Abstracts of papers submitted to the International Conference on Philosophy of Life
In the History of Life: An Introduction to the History of the Absence and Presence of Life in Philosophy
Masoud Omid
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Extended Abstract
This article offers a historical introduction and philosophical inquiry into the concept of life, examining its treatment in the history of philosophy through three periods: absence, attention, and presence. Given the need to place life at the center of philosophical thinking, as well as the necessity of philosophical reflection on life itself, the article seeks to address three fundamental questions. First, what has been the historical trajectory of philosophical reflection on life, particularly with regard to its absence and presence as an important and consequential subject? Second, what are the causes and grounds of the historical absence and presence of life in philosophical thought? Third, what has been the philosophical status and significance of life throughout the history of philosophy, particularly during the last century?These three questions can be considered at three corresponding levels: historical, analytical, and philosophical.The answer to the first, historical question is that the history of philosophical reflection on life can be divided into three stages: the period of neglect or absence, the period of attention, and the period of presence.The answer to the second, analytical question is that mythical, religious, and even philosophical backgrounds that adopted a negative attitude toward life contributed to the neglect of deep philosophical reflection on life throughout much of the history of philosophy. This negative influence operated primarily through the undervaluation or devaluation of life, either absolutely or relatively—for example, through the contrast between earthly life and life after death or the afterlife. Conversely, objective historical circumstances, such as the world wars and the COVID-۱۹ pandemic, as well as philosophical and epistemological developments—most notably the emergence of the philosophy-of-life movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—contributed first to increased attention to life and subsequently to its philosophical presence.
The answer to the third, philosophical question is that, throughout the history of philosophy, life has possessed the capacity to be understood not only at an empirical level, particularly in the biological sense, but also at social and political levels and in metaphorical and literary senses. Moreover, life has the potential to acquire a distinct philosophical meaning and concept. Depending on the philosophical approach adopted and the meanings attributed to it, life can become a point of departure for philosophical inquiry and can even be elevated to the status of a subject in its own right, giving rise to a distinct field of philosophy: philosophical biologism or a philosophy centered on life.In light of these three levels of inquiry, the claims of the article can be examined at three levels:
The historical claim
The analytical claim
The philosophical claim
The main purpose of raising these questions, however, is not to provide comprehensive answers but to direct philosophical and historical scholarship toward an important and neglected subject: life. The article therefore offers preliminary answers to these three questions as a starting point for more detailed future research. Its primary objective is to raise new questions concerning life rather than to provide definitive answers to all of the questions posed.The history of philosophy has been, and continues to be, a history of the emergence and development of philosophical concepts such as becoming, actuality, existence, essence, causality, and related philosophical discussions. Yet the history of philosophy has also been a history of the neglect of certain philosophical subjects that were nevertheless present in philosophical thought. Life is one of these neglected subjects. It is therefore necessary to investigate both the absence and presence of life in the history of philosophy, as well as the ways in which life has been philosophically represented.
At the outset, it is important to distinguish between biologism in the general sense and philosophical biologism in the specific sense. In the specific sense, philosophical biologism refers to a philosophical orientation explicitly centered on life as life. In this sense, it appears predominantly in the modern and contemporary periods. By contrast, biologism in the general sense—namely, philosophical reflection on principles, dimensions, forms, or consequences of life, including political, social, legal, and ethical dimensions—can be found, to varying degrees, from ancient Greek philosophy onward.For example, five different aspects or levels can be distinguished in philosophical discussions concerning life:
The elements and principles of life, such as praxis, phronesis, intuition, and power;
The conditions of life, such as experience, being-in-the-world, and living in the world;
The accessories and necessities of life, such as death;
The forms and types of life, including moral, political, religious, and ideological forms of life; and
Life itself.
Philosophical biologism in the specific sense—philosophy centered explicitly on life as life—appeared relatively late and became explicit and transparent primarily in the modern and contemporary periods. By contrast, philosophical biologism in the general sense, understood as philosophical reflection based on the centrality of the principles, dimensions, forms, and necessities of life, has existed in one form or another since the Greek period.The central claim of this article is that, although life and its various dimensions have been discussed throughout the history of philosophy, life itself has rarely been treated as an explicit point of departure and central philosophical subject, in the same way that being, existence, essence, causality, subjectivity, or Dasein have been treated. Explicit attempts to establish life itself as a philosophical point of departure emerge primarily in the modern and contemporary periods. Accordingly, the history of philosophy can be divided into three historical stages with regard to the philosophical subjectivity of life:
The period of neglect and oblivion
The period of attention
The period of presence and the philosophical subjectivity of life
۱. The Period of Neglect
From the classical period through the nineteenth century, we can identify a period in which life, in the specific philosophical sense described above, lacked centrality. To explain this neglect, we can distinguish between historical contexts and philosophical reasons.As a historical context, the prominence of negative mythical and religious attitudes toward life—particularly within certain strands of Christianity—may have contributed to the marginalization of life as a philosophical subject. From a philosophical perspective, several further reasons can be identified.First, from the standpoint of classical philosophical thought, life did not appear to possess the same philosophical characteristics as metaphysical subjects such as being and existence, including obviousness, centrality, comprehensiveness, systematic importance, and explanatory power. Second, concepts associated with life were not generally perceived as possessing logical characteristics such as necessity, universality, durability, and the conditions required for demonstration. Third, life was often understood primarily as a practical concept, rather than as an autonomous theoretical and philosophical concept. Fourth, from an epistemological perspective, the concept of life generally did not transcend its biological meaning or its socially and politically valid meanings. At first glance, one might object that many concepts central to later philosophies do not appear in earlier periods either. In that case, life could simply be regarded as another concept that had not yet entered philosophical discourse. The difficulty, however, is that life is not merely one philosophical concept among others. It is a fundamental dimension of human existence and, arguably, one of the most important subjects available to philosophical reflection.
The absence of life as an explicit philosophical subject therefore requires explanation.Without detailed textual research, it would be difficult simply to accept the claim that life was absent from earlier philosophies. One might reasonably expect scholars to respond by offering alternative interpretations of classical philosophers or by appealing to implicit conceptions of life within their philosophical systems. Even if the claim of absence were accepted, however, an important question would remain: why did such an absence occur?A distinction should therefore be made between two categories of philosophical subjects in ancient and classical philosophy. The first includes questions that were fundamentally outside the philosophical and scientific horizons of their historical period, such as Kantian transcendental subjectivity or Einsteinian relativity. The second includes subjects whose nature and importance, as well as the partial engagement of philosophers of the period with related questions, make philosophical inquiry into them historically reasonable and expected. The philosophical study of life belongs, in this sense, to the second category.
۲. The Period of Attention
The period of attention emerged alongside the historical transformation of philosophy from ontology toward epistemology, beginning with rationalism and empiricism, represented respectively by thinkers such as Descartes and Hume, and reaching an important point with Kant. Hegel also played an important role in this period by emphasizing history and anthropology within a broader organic-philosophical conception of historical development. Attention to life can be observed in Hegel's philosophy in at least three senses: empirical, theoretical, and metaphorical. During this period, life increasingly became visible within philosophical reflection, although it had not yet fully achieved the status of an independent and central philosophical subject.
۳. The Period of Presence
The explicit philosophical presence of life as a specific and central topic gradually emerged during the last century, particularly through several major transformations in philosophical thought. Philosophy underwent significant turns from epistemology toward different fields, including life, practical wisdom, language, and existential questions. Thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Bergson, and Camus contributed to philosophical reflection on life. Pragmatist philosophers such as James, Peirce, Dewey, and Rorty emphasized practical activity and lived experience. Wittgenstein's philosophy brought language to the center of philosophical inquiry, while Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre developed extensive reflections on existence and human life. These transformations were accompanied by important discussions of life in the works of the young Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition, including Husserl, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty, as well as hermeneutical thinkers such as Gadamer and Ricoeur. Some analytical philosophers, including Thomas Nagel, and members of the Frankfurt School, such as Habermas, also contributed to philosophical discussions concerning life. More recently, thinkers such as Agamben, Žižek, and Badiou have addressed questions concerning life in different philosophical contexts. Among the most important contemporary philosophers are those who have explicitly made life itself the object of philosophical inquiry, including Hans Jonas, particularly in his philosophical biology, and Michel Henry, especially in his phenomenology of life. It is also worth noting that in contemporary Iran there are thinkers who have engaged directly with philosophical questions concerning life, including Mohammad-Taqi Ja'fari, with his conception of "reasonable life," and Mostafa Malekian, particularly in his work on the meaning of life. Overall, philosophical biologism appears to be a growing, changing, and evolving field. Nevertheless, despite the numerous philosophical discussions of life, three significant developments have not yet fully occurred. First, a strong and coherent philosophical biologism movement has not yet been established. Second, no single prominent, comprehensive, and influential philosophy—or family of philosophies—has yet been fully developed around life as its central concept. Third, the point of departure for most philosophers remains primarily related to specific issues concerning life, such as situation, meaning, ethics, and models of living, rather than to life itself as a central philosophical concept with its own philosophical richness.
In other words, philosophical reflection often concerns anthropological questions about human beings and particular dimensions of life rather than life as life, human beings in terms of life, or human life as a philosophical category in its own right.
The Conventional Periods of the History of Philosophy and Their Relation to Life
The relationship between the conventional periods of the history of philosophy and life can be summarized as follows:
Greek philosophy: a period of vitalism, understood as a tendency to raise questions and discussions related to life, rather than a systematic philosophical biography.
Medieval philosophy: a period of religious and prescriptive biography rather than descriptive philosophical biography.
Renaissance philosophy: a period of humanism and prescriptive biography rather than descriptive philosophical biography.
Modern philosophy: a period of vitalism and prescriptive philosophical biography rather than descriptive philosophical biography.
Contemporary philosophy: a period characterized by vitalism and philosophical biography in descriptive, analytical, and prescriptive forms.
How Can We Escape the Forgetfulness of Life?
A difficult question remains: How can we overcome the historical forgetfulness and absence of life as a philosophical subject, and establish a more active relation to life itself?
Two possible paths can be proposed.
First, we can enter into the subject of life through participation in life itself, establishing ourselves as living subjects and developing a philosophical understanding of life through lived experience. In other words, we should focus on the act of living itself and, in addition to understanding subjectivity, move toward practicing subjectivity through living itself, with life as the subject.
Second, we can establish a life-centered relationship with the history of philosophy through reading, narration, and interpretation. The history of philosophy should be approached not merely through the destruction or forced appropriation of previous philosophical systems, but by identifying within them the capacities, resources, and possibilities they contain for understanding life and philosophical biography.
In any case, the history of philosophy, at least in the strict sense of the term, has not yet been a history of philosophical biography centered on life. Yet the existence of such a philosophical movement has been both possible and desirable. The task now is to consider how such a philosophical orientation might be developed.
General Framework and Proposal
The general framework and proposal of this article, concerning the transition from the neglect of life to its attention and eventual philosophical presence, can be summarized in four steps.
First, the initial step is to draw attention to the subject of life on the basis of the principle of understanding and to approach the claims of this article in a simple and preliminary manner, taking into account the signs and analyses presented.
Second, the article adopts a critical and admonitory approach toward the historical neglect and absence of life while also recognizing the importance of the subsequent transition through the stages of attention and presence.
Third, the article adopts a specific methodology. This methodology consists primarily of directly examining philosophical works through a formal approach and, to some extent, considering their content and the philosophical thinking of their authors in order to discover meaningful and directional indications that support the central claim.
Fourth, the objective is to establish, at least, a persuasive degree of symmetry and coherence for the central claim through confirmation rather than definitive proof.
Ultimately, the purpose of this article is not to claim that life has been completely absent from the history of philosophy. Rather, its central claim is more precise: although numerous philosophers have discussed life, life itself has rarely been established as an explicit, autonomous, and central point of departure for philosophical thinking. The history of philosophy can therefore be reconsidered as a history not only of the presence of philosophical concepts but also of the absence, neglect, emergence, and eventual subjectification of life. Such a reconsideration can open a new field of inquiry into the philosophical meaning of life and contribute to the development of a more systematic philosophy centered on life itself.
Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Life: Wonder, Therapy, Pedagogy, and the Ethical Form of Living
Michael A. Peters
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Tsinghua University; Philosophy Research Assoc. Waikato University
Abstract
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reported last words—“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”—appear to conflict with a biography marked by family tragedy, war, depression, vocational rupture, moral severity, and terminal illness. This paper argues that the apparent contradiction arises from treating “wonderful” as an empirical summary of fortunate events rather than as an ethical expression whose sense belongs to a life considered as a whole. Drawing on the Notebooks ۱۹۱۴–۱۹۱۶, the Tractatus, the “Lecture on Ethics,” Philosophical Investigations, and Culture and Value, it reconstructs a philosophy of life organised around four connected motifs: seeing the world sub specie aeterni; the distinction between facts and value; philosophical therapy as work on oneself; and education as initiation into language-games and forms of life. Freud provides a productive contrast. Both thinkers diagnose human captivity and employ therapeutic redescriptions, but Freud explains suffering through a metapsychology of instinct, repression, and civilisation, whereas Wittgenstein resists a comprehensive causal theory and seeks perspicuous representation, acknowledgement, and peace in thought. My work on Wittgensteinian pedagogics supplies the paper’s decisive extension: a philosophy of life is not only contemplated but learned in scenes of instruction, in the acquisition of a voice, and in the ethical labour of learning how to “go on” with others. On this reading, Wittgenstein’s final words are neither a denial of suffering nor a ledger in which friendship and achievement outweigh pain. They are an act of gratitude addressed to friends and an avowal of life under the aspect of wonder. The paper concludes that Wittgenstein offers no doctrine of the good life. He offers a pedagogical and therapeutic practice through which a human being may become answerable for the words, relations, and forms of life that make a life intelligible.
Keywords: Wittgenstein; philosophy of life; wonder; forms of life; philosophical therapy; pedagogy; Freud
Leading the Care-Full Life
Maurice Hamington
Professor of Philosophy, Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies-Portland State University- USA
Abstract
Grounded in feminist care ethics and the embodied, practice-based account of care, this presentation argues that a care-full life, thoroughly saturated with attentive concern for both close and unfamiliar others, is the substance of human flourishing, both personally and politically. The argument begins in antiquity, showing that the case for care as central to a well-lived life is not a recent feminist invention but an ancient thread in moral philosophy. In particular, a caring narrative resonates with Aristotle’s account of habituated virtue and Ibn Miskawayh’s treatment of friendship as constitutive of character, as well as Saadi’s insistence that human beings share a single body of feeling. Moving to the present, the paper traces feminist care ethics from Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings to its current interdisciplinary reach. It examines the specific skills of good care, including humble inquiry, inclusive connection, and responsive action, through which caring competence is practiced and improvised rather than merely felt. It argues that this improvisational openness can produces moral epiphanies and that empirical research on perspective-taking and political empathy demonstrate how a personal disposition of care can scale into a political imagination that extends concern to unfamiliar others. The essay concludes that the modernist ideal of being “carefree” misdiagnoses human flourishing and that a world destabilized by inequality and xenophobia needs, instead, many more people willing to lead care-full lives.
‘Stepping out into the spiritual daylight of the present' – Hegel and the Essence of Life.
David Proud
Institute of Irish Studies. University of Liverpool. UK
Abstract.
Lebensphilosophie, the philosophy of life, was a ۱۹th-century intellectual movement, initiated by Wilhelm Dilthey, a reaction against neo-Kantian transcendental idealism, in which the mind constructs reality through a priori concepts of the understanding, and positivism, in which all genuine knowledge is either true by definition, or positive, that is to say, a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Alternative modes of cognition, such as intuition, introspection or religious faith are ruled out, or considered to be meaningless. Positivism established itself as the dominant form of scientific inquiry, while disregarding the wholeness of life, its unfolding nature, reducing everything to a certain rationality, taking concepts and logic as representative of the limit of what matters within the sciences, and dispensing with viewing human beings, and their lives and existence, as a whole. The philosophy of life offered a contrasting account. Focussing principally upon what Dilthey referred to as encompassing life, it sought to bring the non-rational, as well as creative and dynamic elements, into the picture. With this intent, Dilthey espoused a historical procedure for determining the essence of philosophy, and yet what is really required prior to this would be a determining of the essence of life. For this we can turn to a philosopher of a kind that the philosophy of life was supposedly reacting against. Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, deals with the essence of life in the transitional stage of consciousness to self-consciousness. Consciousness sought truth through an understanding of the physical forces of this world, but this devolved into so many fleeting moments of appearance that are devoid of truth (which is eternal and unchanging). Understanding therefore had to posit another (Platonic super-semsible) world of fixed laws as the possible essence of the mundane world of physical forces, but the two worlds can only be combined into a more universal structure that is called an explanation. A dynamic force is explained precisely through knowing the abstract law associated with it (for instance, the force of gravity and the law of gravity). And yet the fixed and motionless laws of the (Platonic) realm that is totally devoid of change. and is beyond everything, is met by a second (Platonic) realm which reduplicated everything in the first (Platonic) realm of laws, but in inverted form that reveals the stable principles of law to be as unstable as the flux of forces they were meant to ground. Consciousness recognises the inverted world as a mirror of the world it inhabits, and it recognise the truth about itself revealed in this mirror of sorts. The world in which it dwells is the truly infinite, which is not an impersonal force (like gravity) but a power that succeeds in becoming conscious of itself. This truly infinite self-conscious force is me, and when I discover the infinite within myself.
Life is discovering the infinite within oneself.
I move on from being a detached conscious observer to a self-consciousness that has desires, intentions, and that acts. The infinite force is the one that becomes alive. The unfolding of life that Dilthey lamented as being absent in prior rationalist philosophy is there in Hegel, and having achieved self-consciousness through discovering the infinite in itself, self-consciousness exists in self-recognition, it desires another independent self-consciousness, the unity of the independent self-consciousnesses is the I that is We and We that is I, and with the emergence of life both sensible appearance and the super-sensible beyond is left behind as self-consciousness ‘steps into the spiritual daylight of the present’.
Maya, Mass, and the Body of God: Vedāntic Ontology, Yogic Performance, and the Post-Einsteinian Life-World in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi
Sumit Mondal
Ph.D. Scholar (UGC-JRF), Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies,
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India
Anwesha Roy
Graduate Student, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University
PDM Scholar, Indian School of Public Policy
Abstract
Spirituality's claim to a life beyond matter has never been made from outside matter: it is staged, embodied, and witnessed even as it asserts its own transcendence of the body that stages it. This paper examines that dialectic through Paramahansa Yogananda (۱۸۹۳–۱۹۵۲), the Indian yogi who introduced kriyā yoga to the West and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in the United States in ۱۹۲۰. His Autobiography of a Yogi (۱۹۴۶) remains one of the most widely circulated texts of modern Hindu spirituality outside India: a first-person narrative recounting Yogananda's own formation alongside encounters with saints who reportedly perform siddhis — materialization, levitation, bilocation, bodily transcendence — offered as evidence of a reality beyond ordinary matter. Taking the book as a philosophically serious case, this paper asks a question sharper than whether a generic matter/spirit binary holds in it: which indigenous Vedāntic ontological register does Yogananda actually mobilize, where, and for whom — and what does his movement between registers reveal about life as a category irreducible to either pure being or pure biology? Why does his rhetoric of miracles invoke an Advaitic vocabulary of māyā — the world dissolved into light and consciousness, after Śaṅkara — while his lived practice of kriyā yoga, guru-sevā, and embodied grief and touch operates on a more Rāmānujan logic in which matter is real and relationally constitutive rather than illusory?
I argue that Yogananda performs a strategic double movement across two classical Vedāntic frameworks rather than inhabiting either consistently. In "The Law of Miracles" (Chapter ۳۰), he explains siddhis through an Advaitic idiom of māyā, reinforced by his own citation of Einstein's mass-energy equivalence and Eddington's account of the atom as "mind-stuff": matter dissolves into light and infinite mass, pitched to a post-Einsteinian Western readership he is courting into scientific legitimacy. But this is not where the text's spiritual life actually happens. Its practical center — kriyā yoga as a daily embodied discipline linking the individual self (jīvātman) to the supreme self (paramātman) — operates on a logic closer to Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita, or qualified non-dualism, where the material world is not māyā but śarīra, the real body through which Brahman is approached, and self and other remain genuinely distinct while organically bound. The resurrection of Sri Yukteswar makes this tension visible in one scene: Yogananda embraces his guru's astral form as proof of continued relational reality — a Viśiṣṭādvaitic gesture, the body still registering pain — even as surrounding chapters insist the body was always illusion. The text's ontological claim is thus not argued from one doctrine but performed across the friction between two: an Advaitic rhetoric of transcendence for scientific legitimation, and a Viśiṣṭādvaitic practice of embodied relationality for the actual, daily conduct of a spiritual life among others.
The paper works between classical Vedānta (Śaṅkara's Advaita; Rāmānuja's śarīra-śarīrī model of the universe as God's body), modern yoga studies on the yogic body as a site of negotiation between indigenous and colonial-scientific epistemologies (Alter, De Michelis), and performance studies on ritual efficacy and embodied liminality (Turner, Schechner). Against readings that flatten the text into devotional hagiography or crypto-scientific apologetics, it insists the philosophical interest lies exactly in the inconsistency between registers — a deliberate syncretism, not confusion — and connects this to the conference's founding question of why life has rarely been treated as an autonomous philosophical problem. Yogananda's text offers a model in which life is neither dissolution into pure being nor mere biology, but the practiced, daily, relational space between paramātman and mundane self-and-other — a space that can only be inhabited, not resolved.
Keywords: spirituality, materiality, performativity, Vedānta, Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, yogic embodiment, Paramahansa Yogananda
Life and the Organicist Worldview
Robert Hanna
University of Colorado- USA
Abstract
Since ۱۹۰۰, the predominant worldview has been the mechanistic worldview, centered on the root metaphor of the machine (for example, a steam engine or a digital computer) which says that everything in the world is fundamentally either a formal automaton or a natural automaton, operating according to Turing-computable algorithms and/or time-reversible or time-symmetric deterministic or indeterministic laws of nature, especially the Conservation Laws (including the ۱st Law of Thermodynamics) and the ۲nd Law of Thermodynamics, which also imposes always-increasing entropy—i.e., the always-increasing unavailability of any system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical action or work—on all natural mechanisms, until a total equilibrium state of the natural universe is finally reached. Diametrically opposed to the the mechanistic worldview is the organicist worldview, centered on the root metaphor of the living organism (for example, a plant or an animal), which says that everything in the world is essentially or fundamentally uncomputable, processual, purposive, self-organizing, time-irreversible or time–asymmetric, non-equilibrium thermodynamic, and negentropic, and that there is a basic metaphysical and ontological continuity, running from the Big Bang singularity to uncomputable, time-asymmetric, non-equilibrium thermodynamic energy flows, to living organisms, to conscious minded animals, to rational, self-conscious minded animals with free will and practical agency, and finally to social institutions of all kinds. In short, if the organicist worldview is true, then we’re no less than real persons who are innately endowed with conscious, rational, self-conscious rational animal minds and free agency, and not moist robots. In my opinion, the mechanistic worldview is damnably false and the organicist worldview is decisively true; and the revolutionary individual and social comprehension of this worldshaking dual fact is what I call the turn away from the mechanistic worldview to the organicist worldview, or for short, the organicist turn. The organicist turn, whether in philosophy, the formal and natural sciences, the fine and applied arts, religion and spirituality, or morality and sociopolitics, has two basic parts. Fully recognizing, understanding, and indeed internalizing the two basic parts of the organicist turn is the key to the genuine progress and salvation of humankind, of the Earth including all its ecosystems and living organismic systems, and of the rest of the larger and all-encompassing natural universe, aka the cosmos. Therefore, the organicist turn provides us with a comprehensive philosophy of life.
The importance of emotions in life
Liz Jackson
Karen Lo Eugene Chuang Professor in Diversity and Equity, University of Hong Kong
Globally educational systems may be oriented to national development or global political economy. But for those of us involved with education, these are merely instrumental ends. Such ends may be useful to forward intrinsic educational aims, related to well-being, joy, happiness, flourishing, and related positive emotional states and dispositions. We all want good lives. Our emotions are an important part of good living.
But do we know what emotions are—which ones are ‘positive’ and how to cultivate them? On the contrary, our assumptions about emotions can often lead us astray. We may define our emotions in overly narrow and rigid, caricatured ways. We may feel pressure, in schools and other workplaces, to perform emotions, which can lead paradoxically to less joy, happiness, or well-being. Schools around the world see emotional well-being as vital, but often schools are the cause of needless unhappiness and suffering.
This presentation discusses emotional states associated with the good life, including happiness, joy, well-being, and inspiration. It shows that these concepts are understood in diverse ways across traditions and disciplines. Meanwhile, they tend to be narrowly framed by schools in unhelpful ways, leading students to demonstrate positivity and optimism rather than to reflect more deeply on what matters in their lives. A final problem is the individualization of emotion. Students are taught they are responsible for their emotions, but this is not true. Our emotions are shaped by the world and others around us that matter to us. Thus, understanding and building on these relations, rather than obscuring them, is essential. This presentation challenges us to think differently about the role of emotions in life, including views of positive and negative emotions and how we can cultivate emotions to enhance our own lives as well as those of others around us.
Givenness Without a Giver: Biological Opacity, Somatic Contingency, and the Impersonal Autonomy of Life
Paulo Alexandre e Castro
ESTGL-Polytechnic University of Viseu- IEF-University of Coimbra- Portugal
Abstract
Throughout the history of Western thought, life has consistently been subordinated to extrinsic frameworks: reduced to a mechanical substrate, governed as a socio-political apparatus, or absorbed into a metaphysical enquiry concerning Being. Even when contemporary philosophy isolates life as an independent category, it frequently falls into teleological optimism by treating existence as a project of self-creation, subjective care, or narrative coherence. This paper proposes a radical departure from these paradigms by formulating a philosophy of life anchored in its most unsettling dimension: life as a pure, opaque facticity, a givenness without a giver.
Empirically, this autonomy is most glaringly evident in modern physiology, neurobiology, and cellular biology. Phenomena such as stochastic gene expression, somatic mutations, autonomic neural regulation, and autoimmune breakdown reveal an organic domain operating entirely outside conscious agency or intentional design. The human subject does not direct cellular mitosis, nor can it govern the neuro-somatic pathways that mediate pain, degeneration, or homeostatic flux. The body functions according to a recalcitrant biological logic, an intricate mechanism of survival and decay that the self-inhabits, yet never truly commands.
Philosophically, this empirical reality finds profound resonance across French phenomenology and the philosophy of science. Georges Canguilhem’s critique of biological mechanism demonstrates how organic life asserts its own unpredictable normativity precisely through pathology and physiological deviation. This somatic unpredictability mirrors Jean-Luc Nancy’s ontology of the intrusive body (L’Intrus), wherein bodily vulnerability and organic failure confront the self as an irreducible, uninvited foreignness operating from within. To conceptualise this pre-individual vitality, Gilles Deleuze’s final formulation of une vie (a life) provides a neutral, non-subjective immanence that precedes both conscious identity and transcendent purpose. This immanence is further articulated by drawing upon Michel Henry’s phenomenology of radical auto-affection and secularising Jean-Luc Marion’s concept of givenness (donation). Stripping the “saturated phenomenon” of its theological scaffolding allows us to understand biological life as an overwhelming, unmediated immediacy that presents itself entirely without a divine architect or human origin.
By synthesising empirical insights from neuro-somatic pathology with phenomenological critique, this paper contends that life achieves genuine philosophical autonomy not when it is integrated into human projects of meaning, but when its fundamental opacity is acknowledged. Life is neither a divine dispensation nor a manageable technological asset; it is an impersonal, non-teleological event to which the subject remains perpetually exposed.
Keywords: Givenness, Biological Opacity, Somatic Contingency, Immanence, Phenomenological Autonomy
The Language of Fear: Toward a Philosophy of Linguistically Mediated Life
Dr. Victoria Akopova
Independent Researcher and Lecturer in English Literature, Tbilisi, Georgia
Abstract
This article addresses a problem that has been curiously absent from the history of philosophy: the treatment of life itself as an autonomous philosophical concept. Life has traditionally been approached indirectly, refracted through categories such as being, substance, ethics, politics, or biology, rather than examined as a philosophical problem in its own right. This article contributes to the contemporary project of establishing life as such a concept by approaching it through a single, deliberately narrow phenomenon: fear. The central question is twofold — what does fear reveal about the nature of lived life, and how does language participate in transforming embodied fear into meaningful human experience? The article's method is conceptual and phenomenological rather than empirical. It combines four complementary theoretical resources. From phenomenology, it draws on Merleau-Ponty's account of the lived body and Heidegger's analysis of being-in-the-world and temporality, in order to distinguish the objective body, which can be measured from the outside, from the lived body, through which a subject inhabits a meaningful world. From cognitive linguistics, it draws on Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor to show that fear is not merely described metaphorically but is structured through recurrent embodied patterns — confinement, pressure, distance, falling, darkness, and loss of control. From hermeneutics, it draws on Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity to explain how a frightening episode, once articulated, becomes integrated into memory and into a person's understanding of who they are. From the philosophy of symbolic forms, it draws on Cassirer's account of human beings as symbolic beings, for whom experience becomes intelligible only through language, myth, art, and other symbolic structures.
The Difference Between Being Alive and Living:
An Engineer’s Testimony
S. Massoud Amin, D.Sc.
Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA
Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA Prepared for the International Conference on Philosophy of Life
Faculty of Literature, Philosophy and Languages, University of Tabriz, Iran,
in collaboration with the Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical Antonianum University, Rome, Italy
۲۰ November ۲۰۲۶
Abstract
As a child in the late ۱۹۶۰s and early ۱۹۷۰s, I saw villages outside Tabriz without electricity. The people there were alive. There was no light to read by at night, no refrigeration for medicine, no pump for clean water. What was missing was not biology; it was the conditions of a livable life. This paper argues, from more than four decades of engineering practice, that infrastructure is a material constituent of the life-world — Husserl’s Lebenswelt — not its background. The philosophical roots are old. Aristotle wrote that the polis comes into being for the sake of life and exists for the sake of the good life. Heidegger showed that equipment goes unnoticed until it breaks; infrastructure is the same — visible only in failure. Agamben’s distinction between bare life and qualified life, Arendt’s conditions of human activity, and Sen’s capability approach name, in different vocabularies, what an engineer sees in the field: when the systems carrying water, power, and communication fail, what is lost is not the living but living itself. What is new here is the standpoint. Philosophy has examined bare life and the life-world at length, but rarely from the side of those who build and repair their material conditions. The paper offers testimony, systems analysis of how engineered networks constitute forms of life, and a proposal: that philosophy of life admit the built world into its account — as condition, not backdrop.
Keywords: philosophy of life; life-world; infrastructure; being alive and living; resilience; capability; testimony
The Meaning of Life and the Simulacrum of Fulfilment: Promise, Deferral, and the Technological Order
Mario Lupoli
Pontificia Università Antonianum - Italy
Abstract
We say of a death that it came too early, or of a life that it went unfulfilled. Judgments of this kind are argued over, not merely felt, and none can be drawn from biology, which records that a life ended, and when, but cannot say that the end came too soon. Such a judgment measures a life against something the living were owed. Where can a claim of that sort reside? Not in the vital processes; and not in history either, since the philosophies of history repaid the individual with the achievements of later generations, and yet no better society compensates suffering already endured. What is owed is owed to the living themselves, in their bodies, and only a promise can have that form. In the biblical vocabulary, the Italian theologian Sergio Quinzio recovers a notion of truth as fidelity to a promise, and of falsity as a promise betrayed. A promise reinterpreted until no event can refute it has no room left: it has been cancelled, because what can no longer be broken can no longer be kept. Medieval and early modern thought on the Antichrist had already described a falsehood of this kind, which consists less in mere lying than in taking the place of the true while preserving its form: the adversary occupies the temple instead of destroying it. The same operation proceeds today without theology. A technological order improves whatever can be measured, counted and calculated, while every single death remains without an answer of redemption, and with those deaths all the lives lived until now. Two things do not yield to it: the body that suffers, and hope for what has not yet come. Fidelity to a promise of salvation still unfulfilled is what preserves a space of significance for life, precisely in the never-satisfied uncertainty of the not-yet.
AI & The New Philosophy of Man or Philosophical Anthropology
J.L.M. Dassen
Researcher, Anthroopos Foundation Amsterdam, International Member of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands (۲۰۲۰-۲۰۲۴)
Abstract
Historically, philosophical anthropology has sought the answer: What is human being? Today, artificial intelligence demands a radical re-examination of this question. We are moving beyond asking what humans create, to asking how what we create redefines our nature, agency, and consciousness. Re-defining Agency and Intensionality: Classical definitions of human action often rely on conscious intent. AI algorithms simulate decision-making, forcing us to draw new philosophical boundaries between mechanical output and true human volition. The Extended Mind: As AI integrates seamlessly into our daily existence, the boundary between human cognition and machine processing blurs. AI functions as an extension of the human mind, altering how we remember, learn and perceive reality. Ethics and Existential Identity: The advent of artificial general intelligence forces us to reflect on morality. If machines can process ethical frameworks, does our unique status as moral agents change? The rich tradition of Iranian philosophy – from Avicenna’s theories of the soul to Mulla Sadra’s transcendent theosophy – offers a robust framework to understand these shifts. Mulla Sadra’s concept of Harakat-e-Jawhari (substantial motion) posits that beings are in constant flux and evolution. We can view AI not as a static, alien entity, but as a continuation of humanity’s substantial motion – a tool through which our intellectual capacities are actively expanding and transforming in real-time. This dialogue between ancient wisdom and modern technology is actively being explored in academic discourses, such as those published in the University’s Journal of Philosophical Investigations. Ultimately, artificial intelligence does not diminish philosophical anthropology; it enriches it. AI highlights the uniqueness of human emotion, our capacity for existential dread, and our search for meaning. While AI can calculate, it cannot experience the depth of Dasein (being-in-the-world). The future of philosophy lies in guiding this technological evolution, ensuring that AI serves to elevate, rather than eclipse, the human spirit.
Keywords: Artficial intelligence, philosophy, anthropology, humanism, domain unto itself, interdisciplinary, reflection
AI: A new Narrative of Human Life
Prof. Andrea Bizzozero, PhD; PhD
Prof.ssa Carlotta Ciarrapica, PhD
Abstract
Reality is understood through a process of appropriation, the nature of which depends on how rationality is understood and defined. It follows that knowledge takes on the character of a genuine narrative of reality, thereby shaping it and causing it to be in that way, precisely by virtue of the prevailing paradigm of reason. This paper aims to examine certain characteristic elements of the narration of reality in the age of computational technical systems, in order to explore the transformations in the way we conceive of reality and of humanity itself.
From philosophy of life to philosophical living
The public vocation of philosophical practitioners
Rodney King
Department of Philosophy, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa
Abstract
A philosophy that seeks to inform how people live raises a question of public responsibility: who makes philosophical inquiry available within ordinary life, and under what conditions can that work continue? This article argues that philosophical practitioners should become a recognisable and accessible part of public life, with conditions that enable competent practitioners to earn a decent living. It distinguishes life as a philosophical object from philosophy as a way of life, drawing on Pierre Hadot without assuming that the lived philosopher has disappeared. An account of philosophical guidance then explains how concepts, reasons and experience can inform and correct one another within a life. The contemporary significance of this work concerns the difference between encountering accounts of worthwhile living and having opportunities to examine and live them. Across consultation, education, public writing, groups and organisations, practitioners can help create those opportunities. The article argues that public recognition, collective cooperation and adequate remuneration belong within the practical ambitions of a philosophy of life. Accountability is treated as a condition of trustworthy guidance, while philosophical living remains a possibility that extends beyond any profession.
Keywords: philosophy of life; philosophical practice; Pierre Hadot; philosophical guidance; public vocation
COSMIC & PERSONAL DEATH & REBIRTH: Kyoto School and Christian explorations of the meaning of life
Curtis Rigsby
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hiroshima University- Japan
The Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy emerged from dialogues surrounding the ideas of Kitarō Nishida, and drew upon both Asian as well as Western traditons. Drawing upon Medieval conceptions of God as ultimate Being, and Buddhistic conceptions of Universal Law or Dharma, Nishida provocatively termed the all-encompassing reality of the cosmos which interfaces with each individual self, an “Absolute Nothingness,” in order to highlight the infinite possibilities of the universal creative and unitive power that cannot be reduced to any one particular form or being. Kyoto School associates expressed the meaning-conferring activity of Abolute Nothingness in each individual as a “self-realization,” which Nishida’s successor, Hajime Tanabe, characterized by the Christian term metanoesis—literally the transformation of one's mind, or in theological terms, repentance. For Tanabe, it is only by continually and self-critically examining the various options for life meaning or explanation in general, that we are able to learn and mature, and to avoid myopic narrowness and fatal bias, and ultimately to avoid error. This life-transformative activity both signifies and is signified by the Absolute Nothingness. Nishida’s student Takizawa Katsumi added that in our very existence and in our search for meaning, we depend completely upon the Absolute Nothingness, but It does not conversely depend upon us in our finitude and fallibility. Whereas we are prone to err, this divine fount of meaning and life does not err. I myself appeal to Aristotle’s ideas on change in order to characterize this encounter with the Divine as a radical transformation akin to chemical changes in chemistry and metamorphosis in biology, yet involving our will and essence in a way that mere automatic or accidental change does not. In the manner of Kyoto School dialectic and Christian theology, I consider this meaning-conferring transformation in terms of a “death and rebirth.”
Tillich’s Courage as a Response to The Human Predicament
Joshua Jose R. Ocon
University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Philosophy
Abstract
In The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions, David Benatar presents an uncompromising articulation of philosophical pessimism: to exist consciously is to be harmed since life is pervaded by suffering and cosmic insignificance. Any search for meaning turns out illusory, and the awareness of humanity’s inevitable extinction only makes it tragic. Benatar’s position, however, is not a resignation but a “clear-eyed confrontation with reality’s bleakness. The only authenticity then is the acceptance of meaninglessness.
In response, I draw from Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be, which begins from the same existential awareness of human finitude but moves in a different direction. Tillich understands the ‘anxiety of nonbeing,’ death, guilt, and meaninglessness, not as a confirmation of the futility of life but as a manifestation of its ontological depth. Courage is nothing less than the affirmation of one’s being despite nonbeing, which is ultimately made possible by participation in ‘Being-itself,’ the ground of all reality.
Firstly, I will outline Benatar’s diagnosis of the human predicament by focusing on how his claim that life is objectively bad depends on an implicit ideal of nonexistence. Then, I will present Tillich’s “courage to be” as an ontological act, situating it as a response to the same conditions of finitude described by Benatar. Finally, I argue that Tillich’s framework reinterprets Benatar’s “human predicament” as the locus where meaning emerges. By reading The Human Predicament through a Tillichian standpoint, I argue that the experience of despair is not necessarily the end of meaning but its threshold. Against Benatar’s pessimism, Tillich’s courage transforms despair into ontological participation, showing how the question of meaning persists even when meaning appears to be impossible, that is, in the courage to be.
Keywords: being, courage, despair, existence and meaning
Beyond Biological Reductionism: 'Concrete Life' And The Polar Structure In Romano Guardini Towards A New Philosophy Of The Living
Giuseppe Rinaldi
PhD Candidate in Philosophy
Pontifical University Antonianum – Italy
giuseppe.rinaldi@icpadula.edu.it
This paper aims to explore the concept of "Life" as an autonomous philosophical and existential category, freed both from biological-functional reductions and from notionistic hyper-specialization. Drawing from Romano Guardini's insights in Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendigkonkreten (۱۹۲۵), the study demonstrates how the "living-concrete" is structured according to an architecture of polar oppositions that cannot be reduced merely to laws of causality or the accumulation of knowledge. The analysis highlights how Guardini’s ontology of life translates into a radical critique of contemporary man's "impoverishment of the self" in the face of the excesses brought about by the advent of the artificial and of power. For Guardini, personal life is a never-ending process, marked by finitude and the dynamics of encountering the Other. This approach establishes a fruitful theoretical bridge with Edgar Morin's philosophy of complexity and his manifesto Teaching to Live. Both thinkers converge on the necessity of an "ethos of limitation" that overcomes all cognitive monism in order to educate toward the inexhaustibility of reality and the autonomy of the mind. Thus, the paper intends to demonstrate that "Life"—understood as a polar and complex dynamic—constitutes the indispensable primitive foundation for refounding education (Bildung) and personal responsibility in the contemporary world.
How Is Space Lived? The Lifeworld in Dialogue with Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Architecture
Sahar Aalayi,
Psychology graduate, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Abstract
The concept of the lifeworld refers to the world in which human beings find themselves prior to theoretical or scientific reflection and within which everyday life unfolds. This world cannot be reduced to the physical environment. Yet human life is always spatially situated, taking place in relation to places, objects, bodies, distances, and boundaries. This article begins from this relation and asks: What role does architectural space play in the spatiality of the lifeworld, and what can contemporary psychoanalysis contribute to our understanding of this relation?
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the article brings the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld into dialogue with architectural accounts of lived space and contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to the relation between material and psychic space. To avoid conceptual conflation, it distinguishes among lifeworld, architectural space, and lived space. The lifeworld designates the encompassing horizon of everyday experience; architectural space refers to the material and spatial organization of the built environment; and lived space refers to space as it is experienced by the subject. Architectural space, therefore, is neither identical with the lifeworld nor sufficient in itself to determine how space is lived.
The psychoanalytic point of departure is Cosimo Schinaia’s work on psychoanalysis and architecture, particularly his insistence on thinking together inside and outside, psychic reality and material reality. This perspective is brought into conversation with contemporary work on the relation between structural and psychic space. On the one hand, the material organization of space affords and constrains possibilities for movement, distance, proximity, privacy, encounter, and communication. On the other, space is experienced and invested with meaning in relation to the subject’s body, memory, affect, fantasy, and psychic history. Architecture therefore cannot be reduced to a metaphor or projection of psychic life, just as spatial experience cannot be inferred directly from the physical properties of the built environment.
The article further examines the relation between inside and outside. Architectural elements such as walls, doors, windows, and thresholds do more than separate spaces; they also organize the forms of connection between them. Psychoanalysis allows the other side of this relation to be examined: how the distinction between inside and outside acquires meaning in subjective experience and participates in the subject’s relation to the environment.
The article argues that architectural space constitutes one of the material conditions of the spatiality of the lifeworld, while its emergence as lived space takes shape through the relation between the material properties of the environment and the subject’s psychic experience. This formulation makes it possible to examine material and psychic reality together without reducing architecture to the psyche or the psyche to its environment. From this perspective, the question “What makes a space a place in which one can live?” becomes a question concerning one of the fundamental dimensions of the lifeworld itself.
Keywords: Lifeworld; spatiality; lived space; architectural space; contemporary psychoanalysis; architecture; Cosimo Schinaia
The Orthogonal Manifold of Life: Autopoiesis, Intentional Distance, and the Complex State-Space of Living Agency
Amir Noferesti
Independent Researcher, Philosophy of Mind & Computational Cognitive Science- France
Abstract:
Conventional physicalist theories often depict living systems as passive automata traversing deterministic, real-valued state spaces. This perspective carries a fundamental limitation: it collapses intentional distance, the cognitive gap that allows an agent to detach from immediate sensory impacts and contemplate counterfactual possibilities (what could be) into sheer mechanical impaction. To establish Life as an autonomous reality without appealing to mystical vital forces élan vital or reducing consciousness to blind mechanical reactions, this paper proposes an orthogonal state-space model grounded in non-equilibrium thermodynamics and active inference.
We demonstrate that an embodied living agent bounded by an informational boundary (a Markov blanket) does not merely slide down an energy slope. Instead, its underlying dynamics split into two intrinsically perpendicular modes:
The Dissipative Stabilizing Mode: Continual metabolic work that contracts the system toward an autopoietic boundary, preventing structural decay. This demarcates the vegetative baseline of being alive homeostatic persistence.
The Orthogonal Solenoidal Mode: Once this homeostatic boundary is secured, the thermodynamic gradient falls to zero, leaving a sustained, non-dissipative carrier rotation. Moving perpendicular to energetic decay, this mode consumes no extra thermodynamic work and requires no violation of physical laws. It serves as an internal clockwork simulator, projecting prospective scenarios and sustaining the condition of living (deliberative agency and intentional distance.
This architecture provides a naturalized foundation for internal time-consciousness, unifying the retention of the past with the open horizon of anticipation. Life is thus revealed not as an immaterial ghost intervening in matter, nor as a lifeless machine, but as an elegant geometric manifold capable of counterfactual projection within physical reality.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life; Intentional Distance; Autopoiesis; Active Inference; Markov Blanket; Time-Consciousness; Being Alive vs. Living; Naturalized Agency; Teleonomy.
The intelligent matrix: Embodied life, somatic memory and decolonial resistance
Maddalena Celano
Ph.D. Student in Philosophy (Historical-Theoretical Curriculum),
Pontifical University Antonianum (PUA), Rome, Italy.
E-mail: maddalenacelano@gmail.com
This theoretical essay reconsiders the concept of "Life" and matter, liberating them from any mechanistic, passive, or reductionist frameworks. The primary objective is to overcome Cartesian dualism and the categories imposed by patriarchal and colonial modernity, which have historically reduced nature and bodies to mere instruments of extraction and domination. To achieve this epistemological rupture, the text establishes a rigorous dialogue among several foundational critical perspectives. On one hand, the analysis builds upon Daniela Pellegrini’s reflections regarding the "wisdom of matter" and the third way of partialities against phallogentric binarisms; on the other hand, it integrates the political anthropology of Rita Segato, who deconstructs the body as the primary territory of conquest and the target of a structural pedagogy of cruelty. Completing this critical framework are Mary Daly’s radical ecofeminism and spiritual ecology, centered on the opposition between biophilic energy and systemic necrophilia, alongside the indigenous decolonial cosmovision mediated through the thought of Francesca Gargallo Celentani, wherein human beings, corporeality, and the earth form a single living, relational matrix. The most innovative aspect of this journey lies in its continuous engagement with the most advanced contemporary scientific frontiers. Epigenetics, neuroscience, plant biology, and theoretical physics rigorously demonstrate that matter and somatic tissues are not inert, but rather endowed with a biological archive, transgenerational memory, and autonomous bodily intelligence. These scientific findings find deep resonance within depth psychology, particularly through the Jungian concepts of unus mundus and James Hillman's intuition of the Anima Mundi. Ultimately, by healing the split between spirit and matter, this work reconceptualizes the philosophy of life not as abstract ontological speculation, but as an embodied, collective, and irreducibly lived praxis of decolonial resistance and the ontological sovereignty of bodies and the earth.
The Circle of the Logos: A Hegelian Reading of the Johannine Apocalypse as a Philosophy of Absolute Life
Mauro Cascio
Independent Scholar, Italia.
lepantofoledihegel@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper explores the philosophical definition of “Life” through a speculative, Hegelian reading of the Book of Revelation. Moving away from traditional catastrophist or purely historical interpretations that reduce the Johannine Apocalypse to a narrative of cosmic annihilation, this study reinstates the text as a rigorous dialectical device. By utilizing the conceptual frameworks of G.W.F. Hegel’s Science of Logic and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, the apocalyptic claims of the Logos as “the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” are analyzed not as a chronological timeline, but as the very structure of the speculative circle. Within this perspective, the dramatic destruction of natural and worldly immediacy (the “slaughterbench of history”) represents the necessary labor of the negative. The biological, unmediated life must undergo negation to sublate itself (Aufhebung) and finally emerge as Absolute Life—which is Spirit and self-conscious community (Gemeinde) within the symbolic space of the New Jerusalem. Engaging with the theological insights of K.F. Göschel’s Right Hegelianism, the theology of W. Pannenberg, and the mysticism of A. von Speyr, alongside contemporary Hegelian scholarship (S. Achella, P. Valenza, G. Bensussan, J. Cohen), this work demonstrates that the Apocalypse is not the termination of life, but the phenomenology of its spiritual fulfillment, bridging the gap between representation (Vorstellung) and concept (Begriff).
Keywords: Absolute Life, G.W.F. Hegel, Johannine Apocalypse, Speculative Circle, Logos, Labor of the Negative.
Odysseus, Life, and Contingency: Meaning in a Meaningless World."
Daniel Dal Monte
lecturer at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley- Department of Philosophy- USA
Abstract:
I explore the question of meaning in life by juxtaposing two worldviews, exemplified respectively in Homer’s Odyssey and the theistic metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. The crucial difference in these archetypal worldviews is the presence of contingency, i.e. a modal status that always could be otherwise and so is not subject to a stable purposive trajectory. The Homeric universe is radically contingent. It is the contested territory of warring gods, natural forces indifferent to human fate, a fixed destiny without orientation to rationality and goodness, and monstrous entities that challenge any stable notion of normalcy. The Thomistic universe subsumes contingency under a universal divine governance that directs all events to goodness. These competing metaphysics mean that, on the one hand, Odysseus has to generate meaning in his life without any metaphysical support, while on the other, the human agent in the thomistic universe finds meaning in her life by merging with a higher metaphysical principle. Odysseus embraces human life in all its vulnerable contingency, particularly in his rejection of the offers of becoming the immortal spouse of Calyspo and Circe. Through these metaphysical paradigms, I explore the stability of meaning in life in relation to two sustaining poles: a sense of subjective fufillment, and the objective merits of what one is doing. Can, that is, we defend a voluntarism about meaning, sustained only by projecting one’s will onto a domain that is in itself radically contingent and without narrative intelligibility? Or, is meaning—as Susan Wolf maintains—a union of subjective investment with an objectively valuable activity?
A Philosophy of Life is a Biophilic Option: Examining the Nature and Role of Love and Fear
R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D.
Southwestern College, Santa Fe, NM, USA
r.michaelfisher۵۲@gmail.com
This presentation is a brief review of how to re-evaluate the general topic and discourse that has dominated “philosophy of life” in formal Philosophy itself. The presenter integrates some of the better parts of the generic philosophical thinking (and orientation) on philosophy of life and yet casts a critical lens on the topic, a lens based on his Fearlessness philosophy and the focus on the affective dimension of philosophy—in particular, the long tradition of distinction between the arche-motivations of Love and Fear. The argument ends with a unique offering to consider what biophilia and biophobia have to contribute to philosophy of life discourses into the future and a world in a polycrisis.
Reauthoring Sacredness: Life, Relational Distinction, and the Authority of
Representation
Mabel Mauritz
Independent Researcher · Relational Systems
The Netherlands
relational-systems@outlook.com
Abstract
What if Life is not a category within existence, but encompasses existence itself? Reauthoring Sacredness begins from the ontological proposition that nothing exists outside Life and that the divine is immanent in existence itself. From this perspective, the conventional distinction between living and nonliving may describe biological differences without establishing an absolute ontological separation. This inquiry approaches existence through recursive, reciprocal, and multidimensional relations, questioning whether binary distinctions adequately express the reality they seek to describe. Drawing on Relational Systems, the paper employs ontological and conceptual analysis to investigate how representations arising from encounters with existence may acquire authority over the reality they seek to articulate. When conceptual distinctions become treated as absolute separations, representations may obscure relationships and restrict receptivity to experiences beyond established categories. Within Christian theology, this raises a particular question: how can representations of the sacred come to obscure the reality they seek to reveal? Through an inquiry into Logos, divine participation, and the relationship between sacred experience and religious representation, the paper considers how representations of sacredness may become more authoritative than direct encounters with the sacredness of Life. This also raises questions of power concerning whose experiences and relationships receive recognition and legitimacy. Rather than rejecting representation, Reauthoring Sacredness explores how philosophical and theological understanding might remain responsive to existence through relational discernment, receptivity, and participation.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life, Divine Immanence, Relational Distinction, Representation,Sacredness, Logos
Kāla-tuṣṭi in Sāṃkhya Philosophy: Time, Contentment, and the Pursuit of Liberation
Pintu Das
Assistant Professor (guest)
Rajendra University, Odisha, India
Email: daspintudas711@gmail.com
Abstract
The concept of time (kāla) in Indian philosophy is commonly examined in relation to metaphysics, cosmology, and the temporal structure of existence. However, its classification as a form of contentment (tuṣṭi) in Sāṃkhya philosophy raises a distinct philosophical problem concerning the relationship between time, intellectual understanding, and liberation. This paper aims to examine the concept of kāla-tuṣṭi in Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhyakārikā ۵۰ and to clarify its significance within the Sāṃkhya account of the obstacles to liberation. Using a qualitative, text-centred, and interpretative philosophical methodology, the study analyses the relevant kārikā and its classical commentarial interpretations, with particular attention to the classification of tuṣṭi and the role of discriminative knowledge (vivekakhyāti) in liberation.
The paper addresses three questions: how is kāla-tuṣṭi understood in the Sāṃkhya tradition; why is contentment associated with the expectation that liberation will occur in due course considered an impediment to spiritual progress; and what does this classification reveal about the relationship between temporal expectation and the pursuit of liberating knowledge? The study argues that kāla-tuṣṭi can be interpreted as a form of misplaced confidence in the passage of time as a sufficient condition for liberation. This interpretation distinguishes the mere expectation of future transformation from the discriminative knowledge required to distinguish puruṣa (consciousness) from prakṛti (material nature). By examining this distinction, the paper seeks to demonstrate the philosophical significance of kāla-tuṣṭi for understanding the relationship between time, intellectual complacency, and liberation in Sāṃkhya.
The paper contributes to the philosophy of life by showing how a classical Indian philosophical text addresses not only the nature of time but also the human tendency to defer transformative knowledge to an anticipated future.
Keywords: Sāṃkhya philosophy; kāla-tuṣṭi; time; tuṣṭi; discriminative knowledge; liberation; temporality.
Formation of Beingness: A Non-Intellectual Inquiry into the Nature of Living
Jinan Kodapully
Researcher from India
Abstract
Knowledge, beauty, and value are treated as distinct domains. Yet in the process of living, knowing, valuing, and aesthetic sensitivity may be inseparable dimensions of an undivided whole. This paper explores this fundamental unity through the formation of beingness—the nature of living shared by all living beings, whose expression unfolds through engagement with their surroundings. Rather than approaching life as an object of intellectual inquiry, it attempts to understand living from within the very process of living—knowing by being. The paper emerges from a four-decade inquiry that began neither as philosophy nor as academic research, but through responding to contradictions in education, design, making, and everyday life. I describe this as existential research because the inquiry was inseparable from my living: questions arose from experience, responses became part of life, and the method emerged through their consequences rather than preceding them. Encounters with non-literate artisans revealed material and aesthetic knowing without formal education or theoretical knowledge. Observing children brought a further reversal: instead of teaching children, I began discovering through them how human beings form themselves through their engagement with the world. Gradually, everything in life became my teacher—clay, ants, hens and chicks, as well as people. The inquiry followed no prescribed methodology. Its practices emerged through participation, making, observation, documentation, and reflexive awareness of my own cognition. This became inseparable from its philosophical insight: the process need not be determined by a predetermined product. Beingness is thus an ongoing formation through sensing, acting, relating, responding, and becoming.
Keywords: Beingness, Existential Research, Philosophy of Living, Natural Cognition, Cognitive Autonomy, Aesthetic Sensitivity
The Uncodifiable Life: Teacher Moral Agency at the Limits of Professional Codes
Samsul Ma’arif Mujiharto
Faculty of Philosophy, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, INDONESIA
samsulmaarifm@ugm.ac.id
Abstract
Professional codes are designed to guide teachers through ethically difficult situations. Yet the situations in which moral judgment matters most are often those in which the rules do not settle what ought to be done. A teacher may, for example, have good reasons to respect a student’s confidentiality while also believing that the student’s welfare requires disclosure. Both obligations may be recognised by the same professional code. Adding another rule, however, does not necessarily remove the need for judgment, because morally relevant features of a particular case cannot always be specified in advance.
This difficulty, I suggest, reveals more than a practical limitation of existing codes. I call it the “uncodifiable” dimension of professional moral life: the point at which rules remain relevant but cannot relieve a person of the responsibility to judge. This is not a contingent defect that better regulation could eventually eliminate. Nor does it imply that teachers should act according to personal preference. Rather, the limit of codification marks the point at which moral agency becomes unavoidable.
Kant’s account of practical reason and autonomy helps clarify what is at stake. The issue is not only whether teachers can discern what a particular situation requires, but whether they can regard themselves as answerable for the reasons on which they act. Professional norms provide an indispensable framework for such reasoning, but they cannot assume responsibility in the teacher’s place.
I use the term “uncodifiable life” because this condition extends beyond isolated ethical decisions. It concerns what it means to live a professional life while remaining responsible for judgments that cannot be made in advance by a rule. The point, then, is not simply that better rules will always leave something unresolved. The need to judge for oneself is part of what makes moral agency possible in the first place. Teaching, on this account, is a moral life in which rules can guide action without ever fully taking the place of the person who must judge.
Voice in Time and Practice: Bakhtin, Wittgenstein, and the Situated Conditions of Meaning
Joseph (Joe) Couve de Murville
Lecturer at the English Department of the University of Hildesheim (Institut für englische Sprache und Literatur).
Email: couve@uni-hildesheim.de
Abstract
This article proposes voice as a comparative point of entry into Bakhtin and Wittgenstein, not as a concept shared identically by both. Bakhtin’s voice names more than an individual speaker: it can register social position, evaluative orientation, historical inheritance, and an utterance’s address to other voices. In Wittgenstein, voice is not a comparably central technical concept, but it can serve as an interpretive lens for the human utterance situated within a form of life and a language-game. From this starting point, the article develops a cautious comparison between Bakhtin’s chronotope and Wittgenstein’s Lebensform. Both concepts direct attention away from abstract propositions toward the situated conditions under which meaning becomes intelligible. Their emphases differ: chronotope foregrounds historically configured time-space and the emergence of persons and worlds; Lebensform foregrounds the practical background in which linguistic activities and judgments make sense. Voice helps show how these conceptions may be brought into productive contact without collapsing their differences.
Onto-Ethical Giving-Back as a category to characterize life philosophically: a hermeneutical reading drawing on Karl Jaspers
Luca Polverino
Independent researcher, Italy
lucapolverino۹۹@gmail.com
This paper proposes a philosophical characterization of life through the introduction of the category of onto-ethical giving-back. It proceeds from the hypothesis that life may be understood as a gift: the subject receives their existence without being its foundation, and the fact that what is received precedes action gives rise to an ontological debt, understood not in economic terms but as a responsibility toward life itself. Giving-back thus designates the movement through which an existence not yet existentially elucidated (Existenzerhellung) takes responsibility for the life it has received and gives it an authentic form. This proposal will be developed through a hermeneutical reading of Karl Jaspers, with particular reference to the “Paradigmatic Individuals” (die maßgebenden Menschen) and to Nietzsche’s “Being an Exception” (das Ausnahmesein). Socrates, Jesus, and Nietzsche will not be considered in the entirety of their historical and historiographical significance, but according to the function they assume within Jaspers’s interpretation. Their different forms of existence provide a phenomenological ground for examining giving-back as a transformative relation to alterity. In Socrates, maieutic practice may be read as returning the other to the responsibility of their own search for truth; in Jesus, giving-back unfolds through the double relation to transcendence and to one’s fellow human beings; Nietzsche, in “Being an Exception,” expends his existence in the striving toward the possibility of the authentic human being. Finally, giving-back assumes a paradoxical temporal structure: life arises from conditions that precede the subject, is taken up in the present, and is projected toward the future through a responsibility capable of giving back to life the possibility of continuing to generate life, in a sense that is not exhausted by its biological dimension.
Keywords: Jaspers; Life; Onto-Ethical Giving-Back.
The Measure of a Life: Bios, Moira, and the Meaning of Human Existence in Ancient Greek Culture
Giuseppina Capone
Università degli Studi di Padova – Italy
giuseppinacapone۳۸۱@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper investigates the meaning of human existence in ancient Greek culture through the conceptual relationship between bios, understood as the course and form of an individual life, and moira, the portion or allotment that defines the limits within which that life unfolds. Rather than treating Greek thought as offering a single doctrine of the meaning of life, the study reconstructs a constellation of ideas in which human existence acquires intelligibility through finitude, temporal completion, and the tension between agency and necessity. Particular attention is given to the distinction between merely being alive and possessing a life capable of being viewed, narrated, and evaluated as a whole. Homeric epic, archaic poetry, historiographical reflection, and Attic tragedy provide different configurations of this problem: mortality establishes the horizon of human action, while moira marks both the boundary of individual possibility and the condition against which choice, responsibility, suffering, and achievement become meaningful. The paper argues that the Greek notion of the measure of a life cannot be reduced either to fatalism or to individual self-determination. Its philosophical significance lies instead in the dynamic relation between what is allotted and what is made of that allotment. From this perspective, ancient Greek culture offers a distinctive account of human existence in which meaning emerges not from overcoming finitude but from giving form to a necessarily finite life.
Keywords: Ancient Greek Philosophy; Bios; Moira; Human Existence; Finitude; Meaning of Life
Life, and education!
Anders P. Petersen
Independent researcher
Bergen, Norway
At the outset and throughout the discussion, examples are drawn from classical Greek sources: Hesiod on knowledge, love and happiness or misfortune; Euripides on political unfreedom; Homer on the inability to speak the truth; Herodotus on the inability to apply one's knowledge; Solon's conversation with Croesus concerning the nature of happiness; and Socrates on truth and falsehood.
The article argues that human nature seeks self-realization and that the quality of life is proportional to experiences of meaning in which the individual is actively engaged. Such experiences should be informed by reason, as humans by nature strive to develop corresponding understanding to reality, This process also reveals the responsibility one bears toward oneself and others. A practical instrument for such self-realization lies at the core of ancient Athenian rational thought and practice. Plato most clearly demonstrates insight into this tool. Heraclitus' theory of the harmony of opposites, understood as logos, is examined in relation to this dialectical practice and dialogue.
An important instrument within this practice is diairesis, the division and analysis of object or concept of investigation; the constituent parts, elements, and interrelationships of things through concept formation and categorization; the creation of knowledge. This demand truthfully speak without unreasonable risk, that is, parrhesia. This strengthens dialectical processes within individual consciousness, and rational formation in society. Parrhesia functions as the logical hub around which the entire process of development revolves, including control with power.
Consciousness is naturally inclined to question the world as representation/ learning, and the encounter between deficiencies and contradictions within consciousness through reason-oriented dialogue, as thinking.
This perspective offers a methodological and practical form of knowledge relevant with school subjects and education more broadly. In relation to AI-technology, people should view themselves as participating in a dialectical interplay; posing meaningful questions, drawing out their own potential, and possessing the knowledge necessary to evaluate what is produced.
Systematic training and awareness of what takes place in dialogue and development must be improved to meet the challenges of the future. The intellectual prerequisites of conceptual innovation and precision, knowledge formation, and scientific competence will be of conscious praxis. In this way, the circle returns to Plato's thinking about dialectics. The historical examples demonstrates both the success and the decline of this mode of thinking. In other words, education and the possibility of living a life of meaning and happiness is much one and the same thing.
Some relevant thinkers and academics, in addition to ancient texts; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Lloyd Ackrill, Josiah Ober, Arlene Saxonhouse, Sarah Monoson, Ryan K. Balot.
Keywords ; freedom/eleutheria, parrhesia, dialectics, diairesis, and logos.
Hiraṇyagarbha in Indian Knowledge Systems: Cosmic Emergence, Vitality, and the Metaphysics of Embodiment
Parul University, Vadodara, Gujarat, India
dtrivediacp@gmail.com
Abstract
Hiraṇyagarbha is an important concept in Indian cosmological thought, yet its philosophical significance cannot be understood fully by treating it only as an image of cosmic origin. This paper examines Hiraṇyagarbha as a developing metaphysical concept through a close reading of Ṛgveda ۱۰.۱۲۱ and a comparative analysis of its relationship with later Indian philosophical accounts of cosmic manifestation, vitality, and embodied existence. Using a qualitative, text-centred method, the study distinguishes the hymn’s original poetic and theological concerns from the interpretations developed in later Brāhmaṇa, Upaniṣadic, and Vedāntic traditions. It investigates how concepts such as Sūtrātman, Virāṭ, prāṇa, and the five kośas contribute to different understandings of cosmic organisation and individual embodiment. Particular attention is given to the relationship between cosmological emergence and the differentiation of existence, while recognising that these concepts do not constitute a single, uniform doctrine across Indian philosophical traditions. The paper also considers contemporary interpretations of Hiraṇyagarbha and explores limited philosophical comparisons with modern cosmology, systemic interconnectedness, and theories of cognition. These comparisons are analogical rather than claims of scientific equivalence or historical anticipation. The study argues that Hiraṇyagarbha is best understood as a historically developing cosmological and metaphysical concept whose significance lies in connecting questions of origin, manifestation, cosmic order, and embodied existence. By combining textual interpretation with historically sensitive comparison, the paper clarifies both the conceptual continuity and the philosophical diversity of Indian cosmological thought.
The Transformative Openness of the Possible: A Phenomenological-Relational Articulation of Life
Author: Patrizia Diaco
Independent Researcher- Italy
patrizia.diaco@gmail.com
Abstract
This article proposes the notion of the transformative openness of the possible as a phenomenological-relational category for describing how a living form encounters its environment as a differential field of possibilities. The distinction between possibility and availability clarifies that what can take shape within an environment is not necessarily accessible to a situated living form. The pre-semantic threshold designates the configuration in which an available difference emerges as phenomenally salient, orienting experience prior to its possible conceptual thematization. Recursive transformation refers to the process through which the actualization of a possibility can modify the conditions under which subsequent possibilities become accessible. The theoretical contribution lies in articulating accessibility, phenomenal salience, actualization, and transformation within a unified structure while preserving the distinct function of each. A selective genealogical dialogue with the philosophy of life, phenomenology, and ecological and enactive theories serves to clarify the specificity of this proposal without positing an absolute discontinuity with existing approaches. The Franciscan form of life and the contemporary infosphere are examined as illustrative cases of different modes of transformation: the reconfiguration of practices and relationships, on the one hand, and the technological modulation of conditions of access, on the other. The comparison does not seek to establish the empirical validity of the proposed category, but rather to explore its descriptive potential. The transformative openness of the possible thus emerges as a situated and finite category aimed at understanding how a living form participates, within determinate conditions and limits, in the transformation of the possibilities of its own future.
Keywords: philosophy of life; possibility; availability; phenomenal salience; pre-semantic threshold; recursive transformation; phenomenology.
“What Makes Being Life? A Sufi Phenomenological Inquiry”
Prof. Dr. Konul Bunyadzade
Head of the Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology
Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences- Azerbaijan
The investigation of Life in relation to Being begins with a fundamental distinction: Being is more general than Life, while Life possesses particular features that distinguish it as a specific mode of Being. This distinction leads to the central question of this inquiry: “What makes Being Life?” To approach this question, the investigation proceeds on three interconnected levels: first, clarification of what Being itself is; second, examination of the process through which Being becomes Life; and third, identification of the distinctive boundaries and features of Life. Thus, the question cannot be answered by defining Life as a fixed set of characteristics alone; it requires an examination of the transformation of Being through which Life emerges as a distinct mode of Being.
This article aims to investigate the process through which Being becomes Life by drawing on Sufi phenomenology as a conceptual resource. This perspective makes it possible to bring rational inquiry and metaphysical experience into dialogue, while the investigation of Life may, in turn, open new perspectives on both Sufism and phenomenology. Thus, the relationship between the present inquiry and Sufi Phenomenology is not one-directional: while concepts developed within Sufi Phenomenology provide resources for investigating Life, the question of Life may also require these resources to be reconsidered and further developed. In this sense, Life is approached not simply as an object of inquiry, but as a philosophical problem through which previous conceptual resources can acquire new meanings and possibilities.
Within Sufi Phenomenology, each being is understood through an essential determination that constitutes its particular mode of being, preserves its uniqueness, and prevents its transformation into another being. At the same time, this essential determination does not exclude further actualization and transformation within the boundaries of its own potentiality. From this perspective, Life can be approached as a mode of Being characterized by the acquisition of new dimensions of its own potentiality. Yet Life involves more than ontological transformation: it also involves the recognition of Being and its potentiality. When Being becomes capable of consciously recognizing and directing its own potentiality, a distinctive mode of Life emerges. This perspective places consciousness at the center of the transition from Being to Life and opens further questions concerning its relation to spirit, Reality, and the Divine.
A central problem arising from this hypothesis concerns the relationship between movement and Life. If movement belongs to Being as such, movement alone cannot define Life: non-living beings also undergo movements and changes. The question, therefore, is not whether a being moves, but what kind of movement occurs within it and how that movement is directed. In Sufi Phenomenology, the movement of a being is related to its inherent light; the present inquiry extends this understanding by asking whether the direction and transformation of movement can account for the emergence of Life as a distinct mode of Being. This requires distinguishing between physical movement, internal movement, instinctive direction, and conscious direction, which will be examined in the following discussion.
Referring to Sufi Phenomenology opens broader perspectives on both Sufi and phenomenological approaches. In examining the problem of the transformation of Being into Life and the distinctions that may emerge within this process, the inquiry employs conceptual analysis to rethink philosophical terms and uncover previously unrecognized implications of earlier concepts. Comparative analysis, in turn, is used to distinguish different modes of movement and to examine their respective roles in the emergence of life as a distinct mode of Being.
Life as the Site of Manifestation: The Living Observer between the Unmanifest and the Manifest World
Andrey M. Kuznetsov,
Edmonton, Canada
Abstract:
Life is usually treated as an object among others, a set of biological properties inside an already given world. Recent proposals for a philosophy of life reverse this order by taking the subject of life as their starting point. This paper carries that reversal into ontology: life is not located in the world; the world becomes manifest through life. The perceived world is not reality in its final form but a manifestation of a deeper unmanifest domain through observation, neural mediation, and selective stabilization. That domain is not nothingness but a prephenomenal field where objects, space, time, and determinate histories have not yet taken shape. The argument draws on parallels between neural networks and the cosmic web, on quantum indeterminacy and statistical regularity, and on Wheeler's participatory view of observation. Manifestation is modeled by a quantum-inspired poly-logic in which competing logical possibilities coexist before stabilization and a determinate order emerges from their resolution. The central step is to identify living with this resolution: to live is to keep resolving indeterminacy, and the living observer is where that resolution takes place. Two consequences follow. Spectating and acting in life cease to be separate modes, since observing is already acting, and the space, time, and history of a life become products of living rather than its frame. The paper thus offers a formal model for the philosophy of life.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life, Manifestation, Unmanifest, Observer, Poly-Logic, Participatory Universe
Philosophical Lifism (Life-Centric Philosophy):
A Philosophical Possibility for the Post-Classical and Post-War Era in Contemporary Iranian Philosophy
Masoud Omid
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
Contemporary Iranian philosophy, viewed as a collection of philosophical potentials defined through its encounter with modernity, encompasses numerous and diverse philosophical currents. This situation implies that contemporary Iran is creating space for new philosophical ideas—and even entirely new philosophies—while simultaneously tempering the classical, exclusive approach to philosophy and shifting its overall philosophical atmosphere. In this context, and in tune with this evolving atmosphere, the present article calls for an exploration of new horizons and the opening of an alternative philosophical path within the post-classical era of contemporary philosophy. The proposed horizon and philosophical framework is termed "Philosophy of Life" or "Philosophical Lifism" (also referred to as *Lifeism*, *Metaphysics of Life*, or *Metalife*). Contemporary Iranian philosophy comprises six philosophical currents—one being the academic current, under which the approach proposed here falls. Considering the history of contemporary philosophy alongside the issues, concerns, and philosophical potential of contemporary Iran, one can engage with the concept of "Philosophical Investigations on Life," "Philosophical Lifism" (Lifism), or the "Philosophy of Life." The distinction between the subject matter of the philosophy of life and the themes of classical philosophy lies in the fact that the former does not focus on concepts such as *materia prima* (primal matter), *physis*, *cosmos*, *ens* (being/entity), *esse* (existence), *potentia* (potentiality), or *possibilitas* (possibility); rather, its point of departure and central subject is life itself. Furthermore, it differs from the themes and focal points of modern philosophy in that it does not correspond precisely to concepts such as the subject, subjectivity, existence, or *Dasein*; rather, it addresses the subject of life.
Keywords: Contemporary Iranian philosophy, philosophical currents and tendencies, academic philosophical movement, philosophical "lifelogy" (philosophy of life).
The Meaning of Life
Mahmoud Navali
Professor of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
We human beings are alive because our presence in the world is accompanied by a particular kind of movement and by a sense of situatedness. At the same time, we are endowed with the capacity to understand and infer, and we exist within a realm of possibilities. We are also influenced by time, development, and transformation; in other words, we are historical beings. The whole of the past—including culture, tradition, and our awareness of them—provides us with a sense of situatedness. We are likewise influenced by our goals, which are oriented toward the future. Therefore, all our movements and behaviors can be understood with reference to the future, that is, to our goals. The present, too, consists of our speech and action. Do this sense of situatedness, understanding and inference, and ultimately speech and action, possess meaning? Our answer is affirmative. But what, then, is meaning? For the time being, we may say that meaning is the result of signification and orientation. However, meaning is not something that appears prior to our sense of situatedness or in advance of understanding, inference, expression, and action. In other words, there is no pre-given logical meaning of life.
It is we who, under the influence of the past, the future, and time, confer meaning upon events. Even in the case of unwanted events, we create meaning through our own particular movement and sensibility. This is why events acquire different meanings for different individuals. Likewise, occurrences that take place without our will can have a particular meaning for each person. It is also important to note that if an event appears beneficial or harmful to my being—or, in other words, to my sense of “self”—the meaning I attribute to that event will accordingly be regarded as desirable or undesirable. Ultimately, within the conditions of existence, human beings possess, through their capacity for understanding and inference, an opening toward freedom and nothingness; consequently, they acquire the power to construct and create meaning. To live is nothing other than the desire for meaning; the desire for meaning is another name for living and for life.
Keywords: Meaning of Life; Philosophy; Human Being; Time.
The Flirtation of Death and Life
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast
Professor at University of Tehran
Abstract
At the ultimate point of paradox lies the relationship between death and life. The mother of all fears is the fear of death, and living beings that fear death desire life. At first glance, an irreconcilable opposition seems to arise between death and life. Yet, from a deeper perspective, the relationship between death and life resembles an extended and winding flirtation, at the end of which it is life that draws its pleasure from death. The relationship between death and life appears as the relationship between a couple. One cannot think of death without life, just as one cannot think of life without death. What takes place between these two partners—their estrangement and affection—should be understood as an intricate and protracted flirtation. This dynamic unfolds in three stages. In the first stage, estrangement and coyness prevail. Death flees from life, and life turns its face away from death. Accordingly, in order to live, one must flee from death, and in order to die, one must bid farewell to life. At this stage, the law of separation prevails. This law is evident in biological life and operates even in the lives of plants and animals. If this estrangement from, and flight from, death did not exist, life would not survive. This law also governs our human lives. In the first stage, too, we fear death and seek life by fleeing from it. This is why we flee from a predatory animal and fear falling into a ravine. In the second stage, confrontation and encounter emerge. Here, death and life no longer flee from one another; rather, they face each other and look directly into each other’s eyes. In this way, death and life become acquainted with one another. Now, living does not come about by closing one’s eyes to death, but by gazing into the eyes of death. At this stage, those who are more familiar with death are more alive, while those who disregard death are deprived of genuine life. To remember death now gives us a more human form of life: it uproots the decayed tooth of greed and avarice and brings generosity and fellowship with others as its gifts. Forgetting death, by contrast, makes us acquisitive and selfish and deprives us of a truly human life. Here, life reveals itself not in its biological dimension, but in its ethical and human dimension. In the third stage, the duality is overcome: death perishes within life and itself becomes life. Now, living consists neither in fleeing from death nor in turning toward it. Rather, life is attained by appropriating death, and life seeks to make death its own. This is what pure life means: a form of life in which the opposition between death and life is transformed, in some manner, into unity. It is in the third stage that the authenticity of life within the whole of existence becomes manifest. It is no longer merely that the fear of death fades, nor merely that familiarity with death is attained; rather, the individual becomes prepared even to desire death in order to attain a deeper life. When one realizes that one is living a “dead life,” one will desire a “living death.” At this third stage, one should say: death does not lie in wait for life; rather, it lies in its bow.
From the Impossibility of “Pure Philosophy” to the Necessity of a “Philosophy of Life”
Majid Sadrmajles
Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
This paper seeks to take the reader on an intellectual journey toward the conclusion that there is no philosopher who has not, either directly or indirectly, reflected upon and thought about human life. The starting point of this intellectual journey is a simple yet fundamental epistemological principle inherited from Parmenides: “What is not cannot be known or expressed.” In other words, knowing is always knowing something. This idea is addressed today under the notion of intentionality. Philosophy is a form of knowledge, and if this is so, then the expression “pure philosophy,” or “philosophy” without reference to something else, is meaningless. It is meaningless because it does not intend any object and, consequently, cannot be thought. Thus, “pure philosophy” is impossible.Accordingly, we are concerned with philosophy in the sense of “knowledge of ….” We encounter ontology, epistemology, and so forth. In this broad sense, philosophy may therefore be understood as knowledge of being and of the conditions and states of human beings, the world, and God.The second point is that, even if the foregoing claim is not incorrect, it is nevertheless incomplete. Intentionality requires not only a known object (object) but also a knowing subject (subject). Therefore, it may be said that philosophy is “life accompanied by knowledge of ….” I must confess that, concerning the realm of the world and God, I do not know what takes place! I do not know whether beings—whether God or other non-human entities—ask questions about themselves and their own conditions. But I do know that questioning oneself and reflecting upon one’s own condition is a distinctly human activity.Thus, the path into the realm of the world and God, and into questions concerning their existence and existential conditions, passes through only one “door”: the door of our own existence and existential condition. What else could understanding our own existence and existential condition, comprehending the future, and envisioning a condition different from the present be other than human life itself? As the Latin maxim puts it: “First live, then philosophize” (Primum vivere, deinde philosophari).Consequently, questions and answers concerning the world and God are inevitably possible only when human life is presupposed or examined, and when we possess some conception and understanding of both dimensions involved here: the human being and human life. The conclusion, therefore, is that philosophers who apparently have not addressed human life or such questions as the nature of the human being and human life, human freedom and the future, the purpose and meaning of life, evil and suffering—both one’s own and that of others—the existence of others, and the transcendent, should be questioned and called upon to speak; and, after listening to them, we should reconstruct their philosophy of life.Even if we pose philosophical questions to an ordinary person who has nothing to say about epistemology, ontology, or related philosophical subjects, that person nevertheless possesses some kind of philosophy of life. At the very least, they can formulate, in the form of questions and answers, general beliefs concerning themselves, their circumstances, and their future.
Keywords: human beings and human life; pure philosophy; philosophy of life; knowledge; human freedom and the future
The Meaning of Life within the Framework of the Theory of Iʿtibāriyyāt
Mohsen Javadi
Professor philosophy, University of Qom
Life is a collection of activities occurring within a certain span of time, some of which take place involuntarily and others voluntarily. What gives this collection a unified identity is the individual human being or animal to whose body or soul these activities pertain. When philosophers ask about the meaning of life, they consider this collection as a whole and ask: What meaning does this sequence of activities—some of which occur beyond our control—have?
Various answers have been offered to this question:
One view seeks the meaning of life in its ultimate end and maintains that it is the final end toward which these activities are directed that determines the meaning of life. Another view emphasizes a divine purpose and understands the meaning of life as the fulfillment of God’s will. A third view, rather than considering the totality of one’s activities, focuses on each activity individually. If such activities are pleasurable and conducive to happiness, life is regarded as meaningful during the period in which they occur and, correspondingly, the whole of life is considered meaningful to that extent.
In all these approaches, the meaning of life is regarded as something valuable and desirable. There are, of course, other views that acknowledge the possibility of meaning in life without necessarily attributing a positive evaluative dimension to it; such views, however, are not discussed in the present article.
An important question is whether the meaning of life—assuming that it has an evaluative dimension—is something objective and discoverable, which must first be recognized and then pursued, or whether it is non-objective and stipulative, something that must be constructed.
In the Islamic intellectual tradition, philosophers and even theologians, including both the Muʿtazilites and the Ashʿarites, have generally regarded the meaning of human life as something to be discovered, although the Ashʿarites understand it as being established by divine stipulation.
However, Allameh Tabataba’i’s theory of iʿtibāriyyāt (constructed or conventional concepts) has sometimes been interpreted as implying that values in general—and consequently the meaning of life—are conventional and stipulative matters constructed by human beings themselves. One apparent consequence of regarding the meaning of life as stipulative is that it becomes relative and non-objective. Moreover, many assume that if something is stipulative, it must also be arbitrary and without rational justification.
The central question, therefore, is whether the stipulative and iʿtibārī character of the meaning of life in Allameh Tabataba’i’s theory of iʿtibāriyyāt entails these consequences: does his theory render value and meaning relative and arbitrary?
There is admittedly some textual evidence in Allameh Tabataba’i’s writings that may appear to support such an interpretation. The author of the present article, however, argues that the answer to this question is negative. Despite regarding value and the meaning of life as stipulative, Allameh Tabataba’i does not consider them relative. Furthermore, by recognizing certain conditions and constraints governing the construction of values, he does not regard evaluative judgments as arbitrary.
This article is an attempt to defend an account of the meaning of life within the framework of the theory of iʿtibāriyyāt: an account according to which meaning is stipulative or constructed, yet remains open to rational assessment and critique.
Life as Narrative
Muhammad Asghari
Professor of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
M-asghari@Tabrizu.ac.ir
Abstract
In this article, I seek to show that life should be understood as a “narrative”—a narrative within which our lives acquire meaning. Is there a final narrative through which we can describe our lives? A further question is whether human life possesses a coherent meaning prior to being narrated, or whether meaning emerges in the very process of narrating one’s life. These questions have constituted an important concern in contemporary philosophy, particularly from Paul Ricoeur to poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, and they remain significant today. In this context, Paul Ricoeur, through his concept of “narrative identity,” demonstrates that the human being is neither merely a collection of fixed characteristics nor simply a sequence of disconnected events. Rather, we understand ourselves by organizing our experiences in narrative form. Past, present, and future are connected through narrative, and through recounting and reinterpreting one’s life, the individual responds to the question, “Who am I?” Contemporary thought, however—particularly thinkers associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism—has called into question the possibility of attaining a final, unified, and entirely self-grounded narrative of life. Richard Rorty, by questioning the possibility of a “final vocabulary,” invites us toward self-creation in life. Michel Foucault highlights the role of discourse and power in the formation of the modern subject; Derrida emphasizes the incompleteness of meaning and the perpetual possibility of reinterpretation; and Jean-François Lyotard remains skeptical of legitimating metanarratives, defending instead the plurality of “little narratives.” Taking Ricoeur as its central point of reference and comparing his thought with that of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard, this article argues that “life as narrative” should not be understood as the transformation of life into a completely ordered and closed story. Rather, human life is an open-ended process of narration, interpretation, and renarration, within which identity is continually formed in the tensions between memory and forgetting, continuity and change, self and other. In other words, when life is understood as narrative, there is no longer a Cartesian subject conceived as a stable thinking substance. Instead, it is the fragmented and fluid character of the subject in our age that becomes the subject matter of narrative—a narrative whose other name is life.
In classical modern philosophy, particularly from Descartes onward, the “I” was generally regarded as a relatively stable point of departure for knowledge. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, this conception gradually became problematic. Nietzsche was one of the most important figures in this transformation. In his thought, truth cannot be separated from interpretation, and what human beings call truth is always related to perspective, language, and the forces of life. Nietzsche’s importance for the question of life narrative becomes evident precisely at this point. If human access to both the self and the world is always interpretive, then an individual’s narrative of their own life cannot constitute a wholly unmediated account of “what actually happened.” Human beings interpret the past from the standpoint of the present. Consequently, a transformation in the present can also transform the meaning of the past.
Keywords: Paul Ricoeur; life; narrative; narrative identity; hermeneutics; postmodernism; Foucault; Derrida; Lyotard
The Paradoxical Relationship Between the Body and Life
Muhammad Asghari
Professor of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
M-asghari@Tabrizu.ac.ir
Abstract
This article seeks to demonstrate, through a phenomenological approach grounded in the body-centered phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Drew Leder, that the presence of life corresponds to the absence of the body, while the absence of life corresponds to the presence of the body. The phenomenology of the body considers the body not merely as a biological object, but as the foundation of experience and as a fundamental mode of human being-in-the-world—what Merleau-Ponty describes in terms of our embodied presence in the world. Within this framework, Drew Leder’s phenomenology, particularly as developed in The Absent Body, focuses on the ways in which the body becomes present or absent in everyday life. According to Leder, under ordinary conditions and in states of health, the body largely recedes into the background of awareness, functioning as a tacit medium that makes perception, movement, and interaction with the world possible. To put this in Kantian terms, the body is a condition of possibility for our conscious life. Simply stated, conscious life depends upon a body that must be healthy and, at the same time, experientially absent.Thus, human beings ordinarily live “through the body” without experiencing the body itself as an independent object of attention. The body is comparable to the eye: the eye sees everything, yet does not ordinarily see itself; indeed, its own invisibility is, in a certain sense, a condition of seeing other things. Pain, illness, and bodily dysfunction, however, disrupt this condition and bring the body from the background into the foreground of consciousness. As long as the eye is free from pain, for example, it does not normally become an explicit object of attention. Likewise, while typing these words, I am ordinarily aware neither of my eyes nor of my hands as objects in themselves. The aim of this article is to elucidate the paradoxical relationship between the body and life from the perspective of Leder’s phenomenology. According to Leder, the body is not an instrument at the disposal of the mind but the fundamental ground of human experience, action, and engagement with the lifeworld. Bodily experience therefore plays a decisive role in shaping the meaning of the world, spatial perception, movement, identity, and the human mode of existence. This study argues that Leder’s concept of the “absent body” provides the basis for a non-reductionist understanding of embodiment—one in which body and life are inseparable, and in which transformations in the condition of the body can bring about transformations in the totality of an individual’s lived experience, that is, in life itself.
Keywords: Drew Leder; phenomenology of the body; absent body; lived body; lifeworld; lived experience.
Examining and Reconstructing the “Philosophy of Life” in Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasatnama
Majid Sadrmajles
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
Abu Ali Hasan, better known as Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk Tusi, was a statesman and vizier to two Seljuk rulers, Alp Arslan and Malik Shah. Born in Tus in ۴۰۸ AH, he became a victim of political intrigue and was assassinated in ۴۸۵ AH. Among his notable innovations was the establishment of the famous Nizamiyya schools, with various curricula and courses, in several parts of the Islamic world, including the Nizamiyya schools of Baghdad and Rayy. He served as vizier for nearly thirty years and recorded his governmental and political experiences in a work entitled Siyasatnama (The Book of Government) or Siyar al-Muluk (The Conduct of Kings). The work consists of fifty chapters and, through various subjects and stories, examines the relations of power among the ruler, government officials, and the people. In other words, Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk seeks to explain and rectify human life through the framework of social relations among different classes of society. This paper seeks to extract and infer the theoretical foundations of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk’s thought by examining the relationships among the ruler, government officials, and the people, as well as the means of correcting these relationships. These considerations directly reveal his views on individual and social life, the necessity of education and upbringing, the development of military and scientific-technical capabilities, envisioning a different future, improving people’s affairs, confronting injustice, and benefiting from religious faith. From this perspective, it can be seen that statesmen such as Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, who occupy an intermediary social position between the ruler and the people, possess, in a precise sense, a kind of tangible and practicable “philosophy of life”—that is, a body of socio-political ideas concerned with human life and the practical solutions associated with it. Such figures could also serve as the principal organizers and regulators of the relationship between the ruler and the people.
Keywords: Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk; power relations between the ruler and the people; just life; education and upbringing; improving future conditions.
Philosophy of Life in Dilthey’s Thought
Manouchehr Sanei Dareh Bidi
Professor of Philosophy, Shahid Beheshti University
Abstract
From approximately the second half of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, three versions of the “philosophy of life” (Lebensphilosophie) emerged in Europe: in the philosophies of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Dilthey. These three versions differ from one another. For Bergson, the fundamental principle of existence is a “vital impetus” (élan vital). For Nietzsche, the essential nature of human life is emotional or affective, rather than rational. Reason—and the rational culture of the West from Plato to the modern period—occupies a secondary position in relation to emotions, feelings, passions, impulses, and desires. Dilthey’s account of the philosophy of life, however, is a different story. For him, the human being is an empirical-cultural being. Experiences become crystallized in the mind and constitute the structure of reason. This reflective structure gives rise in the mind to what may be called “lived experience” (Erlebnis). Human spiritual life—not merely biological life—is a totality of these lived experiences. These reflections are creations of the mind, and their highest forms are found in the lived experiences of cultivated individuals, artists, thinkers, and other cultural figures. Among lived experiences, artistic experiences, particularly the experiences and creations of poets, occupy a particularly elevated position and serve as an exemplary expression of human culture. For example, in order to understand the national character and the spiritual disposition of Iranians, the study of the works of Ferdowsi, Saadi, Hafez, and others is one of the best means available. From Dilthey’s perspective, the essential task of philosophy is to study the works of artists—especially poets—and, through these works, to understand their spiritual life and outlook. The foundation of philosophy is knowledge, and the foundation of knowledge is life; life, in turn, is most profoundly manifested in the lives and works of poets.
An Ontological Reading of Dewey's Proposition on the Identity of Education with Life
Hamid Ahmadi Hedayat
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Farhangian University
Abstract
John Dewey's statement that education is not preparation for life, but life itself, is considered a cornerstone of contemporary pedagogy. However, it can be said that dominant readings have largely reduced this radical proposition and formulated it under epistemological, psychological, and functionalist frameworks. Relying on naturalism, Dewey defined life essentially as the give-and-take of an organism with its socio-physical environment, but in contemporary education, this formulation has inadvertently paved the way for a kind of technocratic reductionism in which education is reduced to the instrumental acquisition of market-oriented competencies and functional efficiency. The present study aims to provide a precise philosophical reinterpretation of Dewey's proposition within the horizon of fundamental ontology, existential phenomenology, and hermeneutic philosophy of life. To achieve this goal, conceptual-hermeneutic methodology was used and three main findings were obtained. The first finding is that classical pragmatism, by mixing the ontological development of existence and biological equilibrium, faces a kind of inherent vulnerability that largely silences existential dimensions such as finitude, existential anxiety, and the tragic. The second finding is that Dewey's proposition of identity, after being freed from biological reductionism, actually redefines education not as a tool in the service of social efficiency, but as an ontological event of inhabiting the context of vulnerability and openness of the world. And the third finding is that Dewey's insistence on the principle of growth is critically refined from the concept of quantitative development and reconstructed as a hermeneutic-narrative movement for moral self-creation, giving meaning to life, and taking responsibility for the other. Finally, the conclusion is that this identity of education and upbringing with life for Dewey remains a fundamental and unique compass; provided that life is reclaimed as an existential and ontological truth. Authentic education and upbringing, far beyond a tool for socio-economic adaptation, is a fundamental shelter and space for settling in, in which humans actually learn how to live meaningfully and responsibly in a finite and shared world.
Keywords: John Dewey, education and upbringing, philosophy of life, naturalism, educational instrumentalism
Saadi and Everyday Life
Rouholah Eslami
Associate Professor of Political Science
Department of Political Science,
Faculty of Law and Political Science,
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Research Visitor
Faculty of Social Sciences,
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
Abstract
Saadi’s political thought can be reconsidered from a perspective different from the conventional understanding of politics as government, the state, and the pursuit of political power. From this perspective, Saadi analyzes the rules of the political game not primarily through formal governmental structures, but through everyday life, social relations, and individuals’ encounters with various forms of power. In the Gulistan, Saadi warns against direct and costly involvement in governmental politics and portrays politics understood as governing and exercising state power as an inherently dangerous domain. In his metaphorical logic, politics is like fire, whose very nature is to burn, and like a scorpion, whose nature is to sting; consequently, keeping one’s distance from it may be more rational for preserving one’s life and securing the order of everyday existence than becoming directly entangled in it. Yet this distance from governmental politics does not imply a complete withdrawal from politics. Rather, it represents a shift in the locus of politics from “governing” to “how to live.” From this perspective, the Gulistan can be understood as a popular form of political counsel in which Saadi uses short narratives and dramatic situations to reveal the mechanisms of power, wealth, pleasure, and religious authority in everyday life. He demonstrates how these structures shape individual choices, social relations, status, and possibilities for action, and how, under particular conditions, they may generate domination, deception, dependency, violence, and suffering. In response, Saadi offers neither a political utopia nor a revolutionary program for transforming the existing order. Instead, he emphasizes prudence, moderation, situational awareness, caution, and the rational regulation of conduct. His stories may therefore be read as accounts of the lived experience of politics in everyday life, through which the practical rules and modes of dealing with power become visible. The distinctive feature of Saadi’s approach, in this reading, lies in the combination of political realism and practical ethics: a realism that understands politics, before it becomes a question of capturing governmental power, as the problem of intelligently managing life in a world structured by multiple forms of power.
Keywords: Saadi; Everyday Life; Power
Life’s Turn: From “Readiness for Life” to “Living in the Now”; Rethinking the University’s Educational Philosophy
Yousef Rezapour
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
Abstract
Education, especially in its institutional and modern form, is often understood with a future horizon. School and university are supposed to prepare people for life; for work, social responsibility, citizenship, profession, and facing the future. This perception is necessary in its essence; but when “readiness for life” becomes the dominant logic of education, a fundamental question emerges: If a person is living throughout his education, what is the place of his life in the present? Is it possible that education, which is supposed to prepare a person for life, unintentionally postpones his life itself to the future? The present article, with a philosophical-analytical approach, proposes the concept of “life’s turn” to rethink the relationship between life and education in universities. The main claim of the article is that “preparation for life” has a truly educational meaning when it is itself a form of living; therefore, the university should not be considered merely a place of preparing people for future life, but rather one of the main fields of realizing life in the present. To develop this claim, the article examines the various dimensions of experience, temporality, initiation, human relationship, power, and participation in dialogue with the views of Dewey, Heidegger, Arendt, Jaspers, Foucault, and Freire. The result of this dialogue is that living in the present does not mean presentism or disregard for the future, but rather the possibility of experiencing, giving meaning, being present in one’s own time, entering into relationships with others, choosing and initiating, and participating in the common world. Accordingly, the educational philosophy of the university requires a shift in focus from “preparation for life” to “providing the possibility of living in the process of education.”
Keywords: Life's turn, educational philosophy, university, living in the present, preparation for life, experience, temporality, initiation, life.
What does it mean to live well? A philosophical introduction to the concept of a good life
Hamidreza Khademi
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Theology, Humanities Research and Development Institute
Abstract
"A good life" is a concept that is often measured in everyday language by having desirable conditions such as well-being, health, success, satisfaction, and security; however, having such conditions does not necessarily mean "living well." The main issue of this article is that if we distinguish living well from having a desirable life, what criteria can be presented to recognize and evaluate it? Is living well simply a matter of personal preferences and satisfaction, or can a criterion beyond individual desires be considered for it, without imposing a predetermined model for a desirable life? The present article examines this issue with an analytical-critical approach and shows that reducing the good life to pleasure, well-being, success or personal satisfaction, although it explains part of the problem, is not sufficient to explain the value of the human way of life. On the other hand, defining the good life based on completely external criteria is also incompatible with the role of choice, evaluation and personal responsibility in human life. Accordingly, the article defends the view that “living well” should be understood not simply as a desirable state, but as a quality in the way of life in which a reasonable and defensible relationship is established between the desires and choices of the individual, the values according to which he organizes his life, and the consequences of these choices. In the following, this view is examined in the light of some important philosophical views on happiness, virtue, goodness and the meaning of life, and the capacity of the concept of “happiness” in the philosophical tradition, especially in the thought of Al-Farabi and Mulla Sadra, to face the contemporary problem of living well is evaluated. The purpose of the article is not to provide a final and uniform definition of the good life, but rather to clarify the foundations and criteria on the basis of which one can think more philosophically about the good or badness of a way of life.
Keywords: good life; living well; happiness; goodness; satisfaction; choice; meaning of life.
Structural Evil and the Crisis of Meaning in Life
Qodratullah Qorbani
Professor, Department of Philosophy, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Structural evil, in its various forms, threatens the overall meaning of human life. Structural evil is not an evil created by particular individuals; rather, it results from the dysfunctional operation of a combination of a society’s social, political, religious, cultural, economic, and class structures and manifests itself in forms such as injustice, violence, discrimination, inefficiency, unequal distribution, corruption, and oppression. An important point is that the agents responsible for reproducing structural evil are not individuals themselves; rather, the mechanisms of governing structures, laws, social relations, and the interests of ruling classes gradually give rise to such undesirable conditions. Structural evil, in the form of moral and natural evils, is among the most important factors that deprive human life of meaning. A society afflicted by structural evil gradually loses its inclination and enthusiasm toward the components that confer meaning on life. These include belief in God Almighty, the superior status of human beings as the noblest of creatures, transcendent moral values, a higher purpose of life, belief in ultimate felicity in the hereafter, rational principles, aesthetic values, and the like. The meaninglessness of these components, which results from the predominance of structural evil in human life, means that they no longer have an effective function in human existence, do not bestow transcendent value upon life, and leave human beings unable to define a higher purpose for their worldly existence. Therefore, structural evil is a manifestation of one of the greatest afflictions of human life, one that can deprive human existence of meaning both from within and from without and take away hope, which is the most important component for the continuation of life. The way to confront this threat is to recognize human responsibility within our own lifeworld: we ourselves are responsible for questioning the philosophy and purpose of life, and we must define transcendent values for our lives and significant functions for ourselves through which to construct meaning in life. In short, our recognition of human responsibility and our individual and collective efforts have the capacity to destroy, or at least reduce, the effects of structural evil. Therefore, expecting a supernatural agent to deliver us from this deplorable condition is not particularly effective. Rather, attention to individual and social responsibility, together with hope for a brighter future, constitutes an effective and productive factor in understanding the philosophy of life and giving meaning to it.
Keywords: Structural Evil, Meaning of Life, Structural Injustice, Transcendent Values, God, Purpose of Life.
Perceptual Genealogy of Vitality: A Dialectic of Memory Systems and Existential Constriction in the Light of Phenomenology and Computational Neuroscience
Alireza Farnam
Professor of Psychiatry Department, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences; Kharazmi Research Center, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
The concept of "Vitality" has traditionally been formulated in philosophical discourse not merely as a transient affective state or a mood disorder reducible to neurochemistry, but as the measure of “Dasein’s” openness to the world and the intensity of the subject’s engagement with their own existential possibilities. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, bridging embodied phenomenology, experimental epistemology, and computational neuroscience, to advance a novel thesis: the biological-existential quality of psychic life is directly contingent upon the structural dominance of one of the three memory systems (episodic, semantic, or procedural) over the dynamics of consciousness. Within this framework, it is demonstrated that the greater the influence of episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness on mental architecture, the more the lived experience is characterized by vitality, contextual richness, and openness to the surprise of the event. Conversely, the erosion of the episodic domain and the total hegemony of semantic memory—through categorical abstraction and cognitive over-generalization—leads to semantic petrification; furthermore, the dominance of procedural memory reduces the subject to an executive organism, bound by behavioral automation. By re-reading this phenomenon through the lens of "Predictive Processing" theory, this paper argues that authentic vitality is equivalent to the nervous system's resilience in the face of "prediction error" and the hippocampus's capacity for "pattern separation." In contrast, mechanistic rigidity arises from the excessive precision of prior beliefs (hyper-precise priors) and the phenomenological exclusion of novelty from the subject's “Lebenswelt* (lifeworld).
Keywords: Vitality, Episodic Memory, Semantic Memory, Procedural Memory, Autonoetic Consciousness, Predictive Processing, Phenomenology, Existential Constriction.
Ontological Epigenesis: On the Transcendental Dimension of Human Life
A Reflection on Applying Existential Phenomenology to Theories of Psychological Development
Alireza Farnam
Professor of Psychiatry Department, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences; Kharazmi Research Center, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
The reduction of the rich, multi-layered concept of "human life" to mere physiological mechanisms and neurobiological determinism, while successful in explaining organic functions, suffers from extreme reductionism when confronted with the dimensions of "meaning" and "lived experience." Adopting an interdisciplinary approach bridging existential phenomenology (with emphasis on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) and developmental psychology, this paper proposes the concept of "Ontological Epigenesis" as an alternative paradigm for understanding human "becoming." In this framework, human life is not a rigid entity or a mechanical output, but a "dialectical project" that emerges from material and temperamental substrates and ascends to a transcendental level through a graded structure of four fundamental stages: ۱) the transition from instinct to symbolic and cultural formations via "sublimation" (Freud); ۲) the shift from sensorimotor adaptation to "openness to possibility" (Piaget); ۳) the transcendence of the isolated ego toward "historical care" and existential integrity (Erikson); and ۴) the ascent from the somatic infrastructure of temperament to intuitive "self-transcendence" and unity with Being (Cloninger. The paper argues that human life is a continuous self-transcending project and redefines psychopathology not merely as a "neurochemical failure," but as an "arrest in the epigenetic dynamics of existence." This conceptual framework paves the way for understanding the human being as an architect open to the infinite horizon of meaning, transcending the boundaries of reductionism.
Keywords: Human Life, Transcendental Dimension, Existential Epigenesis, Phenomenology, Care (Sorge), Self-Transcendence, C. R. Cloninger. Sent from
The Phenomenology of Life’s Self-Revelation
Neda Mohejel
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Farhangian University, East Azerbaijan Province
Abstract
This article seeks to demonstrate that, in Michel Henry’s phenomenology, particularly in his book Material Phenomenology, life possesses a pre-reflective and self-revelatory dimension that cannot be adequately explained through Husserlian phenomenology, which is based on the appearance of an object to a subject. The central question in Michel Henry’s phenomenology is whether the appearance of things in the world and the intentional relation of the subject’s consciousness to an object can constitute the primary and most fundamental form of appearing, or whether, prior to every external manifestation, there exists a kind of internal and pre-intentional appearing. By distinguishing between the manifestation of the world and the self-revelation of life, Henry argues that life does not reveal itself through the observation of an external object, but rather through the immediate and internal experience of itself. For example, does pain stand before me like a tree? The answer is no. Pain reveals itself in the very experience of feeling it. I do not need to observe pain from the outside in order to feel it. Consequently, life experiences itself directly and inwardly. From this perspective, experiences such as pain, pleasure, suffering, joy, and the capacity to act are present fully within lived experience prior to becoming objects of the reflective and intentional consciousness of the subject. Henry calls this mode of appearing “immanence” and “auto-affection” or “self-revelation of life,” and makes it the foundation of his material phenomenology. Accordingly, affectivity and lived experience are not secondary elements of consciousness; rather, they are regarded as conditions of possibility for any relation to the world and its objects. This is also a point emphasized by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception. This perspective further leads to a redefinition of the concept of the body and of the relationship with the Other. For Henry, the body is not merely a physical object. I do not experience my body simply as an external thing. For example, when I move my hand, I do not first need to construct a mental image of my hand and then decide to move it. I directly experience the capacity to act. Here Henry approaches the concept of the lived body: a body that, prior to being an observable physical entity, experiences ability, suffering, pleasure, pressure, and movement from within. Before the body is an object in the world, it is a lived and affective body.
The relationship with the Other, likewise, is grounded in a shared participation in life and affective experience. Thus, by shifting the focus of phenomenology from “consciousness observing the world” to “life revealing itself,” Henry offers a distinctive interpretation of human experience in which life and affectivity are more fundamental than intentionality and external manifestation.
Keywords: Life; Self-Revelation; Lived Experience; Material Phenomenology; Body; Henry
An Inquiry into the Paradoxes of the Purposelessness of the Universe and Life
Hossein Kalbasi Ashtari
Professor of Philosophy, Allameh Tabataba'i University.
Abstract
The philosophical critique of the view denying teleology (purposiveness) in creation is primarily directed at the materialist and mechanistic worldview that reduces existence to a chain of blind, random, efficient causes. We pursue this critique across four levels: epistemological, ontological, causal, and axiological:
۱. The Epistemological Paradox: The most fundamental philosophical critique regarding the denial of purpose traces back to an epistemological principle. If the human mind and perception arise solely from random genetic mutations and chemical interactions aimed at survival, then attaining "truth" is not only impossible but merely represents "adaptation" to the environment. If our tools of cognition (perceptual faculties) serve no purpose other than biological survival, then the very claim that "there is no purpose in the universe" is itself an evolutionary construct for adaptation, rather than a true proposition about reality. Thus, this approach falls into a fundamental paradox: to prove the purposelessness and lack of teleology in the universe, it employs a tool whose own validity—if it is ultimately hollow and meaningless—would also be nullified.
۲. Confusing Levels of Causality (Efficient Cause vs. Final Cause): Certain trends in modern philosophy, relying on classical physics, have excluded the final cause (purpose) from the realm of scientific explanation, limiting themselves instead to the mechanical efficient cause (the "how" of an occurrence). However, a philosophical assessment of this view reveals that "how" things happen never replaces the "ultimate why." While the movement of a billiard ball can be explained by physical momentum, the geometric order of the table and the laws governing collisions themselves require a teleological explanation. In Aristotelian terms, the final cause does not conflict with the efficient cause but complements it; omitting the former renders the explanation incomplete, as the order inherent in the laws manifests a sense of directionality and an "orientation toward action."
۳. The Principle of Causality and the Problem of Accidental Order: According to the philosophical principle of "existential contingency" (*imkān-e faqrī*), a contingent being possesses—in its own essence—no inherent priority for existence over non-existence, nor any preference for one form of order over another. Absent a final cause (purpose), the emergence of the actual universe—with its precise mathematical discipline—would be tantamount to an impossibility (an infinitely improbable event). Denying purpose in an attempt to avoid teleology leads one to take refuge in "pure chance"; yet philosophically, chance—being a mere negation of cause—cannot account for the existence of order, as there is no inherent tendency for regularity to arise from chaos (entropy). The universe possesses an "intrinsic purpose" regarding its own order and persistence, driving it toward stability and continuity.
۴. Inconsistency in the Realm of Value and Meaning: Those who deny purpose often justify their stance by appealing to ideals such as "scientific evidence" and "freedom from presuppositions." Yet, in a worldview entirely devoid of purpose, the virtue of honesty and the vice of falsehood lack objective value, appearing instead as merely psychologically conditioned behaviors. The fundamental critique here is that, in order to critique *telos* (purpose/end), they employ concepts such as "truth" or "objectivity"—concepts that themselves hold no place within a nihilistic paradigm. In Husserlian terms, this represents the "crisis of European sciences," wherein the institution of rationality loses its meaning by being reduced to mere quantity.
۵. Inability to explain purposiveness within the evolutionary process itself (teleonomy): Even if we reject metaphysical *telos*, evolutionary biology is inevitably compelled to utilize concepts like "function" and "intrinsic purpose" (teleonomy). The heart evolved to pump blood, and the eye to facilitate vision. Denying any form of purpose renders these functions—which arise from natural selection—illusory; yet, in practice, biology can never achieve a coherent explanation without presupposing a "relative directedness" within biological structures.
Ultimately, the philosophical denial of purposiveness suffers from contradictions in epistemological foundations, fallacies regarding causal explanation, and incoherence within value systems."Telos" is not an external add-on but an intrinsic, objective reality of the ontological order; any coherent explanation of the universe's order inevitably presupposes it at some level (even if merely as a functional premise). A purposeless universe and existence constitute an incomplete explanation lacking sufficient rationality—a view shared by both Sadrian philosophy (which regards existence as graded and possessing an intrinsic purpose) and later analytic philosophy (which emphasizes the necessity of a "sufficient reason").
Keywords: Nihilism, entropy, mechanical causality, teleology, gradation of being.
The Philosophy of the University of Life: The University as a Habitat for Human Growth and Development
Asadollah Khadivi
Email: khadivia@cfu.ac.ir
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Administration, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to philosophically conceptualize and formulate the notion of the “University of Life” and to reconsider the nature and purpose of the university by understanding it as a habitat for human growth and flourishing. The study adopted a theoretical and conceptual approach, drawing on conceptual analysis and critical synthesis of the literature. The sources examined comprised philosophical, theoretical, and research-based works related to the philosophy of education, philosophy of higher education, university studies, Bildung and self-cultivation, human becoming, subjectification, human growth and development, flourishing, well-being, meaning and purpose in life, complexity, and the future of higher education. In the analytical process, concepts and arguments concerning the nature and purpose of the university were identified, compared, and critically examined and were subsequently reconstructed within an integrated conceptual framework. The analysis proceeded in three stages. First, key concepts concerning the purpose of the university, the relationship between the university and life, human becoming, Bildung and self-cultivation, subjectification, human growth and development, flourishing, well-being, meaning and purpose in life, complexity, and the future of higher education were identified and analyzed. Second, the premises and arguments advanced in classical and contemporary sources were compared and critically examined in relation to the purpose of the university and human growth. Third, selected theoretical insights were integrated into a coherent framework to conceptualize the university as a habitat for human growth and flourishing. The analysis was conducted at four levels—ontological, educational, human, and social—to clarify the relationship among the nature of the university, lived university experience, the processes of becoming and identity formation, the cultivation of human capacities, and social responsibility.
The findings indicate that, throughout its historical and philosophical traditions, the university has not merely been an institution for transmitting specialized knowledge, preparing human resources, and awarding degrees; rather, it has been consistently connected with fundamental questions concerning truth, rationality, human formation, character development, social responsibility, and ways of living. Nevertheless, the growing dominance of market-oriented approaches, increasing emphasis on employability, performance quantification, standardization of educational processes, and measurable outcomes, together with accelerating technological change, the expansion of artificial intelligence, increasingly complex social and environmental challenges, and growing uncertainty about the future, have intensified the need to reconsider the purpose of the university. In response, this study conceptualizes the university not merely as an “educational organization,” but as a “habitat for human growth and flourishing”—a habitat in which structures, culture, relationships, values, language, physical and digital spaces, learning opportunities, assessment practices, participation norms, and everyday experiences interact to create conditions for human formation and transformation. From this perspective, what is learned at the university is not limited to the formal curriculum; ways of thinking, communicating, choosing, and responding to difference, error, conflict, and uncertainty are also integral to university learning. Human growth, therefore, is not the product of a single course or educational program but emerges through individuals’ continuous engagement with the university as a whole.
The second finding indicates that, as a habitat for growth, the university should create conditions for human becoming, identity formation, and the cultivation of agency. In today’s complex and uncertain world, specialized knowledge and skills alone are insufficient for navigating the future, because individuals must be able to reflect on knowledge, values, choices, and the consequences of their decisions and exercise independent judgment in unfamiliar situations. Accordingly, the university should provide opportunities for self-understanding, critical thinking, dialogue, experience, choice, and responsibility. Problem-, project-, experiential-, and participation-based learning in this framework are not merely instructional methods; they provide opportunities to connect academic learning with the realities of life. When confronted with real-world problems, students should not merely seek answers but also engage with questions concerning why a particular choice is made, what consequences it may produce, and what responsibilities they bear toward others. In this way, the university simultaneously becomes a context for acquiring knowledge and expertise and a setting for the formation of persons capable of developing identity, judgment, autonomy, and agency.
The third finding conceptualizes the university, building on the preceding findings, as an “institutional architecture for human growth and flourishing.” Within this framework, growth is a comprehensive and multidimensional concept that cannot be reduced to cognitive advancement or academic achievement; rather, it encompasses cognitive growth, identity formation, agency development, moral development, the quality of human relationships, professional development, the search for meaning, and the capacity for social participation. Within this broader process, human flourishing refers to the gradual realization, cultivation, and actualization of human capacities through experience, relationships, choice, and action. Flourishing is therefore not understood as a fixed or final state but as a dynamic and gradual process unfolding within human life and experience. The university should likewise avoid imposing a single model of the “good life” on students; instead, it should cultivate their capacity to reflect on the good life, consider alternative possibilities, engage in critical dialogue, and make responsible choices. In this sense, flourishing may be understood as one of the desirable horizons and outcomes of the developmental trajectory rather than as synonymous with growth. This conceptual distinction makes it possible to position growth as the overall process of human transformation, flourishing as the gradual realization of human capacities, and human flourishing as one desirable horizon of this process within a differentiated yet interconnected conceptual framework.
The fourth finding highlights the role of “meaning” in connecting the university, human growth, and life. The University of Life cannot be realized without the cultivation of a “climate of meaning,” because meaning is not something that can simply be transmitted through a course or educational content; rather, it is a quality that must permeate the university experience as a whole. The university is a setting in which individuals think, question, critique, experience, and gradually construct their relationship with themselves, others, and the world. Meaning should therefore be embedded in faculty–student relationships, organizational culture, modes of management, dialogue, decision-making, and participation practices. When this climate is deprived of meaning, knowledge may become information detached from life, while expertise may be reduced to a set of skills lacking normative direction. The University of Life can therefore also be understood as an “ecosystem of meaning-making”—an ecosystem in which knowledge is connected to understanding, understanding to insight, and insight to responsible action. In such a university, learning extends beyond the accumulation of information to encompass knowing, doing, being, and living with others, so that dialogue, respect for differences, coexistence, and social responsibility become integral dimensions of university experience.
The fifth finding redefines the university beyond an educational and research institution as an intellectual and ethical agent within society. In this role, the university is responsible, on the one hand, for understanding complex issues and producing credible knowledge about them and, on the other, for reflecting on the human and ethical implications of knowledge, technology, and social decisions and participating in imagining, critiquing, and shaping possible futures. Within this framework, the professor is not merely a transmitter of curricular content but also a bearer of the university’s intellectual and ethical culture. The classroom is not simply a site for delivering content; it can serve as a space for thinking, dialogue, engagement with disagreement, and the practice of judgment and responsibility. Students, likewise, are not passive recipients of education but active members of an intellectual and social community. From this perspective, the university has a cognitive and ethical role in society and can contribute to collective understanding of complex issues, expand the capacity for dialogue, and contribute to the conscious shaping of the future. The relationship between the university and society is therefore not one-directional: the university influences human growth and flourishing, while flourishing individuals can, through their agency and participation, transform the culture, relationships, and orientations of both the university and society.
The interpretation of the findings indicates that Bildung and self-cultivation, human becoming, subjectification, complexity, meaning, and flourishing, when integrated within a coherent framework, illuminate different dimensions of a common reconsideration of the purpose of the university. Bildung and self-cultivation emphasize human formation and development; subjectification highlights the emergence of individuals endowed with agency and the capacity for judgment; complexity perspectives emphasize the ability to live and learn under conditions of uncertainty; meaning connects knowledge with life; and flourishing represents one desirable horizon for the realization of human capacities. Taken together, these conceptual connections suggest that the university should not be understood merely as a site for knowledge transmission or human-capital production but as an environment for living, learning, becoming, meaning-making, growth, flourishing, and social participation. This perspective does not imply rejecting the professional, economic, or scientific functions of the university. Specialized knowledge, professional competence, scientific research, and responsiveness to economic and social needs remain essential functions of higher education; however, they are situated within a broader horizon that connects them to human growth, flourishing, and social responsibility. Thus, the university is neither reduced to a factory for producing labor nor transformed into an environment concerned solely with personal growth and individual well-being.
The expansion of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies further underscores the importance of this reconceptualization. As technology becomes increasingly capable of producing, processing, and transmitting information, the distinctive value of the university will depend increasingly on its capacity to cultivate independent judgment, critical thinking, ethics, creativity, identity, human relationships, meaning, responsibility, and agency. Under such conditions, the central question is no longer merely how much information the university transmits, but what kind of human being it prepares to engage with information, technology, and the future. The individual formed through the University of Life should be capable of critically judging information, understanding the consequences of technological use, making responsible decisions in complex situations, and actively participating in shaping the future. Accordingly, the University of Life is not a matter of adding several general courses or extracurricular activities to the existing university structure; rather, it entails reconsidering the very concept of the university and its relationship to human life. This reconceptualization expands the university from a place of instruction into a habitat for learning and growth, from the graduate as a credential-holder to the person as an agentive and identity-bearing human being, from academic achievement to multidimensional growth and flourishing, and from employability alone to responsible professional and social life.
The synthesis of the findings and their theoretical interpretation indicates that the purpose of the university should be sought in creating a habitat in which learning, experience, dialogue, civic participation, reflection, engagement, and encounters with real-world problems enable human transformation and multidimensional growth. This logic places the university within a dynamic and reciprocal relationship with individuals and society: the university creates conditions for growth; individuals gradually cultivate their capacities through living and learning within it; and flourishing individuals, through agency, responsibility, and participation, contribute to transforming the university and society. Within this process, growth refers to the overall transformation of the human being, flourishing denotes the gradual realization of human capacities, and human flourishing represents one desirable horizon toward which this trajectory may lead. Accordingly, the conceptual logic of the study can be formulated as follows: a re-envisioned sense of purpose provides the foundation for understanding the university as a habitat; the university habitat, through learning, experience, dialogue, reflection, participation, and engagement with real-world problems, strengthens the process of human becoming; human becoming contributes to multidimensional growth; growth creates conditions for the gradual realization of human flourishing; and flourishing may, in turn, lead toward meaningful living, responsible agency, and forms of human fulfillment. Individuals who experience growth and flourishing can, through participation and social responsibility, contribute to building a learning-oriented and future-shaping society.
Overall, the study concludes that the university cannot be defined solely by what it produces—knowledge, degrees, or skilled professionals—but must also be understood in terms of the kind of human being whose formation and growth it makes possible and the kind of society to whose development it contributes. The University of Life, on this basis, is a university that connects specialized knowledge with human becoming, multidimensional growth, human flourishing, meaning in life, agency, ethical responsibility, and social participation. From this perspective, the philosophy of the University of Life is not merely a proposal for adding a new function to the university; rather, it constitutes a reconsideration of the very purpose of the university and its relationship to human life. It reimagines the university as a habitat for living, learning, growing, flourishing, making meaning, assuming responsibility, and participating in the world. Within this framework, the concept of the “habitat for human growth and flourishing” constitutes the conceptual core of this philosophical reconsideration and provides a foundation for a more human-centered, meaningful, and comprehensive understanding of the purpose of the university.
Keywords: University of Life, habitat for human growth, human growth and development, Bildung, philosophy of higher education.
Philosophy of the University of Life: Rethinking the Nature, Purpose, and Functions of the University as a Form of Life and a Cognitive Subject of Society
Asadollah Khadivi
Email: khadivia@cfu.ac.ir
Associate Professor, Department of Educational Adminstration, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
In recent decades, the modern university has undergone a fundamental transformation in its relationship with knowledge, human beings, society, and life. The growing complexity and uncertainty, rapid technological change, transformations in the nature of work, the emergence of interdisciplinary problems, and increasing social expectations of universities have challenged the traditional conception of the university as an institution for producing and transmitting knowledge, developing human resources, and conducting research. The central problem of the present study is to determine what nature and purpose the university can assume under such conditions and how its relationship with human and social life can be reformulated. The purpose of this study is to philosophically rethink the nature, purpose, and functions of the university and to formulate the concept of the University of Life as a philosophical and institutional framework in which the university is viewed neither as an institution detached from the lifeworld nor merely as a mechanism for preparing individuals to enter society, but rather as a form of life in itself and, simultaneously, as one of society’s cognitive capacities. The study is applied in nature and qualitative in approach, employing philosophical-conceptual analysis and comparative synthesis. In the analytical process, concepts and perspectives related to the idea of the university, philosophy as a way of life, complexity and supercomplexity, the relationship between knowledge and life, the social role of the university, autonomy, self-regulated learning, the entrepreneurial university, and the evolving generations of the university were examined and integrated into a conceptual framework. The theoretical foundations of the study draw primarily on Jaspers’s idea of the university, Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life, Barnett’s perspective on the university in an age of supercomplexity, Barnett and Bengtsen’s idea of reclaiming life, and the literature on self-determination, self-regulated learning, and the transformation of university missions. The analysis and theoretical synthesis indicated that the University of Life can be conceptualized as an interconnected six-dimensional structure. First, the university as a form of life is grounded in the principle that learning is not merely a preparation for entering life but is itself part of living, experiencing, dialogue, choice, reflection, and human becoming. Accordingly, the university shifts from teaching to learning, from knowledge transmission to meaning-making, and from preparation for life to conscious living through the process of learning. Second, the university as the cognitive agent of society refers to its capacity to receive, interpret, critique, produce, and recombine knowledge and thereby strengthen society’s capacity to understand problems, identify complexities, envision future possibilities, and make informed decisions. Within this framework, the metaphor of the brain of society does not imply the university’s command over or superiority to society, nor should it be understood as a separate cognitive organ independent of other components of the social system. Rather, the metaphor denotes the university’s cognitive, interpretive, and reflective role in interaction with other components of society. In this sense, the university is part of society’s living and interconnected network, contributing to the enhancement of society’s collective capacity for understanding, judgment, and informed action through the production and critique of knowledge, dialogue with different social spheres, and reflection on emerging problems and possibilities. Third, the university as a mediator between knowledge and life emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between the university and society, whereby real social problems and experiences enter the university process, are transformed into scientific problems and knowledge within the university, and subsequently return to society through students, faculty members, research, and communication networks. In this sense, the metaphor of the nervous system of society refers to the university’s communicative and feedback-based network with its social environment. Fourth, the university as a cultural regulator explains the university’s role in recognizing cultural heritage and values, critically examining existing assumptions and contradictions, and contributing to the production of new meanings and horizons. Here, the metaphor of the cultural thermostat does not signify the control of culture; rather, it refers to the university’s capacity to assess, critique, and reflect upon the cultural condition and to contribute to the conscious self-regulation of society. Fifth, the university as a builder of human capacity shifts the focus from producing human resources to cultivating human capacities and attends to human development across intrapersonal, interpersonal, extrapersonal, and transpersonal dimensions. Accordingly, self-awareness, self-regulation, reflective thinking, dialogue, collaboration, problem-solving, innovation, social responsibility, meaning, ethics, and values are considered alongside professional competencies. Within this framework, the student moves from being a recipient of content to becoming a subject of learning and a social agent, while the professor shifts from being a transmitter of knowledge to becoming an epistemic guide, facilitator of thinking, and designer of learning experiences. Sixth, the university as a future-making institution is based on the principle that, under conditions of supercomplexity, the university cannot merely transmit knowledge related to the past; rather, it must enhance the capacity of individuals and society to confront unknown futures and construct new possibilities. Accordingly, lifelong learning, critical thinking, tolerance of ambiguity, creativity, problem-solving, self-regulation, and interdisciplinary dialogue are regarded as essential elements of a future-making university. The findings also indicated that this conceptualization is synergistic with psychological and educational foundations such as self-determination, self-regulated learning, and project-based learning, because realizing the University of Life requires an environment in which autonomy, competence, belonging, goal setting, monitoring, reflection, experience, and revision are possible. On this basis, the curriculum shifts from a list of courses to an architecture of learning experiences, the project from a teaching method to the basic unit of university experience, and assessment from a final judgment to a process of feedback, reflection, and growth. At the institutional level, the University of Life is neither an ivory tower detached from society nor an organization governed solely by economic or political logic. Rather, it is an institution that is epistemically autonomous while remaining engaged with real social problems and participating in social life through knowledge production, human development, the expansion of decision-making capacity, and the opening of future horizons. Consequently, the concept of the University of Life cannot be regarded merely as synonymous with the applied university, skills-oriented university, or entrepreneurial university. Its fundamental distinction lies in changing the philosophical point of departure of the university and reconnecting knowledge with life, learning with living, thought with action, expertise with humanity, and the university with society and the future. The overall conclusion of the study is that the University of Life is not a limited operational model but a philosophical position concerning the nature, purpose, and responsibility of the university. According to this position, the university does not merely educate individuals for life; rather, as a form of intellectual, human, and social life, it creates conditions in which individuals can cultivate themselves, connect knowledge with meaning and action, participate in society, and enhance their own and society’s capacity to understand, choose, create, and shape the future.
Keywords: University of Life, Philosophy of the University, University as a Form of Life, Cognitive Agent of Society, Cognitive Subject, Cultural Thermostat
Evaluating Persian Responses to Metz's Critique of Supernaturalist Meaning
Seyedeh Leila Mosavi,
Postdoctoral Student at the University of Pretoria.
Abstract
Debates concerning the meaning of life in contemporary philosophy, particularly in the works of Thaddeus Metz, have generated significant responses among Persian-speaking philosophers. A major part of these studies addresses Metz’s critiques of supernaturalist theories, especially God-centered and soul-centered accounts of meaning in life. This article critically examines these responses by reconstructing their main arguments and analyzing their philosophical and theological foundations. Most Persian critics, often influenced by Islamic philosophy, defend the possibility and desirability of a meaningful life within a supernaturalist framework and reject Metz’s objections to concepts such as divine purpose, the soul, and the afterlife. Using an analytical-critical method, the study explores the confrontation between Metz’s advocacy of naturalism and Persian supernaturalist responses to him. This article offers the first systematic reconstruction and critical analysis of Persian philosophical responses to Metz’s critiques of supernaturalism, and findings suggest that, although some Persian critiques successfully challenge certain presuppositions in Metz’s account, many fail to represent his arguments accurately or to provide a coherent alternative theory of meaning in life. The study further seeks to clarify how future dialogue between Islamic philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy can proceed more fruitfully.
Keywords: Meaning in Life, Theism, Soul, Naturalism, Thaddeus Metz, Islamic Philosophy
Return to the Lifeworld (Lebenswelt): A Critique of Epistemological Abstractionism in Philosophy and Human Sciences
Fatemeh Ahmadi
Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran
Abstract
This article argues that a central source of the contemporary crisis of meaning in philosophy and the human sciences is epistemological abstractionism: the tendency to privilege formal models, objectifying concepts, and method-driven explanations at the expense of the pre-theoretical field of lived experience. Drawing on Husserl’s late phenomenology and his diagnosis of the Crisis of the European sciences, the study reconstructs the concept of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) as the pregiven horizon within which all cognition, scientific idealization, and socio-historical sense-making first become possible. Methodologically, the paper combines (۱) a conceptual analysis of abstraction and idealization in modern epistemology, (۲) a phenomenological clarification of lifeworld structures through epoché and reflective description, and (۳) a critical assessment of objectivist tendencies in selected approaches within the human sciences. The argument proceeds in three steps: it traces how mathematisation and objectification detach scientific reason from its experiential ground; it shows that the human sciences inherit this detachment by treating meaning, agency, and normativity as derivative or reducible; and it proposes a lifeworld-oriented re-grounding of inquiry that preserves scientific rigor while restoring the primacy of meaning-constitution. The article concludes that returning to the lifeworld is not an anti-scientific gesture but a methodological correction: it re-situates abstraction within its originating context and enables the human sciences to address subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and historical life as irreducible sources of intelligibility.
Keywords: Lifeworld (Lebenswelt); Phenomenology; Husserl; Abstraction; Objectivism; Human Sciences; Meaning.
A Critical Reading of the Meaning of Life in the Artificial Intelligence Lifeworld
Against the Backdrop of the Intellectual Foundations of Allameh Tabataba'i and Sartre
Saeed Niazi
(Corresponding Author; PhD in Theology, University of Tabriz)
Ghorbanali Karimzadeh
(Full Professor, Department of Philosophy and Islamic Theology, University of Tabriz)
Abbas Abbaszadeh
(Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Islamic Theology, University of Tabriz)
Abstract
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the transition from mere tool-use to the formation of an "algorithmic lifeworld" will gradually confront the realms of human existence, volitional agency, and the structure of the "meaning of life" with a fundamental challenge and a crisis of reification. In this computational order, the human subject risks being reduced to statistical data, deprived of the possibility of authentic choice, and subjugated to endless cycles of sensory gratification and instinctual desires. Employing a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative-philosophical approach, this study critically examines the implications of this lifeworld for the meaning of life from the perspectives of Jean-Paul Sartre’s atheistic existentialism and Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Tabataba'i’s Transcendent Theosophy (“Hikmat-e Muta'aliyah”). The findings indicate that, while both philosophers align in their critical assessment of the potential risks of human dehumanization within intelligent systems, their respective accounts of the true nature of the "meaning of life" rest upon two entirely distinct foundations. From Sartre’s perspective, the world-in-itself lacks inherent teleology, an “a priori” essence, or objective meaning; furthermore, given the "primacy of existence over essence," the human being is condemned to freedom and cast into the abyss of anguish. Consequently, within Sartrean existentialism, the meaning of life is defined as something "invented" and "subjective," contingent upon the individual's courageous action and choice within a void. In this light, the lifeworld of artificial intelligence poses the greatest threat to the meaning of life; for through the deception of "algorithmic bad faith," it enables humans to delegate their will to the machine—thereby escaping the crushing anxiety of responsibility—and to freeze their identity into a rigid object, resulting in nothing but a descent into inauthentic existence and the proliferation of meaninglessness. In contrast, Allameh Tabataba'i does not view the meaning of life as a mere "construct" or the product of individual conventions; rather, he defines it as an "objective" and "ontological" reality rooted in the essential nature of the human being. Within Allameh’s Sadrian philosophy, the human possesses an "immaterial soul-substance" and the constant nature of the "divine “fitra”" (innate disposition), while their very existence is one of "sheer relational dependence" (“ayn al-rabt”) and absolute poverty vis-à-vis the Necessary Being; thus, the meaning of life is determined through a connection to the Sacred Origin, the teleology of creation, and the soul’s perfection-seeking journey along the "arc of ascent" via knowledge and righteous action. By formulating the theory of "constructs" (“i‘tibāriyyāt”), Allameh demonstrates that a crisis of meaning arises when humans mistake these instrumental constructs for ontological truths, become ensnared by the veil of material multiplicity, and fall into heedlessness regarding the Source of existence. In a comparative and critical assessment, while Sartre—relying on free will—advocates for rebellion against computational determinism, his denial of innate human nature (“fiṭrah”) and failure to posit an objective “telos” cause him to slide into nihilism in the face of the ever-expanding dominance of artificial intelligence; for if meaning is merely subjective, the algorithmic engineering of preferences can fabricate even the perception of freedom. Conversely, by establishing the soul’s connection to Absolute Perfection, Allameh’s philosophical framework offers a robust teleology that empowers humans to remain immune to algorithmic reification. Liberation from the captivity of intelligent systems and the recovery of life’s authentic meaning are achieved not by validating an atomized individualism, but rather through the sovereignty of reason over tools, the reclassification of artificial intelligence as a mere instrumental construct, the revitalization of innate human inclinations, and a return to the transcendent and sacred horizon of existence.
Keywords: Meaning of life, AI lifeworld, Allameh Tabataba'i, Jean-Paul Sartre, constructs (“i‘tibāriyyāt”), existentialism.
Love-Based Interaction in Relations Between Individuals and Nations
Mansour Imanpour
Professor of Philosophy and Islamic Theology, Shahid Madani University of Azerbaijan
Abstract
Humans are social beings by nature or necessity, and this social living has manifested itself in forms and structures such as family, village, city, and society, and at a higher level in the global community. The basis of this collective and global living is different according to the identity of individuals and nations, and this difference in basis has led to different and sometimes destructive effects. Some define relations between individuals and nations based on obtaining material and economic benefits, while others based on racial or linguistic motivation, ideology, or religion, and implement these principles and positions with the means of power. As a result of these principles and motivations, all kinds of wars and bloodshed have occurred throughout history, presenting a terrible picture of human personality and behavior in the mirror of history. In addition to this basis of interaction and diplomacy such as scientific, cultural, and political diplomacy, we can talk about another basis and diplomacy that is rooted in our mysticism, literature, philosophy, and ethics, and that is the same basis and diplomacy based on love and affection. On this basis, from the perspective of transcendent morality and divine mysticism, all humans have the right to life just like ourselves, and our moral duty on a transcendent level is to love and cherish them. According to this view, we deal with humans and nations not as means of gaining benefits, but as goals and objects of love, and we interact based on universal morality and the golden rules of morality. On a higher level, in addition to considering granting them their rights as our moral duty, we do them a favor and love them as our own children. This view and basis of interaction can also be presented from the perspective of a religious reading, and that is the same mystical view of objects, phenomena, and humans. Based on this approach, all creatures are manifestations of God and are worthy of love. This article seeks to substantiate and justify this approach by citing ethical, mystical, literary and religious texts with a descriptive-analytical method and present it to those who are reflective and moral.
Keywords: Love, Relations between Nations, Interaction, Diplomacy, Global Ethics
Hermeneutic Tradition, Humanities, and Philosophies of Life (An Analysis of Dilthey's Legacy)
Malek Shojaei Jeshouqani
Professor of Philosophy, Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies
Abstract:
Wilhelm Dilthey (۱۸۳۳-۱۹۱۱), a ۱۹th-century German philosopher, is considered, along with Schleiermacher and Gadamer, as one of the pioneers of the serious project of the hermeneutic tradition in the discourse of continental philosophy. Dilthey understands the interpretation of life in philosophies of life as "as lived by human beings" and consequently considers the humanities to be the conceptualization of the lived experience of a people and culture, and with the help of his methodological hermeneutics, he establishes a close link between lived experiences and the humanities in the European tradition. The innovation of Dilthey's hermeneutic theory is the linking of the hermeneutic tradition with the central issues of "philosophy of life"; A controversial concept that has two distinct semantic applications: the first refers to a philosophy with a practical orientation and focused on the style and meaning of life that rejects the value of mere speculation, and the second implies the primacy, irreducibility, and irrationality of life and the subordination of reason to the will, which includes thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Dilthey adopts a distinct position by accepting the first meaning and rejecting the second; however, the confusion and neglect of interpreters of this conceptual distinction has caused thinkers such as Rickert and Lukács, ignoring the theoretical boundaries of Dilthey's vitalism, to consider him a member of the intellectual family of voluntarist movements and classify him among the pioneers or expanders of the anti-rationalist tradition. This article shows that the label of anti-rationalism applied to Dilthey's approach is the result of a failure to distinguish between these two semantic horizons of the philosophy of life.
Keywords: Wilhelm Dilthey, philosophy of life, hermeneutics, anti-rationalism, Heinrich Rickert, Georg Lukács.
The Wisdom of Life and the Public Sphere in Suhrawardi’s Political Philosophy
Tayyebeh Mohammadi-Kia
Faculty Member, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS), Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Shahab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi (۵۴۹–۵۸۷ AH), the founder of the Philosophy of Illumination (“Ishraq”), presents a vision of politics—alongside his ontological and epistemological systems—that is rooted in a synthesis of ancient Persian “Khosravani” wisdom, Platonic-Neoplatonic philosophy, and Islamic thought. Suhrawardi conceptualizes politics in close connection with light, inner illumination, and existential hierarchies. The Master of Illumination (“Shaykh al-Ishraq”) seeks to bridge the gap between personal existence and public life by radiating the light of being. He initiates this endeavor through a personal spiritual journey focused on the marvels of the "Spring of Life" and culminates in a political philosophy grounded in light and “Farrah” (divine glory/charisma). In his treatise “The Red Intellect” (“‘Aql-e Sorkh”), speaking through the figure of the "Red Elder," the Master enumerates seven marvels, designating the Spring of Life as the seventh and final one. These seven marvels are: Mount Qaf, the Night-Illuminating Gem, the Tuba Tree, the Twelve Workshops, David’s Armor, the Blade of Belarak, and, finally, the Spring. This sequence is not arbitrary: Qaf represents the homeland; the Gem, the Tuba Tree, and the Workshops symbolize the cosmic order; the Armor represents the body; and the Blade signifies death. The Spring serves as a response to both the armor and the blade: it is the water that softens the armor, making the blade’s strike easier, while bathing in it grants immunity from death and bestows eternal life. In this treatise, eternal life is not a remedy that eliminates death; rather, it is a light that attenuates the body's hold on the soul. The Fountain of Life is the very point where existence transcends mere physical survival to attain the "Water of Life" (“ma’ al-hayat”); when this is realized within the theosophical sage (“hakim-e muta’allih”), it manifests as the capacity for “Kiyan-Khwarrah” (Royal Glory) and luminous leadership of the age. From this perspective, the seventh wonder represents the culmination of all other marvels: without the Fountain, Mount Qaf becomes a forgotten homeland, armor turns into a prison, and the sword signifies nothing but annihilation; yet with the Fountain, they all transform into paths of true life. In Suhrawardi’s system, the cosmos is a hierarchy of Dominating and Governing Lights. Human political life is viewed as a microcosm of this luminous cosmic order. Thus, the public sphere is not merely an arena for the interplay of interests, but a realm where the hierarchies of being and knowledge manifest. One who has attained perfection through Illumination (“Ishraq”) is the most worthy to lead society, for he possesses both rational demonstration and spiritual unveiling. In Suhrawardi’s luminous framework, ontological ranks are determined by the intensity or dimness of light; by the same token, social ranks should reflect individuals' capacity to receive and radiate the light of knowledge. In his political thought, Suhrawardi consciously draws upon ancient Iranian concepts—such as “Farrah-ye Izadi” (Divine Glory or “Khwarrah”)—to address the political legitimacy of the philosopher-king. In his philosophy, “Farrah” is a divine light bestowed upon the worthy, designating them for rulership. This reinterpretation seeks to bridge the pre-Islamic Iranian wisdom tradition with the framework of Peripatetic-Illuminationist philosophy, while simultaneously serving as a means to ground political power in epistemological—rather than merely hereditary—legitimacy. The point is that, although the "Spring" appears to be a matter of individual spiritual journeying, Suhrawardi’s system of thought reveals a remarkable connection between the personal realm and the public sphere; Kay Khosrow embodies this link. Under Kay Khosrow’s rule, the "Water of Life" is transmuted, within the body politic, into “Kiyan-Khwarrah” (Royal Glory). Kay Khosrow plays a pivotal role in Suhrawardi’s philosophy—a role best understood through the relationship between light and life. The “Isfahbad” Light (the commanding light of the soul) resides in every human being; “Kiyan-Khwarrah” is that very light when it settles as “Sakina” (divine tranquility) within a purified soul, extending thence to the body and, subsequently, to society. Thus, Kay Khosrow serves as the connecting link between the light of personal existence and that of public life. He represents the ideal of the divinely realized ruler: his soul has ascended, his body has acquired majestic awe, his words are heard in the realm of the Unseen, and his era is one of luminous time. He also represents Illuminationist philosophy’s response to two deficiencies: against the king devoid of wisdom, he demonstrates that a crown lacking the sanctification of the "Light of Lights" fails to confer “Kiyan-Khwarrah”; against the sage lacking a crown, he shows that divine realization (“ta’alluh”) can manifest as overt leadership rather than remaining merely a hidden spiritual pole. Consequently, public life attains fulfillment only when the Kay Khosrow model remains a possibility—a form of governance that yields justice, triumph, and security for the people.
Keywords: Spring of Life, Suhrawardi, Light, Kay Khosrow, Kiyan-Khwarrah.
The Iranian System of “Fiqh” (Jurisprudence) and Its Relation to the Philosophy of Life
Abdolmajid Moballeghi
Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS)
The issue of the philosophy of life can be approached by asking how any given system of consciousness articulates the relationship between a general principle and an objective situation within the realm of life. In this regard, the differences among certain dominant forms within the Greek, Indian, and Iranian traditions can be traced through the epistemological logic of their respective approaches to this matter. In the Greek tradition, the issue primarily takes philosophical form within the horizon of seeking unity, oneness, and an all-encompassing principle; here, “Logos” enables the understanding of multiplicity in light of a universal order and a unifying principle. In the Indian tradition, a different epistemological capacity comes to the fore—one that emerges amidst a multiplicity of rituals, practices, lived situations, and diverse forms of religiosity, all in close connection with the world as experienced. In the Iranian formulation, the epistemological issue is highlighted by the quality of the relationship established between these two realms: unity manifests within multiplicity, while multiplicity becomes intelligible and organized in relation to unity.
A crucial point must be addressed in this exposition: within the Iranian system of consciousness, this epistemological capacity has found its historical expression most notably in “Fiqh” (Islamic jurisprudence). Here, “Fiqh” is not merely a normative discipline or a collection of rulings; rather, it represents an epistemological potential capable of mediating between the Transcendent and the lived world. On one hand, “Fiqh” connects to the celestial realm and the obligatory nature of existence; on the other, it finds its subject matter in the details of life, human relations, shifting situations, and diverse modes of living. Thus, “Fiqh” can be understood as a form of knowledge and practice that establishes the relationship between principle and situation, ruling and reality, and the Transcendent and the immanent within the sphere of life. It is important to note that jurisprudence in Iran—in this fundamental sense—is not limited or confined to Shi'a jurisprudence; rather, this perspective necessitates the concept of a "system of Iranian jurisprudences." Indeed, Zoroastrian, Sunni, and Shi'a jurisprudences—despite profound differences in their foundations, methodologies, and epistemological institutions—represent three distinct historical manifestations of a capacity that can be studied within the context of Iranian civilization to discern the various levels of the Iranian approach to the philosophy of life. Naturally, it would be a mistake to assume that this continuity implies an identity of jurisprudential content or the simple extension of a single, uniform tradition. What matters here is the enduring possibility of structuring life through a form of knowledge that establishes a relationship between the transcendent horizon of obligation and the pluralistic reality of human existence. Consequently, the historical evolution of these jurisprudential traditions is inextricably linked to the evolution of lifestyles, transformations in social relations, and changes in the ways humans engage with the world.
With this in mind, one can more precisely articulate the position of jurisprudence regarding the Iranian way of life and the Iranian tradition: jurisprudence serves as a bridge between earth and heaven—a bridge facilitating epistemological and practical traffic between these two realms. Within jurisprudence, the transcendent enters the lived world in the form of rulings, obligations, and criteria, while the pluralistic world of life—through its concrete issues and situations—is brought within the ambit of this normative horizon. What occurs in jurisprudence is not merely the transmission of a rule from a higher to a lower realm; rather, it is the establishment of an ongoing relationship between principle and situation. In this process, a pluralistic life can find order within a unifying horizon, while the unifying principle itself gains the capacity for historical realization through its engagement with a multiplicity of situations.
On this basis, the philosophy of life within the Iranian framework can be characterized as a philosophy grounded in "mediation" (acting as an intermediary). Life within this horizon derives its meaning from the quality of the relationship established between the diverse realms of existence and human experience. Iranian historical jurisprudence—serving as the mode of emergence and the vehicle for realizing this potential—provides a mechanism for regulating this relationship in the realm of practice. The outcome of this epistemological logic is a form of dynamic equilibrium wherein stability and change, the individual and the collective, meaning and matter, and ideals and reality become intelligible in relation to one another. Indeed, "equilibrium" here is not a static point or a final state; rather, it is a quality of relationality that must be continuously reproduced within the fabric of life. In this light, the philosophy of Iranian life embodies a possibility centered on the fundamental question of how to exist amidst unity and multiplicity, and how to transform this relationship into a practical mode of living through the diverse forms of jurisprudence found in the history of this land.
Dialogue as a Solution to Life's Problems: The Socratic Method as an Example
Hawkar Hamad Khdir
Lecturer at university of Raparin-Iraq
Abstract
Throughout different stages of life, human beings face problems and challenges; however, as a dialectical process, these problems are an essential and part of life. Therefore, they have continuously pursued to overcome and resolve these issues through different methods and tools. An assessment of the history of philosophy reveals that philosophers have tried to present their perspectives on life's problems using various approaches. Socrates dialectically embodied this approach by resorting to dialogue and definition, demonstrating that certain life problems arise from misunderstandings. Therefore, through his method he strived to offer appropriate solutions. Dialogue is considered as humanity's most powerful tool to understand themselves and their surroundings as a significant portion of life's problems are due to ambiguity, miscommunication, and flawed thinking. The primary objective of dialogue is to reduce conflicts, achieve mutual understanding, and bridge differences regarding issues.
The Socratic method is built upon constant questioning and analyzing problems. Rather than providing pre-packaged answers, it encourages individuals to re-examine their views and identify their weaknesses through persistent inquiry, ultimately guiding them to discover the source of truth and appropriate solutions on their own. Within dialogue, opportunities for expressing diverse viewpoints, encouraging free thought, fostering the will to make decisions, and promoting peaceful coexistence expand. Furthermore, human relationships are reconstructed on the foundation of mutual understanding, the common good, and empathy. In the modern era, philosophy fulfills this role through philosophical counseling and philosophical therapy, utilizing various techniques, approaches, and methods within the advisory and therapeutic process.
Keywords: Philosophical Therapy, Dialogue, Socrates, Life, Problems.
Life as an Event in Relation to Becoming and Time: A Reading through the Philosophy of Henri Bergson
Mahmoud Soufiani
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
Given that life is neither a completed nor a determinate phenomenon, it can be understood, in relation to the whole of being and existence, as an event or a fact. Since being and non-being, or absence, are intertwined, and human life acquires meaning within this contradictory and difficult interrelation, life can be regarded as a profoundly weighty and unique event. In any account of the meaninglessness and futility of life, life must be approached philosophically through an analysis of such an event. In other words, the event of life refers to itself, and living is itself a contradictory and difficult condition. This event is constantly in a process of becoming and transformation and, in this respect, is closely related to the profound concepts of time and movement. When we speak of the profound concept of time and movement, our attention is directed primarily toward Bergson’s philosophy, according to which the world is fundamentally characterized by movement; that is, the world is movement in itself rather than an object that happens to move. From this perspective, such a world, and consequently human life, cannot be reduced to objectivity, nor can it be confined to human subjectivity alone.
Bergson’s famous thesis that there is only movement and no independently existing moving object confronts us with a strange and difficult-to-understand condition, and it is precisely this strangeness that gives human life its unique meaning. Human beings are situated within this condition and, in some way, represent it. The relationship between the concepts of time and movement must be understood in light of this fundamental relation. In contrast to Leibniz’s view that monads are “windowless,” Bergson maintains that the moments of time interpenetrate one another. Accordingly, time is not merely quantitative and measurable time, conceived as the counting of an object’s movement through space. Representing such a condition through ordinary logical and mathematical language is impossible; hence, imagination and fantasy acquire particular significance. Their effects can be observed in artistic creation, or poiesis, and more specifically in creative poetry. It is through imagination and fantasy that the interweaving of past, present, and future can be apprehended, allowing one, in a sense, to dwell within it—a dwelling that is fundamentally a form of homelessness. Human life is precisely this fundamental existential homelessness and its discovery, which becomes manifest for the individual in action or praxis.
Keywords: Life; Becoming; Time; Event; Interrelatedness; Movement; Imagination; Fantasy; Poiesis; Action.
"Attentive Love": The Connecting Link Between Life and Upbringing in Sara Ruddick’s Thought
Neda Mohajel
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Farhangian University, East Azerbaijan Province
Abstract
This article aims to demonstrate that Sara Ruddick, a contemporary feminist philosopher, does not view upbringing merely as a set of methods for transmitting knowledge or shaping a child's behavior; rather, she regards it as a form of ethical and philosophical action rooted in the fundamental reality of human vulnerability and interdependence. In Ruddick’s educational and philosophical thought, caring for a child serves as the intersection of life, ethics, and upbringing; because the child is a dependent being at the start of life, the tasks of preservation, growth, and preparation for entry into the social world place a moral responsibility upon the caregiver. From this perspective, ideal upbringing is realized not through controlling the child, but by creating conditions that—while ensuring safety and support—facilitate the child's gradual growth and independence. Central to this discussion is the concept of "attentive love," which can be seen as the connecting link between the philosophy of life and upbringing in Ruddick’s thought. In this framework, "love" aligns with the realm of life, while "attentive" aligns with the realm of upbringing, together imbuing love within life and education with new meaning. Ruddick maintains that this concept signifies more than just a feeling of affection toward the child; it represents a conscious, responsible relationship grounded in careful attention to the actual child. Parents or educators must understand the child not through the lens of an idealized image or societal and personal expectations, but rather in light of the child's specific needs, abilities, limitations, and unique characteristics. Such love requires the parent to strike a balance between care and freedom, support and independence, and the transmission of social values alongside the preservation of the possibility to critique them. Within this framework, the three primary goals of the educational act are preserving life, fostering growth, and preparing the child for participation in social life. Conscious love plays a fundamental role at all three levels: initially as care and responsibility; subsequently by creating the conditions for growth and autonomy; and finally, by accompanying the child as they enter the social world consciously and responsibly. Thus, in Ruddick’s thought, autonomy does not signify the negation of dependency but rather the outcome of a healthy, caring relationship. Moreover, by emphasizing care, attentiveness, responsibility, respect for autonomy, and the avoidance of domination, this perspective facilitates a connection between education and peace. Ultimately, Ruddick’s thought demonstrates that education is not merely a process of shaping the child; it is a reciprocal process that invites parents and educators alike to reflect upon life, responsibility, freedom, power, vulnerability, and the relationship with the "other." From this vantage point, conscious love can serve as a foundation for understanding education as a human, ethical, and peace-oriented act.
Keywords: Sara Ruddick, philosophy of education, conscious love, maternal thinking, care, vulnerability, autonomy, moral education.
The Lifeworld Under Algorithmic Siege: The Crisis of Political Intersubjectivity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Reza Gholami
Assist. Prof., Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, and Head of the Iranian Wisdom House, Vienna, Austria
Abstract
In the near future, human individual and collective life will become increasingly intertwined with artificial intelligence systems. In this context, philosophical reflection has a vital role to play in shielding human beings from the harms associated with false consciousness, superficial thinking, and technological reductionism. The emergence of generative and recommendation systems based on artificial intelligence has created new forms of human–machine interaction in the public sphere, whose implications for political philosophy have not yet been sufficiently examined. Drawing on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, particularly the concepts of the “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt) and “intersubjectivity,” this article seeks to provide an analytical framework for addressing the following question: Can political dialogue mediated by artificial intelligence preserve the possibility of mutual understanding and genuine democratic participation? Drawing on Husserl’s analysis of the concept of “pairing” (Paarung) in the Cartesian Meditations—which understands knowledge of the Other as grounded in embodied and lived presence—the article argues that certain uses of artificial intelligence in the public sphere, including the automated production of political content and the algorithmic personalization of information, can alter the intersubjective structure of political dialogue without users being aware of it, thereby creating the conditions for a form of collective false consciousness. At the same time, this study avoids any general opposition to technology or scientific rationality. It emphasizes that Husserl’s critique of the “crisis of the European sciences” was directed at the exclusive dominance of an instrumental perspective, rather than at the value of science and technology themselves. Accordingly, artificial intelligence is presented not as an inherent threat, but as a test that calls for conscious rethinking of technological design and governance. The methodology of this study is analytical and interpretive, based on a careful rereading of Husserl’s key texts alongside contemporary literature in the philosophy of technology and political philosophy. The initial findings of the study suggest that a phenomenological reconsideration of intersubjectivity can provide new normative criteria for the responsible assessment of the role of artificial intelligence in democratic institutions, without requiring a retreat from modernity or from its scientific and technological achievements.
Keywords: Phenomenology, Lifeworld, Intersubjectivity, Artificial Intelligence, Political Philosophy, Husserl
The Rhythm of Life, the Rhythm of Music
Majid Akhshabi
Assistant Professor, Payame Noor University, Tehran
Abstract
Music unfolds in time—yet not merely in quantitative, metronomic time. The listener does not experience a musical work as a collection of discrete events; rather, they perceive and feel sounds within a continuous, dynamic, evolving, and directional flow. In this light, the element of rhythm cannot be reduced to a simple arrangement of beats and durations. This article views rhythm not as a metric or quantitative pattern, but as an existential structure that—through the lived body, melody, and time—shapes the "directionality of life." It is grounded in the central idea that the rhythm of music and the rhythm of life intertwine within a shared phenomenological field: pulse, breathing, steps, and daily habits merge with the durations, repetitions (both similar and varied), cycles, and rhythmic nodes of music to create an experience of qualitative time. The study’s theoretical framework synthesizes Husserl’s phenomenology of time (the tripartite structure of retention, primal impression, and protention), Bergson’s philosophy of duration, and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the lived body. It aims to demonstrate that rhythmic perception—prior to any metric organization—generates an intuitive, embodied flow of meaning. Extending this perspective, the article draws upon the "Orpheus hypothesis" and the concept of the "Orphic body"—a body that does not anticipate time but resonates within it, constructing the rhythmic structure of experience through coupling with the temporal attractions of the environment. Consequently, rhythm is redefined as the foundation of the intertwining of the body, melody, and existential directedness. This redefinition not only deepens the understanding of musical experience but also opens up a horizon for a "philosophy of life": a rhythmic life understood as the capacity to live within continuous duration, to endure rupture and suspension, and to reconfigure oneself in relation to the shifting rhythms of the body, music, and the world.
Keywords: Rhythm; lived time; phenomenology of music; lived body; duration; metric modulation; existential directedness; philosophy of life.
The Price of Forgetting: Memory, Identity, and Ethical Life in Lois Lowry’s The Giver
Dr. Hoda Niknezhadferdos
Faculty Member at Marmara University, Department of English Language Teaching, Istanbul, Turkiye
hoda.niknezhadferdos@marmara.edu.tr
Abstract
This article examines the interplay among memory, forgetting, and the formation of identity in Lois Lowry’s The Giver through Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical account of memory, narrative identity, and selfhood. Focusing on the novel’s representation of a society that deliberately suppresses collective memory, the study explores how the regulation of remembrance and forgetting shapes individuals’ understanding of themselves, their relationships with others, and their capacity for ethical responsibility. Drawing on Ricoeur’s distinction between remembering and forgetting and his conception of identity as narratively constituted, the article argues that the removal of memory does not merely deprive individuals of knowledge of the past but also disrupts the narrative processes through which personal and collective identities are formed. Jonas’s gradual recovery of memories consequently becomes a process of self-discovery and ethical awakening, enabling him to recognize experiences and responsibilities that the community has systematically excluded from its social order. The analysis further demonstrates that memory functions not simply as a repository of the past but as a constitutive dimension of selfhood and ethical life. By bringing Ricoeur’s phenomenological-hermeneutic framework into dialogue with Lowry’s dystopian narrative, the study highlights the ethical implications of institutionalized forgetting and demonstrates how the preservation and transmission of memory remain essential to the formation of a responsible self.
Keywords: Memory/Forgetting → Narrative Identity → Selfhood → Ethical Life.
From the Higher Life to Ordinary Life: The Transformation of the Meaning of the Moral Good and the Emergence of Modern Secularism
Rasoul Rasoulipour
Faculty Member, Kharazmi University
Abstract
This article examines the historical and philosophical transformation of the meaning of the “moral good” from the model of the “higher life” to that of “ordinary life,” and explores the relationship between this transformation and the emergence of modern secularism. The central question of the study is how, in the process of the transformation of Western ethics, activities and domains such as work, marriage, family, production, livelihood, well-being, and everyday relationships—which in significant parts of the classical tradition had largely occupied a lower position than the highest forms of human life—gradually came to be regarded as primary arenas for the realization of human good, meaning, and flourishing. Drawing on the distinction between the “higher life” and “ordinary life,” and particularly on Charles Taylor’s analysis of the “affirmation of ordinary life” in A Secular Age, the article argues that this transformation did not initially arise in opposition to religion. Rather, it developed to a considerable extent within the religious transformations of the West, especially Protestantism and Puritanism. The Protestant doctrine of calling, the valorization of work and worldly responsibilities, the rejection of the moral and spiritual privilege traditionally accorded to monastic life, and the Puritan emphasis on self-discipline, regular labor, family, self-restraint, and the moral ordering of everyday life all played significant roles in shifting the meaning of the moral life from exceptional and ascetic models toward ordinary life. In this process, worldly life came to be understood not merely as an arena for satisfying material needs, but as a sphere in which moral and religious responsibility could be fulfilled.The article then demonstrates that this religious affirmation of ordinary life generated consequences that extended beyond its original intentions. Once work, family, well-being, the preservation of life, the reduction of suffering, and social relations had become established as genuine human goods, these goods gradually acquired the possibility of becoming independent of their original theological framework and of being redefined within an immanent horizon. From this perspective, modern secularism cannot be understood merely as the result of the decline of faith or the rejection of religion. Rather, part of the conditions for its emergence should be sought in the internal transformation of the concept of the moral good and in the shift of the center of gravity of the good life from the higher life to ordinary life. Accordingly, the article argues that Protestantism and Puritanism, although deeply religious movements in themselves, contributed through their moral valuation of everyday life, work, and family to the formation of an ethical horizon that could later persist independently of its theological foundations. The relationship between religion and secularism in this process, therefore, is not merely oppositional; it is, to some extent, genealogical and paradoxical. Some of the values that were later articulated in the form of secular ethics initially acquired their meaning within a religious horizon, particularly in the context of the Protestant Reformation.
Keywords: higher life, ordinary life, moral good, virtue ethics, work ethic, Protestantism, Puritanism, modern secularism
Free Play and the Passion of Existence: Kant's Aesthetics as a Prelude to the Philosophy of Life
Author: Mohsen Bagherzadeh Meshkibaf,
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj
mohsen.bagherzade.meshkibaf@gmail.com
Abstract
The issue of life and the concrete quality of lived experience, although at first glance placed on the periphery of Immanuel Kant's critical system and his transcendental project, finds an organic and profound link with the philosophy of life through a fundamental rereading of the concept of the "free play" of the cognitive faculties in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. This essay seeks to answer the fundamental question of how the free play of imagination and understanding, transcending a formal and neutral mechanism in aesthetic judgment, serves as the pulsating core of the feeling of life and the pinnacle of the flourishing of human subjectivity. Moving beyond formalist and epistemological reductionisms in the traditional reading of Kant, this article argues that aesthetic pleasure is the reflection of the self-dynamism and living equilibrium of the mental faculties—a state in which rationality and imagination, in the absence of a specific conceptual purpose, vote in favor of enhancing the individual's ontological capabilities and vital energy. In this perspective, free play is not an abstract flight from reality, but rather a liberation from the hegemony of instrumental purposiveness and an entry into the authentic realm of "self-creation"; a place where life ascends from the mere level of self-preservation to the rank of meaning, passion, and creative vitality. Thus, Kantian aesthetics is not the endpoint of a dry formalism, but a transcendental prelude to the philosophy of life, in which the harmony of the cognitive faculties is regarded as an allegory of the gushing dynamism of existence and the becoming of human life when confronting nature and the work of art.
Keywords: Immanuel Kant, Free Play, Feeling of Life, Philosophy of Life, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Purposiveness Without Purpose, Subjective Dynamism.
Intelligible Life Theory: a Paradigm Shift in Islamic Ontology or an Innovation in Hekmatic Philosophy of Life?
Beytollah Naderlou
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran
b.naderlou_philosophy@yahoo.com
Abstract:
Allama Muhammad Taqi Jafari is generally seen as an idiosyncratic figure in the history of contemporary Islamic philosophy by the traditional philosophical thinkers. This intellectual idiosyncrasy has its origin to the most part in the pioneering and creative debates found in Jafari’s works that cannot be included in the mainstream trends representing Islamic philosophy as a whole. Hekmatic philosophy is ontologically-grounded in its essence and other branches of philosophical sciences in Islamic world are oriented through this ontological vision. Philosophy, thus conceived, is contingent upon ontology per se and accordingly brilliant minds devote themselves to the exposition and development of such ideas. Needless to say, philosophical career in this context is secured only if you follow the guidelines set by the giants and champions of the ontological tradition. Instead of keeping with the mainstream, however, Allama Jafari embarked upon an alternative path. He devoted his works to new readings of the fundamental Hekmatic notions in different directions. Jafari’s Intelligible Life (۲۰۱۱) represents the heart of this innovative philosophical project. This work presents a comprehensive debate on metaphysics of life. The current essay seeks to address two key questions as regards Jafarian philosophy of life: ۱- Can Jafari’s theory of intelligible life be relocated within the perennial parameters of Islamic philosophy? ۲- Are vitaeological reflections of Jafari representing a paradigm shift or a new opening of the potentiality latent in Islamic ontology?
Key Words: Allama Jafari, Intelligible Life, Metalife, Philosophy of Life, Hekmatic Philosophy, Ontology.
Capacities of Islamic Philosophy (Transcendent Wisdom) in Resolving the Crises of the Meaning of Life in the Contemporary Era
Ghorbanali Karimzadeh Qaramaleki
Full Professor, Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
One of the fundamental issues of contemporary humans is the issue of the meaning of life; an issue that despite significant advancements in scientific and technological fields, has increasingly become a focus of philosophical investigations. The experience of feeling emptiness, directionlessness, and disconnection from ultimate horizons of meaning is regarded in many contemporary analyses as a sign of the crisis of the meaning of life. Viktor Frankl calls this situation the “existential vacuum” and considers it the result of modern humans' neglect of the spiritual dimension of their existence; a condition that leads to anxiety, aimlessness, and existential dissatisfaction. From a philosophical perspective, some contemporary thinkers have sought the roots of this crisis in the fundamental developments of modernity. Charles Taylor, through a historical analysis of the process of secularization, shows how in the modern world, the sacred horizons of meaning have gradually weakened and the human being, as a self-founded agent, has been regarded as the ultimate reference for valuation. In such a context, twentieth-century existentialist philosophers, including Sartre and Camus, have attempted to present a worldly reading of the meaning of life by emphasizing human freedom, choice, and consciousness; however, these approaches have often faced the issue of lacking a fixed metaphysical basis for meaning. In contrast to these approaches, the tradition of Islamic philosophy, especially the Transcendent Wisdom of Mulla Sadra, provides distinct capacities for explaining the meaning of life within an ontological and divine horizon. In Mulla Sadra's thought, existence has graded levels and an intensifying journey, and the human being, as a creature possessing substantial motion, is on a path toward existential perfection and proximity to the origin of being. In this framework, the meaning of life is not a merely subjective or conventional matter, but a truth rooted in the objective structure of existence and the purposiveness of human being.The main problem of this research is how one can, by relying on the ontological and anthropological foundations of Transcendent Wisdom, provide a philosophical explanation of the meaning of life that has the power to respond to the crisis of meaning for contemporary humans. The research findings show that in Transcendent Wisdom, the meaning of life cannot be sought merely in pleasure, benefit, worldly success, or conventional goals; rather, the meaning of life has a fundamental link with the truth of human existence and their path of perfection. Based on principles such as the originality of existence, the gradation of existence, and substantial motion, the human is a dynamic and perfectible being whose life finds meaning in the path of existential transformation and perfection. In this framework, human knowledge regarding the origin and end of existence, attention to the truth of the soul, free will and volition, directing life based on true perfection, and moving in the path of divine proximity are considered the essential elements for resolving the crisis of meaning. Therefore, Transcendent Wisdom, by presenting a purposeful image of existence and the human being, enables the reconstruction of the meaning of life based on the truth of existence and human perfection, and can offer a philosophical framework for confronting the crisis of the meaning of life in the contemporary era.
Death and the Meaning of Life in the Thought of Morteza Motahari
Abdollah Salavati
Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University
Ali Heidari Faraj
PhD Student in Philosophy and Islamic Theology, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University
Abstract:
The problem of death is one of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of life, since awareness of the end of life raises questions about the purpose, value, and meaning of human life. In the thought of Morteza Motahari, death cannot be analyzed merely as the biological end or loss of life; rather, it can be understood in relation to concepts such as perfection, motion, the soul, and the afterlife. The main question of this study is what meaning death acquires within Motahari’s anthropology and worldview, and how this meaning is related to the understanding of human life. Using an analytical-descriptive method and drawing on Motahari’s philosophical and theological works, the study first examines the distinction between death as the end of bodily life and death within a philosophical-religious framework. It then shows that, within the framework of motion and perfection, human life is not merely a biological and static process but is understood within a teleological horizon, and death is also part of this horizon. The study further examines the place of the afterlife and its relation to human perfection in order to clarify how Motahari’s interpretation of death extends the meaning of life beyond the limits of earthly existence. On the basis of this analysis, death in Motahari’s thought is not merely the negation and end of life; rather, within a broader framework, it is regarded as the end of one stage of the human mode of existence and the beginning of entry into another level. Nevertheless, a distinction must be made between an ontological and eschatological explanation of death, on the one hand, and the individual human experience of loss, fear, and rupture arising from death, on the other. Accordingly, this study seeks to show that Motahari’s account of death, in addition to addressing its nature and place, has significant potential for reconsidering the problem of the meaning of life, although the relationship between this account and the lived experience of human beings still requires separate examination. Thus, the question of death moves from a question concerning the mere continuation of biological existence toward a question concerning the ultimate and meaningful horizon of human life.
Keywords:
Death; Meaning of Life; Human Perfection; Morteza Motahari
The Possibility of Meaningfulness in Animal Life from a Sadrian Perspective: With an Emphasis on Embodied Cognition and Animal Agency
Mehdi Monazzah
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Theology, University of Tabriz
Abstract
The meaningfulness of life is an important issue in the philosophy of life and, in a significant part of contemporary philosophical literature, has predominantly been associated with such capacities as consciousness, rationality, self-consciousness, and the ability to reflect upon the value and purpose of life. This approach raises the question of whether the capacity for conceptual reflection on the meaning of life is a necessary condition for meaningfulness, and whether the absence of such a capacity excludes animal life from the domain of meaningfulness. The central question of the present study is whether, within the framework of Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy (al-Hikmah al-Mutaʿaliyah), it is possible to account for the possibility of a form of meaningfulness proportionate to the ontological rank and mode of life of animals, without imposing an anthropocentric model of meaningfulness, and what role embodied and embedded cognition and animal agency play in such an account. The study employs a descriptive-analytical method and a comparative-critical approach. It first examines the relation between meaningfulness, consciousness, rationality, and the capacity for conceptual reflection. It then analyzes the ontological status of animal life on the basis of Mulla Sadra’s accounts of the gradations of being, life, the animal soul, sensory and imaginal perception, voluntary motion, the relation between soul and body, and teleology and perfection. Subsequently, embodied and embedded cognition is examined as a contemporary framework for understanding the dynamic relation between the animal, its body, and its environment, while animal agency is considered as an intermediary link between perception, action, and directedness. The argument proceeds on the basis that the inability to engage in conceptual reflection on the meaning of life does not necessarily entail the absence of any form of meaningfulness; at the same time, mere biological directedness or behavioral goal-directedness is not sufficient, in itself, to ascribe meaningfulness. The main finding of the study is that, on the basis of a Sadrian reconstruction, a theoretical connection can be established among life, perception, agency, directedness, and perfection, each proportionate to the relevant ontological rank, thereby explaining the possibility of meaningfulness in accordance with the ontological rank and mode of life of animals. Accordingly, the meaningfulness of animal life is neither identical with the meaning of human life nor reducible to biological function or natural goal-directedness; rather, its possibility can be explained in terms of the animal’s mode of being, perception, and agency. This conclusion, while extending the scope of questions in the philosophy of life to nonhuman life, provides a basis for a non-reductive dialogue between Transcendent Philosophy and contemporary discussions of embodied cognition, animal cognition, and animal agency.
Keywords: meaningfulness of life; philosophy of life; Transcendent Philosophy; animal life; embodied cognition; embedded cognition; animal agency.
A Feasibility Study of the Reconstruction of “Philosophy of Life” in the Islamic Philosophical Tradition
Mohammad Mahdavi
Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Sciences, University of Tabriz
Abstract
The present study, by framing the relationship between “philosophy of life” and the Islamic philosophical tradition, examines the possibility or impossibility of using this concept within the framework of Islamic thought. Its main question is: what status does the concept of “philosophy of life” in its modern sense have in the Islamic philosophical tradition, and how can it be systematically reconstructed? The theoretical focus of the article is an examination of the definitions and history of the concept of “philosophy of life” and its relation to the fundamental questions of life, the soul, meaning, happiness, and motion in Islamic thought. The hypothesis of the study is that although the Islamic tradition lacks an independent discipline or title of “philosophy of life” in its contemporary form, it nonetheless has considerable capacities, in terms of content and concepts, for dialogue with this field. This study adopts an analytical-comparative approach at two levels, conceptual and historical: first, it analyzes the definitions and conceptual developments of “philosophy of life” and explains its relation to the question of the “meaning of life”; second, it searches for its functional equivalents in Islamic texts. In this regard, citing primary texts and the works of commentators, it examines the views of Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, and Iqbal Lahori. The findings show that in Ibn Sina, the connection between the soul, life, and happiness; in Suhrawardi, light, presence, and spiritual life; in Mulla Sadra, substantial motion, gradation of existence, and bodily-spiritual resurrection; and in Iqbal, selfhood, love, action, and reconstruction of religion can be reread as elements of an Islamic philosophy of life. However, such a rereading is not possible without distinguishing between “philosophy of life” as second-order knowledge and “meaning of life” as an existential question, and also without attending to the historical and theological contexts of the Islamic tradition. The conclusion is that “philosophy of life” in its modern and systematic sense does not exist in the Islamic tradition; however, the possibility of its systematic and comparative reconstruction exists on the basis of concepts such as life, the soul, meaning, happiness, and motion. Such a reconstruction neither claims complete conformity with the tradition nor denies paradigmatic differences; rather, it proposes a kind of critical hermeneutics and intercultural dialogue.
Keywords: philosophy of life, Islamic philosophy, meaning of life, happiness, substantial motion, conceptual reconstruction.
When the World Is No Longer Livable
Psychosis, the Disintegration of the Lifeworld, and the Possibility of Reconstructing Meaning
Dr. Abbas Bakhshipour
University of Tabriz – Department of Psychology
۱۴۰۵
Abstract
Psychosis is typically described within a diagnostic framework on the basis of symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and negative symptoms. Although this level of description is essential for diagnosis and treatment, it does not necessarily reveal how a person experiencing psychosis experiences the world, the self, and others. By shifting the focus from the content of symptoms to the structure of experience, the phenomenological approach suggests that, across the psychosis spectrum, fundamental alterations may occur in selfhood, the taken-for-grantedness of the world, the sense of familiarity with the environment, relations with others, and the temporal continuity of experience. Blankenburg’s concept of the “loss of natural self-evidence” and the theory of fundamental self-disorder within the tradition of Sass and Parnas constitute two complementary formulations for understanding these transformations. Empirical evidence and systematic reviews indicate that disturbances of self-experience are disproportionately represented in the schizophrenia spectrum, may also be observed in some individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis, and are associated with certain clinical dimensions and aspects of social functioning. From this perspective, psychosis may be studied not merely as a constellation of false beliefs and anomalous perceptions, but as a transformation in the way of “being-in-the-world.” From the same standpoint, recovery does not necessarily mean merely a reduction in symptoms; rather, it may involve rebuilding connections with the self, others, time, the environment, and meaningful life goals. Nevertheless, the concept of the lifeworld should not be reduced to a single causal factor or transformed into an essential definition of psychosis. With this caution in mind, the present article proposes an integrative model in which psychosis is understood as a relative disruption in the organization of experience and world-relatedness. Within such a framework, psychotherapy, alongside biological treatment and social interventions, may contribute to the gradual reconstruction of a shared and livable world.
Keywords: psychosis, schizophrenia, lifeworld, phenomenology, self-disorder, natural self-evidence, meaning, recovery, psychotherapy.
Life as a Portfolio? A Philosophical Critique of the Financialization of Everyday Life from the Perspective of Human Flourishing
Seyed Mohammad Abbasnia
Assistant Professor of Financial Management and Faculty Member, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
Sm.abbasnia@pnu.ac.ir
Abstract
Financialization in contemporary societies is no longer confined to the expansion of financial markets, institutions, and instruments. It increasingly penetrates everyday life and shapes how individuals understand themselves, their futures, and their choices. Decisions concerning education, housing, health, retirement, debt, savings, and future security are progressively framed in terms of return, risk, time value, and resource optimization. Under such conditions, individuals become not merely holders of assets but, in a deeper sense, managers of their own life portfolios. This article asks how the expansion of financial rationality relates to the idea of the good life and at what point finance ceases to function as a means of supporting life and becomes a logic for organizing and evaluating life itself.
The study employs conceptual-critical analysis and normative reconstruction. First, the financialization of everyday life is conceptualized not simply as the growing use of financial services, but as the extension of the logic of return calculation, risk management, and optimization into existential and life-related decisions. Second, drawing primarily on the Aristotelian conception of eudaimonia and using the capability approach as its contemporary normative extension, the article examines the relationship between wealth, financial security, freedom of choice, and a life worth living.
The central argument is that the philosophical problem of financialization does not arise from the presence of finance in human life, but from a reversal in the relationship between means and ends. Finance serves human flourishing insofar as it provides the material conditions and capabilities required for pursuing a valuable life. However, when return, risk, and wealth accumulation become criteria by which a successful life is defined, life itself risks being reduced from the end of economic activity to an object of financial management, measurement, and optimization. The article therefore distinguishes between a life supported by finance and a life organized according to financial logic and proposes this distinction as a normative framework for reconsidering the ends of finance. It concludes that financial systems should be evaluated not only by efficiency, return, and stability, but also by their contribution to human capabilities, autonomy, and the possibility of living a life one has reason to value.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life; Financialization of Everyday Life; Human Flourishing; Financial Rationality; Capability Approach
The Presence of Absence: Mourning, the Reconfiguration of Meaning, and the Possibility of Living in the Dialogue between Gadamer and Derrida
Neda Rahbar
PhD in Philosophy. Visiting Professor of Philosophy at university of Mazandaran . Iran
Abstract
This article examines two fundamental questions concerning the problem of mourning within a shared philosophical discourse between Jacques Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The first question concerns how, within Derrida’s poststructuralist perspective, the mourning of the Other—as absence—can, contrary to conventional conceptions of absence as the negation of presence, become itself a condition of possibility for presence. From this perspective, the absence of the Other is not merely a remembrance of what has been lost; rather, it constitutes, within the structure of language, the possibility of the Other’s presence from within absence itself. The second question, extending this Derridean reading, concerns how philosophical hermeneutics, in confronting the binary of presence and absence, makes possible a movement beyond such oppositional structures through the production of new configurations of meaning. Employing an analytical method rather than a comparative approach, this study brings poststructuralism and philosophical hermeneutics into dialogue and argues that, by moving beyond the binary opposition between presence and absence, both traditions situate mourning not as the opposite of presence but as a condition of its possibility within the sphere of lived existence. In other words, Derrida brings to light the structure of mourning and the constitution of the absent-present, while the Gadamerian dialogue between presence and absence invites an acceptance of living with the pain of the Other’s absent mode of presence and with the proliferation of new meanings emerging from it. The findings demonstrate that mourning, understood as a hermeneutic event, can constitute a precondition for the re-emergence of presence and a return to life. Derrida’s invitation to move beyond the aforementioned binaries is, in this sense, an invitation to rethink meaning and the possibilities concealed within it, thereby giving rise to a renewed conception of mourning. Mourning, beyond being an experience of the loss of the Other, becomes a possibility for articulating presence and a precondition for its emergence. Philosophical hermeneutics, in turn, conceives mourning as a hermeneutic event that traverses the binary boundaries of language and reconfigures the relationship between presence and absence within a philosophical-hermeneutic entanglement, thereby offering a renewed mode of living in the movement between death and life. Accordingly, within this shared discourse, Derrida and Gadamer understand mourning as a potential site for the production of new forms of meaning, language, world, and lived possibilities.
Keywords: Mourning; Derrida; Gadamer; Hermeneutic Event; Presence; Absence
Love as a Form of Life: The Reconfiguration of Self, Time, and World in the Experience of Loving
Ali Almasi Zand
PhD Graduate in Philosophy of Religion,Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract:
Love has been conceptualized in many philosophical and psychological approaches as an emotion, desire, virtue, commitment, or a relation between two individuals. Such accounts, however, often leave insufficiently examined the more fundamental question of how the experience of love transforms the overall structure of human living. The central question of this study is whether love can be understood not merely as an event occurring within life, but as a “form of life,” that is, as a mode of being in which one’s relation to the self, the other, time, and the world is fundamentally reconfigured. Drawing on conceptual analysis and phenomenological description, and employing theoretical resources from Max Scheler’s phenomenology of value, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s account of the lived world and embodiment, and Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of narrative identity and selfhood, this study examines the structure of the experience of loving on four interrelated levels. First, at the level of selfhood, love shifts self-understanding from a purely self-contained model toward a relational conception of identity, without necessarily dissolving individuality into the other. Second, at the level of temporality, the experience of love reshapes the structure of past, present, and future: the past is reinterpreted in light of the relationship, the present acquires a distinctive quality through the presence of the other, and the future opens up in the form of shared possibilities, promises, and projects. Third, at the level of world hood, the other does not merely appear as an object of desire within an already constituted world; rather, the other’s presence reconfigures the field of meaning itself, placing ordinary objects, places, and events within a new network of significance. Fourth, at the level of intersubjectivity, love entails the emergence of a shared world in which intimacy remains compatible with the irreducible otherness of the beloved. The article argues that love becomes a form of life when it exceeds the level of feeling or attachment and transforms the horizon within which the self, the other, and the world appear. On this basis, the study distinguishes authentic love from unhealthy forms such as possession, dependency, and fusion, and concludes that loving life can be understood as a relational mode of existence in which self-realization becomes possible neither through absolute independence nor through the erasure of individual boundaries, but through a responsible openness to the other.
Keywords: Love, Form of Life, Phenomenology, Selfhood, Temporality, World hood, Intersubjectivity.
A Philosophical Reflection on the Place of the Concept of Play in Life: A Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Approach
Esmaeil Panahi
Researcher at the Institute for Cultural, Artistic, and Communication Research
Abstract
In common understanding, play is situated on the margins of serious life, in opposition to work, duty, and responsibility. However, its structural presence in education, art, culture, sports, the economy, politics, and social relations challenges this dichotomy with a philosophical question: if play is not merely a pastime or a temporary escape from reality, what structure transforms it into a fundamental form of human experience and cultural life? This article is grounded in the idea that play is not simply an activity performed by humans, but a mode of being and relating to the world, the Other, and future possibilities—a mode in which freedom and rules, reality and possibility, individuality and collective participation, and seriousness and leisure enter into a relationship that is seemingly incongruous yet generative. Adopting a phenomenological and hermeneutic approach, the article analyzes the structure of the experience of play and its role in the formation of meaning. In play, the human being is not merely an agent in command of their own actions; rather, they become engaged in a network of rules, situations, relationships, and emerging possibilities, and are themselves shaped during the course of the game. By understanding play as an event that draws the player into its own arena, Gadamer elevates this characteristic to a hermeneutic level, such that meaning is not merely the product of the subject's intention, but the outcome of participation in the event of play itself. Accordingly, the logic of play can be observed in education—as a realm for learning and character formation; in art and culture—as a sphere of creation, interpretation, and shared experience; and in economics and politics—manifesting as competition, rule-following, role-playing, negotiation, strategy, and the creation of possibilities. However, play possesses a dual nature: it can foster learning, creativity, understanding, participation, and openness to the world, or—when severed from truth, responsibility, and the human telos—degenerate into futility, frivolous diversion, and heedlessness. Drawing upon the Quranic distinction between *la‘b* (play) and *lahw* (frivolous diversion), this article asks how the boundary is drawn between play as a source of meaning and play as a breeding ground for heedlessness. Answering this question elucidates the role and significance of play within the context of human experience and cultural formation.
Keywords: Play, life, phenomenology, hermeneutics, meaning.
Philosophy as an “Art of Living”: The Relation of Philosophical Life to “Self-Transformation” and the “Problematics of Thought” in Michel Foucault’s Thought
Amirreza Shatizade Malekshahi
PhD in Contemporary Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Extended Abstract
Foucault understands philosophy as the critical work of thought upon itself. He maintains that, rather than legitimizing what we already know, philosophy is an attempt to determine how and to what extent it is possible to think differently. From this perspective, philosophy is not primarily a system of propositions and abstract concepts; it is a “way of living” and a concrete practice that sheds light on the entirety of an individual’s life. In a certain sense, Foucault seeks to restore philosophy to what it once was: a continuous exercise and practice directed toward “change”—the transformation of things and of the self, a capacity embodied in Foucault’s conceptual machinery and toolbox. This change is achieved by creating possibilities and opening spaces of freedom through the problematization of the present, that is, of actuality. Ultimately, its raw material is found in the context of everyday life, and its aim is nothing other than the transformation of lived experience.
From Foucault’s perspective, philosophy is not merely a matter of changing frameworks of thought and systems of value. It is an effort to think differently and to transform one’s relation to oneself—in other words, to transform the form of subjectivity. More importantly, philosophy is a mode of reflecting on and thinking about our relation to truth, as well as a way of putting ourselves into question. These dimensions may be understood as a mode of existence and as the “life of philosophy.” Accordingly, the “life of philosophy” is nothing other than the transformation of philosophy into an “art of life,” or, more precisely, an “art of living”: an art in which life itself becomes the locus for the testing of truth. The question, then, is this: When the way of life associated with philosophy is described in these terms, how does philosophical work transform the “self” in relation to one’s “own life,” and how does it turn our everyday existence and manner of living into a field of fundamental transformation?
Michel Foucault also regards his thought as a toolbox that makes possible the “transformation of things” and, indeed, the “transformation of individuals.” He maintains that he writes not for “readers” but for “users”—users who wish to employ these tools in the workshop of their own concrete lives and reconstruct their mode of being in the world. Foucault himself is the first active user of his own “toolboxes.” He explicitly identifies the transformation of the “self” as his concern. This is why he maintains that he writes in order to become other than what he is, since one attempts, through philosophical work, to modify one’s mode of existence.
This modification of one’s mode of existence is, in fact, the ongoing exercise of living: a way of living that continually seeks liberation from imposed forms of subjectivity. Foucault understands this transformation of the self as a form of aesthetic experience of oneself. Intellectual work, for him, is thus a form of aesthetic activity connected with the transformation of the self and aimed at preventing the formation of a rigid identity and the reification of the self. At this point, Foucault revives the aesthetic ideal of existence: turning life into a “work of art” so that actions, relationships, and lived moments may acquire a singular and self-created style rather than conforming to disciplinary norms.
Foucault even introduces the concept of the “author-function” in order to move beyond the authorial identity of a writer associated with a book bearing a determinate identity and thereby displace the “author’s name.” Through this move, he seeks to redefine and foreground the act of authorship while effacing the author’s identity, thereby showing that what possesses authenticity is the fluid movement of life and thought, rather than a static name attached to a subject. Once one effaces one’s identity in this way and, by means of one’s conceptual toolbox, aims first at transforming things and then at transforming the “self,” the position of the intellectual also acquires a different significance.
This means that the role of the intellectual is likewise bound up with “change”: “changing something in people” and opening a new possibility within their way of living. The intellectual’s task is to unsettle habits and established modes of acting and thinking, to dismantle accepted familiarities, to reassess rules and institutions, and, on the basis of this renewed problematization, to carry out the distinctive vocation of intellectual work. In this way, the intellectual challenges dominant and restrictive forms of life. It is at this point that Foucault’s emphasis on the importance of theory as a practice becomes apparent.
Foucault goes beyond the question of intellectual work and reconsiders thought in its general sense. Thought is what enables an individual to withdraw from one mode of action or reaction, present that mode to oneself as an object of thought, and call its meaning, conditions, and aims into question. This critical withdrawal makes it possible to reconsider lived experience, so that human beings are no longer enslaved to the unexamined habits of everyday life.
Thought is freedom—freedom in relation to what an individual does. It is a movement through which the individual separates themselves from what they are doing, establishes it as an object, and thinks of it as a problem. It is at this point that the meaning of problematization becomes clear. Problematization is the distinctive task of thought: transforming obstacles and difficulties into questions that can be answered and, in this way, opening the conditions of possibility for finding new solutions.
Thus, the whole of life becomes a domain of problematization: a field in which every behavior, every desire, and every practice of living becomes an object of critical reflection. For Foucault, the task of philosophical and historical reflection consists in stepping back into the field of thought, provided that problematization is understood not as the ordering and organization of representations, but clearly as the specific work of thought.
It is here that the role of the philosopher as a “diagnostician of the present” becomes prominent. The aim of this diagnosis is to understand the forms that shape and constrain our contemporary lives. For Foucault, this task is inseparable from an “ontology of the present” and from the claim that “the problem of the present time and the problem of who we are at this particular moment” constitute the most decisive problem of philosophy in our era.
Accordingly, actuality becomes the domain of philosophy, while the “critical analysis of the world in which we live” becomes philosophy’s task. Yet because it is this very contemporary world that has shaped our identity and our mode of being, criticism of the surrounding world inevitably leads to criticism of ourselves. This is why the French philosopher emphasizes that the primary aim is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are; philosophy is one of the principal means of doing so. Such refusal entails inventing new modes of being and creating other forms of life.
Foucault understands philosophy as the critical work of thought upon itself: an attempt to determine how and to what extent it is possible to think differently. The ultimate aim of this effort is to make possible the following radical question: How can one live differently?
Keywords: philosophy; art of living; problematization; life as a work of art; self; Michel Foucault
From Psychological Well-Being to the Philosophy of Life: A Network Reconstruction of Ḩayāt Ṭayyibah in the Qur’anic Horizon
Zohreh Ghaderi
Researcher in Philosophy and Religious Studies, Institute for Humanities and Social Studies (IHSS)
Zo.ghaderi@gmail.com
Abstract:
Contemporary research on well-being, particularly within positive psychology, has identified and operationalized diverse dimensions of the desirable human condition, from happiness and life satisfaction to meaning, autonomy, and personal growth. The philosophical question of what makes a life good, however, cannot simply be answered by measuring a set of psychological states or indicators. This study asks whether “well-being,” understood as a cluster of desirable states, can be distinguished from the “goodness of life,” understood as the quality of a lived whole, and whether a coherent structure of the good life can be reconstructed on this basis.
Drawing on “network reconstruction” and a structural reading, the paper examines a set of central Qur’anic concepts — including faith (īmān), righteous action, ḥayāt ṭayyibah, self-purification (tazkiyah), patience (ṣabr), trial (ibtilāʾ), responsibility, and mutual exhortation (tawāṣī) — in relation to one another. The central argument is that these concepts cannot be treated as an aggregate of independent virtues or components; rather, in structural relation to one another, they form a pattern of living in which purpose, direction, value, and relationality are bound together. On this basis, ḥayāt ṭayyibah is reconstructed not as the Qur’anic equivalent of psychological well-being, but as a condensed expression of a way of living that is oriented through relation to the transcendent, actualized through inner transformation and individual agency, extended into responsibility and action through relations with others and the world, and consolidated through patience and trial in the face of suffering and limitation.
The paper’s central finding is that this conceptual network yields a “relational–teleological” model of the good life. This model shows that a good life cannot be explained merely by the aggregation of positive states or well-being indicators; the quality of life also depends on the relational structure and overall orientation of living. From this perspective, the Qur’anic reconstruction can contribute, as an independent religious-philosophical formulation, to contemporary debates on the good life, meaning, agency, and the human relation to suffering — without treating Qur’anic concepts as equivalent to contemporary theories of well-being.
Keywords: philosophy of life; the good life; ḥayāt ṭayyibah; psychological well-being; network reconstruction; structure of living; relational–teleological model.
“The de-worlding of the human being in the age of Artificial Intelligence, in light of the philosophical concept of Dasein.”
Raham Sharaf
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Zanjan
raham_sharaf@znu.ac.ir
Abstract
Without a doubt, one of the most significant (if not the most significant) achievements of modernity and technology in the present era is Artificial Intelligence. It can be asserted unequivocally that AI has permeated all spheres of human existence and, in many instances, has constricted them. Consequently, the debate regarding the positive and negative implications of this modern achievement has remained fervent, garnering attention from psychological, sociological, ethical, and philosophical perspectives. One of the critical challenges of AI, which warrants philosophical scrutiny, is the relationship between humanity and the world following the emergence of this technology. It could be argued that a thorough investigation of this challenge would provide a robust foundation for discussing the constraints of AI in other domains.
From the author’s perspective, the most significant negative philosophical consequence of AI in the contemporary era is the issue of “human de-worlding” (unworlding). This research endeavors to examine this issue through the lens of the concept of Dasein, as formulated by the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger, Dasein represents the specific mode of human being that distinguishes humans from all other entities. Indeed, when Heidegger seeks to scrutinize the question of the essence of Being, he invokes the concept of Dasein, or the unique mode of human existence. Based on this concept, the human being is “Being-in-the-world,” possessing an inherent connection and belonging to existence. In truth, the human is the sole entity upon whom Being is disclosed, granting them the capacity to choose their mode of being. However, in the age of Artificial Intelligence, we face the challenge that AI has restricted human choices across various domains and, in some cases, has even supplanted them. This phenomenon is manifest not only in the empirical sciences but also in the humanities and even the arts. Accordingly, it appears that the openness of Being to the human being has encountered a fundamental challenge, and contemporary humanity has become, to a large extent, “de-worlded.”
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Dasein, Being-in-the-world, Heidegger, Truth.
Life as a Plastic Narrative: Rethinking Meaning in Life in Light of an Open Future
Mohammad Ali Tavana
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science (Political Thought), Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz,
Seyed Yazdan Hashemi Asl
Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science (Political Thought), Faculty of Law and Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Abstract
This article asks how meaning in life can remain intelligible without a final telos that fixes its value in advance. It develops the concept of a “plastic narrative” to connect temporal narrative configuration with plasticity, embodiment, and the possibility of revising the forms through which we understand a life. Through conceptual analysis and critical reconstruction, it brings Paul Ricoeur’s account of emplotment and narrative identity into dialogue with Antti Kauppinen’s analysis of meaningfulness and time and Catherine Malabou’s account of plasticity, while critically engaging anti-narrativist objections and contemporary theories of life’s meaning. Bodily limits, rupture, and data-driven prediction serve as conceptual tests; the article makes no empirical claims about technologies. Narrative can provisionally cohere events without closing a life into a final plot. Plasticity names linked capacities to receive forms, participate in giving them, and undergo transformations that may unsettle them. These capacities are situated and are not inherently emancipatory. The absence of a predetermined end need not mean meaninglessness. Meaning is a revisable relation among past, present, and possible futures. A defensible criterion is the preservation of responsible reconfiguration, answerable to embodied reality, other people, and the consequences of action.
Keywords: Embodiment, Future, Life, Meaning in Life, Narrative, Plasticity
Life as Narrative: Time, Answerability, and the Unfinalizable Self
Narrative Identity, Antenarrative, and the Meaning of a Human Life in the Philosophy of Life
Farzaneh Fatemi
PhD Candidate, Department of Management, College of Economics and Management. University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran. Email: f.fatemi@Tabriz.ac.ir
David M. Boje
Emeritus Professor of Management, Department of Management, College of Business. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM ۸۸۰۰۳, USA. Visiting Professor, Fisk University, Nashville, TN. davidboje@pm.me
Abstract
This paper defends a philosophically precise version of the thesis that human life is constituted, understood, and made meaningful in a narrative form, and argues that this thesis belongs at the centre of the philosophy of life. It grounds the thesis in the classical aporia of time — Augustine's distentio animi and Aristotle's muthos — and in Ricoeur's demonstration that narrative accomplishes in poetics what speculation cannot accomplish in the aporetics of time: through the threefold mimesis it configures the discordance of lived time into the "concordant discordance" of a followable story, and so yields narrative identity as the mediation of sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse). Situated against both the substance theory of the self and the Lockean–Parfitian reductive view, narrative identity is shown to answer the "characterization" question that the personal-identity debate leaves open. The paper then reconstructs the philosophy-of-life lineage of the thesis (Dilthey, Bergson, Nietzsche) and its phenomenology of temporality, embodiment, and the life-world (Husserl, Heidegger, Bakhtin), before confronting its two strongest objections: Strawson's "Against Narrativity," which distinguishes Episodic from Diachronic selfhood and warns that narrative coherence falsifies a life, and the phenomenological claim (Zahavi, Gallagher) that a pre-narrative minimal self is more basic than any storied one. Conceding the force of both against strong narrativity, the paper develops an alternative position drawn from dialogism and organizational storytelling: the self as an answerable, unfinalizable, antenarrative process. Uniting Bakhtin's non-alibi in Being and unfinalizability with Boje's concept of antenarrative — the fragmentary, forward-"bet" story that precedes closure — it argues that a life is neither a finished plot nor a mere sequence of episodes but an open, prospective, co-authored storying-in-becoming. This position preserves the narrative constitution of meaning while dissolving the worry about false coherence, and it reframes the meaning of life, authenticity, and self-creation as achievements of an authorship that remains answerable and is never complete.
Keywords: narrative identity; antenarrative; philosophy of life; temporality; non-alibi in Being; unfinalizability; meaning of life; Ricoeur; Bakhtin; Strawson.
Life, Gender Performativity, and the Political: Rethinking Kurdish Women’s Resistance in Rojava
Bayan Karimi
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy Department, University of Kurdistan,
Sanandaj, Iran.
karimi.bayan@uok.ac.ir
Abstract
Under conditions of war, ideological violence, and gendered domination, life becomes entangled with struggles over identity, agency, and political recognition. The experience of Kurdish women in Rojava, particularly those who took up arms against ISIS, provides a crucial lens for examining how women’s engagement with life can develop into resistance and political agency. Confronting an ideology that subjected women to systematic domination, these women challenged established gender norms through embodied action and entered a political sphere from which women had historically been excluded. Drawing on Judith Butler and Hannah Arendt, this article examines how this transformation unfolds. Butler’s account of gender performativity illuminates how gendered subjectivity is constituted through regulatory norms and how their disruption can open alternative possibilities for agency. Arendt’s conception of action and political appearance, in turn, clarifies how such embodied agency becomes political through women’s emergence as acting subjects. The experience of Kurdish women in Rojava thus reveals a movement from the contestation of gendered subjectivity to political agency: Butler clarifies the transformation of gendered subjectivity, while Arendt conceptualizes its emergence as political action. The article argues that their struggle against ISIS cannot be reduced to armed combat or women’s emancipation alone. Rather, it demonstrates how the contestation of gendered norms can transform embodied resistance into political appearance and action, reconfiguring the relationship among life, resistance, gender, and the political.
Keywords: Life; Gender Performativity; The Political; Kurdish Women; Rojava.
Science for Humanity
Mehdi Golshani
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Science, Sharif University of Technology
mehdigolshani@yahoo.com
Abstract
Scientific work is a human activity for understanding how the natural world works nd is structured. Why do human beings seek scientific knowledge? Science, by itself, cannot provide the answer. The response comes from a more comprehensive framework that defines, among other things, one’s goal for scientific activity.
Traditionally there have been two major responses to this question: ’science for the sake of science’ and ’science for the sake of understanding God’s handiwork and for taking care of humanity’s lawful physical and spiritual needs. A third view became dominant during the twentieth century, advocating science for its practical and material benefits. According to the first and third views there should be no limit on the kind of scientific research being done, but according to the second view scientific activity cannot have a free run.
Due to the miseries brought about by the abuse of science and its application, especially during the twentieth century, many eminent scholars throughout the world have been crying out for a new attitude toward the goal of scientific enterprise—an attitude that seeks scientific knowledge for the purpose of enriching the spiritual dimension of human beings and for securing human welfare, i.e. seeking knowledge for the sake of humanity, rather than ignoring humanity. Unless this is done there will be no hope for the future of the human race. It is the duty of all scientific academies and institutions to engage in a ’crusade’ for realizing this change of attitude toward the goal of science.
Key Words: Understanding universe, God’s creation, ethical values, Humanity’s concerns, , Limitations of empirical science, metaphysical assumptions, worldview
The Philosophy of Life in ۱۹۷۰s Iran:
A Narrative of an "Inside-Out Sheepskin Coat"
Dr. Reza Mahoozi
Professor of philosophy, Institute for Social and Cultural Studies
Mahoozi.reza@gmail.com
Abstract
From the late ۱۹۶۰s through the ۱۹۷۰s, the intellectual landscape of Iranian society was saturated with literature concerning critical philosophical and sociological schools, existentialism, socialism, and political Islam. Despite the prevailing division between Continental and analytic traditions, these currents shared a commonality: participation in a grand Iranian intellectual project. This project was driven by a desire for "authenticity" and a "return" to roots, alongside a fierce antagonism toward the camp represented by the entrepreneurial "new middle class" of the ۱۹۶۰s and ۷۰s—a camp associated with liberalism, free markets, and democracy, and frequently accused of promoting cultural secularism. Among these currents, the stances of socialism and political Islam were relatively clear-cut; they fundamentally offered society the vision of a bright future—which was, in reality, an idealized past characterized by class homogeneity and monotheism—and demanded self-sacrifice, action, and commitment from their adherents, even at the cost of their lives and the endurance of great hardship. The critical current, meanwhile, by gradually gravitating toward the New Left, echoed similar sentiments in a different guise; it offered a critique of mechanization and capitalism that closely paralleled the other two movements, differing primarily in that it did not advocate for a "return" to the past, yet- like them- placed a strong emphasis on "identity." In this context, existential philosophies in Iran- focusing on German and French existentialism- followed a trajectory quite the reverse of their origins under the influence of the aforementioned currents. French existentialism, emphasizing individual freedoms and the concept of responsibility, leaned toward critiquing capitalist-oriented rationalism and effectively fueled the fires of Marxism and anti-rationalist activism; meanwhile, German existentialism- with its emphasis on critiquing metaphysics and the Western rationalist tradition- presented a different manifestation of "Being" and an "authenticity rooted in return" to its adherents.
Both existentialist currents in Iran had their own distinct narratives within the broader intellectual landscape of the late ۱۹۶۰s and the entirety of the ۱۹۷۰s: the former found its primary foothold in the Iranian Writers' Association and various literary circles and gatherings, while the latter was most prominent in the Hosseinieh Ershad, religious seminaries, and traditionalist circles aligned with the state and government. What they shared was a critique of the status quo and a call for action based on a romanticized vision of an ideal state; the former advanced this demand through a critique of despotism and its intellectual and cultural toll on the individual and the collective, whereas the latter articulated it amidst the discourse of "returning to the self," critiquing the West, and reviving Shi'a heritage.
Another commonality between these two currents- despite their respective activist struggles against the manifestations of despotism or secular modernity- was their deep involvement in the political conflicts of the Iranian intelligentsia. An intellectualism that- aligning with and reinforcing its own agenda of political militancy- cherry-picked specific elements from French and German existentialism (such as ontological authenticity, political responsibility, and the nihilism born of rationalism) while either turning a blind eye to other facets- like freedom, uncertainty, tolerance, and individualism- or interpreting them through the lens of its own political ideology; a choice made either consciously or unconsciously.
Another facet of this political reading of existentialism- which drew more heavily on the German model, particularly that of Nietzsche and Heidegger, than on the French one- was a disregard for modern sciences and scientific methods, especially positivism. These sciences and methods failed to acknowledge claims of "authenticity" or the emergence of "Being" as a mysterious realm; instead, they prioritized reason, scholarly inquiry, universities, and classrooms over action rooted in a form of revelation. For this politicized current, the imagination held a noble superiority over understanding and reason- an imagination untainted by metaphysical conceptualism or historical rationality, capable of characterizing- more effectively than those two faculties- a form of zealous, committed action and bringing it into the present as a model of authentic conduct.
This intellectual selection of elements from French and German existentialism during the ۱۹۵۰s confronted Iranian society with a kind of "inverted existentialism." In this version, human freedoms were subordinated to a grand narrative—whether it was the narrative of "Return," the vision of establishing a classless, monotheistic society, or the revival of Islamic heritage as an "Asia versus the West" paradigm, and the like. Within this Iranian grand narrative, the concept of the "free, solitary individual" gave way to the idea of conscious masses who had attained self-awareness; these masses were now called upon to rise up under the framework of *Ummah* (community) and *Imamah* (leadership) and to establish a new order guided by a coordinating leader. "Conscious" masses- rallying behind a leader- were expected to dismantle manifestations of social injustice, intellectual and economic exploitation, political tyranny, and inauthenticity through *jihad* and struggle.
Thus, this mass-oriented approach, revolutionary training, and collective militant action- while ostensibly drawing upon the foundations of European existentialism- sacrificed the essence of lived experience, concrete existence, individualism, and personal freedoms for the sake of collective ideological ideals. This gave rise to a distinct form of "inverted existentialism" in Iran: the concept of individual agency- the capacity to choose and accept responsibility for the consequences- was supplanted by a subversive political mass movement. In the name of revolutionary self-awareness, the masses were compelled to choose precisely what the prescribed worldview and ideology dictated- a phenomenon akin to the inverted existentialism derived from interpretations of Heidegger’s thought.
Against the backdrop of this inversion, this article aims to examine how Iranian intellectuals and thinkers of the ۱۹۷۰s interpreted French and German existentialism through the prism of politics and militant ideologies- an interpretation largely alien to the philosophical principles of "life" inherent in those original frameworks.
Keywords: Existentialism, freedom, responsibility, the ۱۹۷۰s, ideology, politics, the masses.
From Suffering to Growth: The Role of Philosophical Meaning-Making in Post-Traumatic Growth
Seyed Mohammad Kazem Alavi
Associate Professor of Department of Islamic Philosophy and Wisdom, Research Core of Health Studies (RCHS), Hakim Sabzevari University
smk.alavi@hsu.ac.ir
Abstract:
Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) refers to the positive psychological transformations experienced by individuals in the aftermath of a traumatic event. Every traumatic experience inherently precipitates stress and tension, thereby jeopardizing mental well-being and inducing profound suffering. In the post-trauma recovery process, while initial emotional responses are prevalent, the subsequent cognitive processing of the event often leads individuals to undergo significant transformations across various dimensions of life, including personal and spiritual development. This study investigates the potential role of philosophy in this transformative process and the mechanisms through which it operates. We argue that philosophy, serving as a catalyst for meaning-making, can act as a transformative force in an individual’s life. Meaning-making is conceptualized here as a process of cognitive restructuring and attributing significance to life events, functioning as both an attitude shift and an intervention for psychological and existential trauma. By fostering a comprehensive worldview—a hallmark of philosophy—individuals are empowered to confront adversity in a way that imbues life with purpose and reorients their experiences toward a meaningful trajectory. Ultimately, this integration facilitates the conversion of suffering into growth, mediated by a fundamental shift in one’s existential perspective.
Keywords: Philosophical Meaning-Making, Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG), Suffering, Philosophy of Life.
The Genealogy of Redemption and the Meaning of Life in Nietzsche’s Early Philosophy
Amir Hossein Farahinia
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Technical and Voctaional University, Tehran, IRAN
Abstract
The question of the “meaning of life” amid the pervasive crisis of nihilism and the decline of grand metaphysical narratives is one of the most fundamental existential challenges in contemporary thought. Friedrich Nietzsche was the first thinker to identify this civilizational crisis not as a passing historical aberration, but as the inevitable destiny of the Western intellectual tradition after the ascendancy of Platonism and Christian morality—a tradition that, by splitting the world in two and referring values to a supernatural realm, paved the way for the devaluation of earthly life. Drawing on a descriptive-analytical method and focusing on Nietzsche’s first seminal and influential work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (۱۸۷۲), this study examines in depth his response to the abyss of existential absurdity. By revisiting the Greek myth of “the wisdom of Silenus,” Nietzsche lays bare the appalling, ruthless, and suffering-filled truth of earthly life. He shows that the metaphysical consolations of an afterlife and the theoretical optimism arising from Socratic rationalism cannot withstand this terrifying abyss.The central concern of this article is to explain how the meaning of living may be recovered by replacing an ethical-epistemological approach with an aesthetic one, and by advancing the idea of “art as the sole path to redemption.” The findings show that, for Nietzsche, redemption is an entirely this-worldly and immanent-transcendent concept, arising from the tension and complex dialectic between two fundamental forces of nature: the Apollonian, which embodies form, order, clarity, illusion, and salvific semblance; and the Dionysian, which expresses intoxication, unrestrained flux, the destruction of the principle of individuation, and ecstatic union with the primordial unity of existence. The union of these two principles in the masterpiece of ancient Greek tragedy—especially through the chorus and the spirit of music—creates an experience for the audience that Nietzsche calls “metaphysical consolation”: a profound faith that beyond the inevitable destruction of individual forms and the unavoidable suffering of appearance, the pulse of primordial life and the joy of existence continue to flow vigorously and imperishably beneath the surface of being. Thus, life becomes worthy of being lived not in anticipation of an otherworldly end, but in the present moment and in the light of the central principle of the “aesthetic justification of existence.” Ultimately, this early Nietzschean approach establishes the origins and essential foundations of themes in his mature philosophy, including “unconditional affirmation of life,” the will to power, eternal recurrence, and amor fati.
Keywords: meaning of life, redemption, The Birth of Tragedy, the wisdom of Silenus, Apollo and Dionysus, aesthetic justification, metaphysical consolation, nihilism.
The Meaning of Life and the Possibility of Happiness in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy
Kamran Ghayoom-Zadeh
Faculty Member, Shahid Madani University
Abstract
Can happiness be attained in life? Does the meaning of human existence contain any indication of purposiveness or teleology? In his philosophical system, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer offers one possible response to such questions. Grounded in the distinction between “the world as representation” (die Welt als Vorstellung) and “the world as will” (die Welt als Wille), his philosophy interprets human existence in terms of a blind, aimless, and insatiable will (Wille). According to Schopenhauer human beings are perpetually driven by desires and wants, the satisfaction of each of which merely gives rise to another desire. Consequently, life oscillates between the suffering arising from unfulfilled desires and the boredom (Langeweile) resulting from their satisfaction, and thus no objective or predetermined end can be identified as the ultimate purpose of life. Accordigly, the conventional conception of the meaning of life-as the attainment of happiness, progress, or the fulfillmentof an ultimate purpose-is an illusion arising from the structure of the will, Schopenhauer locates a relative liberation from this condition in the diminution of the will’s domination through aesthetic experience, compassion (Mitleid), and ultimately, the denial of the will to live (Verneinung des Willens zum Leben) and asceticism (Askese).
Nevertheles, Schopenhauer’s conception of the meaning of life faces several significant philosophical challenges. First, the absence of a cosmic or metaphysical telos does not necessarily entail the meaninglessness of life, since meaning may be understood as a human and intersubjective phenomenon. Second, although Schopenhauer’s argument concerning the primacy of suffering over pleasure and the inability of pleasure to provide lasting satisfaction captures an important dimension of human experience, its generalization to human life as a whole requires independent justification. Third, his doctrine of the denial of the will appears to generate internal tensions when considered alongside his simultaneous emphasis on compassion and the value of aesthetic experience. Accordingly, the central question in a critical assessment of Schopenhauer is not whether he is justified in taking human suffering seriously; but whether his pessimistic analysis of the structure of desire can legitimately support a general conclusion concerning the meaninglessness of life. By examining this inferential transition, the present article argues that Schopenhauer’s metaphysical pessimism, even if his analysis of suffering and desire is granted, constitutes only one possible interpretation of the problem of the meaning of life.
Keywords: Schopenhauer, meaning of life, pessimism, happiness, will
The Disappearance of the Problem of Life in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: An Internal Critique and Contemporary Reconsideration
Ali Shamsi
PhD Graduate in Philosophy of Science, Department of Philosophy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
ali.shamsi2167@iau.ac.ir
Abstract
In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein distinguishes between what can be said and what can only be shown, thereby separating the question of the value and meaning of life from the domain of theoretical knowledge. Thus, even a complete answer to scientific questions about the world would not resolve the question of meaning. Yet if this question is not a factual question that can be put into words, can its disappearance be regarded as a solution? Focusing on the closing propositions of the Tractatus and employing an internal critique, this article argues that Wittgenstein’s response is intelligible within his theory of language but faces limitations in specifying precisely what this disappearance means and what its consequences are. First, the distinction between saying and showing requires an account of how one can speak philosophically about the limits of language, given the position of the Tractatus’s own propositions within that distinction. Second, if the disappearance of the problem of life involves a transformation in one’s outlook and way of living, the Tractatus provides no independent criterion for distinguishing such a transformation from merely setting the question aside. Consequently, the strength of the Tractatus lies less in offering a complete solution to the question of meaning than in revealing the limits of theoretical knowledge and opening a different horizon for understanding that question. From this perspective, the question of the meaning of life remains open: not merely as a question about a discoverable fact, but as a question about how one lives and how one relates to the world and to others.
Keywords: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; meaning of life; saying and showing; disappearance of the problem; Wittgenstein.
The Tragic Truth of Life: A Lacanian Reading of Kierkegaard
Hassan Fathzadeh
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Zanjan
Nietzsche, by rejecting an ethics grounded in obedience, raises a question that would later assume a more radical form in Lacanian psychoanalysis: Can one take responsibility for one’s own life without taking refuge in a transcendent guarantee? Classical ethics, by transforming values into universal imperatives, fixes the subject within the symbolic order; yet this very stabilization can itself constitute a higher form of subjection. Nietzsche, by contrast, posits an affirmation of life: not a passive acceptance of what is, but the capacity to act and create values, even in a world that guarantees no ultimate meaning. From Nietzsche’s perspective, the truth of life does not take place in any Kantian “kingdom of ends,” since he regards the resultant of active forces not as the sum of those forces, but as their greatest, and the resultant of reactive forces as their smallest. Nietzsche’s tragic vision of life begins precisely here.
Kierkegaard brings this rupture to its extreme in the individual’s relation to the infinite God. At the moment of faith, the individual can no longer delegate his or her truth to the universal. Abraham, in the suspension of the universal ethical order, stands alone before God; a decision that not only cannot be guaranteed or justified by any universal rule, but in which the “universal” itself becomes the temptation. It is precisely at this point that a Lacanian reading becomes possible: the subject emerges when the Other cannot provide a final answer. As Lacan puts it, “There is no Other of the Other”; that is, there is no ultimate authority capable of guaranteeing, from outside, the validity of the law, meaning, or decision. Here, in Lacanian terms, we are dealing with the intervention of the phallic in the Logos. The phallus is a fissure within the symbolic order, through which signifiers acquire weight and are released from their futile circulation; it is something that has already been lost (castration), leaving the subject, in Derridean terms, caught in the perpetual deferral of meaning. In the encounter with the Father-God, symbolic castration, as a constitutive exception, is the condition of possibility of meaning—the universal.
From this perspective, Lacanian ethics is not an ethics of the law but an ethics of desire: “Do not give up on your desire!” Yet this statement by no means signifies the subject’s autonomy, since “desire is the desire of the Other.” Desire arises from language and the symbolic order, although it is never fully established within them. It is here that, in place of Abraham, Lacan introduces Antigone as the tragic heroine. Antigone is not merely the defender of one law against another; she embodies this very fissure. Her act is a failure from the standpoint of the public order, and no metaphysical guarantee ensures its success. She stands by her desire while knowing that such a stance may lead to the collapse of the public order, as well as to her own death. This is the tragic truth: the subject can remain faithful to his or her desire without triumphing. The tragic hero fails because, unlike Abraham’s God, there is no Other to guarantee his or her victory; yet it is precisely in this failure that the act distinguishes itself from obedience. Affirmation of life is not optimism about the world, but a refusal to betray one’s desire in a world in which no ultimate guarantee exists for it. Fidelity to desire may lead to failure, rejection, solitude, and even death; and it is precisely for this reason that Lacanian ethics is inherently tragic. Antigone does not simply choose between the “law of the city” and the “law of the family”; her act brings the subject to the point at which the very symbolic position of the subject is placed at risk. Life finds its truth in this tragic transgression of the ethical order—the universal.
Theology of Life
Dr. Masoud Omid
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tabriz
Abstract
In the field of theology, there are various concepts and approaches, such as metaphysical theology, existential theology, ethical theology, systematic theology, and even political theology. With the emergence of the philosophy of life, however, it is now possible to speak of a field or approach called the theology of life. This can be understood either as a theology grounded in the philosophy of life or as a life-centered theology.
The theology of life is a philosophical attempt to develop a different understanding of theology. From the late nineteenth century onward, the concept of life gradually became an explicit and immediate subject of philosophical reflection, entering the philosophical arena through thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Bergson. In the twentieth century, after a brief interruption, this direct and explicit thematization of life receded somewhat into the background. Nevertheless, life continued to receive indirect attention, to varying degrees, in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt, Gadamer, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, the later Wittgenstein, Nagel, Deleuze, and others. Toward the end of the twentieth century, a second wave of attempts to make life an explicit philosophical theme and to engage philosophically with the domain of life emerged, for example in the works of Michel Henry, Agamben, Kishik, and others.
These efforts indicate that the history of philosophy has witnessed an elevation of the concept of life from a biological, social, political, and even metaphorical meaning to a properly philosophical meaning. In philosophical terms, the concept of life has been elevated from the level of a first intelligible and conventional meaning—that is, a natural and practical meaning—to the level of a second-order philosophical intelligible, namely a theoretical concept.
The question, then, is this: If life has become a philosophical concept and capacity, and if studies such as the philosophy of life or philosophical inquiry into life have emerged over the past century, can we, along the same lines, speak of something called the theology of life? This article seeks to answer this question and attempts to offer possible images and descriptions of a philosophical capacity that may be called the theology of life.
The first step in describing this type of theology is to point to its negative dimension, namely, its general differences from classical forms of theology—whether in Greek, Christian, or Islamic metaphysics—and even from modern forms of theology found in the philosophical traditions of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and others. These differences may be outlined as follows:
Unlike classical and modern philosophical theology, the theology of life is not an abstract theology but a concrete and embodied one.
It is primarily formed around, and grounded in, the divine attribute of life (ḥayy/ḥayāt).
The meaning attributed to this divine attribute does not remain at its conventional level, namely perception and the origination of action. Rather, it is understood on the basis of life as a philosophical concept and in accordance with the philosophies of life.
It is not a form of negative or apophatic theology. Rather, it is an affirmative theology, and indeed a concrete one, deeply involved in and intertwined with creation, particularly with human life.
The second step, constituting its positive dimension, consists in attempting to formulate possible meanings for the theology of life within the horizon of the philosophies of life. The most important issue in the theology of life concerns the meaning of God. From the perspective of the history of the philosophy of life, some possible philosophical conceptions of God, whose origins can be traced to different philosophies of life, may be formulated as follows:
Schopenhauer: the will, intertwined with the creation of human beings and the world, yet without consciousness.
Nietzsche: the distinction between the existing God and the living God, and further between the living God and the dead God.
Dilthey: truth as something lived historically and through lived experience in relation to religions.
Bergson: a dynamic, creative, continuously vital and conscious duration that encompasses all human durations.
Michel Henry: the divine as an immanent horizon of appearingness in relation to phenomena.
Wittgenstein and Kishik: God as the source of a form of life that is realized through religious language.
And so forth.
The third step is an attempt to formulate an idea within the theology of life based on a particular philosophy of life. This article considers two ideas and two general images within the framework of the theology of life.
First General Image
It is possible to understand God on the basis of the concept of life.
God is ḥayy, that is, God is life—not in the sense that ḥayy merely signifies the highest degree of cognition and the origination of action.
The world of life is a confluence of divine and human life.
God is involved in life with His creatures, rather than merely being the source of cognition and action with respect to them.
God's life with His creatures is not necessarily interventionist. Rather, it is fundamentally observational, concerned, and caring.
Perhaps the meanings of divine presence, care, and providence can be understood in terms of the shared and intertwined life of Creator and creature.
Second General Image
I am a life and a narrative of a life; the other and others are likewise.
Life is the source and horizon through which I understand myself, others, and the world.
The most important divine attribute is being alive, rather than being Being or a being. The fundamental theological proposition concerning God is not that “God is Being” or “God exists,” but that “God is life” and “God is one who lives with other lives and living beings.” Without the concrete attribute of life, the other divine attributes become abstract or meaningless.
Divine Being and divine existence considered in isolation are abstract, of limited significance, or meaningless for a life. God understood as life and as one who lives with a life or with lives is more meaningful than God understood merely as Being or as an existing entity. God cannot be meaningful apart from life, because otherwise God would resemble a galaxy in some distant part of the universe, unrelated to a life or to lives. God must be present in life and in lives.
In other words, the fundamental theological question is not simply whether God exists or does not exist. Rather, it is whether God is present within the horizon and context of a life, and whether one can live with God, or whether this is not the case.
In order to understand the foundation and character of theology and the knowledge of God, the most important and fundamental source is life itself, considered in terms of its manner, style, narrative, and so forth.
Conclusion: Theology is, ultimately, a theological perspective that constructs and opens up a life and a narrative of life for us. The theology of a life emerges in proportion to that life itself—in its measure, stature, quantity, and quality. It is the whatness, meaning, manner, style, and character of a life that prepares and determines the theology of that life. Theology takes on the form, structure, boundaries, and capacities of a life and manifests itself within the limits of that life.
Keywords: Philosophical Theology; Philosophy of Life; Theology of Life; Life-Centered Theology; Life as a Horizon for Understanding the Meaning of Theology.
From Text to a Philosophy of Life: A Methodology for Reconstructing Rumi’s Philosophy of Life
Yousef Rezapour
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
Abstract
This study addresses the possibility and methodology of reconstructing Rumi’s philosophy of life. The problem arises from the fact that Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi did not leave behind an independent treatise entitled Philosophy of Life, nor a philosophical system concerning life articulated through a unified terminology. At the same time, his works are replete with reflections, narratives, images, oppositions, and representations of lived experience that relate, in diverse ways, to human life and living. Therefore, reconstructing Rumi’s philosophy of life can neither be understood simply as the “discovery” of a pre-existing system nor as a license to impose contemporary philosophical, psychological, or educational concepts upon Rumi’s texts. The central question of this article is: What methodological principles make it possible to move from textual evidence and representations of lived experience in the five principal corpora of Rumi’s works—Masnavi-ye Ma‘navi, Divan-e Shams, Fihi Ma Fih, Majalis-e Sab‘a, and Maktubat—toward a conceptual network and subsequently a philosophical formulation concerning life, while preserving the distinction between text, interpretation, and reconstruction?
To address this question, the article proposes a text-centered, network-based, and hermeneutical approach that emphasizes the primacy of the text, conceptual suspension, contextual and genre-sensitive reading, comparison across the corpora, recording counter-evidence, independent testing of conceptual relations, differentiation among the three levels of text, interpretation, and reconstruction, and openness to revision. Within this framework, Gadamer’s account of hermeneutical understanding and its historical situatedness, together with Ricoeur’s notions of distanciation, the autonomy of the text, and the possibility of critical interpretation, are employed as methodological resources for engaging with the text rather than as theoretical systems for determining in advance the meaning of Rumi’s works. The proposed methodology is then demonstrated through two examples, “the mirror” and “wonder,” drawn from Rumi’s works. The article concludes that a controlled movement from textual evidence to a conceptual network, from the network to structural relations, and from tested relations to philosophical formulation can provide a basis for reconstructing a philosophy concerning life, without treating this reconstruction as identical to a system that Rumi himself necessarily formulated in the same language and conceptual architecture. The ultimate horizon of this inquiry is a philosophical dialogue concerning the philosophy of life and an examination of the educational implications of this reconstruction for education, within the framework of a research program.
Keywords: Rumi’s philosophy of life; philosophical reconstruction; interpretive methodology; text-centered reading; conceptual network; hermeneutics; lived experience; educational implications
Zoroaster and the view of life
Mohsen Mirzaei
Assistant professor, Department of Culture and Ancient Iranian Languages, University of Tabriz..
When we speak of Zoroaster and his teachings, we must distinguish between two relatively distinct conceptions: (a) Zoroaster as a historical figure, endowed with the ordinary characteristics of a human being; and (b) Zoroaster as a transcendent, sacred, and inaccessible being.
The historical Zoroaster and his teachings—although obscure and difficult to recover—are reflected chiefly in the Gathas, the hymns attributed to Zoroaster, as well as in certain prose passages known as the “Seven Chapters,” which, in all likelihood, are the product either of his teachings or of those of his earliest circle of followers.
Zoroaster’s manifesto rests upon a fundamental and definitive opposition between the two principles of Good and Evil. As he himself explicitly states in the Gathas, everything—including thought, teaching, perception, belief, speech, action, conscience, and the spirits of Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu—is in complete opposition. Thus, every thought, word, and deed is either demonic or Ahuric. Moreover, the Gathas contain evidence for the existence of an ultimate Creator, and from this perspective, Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu may perhaps be understood as twins originating from a single and common source. The crucial point, however, is that human beings are free to choose: there is only one path, and that path is Truth.
Over the course of history, and in the eyes of their followers, the human and historical identities of great figures and saints undergo such profound transformations that these eminent human beings come to attain divine or godlike status in hagiographies and legendary accounts. Such narratives are transmitted in various forms, sometimes through biographers or oral traditions, either in written form or through oral transmission, and continue from one generation to another for many successive generations. Zoroaster is no exception to this rule. In later centuries, shaped by distortions and myth-making on the part of the clergy, as well as by the influence of the diverse cultures of Western Asia, Zoroaster becomes increasingly removed from his historical human status, to the point that his birth, upbringing, life, and the miracles associated with him all become wholly sacred and extraordinary.
Thereafter, Zoroastrianism gradually emerges from its primitive state and develops into a highly ritualistic religion. Although every religion, from its very beginnings, develops its own particular customs or adopts and reshapes practices from other cultures, such rites naturally proliferate and become increasingly elaborate and complex over time. By a “ritualistic religion” is meant a body of teachings that makes individual and collective salvation contingent upon the proper performance of ritual acts and religious observances. Thus, Zoroastrianism leaves virtually no place for the famous hadith “Actions are judged by intentions” within its doctrinal system. This, in turn, had so greatly facilitated the unchecked expansion of ritual acts and religious observances—to the benefit of those who administered them—that, by the end of the Sasanian Empire, they spared not even the people’s meager piece of bread on their impoverished table. In fact, within the Zoroastrian religion—as with its adversaries, the Zandiks (the Manichaeans)—the common people were, in effect, customers of their own religious establishment.
In Zoroastrian belief, Ahura Mazda is a powerful god, but not an omnipotent one. Ahura Mazda is assisted by seven archangels, counting Spenta Mainyu among them, who may once have been attributes of Ahura Mazda but later acquired individual and independent personalities of their own. In addition, other groups of spiritual beings, known as Yazatas and Menog, assist Ahura Mazda in the ordering of the world. For example, the spirit Rapithwin is said to protect the springs and roots of plants from the evil cold throughout the “Great Winter,” and with his appearance at noon on the first day of Farvardin, Nowruz begins. Most of the major Zoroastrian Yazatas—such as Mithra, Anahita, and Tishtrya—are, in fact, redefined forms of deities worshipped by the Iranians before Zoroaster. Zoroaster may have rejected them, but these deities subsequently found their way back into Zoroastrianism under the influence of pre-Zoroastrian Iranian culture; alternatively, Zoroaster himself may have accepted and incorporated them into his own intellectual system.
Zoroastrians are not fire-worshippers, nor have they ever been. Fire is the son of Ahura Mazda, occupies a central place in ritual practice, and exists in several forms. The status of the “Atash Bahram” is such that Zoroastrians would not even look upon it; the care and tending of the sacred fire was the responsibility of the clergy. Zoroastrians are not “dual-worshippers” either. The term “dualism” does not mean that they worship Ahura Mazda and Ahriman; rather, it simply means that they recognize two principles, Good and Evil. In Zoroastrian culture, the idea of two fundamental principles has become so deeply rooted that, in addition to human beings, it extends even to the animal world and to words themselves: the wolf is demonic, whereas the sheep is Ahuric; and, in the realm of vocabulary, for example, sar (“head”) is Ahuric, whereas kalleh (“head/skull”) is Ahrimanic.
An Analysis of the Meaning of Life from the Perspective of Hakim Nizami Ganjavi
Mohammad Khakpour
Associate Professor, Department of Persian Literature, University of Tabriz
Hakim Nizami Ganjavi is one of the few Iranian poets who, through his unique worldview and distinctive perspective on the order of creation, consistently seeks to elucidate the meaning and concept of human life within this earthly realm. As evidenced by his *Panj Ganj* (The Five Treasures), he often appears in the guise of an elder—a sage—who, with fervent passion and uncompromising dedication, pursues an ideal vision of humanity and the world, a vision largely crafted by his own mind and inner consciousness. Since Nizami’s worldview is grounded in the twin pillars of love and asceticism, his perspective on human life is inevitably and inextricably linked to these fundamental concepts. In this context, one cannot overlook his leanings toward Ash'ari theology; indeed, the love and asceticism woven into his soul and worldview must be viewed through this specific lens. It is worth noting that while Nizami—a sage and mystic well-versed in wisdom—engages with profound questions regarding human identity, the cosmic order, and numerous other thought-provoking subjects, his reflections are not strictly philosophical in the conventional sense; rather, they align more closely with Ash'ari thought. In any case, Hakim Nizami views life primarily through its spiritual and idealistic dimensions; in his perspective, only love and asceticism can liberate the human being from the shackles of worldly existence—which he regards merely as a shadow of the afterlife—and elevate the individual to the highest levels of human perfection. Through a study of the *Khamsa* (Quintet) of Hakim Nizami Ganjavi, and by employing textual analysis and reasoned argumentation, the author of this essay seeks to explore the meaning of life as conceived by the poet.
Keywords: Nizami Ganjavi, *Khamsa* of Nizami, meaning of life, love and asceticism.
Disembodied Love: A Phenomenology of Romantic Relationships in the Age of AI
Yashar Karimi
Ph.D. Philosophy of art. Islamic Azad University. Central Tehran Branch
Abstract
This paper explores what happens to romantic love and intimacy in a world where technology increasingly detaches us from our bodies. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s transcendental and genetic phenomenology, the study begins by distinguishing between the lived body (Leib)—the feeling, sensing self that makes all experience possible—and the physical body (Körper)—the material, measurable object studied by natural sciences. Using a phenomenological approach, it traces how romantic connection forms, moving from passive, felt sensations to an active, meaning-making intentionality. A key insight here is that bodily affection serves as the very foundation of romance, rooted in the passive synthesis of hyletic material that awakens the self to connection with another (Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis). This shared affective experience is what makes human love authentic, distinguishing it from purely mechanical or physiological acts.
Building on Husserl’s thought, the paper examines how modern digital technologies reduce the lived body (Leib) to an interchangeable, disposable tool (Körper), creating a new kind of digital Cartesianism. In the context of AI companions and synthetic partners, the analysis shows how these technologies challenge the essential qualities of genuine love—especially vulnerability, mutual giving, and selfless care. By offering artificial companions as frictionless, obedient partners designed to satisfy personal desires, digital platforms risk turning mutual commitment into one-sided consumerism. Ultimately, drawing on contemporary phenomenological thought, this paper argues that profound love cannot be separated from the shared vulnerability of the living body, calling for a return to embodiment as the true source of meaning and authenticity in human life.
Keywords: Lived Body (Leib), Embodied Love, Phenomenology of Intimacy, Artificial Intelligence, Edmund Husserl, Intersubjectivity.
Life on the Horizon of Philosophy: From Kant’s Moral Autonomy to Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Self-Understanding
Asghar Vaezi,
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Shahid Beheshti University
Abstract
The relationship between philosophy and life is one of the most fundamental issues in the history of philosophy. In this relationship, philosophy is not merely an abstract and theoretical form of knowledge, but rather a way of thinking about the meaning and purpose of life. The central question of this article is whether philosophy can move beyond the level of theoretical reflection and establish a meaningful connection with human existence itself without sacrificing the independence and critical status of reason. To address this question, the article examines the relationship among reason, freedom, moral life, meaning, and human self-understanding, focusing first on Kant’s philosophy and then moving to Hegel’s absolute idealism and Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.
In Kant’s philosophy, the limitation of the claims of theoretical reason creates the conditions under which practical reason and concepts such as freedom, autonomy, duty, dignity, and hope can assume a fundamental position. On this view, the human being is not merely a knowing subject but also a free and responsible agent. Autonomy in Kantian ethics and life within the Kingdom of Ends consist in obligating oneself to obey a law that one has legislated for oneself. According to this view, humanity, as an end in itself, possesses dignity rather than a price. From this perspective, human life, at a level beyond mere natural existence, becomes the arena for the realization of freedom and moral responsibility.
The article then shows that Hegel extends the question of freedom from the level of the individual moral agent to the domains of history and social institutions. The concept of “ethical life” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right encompasses the family, civil society, and the state as objective forms in which freedom is realized. Thus, freedom is not merely an internal condition of the individual; it must also be actualized in social relations and institutions within which the individual can recognize himself or herself as a free being.
The article next turns to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. From Gadamer’s perspective, human beings are always situated within language, history, and tradition, and their understanding of themselves and of the world in which they live is shaped by their historical pre-understandings and prejudices. These pre-understandings are not merely obstacles to understanding; they are also conditions of its possibility. The concept of the “fusion of horizons” demonstrates that understanding is a dialogical process that takes shape within the world of subjects.
On the basis of this analysis, the article’s central claim is that philosophy establishes an authentic relationship with life when it neither dissolves into life nor distances itself from it through conceptual abstraction. Kant highlights the possibility of rational critique, freedom, and responsibility; Hegel demonstrates the social and historical realization of freedom; and Gadamer reveals the historical and dialogical character of understanding and, consequently, of self-understanding. Philosophy can therefore be understood as an endeavor toward “critical self-understanding of the human being in the world”, a form of self-understanding through which human beings seek to clarify their relationship to themselves, others, society, tradition, and the future.
Keywords: Philosophy and life; Kant; autonomy; freedom; human dignity; Hegel; ethical life; Gadamer; self-understanding.
A Philosophical Analysis of the Relationship between "Life" and "Individuality" in Islamic Wisdom; with Emphasis on Sadrian Foundations
Mohsen Taghizadeh
Academic Officer of Imam Khomeini Seminary (RA), Mashhad, Level ۳ Seminary, Equivalent to Master's, Jurisprudence and Principles
Khorasan Seminary, Mashhad, Iran
MT۱۳۵۶۸۸۵@GMAIL.COM
۰۹۱۰۴۶۹۳۱۷۹
Abstract
The issue of the relationship between life and individuality in Islamic wisdom, despite its importance for understanding human individuality, has been less examined independently; existing studies either pursue individuality and personal identity without analyzing the concept of life, or explore life from the perspective of meaning and authenticity. This article attempts, on the basis of the foundations of Transcendent Wisdom, to clarify whether and how a philosophical relationship can be established between life and individuality. The research method is analytical-descriptive, and conceptual analysis and argumentative reconstruction have been used to arrive at the relationship between the two concepts. First, the concepts of life, vitality, soul, individuality, and identity are distinguished from one another, and then the Peripatetic, Illuminationist, and Sadrian approaches to individuality are compared. The main finding is that the primacy of existence, gradation, substantial motion, the bodily origination of the soul, and connective unity together make possible a six-premise argument on the basis of which life is the gradual ground for the realization and deepening of individuality. The innovation of the research is the distinction between "foundational individuality" and "graduated individuation" and the reconstruction of this very argument. Its main conclusion is that life is not constitutive of foundational individuality, but it plays a role in graduated individuation; this conclusion depends on a non-extended reading of substantial motion and remains limited in the face of the challenge of identifying identity in the afterlife, and a final resolution of the problem is not claimed.
Keywords: Life, Individuality, Personal Identity, Soul, Substantial Motion, Transcendent Wisdom
Life as Seeking and Creation: Reconstructing the Relationship between Love and Creativity in the Islamic Tradition
Morteza Shojari, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, University of Tabriz.
Zahra Gozali, Ph.D. Graduate in Philosophy, University of Tabriz.
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between life, love, and creativity in selected philosophical and mystical accounts within the Islamic tradition. The central question is how love transforms the mode of human being and living, and how this transformation manifests itself in creativity. Employing an analytical method and conceptual reconstruction, the study examines the views of Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Ibn ʿArabī, Rūmī, and Mullā Ṣadrā, without attributing to them a unified theory under the title of "philosophy of life." The findings indicate that, in the accounts examined, love is understood in connection with the perception of the good, beauty, and perfection, and in relation to ṭalab (seeking) and movement toward perfection. Accordingly, the relationship between love and creativity is not a simple, direct causal one; rather, it can be explained through the interplay of ṭalab, imagination, form-giving, will, and human action. On this reconstruction, human life can be understood as a process of seeking, transformation, and form-giving, of which creativity is one mode of manifestation. Art, in turn, is one of the most evident domains in which this creative mode of life becomes manifest, without implying that the human being, as a creative agent, is the absolute creator of the self or of the world.
Keywords: life, love, ṭalab, creativity, imagination, perfection.
Religion as a Form of Life in Later Wittgenstein
Abdurrazzaq Hesamifar
Professor of Philosophy at Imam Khomeini International Philosophy
Abstract
In the philosophy of the early Wittgenstein, religion is reflected more in his life than in his written works. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus mentions God in only a few propositions, whereas prominent religious elements are evident in Wittgenstein’s life, particularly during his early period of thought. Carrying Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief during the time of his participating in war and referring to religious concepts in his correspondence with Russell shows his distinctive approach to religion. Although not a conventionally religious person, he stated that he was unable to avoid viewing matters from a religious perspective. Admittedly, the early Wittgenstein’s epistemological approach to religion—at a theoretical level—consisted of relegating it to the realm of the unspeakables, specifically the domains of feeling and mysticism. However, the later Wittgenstein, in line with his use-theory of meaning—and particularly the theory of language-games—links religion to human existence and regards it as a "form of life." From this perspective, religion and religious propositions should not be considered in isolation from human life and the role they play within it. The use of religious concepts within a religious society constitutes a type of language-game, and grasping the meaning of these concepts depends on familiarity with the religious form of life. Thus, the meaning of religious propositions is entirely contingent upon the form of life of believers—a concept distinct from that of "lifestyle." By the concept of "form of life," Wittgenstein refers to the dependence of the meaning of religious terms on the beliefs of believers, as reflected in their form of life. The concept of "lifestyle" refers to the customs and rituals inherent in various modes of living; for instance, lifestyles differ between rural and urban areas, and the observance of specific events—such as a wedding—varies across cities with distinct cultures. This study aims to examine the perspective of the later Wittgenstein regarding religion and its connection to human life.
Keywords: religion, mysticism, form of life, use theory of meaning, language-game theory, lifestyle.
Life as Possibility: A Philosophical Introduction to Ontological Possibility
Kaveh Haji-Allahverdipoor
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran,
Kaveh.Allahverdipoor@atu.ac.ir
Abstract
This article develops Ontological Possibility (OP) as a philosophical foundation for understanding life. Its central question is whether possibility is merely something a living being possesses, or whether it is constitutive of life itself. Drawing on Henri Bergson’s philosophy of life, especially his concepts of duration, becoming, creativity, and novelty, the article argues that life cannot be reduced to its actual state. Life unfolds through a temporal continuity in which the past remains present while the future is never fully determined in advance. This openness makes the emergence of the new possible.
The article distinguishes between mere biological life and human life. By mere biological life, or living, we mean the animal and vegetal processes of existence and survival. By life, we mean human existence as a mode of being that is intrinsically open to possibility. On this basis, the article proposes that possibility is not an accidental or secondary feature of life. It is an immanent dimension of its mode of being. Life is not only what is actual; it is also the capacity to exceed its present actuality. Possibility, therefore, should not be understood simply as a set of future options, a probability, or a potential awaiting realization. It is the constitutive openness through which life can become otherwise.
The article further argues that actuality never exhausts life. A living being is always more than its present state because its mode of being remains open to what has not yet become actual. From this perspective, the loss of possibility is not merely a reduction in freedom or choice. It marks a deeper ontological transformation. When the openness to possibility disappears, life is reduced to mere biological existence. OP thus advances a fundamental claim: life is intrinsically possible, and possibility belongs to the essence of life rather than being added to it from outside. This formulation establishes the philosophical foundation for further inquiries into the social and cultural conditions under which this ontological possibility may later be limited, determined, or exhausted.
Love, the Foundation of Life; Peace, Its Ultimate End.
Hedayat Rashidi
Faculty Member of Islamic Azad University, Shushtar Branch
The present study seeks to formulate the anthropological foundation of "love" as the "voluntary acceptance of binding responsibility," and to redefine "peace" not as the absence of war, but as the ultimate end of love and life, namely survival, protection, and flourishing. Employing a review-analytical approach, the study analyzes population-genetic data (the Y-chromosome bottleneck), archaeological evidence, and pre-Christian legal corpora (Ur-Nammu, Hammurabi, the Hittites, and the Torah)
۱. The post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck is evidence of the monopolization of reproduction by propertied men and the exclusion of the majority of ordinary men from marriage.
. ۲. The ancient legal systems, by binding the young man to financial and multiyear commitments, created a mechanism for testing the sincerity of his affection and the durability of the union: accepting this weighty condition was at once proof of the lover's sincerity and a guarantee of the young couple's stability in truth, the foundation of life was laid upon pure love.
۳. Society itself was built upon this same basis: trust, assurance, and empathy in meeting one another's needs were rooted in that same pure and sincere love.
. ۴. Peace, not merely the absence of war, but a form of human life — signifies survival, protection, and flourishing, and constitutes the ultimate end of this journey: an end that responsible love inaugurates within the family hearth, and which society extends to the horizon of civilization.
Authentic love is a proposition proven only by the act of responsibility: "Love is the foundation of life, and peace is its ultimate end."* Societies that build the family upon love tested through responsibility have, in truth, reached their final destination — some positive peace rich in survival, protection, and flourishing: not a temporary treaty, but the ultimate purpose of their philosophy of life.
Love is the foundation of life, for only that love is authentic which, in the trial of marriage, voluntarily accepts multi-year responsibility. And peace is the ultimate end of this love, for true peace is not the absence of war, but survival, protection, and flourishing and these three are the final destination of that same responsible love, which was founded within the family hearth and shall reach its perfection across the domain of society.
Keywords:Responsible Love, Dominant-Male Exclusivity, Y-Chromosome Bottleneck, Marriage Trials in Ancient Civilizations, Positive Peace, Peace as the Ultimate End, Social Empathy
The Crisis of Meaning in Life among Teachers and the Role of Educational Leadership in Reconstructing the Existential Horizons of the School
Mahdi Namdari-Pejman
Department of Educational Administration, Farhangian University, P.O. Box ۱۴۶۶۵-۸۸۹, Tehran, Iran. Email: m.namdari@cfu.ac.ir
This review examines the crisis of meaning among teachers as an existential and multidimensional phenomenon that extends beyond ordinary occupational stress and burnout. Drawing on Frankl’s logotherapy, existential-phenomenological perspectives on teacher identity, and contemporary empirical research on teachers’ well-being and professional identity, the article argues that existential frustration arises when teachers’ “will to meaning” is persistently blocked by bureaucratic demands, value–practice misalignment, erosion of professional agency, diminished experienced significance, and the fragmentation of a shared educational purpose. These conditions may coalesce into a broader existential crisis of the school—a state in which the school remains administratively functional yet becomes existentially fragmented. The review advances a multilevel framework that reconceptualizes meaningfulness as an organizational and collective condition rather than a purely individual experience, and refigures teacher professional identity as an ongoing existential project of “becoming.” On this basis, the concept of existential leadership is developed as a complementary perspective within educational leadership that concerns the creation of organizational conditions in which teachers can exercise agency, reconnect with educational purposes, experience recognition and belonging, maintain professional authenticity, and reconstruct a shared horizon of possibility. Integrating evidence on servant leadership, leadership for teacher flourishing, and school climate, the article proposes that meaningful teachers and meaningful schools are mutually constitutive. A research agenda is outlined for operationalizing constructs such as teachers’ existential meaning, the school’s existential climate, and existential leadership, and for testing their relationships through quantitative, qualitative, and multilevel designs.
Keywords:Existential Vacuum,Teacher Professional Identity, Educational Leadership, Meaning in Life, School Existential Crisis
The Philosophy of Life in Light of Unhappy Consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit "
Saeed Eslamee
Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Chalus Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran
Unhappy consciousness, or what Hegel characterizes as “self-divided” or “self-alienated” consciousness, constitutes a crucial stage in the dialectical development of self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It emerges following the stages of Stoicism and Skepticism.. Unhappy consciousness is characterized by a profound internal division: on the one hand, consciousness experiences itself as a finite, mutable, and contingent being embedded in the sensible world; on the other hand, it aspires toward an infinite, immutable, and absolute truth.
The significance of unhappy consciousness lies in the fact that its suffering cannot be reduced merely to the difficulties and contingencies of human existence. Rather, its distress arises from a deeper sense that the truth and meaning of existence are located beyond the self. Consequently, the individual may seek authentic meaning in a realm transcending ordinary, finite existence. Yet the more consciousness separates the truth it seeks from its concrete, lived existence, the more deeply its experience of alienation may become entrenched. At this point, a crisis of the meaning of life emerges when the individual is unable to establish a meaningful relation between the truth being sought and concrete existence.
From a Hegelian perspective, unhappy consciousness cannot attain truth simply by negating its own finitude. The problem, therefore, is not to abolish human finitude, but to attain a form of self-consciousness in which finitude is no longer understood as an absolute separation from truth. The relationship between the finite and the infinite must instead be comprehended dialectically, such that the finite is understood as belonging to the very process through which the infinite comes to actuality.
It is precisely at this point that a significant connection can be established between unhappy consciousness and the philosophy of life. If human beings seek the meaning of life exclusively in the infinite and locate truth beyond the finite world, their concrete existence may come to appear deficient, insignificant, or devoid of intrinsic meaning. Conversely, if the relationship between the finite and the infinite is reconsidered dialectically, a new possibility for understanding human life emerges—one in which finite existence is not simply opposed to truth but participates in its realization.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, unhappy consciousness initially posits truth as something external to itself and experiences itself as separated from that truth. Its relation to truth is consequently characterized by dependence, distance, and separation. The movement of consciousness, however, gradually reveals the inadequacy of this opposition. The truth that consciousness initially confronts as an external and transcendent reality must ultimately be recognized as related to consciousness itself.
This movement acquires a further dimension in Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, where the question of freedom is situated within the structures of ethical and social life. For Hegel, freedom cannot be reduced to individual choice or the arbitrary fulfillment of subjective desires. Rather, freedom becomes actual within ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and through the institutions in which individual and universal interests are mediated, including the family, civil society, and the state. Thus, the reconciliation between the individual and the universal does not require an escape from finite social existence; rather, it is achieved through the transformation and rational organization of that existence.
Against this background, the present study examines the philosophy of life in light of unhappy consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at three interconnected levels: the existential, the dialectical, and the liberatory. At the existential level, the study investigates the experience of division, finitude, suffering, and the crisis of meaning characteristic of unhappy consciousness. At the dialectical level, it analyzes the movement through which the opposition between the finite self and the infinite truth is progressively transformed. Finally, at the level of liberation, it examines how the overcoming of alienation becomes possible through a transformation in consciousness and through the recognition of the unity of individual freedom and the universal.
The central question of the study is how the dialectical movement of unhappy consciousness makes possible the overcoming of alienation and the emergence of a form of reconciliation between the human being and truth. More specifically, the study asks why, in Hegel’s philosophy—particularly in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right—the meaning of human life should not be sought in an escape from suffering and finitude, but rather in the individual’s relation to the totality of Spirit (Geist).
The transition from unhappy consciousness to Reason is particularly significant in this regard. Through this transition, consciousness undergoes a transformation in its relation to truth. It gradually comes to recognize that the self-consciousness that seeks truth and the truth being sought are not absolutely alien to one another. The overcoming of alienation therefore does not consist in the simple disappearance of difference, but in the achievement of a higher form of unity in which difference and identity are mediated within the movement of Spirit.
Accordingly, the study argues that the Hegelian philosophy of life should be understood neither as an affirmation of passive resignation to suffering nor as an attempt to escape finite existence in favor of an abstract infinite. Rather, it is grounded in the dialectical transformation of the individual’s relation to finitude, universality, and Spirit. From this perspective, the experience of unhappy consciousness, despite its inherent suffering and alienation, constitutes a necessary moment in the development of self-consciousness toward a more comprehensive form of freedom and reconciliation.
Keywords: Consciousness; Unhappy Consciousness; Self-Consciousness; Hegel; Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Life; Alienation; Reconciliation; Spirit; Freedom
Philosophy and the Meaning of Life in Philosophical Theories
Heydar Bagheriasl
Professor of Law, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University of Tabriz
Abstract
The philosophy of life addresses some of the most fundamental questions in human thought: Why do we live? What makes a life meaningful? What constitutes human flourishing? What is the relationship between happiness, virtue, freedom, suffering, and death? Although the expression “meaning of life” became more explicit in modern philosophy, its underlying questions can be traced to Socratic reflections on the examined life, Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia, religious accounts of humanity’s ultimate end, and modern and existentialist discussions of freedom and responsibility. This study employs a descriptive-analytical and library-based methodology to examine major philosophical approaches to the philosophy of life. It discusses the views of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, and Viktor Frankl. It also considers contemporary debates concerning supernaturalist, naturalist, subjectivist, objectivist, and hybrid theories of meaning in life. The study argues that a meaningful life cannot be reduced to pleasure, wealth, social success, or subjective happiness. Across different philosophical traditions, self-knowledge, virtue, rationality, freedom, responsibility, love, creativity, truth, relationships, and a conscious confrontation with mortality repeatedly appear as important dimensions of meaningful existence. Contemporary philosophy likewise offers competing accounts of whether meaning requires a transcendent source or can arise within a naturalistic worldview. The study concludes that philosophy of life is best understood not as a single doctrine providing one final answer, but as a rational and critical inquiry into the values, purposes, and forms of living that make human existence intelligible and worthwhile.
Keywords: Philosophy of life, meaning in life, good life, happiness, virtue, freedom, absurdity, nihilism, existentialism, suffering, death.
English Title: The City as an Arena for Self-Creation: From Supporting Life to Enabling Ways of Living
Bita Shafaei
Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning Engineering, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tabriz Islamic Art University.
Nahideh Rezaei
Assistant Professor, Department of Architectural Engineering, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tabriz Islamic Art University.
Abstract
The city is one of the primary arenas in which everyday human life unfolds. Nevertheless, a considerable body of urban design approaches has conceptualized the relationship between space and life mainly in terms of supporting activities, facilitating behavior, promoting vitality, and improving environmental quality. Within this framework, the prevailing question is often “How does space support life?”, a question that may reduce life to a set of observable activities and behaviors. This paper shifts the focus of inquiry by asking a different question: “How can space enable people to find, construct, and recreate their own ways of living?” Adopting a qualitative approach and a conceptual-interpretive method, the study draws on theoretical literature concerning life, everyday life, self-creation, subjectivity, and urban design. The paper argues that life should not be understood merely as a given condition or a set of repetitive practices; rather, within social, cultural, economic, and spatial conditions, individuals continuously shape, interpret, and redefine their ways of living. The findings suggest that spatial qualities such as flexibility, choice, appropriation, plurality, adaptability, and openness to unforeseen uses can expand the possibilities for human action and agency. Accordingly, the role of urban design can be reframed from supporting existing forms of life toward designing the conditions of possibility for the emergence and recreation of plural ways of living.
Keywords: Everyday Life; Self-Creation; Ways of Living; Urban Design; Urban Space; Agency.
Life as an Ethical Matter
Reconstructing the Concept of “Life” in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy
Mohammad Saeed Abdollahi
Ph.D. in Moral Philosophy
Faculty Member, Research Institute for Women and Family
Email: m.saied.abdollahi@ut.ac.ir
Abstract
The concept of life in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein cannot be reduced merely to a biological phenomenon or to an isolated question concerning the meaning of life. Rather, this concept emerges in connection with the human being’s mode of encountering the world, the experience of value, and ways of living. The central aim of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between life and the ethical in Wittgenstein’s thought and to examine the possibility of reconstructing this relationship in light of his works. The main thesis is that life, within Wittgenstein’s philosophy, can be reconstructed as a horizon for understanding the ethical—a horizon in which ethics is not conceived as a set of theoretical principles and propositions, but is fundamentally intertwined with ways of living and with human beings’ relations to the world and to others. To develop this account, in addition to examining Wittgenstein’s principal works, we draw on three interpretive approaches developed by Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and Anne-Marie Christensen. We first analyze the relationship among life, the world, and value in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy. We then examine concepts such as the use of language, practical context, and the form of life in his later philosophy in order to assess the possibility of understanding ethics in relation to ways of living. Finally, we argue that reconstructing the concept of life in Wittgenstein’s thought can yield an understanding of ethics in which ethical reflection is not detached from human beings’ concrete lives, but rather acquires its meaning through the ways in which they live and through their relations to the world and to others.
Keywords
Wittgenstein; ethical life; meaning of life; value; form of life; moral philosophy
Life in the Thought of Allamah Tabataba’i
Abbas Abbaszadeh
Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, University of Tabriz
aabaszadeh@tabrizu.ac.ir
Among biologists, life is defined in terms of respiration, nutrition, growth, and reproduction, phenomena that are common to human beings, animals, and plants. Such characteristics, however, pertain more to mere survival than to life in its fuller sense. In the field of educational sciences, life has been defined as a movement from deficiency toward perfection, involving the gradual flourishing of innate potentials and the actualization of one’s faculties. Although such definitions are applicable to human beings, animals, and plants, they do not encompass God Almighty, whom we likewise affirm to be living. As a philosopher concerned with Being in its absolute sense, however, Allamah Tabataba’i defines life in terms of perception and action (idrak wa fi‘l). He argues that since God Almighty possesses the highest degree of perception and performs the greatest, most extensive, and most perfect acts—namely, the creation of beings—it follows that the highest degree of life belongs to Him. Employing a descriptive-analytical and library-based methodology, this study seeks to elucidate and present Allamah Tabataba’i’s position on the question of life. According to Allamah Tabataba’i, the Qur’anic concepts of faith and righteous action (iman wa ‘amal salih) constitute a more comprehensive expression of perception and action, and their integrated manifestation is referred to as “the good life” (al-hayat al-tayyibah). From this perspective, the theoretical and practical felicity of the human being consists in strengthening the two wings of knowledge and volition. It should be noted that, just as faith and righteous action must coexist, perception and action likewise constitute life only when they are realized together rather than independently of one another. Allamah Tabataba’i divides the stages of human existence into six periods, which he designates as the Six Existential Realms (al-akwān al-sittah): the Realm of the Primordial Covenant (‘Ālam al-Dharr); the Paternal or Procreative Stage (‘Ālam al-Aslāb); the Maternal/Womb Stage (‘Ālam al-Arhām); the Worldly Life (al-Dunyā); the Intermediate Realm (‘Ālam al-Barzakh), namely, the realm after death; and the Hereafter, namely, the realm of Resurrection, gathering, and final reconstitution. In Allamah Tabataba’i’s view, the first five realms or stages function for the human being as a path and a succession of stations along the journey, whereas only the sixth realm can be regarded as the ultimate end toward which the preceding stages are directed. The worldly realm (al-Dunyā), by virtue of the human being’s conscious exercise of free choice, constitutes the most important and critical stage of human life. This freedom of choice is manifested in an implicit and primordial form in the Realm of the Primordial Covenant, where the human being responded affirmatively to the divine question, “Am I not your Lord?” (A-lastu bi-rabbikum?). It is then manifested explicitly and concretely in the worldly realm, where the human being’s fidelity to that primordial covenant is put to the test. From Allamah Tabataba’i’s perspective, life encompasses multiple levels and degrees. It begins with material life and progresses toward the realization of the human being as an “intellective and God-oriented living being” (hayy muta’allih).
Keywords: Ḥayy, Life, Material Life, Spiritual Life, Allamah Tabataba’i
Is Living More Than Being?
A Reflection on the Metaphysics of Life
Soraya Abbasi Gheidari
Assistant Professor, Department of History Education, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran
Email: ir.ac.cfu@abbasi.s
Abstract
The question of “life” is not merely a question of how a living being continues to exist; rather, it goes back to one of the most fundamental questions in philosophy: the relationship between being, living, and meaning. Adopting an analytical-critical approach, this article seeks to demonstrate that reducing life to mere biological existence overlooks an essential dimension of the reality of living. The central question of the study is whether a philosophical distinction can be established between “being alive” and “living” and, if such a distinction is possible, what its ontological component consists in. Accordingly, through a critical re-examination of selected discussions in metaphysics, phenomenology, and existential philosophy, the article considers the concept of living not merely as a biological condition, but as a mode of the realization of existence in relation to consciousness, time, possibility, choice, and meaning.
The argument of the article is based on the premise that “being” may refer to the actualization of existence, whereas “living” entails a particular mode of relating to oneself, the world, and the possibilities lying ahead. From this perspective, meaning is neither merely a pre-given feature of the world nor solely a product of individual will; rather, it emerges through the relation between the lived being and the horizon of the world. Ultimately, the article proposes that the metaphysics of life cannot be understood without moving beyond simplistic dichotomies such as life/meaning, necessity/freedom, and being/becoming. The conclusion is that the fundamental question of life may be not “Why is a living being alive?” but rather “How does being become living?”—a question that may open up the possibility of redefining the concept of life within contemporary philosophy.
Keywords: Metaphysics of Life, Living, Ontology, Meaning, Consciousness, Becoming, Existential Philosophy
From Wet Ontology to Hydro-Ontology: Rethinking Life as Relational Becoming
Elmira Bazregarzadeh
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
e.bazregar@tabrizu.ac.r & bazregarzadeh.elmira@gmail.com
Abstract
What does it mean to live? This question grows urgent when life is seen not as an autonomous property of bounded organisms but as a material, relational, and continuously unfolding process. This paper proposes hydro-ontology as a philosophical framework for rethinking life through the material dynamics of water. Bringing Steve Mentz’s wet ontology into dialogue with Sidney I. Dobrin’s blue ecocriticism, Astrida Neimanis’s hydrofeminism, Stacy Alaimo’s trans-corporeality, and Karen Barad’s agential realism, it argues that water is more than an environmental object or metaphor: it offers a material paradigm for reconceiving the conditions and modes of living. Hydro-ontology identifies five interconnected characteristics of life: fluidity, permeability, relationality, processualism, and generativity. From this view, life is not a fixed state but an ongoing process of becoming; living bodies are porous formations constituted through continuous material exchanges rather than autonomous entities; and life itself emerges relationally through interactions among human, nonhuman, and ecological forces. Water thus becomes both a condition of life and a philosophical model for understanding what it means to live. The paper also considers the ethical implications of this aqueous conception, arguing that recognizing our watery constitution demands an ethics of responsiveness, vulnerability, and care. Finally, through a reading of Alice Oswald’s Dart, it shows how literature can enact life as fluid, relational, embodied, temporal, and generative. Hydro-ontology reframes the philosophy of life as a philosophy of relational becoming, challenging the distinction between being alive and living and proposing that to live is fundamentally to exist in relation.
Keywords: Blue Humanities, Generativity, Hydro-Ontology, Permeability, Relational Becoming, Terrestrial Bias
Life is beautiful
Ahad Hosseini
An artist and sculptor from Tabriz
ahad.hosseini.museum@gmail.com
Abstract
I have thought a great deal about what life is like, and in this regard, I asked myself this question: Is life beautiful? I found no answer that seemed more logical than this: SINCE I DO NOT COMMIT SUICIDE, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. But what is the beauty of life? Knowing that the knowledge and feelings of every man are different, each will have a different vision of beauty. However, I believe that the beauty of life is a pleasure or a joy that each man can find in his own actions as well as in his relations with the world.
It is clear that one can enjoy this pleasure as long as it does not hinder the pleasure of others. Let us not forget that the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaims that "liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others: accordingly, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those that secure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. These limits can only be determined by law." Music, dance, singing, poetry, love, friendship, and others still, constitute the apparent beauty of the world. I think that among all these appearances, three are "essential beauties": GREAT LOVE, EFFORT, and REASON. It is evident that only a small number attain these three beauties. We cannot hide the fact that they are normally and intimately accompanied by a sort of asceticism, of sacrifice, where resides a passion difficult to explain. Indeed, perseverance in love, the suffering of the mountaineer to reach the summit, or that of the scientist to always go further, are forms of asceticism.The admiration that we hold for these men comes from the numerous difficulties they endure. For this reason, without a doubt, Greek philosophy thinks that among all things, the most difficult is the best. The bringing of a child into the world would be, in this case, another "essential beauty" exceptionally reserved for women. Between great love, science, and effort, it is impossible for me to say which of these three beauties is the best.
Finally, the fusion of the three gives me, for my part, the perfection that I would call: THE PASSION FOR LIFE, and which I would define as follows: a great effort, accompanied by love and directed by reason.
Lived Time versus Spatialized Time: The Meaning of Life and Death
Ali Hosseini,
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Yasouj University
a.hoseini@yu.ac.ir
Abstract
Socrates, by stating that "life is a rehearsal for death," has established a fundamental opposition between two experiences of time: one that narrates lived time as a phenomenological quality, inner and dependent on human consciousness and embodiment, and the other, spatialized time, conceived as a measurable, linear, and external quantity. The central question is how this duality shapes our understanding of the meaning of life and death. In the phenomenological tradition, lived time is not an empty container, but rather the context of human existential experience in which past, present, and future are intertwined. Death in this framework is revealed not merely as a biological event at the end of the timeline, but as a fundamental possibility and being-toward-death (Heidegger), which bestows authenticity upon life. In contrast, spatialized time, which is the legacy of modern science and the mathematical conception of time, reduces death to a point on the calendar and life to a collection of qualityless moments. Qualitative research on terminally ill patients shows how, in the face of temporal limitation, lived time is experienced as a pendulum movement between opposing dimensions (fast/slow, safe/unsafe, full/empty), and it is in this very experience that the existential meaning of life and death is revealed to the subject. The conclusion is that the question of time is an ontological question: the choice between lived time and spatialized time is in fact a choice between two attitudes toward life and death; one in which death strips life of meaning, and another in which the awareness of death is itself the founder of the authentic meaning of life.
Keywords: lived time, spatialized time, phenomenology, death, meaning of life, Heidegger
A Critique of Immediacy in the Project of Returning Philosophy to Life: A Critical Reading of Phenomenology and Masoud Omid’s Proposal in Light of the Critique of Pure Experience
Sajjad Ypusefi
Researcher in philosophy and psychology
Abstract
The dominant tradition of philosophizing in Iran—particularly within its orthodox and scholastic orientations—has long severed its organic tie to the real world and concrete human suffering by withdrawing into formal abstractions and self-referential subtleties. In response to this theoretical stagnation and enervation, Masoud Omid, deploying notions such as *“Philosophy for Life”* and *“Philosophy of Life,”* seeks to retrieve philosophy from its metaphysical ivory tower, transposing it back into the matrix of concrete existence. In doing so, he endeavors to reconfigure philosophy as an existential, therapeutic instrument and a guide to praxis amid everyday conflicts, existential meaninglessness, and suffering. This emancipatory impulse carries a profound resonance with the classical phenomenological project—a tradition that, from Edmund Husserl’s critique of scientific formalization in *The Crisis of European Sciences* to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s investigations into embodiment, has continually sought, under the imperative of a *“return to the things themselves”*, to bracket imposing theoretical dogmas and access the pre-theoretical terrain of the *“lifeworld”* (*Lebenswelt*). Inherent to both projects is an alluring presupposition: that anterior to the intervention of conceptual categories and linguistic matrices, there flows an untouched, dynamic, and pellucid stratum of “lived experience” (*Erlebnis*), by drawing near to which philosophy might recover its authentic vitality.
Nevertheless, the core problematic of this study unfolds precisely here: Is a return to such a pure, pre-conceptual experience fundamentally tenable, or does it inevitably ensnare itself in a renewed myth-making? Mobilizing the critical apparatus of Todd McGowan—specifically articulated in *Emancipation After Hegel*, which orchestrates a rigorous synthesis of Hegelian dialectics and Lacanian psychoanalytic deconstruction—this inquiry demonstrates that the claim to access “immediacy” is both an epistemological illusion and an unconscious fantasy. Reinterpreting the chapter on “Sense-Certainty” in Hegel’s *Phenomenology of Spirit*, McGowan establishes that the sheerest, most unadulterated confrontation with the world turns out to be the most abstract and vacuous the moment it strives to be grasped or articulated; every experience is, from its very inception, caught within a web of mediation (*Vermittlung*), negation, and linguistic differentiation. Viewed psychoanalytically, the drive to flee the clutches of the concept and regress to a pre-linguistic experiential realm constitutes a palliative fantasy—an illusory return to pre-Oedipal completeness that disavows the constitutive lack (*manque*) of the subject, blinding itself to the reality that tension, split, and the unconscious are always already lodged within the very fabric of perceptual experience. Furthermore, at the sociological level, no pristine psychic experience can manifest outside matrices of power, discursive formations, and objective social structures such that it could ever be encountered in its unmediated purity.
The fundamental thesis of this article is that Omid’s project of summoning philosophy back to life can guard against lapsing into an abstract romanticism and the illusion of purity only if the domain of life is not conflated with a pristine, pre-conceptual realm. Human existence unfolds not across an uncorrupted landscape unburdened by symbols, but squarely within contradictions, linguistic mediations, psychic traumas, and social antagonisms. Thus, for philosophy to return to life, it need not beat a retreat behind concepts; rather, it must constitute itself as the concrete mediation through which these contradictions are comprehended and sustained.
Keywords: Masoud Omid, philosophy of life, phenomenology, lifeworld, Todd McGowan, critique of the unmediated, mediation, myth of pure experience, unconscious subject.
New Existentialism and the Return of Old Questions from Colin Wilson's Perspective
Sosan Ghasemi Heydari,
MA in Political Science, Tarbiat Modares University, and PhD in Post-Islamic Iranian History
Ali Hosseini,
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Yasouj University
Abstract
New existentialism, chiefly associated with the name of Colin Wilson and his book "Introduction to the New Existentialism," is a response to the nihilistic and absurdist dead end to which old existentialism (represented by Sartre and Camus) led. This intellectual current seeks, by returning to the fundamental questions of existence—but this time with an optimistic and evolutionist outlook—to find a way to give meaning to the life of modern man. Traditional existentialism, especially in its Sartrean reading, emphasized the contingency of existence and the priority of existence over essence; the logical consequence of this view was the emptiness and meaninglessness of the world. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus accepted this emptiness and called on man to rebel against it, but he offered no final answer to why one should live. Heidegger, too, spoke of the existential homelessness of modern man—a condition in which man no longer encounters his own essence and the question of the meaning of being has been forgotten.
Colin Wilson examines existentialism from two perspectives: old (pessimistic) and new (optimistic). Wilson's new existentialism, unlike the Sartrean version that halts at absurdity, is based on "the intentionality of consciousness." This concept, borrowed from Husserl, means that consciousness is always directed toward something and can be used as a tool for discovering values and meaning. Wilson regards Nietzsche as the true pioneer of this current, because by introducing the Superman and criticizing passivity and herd-following, he opened a path for overcoming nihilism.
The central axis of new existentialism is the return to the same eternal and old questions with which man has always been grappling: What is the meaning of existence? "How should one live?" And are values merely human affairs, or do they have a foundation in the structure of being?
The difference is that these questions no longer lead to predetermined metaphysical answers or to absolute absurdity, but are regarded as an intellectual adventure and a science of happiness. Wilson suggests that by expanding consciousness and employing will and attention, every day can become a arena for realizing human capacities and discovering new values.
The conclusion is that new existentialism is an attempt to save existential philosophy from the trap of the nihilism to which it itself had contributed. Nevertheless, critics believe that Wilson's optimism may lead to a kind of simplification or neglect of the tragic aspects of human existence. Nonetheless, raising anew the fundamental questions about meaning, value, and human destiny, in an age when the forgetting of being and homelessness have become the dominant discourse, remains an undeniable necessity.
Keywords: New Existentialism, Colin Wilson, Old Questions and Existential Philosophy
Philosophy’s Return to Life Through the Body: A Critique of Objectivism in Michel Henry’s Phenomenology
Sajjad Ypusefi
Researcher in philosophy and psychology
Abstract
One of the fundamental dilemmas of modern philosophy is the gradual estrangement of philosophical thought from concrete life and lived experience. This rift can be traced, in part, to how the relation between the subject and the body has been conceptualized: the body has been progressively detached from the domain of lived experience and reduced to a natural, observable, measurable, and scientifically explicable object. In this trajectory, not only has the body been marginalized as an essential dimension of human existence, but a singular mode of the manifestation of life has also been occluded by the objectivist paradigm of knowledge—a mode of appearing wherein life, prior to becoming an object of observation and cognition, reveals itself within lived experience through affectivity, pain, joy, striving, and corporeal sensation.
Drawing upon the phenomenology of Michel Henry, this paper contends that philosophy’s return to life cannot be construed merely as appending "life" or "the body" to the catalogue of philosophical topics; rather, such a return demands a radical rethinking of the very concept of *appearing* (*phénoménalité*). The central question is: How can the critique of objectivism in Michel Henry’s phenomenology transform the body into a conduit for philosophy’s return to concrete life? The paper hypothesizes that philosophy’s crisis in confronting life does not stem merely from an oversight of the body, but is rooted in the reduction of appearing to the paradigm of the object’s manifestation before an intentional subject. Within this paradigm, what is deemed real is primarily that which can stand opposite consciousness, to be observed, quantified, and objectively described; whereas life, in Henry’s sense, precedes all objectification, being experienced in and for itself.
Accordingly, the paper first interrogates the concept of objectivism, demonstrating how the scientific-objective model of knowledge drives a wedge between "life" and "that which is observable and explicable about life." Subsequently, by invoking Henry’s distinction between the objective body (*Körper*) and the lived body or flesh (*chair* / *Leib*), it demonstrates that the body cannot be apprehended merely as a physical entity among other worldly objects. Prior to being an intentional object of perception, the body is that through which suffering, joy, effort, desire, capability, and vulnerability are experienced. From this vantage point, the body is not merely a biological entity, but an immanent mode of life’s self-manifestation.
Next, the paper examines the foundational concept of life's self-manifestation or self-affection (*auto-affection*) in Henry’s philosophy. In his radical phenomenology, life does not reveal itself via an external relation between subject and object; rather, it experiences itself in an immediate, immanent, and non-intentional pathic intimacy. Pain exemplifies this condition: before becoming an object of observation or a proposition for description, pain is lived in the very immediacy of suffering itself. Hence, life cannot be adequately grasped within an epistemological framework predicated on exterior observation and objectification. This demarcation makes it possible to distinguish between "the body as an object of the natural sciences" and "the body as the locus of life’s self-revelation."
The paper then illuminates how Henry’s phenomenological analysis bears upon the historical problem of philosophy’s return to life. If life is experienced prior to any objectification—within the flesh and as an affective self-revelation—philosophy cannot return to life merely by engaging in the objective study of biological, psychological, or sociological phenomena. Returning to life entails retrieving a stratum of experience wherein the human being, before becoming a detached spectator of the world, is an embodied, affected, and living agent.
Within this framework, the paper bridges Edmund Husserl’s critique of objectivism with Michel Henry’s more radical project. Through the concept of the life-world (*Lebenswelt*), Husserl demonstrated that the objective sciences are grounded upon the bedrock of prescientific, lived experience. Henry, however, shifts the inquiry to a more primordial level, interrogating how the very "appearing of life" is possible. From this perspective, if Husserl speaks of the "forgetting of the life-world," Henry brings to light an even deeper crisis: the forgetting of life itself and its intrinsic mode of auto-affection.
Ultimately, the paper argues that the body functions as the mediating threshold between philosophy and concrete life, situated continuously at the nexus of internal experience and the external world, passivity and action, suffering and capability, the subject and the world. Consequently, philosophy’s return to life does not merely denote the introduction of a new subject matter; it requires an ontological shift in how philosophy conceives of manifestation, experience, and subjectivity. From Michel Henry’s perspective, this shift begins with acknowledging that life feels and reveals itself in the flesh long before it can ever become an object of theoretical knowledge.
Thus, the body ceases to be a marginal topic in philosophy; rather, it emerges as a foundational pathway through which philosophy can overcome objectivism and return to concrete life.
Keywords: Michel Henry, phenomenology of life, lived body (flesh), self-manifestation, auto-affection, objectivism, concrete life, phenomenology, life-world (*Lebenswelt*).
Re-reading the Philosophy of Life from the Perspective of Human Agency: From Choice to Existential Perfection
Dr. Massoud Zeinolabedin
PhD Graduate of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4172-2777
massoudzz@yahoo.com
Abstract
This article seeks to propose human agency as a fundamental basis for re-reading the philosophy of life. Its central question is whether the relation among choice, the meaning of life, and existential realization can be explicated on the basis of agency. The article's hypothesis is that meaning, identity, authenticity, and directionality of life cannot be fully understood without reference to a human being capable of attributing the course of his life, to some extent, to himself. Accordingly, instead of beginning with the question "What is the meaning of life?", a more fundamental question is posed: "How can a human being regard life as his own life and participate in its realization?" The research method is conceptual analysis and critical reconstruction, drawing on the capacities of certain discussions in modern philosophy and Islamic philosophy. The article first distinguishes the concept of agency from mere activity, free will, and volition; it then examines choice as an existential situation, relying on William James's analysis and comparing it with Clifford. Subsequently, drawing on Avicenna's analysis of the soul and Mulla Sadra's theory of substantial motion and the soul's perfection, the relation between voluntary action and human existential realization is demonstrated. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical limitations of agency-including economic pressure, social conformity, habit, and technology-and the distinction between formal and real choice are examined. The conclusion is that agency is not a sufficient condition for meaning, but is an important condition for its personal realization; the human being is a situated agent who, within conditions, determines his relation to the possibilities of life.
Keywords: Human agency; philosophy of life; choice; existential perfection; meaning of life
The Transition from Instrumental Life to Human Flourishing: An Anthropological Re-reading of the Theory of Fitra (Innate Nature) in the Thought of Professor Motahhari
Habibollah Kazemkhani
Assistant Professor, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University
Abstract
Instrumental life has exposed humans to being reduced to a set of productive, economic, and consumer roles and functions, transforming the question of the purpose of human life into one of the significant philosophical issues of the contemporary world. The central question of this research is whether it is possible to find a basis within the human existential structure for transcending purely instrumental life and moving toward human flourishing. Using an analytical approach and re-reading the theory of Fitra (innate nature) in the thought of Professor Morteza Motahhari, the present article seeks to address this issue. The research findings indicate that in Motahhari’s intellectual system, Fitra is not merely the origin of certain human inclinations; rather, as a formative structure, it directs human beings toward truth, goodness, beauty, and perfection. On this basis, Fitra provides the possibility of distinguishing between human ends and purely instrumental goals, and in conjunction with reason and freedom, it creates the context for the actualization of innate inclinations within human choice and action. From this perspective, instrumental life is formed not in the act of using tools and material resources itself, but in a situation where the means replaces the end, and the value of a human being is measured by the extent of their functionality and utility. Therefore, transcending instrumental life does not entail the negation of material life or technology; rather, it requires the readjustment of the relationship between means and ends, and the positioning of material resources in the service of human perfection. Consequently, the theory of Fitra in Motahhari’s thought can be considered an anthropological basis for criticizing the reduction of humans to instrumental functions and for explaining the possibility of transitioning from instrumental life to human flourishing.
Keywords: Fitra (Innate Nature), Instrumental Life, Human Flourishing, Anthropology, Teleology, Freedom, Professor Motahhari.
Suicide and the Crisis of Meaning in the Thought of Kierkegaard and Camus: A Comparative Analysis of Despair, Absurdity, and the Possibility of Living
Habibollah Kazemkhani
Assistant Professor, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University
Abstract
Suicide is one of the most complex issues at the intersection of psychology, sociology, medicine, and philosophy. Although contemporary empirical and clinical approaches have highlighted intrapsychic factors and environmental components, such as social isolation and the breakdown of communal bonds, the problem of suicide also possesses an existential and philosophical layer that relates to the way humans experience finitude, suffering, death, freedom, and, in particular, the “possibility of living.” The present research aims to analyze, comparatively, the structure of the existential crisis associated with suicide in the thought of two influential thinkers of the existentialist tradition: Søren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus. The fundamental question of the research is how these two thinkers, despite belonging to contrasting theological and atheistic horizons, explain the crisis of meaning, and with what ontological and epistemological foundations they consider suicide not as an authentic response to the existential crisis, but as a dead-end in confronting the human condition. The research method is descriptive-analytical and based on conceptual comparison through an investigation of the primary works of both thinkers; whereby their conceptual apparatuses are first reconstructed independently, and then the components of the crisis, the perception of death, the confrontation with suicide, and the horizon for exiting the dead-end are examined comparatively.
The findings of the research indicate that the structure of the crisis of meaning in these two lines of thought rests on two distinct conceptual axes. In Kierkegaard’s system of thought, the crisis is an intra-structural phenomenon within the status of the “self,” originating from incompatibility in the synthesis of the opposites that constitute it, including “finitude/infinitude” and “possibility/necessity,” and, most importantly, from a disruption in the human existential relationship with the transcendent Source. This state manifests as “despair,” a form of internal death that is more lethal than physical death, because physical suicide cannot resolve the fundamental problem of “becoming a self” and the human relationship with eternity, and thus, it does not constitute a way to escape despair. In contrast, in Camus’s system of thought, the crisis arises not from a severance of the human relationship with a transcendent Source, but from the inevitable friction between “the human desire for clarity and meaning” and “the irrational silence of the world,” which leads to the experience of the “absurd.” Camus rejects physical suicide because by eliminating life, it eliminates one of the two sides of the absurd condition—namely, the conscious human and their desire for meaning. Furthermore, he views “philosophical suicide” as an escape from the absurd condition and a retreat into metaphysical consolations, incompatible with intellectual honesty.
Therefore, the primary distinction between the two thinkers becomes apparent in how they confront the existential contradiction and the possibility of living: Kierkegaard sees the way out of despair in establishing an authentic relationship between the “self” and God and the realization of faith—a relationship that, in his horizon of thought, is linked to the “leap of faith” and the process of becoming a self. In contrast, Camus considers the condition for authentic living to be the conscious acceptance of the absurd condition, maintaining unflinching awareness, and continuously confronting the contradiction through “rebellion.” From this perspective, both thinkers, despite fundamental differences in theological and atheistic foundations, do not consider suicide an authentic solution to the crisis; however, their positive basis for the possibility of living is entirely different: one rests on restoring the human relationship with the Transcendent, and the other on rebellion and living without resorting to metaphysical meaning.
The analytical outcome of this study is the formulation of the concept of “existential resilience”; a concept that in this research, as a conceptual construct rather than an empirical or clinical one, signifies the human ability to maintain and reconstruct their relationship with life in the face of suffering, despair, and meaninglessness. This concept is derived from comparing the two different horizons of Kierkegaard and Camus and shows that the possibility of living can be sought not in the elimination of suffering or the denial of crisis, but in how humans confront their own existential condition. Although the findings of this research, due to their philosophical and text-based nature, lack direct empirical or clinical application in psychiatric intervention situations, they can provide a theoretical perspective for interdisciplinary research in the field of mental health by introducing a level of existential analysis. Accordingly, resistance to suicide is not merely analyzable through avoiding suffering or denying the absurd, but philosophically, through reviving the possibility of living and maintaining the human connection with life in the midst of fundamental existential contradictions.
Keywords: Suicide, Crisis of Meaning, Kierkegaard, Camus, Existential Resilience, Despair, Absurdity, Rebellion.
Well-Being and the Good Life: A Conceptual Reframing
Babak Abbasi
Assistant professor, Department of Philosophy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Email: babbaasi@iau.ir
Abstract
In the contemporary value theory and moral philosophy, discussions of the highest and best human good have sometimes treated the good life and well-being (or happiness) as equivalent or even identical concepts, and sometimes regarded one as a component of the other. Consequently, in addition to questions concerning the nature of these concepts, confusion has arisen regarding their relation to one another. This paper offers a conceptual investigation of the relationship between the two concepts and of the different conceptions of each. After a critical review of three prominent ways of construing their relationship, I argue that the good life is best understood as the central and most general concept—the explanandum—for which various substantive accounts may be offered. Within this framework, well-being is one such account—neither the sole account nor necessarily the best one.
Reconsidering the Foundations of Living in Hafez’s Ghazals
Asadollah Vahed
Professor of Persian Literature, University of Tabriz
avahed@tabrizu.ac.ir
Abstract
Human beings are inquisitive and seek to understand the mysteries of existence. As conscious beings, their perception of existence and life differs fundamentally from that of animals. For animals, life is essentially a matter of eating and sleeping; for human beings, however, questions concerning the nature of existence and life, as well as how one should live, have always occupied the human mind. Accordingly, each person develops a different understanding of the meaning of life according to their awareness, perception, knowledge, and artistic sensibility. Yet a common element underlying these diverse perspectives is the pursuit of a life lived in accordance with one’s deepest desires and values. Exploring how artists, particularly poets, have responded to this question is therefore of considerable interest.In Persian ghazal poetry, Hafez is among the poets whose works devote substantial attention to reflections on existence, humanity, death, love, joy, suffering, destiny, and the relationship between human beings and the world. Accordingly, through a consideration of a range of fundamental concepts, contradictions, and binary oppositions in his Divan, it is possible to reconstruct Hafez’s perspective on life and his conception of the desirable way of living. Employing a descriptive-analytical method and relying on a close textual reading of Hafez’s ghazals, the present study seeks to identify and analyze the principal components of his philosophy of life.The findings indicate that, in Hafez’s worldview, awareness of the transience of the world and the brevity of human life does not lead to a rejection of life’s value; rather, it emphasizes the necessity of making the most of the opportunity to live. Love, rendi (the ethos of the free-spirited and nonconformist libertine), loyalty, concealing the faults of others, liberation from hypocrisy, seizing the moment, and embracing joy despite the constraints and hardships of the times constitute some of the most important elements of this way of living. Among these, rendi is not merely an ethical, artistic, or literary concept; rather, it functions as a practical philosophy of life and may be regarded as a model for how to live in resistance to hypocrisy and ostentation.Therefore, Hafez’s philosophy of life cannot be considered a systematic philosophical doctrine in the conventional sense. Rather, it should be understood as an interconnected constellation of ontological, anthropological, and ethical perspectives articulated through the poetic language of his ghazals.
Keywords: Hafez, philosophy of life, hypocrisy, rendi, love, death, transience
Which one?
Length of life or life area
Adel Dabbagh Mohammadi Nassab
Prof. of Ecology, Department of Plant Ecophysiology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz
Email: adeldabb@yahoo.com, adeldabb@gmail.com
Abstract
In biology, the parameter of lifespan is measured and considered for living organisms. In human life, longevity, viewed as an individual's opportunity to live in this world, has gained great significance. In this regard medical science strives to extend it. By definition, longevity represents the span between one's entry into world and departure from it. Here, I would like to briefly discuss another dimension of this opportunity and time span: the "area" of life, or the product of life's length and its breadth. To illustrate this simply, let us to bring out the following example. Consider two individuals, both with a lifespan of seventy years: the first has a width of life of ۱, while the second has a width of life of ۴. Although both have the same duration of life, their "areas" differ, the first has an area of ۷۰, and the second, ۲۸۰. This fourfold difference in area implies that the second individual effectively lived a life four times greater in scope than the first. While this definition may seem simple in mathematical terms, the question arises: what do the concepts of "breadth of life" and "area of life" actually mean in the real world? and how can they be altered or attained? Mystics have highlighted the importance of the width of life, often considering it more valuable than the length of one's lifespan, in the past. When we speak of the "area of life, this refers to the importance of both dimensions: length and breadth. Philosophy, wisdom, ethics, art, innovation… are disciplines capable of enhancing the breadth, and consequently the overall area of life. Therefore we need of teachings that broaden our lives and give them with deeper meaning and significance, now. Elaborating on this topic would require many pages, yet I want to express my speech in simple terms. I come to the Threshold of life alley. When we tearfully parted from our mother's womb, we set out, hobbling along, to play in childhood, to dream in youth, to strive in middle age, and to yearn regrets in old age. One must travel this alley, a path spanning the length of a lifetime. Some walk with eyes wide open, facing forward, moving swiftly and striving to get ahead, a sack upon their shoulder, intent on gathering whatever had materially value. Sometimes, an extra gunny is needed, the bar grows heavier, and the safe journey becomes harder. Then comes the moment at the alley’s end, a sudden awakening, a time to shake off all one carries; everything must be set down and left behind. And another alley, and a different path ahead. Without attention to all that could be seen, this life passed along a narrow path, limited role, goals and endeavors. Perhaps one could walk the alley, going to breadths: With wide, observant eyes, Joining in the smiles of children, wiping one’s tear by sleeve, taking the hand of one weary from the journey; rough path Smoothing for all, an old wall painting , a broken cartwheel repairing, happy song to soothe sorrowful hearts singing, with fellow travelers warm conversation , placing a fallen brick back atop a wall, caravan’s lamp bearer in the dark night, carrying and donating a sack full of kindness, and at times, writing the stories of the events and travelers. And at the end of the alley, light load, tranquil heart, And at the moment of farewell, many hands clapping and tears of parting in eyes; stable feet in turning away from the world alley, And a blessed step into life within the world of lights. Yes, dear fellow traveler: through playing the many roles and by combining life with art, music, painting, creation, invention, innovation, writing, love, ethics, humanity, philosophy, and wisdom… we can traverse this brief life across a slightly wider expanse. To me, these are simple language of expressing the life width, the philosophy and main purpose of our creation and the secret of life!
Come, hand in hand pass through the alley with joy, build up and bring it to life
The Question of the Ontological Basis of “Affirmation of Life” in Andrew Feenberg’s Critique of Technology
Camellia Talei Bafghi,
Corresponding Author, PhD Graduate in Philosophy of Art, Tehran, Iran,
Maryam Soltani Kouhanestani
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili (uma), Ardabil, Iran
m.soltani.philosophy@gmail.com
Abstract:
Andrew Feenberg does not regard technology as a collection of neutral tools. Instead, he argues that social and political relations shape its design and use. However, critiquing dominant forms of technology raises a philosophical question: if the existing technological order is only one possible form of technological organization, what place do unrealized possibilities for human beings and nature occupy in reality? Focusing on the concept of “affirmation of life,” this article examines whether Feenberg’s critical theory of technology provides an ontological basis for these possibilities and how such a basis relates to the critique of technological domination. Through an analytical and critical approach, the study examines the relationship between human and natural capacities, their actual conditions, and the possibility of changing technical structures. The central argument is that the ontological question in Feenberg’s critique of technology concerns the relationship between the possibilities of human beings and nature and the historical forms in which they are actualized. Since existing technical structures arise from particular social relations, they cannot be understood as the final expression of the capacities of human beings and nature. However, the existence of unrealized possibilities does not, by itself, justify their actualization or establish that their realization is desirable. In Feenberg’s theory, the critique of technology is connected to the interests of social groups, democratic participation, and changes in relations of domination. Examining the ontological basis of “affirmation of life” therefore requires an account of how these possibilities relate to the criteria used to justify the choice among alternative forms of technology.
Keywords: Andrew Feenberg; Affirmation of Life; Ontological Foundations; Possibility and Actuality; Critical Theory of Technology.
The Negative Structure of Possible Life and the Philosophy of Life: Being-Able-to-Be (Seinkönnen) and Nullity (Nichtigkeit) in Heidegger
Maryam Soltani Kouhanestani
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili (uma), Ardabil, Iran
m.soltani.philosophy@gmail.com
Camellia Talei Bafghi,
Corresponding Author, PhD Graduate in Philosophy of Art, Tehran, Iran,
Abstract
In Being and Time, Dasein's being-possible involves a form of nullity that cannot be explained simply as choosing one possibility and giving up others. This article examines nullity's place within the structure of Dasein's being-possible. It considers two aspects of nullity. The first arises from thrownness (Geworfenheit), since Dasein has chosen neither the beginning of its existence nor the conditions in which it finds itself. The second appears in projection (Entwurf), since Dasein, in opening up and pursuing any possibility, always leaves other possibilities aside. These two aspects are not separate, however, because projection always proceeds from a situation into which Dasein has already been thrown. However, nullity cannot be attributed solely to the limitations of thrownness, since projection itself involves determining possibilities and excluding others. The article therefore argues that nullity is neither simply the result of choosing one possibility nor a limitation imposed upon being-able-to-be. Rather, it belongs to the structure of Dasein's being-possible. Dasein's finitude does not mean only that it cannot realize all its possibilities. It's being-possible also entails that it cannot determine the ground of its own existence and must set other possibilities aside. Heidegger's analysis thus indicates that human life has a negative and finite structure. From this perspective, authentic existence means taking responsibility for one's own existential possibilities within thrownness and in awareness of finitude.
Keywords: Dasein; Being-Able-to-Be (Seinkönnen); Nullity (Nichtigkeit); Thrownness (Geworfenheit); Projection (Entwurf); Being-Possible.
A Kantian Reading of the Postulates of Practical Reason (Freedom, Immortality, God) and Their Necessity for Giving Meaning to Life
Ali Hosseini
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Yasouj University
a.hoseini@yu.ac.ir
Hamid Behrouzi Nasrabad
Philosophy Student, Yasouj University
Abstract
Within the framework of the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, Kant introduces three practical postulates—freedom, the immortality of the soul, and God. This article shows that these postulates are presented not as cognitively justified propositions, but as necessary presuppositions for establishing moral action and for securing the principles of life's meaningfulness and moral hope. By analyzing Kant's philosophical foundations, the role of each of these postulates is examined in the correlation between virtue and happiness, the possibility of moral self-creation, and the preservation of human dignity. The conclusion is that, for Kant, the meaning and directedness of the moral life become possible only in light of the practical acceptance of these postulates; without these practical assents, theoretical reason refrains from responding to human practical needs.
Keywords: Kant, practical reason, freedom, immortality, God, meaning, virtue, happiness, dignity.
The Crisis of the "Lifeworld" in Modern Politics: A Phenomenological Analysis of Political Alienation
Reza Mahmoudoghli
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili
Abstract
This article seeks to offer a fresh analysis of "political alienation"—viewed as one of the fundamental crises of modern politics—by drawing upon the concept of the "lifeworld" within the phenomenological tradition and re-examining it through the lens of contemporary political theory. The central question is: How have modern political institutions—originally established to facilitate communicative action and realize collective life—transformed into structures that alienate subjects from their own "lifeworld"? To address this, the article first reconstructs the conceptual genealogy of the "lifeworld" from Husserl to Habermas, demonstrating how this concept—serving as a pre-reflective horizon of meaning and an intersubjective context for action—can provide a basis for identifying modern forms of alienation. Subsequently, utilizing Hannah Arendt’s phenomenological analysis of the "search for meaning in a meaningless world," the article argues that modern political alienation is not merely a psycho-social attitude but an existential-political condition rooted in the collapse of the shared space of action and speech. Arendt demonstrates that in the modern world, processes of alienation—from the world, the self, and others—deprive the subject of the capacity to be "at home in the world" and erode the intersubjective space of political action. Drawing on contemporary empirical research regarding the "democracy-politics paradox," the following section explains how citizens simultaneously remain committed to democratic values while harboring deep dissatisfaction with the performance of political systems. This paradox—described in political science literature through concepts such as "political alienation," "institutional distrust," and "democratic disaffection"—is interpreted within a phenomenological framework as a sign of the colonization of the "lifeworld" by abstract systems of power and money. Subsequently, relying on contemporary analyses that view alienation as a "situated and relational" process, it is argued that political alienation is not a static state but a dynamic process generated and reproduced through the interaction between subjects and institutions. This analysis, which elevates alienation from a "subjective category" to a "socio-political relationship," enables a deeper critique of modern political institutions. Finally, utilizing the concepts of "communicative action" and the "ideal speech situation," the reclamation of the "lifeworld" from systemic domination is formulated as a politico-philosophical project. The concluding argument posits that the critique of political alienation is not merely a theoretical exercise but a prerequisite for reconstructing the meaning of life in the public sphere and revitalizing politics as the arena for the emergence of "intersubjective life."
Keywords: Lifeworld, political alienation, political phenomenology, communicative action, critical theory.
The Philosophy of Passage and Sanctification of Life: Analyzing Traditional Birth Rituals and Lived Islam in Mazandaran Folklore
Bamshad Hekmatshoartabari
Asistant Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Humanities, Yasouj University, Yasouj, Iran
Email: b.hekmat@yu.ac.ir
Abstract
Childbirth, as the inaugural phase of human terrestrial life, has perpetually occupied a central place across diverse cultures and societies. It represents a foundational threshold through which human beings, throughout history, have sought to navigate, articulate, and mediate its perilous and enigmatic transition via rituals, rites, symbolisms, and diverse manifestations in folklore and literature.
The present study aims to examine and analyze traditional birth rituals within the traditional lifeworld of northern Iran (particularly Mazandaran Province in the recent past), demonstrating the mechanisms through which ancient-indigenous beliefs and Islamic rituals and jurisprudence coalesce and coexist. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach grounded in ethnographic evidence, this research synthesizes two primary theoretical frameworks: the rites of passage paradigm (Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner) and cultural and religious syncretism (Clifford Geertz and Charles Stewart).
The findings indicate that within the critical, precarious, and vulnerable phase of liminality (spanning from pregnancy to the postpartum forty-day confinement period, chehelleh-neshini), the indigenous community of Mazandaran did not marginalize its ancient pre-Islamic collective memory to alleviate mortality anxieties and ward off malevolent mythological forces (such as the Āl and the evil eye). Rather, through symbolic reinterpretation and mutual accommodation, these indigenous beliefs were interwoven with Islamic rites and texts—such as reciting the call to prayer (adhan) into the newborn’s ear, utilizing protective amulets (hirz), offering the sacrificial feast (‘aqiqah), and placing the Quran beside the mother and child.
This synthesis represents not a discordant eclecticism, but rather the construction of a cohesive form of “lived and vernacular Islam,” wherein protective, identity-affirming, and sanctifying functions toward nascent life are holistically reproduced.
Keywords: Birth Rituals, Folklore of Mazandaran, Rites of Passage, Cultural Syncretism, Lived Islam, Liminality.
Meaning of Shared Life
Mahdi Akhavan
Faculty member of the Department of Philosophy at Allameh Tabataba’i University
Abstract:
What is “shared life”? What does “life together” mean? In this context, what do we share, and why? Do our beliefs, convictions, feelings, and decisions become—or ought to become—shared, or is it merely portions of our time, space, bodies, and behaviors that are shared? In other words, is it our inner aspects that are shared, or our outer ones? And from a normative perspective, what state is desirable (or what *ought* to be shared)? Indeed, is a "shared life" possible in the first place, and is it desirable? If it is possible, in what sense? If it is impossible, in what sense? Can we conceive of sharing the entirety of our lives with another person or persons? Do we share our lives with our children or other acquaintances in the same sense that we share them with a spouse? This essay begins by touching upon the famous debate regarding the "meaning of life"—one of the most contentious issues in contemporary philosophy—to introduce a discussion on "shared life," its concept, and its implications. If marriage and shared life are two concepts that, in common understanding, refer to the same set of instances, what is the relationship between them? In other words, is it possible to have a shared life without marriage, and vice versa? Furthermore, what do cohabitation and shared life have in common, and is marriage closer to or further removed from the concept of shared life? To answer these questions, we must analyze the concepts of marriage and other forms of cohabitation from legal, ethical, and cultural perspectives to determine whether "sharing a life" is a component of marriage—and if so, in what sense. This essay explores the concept of privacy and its scope within a shared life, examining whether a boundary regarding closeness and intimacy in such a relationship is conceivable or desirable. Can one’s life partner be a non-human entity or someone of the same sex?
Keywords: Shared life, meaning of life, marriage, privacy, closeness and intimacy, life partners, sexual partners, cohabitation.
Life, Its Meaning, and Its Purpose in The Mourners of Bayal
Ebrahim Ranjbar,
Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.
Abstract
The Mourners of Bayal (first published in ۱۹۶۴) is the first novel by the prominent Iranian writer Gholam-Hossein Saedi. The novel depicts the painful and impoverished existence of the inhabitants of the fictional village of Bayal. Its principal themes may be summarized as follows: inadequate healthcare facilities in the village and their limited availability in the city; the absence of educational and scientific resources; restricted access to urban facilities; early-age marriage; the villagers’ submission to and unquestioning obedience toward individuals distinguished by religious attire; the destructive prevalence of ignorance and superstition; the younger generation’s disorientation in confronting their instinctual and emotional needs; and persistent poverty and famine.
No discernible manifestation of the economic, cultural, artistic, civilizational, scientific, medical, intellectual, developmental, industrial, transformative, or innovative dimensions associated with modernity at the time of the novel’s publication can be found in Bayal. The villagers appear to exist outside the processes of historical and social transformation: women resemble men, the young resemble the elderly, and all seem like stones that have settled permanently within a tranquil yet stagnant environment.
The present study seeks to elucidate the meaning and purpose of life as manifested in the material and spiritual existence of the characters in the novel. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach, the study draws on the author’s scholarly observations and documented interpretations. The findings indicate that, unless human beings’ innate, instinctual, material, and physical needs are adequately fulfilled, they lack the material and intellectual capacity required to move toward the higher meanings and values of life. Deprived of the conditions necessary for such development, individuals remain confined to the most elementary stages of existence and become trapped in a state of intellectual and existential stagnation.
Becoming Human in the Age of AI: Meaning, Life, and Machine Assemblages
Sara Faryam Rad
PhD in English Literature, Department of English Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Islamic Azad University, Kerman Branch, Iran
sara.faryamrad@iau.ac.ir
ORCID.ID: ۰۰۰۹-۰۰۰۰-۷۰۰۸-۱۳۳۴
Abstract
The increasing integration of artificial intelligence into human thought raises the question of what will happen to the meaningfulness of human life as thought becomes interwoven with, and affected by, machinic processes. This question cannot be adequately discussed through the conventional binarism between human and machine intelligence. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze, this article attempts to modify the previous understanding of human-AI relations toward the processes through which their relations are interconnected. However, the existing scholarship has examined human and AI interaction through Deleuzian concepts of “assemblage”, “subjectivity”, and “control”, this study brings together the productive aspect of human-AI assemblage, desire and affect, while deterritorializing the established forms of thought to reflect new capacities of becoming different, while implying the ongoing formations of human subjectivity. From this outlook, AI is neither an autonomous replacement for human thought nor a passive tool subordinate to an independent human subject, but as a machinic component within assemblages through which thought and subjectivity are continually produced, whereas, meaning in life is an emergent in this relational process rather than a fixed human possession or a predetermined purpose.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Becoming; Deleuze; Human–AI Assemblage; Subjectivation; Meaning in Life;
Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Concept of Freedom and Responsibility Based on Alawi Justice: From Absolute Freedom to Bound Justice
Seyed Hassan Mohammadi*۱, Zohreh Abbasi۲
۱- Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Education, Farhangian University, P.O. Box ۸۸۹-۱۴۶۶۵, Tehran, Iran. s.h.mohammadi@ut.ac.ir
۲- M.A. in Psychology and Education of Exceptional Children, Islamic Azad University, Qaenat Branch, Iran. z.abasi۲۹@gmail.com
Abstract:
Freedom and responsibility are fundamental topics in moral and political philosophy. The present article examines and critiques Sartre's view on freedom and responsibility based on Alawi justice. Sartre, with absolute freedom, considers man condemned to freedom and responsible for all choices and the fate of humanity, while Alawi justice is based on divine foundations, a shared innate nature (fitrah), and social responsibility, and defines freedom within the framework of justice. This research, using a library-based method and a descriptive-analytical approach, first analyzes the theoretical foundations of freedom and responsibility in Sartre's major works, and then refers to the principles and foundations of Alawi justice based on Nahj al-Balagha and authoritative commentaries. Finally, the two views are compared and evaluated using rational and anthropological criteria. The findings of the research showed that Sartrean absolute freedom, due to the lack of an objective criterion and the negation of a priori human nature, leads to the conflict between freedom and responsibility, moral relativism, existential anxiety, and the inability to justify social responsibility. Ontological, epistemological, and social critiques show that Sartre is incapable of explaining becoming (becoming/process), answering the objective criterion of responsibility, and justifying the right of the other and accountable institutions. In contrast, Alawi justice, with inherent dignity, universal accountability, and structural justice, establishes a coherent link between freedom and responsibility. Therefore, freedom without an objective criterion and a link to justice leads to moral chaos and the inability to justify responsibility; but Alawi justice, relying on divine foundations, shared innate nature, and human dignity, offers a model in which freedom and responsibility find meaning in each other's perfection.
Keywords: Freedom, Absolute Freedom, Bound Freedom, Responsibility, Alawi Justice.
Death-Consciousness and the Idea of Progress: An Introduction to Its Relation to the Philosophy of Life
Arsalan Aghakhani
Assistant Professor, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran
Email: aghakhani.arsalan@gmail.com
Abstract:
Many contemporary thinkers are skeptical of the idea of progress—a negativity whose origins, at least in our time, are self-evident. While the radiant idea of progress once promised salvation, human happiness, and the ultimate establishment of secular values, most contemporary philosophers have now abandoned such a promise. The roots of the idea of progress are deeply embedded in ancient and theological Western doctrines; however, following the rise of scientific knowledge among thinkers such as Bacon, Condorcet, and Turgot, worldly salvation and the accumulation of wealth replaced ancient forms of well-being. Nevertheless, the idea of progress rests upon a powerful negative underpinning in metaphysical thought: namely, “death-consciousness,” the pivotal moments of which become evident in the eschatological perspectives of Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg regarding this idea. In fact, death-consciousness constitutes a rational preservation of worldly life, which, arising from despair regarding immortality, commits itself to a thoughtful human confrontation with death. The present research aims to articulate the death-conscious foundations of progress in Western thought and to criticize “death-consciousness” as the negative foundation of the idea of progress in relation to the philosophy of life.
Keywords: Death-consciousness, Progress, Philosophy of Life, Scientific Knowledge
Cinema and Philosophical Concepts in Human Life
Mohammad Mahmoudi Asl
M.A. in Cinema, University of Tehran & Film Producer, Screenwriter, and Director
mmahmoudia@yahoo.com
Abstract
“Humanity” is the most central subject shared by both cinema and philosophy. Ever since human beings became capable of reflecting on the nature of their own existence, they have been confronted with fundamental questions. Throughout history, philosophy has sought to offer rational and thought-provoking responses to questions concerning human existence. Yet philosophy can exert its greatest influence on human life when it moves beyond the realm of theory and becomes a way of living. In this context, art—and cinema in particular—possesses a remarkable capacity to transform abstract philosophical concepts into tangible human experiences. Cinema can portray concepts such as freedom, justice, love, death, choice and the tension between determinism and free will, truth, faith, and the meaning of life through characters and human situations. From this perspective, cinema may be regarded as a kind of practical laboratory for the philosophy of life: a laboratory in which philosophical ideas manifest themselves through concrete human circumstances. Philosophy is not merely a collection of complex theories concerning existence and knowledge. One of its most important functions is to help human beings discover a conscious and meaningful way of living. One of the fundamental challenges facing contemporary humanity is that people may possess considerable knowledge about philosophical concepts without ever truly experiencing or practicing them in their own lives. A person may study freedom while, in making personal decisions, remaining deeply influenced by social and political pressures and considerations, ultimately feeling compelled to surrender that freedom. Likewise, someone may speak eloquently about justice yet fail to treat others justly in everyday life. A person may study the meaning of life and yet, when confronted with failure or crisis, be unable to find meaning in the path of his or her own existence. It is precisely here that art, especially cinema, can serve as a mediator. Unlike theoretical philosophy, cinema generally does not define a concept directly; instead, it presents that concept through a human situation. Suppose, for example, that a film explores the subject of freedom. Rather than delivering a philosophical lecture on freedom, the filmmaker can portray a character who is forced to choose between oppression and liberty. Similarly, if the subject is moral responsibility, the filmmaker can place a character in a situation where the protagonist’s decision profoundly affects the audience and confronts them with a serious question. Under such circumstances, viewers do not merely think about a philosophical concept; they find themselves imaginatively placed before a tangible human choice. This characteristic makes cinema a powerful medium for the indirect development and dissemination of philosophical ideas.
One of the most important areas in which cinema can establish a connection with philosophy is ethics and human behavior. A film may raise questions belonging to moral philosophy without necessarily being required to provide definitive answers. Indeed, philosophy itself may not always require definitive answers to its questions. Cinema, too—as an art form that reflects the complexity of human life—contains this element of relativity and ambiguity. Sometimes the most valuable film is one that leaves its audience alone with a serious question after the film has ended, drawing them into an intellectual challenge. It is at this point that philosophy enters the realm of cinema, confronting the viewer with philosophical questions and even philosophical ambiguities. Human life, moreover, consists of a series of choices—the enduring question of determinism and free will. One’s way of life, one’s response to difficulties, and even one’s manner of confronting death, failure, or victory all involve dimensions of human choice. Cinema can present these concepts objectively, visually, and tangibly, allowing the audience to identify with the film’s characters and protagonists. When confronted with events and circumstances, the protagonist reacts and is compelled to make decisions in order to overcome obstacles. Inevitably, the character must then face the consequences of those decisions. Through this process, the audience is encouraged to reflect and think. One of cinema’s most significant functions is its ability to allow viewers to see themselves in the characters on the screen, a process commonly referred to as identification. A viewer may encounter a character whose personality closely resembles his or her own. As a result, the viewer develops a sense of closeness to that character and becomes emotionally involved in the protagonist’s psychological and personal experiences. In this way, cinema can stimulate and activate the processes of self-knowledge and a return to the self.The subject of suffering is one of the most serious philosophical issues in human life. Human beings naturally seek to escape suffering, illness, failure, and loss. Yet the more fundamental question is how a person should confront these realities.
Cinema can demonstrate that even under difficult circumstances, human beings may still exercise some degree of control over how they respond to suffering. Cinema does not necessarily tell its audience that “suffering is beautiful,” nor does it necessarily attempt to measure or quantify suffering. Instead, it raises a deeper question—one that is fundamentally philosophical: How can a human being respond to suffering, whether that suffering has been chosen or imposed upon them? Even more profound than suffering is the question of death and the nature of mortality. Death is one of the most fundamental subjects of both philosophy and cinema. By portraying death, cinema can transform this abstract concept into an emotional and human experience.
A film may ostensibly be about death, yet ultimately be concerned less with dying than with how one should live. An awareness of the dimensions and finite nature of life can reveal more clearly the value of human relationships and the significance of the choices we make.Freedom is another of the most important themes in philosophical cinema. Freedom is inseparable from responsibility. When human beings make choices, they also assume responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Cinema can depict this relationship between freedom and responsibility visually and concretely, often with greater immediacy than a purely theoretical philosophical discussion. Philosophy speaks about the human being, but art enables us to feel what it means to be human. When viewers encounter, through a cinematic work, the story of someone from a different social class or a radically different set of life circumstances, they temporarily experience the world from that character’s perspective and compare that experience with their own lives. This capacity can contribute to greater social empathy and deeper human relationships. Film and cinematic art can therefore become instruments for bringing people closer together and helping them acknowledge and transcend cultural, social, and economic distances. More importantly, cinema can bring human beings closer to their own inner selves, confronting the individual with the self. All these concepts are philosophical in nature and demonstrate that cinema can provide a platform for philosophical dialogue among human beings. Some films can confront audiences with questions that continue long after the film itself has ended. This is one of the most important characteristics of a thought-provoking cinematic work: The film ends, but its question continues in the mind of the viewer.
A cinematic work may therefore have an open ending, allowing the audience to leave the theater carrying a philosophical question with them. Philosophy and cinema are two different approaches to a shared subject: human beings and life. Philosophy seeks, through reason and argument, to raise questions about the meaning of life, while cinema presents those same issues through images, characters, narrative, and storytelling. From this perspective, cinema can serve as a bridge between theoretical discourse and real life. A valuable cinematic work is not necessarily one that provides ready-made philosophical answers. Rather, it is one that compels its audience to think about life.
Philosophy of Life
Ahad Hosseini
Sculptor, Tabriz
ahad.hosseini.museum@gmail.com
Abstract
Each of us enters this world as the result of a complex process of natural selection, under different circumstances and conditions. We grow up in diverse environments and, shaped by culture and education, gradually develop our personalities. Eventually, in order to assert our existence and find our place in life, each person chooses a path. At the entrance to one of these two paths, the words “Surviving” are written; on the other, “Living.” To a considerable extent, our destiny depends on which of these two paths we choose. In today’s turbulent world, most people choose the path of survival, perhaps because it is easier to walk. Yet some choose the second path: living. Needless to say, choosing this path requires courage. Those who wish to walk this road need a driving force—something that keeps hope alive. You know this force: it is called purpose. But the path of living is not always smooth. The greater the purpose, the rougher the road becomes, to the point where falling and getting wounded are inevitable possibilities. Moreover, moving along this path is accompanied by hardship and self-discipline. Despite all this, one can confidently say that it is precisely these hardships that give life its vitality. The more difficult the path, the more often we fall. This is why Greek philosophy tells us: “The best things are the hardest.” The presence of such contradictions in life—on the one hand, joy and fascination, and on the other, suffering and ecstasy—can in itself give rise to a new philosophy: a philosophy that defines life through its contradictions. Drawing upon this idea, I have displayed sculptures on the theme of misery, rendered in a realistic style, alongside sculptures on the theme of happiness, created in a modern style, at the Ahad Hosseini Museum. Ultimately, regardless of whatever image we may have of life, if one day I were asked whether I lean toward pessimism or optimism, I would say, with all due respect to the pessimistic philosophers, that the balance of my thinking weighs more heavily toward optimism. Then I would cry out:“Life is beautiful!” And, echoing Carl Gustav Jung, I would say: “Life must be lived.”
From the Collapse of Meaning and the Suspension of Freedom in Sartre’s Nausea to Existential Anxiety and the Desire to Delegate Choice in an Intelligent World
Arezou Abdi,
PhD graduate in French Language and Literature from the University of Tabriz and Visiting Lecturer in the Department of French Language and Literature at the University of Tabriz.
Abstract
Contemporary humans have access to more tools than ever before to assist them in making choices, predicting outcomes, and organizing their lives. These range from recommendation algorithms that shape their tastes and preferences to generative artificial intelligence systems that offer guidance on professional, emotional, educational, and even ethical decisions. Yet the expansion of these capabilities raises a fundamental question: Does an increased capacity to calculate, predict, and optimize life necessarily lead to greater freedom and meaningfulness? Can a life that is efficiently managed necessarily be regarded as a good life, worthy of being lived?
Starting from this contemporary problem, the present study undertakes a philosophical rereading of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea. Antoine Roquentin’s encounter with existence is an experience in which the self-evidence of the assumptions that render the everyday world familiar and meaningful begins to collapse. What was previously intelligible through established concepts, habits, and relationships loses its apparent necessity and self-evident justification in the face of the reality of existence. In this experience, the issue is not merely the absence of a ready-made meaning, but the realization that no predetermined order may be capable of fully justifying the necessity of human existence or prescribing how one ought to live. From this perspective, Sartre’s novel provides a framework for examining the relationship between the contingency of existence, freedom, and human responsibility for one’s own life.
This problem acquires a new and thought-provoking dimension in the age of artificial intelligence. Intelligent systems can analyze data and past preferences to recommend options that better align with predefined goals. Yet this very process raises a philosophical question concerning the origins and validity of those goals. If recommendation systems generate suggestions based on our previous preferences, while our ongoing interactions with these suggestions also influence the formation of our future preferences, how can we distinguish personal choice from preferences reinforced through technological processes? The issue, therefore, is not simply whether machines make decisions on behalf of humans, but whether humans can still critically reflect on the values and ends upon which their decisions rest and thereby preserve their existential freedom.
Accordingly, this study distinguishes among three concepts: efficiency in the choice of means, autonomy in determining and revising ends, and meaningfulness in the manner of living. Its central hypothesis is that these concepts are interrelated but irreducible to one another. A decision may be computationally efficient without its underlying goal having been independently examined. Similarly, a life may be socially successful and operationally well organized, yet an individual may be unable to offer a considered account of their relationship to its values and commitments. The philosophical problem of artificial intelligence, therefore, concerns not merely the accuracy or fallibility of its recommendations, but also the relationship between recommendation, autonomy, and responsibility in shaping human life.
Within this framework, drawing on Sartre’s conception of freedom, the article examines whether responsibility for human choices can be delegated to systems that assist us in choosing among available alternatives. Its proposed answer is that technological support for decision-making does not, in itself, undermine freedom. The danger arises when the capacity to evaluate ends independently, consider alternative possibilities, and reconsider personal values becomes weakened. Consequently, the central issue is not a simple opposition between humans and machines, but the distinction between using technology to expand our capacity for judgment and relying on it to relinquish the responsibility to judge.
Ultimately, this article seeks to demonstrate how a contemporary interpretation of the philosophical dimension of Nausea can contribute to a reconsideration of meaningful life. A meaningful life cannot be defined solely in terms of error reduction, increased productivity, or the fulfillment of existing preferences, since preferences, goals, and criteria of success must themselves remain open to questioning. From this perspective, freedom entails more than the ability to choose among available options; it also involves the capacity to question why we desire what we desire, evaluate our ends, and assume responsibility for the way we live. Accordingly, the study’s central question is this: In a world where technology can recommend and optimize life paths with ever-increasing precision, will the contemporary human subject retain the capacity and willingness to judge freely the ends, values, and meanings of those paths?
Keywords: Philosophy of Life, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, Freedom, Existential Responsibility, Autonomy, Meaning of Life, Intelligent World.
Who Narrates the Lives of Things? Rethinking Industrial Design History through First- and Third-Person Perspectives
Meysam Khodashenas
Department of Industrial Design, Faculty of Design, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran.
The history of industrial design has often examined artefacts through stylistic, technological, and social transformations; however, this approach does not necessarily reveal how things become embedded in human experience and life. This study investigates how narrative perspective shapes historical understanding of design and the relationship between humans and things. It aims to clarify the epistemic potential of first- and third-person narratives for reinterpreting industrial design history through the concept of lived life. Adopting a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach, the research draws on an interpretive reading of philosophical literature and theoretical scholarship in design history, focusing on lived experience, the lifeworld, hermeneutics, and narrative. Within this framework, third-person narration enables the analysis of historical contexts and social structures, whereas first-person narration brings to light experience, memory, embodiment, and the everyday meanings of artefacts. The central argument is that the lives of things emerge neither solely from their material properties nor exclusively from users’ individual experiences, but through the relationships among artefacts, human subjects, and historical contexts. Accordingly, integrating the two narrative perspectives by moving beyond their presumed opposition can provide a basis for a pluralistic historiography of industrial design and for understanding design as an integral dimension of human ways of living.
Keywords: Lives of Things; Industrial Design History; First-Person Narrative; Third-Person Narrative; Lived Experience; Design Historiography.
Life as a Site for the Reconstitution of Subjectivity:
A Strategic Shift in the Form and Content of Claim-Making Politics
Mohsen Abbaszadeh Marzbali
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Iran m.abbaszadeh@umz.ac.ir
Abstract
One of the most recurrent criticisms levelled against democratic order has concerned a “crisis of representation,” whether under liberal representative democracy or left-wing populist, nationalist, and nativist authoritarian regimes. Conversely, recent decades have witnessed the emergence of a new mode of claim-making, whereby masses have increasingly shifted away from conventional forms of articulating demands through representative institutions—including organizations, political parties, and civil society groups—and from the language of classical or ideological values, such as liberal freedom, leftist equality, and nativist normativity. Instead, they have foregrounded forms of life through spontaneous, unmediated political action. How can the conditions and circumstances underlying this transformation be explained?
This study hypothesizes that the growing prominence of “life” in contemporary mass political action can be understood through sociological transformations linked to epistemological shifts in the humanities and social sciences, as well as the expanding reach of globalization. Within this post-grand-narrative context, life politics emerges as a strategic shift in both the form and content of political engagement. In terms of form, this mode of political action represents a shift away from recourse to representation—whether democratic or populist—towards direct, unmediated, and expressionist forms of action as a style and channel for articulating political demands. In terms of content, the focus of political claims has shifted from emancipatory politics towards life politics.
Drawing on a synthesis of Anthony Giddens’s and Asef Bayat’s theoretical approaches, this study establishes the analytical plausibility of applying this hypothesis to a comparative analysis of emergent forms of subjectivity in two distinct contexts: the contemporary West and the Middle East. The findings suggest that this strategic shift enables society’s political subjectivity to be reclaimed within the immediacy of life here and now, under conditions in which institutional and bureaucratic constraints restrict the scope of political action mediated through representation.
Keywords:
Subjectivity; Representation; Emancipatory Politics; Life Politics; Expressionism; Street; Life Movements; Social Nonmovements; The West; The Middle East.
From Living Being to the Possibility of Living: Toward a Transcending Holistic Metaphysics of Life
Musa Akrami
Professor of Philosophy; E-mail: musa.akrami@gmail.com
Abstract
One of the fundamental problems in the philosophy of life is understanding the relationship between the being of a living entity and the real possibilities of living. The philosophy of biology and process metaphysics address the organization, dynamics, and continuity of life; capability-oriented approaches examine the conditions under which abilities and substantive freedoms can be realized; and moral philosophy and political philosophy concern themselves with justifying normative judgments about individual and collective ways of living.
This article asks how the relationship between living being and the possibilities of living can be elucidated while simultaneously maintaining a distinction between the cognition and explanation of these two domains and their normative evaluation, without either disconnecting these levels from one another or directly deriving normative values from biological facts.
To address this problem, the article proposes a framework designated as a “Transcending Holistic Metaphysics of Life,” whose guiding principle is the “Principle of Relational Dependence and Analytical Distinction between Living Being and the Possibilities of Living.” According to this principle, living being and the possibilities of living constitute two distinct yet interconnected domains of reality: the possibilities of living depend on the organization and characteristics of a living entity, as well as on its environmental conditions and surrounding relations, without being reducible to a description of living being. Normative evaluation, particularly with regard to the possibilities of human living, does not belong to a domain of the same kind as these two domains. Rather, it pertains to a distinct level at which facts and real possibilities are assessed in light of normative criteria and reasons.
The article examines this framework in dialogue with the process-oriented philosophy of biology, debates concerning the definition of life, theories of autonomy, and the capability approach. It then assesses the framework’s potential to elucidate the relationship between the real possibilities of living and such principles as human dignity, freedom, justice, responsibility, and sustainable peace. The article’s proposed contribution lies not in claiming to have discovered, for the first time, a connection between life and possibility, but in formulating and evaluating a framework for analyzing the relationship between the two domains of living being and the possibilities of living, and for determining the epistemic and normative status of inquiry into them. Defending this framework requires careful distinctions between dependence and reduction, explanation and justification, and the description of reality and evaluative judgment. Accordingly, the present proposal is advanced as a research program whose originality and validity must be established through critical comparison with competing views and assessment of its capacity to make distinctions and provide explanations.
Keywords: metaphysics of life; living being; possibilities of living; relational dependence; analytical distinction; process metaphysics; holism; transcendence; autonomy; fact and value.
Life and Self-Creation from the Perspective of Mulla Sadra: An Account of the Formation of the Self in Light of the Substantial Motion of the Soul, Knowledge, and Voluntary Action
Sahar Kavandi
Professor of Philosophy, University of Zanjan
drskavandi@znu.ac.ir
Abstract
In Transcendent Philosophy, the relationship between life and the reality of the human being is not merely external. At the outset of its existence, the human soul does not possess all of its perfections and final determinations in actuality; rather, throughout the course of life, it becomes actualized through cognition, action, and volition. The central question of this study is whether, on the basis of Mulla Sadra’s philosophical psychology, human life can be understood as the arena of human “self-creation,” while at the same time preserving the human being’s ontological dependence on the Divine Origin, the influence of non-voluntary conditions, and the teleological orientation of human perfection. Employing conceptual analysis and argumentative reconstruction, this study demonstrates that the soul’s corporeal origination and substantial motion provide the ontological basis for the gradual formation of the self; the union of the soul with its cognitive forms explains the role of knowledge in human actualization; and the interrelation of action, intention, state (ḥāl), and disposition (malaka) elucidates the mechanism through which the human being acquires and shapes its existential form. Accordingly, self-creation does not mean the independent creation of the soul or the unrestricted invention of identity. Rather, it signifies the human being’s real, gradual, and dependent participation in determining the actuality of its own being. he distinctions between natural and voluntary motion, primary nature and acquired or “second” nature, and the continuity of personal identity and the stability of attributes demonstrate that a human being can remain the same person while continually acquiring new and different existential forms throughout the course of life. Knowledge and action, moreover, stand in a reciprocal relationship within this process: cognition and knowledge orient action, while action creates the conditions for either the deepening or the restriction of cognition. Desirable self-creation results from the proper ordering of this reciprocal relationship toward intellectual and moral perfection. This process unfolds in worldly life, and the existential form thereby acquired by the soul bears significance for its ultimate existential destiny.
Keywords: Mulla Sadra; self-creation; substantial motion; corporeal origination of the soul; union of the knower and the known; voluntary action; second nature.
A Look at the Relation of Action-Oriented Ethics with the Meaning of Life
Ali Akbar Abdol Abadi
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract:
One of the theories of “Moral Life” in Normative Ethics is the theory of “Action-Oriented Ethics”. The central question in this moral theory is that “What Must One Do?”. The general answer of this moral theory to this question is that “One Must Do the Right Action”. But, Right Action is related to both dimensions of the outer life of every human being; i.e., his/her Dimensions of Discourse and Conduct. Undoubtedly, one important part of the “Meaningful Life” of every human being is the “Moral Life”. Now, we can ask that what is the relation of the Action-Oriented Ethics with the Meaning of Life. If we consider the meaning of the phrase “Meaning of Life” as “Positive Function/Utility of Life”, the question can be asked as follows: “What is the relation of Action-Oriented Ethics with the “Positive Function/the Utility of “Life”. For answering to this question, we must see that issuing of what kind of right actions in discourse and conduct from a human being gives meaning; i.e. positive function/utility, to his/her life. In this paper, by an analytical approach, I will try to show briefly that issuing of what kind of right actions in discourse and conduct from a human being gives meaning; i.e., positive function/utility, to his/her life, and so, to show that the Action-Oriented Ethics, in its relation with Meaning of Life, is an Ethics for Rule-Based Action, and, in fact, is an “Ethics of Rule”.
Key Words:Normative Ethics, Action-Oriented Ethics, Meaning of Life, Dimension of Discourse, Dimension of Conduct, Rule-Based Action, Ethics of Rule.
A Look at the Relation of Character-Oriented Ethics with the Meaning of Life
Ali Akbar Abdol Abadi
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract:
One of the theories of “Ethical Life” in Normative Ethics is the theory of “Character-Oriented Ethics”. The central question in this moral theory is that “How Should One Be?”. The general answer of this moral theory to this question is that “One Should Have Good Character”. But, Good Character is related to all the three dimensions of the inner life of every human being; i.e., his/her doxasto-epistemic, emotional, and volitional dimensions. Undoubtedly, one important part of the “Meaningful Life” of every human being is the “Ethical Life”. Now, we can ask that what is the relation of the Character-Oriented Ethics with the Meaning of Life. If we consider the meaning of the phrase “Meaning of Life” as “Value of Life” and/or “Purpose of Life”, the question can be asked as follows: “What is the relation of Character-Oriented Ethics with the “Value” and/or the “Purpose” of “Life”. For answering to this question, we must see that what good characters in all the three pre-mentioned dimensions of every human being give meaning; i.e., value and/or purpose, to his/her inner life. In this paper, by an analytical approach, I will try to show briefly that what good characters give meaning; i.e., value and/or purpose, to the inner life of every human being, respectively, in his/her doxato-epistemic, emotional, and volitional dimensions, and so, to show that the Character-Oriented Ethics, in its relation with the Meaning of Life, is an Ethics for Deep Agency.
Key Words:
Normative Ethics, Character-Oriented Ethics, Meaning of Life, Doxasto-Epistemic Dimension, Emotional Dimension, Volitional Dimension, Deep Agency.-
From Philosophy of Life to Trans-Vital Living: Revisiting the Iranian Tradition in Grounding "Life-Aligned Learning"
Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Khosravi Olya
Mohammad Mehdi Khosravi Olya, PhD, Graduate in Philosophy of Education
Dr. Seyed Mehdi Sajjadi (Corresponding Author)
Professor, Tarbiat Modares University – Tehran – Iran
Abstract
This article is grounded on the fundamental premise that 'life' in the contemporary era—under the shadow of modern philosophy, which has permeated all spheres of contemporary existence—has been structurally severed from a dimension termed here as 'Meta-life'. This dimension reduces life neither to mere biological existence nor to abstract being; rather, it conceives material life, when intertwined with the dynamic and creative current of meta-life, as an opportunity to discover and forge a unique trajectory toward the flourishing and evolution of human individual-collective existence—an unfolding realized through humanity’s conscious participation in the cosmic order and alignment with the creative flow of existence.
The research gap motivating this study arises from the fact that scholarship in the philosophy of life has hitherto failed to provide a coherent formulation of the Iranian tradition as an autonomous paradigm. Utilizing a comparative-hermeneutic analysis and conceptual reconstruction, this paper demonstrates that a coherent continuum—spanning from Asha in the Gathas to Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of substantial motion (al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya)—has guided Iranian culture toward a formulation of 'meta-life-based living,' wherein the archetype of the 'Sage-Hero' (Pir-Pahlavan) serves as the practical embodiment of this continuous trajectory across millennia.
The principal contribution of this article is the proposal of the innovative concept of 'Life-Aligned Learning': a pedagogical paradigm that relies on the unmediated experience of the unique trajectory of human existential flourishing and evolution rather than the mere transmission of information. This approach challenges the prevailing cognitive architecture of contemporary civilization—which has spawned crises of meaning, ecology, and cultural cohesion—and invites it into a transformative, evolutionary orbit.
The article concludes that meta-life is not an exclusive panacea, but rather a distinct and irreplaceable voice in the global polyphony of philosophies of life, the rediscovery of which may offer a path out of the evolutionary impasse confronting contemporary humanity. In this journey, comprehending the multifaceted dimensions and expansive layers of the 'philosophy of the Iranian-Islamic tradition' constitutes the key to resolving and transcending the epistemological deadlock within Iranian culture."
Keywords: Meta-Life; Philosophy of Life; Life-Aligned Learning; Sage-Hero; Asha; Iranian Wisdom
Extended Summary
Contemporary philosophy finds itself at an impasse regarding one of its oldest and, paradoxically, most neglected objects of inquiry: life itself. While Being (Sein), existence, and consciousness have each received rigorous philosophical treatment, "life" as an autonomous philosophical concept — distinct from biological bios and from abstract ontological categories — has rarely been granted independent theoretical standing. Heidegger's deliberate bracketing of "life" in favor of Dasein in Being and Time (۱۹۶۲) exemplifies a broader structural tendency within Western philosophy: the reduction of life either to a biological substrate studied by the natural sciences or to an abstract existential category emptied of cosmological and communal resonance. This article contends that this structural emptying is not incidental but constitutive of modern Western metaphysics, and that it lies at the root of what Frankl (۲۰۰۶) called the "existential vacuum," what Taylor (۲۰۰۷) analyzed as the condition of "secularity," and what Shayegan (۱۹۹۲) diagnosed, from an Iranian vantage point, as "cultural schizophrenia."
Against this backdrop, the article poses a central research question: does any tradition in the history of human thought offer a formulation of life that avoids both horns of this dilemma — neither reducing life to biological survival nor dissolving it into philosophical abstraction? Drawing on an extensive prior study of the concept of "Meta-Life" in Iranian culture, the article answers affirmatively, arguing that across three millennia — from the Indo-Iranian concept of Ṛta/Aša, through Zoroaster's Gathic revolution, the epic cosmology of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the mystical poetics of ʿAttar, Rumi, and Hafez, to the illuminationist philosophy of Suhrawardi and the transcendent theosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā — Iranian civilization has sustained and continuously reformulated a vision of life as the conscious participation of the human being in Aša (cosmic-moral order) and as active collaboration in Frashokereti (cosmic renewal).
The article develops this argument in six movements. First, it establishes the conceptual architecture of Meta-Life through a tripartite semantic analysis — the "beyond" (transcendence of mere biological survival), the "reflexive" (life's capacity to become aware of itself), and the "transformative" (the inherently change-inducing nature of authentic meta-vital experience) — while carefully distinguishing Meta-Life from adjacent concepts such as metaphysics, contemporary spirituality, afterlife doctrines, and Maslow's (۱۹۶۲) self-actualization. Crucially, the article introduces a foundational distinction between the "tradition of Islamic philosophy" (a largely Peripatetic-theological current shared across the broader Islamic world) and the "philosophy of the Iranian-Islamic tradition" (a distinct current, rooted in pre-Islamic Persian wisdom, that privileges direct intuitive experience over discursive demonstration alone) — a distinction substantiated through the work of Suhrawardi and Corbin (۱۹۷۱, ۱۹۹۴). Second, the article reconstructs the historical thread of Meta-Life across seven epochal moments: the Indo-Iranian Ṛta/Aša complex and the Haoma ritual as an early "technology" of meta-vital experience (Boyce, ۱۹۷۵–۱۹۹۱); Zoroaster's five achievements — democratization of spiritual access, free moral choice, the ethicization of the cosmos, radical world-affirmation, and Frashokereti; the constellation of Avestan concepts (Aša, Fravashi, Daēnā, Khvarenah, the Amesha Spentas); the Shahnameh's gallery of meta-vital archetypes (Jamshid, Zahhak, the Simorgh, Zal, Rostam and Sohrab, Esfandiyar, Siyavash, and Kay Khosrow); the Persian Sufi tradition (ʿAttar's seven valleys, Rumi's evolutionary cosmology and the technology of samāʿ, Hafez's Pīr-e Moghān and Rend); and the Illuminationist and Transcendent philosophies of Suhrawardi and Mullā Ṣadrā, where concepts such as trans-substantial motion and the "union of the intellecting subject and the intelligible object" (ittiḥād al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl) provide rigorous philosophical articulations of meta-vital transformation. Across this entire arc, the recurring archetype of the Pīr-Pahlavān (Sage-Hero) — most fully embodied in Kay Khosrow — integrates personal existential maturation with active social responsibility for the realization of dād (cosmic-social justice, rightly rendered as "putting the right thing in the right place, in the right way, at the right time"). Third, the article situates this Iranian formulation within a comparative framework against Hermetic, Daoist, Hindu-Buddhist, Hellenic, esoteric Abrahamic, and shamanic traditions, arguing that the distinctly Iranian "signature" lies in the unique convergence of radical world-affirmation, free moral choice, active (rather than passive) eschatological participation, socially embedded ethics, and three millennia of continuous transmission of the Sage-Hero archetype. Fourth, and most significantly for contemporary relevance, the article argues that four ostensibly separate crises of contemporary civilization — the crisis of meaning, the environmental crisis, the crisis posed by artificial intelligence, and the crisis of cultural coherence — are in fact four manifestations of a single root cause: the structural evacuation of life's meta-vital dimension. Because the entrenched cognitive paradigm of modern civilization is itself implicated in generating these crises, the article insists that no durable solution can be found from within that same paradigm; what is required instead is a new evolutionary circuit, for which Meta-Life supplies the structural backbone. Fifth, building on this diagnosis, the article's central original contribution is the concept of "Life-Aligned Learning" — an educational paradigm designed in conscious alignment with Meta-Life. This approach privileges direct, unmediated experience of the meta-vital flow over the mere transmission of information; reconceives the teacher as Pīr-Pahlavān rather than information-provider; treats canonical texts (the Mathnawi, the Shahnameh, the Gathas) as living encounters rather than historical artifacts; and evaluates learning through existential growth rather than information retention. The approach integrates personal transformation, active social participation in the realization of dād, and civilizational transition toward a cognitive paradigm harmonized with the broader web of life on Earth — illustrated through Iranian "technologies of Meta-Life" such as Rumi's samāʿ, the aesthetic-contemplative "ḥāl" of Persian classical music, Nowruz as an annual ritual of cosmic renewal, and the divinatory practice of consulting Hafez's Divan. The article concludes by proposing a terminological and existential shift from "philosophy of life" (theoretical reflection about life) to "philosophical life" (living within Meta-Life) — framed, following Jaspers (۱۹۵۳), as a potential second Axial Age, in which Iranian Meta-Life offers not an exclusive truth but a distinct, irreplaceable voice within humanity's collective reconsideration of what it means to live.
The Principle of the Preservation of Life in the Founding of Mullā Ṣadrā’s City:
A Rereading of City (Madina) in Relation to Aristotle’s Politeia (πολιτεία) within the Horizon of the Philosophy of Life
Mahdi Dastranj
PhD in Islamic Philosophy, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
mahdidastranj@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper examines the role of the principle of preserving life (Ḥefẓ-e Ḥayat) in the conceptual foundation of the city (Madina) in Mullā Ṣadrā’s social and political philosophy (Ḥekmat-e Madani), and seeks to clarify its relation to Aristotle’s concept of politeia (πολιτεία) within the horizon of the philosophy of life. The central question is how the preservation of life relates to the soul’s (nafs) ongoing movement toward perfection (estekmāl-e nafs) and the attainment of felicity in the hereafter, and what place it occupies in the foundational ordering of the city (madina). In Mullā Ṣadrā’s social/political philosophy, the acquisition of knowledge and the perfecting of the human soul (nafs) constitute fundamental ends; their realization, however, depends on the continuation of worldly life, the ordering of livelihood, and the preservation of human lives. Accordingly, the preservation of individual human lives, the continuity of human generations, the survival of the human species, and the provision of essential means of livelihood cannot be regarded merely as a set of discrete requirements unrelated to civic (madani) life. Rather, their place in grounding and ordering the city must be examined.
Employing conceptual analysis and comparative study, this paper first reconstructs the relations among worldly life, livelihood, the acquisition of knowledge, the soul’s movement toward perfection, and felicity in the hereafter in Mullā Ṣadrā’s works. It then examines the place of the principle of preserving life in his social/political philosophy in light of Aristotle’s concept of politeia (πολιτεία), as the fundamental ordering of the polis (πόλις), which determines the governing authority, the relations among its constituent parts, and the end of the political community. This analysis distinguishes three principles in an analytical reconstruction of the foundations of Mullā Ṣadrā’s city: the principle of perfecting of the human soul, the principle of preserving life; and the principle of preserving property (Ḥefẓ-e Māl). The principle of perfecting of the human soul concerns the city’s end; the principle of preserving life concerns a necessary condition for realizing that end; and the principle of preserving property concerns the equitable safeguarding of the inhabitants’ basic requirements and the prevention of their deprivation. Accordingly, worldly life is not the ultimate end of the city. Rather, the preservation of life and the ordering of livelihood make possible the acquisition of knowledge and the soul’s progress toward perfection, deriving their significance from their orientation toward felicity in the hereafter. This rereading seeks to clarify the relationship between Aristotle’s and Mullā Ṣadrā’s conceptions of the end of civic (madani) life and to illuminate the contribution of Mullā Ṣadrā’s social/political philosophy to understanding the relationship among human life, the founding of the city, and the end of life within the philosophy of life.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life; Mullā Ṣadrā; Social and Political Philosophy (Ḥekmat-e Madani); Preservation of Life (Ḥefẓ-e Ḥayat); Politeia (πολιτεία); Aristotle; Madina Foundation.
Living Before Knowing: Experience, Choice, and the Formation of Meaning in Life through a Philosophical Reading of Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring
Babak Shamshiri
| Rouhollah Taravat
۱. Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran: bshamshiri@rose.shiraz.ac.ir
۲. Corresponding Author, Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy of Education, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.: rouhollah.taravat@yahoo.com
Should one fully understand the meaning of what one chooses before making a choice, or might that meaning emerge only in the course of living and confronting the consequences of one’s choices? This question becomes particularly significant when we face fundamental choices—choices that transform not only the course of our lives but also how we understand ourselves, others, and the future. Focusing on the relationship between experience, choice, and the meaning of life, this study seeks to demonstrate that, in certain fundamental situations, experience is not merely a consequence of choice but can also play a role in shaping and reconstructing its meaning. To frame this problem, the study draws on John Dewey’s concept of experience in the philosophy of education, Jean Piaget’s developmental account of changes in structures of understanding, and the existentialist problem of choice under conditions of uncertainty. The study then offers a philosophical and interpretive analysis of Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring (۱۹۴۹). Noriko’s hesitation about marriage, the characters’ varied experiences of marriage and solitude, the absence of the prospective husband from the film’s narrative, and Ozu’s use of narrative withholding provide grounds for reflecting on a choice whose full meaning may not be accessible prior to experience. Finally, extending the discussion to the philosophy of education, the study asks whether, if part of our understanding of life takes shape through experience and reflection, the task of education is merely to transmit ready-made answers about life or whether it should also cultivate the capacity to confront uncertainty, make reflective choices, and reconstruct one’s self-understanding. The paper argues that educating for a meaningful life does not necessarily mean prescribing a predetermined meaning of life. Rather, it may involve creating the conditions for the pursuit of meaning, experiential learning, and responsible reflection.
Keywords: Meaning of Life; Experience; Choice; Yasujirō Ozu ; Philosophy of Education
The Nature of Life in the Mirror of Science and Religion;
with Emphasis on the Concept of Fitrah in Motahhari's Thought
Dr. Hamid Rezania Shirazi
Faculty Member, Department of Philosophy and Theology, Al-Mustafa International University
Email: hamidrezania@miu.ac.ir
The question of why we live is certainly more important than why we live? Who or what is the reference that answers this fundamental question? From which cognitive source can we seek help to find a suitable answer? Can science provide a comforting and convincing answer to humans? If it can, by which method and with which tools? Empirical science is a powerful tool for describing the "how" of phenomena. Science can explain how life was formed, how it evolved, and what mechanisms preserve it. But the question "why do we live?" or "what is the meaning of life?" is a question of purpose and goal, not of material mechanism.
Alongside these are religious answers that are in harmony with human nature and innate disposition. By receiving them, a person feels as though they have found their lost self after years. They gain motivation. They recognize the ultimate destination of their path. They move toward it. The question of "the nature of life" and "why we live" is a question that stitches together the boundaries of science and religion. In the thought of Shahid Motahhari, the answer to this question lies not in the laboratory, but in the "fitrah" of the human being; a nature that God has placed in the human soul, and religion is the manifestation of that very nature.
This paper seeks to answer the above questions by drawing on scientific (empirical) and religious (Islam) views, relying on documentary and library methods.
Keywords: meaning of life, science, religion, fitrah
Reorienting Philosophy toward Life through a Reconsideration of Its Telos, Method, and Function
Ali Ansari baygi
Researcher, Islamic Research Foundation, Mashhad, Iran.
Abstract
The fundamental transformations of the contemporary world in the domains of meaning, identity, history, and knowledge have profound philosophical dimensions. Consequently, the connection between philosophy and the life of contemporary human beings has become increasingly necessary, although the theoretical articulation and practical realization of this connection still require further development. This study seeks to answer the following question: What are the foundations of the relationship between philosophy and life, and what conceptual and methodological requirements must be met to realize it? The central hypothesis is that this relationship cannot be confined merely to raising questions arising from lived experience or offering philosophical solutions to everyday problems. Realizing a life-oriented approach to philosophy requires a reconsideration of the telos of philosophy, its epistemological foundations, and its methodological framework. Adopting an analytical-conceptual approach, this study first examines the relationship between the telos of philosophy and human life, and then analyzes the potential of dialogical methods and interdisciplinary studies to expand and deepen this relationship. It argues that preserving the centrality of rational argumentation while drawing on explanatory and dialogical resources can create the conditions for a more effective engagement between philosophy and the complex problems of contemporary life. Within this framework, the function of philosophy is not limited to providing particular and direct answers. By employing explanatory frameworks oriented toward epistemic coherence and human concerns, philosophy can contribute to understanding and interpreting the various dimensions of contemporary life, particularly by helping to make life meaningful and providing orientation for it. Accordingly, life-oriented philosophy constitutes an approach to reconsidering the nature, telos, and function of philosophy, placing the connection between philosophical knowledge and the fundamental questions of human existence at the center of its inquiry.
Keywords: Life-Oriented Philosophy, Philosophy and Life, Telos of Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Philosophy, Nature of Philosophy.
Religiosity as a Way of Life
Dr. Masoud Zeynalabedin (Corresponding Author)
PhD Graduate in Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran.
massoudzz@yahoo.com
Dr. Ali-Akbar Abdolabadi
Assistant Professor, Department of Wisdom and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religions, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
a_abdolabadi@sbu.ac.ir
Abstract
Religious life cannot be reduced merely to a set of doctrinal beliefs or devotional practices; for religiosity, in addition to belief and practice, requires the formation of an enduring orientation in the manner of human living. The present study seeks, by reconstructing the semantic relations among four Qur'anic concepts — taslīm, īmān, taqwā, and iḥsān — to offer a model for understanding religiosity as a way of life that influences our attitude toward the philosophy of life. The research method is analytical and based on the systematic reconstruction of the network of Qur'anic concepts through semantic methodology; an approach that, by emphasizing the relations among words, their contexts of use, and their connection to adjacent concepts, goes beyond isolated and lexicographical definitions. The preliminary finding of the study indicates that these four concepts can be regarded as distinct yet interwoven domains within the structure of religiosity: taslīm, the human being's practical orientation before God; īmān, inner commitment and assent; taqwā, continuous vigilance in regulating life in accordance with this orientation; and iḥsān, the elevation of the quality of action. Nevertheless, the relations among these concepts are neither uniform in all cases nor reducible to a linear sequence. The article argues that this model, if confirmed by Qur'anic evidence, can provide a basis for a processual and dynamic understanding of religious life.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life, Religiosity, taslīm, īmān, taqwā, iḥsān, Semantics, Qur'an
From Living Being to the Possibility of Living: An Outline for a Holistic Trans-Emergent Metaphysics of Life
Musa Akrami
Professor of Philosophy. Email: musa.akrami@gmail.com
Abstract
One of the fundamental problems in the philosophy of life concerns the relation between the being of a living entity and the real possibilities of living. The philosophy of biology and process metaphysics address the organization, dynamism, and persistence of life; capability-oriented approaches examine the conditions under which capacities and real freedoms can be realized; and moral and political philosophy seek to justify normative judgments concerning individual and collective ways of living. The central question of this article is how the relation between living being and the possibilities of living can be clarified while, at the same time, keeping the cognition and explanation of these two domains distinct from their normative evaluation—without severing these levels from one another or deriving normative values directly from biological facts.
In response to this problem, the article proposes a framework termed a “holistic trans-emergent metaphysics of life,” guided by the “principle of relational dependence and analytical distinction between living being and the possibilities of living.” According to this principle, living being and the possibilities of living constitute two distinct yet interconnected domains of reality. The possibilities of living depend on the organization and properties of the living entity, as well as on environmental conditions and its surrounding relations, without being reducible to a description of the living entity itself. Normative evaluation—particularly with respect to human possibilities of living—is not a domain of the same kind as these two domains; rather, it belongs to a distinct level at which realities and real possibilities are assessed in light of normative criteria and reasons.
The article examines this framework in dialogue with process philosophy of biology, debates over the definition of life, theories of autonomy, and the capability approach. It then considers the framework’s potential for clarifying the relation between real possibilities of living and principles such as human dignity, freedom, justice, responsibility, and sustainable peace. The article’s proposed contribution is not the claim to have discovered, for the first time, a connection between life and possibility, but rather the formulation and assessment of a framework for analyzing the relation between the two domains of living being and the possibilities of living, and for determining the epistemic and normative status of discourse concerning them. Defending this framework requires a precise distinction between dependence and reduction, explanation and justification, and the description of reality and evaluative judgment. The present proposal is therefore offered as a research program whose novelty and validity must be established through critical comparison with competing views and through an assessment of its explanatory and discriminative power.
Keywords: metaphysics of life; living being; possibilities of living; relational dependence; analytical distinction; process metaphysics; holism; trans-emergence; autonomy; fact and value.
The Authenticity of Life in Zarathustra’s Thought: From Living in Accordance with Truth to Human Responsibility for Self-Formation
Sayyidah Susan Anjomeruz
Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Religions and Mysticism, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
This article offers a philosophical interpretation of Zarathustra’s Gathas from the perspective of the “authenticity of life,” addressing the question of how human beings make a life genuinely their own and on what grounds they accept responsibility for their choices. The study is based on an analysis of the Gathas and relevant passages of the Yasna. From the perspective of authenticity, it develops a philosophical interpretation of Yasna ۳۰, focusing on the two opposing dispositions or spirits, the necessity of discernment and choice, and the need for human beings to reflect on the path they choose. Through an analysis of Yasna ۳۴, as well as other passages of the Gathas concerning the relationship between thought, word, and deed and the importance of right action, authenticity can be understood as a form of moral integrity: an individual who speaks of truth but acts contrary to it creates a gap between their beliefs and their way of life. This study examines authenticity in terms of the relationship among conscious choice, moral coherence, and human responsibility toward the world. It concludes that the authenticity of life in Zarathustra’s thought encompasses three distinct yet interrelated meanings. The first is “being oneself,” understood as the conscious choice of one’s way of life. The second is existential sincerity, which entails harmony among what a person thinks, says, and does. The third is moral responsibility, understood as the conscious acceptance of one’s choices and the assumption of responsibility for their consequences. These three meanings are closely interconnected and can be examined as elements of a unified semantic framework. In the Gathas, the human relationship with the “good” is not merely a personal or inward matter; rather, human choices and actions are also connected to the state of the world and the possibility of realizing the right order. Accordingly, in this interpretation, authentic life in Zarathustra’s thought also entails responsibility toward reality and the shared world. Keywords: Authenticity of Life, Truth (aša), Zarathustra, Gathas, the Two Spirits
Divine Purpose and Human Self-Formation: Reconstructing the Foundations of Life’s Teleology in Transcendent Philosophy
Morteza Hoseinzadeh
Assistant professor of Islamic Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
University of Zanjan
mhoseinzadeh@znu.ac.ir
Abstract
Theories that ground the purpose of human life in God face two major objections. First, divine purpose may reduce human beings to instruments for realizing an external end. Second, accepting a pre-given end may restrict their role in choosing the course of their lives and shaping their identities. Employing an analytical-critical method and an approach of philosophical reconstruction, this study examines the resources within Transcendent Philosophy for addressing these objections. The relevant foundations are analyzed at three levels: theological, anthropological, and practical. The first level comprises the First Principle’s freedom from any end that would confer perfection upon it, the existential dependence of contingent beings, and the teleological structure of existence. The soul’s corporeal origination and spiritual subsistence, together with substantial motion, account for the unfinished and transformable character of human identity. The unity of the intellect and the intelligible, along with the effects of actions and acquired dispositions on the soul’s final form, elucidates the role of human activity in attaining perfection. This reconstruction yields a model termed “two-layered teleology”: return to the First Principle constitutes a universal ontological horizon, whereas the quality of this return and the human being’s ontological rank are linked to knowledge, intention, and action. The model suggests that, within the Sadrian framework, divine purpose is not necessarily instrumentalizing or incompatible with human self-formation. Nevertheless, establishing free will, identifying the concrete forms of perfection, and accounting for the lived experience of meaning require further argument.
Keywords: Mulla Sadra; Transcendent Philosophy; purpose of life; self-formation; meaning of life; perfection of the soul; two-layered teleology.
Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary Philosophy and Psychology, and Human Personal Development in the Contemporary World:
A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Cognition, Social Behavior, and Human Flourishing
Hassan Akbari Beiragh
Associate Professor, Semnan University
Fatemeh Ghazvehi
M.A. Student of Persian Language and Literature – Semnan University
fghazvehi@semnan.ac.ir
Shakiba Taleb
M.A. in Persian Language and Literature – Semnan University
Shakiba.taleb-۸۱@semnan.ac.ir
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the conditions under which human beings learn, communicate, make decisions, establish social relationships, and develop their intellectual and emotional capacities. Evolutionary Philosophy and psychology provides a theoretical framework for understanding cognitive, emotional, and behavioral mechanisms shaped by human evolutionary history. Bringing these fields together offers an opportunity to investigate how contemporary technologies interact with the evolved architecture of the human mind and influence development across the life course. This article examines the intersection of AI, evolutionary psychology, and human development through an interdisciplinary conceptual review. It explores implications for cognitive development, social learning, attachment, emotional regulation, cooperation, moral judgment, identity formation, education, and psychological well-being. The article argues that AI should be understood not merely as a technological instrument but also as an increasingly influential component of the developmental environments in which people acquire knowledge, construct identities, and establish relationships. Nevertheless, the effects of AI are neither inherently beneficial nor inevitably harmful; they depend on system design, developmental characteristics, patterns of use, social contexts, and institutional safeguards. Particular attention is given to cognitive offloading, algorithmic influence, social comparison, emotional attachment to AI systems, developmental inequalities, and human agency. The article proposes a human-centered developmental framework in which AI augments human capabilities while protecting autonomy, critical thinking, social competence, and psychological well-being. It concludes that understanding the future of human development requires integrating evolutionary insights with developmental science, technological research, and ethical governance.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Evolutionary Philosophy and Psychology; Human Development; Cognitive Development; Social Learning; Human–AI Interaction; Digital Society; Human Agency.
The Crisis of Educational Lifeworld in Schools and a Rethinking of the Meaning of Educational Leadership
Sohrab Yazdani
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Administration, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran. Email: s_yazdani@cfu.ac.ir
ABSTRACT
Schools are organizations in which knowledge transmission and the achievement of educational goals are intertwined with life experiences, the formation of human relationships, and the personal and social development of students and teachers. Through everyday interactions, decision-making, and encounters with diverse situations, teachers and students make sense of their experiences and shape their understanding of learning, education, and life. However, the dominance of administrative requirements, the emphasis on quantitative performance indicators, and the reduction of educational success to measurable outcomes raise the question of the extent to which schools can provide meaningful experiences of education and human development. The central concern of this article is to explore the concept of a crisis in the educational lifeworld and examine its implications for rethinking the meaning of educational leadership. The article aims to elucidate the human, ethical, and existential dimensions of educational leadership and examine its role in making educational life meaningful within schools. Adopting a conceptual and analytical approach, the article draws on philosophical discussions of the meaning of life, the concept of the lifeworld, and the literature on educational leadership to examine the relationship between the meaning of educational life and the responsibilities of educational leaders. Within this framework, a crisis in the educational lifeworld refers to a situation in which the humanistic aims of education are overshadowed by organizational demands, administrative routines, and an emphasis on measurable outcomes, thereby limiting opportunities to reflect on the meaning of educational activities and the quality of human relationships. Accordingly, rethinking the meaning of educational leadership requires attention to schools’ capacity to foster relationships grounded in respect and care, create opportunities for teachers to participate in decision-making, recognize their lived experiences, and connect everyday practices with the humanistic aims of education. From this perspective, educational leaders play a role in creating conditions that enable teachers and students to understand their experiences as meaningful and recognize the connections between education, life, and human responsibility. Ultimately, rethinking the meaning of educational leadership can help renew attention to the human and existential dimensions of educational life and redefine educational leaders’ responsibilities toward the aims of education.
Keywords: Philosophy of Life, Educational Lifeworld, School Lifeworld, Meaning of Life, Educational Leadership
The Meaning of Teaching and Its Connection to the Meaning of Life in the Process of Education
Zhila Kardan Halvaee
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.
Email: Zh.kardan@cfu.ac.ir
ABSTRACT
Teaching is a profession whose meaning emerges through everyday classroom experiences, interactions with students, and engagement with diverse educational situations. Such experiences invite teachers to reflect on their responsibilities, human values, contributions to students' development, and the significance of their professional practice. They also provide opportunities to reconsider the meaning of teaching in relation to the broader meaning of life. This paper examines how the meaning of teaching is constituted through the interplay of lived experience, personal values and beliefs, and ethical responsibility, and how this meaning shapes teachers' understanding of life and their engagement in the educational process. The discussion begins by conceptualizing the meaning of teaching and distinguishing it from narrowly occupational or duty-oriented understandings of the profession. Drawing on Nel Noddings' ethics of care, particularly her emphasis on interpersonal relationships, attentiveness to others, and responsiveness to students' needs, the paper explores the ethical and human dimensions of teaching. From this perspective, teachers' ethical responsibilities, sensitivity to students' needs, and cultivation of meaningful educational relationships contribute to an understanding of teaching as a profoundly human and meaningful practice. Difficult experiences and professional setbacks may also create opportunities for teachers to reconsider the meaning of their work and its relationship to their understanding of life. Moreover, tensions between educational values and institutional constraints can complicate the realization of these values, prompting further reflection on the purpose and significance of teaching. The paper argues that the meaning of teaching and the meaning of life are mutually constitutive. Through educational experiences, relationships with students, and reflection on their responsibilities, teachers develop a sense of meaning in their professional practice that may, in turn, inform their understanding of what makes life meaningful. Conversely, teachers' values and beliefs about life shape how they interpret educational experiences, respond to challenges, and establish relationships with students.
Keywords: Meaning of Teaching; Meaning of Life; Ethical Responsibility; Educational Process; Noddings
Reflections on the
Meaning of Life
Yousef Nozohour
Associate Professor
Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract
Proving that life possesses an objective and concrete meaning is exceedingly difficult—perhaps even impossible; yet striving to construct a meaning for our lives—one that renders existence somewhat more bearable and sustainable—appears both possible and, perhaps, essential. The difficulty of the problem lies in finding a meaningful way of living. In other words, life is inherently devoid of meaning, and searching for meaning in the objective world leads nowhere; therefore, we must either accept this meaninglessness and come to terms with it, or strive to forge a meaning for ourselves. Here, we highlight some of the most important ways to make life meaningful and attempt to defend them in a reasoned and methodical manner.
This article argues that the very effort to comprehend the elusive, precarious, and unstable nature of life—and to cherish each passing moment by infusing it with love and art while leading an ethical existence, without expecting a reward at the end of the process—can imbue human life with profound meaning and save the individual from falling into the abyss of existential nihilism.
Keywords: Philosophy and the meaning of life, Nihilism, Ethical living, The instability of life
Meaningful life or good life: Reconstructing the concept of "meaningful good life" in the views of Aristotle, Susan Wolf, and Thaddeus MetzAbstract
Manijeh Ameli
Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, University of Zanjan
Email: Man.ameli@znu.ac.ir
Abstract
The relationship between the good life and the meaningful life is a fundamental issue in moral philosophy and contemporary debates on the meaning of life. This study asks whether meaning in life can be reduced to happiness, virtue, and human flourishing or constitutes a distinct dimension of life’s evaluation. Through conceptual analysis, argumentative reconstruction, and comparative philosophical analysis, it examines Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia alongside the contemporary theories of Susan Wolf and Thaddeus Metz.The study first demonstrates that, in Aristotelian ethics, the good life consists not merely in subjective happiness but in virtuous activity, the actualization of human capacities, and the coherence and completeness of life as a whole. It then argues that, in Wolf’s and Metz’s accounts, meaning depends on objective value, active engagement, and relationships with things of value. Consequently, meaning is neither identical to happiness nor reducible to virtue or flourishing.Critically assessing reductionist and independence-based approaches, this study proposes the model of the “Meaningful Good Life,” in which meaning constitutes a distinct dimension that plays a structural role in the normative evaluation of life without necessarily being either a necessary or sufficient condition of the good life. The model maintains that a comprehensive evaluation of human life requires explaining the relationships among meaning, virtue, flourishing, and happiness rather than reducing these dimensions to one another or merely juxtaposing them. Ultimately, the study argues that an adequate account of the desirable human life must preserve the conceptual distinctions among these dimensions while clarifying their normative interconnections.
Keywords: the good life, meaning in life, eudaimonia, human flourishing, happiness, Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Life in the Age of Social Networks: The Transformation of Fundamental Paradigms and the Reconfiguration of Lived Experience in the Contemporary World
Zahra Hosseini
Faculty Member, Department of Philosophy, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran
Extended Abstract
The history of philosophical thought reveals that foundational concepts never take shape in isolation from the prevailing world picture. The close ties between physics and metaphysics in the Aristotelian tradition, or the reliance of ancient ontology on cosmological models, clearly attest to this fact. Today, with digital ecosystems and social platforms shaping everyday life, philosophy faces an unavoidable question: Which inherited notions can still account for human experience, and which ones call for rethinking? Social networks are not merely communicative instruments; by altering how we perceive the world, preserve memory, and understand ourselves, they carry far-reaching ontological weight. One of the central tasks of the philosophy of life is to engage with this altered reality as it appears in contemporary lived experience. Taking a phenomenological perspective, this paper proceeds in three steps: first, examining how the core notions of identity, time, and space have shifted; second, analyzing the imprint of these shifts on ordinary human life; and third, considering the crisis of meaning alongside ways to reconfigure our lived experience within this networked environment.
۱. The Transformation of Fundamental Paradigms
Identity: In classical thought, personal identity was largely conceived in terms of an enduring substance and ontological stability. In networked settings, this continuity gives way to fluidity. Identity shifts from a matter of “being” to one of continuous display, becoming a data-dependent construct shaped by algorithmic feedback and the unending scrutiny of others.
Time: The traditional sense of time followed a continuous and directional line. Within digital environments, temporality contracts into the immediate moment. Driven by real-time streams and transient content, time breaks apart into discrete episodes, producing an aimless, pervasive rush that leaves little room for calm reflection.
Space: Space was long understood as the ground of embodiment and physical co-presence. In digital life, however, connectivity routinely substitutes for shared physical location. Through this deterritorialization, the sense of rooted dwelling weakens, leaving individuals suspended in a vast web of contacts without deep local grounding.
۲. The Phenomenon of Living in the Digital Age
The reconfiguration of these three dimensions leaves distinct marks on daily life: fragmentation (the division of experience into disjointed episodes), suspension (an ongoing posture of waiting for external validation), and exhaustion (the weariness born of constant responsiveness). Together, these conditions undermine the conditions that support a meaningful life, particularly a grounded relationship to the world, a coherent self, and a continuous narrative arc. Agency is also weakened by automated environments: while individuals believe they are choosing freely, the paths of perception and deliberation are often laid out in advance by algorithmic architectures. As human life becomes intertwined with computational systems, the boundary separating person and machine grows porous. Drawing on insights like those of James H. Moor concerning the malleability of computer technology and its capacity to alter human practices, one may ask whether networked life has begun to take on the characteristics of a cyborg existence.
The role of the philosophy of life in this context is neither to reject technology out of hand nor to embrace it uncritically, but to open pathways for reclaiming lived experience. This study argues that cultivating an authentic life within networked environments requires recovering dimensions of human existence that have receded under the pressure of continuous data flow. Such renewal involves four interrelated efforts: recovering attention from external distractions so it can settle on deeper experience; reviving contemplative pause to counter unreflective haste; returning to embodied, concrete encounters with others rather than relying on mediated representations; and maintaining an ongoing narrative of oneself to heal temporal fragmentation and preserve inner coherence. Ultimately, this paper aims to clarify how the philosophy of life can outline the conditions for experiencing and sustaining a genuine human existence within an interconnected world.
Keywords: Life, Social Networks, Identity, Time, Space, Cyborg.
Invisible Voices and the Philosophy of Survival: A Subaltern Reading of Volume ۶ of Shazdeh Hammam (The Prince of the Public Bath)
Firouzeh Ameri
Assistant Professor, English Department, University of Tabriz
f.ameri@tabrizu.ac.ir
Abstract
Traditional historiography in Iranian historical literature has consistently prioritized elites, power-holders, and dominant discourses, while ignoring the lived experiences of marginalized classes. Volume ۶ of the autobiographical collection Shazdeh Hammam (The Prince of the Public Bath) by Mohammad-Hossein Papoli-Yazdi, focusing on the most marginalized and impoverished strata of Iranian society—particularly during the ۱۹۵۰s and ۱۹۶۰s—represents a novel endeavor to break away from this elitist tradition and record oral history from below. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Subaltern Studies (specifically Ranajit Guha’s insights and Gayatri Spivak’s problematic of the representation of the subaltern voice), coupled with the philosophy of life and tactics of everyday resistance (Michel de Certeau), this article analyzes the identity and existential implications of these narratives. The findings reveal that Papoli-Yazdi not only unveils the raw violence of poverty, structural inequalities, and lived suffering, but also—by narrating solidarity, livelihood creativity, and resilience strategies—transforms subalterns from passive objects into active agents endowed with agency and meaning. Ultimately, the paper argues that rereading such texts elevates our understanding of the “philosophy of life” from an abstract level to a concrete, resistance-rooted philosophy grounded in human dignity amid destitution, thereby highlighting the imperative to revise official historiography.
Keywords: Subaltern Studies, Shazdeh Hammam (The Prince of the Public Bath), Papoli-Yazdi, Philosophy of Life, History from Below, Narratives, Subaltern
A Critical Comparison of the Philosophy of Life in Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy and Viktor Frankl's Theory of the Meaning of Life
Farhang Bahmani
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Department of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Yasouj University
fbahmani@yu.ac.ir
Abstract
Background and Objective: The philosophy of life and the question of the meaning of life are among the fundamental issues of contemporary philosophical and psychological thought, addressing questions concerning the reason for living, the ultimate end of human existence, the possibility of attaining perfection, and how to confront one's own suffering, while also clarifying human responsibility toward the life that has been bestowed upon him. In Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy, by explicating ontological foundations such as the primacy of existence (asālat al-wujūd), the gradation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd), and substantial motion (ḥarakat al-jawhariyya), as well as anthropological foundations such as the levels of the soul and the teleological orientation of human perfection, a coherent ontological and anthropological framework for explicating the philosophy of life is established. In contrast, Viktor Frankl, in his theory of logotherapy, by emphasizing the will to meaning, freedom of will, responsibility, and the possibility of discovering meaning in various life situations, explicates how the lived experience of the human being becomes meaningful. This psychological thinker also endeavors, by explicating the philosophy of life and elucidating or constructing its meaning, to render life in this world possible and desirable. The present study aims to conduct a critical comparison of these two approaches in order to identify their foundations, components, points of convergence, theoretical differences, and complementary capacities in explicating the philosophy of life.
Method: This study is qualitative in nature and employs a comparative-critical approach. Data were collected and examined through documentary and library-based methods, by means of conceptual analysis of Mulla Sadra's principal works, particularly al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī al-Asfār al-ʿAqliyya al-Arbaʿa, and Frankl's seminal works, particularly Man's Search for Meaning and The Will to Meaning. In the analytical process, the ontological and anthropological foundations of Mulla Sadra and the anthropological and semantic foundations of Frankl are first extracted; subsequently, the principal components of each perspective are compared along axes such as the ultimate end of life, human perfection, freedom and volition, responsibility, the role of suffering, self-transcendence, and the relation of meaning to felicity. In the final stage, a critical comparison of the two perspectives is undertaken.
Findings: The comparative analysis indicates that both thinkers refuse to reduce human life to the satisfaction of material needs, hedonism, or the attainment of external successes, and both attach importance to transcending one's actual condition and to the individual's responsibility in the manner of living, for the sake of human exaltation. Nevertheless, their theoretical foundations and ultimate ends are not identical. In Mulla Sadra's thought, human life is understood in conjunction with the gradational reality of existence, the motion and perfective becoming of the soul (istikmāl al-nafs), and the attainment of higher levels of perfection; therefore, the meaning of life can be analyzed within a metaphysical and teleological framework whose ultimate horizon is bound up with felicity (saʿāda) and the existential destiny of the soul. In Frankl's theory, the point of departure is the search for a specific meaning commensurate with each individual's situation—a meaning discoverable through the realization of creative values, the experience of love, and the responsible confrontation with unavoidable suffering. Within this framework, human freedom is primarily highlighted in the capacity to adopt an attitude toward one's circumstances and to respond responsibly to the demands of life. Thus, while the Transcendent Philosophy is more concerned with explicating the existential foundations, the path of perfective becoming, and the ultimate end of life, Frankl's theory possesses greater capacity for explaining how meaning is experienced and realized in concrete and difficult life situations. At the same time, Frankl's emphasis on the possibility of finding meaning in suffering does not imply that suffering is to be regarded as valuable or necessary—just as Mulla Sadra's teleological framework, without a precise analysis of its foundations, does not directly translate into a psychological or therapeutic theory.
Conclusion: The outcome of the research suggests that a critical comparison of the views of the Transcendent Philosophy and Frankl's theory can provide the basis for formulating a multi-level framework for understanding the philosophy of life—a framework in which the ontological and teleological foundations of life and the explication of human perfection in Mulla Sadra's thought are brought into dialogue with Frankl's emphasis on the discovery of situational meaning, freedom of positioning, and practical responsibility. The value of this comparison lies not in claiming the equivalence of the two theories, but in revealing their complementary capacities as well as their fundamental differences. Such an approach can, on the one hand, contribute to a more practically oriented rereading of the anthropological capacities of the Transcendent Philosophy, and on the other hand, facilitate a deeper philosophical evaluation of the foundations of Frankl's theory of the meaning of life.
Keywords: Mulla Sadra, Viktor Frankl, philosophy of life, meaning of life, logotherapy, perfective becoming of the soul (istikmāl al-nafs), freedom, responsibility.
Life as the Immediate Idea: Hegel's Answer to the Oblivion of Life in Philosophy
Peng FU
lecturer in Haidu Academy -China
Email: ۹۲۰۵۷۹۷۸۹@qq.com
Abstract
If the history of Western philosophy is largely a history of the forgetting of life, the present paper argues that G. W. F. Hegel constitutes a systematic exception to that history. Hegel is arguably the only major philosopher who elevates life (das Leben) from a regional theme of biology or ethics to a category of logic itself, treating it as the first, immediate form of the Idea: the unity of the concept with its own reality. The paper reconstructs this thesis across three textual loci. First, in the Science of Logic, the chapter "Life" presents the living individual as self-mediating negativity: the organism preserves itself only by actively negating its presuppositions, so that life already displays the structure of self-creation that will later define spirit. Second, in the Philosophy of Nature (Encyclopedia §§۳۳۷–۳۷۶), Hegel develops an organic worldview in which the organism is the concept existing outside itself, articulated through sensibility, irritability, and reproduction; the genus process shows that death is not an external negation but a constitutive moment of life. Third, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, self-consciousness has life as its object, and the dialectic of desire and recognition exhibits spirit as emerging from natural life while preserving it within itself. The paper concludes that Hegel is both a resource for and a critical interlocutor of the proposed paradigm shift "from being to life": any philosophy of "life insofar as it is life" that abandons conceptual thinking risks relapsing into indeterminate immediacy.
Keywords: Hegel; life; the Idea; organism; self-consciousness; organic worldview
An Examination of the Concept of the Meaning of Life in Shams-i Tabrizi’s Thought
Hadi Sadeghi
PhD Graduate in Persian Language and Literature, University of Tabriz
sadeghihadi۷۰۴@gmail.com
Abstract
The question of the meaning of life is one of the fundamental issues in philosophy, concerning human existence, the purpose of living, and the possibility of attaining a meaningful life. Persian mystical literature abounds in works in which the meaning of life and the purpose of human existence are expressed, both explicitly and implicitly. Within the Persian mystical tradition, the thought of Shams-i Tabrizi is particularly significant because, in Maqalat-e Shams (The Discourses of Shams), he challenges habitual patterns of thought, superficiality, and self-deception, inviting human beings to reconsider their way of being and their relationship with truth. This study aims to elucidate the concept of the meaning of life in Shams’s thought and examine its foundations in Maqalat-e Shams. It addresses the following question: What elements, according to Shams, give meaning to human life, and how can individuals attain a deeper understanding of the meaning of existence? Employing a descriptive-analytical method and drawing on textual evidence, the study examines such elements as self-knowledge, liberation from self-centeredness, criticism of imitation and merely formal knowledge, inner transformation, and the human relationship with truth. The central hypothesis is that, in Shams’s thought, the meaning of life cannot be sought solely in a theoretical answer to the question of why we live or in a set of accepted beliefs; rather, it must also be understood in relation to the quality of lived experience and inner transformation. Accordingly, a tentative conclusion is that, in Shams’s perspective, moving beyond formal knowledge toward an existential experience of truth opens up a new horizon for understanding the meaning of life—a horizon in which the question of meaning transcends a merely intellectual inquiry and becomes intertwined with the way human beings exist and live. This interpretation may provide a basis for dialogue between Shams’s mystical thought and contemporary philosophical approaches to lived experience and the meaning of life. Through an analysis of the concepts and textual evidence found in Maqalat-e Shams, this study seeks to offer a clearer account of the foundations of meaningful existence in Shams’s thought.
Keywords: Shams-i Tabrizi, Maqalat-e Shams, meaning of life, self-knowledge, inner transformation, lived experience.
Redefining the Meaning of Life in the Age of AI: An Embodied Approach to the Crisis of Meaning in the Posthuman Condition
Hamid Taleb
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy of Mind, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, h.taleb@urd.ac.ir
Traditional analytic philosophy has largely approached the meaning of life through an abstract, disembodied search for necessary and sufficient conditions. Moving away from this traditional framework, this paper adopts an embodied cognition approach, conceptualizing meaning as an emergent property arising from the dynamic coupling of mind, body, and environment. Within this paradigm, while bodily experiences serve as the foundational grounding of meaning, sociocultural conditions act as essential filters and scaffolds that structure and validate meaningful experience—underscoring the central importance of culture and society. This approach is crucially important in the contemporary cultural and social conditions that is being radically reshaping by rapid technological disruption, most prominently the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). By perturbing cognitive and bodily boundaries, AI challenges the conventional, unified notion of the 'self' that has traditionally anchored the meaning of life, bringing human existence face-to-face with the 'posthuman' condition. Utilizing the embodied cognitive framework, this paper investigates the contemporary 'crisis of meaning' stemming from these transformations. By examining the dialectic between the embodied mind, shifting cultural schemas, and the emergence of posthuman identity, the paper demonstrates how the meaning of life can be re-evaluated and reconstructed amid the existential dislocations of the AI era.
The modern world, particularly in recent decades and alongside the expansion of digital technologies, big data, and artificial intelligence, has confronted a profound crisis of meaning and existence. Many thinkers regard this crisis not merely as psychological dissatisfaction or a decline in traditional religiosity, but as the consequence of an “epistemic blind spot” within modern civilization. The metaphor of the “blind spot” suggests that, precisely when modern civilization believes it understands the world and human beings better than ever before, it is, in fact, overlooking an essential dimension of human reality. Just as the human eye has a blind spot in its visual field—a gap that the mind conceals—modern science and technology also have an epistemic blind spot: in studying the world, empirical science has marginalized lived experience, inner awareness, and the quality of human presence in the world. Consequently, the world is increasingly understood through data, computation, and external observation, while human beings gradually come to regard themselves as objects that can be measured, predicted, and processed.
The contemporary crisis of meaning is not merely a consequence of the misuse of technology; rather, it is rooted in a reductionist understanding of human beings that has displaced conscious and lived experience from the center of our understanding of the world. This blind spot manifests itself in an approach that reduces human beings and the living world to computational mechanisms, quantitative data, and information-processing operations. Within this perspective, lived experience, inner awareness, embodiment, relationality, and the meaning-bearing dimension of human life are marginalized. Rather than being regarded as conscious, purposive subjects, human beings become units of processing within data networks. Many critics of modernity maintain that the dominance of instrumental rationality and a technological view of the world has gradually subsumed all spheres of life under the logic of efficiency, control, and calculation, thereby undermining the possibility of meaningful human experience. The central question is whether we can recover an understanding of human beings that does not regard them merely as machines, data, or computational systems. Can lived experience, presence, relationality, consciousness, the sacred, and existential meaning be restored to the center of our understanding of human beings? Answering these fundamental questions depends decisively on the perspective and approach adopted toward the crisis of meaning and the meaning of life—an approach capable of establishing a connection between teleological and instrumental perspectives.
The dominant approach to the meaning of life in traditional analytic philosophy has relied on an abstract search for necessary and sufficient conditions—a disembodied approach that overlooks the fundamental connection among mind, body, and the lifeworld. In critiquing this dualism, this article adopts embodied cognition as a theoretical framework for conceptualizing meaning not as an abstract concept, but as a phenomenon emerging from the dynamic interaction among body, mind, and environment. Within this framework, bodily experiences provide the experiential origins of meaning; however, it is cultural and social structures and conditions, functioning as an interpretive context, that make the articulation of meaning possible. This underscores the inseparability of meaning from its social context. Such an approach acquires particular importance and significance under contemporary cultural and biological conditions. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has transformed the boundaries of human agency, confronted the “self”—the traditional locus and anchor of meaning in life—with serious existential challenges, and brought humanity to the threshold of the posthuman condition. Drawing on the embodied cognition approach in cognitive science, this article seeks to analyze the dimensions of the contemporary “crisis of meaning.” By examining the interplay among embodiment, emerging cultural-technological environments, and the posthuman self, this study shows how redefining the “self” in light of AI-driven transformations requires rethinking the structure of meaning and reconstructing the possibilities for meaning-making in life in today’s world.
KeyWords: Embodied Cognition, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Crisis of Meaning, Posthuman Condition, Self, Philosophy of Mind
The Crisis of Meaning and the Necessity of Returning Philosophy to the Text of Life
Leila Nikooienejad
Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Yasuj University, Yasuj, Iran.
Abstract:
Throughout the history of philosophy, a cleavage has persistently existed between theoria (thought) and bios (living); however, in the modern era, this rift has been exacerbated by the hegemony of technical paradigms and technological accelerationism. This essay is predicated on the thesis that in transitioning from the traditional to the modern and postmodern worlds, philosophy has sacrificed its intrinsic function—namely, the “art of living”—to abstraction and purely theoretical discourse. The central inquiry of this paper explores the causes of this alienation and the ensuing crisis of meaning in contemporary humanity: an individual who, amidst an abundance of information, remains unable to discern an authentic pattern for existence.
The research methodology employed is descriptive-analytical, utilizing a phenomenological approach toward the Lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Through a critical re-reading of the position of the “Subject” within existential philosophy and practical reason, this essay argues that philosophy is not a decorative activity confined to libraries, but rather a form of praxis embedded within the context of everyday life. This study demonstrates how one might transcend the heavy lexicon of academia to restore philosophy to the “pavement”—the actual text of lived experience—as a tool for confronting the crises of modernity. Ultimately, this research concludes that returning philosophy to the “pavement” does not imply superficiality; rather, it represents an endeavor to “exist well” in an age where technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence, has usurped human capacity for reflection. This article proposes that philosophy should not merely be concerned with the production of theoretical knowledge, but should instead cultivate a “mode of life” (Lebensform) that enables the individual to move beyond passivity, to re-author their own narrative, and to achieve a stable and authentic sense of meaning in the face of modern challenges.
Keywords: Philosophy, The Art of Living, Lifeworld, Praxis, Self-becoming, Crisis of Meaning, Contemporary Humanity.
The Foundations and Components of the Philosophy of Life in Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy
Farhang Bahmani
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Department of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Yasouj University
fbahmani@yu.ac.ir
Abstract
Background and Objective: The philosophy of life is one of the fundamental issues of philosophical thought, concerned with explicating the nature of human life, its foundations of meaningfulness, the ultimate end of living, the path toward the realization of perfection, and the relation among knowledge, volition, action, and felicity. The significance of this issue in the contemporary world has been doubled in light of the proliferation of questions concerning the meaning of life, identity crises, and doubt regarding the ultimate ends of human existence. The Transcendent Philosophy of Sadr al-Mutaʾallihīn Shīrāzī, by virtue of possessing a coherent system in ontology, anthropology, epistemology, and teleology, has considerable capacity for the philosophical reconstruction of the concept of life and its components. Foundations such as the primacy of existence (asālat al-wujūd), the gradation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd), substantial motion (ḥarakat al-jawhariyya), the soul's being bodily in origination and spiritual in subsistence (jismāniyyat al-ḥudūth wa rūḥāniyyat al-baqāʾ), and the explication of human felicity provide the possibility of examining life not as a static and merely biological condition, but as a dynamic, gradational, and perfection-oriented process. Despite the studies conducted on the meaning of life in Mulla Sadra's thought, a systematic explication of the relation between his philosophical foundations and the components that can be extracted for the philosophy of life still requires conceptual and analytical reconstruction. Therefore, the present study aims to identify and analyze the ontological, anthropological, epistemological, and teleological foundations of the philosophy of life in the Transcendent Philosophy and to extract its principal components on the basis of Mulla Sadra's works.
Research Method: The present study was conducted using a descriptive-analytical method. The research corpus is al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī al-Asfār al-ʿAqliyya al-Arbaʿa, although other relevant works have been utilized to supplement the discussion. In the first stage, the propositions and concepts related to the reality of existence, the levels of existence, motion and perfective becoming, the reality of the soul, knowledge, volition, felicity, and the afterlife were identified. Subsequently, the relation between the philosophical foundations and the components of the philosophy of life was analyzed in order to clarify upon which theoretical foundation each component rests and through which line of reasoning it can be attributed to Mulla Sadra's intellectual system.
Findings: The conceptual analysis of the Transcendent Philosophy makes it possible to identify four categories of fundamental foundations for explicating the philosophy of life. First, the ontological foundations, comprising the primacy of existence, the gradation of existence, and substantial motion, on the basis of which human life can be analyzed in conjunction with the reality of existence and motion through the levels of perfection. Accordingly, life is not merely a collection of scattered states and occurrences, but is, within an ontological framework, a dynamic and transformative process. Second, the anthropological foundations, particularly the explication of the soul and its relation to the body, as well as the possibility of the soul's perfective becoming and subsistence through its substantial motion, demonstrate that human identity cannot be reduced to the bodily condition and material needs; rather, the understanding of life requires attention to the epistemic, volitional, and spiritual dimensions of the human being as well. Third, the epistemological and practical foundations indicate the role of knowledge, awareness, will, and human actions in shaping the individual's existential condition. Within this framework, knowledge is not merely an instrument for knowing the world, but gains importance in relation to how one lives and how the human being is oriented toward perfection. Fourth, the teleological foundations, by emphasizing the felicity and perfection of the soul and a horizon beyond worldly life, provide the possibility of explicating the ultimate end of life within the system of the Transcendent Philosophy.
On the basis of these foundations, the principal components of the philosophy of life in Mulla Sadra's thought can be reconstructed in the form of an analytical model comprising seven components: First, the existentiality of life; meaning that human life is understood in relation to the reality of existence and its levels. Second, dynamism and perfective becoming; life is a transformative process that encompasses the possibility of moving toward higher levels of perfection. Third, the centrality of the soul in human identity; the understanding of life requires attention to the reality of the soul, its transformation, and its relation to the body and the levels of perception. Fourth, epistemic orientation; knowledge and the mode of human perception are important in shaping one's outlook and the direction of one's movement. Fifth, the role of will and action in the realization of perfection; human life is not limited to the mere possession of potentials, but can be examined in conjunction with actions and the manner in which the individual's capacities are actualized. Sixth, teleology and felicity; human perfection is analyzed within a framework of an ultimate end beyond the satisfaction of transient needs. Seventh, the supra-worldly horizon of life; the explication of human life, with attention to the foundations of the soul and its subsistence, is not confined to worldly life, and the hereafter horizon gains importance in the final understanding of the human destiny.
Conclusion: The study showed that the Transcendent Philosophy has the capacity to explicate the philosophy of life in the form of a continuous model extending from ontological foundations to the ultimate end of human life. In this model, the ontological foundations provide the possibility of understanding the dynamism and gradational nature of life; the anthropological foundations explain the station of the soul and the human being's capacity for transformation; knowledge and action come to play a role in analyzing the path of actualizing human capacities; and teleology clarifies the horizon of perfection and felicity. Therefore, the philosophy of life in the present reconstruction is not merely a set of ethical recommendations or strategies for increasing psychological satisfaction, but a philosophical framework for understanding the reality of life, the path of human transformation, and the human being's ultimate end.
Keywords: Mulla Sadra, Transcendent Philosophy, philosophy of life, ontological foundations, philosophical anthropology.
Games and Agency: Escape from Life or Openness to Living Otherwise?
Narges Sadat Sajjadieh
University of Tehran
Sajjadieh@ut.ac.ir
Games have long been interwoven with human life and have constituted an integral part of human culture. So profound is this interconnection that thinkers such as Johan Huizinga have characterized the human being as a game-playing animal. Initially, however, games stood in opposition to work and duty, offering an escape from boredom and an opportunity for enjoyment and amusement. In other words, games seemingly stood apart from life, and engaging in them was regarded as a form of escape from it. Yet the structural complexity of contemporary games, their increasingly narrative character, the diverse roles they offer, and their growing resemblance to the narrative worlds of real life have gradually brought games closer to life, establishing a more intimate relationship between inhabiting game worlds and living in the world. Human agency provides one perspective from which the relationship between games and life can be articulated. Attending to human agency in life and identifying its instantiations in games can serve as a conceptual link between the two. In recent years, thinkers such as C. Thi Nguyen have described games as a “library of agency,” exploring their potential to enable the experience of different forms of agency. Drawing on this perspective, the present study seeks to reconceptualize games as a means of enriching life. Within this new conceptual framework, games become a setting for experiencing diverse forms of agency, agential fluidity, and agential resilience. It is also necessary to introduce moments of respite within gaming and establish pathways of reciprocal movement between games and life. Such arrangements can create space for reflection on in-game agency and establish a continuous connection between the in-game agent and the person as a whole agent within the ongoing course of life. This connection is needed to prevent the in-game agent from becoming detached from the whole agent and to sustain reflection on agency within games. In this regard, strengthening the aesthetic dimensions of games and shifting the emphasis from achievement-oriented gaming to striving-oriented gaming may help establish and maintain this continuity. Under these conditions, human agents can find in games an opportunity to experience forms of agency beyond those available in everyday life. Exercising agential tenacity and fluidity within games may, in turn, foster openness to new possibilities in life. Games, on this account, are not merely a means of escaping life; they also offer an opportunity to enrich it, enabling individuals, as agents, to discover new horizons and navigate their paths through life.
Keywords: Game, Life, Agency, Agential fluidity, Agential resilience, Possibility, Reflection.
Philosophy and Human Life
Seyyed Yahya Yasrebi
Retired Professor- Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract
The relationship between philosophy and life is both exceptionally strong and, at the same time, subtle. Russell observes that by examining the life of any society, one can discern its philosophy—and vice versa. This is no mere prophecy; history attests to the fact that transformations across all facets of human life are rooted in shifts toward sound reasoning and rationality. In certain societies—including Iran—the influence of philosophy and science is not particularly evident or tangible. It appears that the primary reason for this lies in fundamental shortcomings within the educational system. For instance, the focal point of education in our society is the "answer" rather than the "question" or the formulation of a problem. This detrimental predicament can be overcome through a methodical transition—a paradigm shift—from an "answer-centered" to a "question-centered" approach within public education. This article explores several such shortcomings and discusses how they might be addressed and resolved.
Keywords: Rationality, the connection between philosophy and life, problem-based education
Beyond Biological Reductionism: Concrete Life and Polar Structure in Romano Guardini: Toward a New Philosophy of the Living
Giuseppe Rinaldi
PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Pontifical University Antonianum – Italy
giuseppe.rinaldi@icpadula.edu.it
This paper explores the concept of “Life” as an autonomous philosophical and existential category, liberated both from biological-functional reductionism and from the excessive specialization of knowledge into isolated fragments. Drawing on Romano Guardini’s insights in Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendigkonkreten (۱۹۲۵), it examines how the “living concrete” is structured according to a framework of polar oppositions that cannot be reduced to mere laws of causality or the accumulation of knowledge.
The analysis highlights how Guardini’s ontology of life translates into a radical critique of the “impoverishment of the self” experienced by contemporary human beings in the face of the growing dominance of artificiality and power.
For Guardini, personal life is an open-ended process, shaped by finitude and by the dynamics of encounter with the other. This approach offers a fruitful theoretical bridge to Edgar Morin’s philosophy of complexity and his manifesto Teaching to Live. Both thinkers converge on the need for an “ethos of limits” capable of overcoming all forms of epistemic monism, fostering an education oriented toward the inexhaustibility of reality and the autonomy of the mind.
The paper thus seeks to demonstrate that “Life,” understood as a complex dynamic of polar oppositions, constitutes the fundamental basis for rethinking Bildung and personal responsibility in the contemporary world.
Life as “Grip on the World” in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology
Francesco Ori
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy
E-mail: uniantC۱۸۲۵۷@antonianum.eu
Abstract
This paper explores how the concept of prise sur le monde (grip on the world) evolved in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, from his ۱۹۴۵ work The Phenomenology of Perception to his posthumous The Visible and the Invisible (۱۹۶۴). It reveals an unstable notion of life that shifts from a perceptual to an ontological register. In his early works, the grip refers to the perceptual efficacy of the lived body, whereas in his later ontology, it signifies a non-possessive structure of Being.
Merleau-Ponty's research into nature, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France (۱۹۵۶–۶۰), prompted a change in the meaning of the grip on the world. It is no longer a taking hold of the world, but rather a letting be, in light of reversibility. This philosophical metamorphosis reimagines existence as not an instrumental mastery, but as a reciprocal openness and a breathing in of Being. This binds the embodied subject to its Umwelt and the living beings that inhabit it.
This transformation is also detectable in the reception of the concept of prise sur le monde. The paper examines various interpretations of this concept, including the maximal grip in Hubert Dreyfus's account of skillful coping, the enactive approach (Gallagher), and eco-phenomenology (Toadvine and Iofrida). This overview reveals a parallel reconfiguration of this notion articulating an idea of life that prefigured the integral ecology paradigm.
Keywords: Merleau-Ponty, Grip on the World, Phenomenology, Eco-phenomenology, Integral Ecology
Study of the Role of Religion in Giving Meaning to Life: A Comparison Between Sudden Calamities and the Banality of Routine Life
Azim Razavi Sufiani
Assistant Professor, Department of Religions, Islamic Mysticism, and Political Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran
Abstract
The relationship between religion, meaning, and life has been a subject of extensive discussion in sociological and psychological research. Contemporary thinkers such as C. Geertz, P. Berger, and T. Luckmann have proposed thought-provoking theories regarding the role of religion in imparting meaning to both the individual and society. This study aims to investigate the role of religion in providing meaning to three categories—bewilderment, suffering, and evil—and to examine the connection between these concepts and everyday life. The article employs a descriptive-analytical method and relies on library research for data collection. After distinguishing between and defining the concepts of "bewilderment," "suffering," and "evil," the study focuses on "bewilderment" to differentiate and define two sub-categories: "sudden calamities" (such as death, floods, and earthquakes) and the "banality of routine life," identifying the latter as the greater calamity. Consequently, the study highlights the significant role religion plays in structuring and organizing the meaning of routine life within a symbolic universe—characterized by specific social symbols and a meaningful order that both clarifies one's situation and regulates social behavior.
Keywords: Religion, Meaning, Life, Bewilderment, Everydayness
Life as a Market Full of Trials and Spiritual Profit and Loss: A Philosophical-Theological Reading of the Meaning of Human Life in the Qur'anic Monotheistic Meta-Paradigm
Kamal Al-dinSalehyan Rad
Payame Noor University Faculty Member
salehyanrad@pnu.ac.ir
Abstract:
Within the Qur'anic monotheistic meta-paradigm, death and life are profoundly interwoven, with the ultimate purpose of their creation being the manifestation of the "best deed" (Al-Mulk=۶۷/۲). Life, far beyond a mere biological reality, is a bustling market brimming with trials and arenas of spiritual profit and loss (Al-Anbiya=۲۱/۳۵). In this market, the human being is both buyer and seller, meticulously shaping his own gain or loss. Endowed with the means to discern truth from falsehood, he bears full responsibility for his voluntary words and deeds (Al-Insan=۷۶/۳). Attaining intellectual maturity is the prerequisite for this divine test. Both good and evil serve as tools of trial (Al-Anbiya=۲۱/۳۵), and every deed carries its own weight: righteousness is heavy, while evil is light (Al-A'raf=۷/۸; Al-Qari'ah=۱۰۱/۶-۹). The door of repentance remains open in this world (Al-Shura=۴۲/۲۵), and death is the moment the market closes and the final reckoning begins. Deeds and words are precisely recorded and weighed on their own divine scales (Al-Anbiya=۲۱/۴۷). Ultimate happiness or misery in both worlds is determined by one’s transactions: the righteous attain the pure life (Al-Nahl=۱۶/۹۷), whereas the heedless are cast into straitened livelihood and misery (Ta-Ha=۲۰/۱۲۴). Consequently, life in the Qur'an finds profound meaning within a unique meta-paradigm, rooted in its distinct monotheistic ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations. Ultimately, human awareness or neglect of these truths—along with practical adherence to their dictates according to the Qur'anic axiology—defines the value of life and the existential degree of every individual.
Keywords: Life, Philosophy of Life, Trial, Spiritual Profit and Loss, Scale of Deeds, Monotheistic Meta-Paradigm
The Philosophy of Life from the Perspective of Ibn Sina’s Oriental Wisdom in the Modern World and for Contemporary Humanity
Seyed Mohammad Dibaji
Professor of Philosophy,Tehran University
Abstract
The philosophy of life is one of the fundamental concerns of human thought, addressing questions about the meaning of existence, happiness, the purpose of life, and the relationship between human beings, the world, and the self. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the eminent philosopher of the Islamic world, presents a coherent vision of the ideal human life through his philosophical system, emphasizing the relationship between reason, the soul, and human perfection. In the Oriental Wisdom (al-Hikma al-Mashriqiyya) attributed to Ibn Sina, particular importance is given to the inner dimensions of human existence and the soul’s progression from lower levels of perception and being toward perfection. From this perspective, life is not merely a collection of material needs and transient pleasures; rather, it is a process of discovering truth, cultivating virtues, and attaining genuine happiness.
In the modern world, despite remarkable advances in science and technology, contemporary humanity faces challenges such as a crisis of meaning, excessive individualism, consumerism, anxiety, and alienation from the self. A critical reconsideration of Ibn Sina’s thought may provide a valuable framework for examining the relationship between reason, ethics, society, and the ultimate purpose of human life. Within this framework, reason is not merely an instrument for controlling nature; it is also a means of discovering truth and organizing human life in accordance with rational principles. Furthermore, happiness in Ibn Sina’s philosophy is closely connected to the perfection of human faculties and the spiritual and intellectual development of the soul, extending beyond the mere satisfaction of material needs.
Employing a descriptive-analytical method, this study examines the principal components of the philosophy of life in Ibn Sina’s Oriental Wisdom and explores their potential relevance to the challenges facing contemporary humanity. The findings suggest that rationality, self-knowledge, virtue, moderation, and the pursuit of perfection can contribute to a renewed understanding of meaningful life in the contemporary world. Accordingly, revisiting Ibn Sina’s philosophical legacy does not imply a return to the past; rather, it offers an opportunity for constructive dialogue between the intellectual heritage of Islamic philosophy and the existential concerns of modern humanity.
Keywords: Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Oriental Wisdom, Philosophy of Life, Happiness, Contemporary Humanity, Reason, Self-Knowledge, Human Perfection.
Life in an Unstable World: A Philosophical Re-reading of Hafez’s Poetry
Mansoureh (Noushid) Mahmoudi
Visiting Assistant Professor, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art
Abstract
The instability of the world, the difficulties of living, and the crises of human orders raise questions about the possibility of living freely. In such circumstances, the issue is not merely how to endure suffering or wait for conditions to change, but how to preserve hope, zest for life, and personal freedom in the face of adverse circumstances. Through a philosophical reading of Hafez’s ghazals, this study asks what possibilities his poetry offers for thinking about ways of living in an unstable world and how instability, hope, rendi (the spirit of the rind), and human freedom are related.
Using an interpretive method to examine selected ghazals, the study explores the representation of life’s instability, the critique of hypocrisy and authority, and the manifestations of hope and zest for life. Rather than presuming that rendi is equivalent to resistance or freedom, the study treats it as a multivalent concept whose relationship to independent judgment and the acceptance or rejection of dominant orders must be examined through the text. The initial hypothesis is that Hafez’s poetry may open up possibilities for preserving personal freedom under imposed conditions. This hypothesis will be tested against the poems’ internal tensions and alternative readings. The study aims to assess the potential and limitations of Hafez’s poetry as a resource for thinking about contemporary crises of life.
Keywords: Hafez, philosophy of life, instability, hope, rendi, freedom, human agency, dominant order.