Typology of Certainty and its Relationship with the Definition and Conditions of Certainty in Fārābī’s Philosophy
Subject Areas : مطالعات حوزه فلسفه و حکمت اسلامی
Zahra Aghajan Molaei
1
,
Nadia Maftouni
2
1 - MA in Islamic Philosophy and Kalam, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2 - Professor at the Islamic Philosophy and Kalam Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Certainty, absolute judgment, conformity with reality, belief, fixity, idea, sufficiency, Fārābī,
Abstract :
Philosophy is based on certain knowledge, and Fārābī, as the founder of Islamic philosophy, paid particular attention to “certainty”. On the one hand, the definitions and conditions that he provided for certainty are so fastidious and restrictive that many items of human knowledge and even sense perceptions are placed out of the domain of certainty. On the other hand, he has referred to some different types of certainty in some of his works that seem to be incompatible with his definition of certainty and its conditions of realization, as explained by him. Following a descriptive and critical-analytic method, this paper is intended to inquire into the relationship between the typology of certainty, its definition, and its conditions in Fārābī’s philosophy in order to remove the contradictions regarding the problem of certainty in his school of thought. In line with this purpose, the authors have initially examined the definitions and conditions of certainty in Fārābī’s perspective and then analyzed the types of certainty, as specified by him, and its relationship with the definitions and conditions that he provided. The findings of this study demonstrate that his realistic view of certainty led him to accept a kind of general gradation in different types of certainty, alongside his rigid definition of absolute certainty, in order to introduce a way for saving a great part of human knowledge from the trap of skepticism.