Search

One of the conditions which gave rise to the emergence of modern aesthetics was the claim that beauty could and must be studied independently of goodness and truth. However, in premodern philosophy, namely that of ancient Greece and the middle ages, the beautiful was not understood and explained independently of the good and the true. Before Christanity and in the middle ages, the relation of beauty with goodness and truth was elaborated by Dionysius. In his On the Divine Names, by a combination of theological perspective with the late neoplatonic framework, Dionysius explains the relation of beauty with goodness and truth as three fundamental Divine Names. This paper tries, through the analysis of Dionysius' treatise, to study and explain the nature of these three Names and their relationships. This paper shows that Dionysius while declaring the essential unity of beauty, goodness, and truth, affirms the theophanic aspect of beauty and its function to motivate the soul powers of knowledge and love towards its ultimate goal, theosis. As such, Dionysius can be regarded as the founder of a kind of theological-mystical aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral semantics is one of the subjects of moral philosophy which discusses the semantic analysis of moral conceptions and propositions. Moral semantics has a close relationship with the ontology of ethical terms. The major issues in moral semantics are the study of the concepts of subject, predicate, and concepts in morality. The present study aims to investigate Mohaghegh Tusi's innovations by reviewing ethical concepts in his thought. Mohaghegh Tusi has studied the basic virtues in examining the concepts that are used in the subject and classifies the four famous virtues with the two criteria of quantity and quality. Like the famous thinkers of ancient Greece, he considered the basic virtues to be justice, wisdom, courage, and chastity. He has sometimes categorized these virtues by quantitative criteria. That is, justice is the degree of attainment of perfection of the other three virtues, namely wisdom, courage, and chastity, and each of these three virtues includes many other virtues. Justice includes all other virtues, has more territory, and wisdom in its sub-category and is higher than wisdom because, in addition to pure wisdom, it also has other virtues. In the qualitative classification, Mohaghegh Tusi considers wisdom to have a higher degree. In the qualitative division of virtues, he first divides virtues into two categories: virtues related to the soul, and virtues related to the body. Wisdom is a carnal virtue related to thought, and other basic virtues are related to the action and behavior. The manifestation of wisdom is the rational soul. In the importance of theoretical virtue, it is enough that theoretical virtue is more stable, but other virtues are not. In an innovative division, Mohaghegh al-Tusi divides the power of the human soul into two basic categories: the power of perception by essence, and the power of voluntary stimulation. Each of the two types has a secondary category. The power of perception by essence creates wisdom on the basis of the evidence of theoretical reason while on the other hand brings about justice on the basis of the evidence of practical reason. The power of voluntary stimulation is also divided into lust and anger resulting in moderation, chastity, and courage. In defining justice as a widely used concept in the subject of moral sentences, Mohaghegh Tusi believes that justice means equality, but equality means equality based on proportion in objects. Wisdom, as another widely used concept in the subject of moral sentences, according to Mohaghegh Tusi, refers to knowing things as they are and knowing voluntary actions as they should be, so that man can achieve happiness through those actions. Thus, wisdom is divided into two types: practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom means the result of knowledge of beings and facts, which includes metaphysics, mathematics, and physics while practical wisdom is the perception of man's voluntary actions. In another division, practical wisdom is divided into two types: individual actions that have nothing to do with the society, and social actions that take place with social participation. Individual actions are called personal ethics, and social ethics is divided into house and civil politics. Mohaghegh Tusi considers the meaning of moral good and evil as the real relationship between "happiness and cruelty of the behavior" and "praiseworthy and reprehensible". Explaining the concept of perfection, which is a widely used concept in ethics, he believes that every creature has a property due to its nature. That is, a property in which no other being participates with this being, and this is his perfection. Mohaghegh Tusi paid close attention to the semantics of virtues and vices and introduced innovations in the theory of mediocrity so that by considering the quality in mediocrity, he has more accurately expressed the realms of basic virtues and vices. However, he does not seem to have paid enough attention to the good and bad moral semantics that have accepted the separation of the three meanings from Fakhr-e Razi, because it is possible to combine these meanings in one category. It seems that he has not proved the true relationship between the granting of divine blessings and the necessity of worship in explaining the ontology of morality. In any case, Mohaghegh Tusi is considered as realistic, absolutist, and morally monist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being used in different branches of humanistic science such as literature, theology, and especially philosophy during the last two to three centuries, Hermeneutics has not yet been defined clearly. The literal meaning of hermeneutics in dictionaries has been affected by its traditional meaning as an interpretation of the holy book. Although hermeneutic roots can be found in ancient Greece, its serious presence is connected closely by understanding the holy books. Levels of meanings and metaphorical aspects alongside the absent author are of the characteristics of holy books which make their understanding with a problem. That was why a means for “understanding the primary meaning of holy text “was needed and hermeneutics proposed this means. Determining the meaning was, therefore, the assumption of classical hermeneutic, and “achieving the author’s intention” was the philosophy of hermeneutical science. During the different eras, hermeneutics has been defined differently from “achieving the author’s intention” to “creating meaning by interpreter” or even “the death of the author”. From Gadamer's point of view, hermeneutics tries to understand the text. He, however, emphasizes that assumptions have great dominance on the interpreter, and, therefore, discovering the intention of the author is not possible. Such an idea strengthens relativism in the field of epistemology and is criticized by some scholars like Hersch in the school of critical hermeneutics. Eric Hersch is one of the great theoreticians believing in the intention of the author. He is known for reviving the classical hermeneutics. Although his ideas are greatly following Schleiermacher and Dilthey (romantic hermeneutic), he gets distance from the romantic hermeneutics as well as philosophical hermeneutics by referring to the fundamentals of classical hermeneutics and restricting the meaning of intention of the author. By defending from the “intention of the author”, he tried to criticize philosophical hermeneutics so his hermeneutics is known as new hermeneutic. He believes that even though discovering the intention of the author is so difficult, the chief job of an interpreter is to reveal the interpreter’s logic, interests, intellectual input, and, generally, the word of the author. One of Hersch’s ways to revive the “intention of the author” is to classify between the types of interaction with any text. he believes that four-functions are possible for every text,” understanding”, “interpretation”, “judgment”, and “criticism”. To distinguish between these functions, he proposes two fundamental separations as “separation between “Subtilitus Explicandi” and “Subtilitas Inteligendi”. Hersch believes that the main mistake of Gadamer and Heidegger was not paying attention to this big difference in understanding. Using a method like a reverse argument, Hersch proves the incorrect consequences of denying the author and dependence of meaning of the text which is doubtfulness and ignoring determine and demands incorrectness to any kind of reasoning of a theory of independence of meaning. Separation of text from the thought of the author, hence, causes the plurality of meaning rather than a single meaning; however, it extirpates not only the author’s thought but also the essence of the meaning. Emphasizing that there is a big difference between the validity of interpretation and creativity of interpretation, Hersch points out that creativity in interpretation does not lead to the validity of interpretation. He believes validity refers to an accommodation with the meaning of the text. In this way norms like “sensitivity”, “acceptability”, “power”, and “attractiveness” are not so important. Because what the text says maybe is none of them. The aim of interpretation, therefore, from the internationalists’ perspective is the validity of interpretation which its necessity is a limitation. Hersch, hence, emphasizes that the validity of interpretation which refers to the accommodation of a meaning that text presents is not necessarily creativity in interpretation. Opposed to all internationalists who believe in the theory of independence, Hersch considers meaning a sort of awareness, not words. This departure of words from meanings makes serious problems for him which made him present some rules named as the rules of confirming interpretation in four functions. By making use of these rules, it is more probable to achieve the intention of the author and reach a valid interpretation, especially in holy books in which the author is absent. These rules are “legitimacy”, “correspondence”, “gendered appropriateness” and “coherence”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]