The Ontological Foundation of Allameh Tabatabaei’s View on

Abstract

In Islamic philosophy various interpretations are offered with respect to the concept “Nafs al-Amr”. These have resulted from the way different philosophers have tried to resolve the difficulties concerning the correspondence theory of truth in connection with various kinds of propositions. More complications are added when the theory of “Principality of Existence”, propounded by Mulla-Sadra, has found wide-spread acceptance. The complications result from the existential presuppositions of the theory. In these circumstances Allameh-Tabatabei has offered his own interpretation of “Nafs al-Amr”. In this article we offer a detailed description of delicacies in Allameh’s theory, with a careful attention paid to his words when he discusses the theory of Pricipality-of-Existence. In this connection of special interest would be his discussion of correspondence theory of truth with regard to some special kinds of propositions. We shall discuss also some of the criticism made of his analysis.

Keywords

• Truth
• Correspondence theory
• Nafs-al-Amr
• intentional concepts
• Allameh Tabatabaei.