نشریه جاویدان خرد
سال یازدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 25، بهار و تابستان 1393)

One of the issues in moral epistemology is cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Most researchers interpret Isfahani’s thesis as a non-cognitivism. In this paper we aim to explain the terms in the thesis and vindicate moral cognitivism. Isfahani means by “the theoretical certainties” “self-evident” and by “generally accepted propositions in broad sense” “non-essential generally accepted propositions” and considers moral propositions as theoretical. He maintains that moral propositions such as “justice is good”, “oppression is bad” are decisive judgment and aren’t surmise. He tells us how to know and determine moral propositions; therefore he is cognitivist.

The way of love is one of the two ways to attain to the One in view of Plotinus. In this paper we attempt to describe the way of love which is a process of spiritual journey which soul begins from seeing the tangible beauties and then continues to see the beauties of intelligible world, and finally reaches to the beyond of beauty. The soul performs the journey so as to become similar to the One as far as possible and then becomes united with it. Then it will be investigated whether the love-relationship between the God and man is merely bilateral or the God does regard to human happiness. Based on idea of plotinous, the Good has special attention to human happiness. Because man potentialy has its love from beginning and realizes it with purification and spritual journeying, in adition, the One is the efficient cause, ultimate cause and survival case for everything.

Farabi in his book entitled Al-Horuf (the words) has mentioned three meanings for “existent” such as “categories”, “true” and “autonomous from the external essence” and maintains that the last two meanings are the main meaning of the “existent”. In order to preserve the philosophical position of the technical meaning of the “existent”, he believes the application of “existent” is as a connective between subject and predicate in decisive affirmative propositions, and in Arabic language is equivalent to the verbs کان/یکون. He also maintains the “existent” which means “autonomous from the external essence” has two kinds of essence, i. e. divided or undivided one. In the divided essences the existence of a thing with its whole essence is in an undetailed way (like human), and “existence” is either the whole essence in a detailed way (like intelligent animal) or components of essence (like animal or intelligent). He gathers all of the debates in (هل/ do/does). In philosophy, this question accompanies by the “existent” and it is either predicate itself or interconnector between subject and predicate. With regard to the meanings of the “existent” in both of these questions, there is a problem of truth in the first place. After knowing the truth, the question which starts with “هل” is used for the essentials of subject which consists of its nature and essence which causes its external autonomy from other beings.

Abul-Futuh Aḥmad ibn-Muḥammad ibn-al-Ṣalāḥ Al-Ḥamadāni, a logician who lived one century after Avicenna, is the first Muslim who enumerated and proved the valid and invalid moods of the Fourth Figure in his treatise: ‘On the Fourth Figure, which is attributed to Galen.’ A facsimile of this has been published in 1965, and one year later was published in USA with a fairly unsophisticated edition of Nicholas Rescher. This paper is a new edition of the treatise with many corrections and contains some new information about the history of the subject.

In the view of Avicenna, mediating movement is the being of moved between origin and end of the movement, and traversing movement is the abstraction of imaginary forms from the terms of movement and picturing them collectively. Due to raising some objections to the existence of movement, Bahmanyar denied the objective existence of the mediating movement; on the contrary Mirdamad accepted the objective existence of both of them. Mullah Sadra in some cases is inclined to accept the objective existence of the mediating movement and in other cases accepted the objective existence of the traversing movement. Tabatabaei believes in the objective existence of both of them. In this paper the authors have proven that only Sabzevari has grasped the view of Avicenna about these two movements- which is the objective existence of the mediating movement and the subjective existence of traversing movement- very well.

Comparing the mystical and Salafi approach in ontology by emphasizing on the views of two eminent representatives of these approaches, i.e. Ibn ʽArabi and Ibn Taymiya is important in some respects. The difference between the speculative principles of Ibn ʽArabi as a founder of speculative mysticism and Ibn Taymiya as the most influential person in Salafi thought hasn’t been examined in any research thus far. Ibn ʽArabi’s emphasis on pantheism – and his belief that sole instance of real existence is God and other beings such as material and immaterial ones are manifestations of absolute existence - is in contrast with the pluralistic thought of Ibn Taymiya who regarded God as a material being who is perceptible and also denied the existence of immaterial beings. Their differences in ontological approach can be found in some issues such as their idea about the existence of God, existence and essence, the theory of eternal essences. These differences can be found in other spheres such as anthropology, epistemology and eschatology either. The present paper manifests their fundamental differences by analytical method and by emphasizing on their most important works. Although the impossibility of synthesis of these approaches is the confirmed point in this paper, mentioning the consequences of these approaches is not the aim of this paper, but they will be understood implicitly.