Allameh Tabatabaei Tried to Link Philosophical Thinking to Contemporary Issues
He initiated a current in Islamic philosophy that has continued with his students and their students.
This is according to religious scholar Mohammad Fanaei Eshkevari, speaking at a forum on Islamic philosophy. Following are excerpts from his speech at the forum:
It is sometimes said the different between Islamic philosophy and Western philosophy is that the latter pays attention to life and has social outcomes but the former has remained in generalities and has not initiated developments and evolutions. But is this because of the essence of Islamic philosophy?
The approach that was common until about half a century ago was such that it was as if Islamic philosophy has no links to social issues and man’s life and is only about intellectual topics. We have great philosophers in whose works there is no trace of discussions about social issues or concerns about resolving the day’s problems.
In our time, Allameh Tabatabaei was the first to discuss and contemplate the issues of the day with a philosophical thinking. He initiated a current in Islamic philosophy that has continued with his students and their students.
In the contemporary era there is also another approach that seems to believe that philosophy not only is related to social issues but is the key to resolving all problems.
Neither is philosophy unrelated to social issues like it was thought to be in the past nor is it the solution to all problems. There are many issues playing a role in society and civilization building and philosophy is only one of them.
It is sometimes said that if there has been development and progress in the West, it is the product of philosophy and if we are also going to have progress, we should go to philosophy.
Of course, we should not expect miracles from philosophy and we should not think that in philosophy we can find the answer to all questions.
Can Islamic philosophy play a role in development and civilization building? The answer certainly is positive. Obviously, the understanding of the past generations from philosophy does not have much relation with development and civilization building because we have had great scholars whose philosophy played no role in social developments. So the first step is to rebuild our perception of philosophy so that our philosophy can create change.
The other point is that in addition to philosophy, other fields of knowledge should also be activated in order to bring about change and development in society because, basically, development in philosophy is dependent on development in other areas of cognition.
One of the differences between our perception of philosophy today and that of those in the past is that they considered philosophy to be a static issue while in today’s definition, philosophy is dynamic and progressing, with new branches of philosophy being created constantly.
If great figures like Allameh Tabatabaei, Martyr Motahhari, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and others have philosophized, it is because they did not limit philosophy to ontology but tried to develop Islamic philosophy in various fields. This method continues today.
