History of Philasophy: 32 (4)

Open Access Article

1 - Historical Deliberations over the Principle of the Nobler Possibility
Hoorieh Shojaee Baghini Einollah Khademi

The present paper examines the principiality of the principle of the nobler possibility as an Illuminationist principle. Despite the common belief regarding the Greek root of this principle, here the writers claim that it is among the concomitants of the Illuminationist More

The present paper examines the principiality of the principle of the nobler possibility as an Illuminationist principle. Despite the common belief regarding the Greek root of this principle, here the writers claim that it is among the concomitants of the Illuminationist philosophy and is not consistent with Peripatetic ideas and principles. In order to demonstrate their standpoint, they initially provide some proofs from the works of Suhrawari himself and the commentators of his philosophical school and explain how the words of such commentators have led to the idea that this principle has a background prior to the development of Illuminationist philosophy. Second, they examine the concomitants of the Illuminationist school and conclude that Suhrawardi used this principle in order to prove the philosophical principles of his own school, which are not accepted by the Peripatetic school. Hence, it is wrong to seek for a background for this principle in pre-Suhrawardi times. Manuscript profile

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2 - A Comparative Analysis and Explanation of the Creation of the World in the View of Ionian Philosophers
Mohammad Akvan

The creation of the world, which is an important and contradictory problem with an eventful historical background, has always attracted the attention of human beings and aroused their enthusiasm and curiosity since ancient periods. This problem has been investigated in More

The creation of the world, which is an important and contradictory problem with an eventful historical background, has always attracted the attention of human beings and aroused their enthusiasm and curiosity since ancient periods. This problem has been investigated in four epistemological areas: mythological cosmology, philosophical cosmology, monotheistic worldview, and scientific cosmology. Each of these disciplines has dealt with the creation of the world and its phenomena based on its own principles and methodology and introduced its particular bases of cosmological system. In this study, the process of the creation of the world and natural phenomena has been probed in the philosophical-cosmological view of Ionian philosophers, including Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. In doing so, the author initially examines the principles of the quality of going beyond a mythological view towards a philosophical approach regarding the problem of creation through focusing on the historical trend of the development of theogonic view into a cosmogenic one, the quality of the change of personal explainers into non-personal ones, leaving mythological particularism behind and developing universal philosophical concepts, and then compares their methods and methodological approaches. Thales and Anaximenes have both explained the issue of creation based on the “change and evolution” of the prime matter of “water” and “air”, and Anaximander has done so based on the “separation” of objects from the first principle of apeiron. Thales and Anaximenes consider all existents and objects as the qualities of prime matter, while Anaximander grants an objective existence to qualities and deems them to be among real existents. Toward the end of this paper, the author tries to provide answers to the questions of how the structure and nature of the world and natural phenomena are formed in the view of Ionian philosophers, how existents and objects are created and annihilated, and whether there is a single origin and a prudent intellect called the Divine Element beyond all changes and evolutions, the turning of material elements into each other, and the detachment of objects. Manuscript profile

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3 - Heidegger’s Interpretation of Anaximander’s Arche, Participation, and Time
Ghasem Purhassan Mehrdad Ahmadi

Heidegger believed that a metaphysical conceptualization of the relationship between identity and difference is not original and maintained that such negligence is rooted in the fact that metaphysics has forgotten “difference as such” as pure unfoldedness. In his view, More

Heidegger believed that a metaphysical conceptualization of the relationship between identity and difference is not original and maintained that such negligence is rooted in the fact that metaphysics has forgotten “difference as such” as pure unfoldedness. In his view, the Greeks had a clearer image of the above-mentioned relationship. In his interpretation of Anaximander’s view, Heidegger demonstrates that, while viewing all being as a whole, Anaximander does not ignore the differences among them. Based on Heidegger’s interpretation, through introducing apeiron and time as two fundamental elements, Anaximander managed to have an early encounter with the relationship between identity and difference. Heidegger called this relationship “participation” and maintained that this concept can lead one to fundamental difference. This is because, unlike metaphysical theories, it does not depend on external elements, upon which correlation relies; rather, it depends on the being of beings. Apeiron and time open the door to a pure space in the unfoldedness of which beings find their essence and, at the same time, depend so much on each other that the whole is created based on their mutual relation. Manuscript profile

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4 - Doubt and Certainty in Contemporary Islamic and Western Philosophies
Abdurrazzaq Hesamifar

Doubt and certainty are two soulish states which form problematic and certain knowledge in the process of human cognition. Problematic knowledge is mainly obtained in the realm of empirical sciences, while certain knowledge is mostly acquired in the domain of certain no More

Doubt and certainty are two soulish states which form problematic and certain knowledge in the process of human cognition. Problematic knowledge is mainly obtained in the realm of empirical sciences, while certain knowledge is mostly acquired in the domain of certain non-empirical sciences such as philosophy, logic, mathematics, and gnosis. In the history of philosophy, philosophers often sought certain knowledge and believed that it is possible to attain the truth. In contrast, skeptics undermined the acquisition of such knowledge and did not believe in the existence of any kind of truth. The confrontations of these two groups have always constituted a part of the history of philosophy. Such a confrontation has been revived in contemporary philosophy as a result of the discussions which are made in modern epistemology both in Islamic philosophy and Western philosophy. On the one hand, contemporary Muslim philosophers have tried to defend the strong epistemological principles of Islamic philosophy through negating the views of skeptics. They believe in realism in epistemology and reject any interpretation of knowledge which is based on subjective idealism. On the other hand, at least some contemporary Western philosophers have tried to provide some responses to the questions posed by skeptics by developing a number of new views. In this comparative study, the author has tried to evaluate the attempts of a group of philosophers of each side in this regard. It is eventually concluded that the responses of Islamic philosophers to the posed questions enjoy a stronger basis both in the past and at present. Manuscript profile

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5 - foreword
Hossein Kalbasi Ashtari

Iranian culture, History, philosophy of history.

Iranian culture, History, philosophy of history. Manuscript profile

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6 - Components of Plato’s Critical Approach to Poetry and Poets
Meysam Dadkhah Ali Naqi Baqershahi

In his Republic, after denouncing Athenian poetry and poets in certain sections, Plato decrees their deportation from his Utopia in the 10th book of the same work. At the same time, however, Plato’s own works abound in poetic concepts, and wherever he talks about poets, More

In his Republic, after denouncing Athenian poetry and poets in certain sections, Plato decrees their deportation from his Utopia in the 10th book of the same work. At the same time, however, Plato’s own works abound in poetic concepts, and wherever he talks about poets, he uses a language which is both hesitant and respectful. Accordingly, this paper is intended to provide some answers to the following questions: which truth underlies such a paradoxical attitude? How could Plato’s approach to poets be explained? What is the main object of Plato’s criticism: Athenian poets’ use of poetry or the essence of poetry itself? Or, should one seek for the response elsewhere and perhaps find the problem in the addressees of poetry? The authors believe that, if one agrees that one of the important elements of poetry in Athens was to believe in an epistemological aspect for sophist teachings, and if one assumes that, beyond ontological and epistemological discussions, Plato’s first problem is basically politics and the establishment of an organized political system, it can be concluded that, in this Utopia, the Athenian poetic tradition and its specific features are not consistent with Plato’s political ideas. The reason is that if one considers paedeia or a system of education to be necessary for the establishment of Utopia, if the intended paedeia is based on mythology and sophists’ teachings as its epistemological origin, it will be doomed to failure from the beginning. Moreover, one can approach this problem from the epistemological aspect of Plato’s philosophy and speak of the distinction between aesthetic beauty, as we know it today and as it is manifest in works of art, and the Ideal beauty or the same truth, as intended by Plato. In his view, the aesthetic view of beauty is a subcategory of Ideal beauty; hence, by the word “beautiful”, he does not merely mean the values that are involved in today’s concept of aesthetics. Rather, he has ethical and epistemological values in mind as well. Therefore, the discussion of the dismissal of poets from Utopia must be revisited under the category of general and particular senses of beauty. Manuscript profile

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7 - An Evaluation and Pathology of the Components of Epistemology of the Modern Period in Human Sciences
Ali Karbalaei Pazooki Fatemeh Najafi Pazooki

The formation of modern human sciences which are presently taught at the academic centers of the world dates back to the modern period in the West; an era which is known as the period of the separation of science, religion, intellect, and faith from each other. The theo More

The formation of modern human sciences which are presently taught at the academic centers of the world dates back to the modern period in the West; an era which is known as the period of the separation of science, religion, intellect, and faith from each other. The theoretical principles of this field of knowledge are limited to matter from an ontological standpoint, to anthropology from a humanist standpoint, to secularism from an eschatological standpoint, and to sense perception, experience, verification, and instrumental intellect from an epistemological standpoint. The question is what the contexts and background of the formation of modern human sciences in the West are, and what epistemological, religious, psychological, and spiritual harms they might lead to. Following a descriptive-analytic design and through a historical review of the problem of knowledge in the West, the present study intends to revisit the epistemological factors influencing the formation of the human sciences of the modern period and their disadvantages. Restricting science to scientism; human being to humanism; the world of being to natural phenomena; acquisition of knowledge to sense perception, empiricism, causality, and pure rationalism, as well as focusing on an epistemological distinction between phenomena and things in-themselves, and ignoring inner sense and fitri (intrinsic) knowledge, intuitive intellect and revelation are among the significant factors which play roles in the formation of modern western human sciences. Moreover, they underlie the creation of epistemological, religious, and psychological crises; spiritual poverty; nihilism, and the like in the world today. Manuscript profile

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8 - Reflection of the Philosophy of Amesha Spenta in Suhrawardi’s Theory of Archetypes
Nadia Maftouni Morteza Darrudi Jawan

Following the method of content analysis, this study explores the extent of the direct and indirect effects and signs of five amesha spenta in the collection of Suhrawardi’s works. In this process, after establishing the general and particular features of amesha spenta More

Following the method of content analysis, this study explores the extent of the direct and indirect effects and signs of five amesha spenta in the collection of Suhrawardi’s works. In this process, after establishing the general and particular features of amesha spenta based on Zoroastrian sources, such as Avesta and Bandhesh, and other scientific and analytic texts, the authors have searched for them in Suhrawardi’s works. They have extracted and enumerated all the cases in which explicit references have been made to amesha spenta and their general and specific features. After calculating the frequency of the features and signs of each amesha spenta, they have provided a content and conceptual analysis for them. Among the findings of this study are determining the number of explicit references to amesha spenta and the relative order of the frequency of the signs based on the order of amesha spenta, referring to the five-fold amesha spenta as accidental intellects based on their archetypal functions, providing a collection of the strongest signs in Persian texts, and reminiscing about Iranian mythical heroes. Manuscript profile

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