Journal of Philosophical Investigations (22517960)16(41)pp. 373-385
Soren Kierkegaard, as one of the leading anti-philosophers of the school of existentialism, employs an ironic and groundbreaking approach to find fault with rationalism, abstract thinking, heteronomy, ethics and pluralism developed from the ideas of thinkers such as Kant and Hegel. Instead of valuing society, government, and conventional ethical and moral norms, he supports de-familiarization, creativity, autonomy, activity, individuality, and singularity. Kierkegaard argues that there are three stages on life’s way or three spheres of existence on the path to self-realization. He believes that the highest realm of human life is the religious sphere in which Abraham, as a believer in the realm of faith, decides to sacrifice his son Isaac to God with the aim of saving his agency, individuality and singularity from the clutches of moral, governmental and public systems. Kierkegaard argues that the leap of faith is making a decision in the very moment of madness, and considers it as a kind of gambling and risk-taking. He believes that faith is a belief in the impossibility, irrationality and paradoxicality. In this sense of faith, on the one hand, Abraham is willing to obey God’s command regarding the sacrifice of Isaac, and on the other hand, he believes in his heart that Isaac will be returned to him in this material world by God’s command. The present paper, accordingly, examines the following hypothesis: Although Kierkegaard is against the official government policy based on sovereignty and pluralism, his leap of faith, which implies standing on the boundaries and suspending the moral and the general, can lead to the emergence of a political event and, consequently, the birth of an active and autonomous subject. © The Author(s).
Journal of Philosophical Investigations (22517960)16(39)pp. 626-642
As one of the most prominent thinkers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger has made fundamental criticisms of the subjectivism of the modern world. He critically examines the 2,500-year history of the West as a manifestation of metaphysical rationality. Heidegger contrasts with the Cartesian and Kantian calculus thinking, the profound thinking based on the metaphysics of the carpenter. Heidegger believes that with Descartes as the creator of the paradigm of modernity, subjectivism is spreading in the world. One of the inevitable consequences of the supremacy of subjectivism is the dominance of technological rationality over the world. For Heidegger, technology is not a mere tool; instead, it is a special kind of development and way of thinking that imposes its possessive and calculating logic on everything and everyone. In other words, in the paradigm of knowledge of the modern foundation, existence is manifested technologically, which has created a special kind of rationality called technological rationality. The premise of this article is based on the fact that although Ali Shariati, as a critic of the modern world, criticizes scientism and mechanism, his critique of technology and mechanism is more political and sociological. Also, like Heidegger, he never could critique the philosophical, theological, and ontological subjectivism and technological rationality of the modern world. © The Author(s).
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences (discontinued) (20392117)5(7)pp. 555-561
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, scholars and thinkers encountered new scientific conditions, modern political ideas and newly established time and ground, and each, responding to these new upheavals which was the governance and fulfilment of Islamic commandments in all political, social, cultural and economic fields, presented ideas appropriate to their thought constellation. Reza Davari as a Fardidian thinker, following the ideas of the famous German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, criticizes the West philosophically and phenomenologically and knows the only redemptive path for Iranians as leaving the West as an integrated whole and criticizes modernity in a severe way. Contrary to this uncompromising approach to the West, another approach, particularly in the second and third decades of the Islamic Revolution gradually appeared which practiced sympathetic approaches to the West and Abdul Karim Soroush as the forerunner of this approach, tried to pave that path for establishing modernism by an epistemological reading of religion. In the present article, it has been tried to discuss and compare the ideas and thoughts of Davari and Soroush to the West.
