List of Articles essential

• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  1 - Philosophical Critique of Cultural Essentialism in the Theory of the Clash of Civilizations
  اصغر ميرفردي علیرضا  سمیعی اصفهانی آرش  موسوی
  This research is a philosophical critique of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and, an important theory in current discourse on international relations. According to Huntington, the world can be divided into several distinct civilizations and civilization b More

  This research is a philosophical critique of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and, an important theory in current discourse on international relations. According to Huntington, the world can be divided into several distinct civilizations and civilization beliefs/values will determine how countries will act towards each other. By drawing upon philosophical critique as a theoretical stance and methodological path, the text of Huntington’s theory was analyzed. In this theory, cultural essentialism can be found in two forms: monoculturalism and multiculturalism. While the research aims to identify specific discursive patterns, open them to criticism, and explain their existence in the text, it also discusses questions related to understanding of the nature, form and function of the clash of civilization discourse. Compacted within the theory is the ideology of cultural essentialism in their two components. The first is that there is a core set of basic beliefs that remains immutably important through time. The second is people of similar cultural background resort to these values, even if they migrate to other countries and in times of crisis, relative countries and emigrants will unite together. The findings show the leaders and their policies, rather than covert cultural beliefs are determining in political interaction and evolution. When a country’s culture values are seen as determining the actions of its political leaders, the importance of individual leadership and the supervisory power of nations are underestimated. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  2 - Arendt’s Political Thought and the Possibility of Change in International Relations
  Homeira  Moshirzadeh Arya Moknat
  According to mainstream IR theories and, in particular, realism, violence is and will remain to be an essential and inseparable part of international relations. All variations of realism view human nature and/or intentional system as inherently violent. Hannah Arendt’s More

  According to mainstream IR theories and, in particular, realism, violence is and will remain to be an essential and inseparable part of international relations. All variations of realism view human nature and/or intentional system as inherently violent. Hannah Arendt’s theory of political power as a non-violent and collective human action challenges this fundamental assumption and offers a new perspective on what constitutes the essence of politics. Arendt’s idea of “human condition” rejects all forms of essentialism with regard to human beings and opens up a theoretical space for a new understanding of international relations where human beings become the primary political agents (despite the fact that she sees the existing international relations more from a realist point of view). Contrary to mainstream IR theories in general, and to realism in particular, for Arendt the individuals, rather than the states, are ultimately the main players in international relations. In this paper, we bind different aspects of Arendt’s political thought together to offer a new theoretical perspective for a possible change in world politics. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  3 - God’s Will in Ṭūsī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī
  Armin Mansouri Ali Alahbedashti
  The howness of God’s Will is one of the problems that has provoked a lot of discussion in the field of theology. Although all philosophers have accepted God’s Will as a Divine Attribute, there are several disagreements in its interpretation. The purpose of this paper is More

  The howness of God’s Will is one of the problems that has provoked a lot of discussion in the field of theology. Although all philosophers have accepted God’s Will as a Divine Attribute, there are several disagreements in its interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, compare, and evaluate the views of Khwājah Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī in terms of the semantics, origin, and ontology of God’s Will. Ṭūsī maintains that will is the same as motive, which is the same as knowledge of the goodness of act, and thus believes in God’s essential will as an essential attribute. Mullā Ṣadrā also adds the sameness of love with will to the sameness of the knowledge of goodness of act with act and introduces will as an essential attribute. Moreover, he justifies the Infallible Imam’s narrations regarding the sameness of will with act by changing its meaning from having the intention to perform an act to the making and changing of its level from essence to the level of actual existents. However, ‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī views the identity of free will with the knowledge of the best system as a verbal conflict and a merely different denomination. He disagrees with equating free will with any essential attribute (such as love) other than knowledge. Thus he maintains that free will is not an essential attribute but is, rather, abstracted from the level of act and is one of its attributes. He also introduces the essence of an act that occurs in the outside or the presence of perfect cause for the act as its source of abstraction. It seems that ٬Allāmah’s change of ontological view of free will and considering it an actual attribute in justifying rational constraints are more accurate than regarding it as an essential attribute without paying attention to the conceptual difference between free will and knowledge and love, which has been propounded by Ṭūsī and Mullā Ṣadrā. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  4 - An Evaluation of the Common Interpretations of Fact Itself and its Whatness Based on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Final View
  Seyedeh Zahra  Mousavi Baygi Seyd Mohammad  Musavi
  One of the discussions that has attracted great attention in scientific-philosophical societies is epistemology and its related problems such as the problem of the “criterion for the truth of propositions”. Muslim thinkers believe that the criterion corresponds with naf More

  One of the discussions that has attracted great attention in scientific-philosophical societies is epistemology and its related problems such as the problem of the “criterion for the truth of propositions”. Muslim thinkers believe that the criterion corresponds with nafs al-amr (fact itself); however, they have provided different views and interpretations of this concept. The required data for the study were collected through the library method. After describing and analyzing them, while evaluating three famous views regarding the truth of fact itself, reporting the related criticisms, and emphasizing the incomprehensiveness of these views, the researchers try to demonstrate that fact itself means “God’s essential differentiated knowledge”. Their standpoint is in conformity with gnostic and Sadrian philosophical principles. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  5 - Trans-Substantial Motion of the Soul and its Consequences in the Sadrian Study of the Soul
  Rouhollah  Souri Hamed  Komijani
  The soul goes through elemental, natural, mineral, vegetative, animal (Ideal immateriality), and rational (intellectual immateriality) stages in the cradle of its fluid existence. Therefore, the soul’s belonging to the body is a part of its identity and, thus, it can be More

  The soul goes through elemental, natural, mineral, vegetative, animal (Ideal immateriality), and rational (intellectual immateriality) stages in the cradle of its fluid existence. Therefore, the soul’s belonging to the body is a part of its identity and, thus, it can be said that the soul is a material-immaterial substance. Given the existential fluidity of the soul, Mullā Ṣadrā has reinterpreted its various characteristics. Accordingly, the soul’s faculties are levels of its continuous truth that flourish one after each other. Moreover, natural death is the result of the soul’s ontological gradedness and losing interest in elemental body. At some stages of this ontological becoming, the soul attains immateriality and, hence, its survival after death become necessary. Because gradedness and, as a result, attaining immateriality are essential to the soul, its incarnation and return to elemental body is unjustifiable. Therefore, after death, the soul begins its purgatorial life in an Ideal body that is created based on its moral habits, and the natural form that is created in the matter of elemental body opens the path towards purgatorial perfection before it. One of the most important consequences of the soul’s trans-substantial motion is its entrance into divine worlds and annihilation in active, attributive, and essential oneness. Interestingly enough, based on the trans-substantial motion, this significant achievement is possible at the moment of the soul’s belonging to elemental body and is not necessarily limited to the moment of occurrence of natural death. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  6 - A Critique of the Theory of the End of Comparative Philosophy Based on Steven Burik’s View
  Maryam Parvizi Ghasem Pourhasan
  Since the coinage of the term “comparative philosophy” several views have been propounded concerning its whatness, principles, and function. Some thinkers emphasize the end of comparative philosophy, and some others insist on its significance and necessity. There are st More

  Since the coinage of the term “comparative philosophy” several views have been propounded concerning its whatness, principles, and function. Some thinkers emphasize the end of comparative philosophy, and some others insist on its significance and necessity. There are still others who advocate the beginning of some basic changes in this school from Europe-centeredness to interaction and dialog with others. However, the word “end” has different meanings the investigation of which could lead to three main meanings and referents for it: 1) essential impossibility: the followers of this theory believe that comparative philosophy suffers from an important defect called “impossibility in essence” because of its internal problems and shortages and should not have been formed at all; 2) appearance of all possibilities and actualization of all potencies and abilities, which emphasizes the principle of progress and perfection; 3) end of the past and a new beginning. Following an analytic-descriptive method and relying on Steven Burik’s viewpoint, the present study investigates and evaluates the theory of the end of comparative philosophy based on these three meanings. Apparently, what opponents of comparative philosophy emphasize is end in the first sense because they believe that this kind of philosophy has become “Europe-centered” and cannot enter any dialog or interaction with other scientific traditions and systems. Accordingly, it conceptually enjoys a kind of essential impossibility. Nevertheless, unlike the opponents, Burik believes that comparative philosophy is necessary for stopping the East’s isolation and the growth of Europe-centeredness. Through adopting a critical approach to the “previous comparative philosophy” because of its Europe-centeredness, he pays attention to the “future comparative philosophy”, which bears two responsibilities: 1) maintaining various methods of thinking and 2) facilitating the relationship between these methods without reducing one to another. Manuscript profile
• Open Access Article
  • Abstract Page
  • Full-Text
  
  7 - Whatness, Origin, and Purpose of Essentialist Education
  Ahmadreza Azarbayejani Mohammdreza Sarmadi Faezeh Nateghi Alireza Faghihi
  Mullā Ṣadrā places the “truth” in idealism alongside “truths” in realism in his Transcendent Philosophy. For him, truths are the same truth that reveals itself at different levels. In the view of gnostics, the four-fold spiritual journeys are a way for gnostic transcend More

  Mullā Ṣadrā places the “truth” in idealism alongside “truths” in realism in his Transcendent Philosophy. For him, truths are the same truth that reveals itself at different levels. In the view of gnostics, the four-fold spiritual journeys are a way for gnostic transcendence that the wayfarer traverses at different stages. This journey begins from fiṭrah (primordial nature), which has different levels with nature as its lowest level. Therefore, this journey or, in a sense, this process of learning begins with nature and becomes complete through a hierarchy of stages. The level of learning includes the level of theory and practice at the same time. Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical methodology is based on revelation, rational demonstration, and intuition in the sense that all elements must perceive and confirm the reality and truth of a finding. Relying on the Transcendent Philosophy, the present study follows a demonstrative method in order to define essentialist education and explain its origin and purposes. In doing so, it benefits from a meta-analytic method to introduce the levels of essentialist learning, which is based on human fiṭrah. The purpose of this study is to present a conceptual model for education and learning whose philosophical foundations are not necessarily limited to one specific philosophical school. Manuscript profile