Knowledge of Sufism and the Symbolic Interpretation of Paradise Garden Design Concept

As human beings we stand on the edge of two truths: the existing material world and the Spiritual being world. The knowing heart is the holy place, where these two dimensions meets and combined. In Sufi lessons the mortal heart of human is not an imaginary symbol but an objective organ of perception and intuition that reflect transcendent qualities in the world, for the assistance and help of other people. The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been mentors of the heart for almost fourteen centuries. Their education and techniques purpose is to stimulate us and help us to wake up and clean the self for Divine love. Sufism is the spiritual dimension of Islam. According to Sufism, there are two aspects of Islam: the outer part, which consists of the Shari‘ah (the rules of Islamic law), and the inner part, so-called tariqah (the spiritual way). Together, these aspects lead one to haqiqah (the Truth). Sufism is another term for tariqah. This paper is an attempt to understand Sufism knowledge (true knowledge) and how this knowledge is related in world and with ChaharBagh (Garden of Paradise) concept, “symbolic interpretation of paradise garden” which is used by the Muslims in architecture. Sufism explains us that it is possible to understand the world beyond our thoughts. Those who dedicate themselves in Sufim exercise and practices eventually discover the state they can see things as real and true as they are or when you worship God as though you can see him.

A CULTURE OF SELFISHNESS AS A FACTOR IN THE CONTINUATION OF THE PANDEMIC

The pandemic, which lasts for two years, has significantly changed all aspects of people's social life due to restrictions on the usual forms of behavior of people in everyday life, public places, and at work. A person is put in a situation of choice: either continue to interact with relatives, friends, colleagues at work on the basis of stereotypes of behavior, but in a pandemic that poses a threat of unintentional infection with coronavirus, or strictly observe the rules of partial or complete isolation. The practice of organizing the behavior prescribed by the sanitary service of large groups of people has shown that a significant part of the population resists the requirements to wear personal protective equipment, to vaccinate with promptly created vaccines against coronavirus. Authorities are forced to impose increasingly stringent measures on violators of doctors' instructions. In the article, the clash of individual and public interests in a pandemic situation is analyzed from the point of view of a theory that reveals the essence and content of a culture of selfishness. It is a system created by people throughout the history of social development to increase the natural selfishness given to all living organisms, including humans. Some social groups, through cunning, lying, psychological and physical coercion, provide personal benefits, while others use these behaviors to preserve themselves, their families. The negative attitude of people to regulations that destroy traditional social ties, compulsory vaccination is considered as a manifestation of individual and group selfishness, formed on the basis of affirming the priority of personal freedom, their own ideas about how to protect the body from various diseases. In the actions of the part of the medical community that is trying not by the method of explanation, persuasion to develop a vaccination kit in people, but to force with the help of severe restrictions to force it, corporate selfishness is being implemented. Those who are guided by it attribute their possession of true knowledge to themselves, rejecting other options for combating the pandemic. The article states that acting on the basis of values and norms of a culture of cooperation, it is possible to achieve the desired success in suppressing coronavirus infection. The conditions for the transition of social subjects from the implementation of the rules of a culture of egoism to the adoption of values and norms of a culture of cooperation are revealed.

Philosopher and Theologian

The seventeenth century witnessed significant changes in the content and method of philosophical enquiry in the years between the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Chapter 10 examines Herbert’s principal philosophical and theological works, De veritate, De causis errorum, Religio laici, and De religione gentilium. It examines their purpose, key arguments, and characteristics, the extent of their originality, and their historical and intellectual context and reception. It briefly considers the authorship issues surrounding A dialogue between a tutor and his pupil. It presents Herbert as a serious and respected but controversial philosopher who sought to challenge the revival of scepticism by developing a methodology for assessing true knowledge, subjected both Christian and pagan religions to rational intellectual examination, and advocated the reduction of religion to essential tenets in order to combat religious confusion and conflict. It acknowledges his dependence upon earlier authors but also highlights ways in which he anticipated elements of Enlightenment thinking. It explores Herbert’s religious beliefs during the final two decades of his life, building upon his correspondence with Sir Robert Harley in Chapter 6 and drawing a comparison with George Herbert’s distinctly Elizabethan via media in religion. It emphasizes his commitment to the Church of England and examines his interest in Arminianism and Socinianism and the extent of his religious heterodoxy. It presents Herbert as an independent and liberal religious thinker but rejects claims that he was an early deist or atheist.

Crafted ambiguity in the Wisdom of Solomon

The Wisdom of Solomon is a text intensely concerned with epistemological questions. What is true knowledge? Where does it come from? What’s its purpose? How does one attain it? In each of its parts, Wisdom can be seen directly and clearly tackling these types of problems. The Wisdom of Solomon is also a text deeply and frustratingly ambiguous. Is this some kind of embarrassing irony, a text so intent on delving into the nature and purpose of understanding ultimately unable to be understood? This study looks at how the ambiguity, surely present at several places throughout the book, is, in fact, rhetorically crafted and designed to guide to the reader to greater clarity and understanding. There is, then, no conflict between the stated purpose of the text, to lead the reader to wisdom and knowledge, and the means by which the author does so. The ambiguity and the epistemology of the Wisdom of Solomon are, in the end, inseparable.

Colloquium 2 Commentary on Trott

In her “Saving the Appearances of Plato’s Cave,” Dr. Adriel M. Trott argues that “the philosopher’s claim to true knowledge always operates within the realm of the cave.” In order to probe her claim, I challenge her to make sense of “politics in the cave,” namely, the status and practices of two categories of people in the cave: “woke” cave-dwellers (namely, those who recognize shadows as shadows but have not left the cave) and “woke” puppeteers (namely, philosophers ruling within the cave).

Educating ‘Temple Cultures’ Heterogeneous Worship and Hindutva Politics in Kerala

Contrary to the popular imagination of Kerala as a secular, rational left bastion, the state is witnessing Sangh Parivar’s active presence in the domain of temples and everyday culture. This study attempts to examine the anxiety of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its sympathisers about the ‘true’ knowledge on temple culture, and their efforts to teach everyday Brahmanical rituals and other forms of worship such as srividya and kuladevathas. I argue that Sangh Parivar is interested in heterogeneous worship practices in Kerala as part of their ideological expansion. Their obsession for the didactics of temple culture is a response to the modern secularisation process and ambition to educate the Other Backward Classes and Dalits in Brahmanical knowledge, for they are not traditionally inclined to the Brahmanical temples. Finally, the study aims to document the ethnographic details of Sangh Parivar activities in the world of worship and temple culture.

Supremacy of theoretical thought over practical thought in Plato's political philosophy

Based on the example of Plato’s political philosophy, this article explores the phenomenon of supremacy of theoretical thought over practical thought, which is a universal trait of the classical Ancient Greek philosophical systems. The first part of the articled indicates the conceptual similarity of the two-level systems of knowledge of Plato and Aristotle in the role that theory plays in relation to practical thought. The second part of the article reconstructs the concept of Plato's philosophy of politics, outlines the key political strategies he dealt with, and provides analytical reconstruction of the democratic theory of politics, oligarchic and civil-political, where the latter is the reflection of Plato’s original political views. The final part is dedicated to the method of Plato's political philosophy. Analysis of the context of using the term “theory” by Plato allows reconstructing the key methodological characteristic of Plato's model of theoretical philosophy. The article also provides the typology of practical knowledge, and substantiates the reasons according to which the political philosophy, as one of the types of practical knowledge, had to adhere to the theoretical prescriptions that fully determined the content of political reflection. The paper reveals the central practical task of philosophical theory, which by Plato's plan was intended to cease the political strife in Athens using true knowledge. The thesis is substantiated that using theory, Plato sought to complete the history of practical politics and subsequently shift towards building the “ideal state” based on the laws that are mandatory for all citizens of the polis. The article also discloses the principles of complex interrelation of the three Socratic methods: irony, dialectics and maieutics, which in Plato's political philosophy manifested as a single complex method. It is demonstrated that the method fulfills a bonding function between theory and practice, which allows transferring the theoretical truth to the sphere of practical problems of politics.

Cumulative Structure in Zhuangzi's “The Great and Venerable Teacher”

The secret of the “cumulative structure,” one of Zhuangzi's favorite rhetorical devices, is “adding.” To add is not to repeat but to arrange meanings of different shapes in various incremental parallel structures. This effective tool is used in his chapter titled “The Great and Venerable Teacher” to explicate the highest order of true understanding of the Way, or zhenzhi, and to symbolize the climactic pursuit of the Daoist truth. Vertically the Daoist epistemological value system, with the zhenzhi at its apex, is extended into a graphic hierarchy; horizontally the step-by-step progressive process of the attainment of this true knowledge is sometimes subjected to contemplative examination and sometimes compressed along the axle of time flow into an intense moment of sudden enlightenment. Since the cumulative structure works as a living body of correlation, the palpable contour of which corresponds to the message it conveys, it enables the readers to experience—not just to understand—Zhuangzi's teaching.

The Body, the morality, and the passions in Descartes’ philosophy

This article attempts a discussion of the philosophy of Rene Descartes, about the relationship between the human body and its passions, in the process of learning the morality of virtues. Descartes has repeatedly mentioned the decisive role that the true knowledge of the good must play and trouble by regulating our passions, but without ever providing us with the answer satisfying the following question: where does and what exactly does this awareness? Even if do not find a complete answer to our question in the last great work of Descartes, we still see several elements emerging from it important in some articles of the Passions of the Soul. Thus we learn in article 143 that desire "is always good when it follows a true knowledge”, but this true knowledge only seems to be reduced to a distinction fundamental that takes place inside the soul of things "which depend entirely on us, of those which do not depend on it”. But if true knowledge, that is true, does not seem to have any other criterion apart from what it depends entirely on us, here we are in full philosophical modernity. To what Descartes immediately adds that if one succeeds in one's life in distinguishing fatality from posture, "one easily gets used to regulating his desires in such a way that, especially as their fulfillment depends on us, they can always give us complete satisfaction ” (article 146). Theoretical aspect, practical aspect, thus reconciled and harmonized with each other, it remains for us to ask one more question: why the true joy, which makes the greatest happiness of human life (felt, for example, by the husband mourning his wife in section 147) can only be a "joy secret ”? René Descartes frequently mentioned the importance of the real knowledge of good and evil, supposed to rule our lives. However he never clearly explained what this knowledge really meant to him. If there's no full answer to that to be found in his work, at least it seems that the real knowledge, meaning the truth, is totally dependent on us. Quite a modern vision of Philosophy was suggested by Descartes but also, in this article, an unusual point of view of the philosopher's work.