فصلنامه تاریخ فلسفه
سال پنجم شماره 1 (پیاپی 17، تابستان 1393)

From among the views propounded in the field of ethics, Aristotle’s theory of golden mean has attracted the greatest attention of Muslim philosophers, including Farabi, who is considered to be the founder of Islamic philosophy. The problem here is whether Farabi himself was merely content with a pure imitation, explanation, and expansion of Aristotle’s theory in designing his ethical system or developed his independent view in the realm of ethics. Through presenting a documented report of Farabi’s views in ethics, the present paper intends to demonstrate that, in spite of Aristotle’s undeniable influence on his thoughts in the development of some of his philosophical principles in the field of ethics, such as considering happiness to be the ultimate goal and resorting to the theory of the mean in explaining virtues and posing Aristotle’s four-fold virtues, Farabi was never content with a mere explanation of Aristotle’s ideas in this regard and, on the contrary, presented his own specific theories. Clearly, Farabi promotes happiness from the level of a purely ethical concept with an individualistic bent to the level of a social concept and considers it to be the foundation of the political systems that are based on virtue. He also enters some purely religious features into this field and clearly explains them. However, his ideas in this regard are not immune to criticism. What places Farabi with regard to his ethical theories in the same line with Aristotelians is the problem of proposing the mean as the criterion for determining moral virtues. Through emphasizing this problem, this paper intends to demonstrate how Farabi has organized his ethical system based on the elements he has borrowed from Aristotle.

“Eternal recurrence” is an old theorem in the history of philosophy stating that any event in the world will recur in future in a self-similar form an infinite number of times as it has recurred an infinite number of times previously. Suhrawardi discusses this theorem in his Hikmat al-ishraq and al-Mashari‘ wa al-mutarihat and adduces some arguments in order to demonstrate it.In his T‘aliqat written on Qutb al-Din Shirazi’s commentary on Hikmat al-ishraq, Mulla Sadra evaluates Suhrawardi’s argument and deems them unfounded. However, the falsity of the argument does not indicate the falsity of the claim, particularly, because we have Poincaré’s “proposition of recurrence” before us demonstrating that, in any system, the initial states of all component parts of a whole will recur after the passage of a sufficiently long time. This idea necessitates the demonstration of the theorem of “eternal recurrence”. Nevertheless, one must ask how long this sufficiently “long time” is. Based on the calculations of Chandrasekhar, for a spherical volume of air with a radius of one centimeter at a standard point of temperature and pressure, with one percent of fluctuation in density around the mean, this time is equal to 3 trillion years! Therefore, the time of the recurrence of the whole universe is so long that the life of its components will come to an end long before that time. This will make the recurrence of the universe impossible. Therefore, this paper concludes that the theorem of “eternal recurrence”, which Suhrawardi also believes in, is essentially possible but practically impossible.

Vedanta is the most original Indian philosophical school which has borrowed its basic principles from Upanishads and emphasizes non-dualism. Indian historians have divided the history of this school into three periods: Pre-Shankara, Shankara, and Post-Shankara. In the first period, some figures such as Badarayana and Gaudapada emerged and laid the foundation for Vedanta philosophy. In the second period, Shankara expanded this school and played a significant role in spreading and disseminating it. During the third period, Ramanuja presented a different interpretation of non-dualism and the notion of Ultimate Reality based on his own critical views and pushed the borderlines of this school even further. Generally speaking, each of the founders and interpreters of Vedanta philosophy explained and expanded this school based on their own philosophical tastes and views and tried to enrich it more than ever before. However, the important point here is that all of them were unanimous regarding the notion of non-dualism. Of course, they had some serious disagreements concerning certain issues, which can also be seen among their advocates. Some of the contemporary Indian thinkers, such as Rabindranath Tagore tried to reconcile their ideas with each other in some way. Vedanta has also influenced contemporary Indian philosophers and artists to such a great extent that their worldview has been completely affected by this school. In the present paper, the writer traces the historical development of the school of Vedanta and explores its relationship with non-dualism.

This paper intends to demonstrate that the traces of the epistemological criterion for Cartesian distinction existed previously in Islamic philosophy and kalam. Hence, the writer initially refers to Descartes’ views and follows their traces in the ideas of early Muslim scholars. Then he refers to the views of some Muslim thinkers such as Fakhr al-Din Razi, ‘Allamah Hilli, Taftazani, and Mulla Sadra, who were already involved in this discussion more than others and propounded more solid and plausible theories in this regard. They have sometimes reviewed the same informed theories critically before some of the critiques of Descartes. In this way, the author reveals that Islamic thinkers’ interpretation of the Cartesian distinction is closer to Hume’s more solid interpretation of this notion than to that of Descartes himself. Hume states that clarity and distinction result in possible existence rather than the very existence of the researchers.

Justice is the key term by which Farabi has managed to explicate the foundations of the genetic system of the world. Moreover, based on the same concept and following Plato, he has entered it into the structure of utopia and justified the system of individual ethics accordingly. Here, the writers maintain that it is only through matching the system of divine legislation to creation and using it as a model in establishing individual and social relationships that Man can attain happiness, which is the ultimate end of Plato and Farabi’s utopia.

The term dialectic has a Greek root and enjoys a historical background as long as that of philosophy itself. This term has been employed by most philosophers at all times and has undergone some changes in terms of meaning in line with the differences in the views of different philosophers. The present paper aims to recount, examine, and evaluate Heidegger’s interpretation of the word “dialectic” as used by Plato.Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s dialectic is other than the common interpretations provided by most interpreters. While examining the interpretations given by the philosophers preceding him, Heidegger enters a dialog with them and believes that he has observed the norms of justice in this dialog while granting some freshness and beauty to their interpretations through employing a specific composing style and arrangement of ideas. At the same time, he has remained loyal to the interpreted text. In fact, while having a dialog with philosophers (particularly, Plato and Aristotle) and interpreting their views, Heidegger tries to remain objective and portray a new and unprecedented picture of their thoughts. In this paper, the writers have evaluated Heidegger’s loyalty to the thoughts of his intended philosopher (Plato) and, while exploring Platonic dialectic in the light of Heidegger’s philosophy, review the latter’s interpretation of this particular idea.

The present paper presents a definition for “intellectual intuition” in Ibn Sina’s Oriental epistemology as referred to in his Rasa’il mashriqi. Accordingly, in the first part, the writers initially explore the different meanings of intuition. Then, through an analysis of Ibn Sina’s epistemological system, under titles such as “A Study of Different Stages of Acquiring Knowledge” and “A Study of Various Stages of Conjecture”, they try to explain Ibn Sina’s specific definition of intellectual intuition. Finally, by comparing his definition with other ones, they pinpoint their differences and similarities and refer to his all-inclusive definition of intellectual intuition. In the second part, through investigating the specific features of Ibn Sina’s definition of this concept, the writers introduce the objects of intellectual intuition, the good and evil moral attributes of the soul, the evident ethical propositions, and the particular ethical acts.