نشریه جاویدان خرد
سال دهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 23، بهار و تابستان 1392)

Most of Plato’s works have conversational style. The present article deals with the question of why Plato chooses this style and format? This subject will be examined from three perspectives by posing three questions: Can we attribute a role to the historical Socrates in this regard? Has Plato a critical approach towards the written logos in his works and if it is the case, has this critical approach led him to choose the style that bears close resemblance to the verbal logos? Is it possible to obtain evidences indicating an essential connection between the themes of Plato's philosophical thought and this style? From the first perspective, an examination is done on the role of the historical Socrates’ method in creating an atmosphere which impressed not only Plato, but also a group of his followers and disciples, prompting them to write works in conversational form. From the second perspective, Plato's criticisms of written logos are examined and the way Plato avoids them himself. From the third perspective, the necessary relation between the conversational style and the themes of Plato's philosophical thought is examined in detail. Of course, this necessity has also been pointed out in the first two perspectives.

The problem of evil is a well-known subject in philosophy, especially in philosophy of religion. In fact many thinkers hold that the problem of evil is the most potent rational objection to the theistic belief and has been called the rock of atheism and are being introduced as a recently emerging notion. This paper shows that this problem was proposed and discussed many years ago by Zoroastrian scholars. This paper also studies the solutions proposed by those scholars; And with the help of some theories from Islamic theosophists, the existence of the two sources of good and evil in Mezdayasnian creed has been compared with the concepts of Attributes of Beauty and Glory. In this way, it has been shown that with the help of responses from the Khorasan school to the problem of evil, the Zoroastrian religion can be considered as a creed of Unity.

Ibn Muqaffaʽ was one of the main medium to transfer ethics from ancientPersia and India to Islamic period. Only eleven short and long essays of Ibn Muqaffaʽ have survived. Ten of them are in ethics. Although most of them were translation from Pahlavi to Arabic, he was not just a translator; on the contrary his political position and his personal characteristics promoted his position to the level of ethical thinkers and researchers, not to sayIslamic political philosopher. In spite of that, the recognition of his position in ethics was delayed due to some marginal issues targeting his personality. His moral school is rational based, yet it is not autonomous but is dependent on the teachings of revelation. In his view, the origin of moral act is human dignity, self-esteem and noblesse; and morality is unconditional. In his works, friendship and loyalty to friendship, among other virtues, are so important. So if his moral school can be called "rational-based noblesse", both of them can illustrate his ethical research components.

Twelve Shiʽism has passed different periods. In the initial periods, the apparent development of the history of Imamiyyah and the compilation of the corpus of hadith knitted together. Gradually after establishing its intellectual framework, this creed encountered with different schools such as various jurisprudential, theological, philosophical and mystical schools. Two general ways are possible in this encounter; first, rejection and separation and second, reconciliation. Ibn Abi JumhBr AhsCῑ was one of the Shiʽi thinkers who was proponent of the reconciliation and had a great role in paving the way for it. AhsCῑ tried to reconcile theology (Ashʽarites, Muʽtazilites and Shiʽi theology) with philosophy (Illuminative Philosophy and Peripatetic Philosophy) and Sufism, by means of a hierarchical system. In this paper a perspective of his synthetic and comparative method will be presented for the first time and especially the significance of IjtihCd and its focal role in the foregoing phenomenon will be explained.

Knowing God is one of the basic concerns of human being for which he has experienced different ways such as intuitive knowledge, refinement of the soul and intellectual argument. But the latter which has been one of the most fundamental ways of knowing God has always been criticized. Some philosophers maintain that belief in God is justified as far as it is proved by the intellectual arguments while others maintain that belief in God is justified because it is an intuitive knowledge. Therefore theists are justified in their belief in God even without any proof. The mentioned hypothesis can be seen in the following approaches; Fideism, Reformed Epistemology, Intuitionism and innate knowledge of God. By a descriptive- analytic approach, we come to this conclusion that fideism has encountered lots of difficulties and cannot justify the plausibility of belief in God without argument. Authenticity of intuition is personal and the reformed epistemology can justify theists in their belief in God. Therefore, the only way that suffices for a priori knowledge of God without any argument, is the innate approach according to which everyone knows God by creation.

Contemporary epistemologists have different views about the meaning and justification of moral intuition and intuition. In this paper, I will attempt to examine the meaning and justification of moral intuition and I will support the view that moral intuition is a kind of rational appearance which has value content. This paper answers the question that how moral intuition stops the regress of justification of moral beliefs and how to justify basic moral beliefs? Firstly this paper refers to the negative and affirmative aspects of moral intuition and then analyzes the nature of the justification of moral intuition and then suggests two models of justification of moral intuition: introspective account of moral intuition and reliability of moral intuitions. Either of these theories help to justify a person in his moral beliefs and stop the regress of basic moral beliefs. Finally, the conditions of intuitive justification such as moral impartiality will be expressed.

Mulla Ṣadra considers theology as a knowledge which discusses divine nature, attributes and actions, the quality of resurrection, prophets and holy books. Its duty is explanation of these phenomena and proving their truth and defending them against the objections. Learning some parts of it,are necessary for everyone and learning other parts are necessary only for specialists. He has replied to the objections concerning inappropriateness of learning theology. In comparing theologians with other groups of theists (ordinary people, philosophers, mystics), he judges to the relative superiority of theologians over some of the foregoing groups and the inferiority of them over other groups of theists. He knows the downside of theologians well and explicitly suggest his view about some theologians and some theological schools such as Ashʽarites, Muʽtazilites and Esotericist. This paper attempts to examine Mulla Ṣadra's view about theology and theologians in the framework of the mentioned discussions.