The chief purpose of this paper is to argue for the possibility of immediate knowledge of God through knowledge by presence from Sadra’s philosophical perspective. This sort of immediate and direct knowledge can provide justification for belief in God. I shall show how knowledge by presence works in this regard، and how important the role of knowledge by presence is in a religious epistemology. Sadra as a famous Shi‘ite philosopher in his new philosophical school، al-Hikmat al-muta‘åliyah، on the basis of Shi’ite theology، has attempted to employ knowledge by presence to argue for the justification of immediate knowledge of God. I also shall deal with the criticisms of the immediate knowledge of God، that Sadra contended epistemically.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT: A QUARTERLY OF SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2013, Ser. 46, ISSN: 2251-6123 The Epistemic Justification of Immediate Knowledge of God from Sadra's Philosophy Perspective Dr. Abbas Yazdani 1 Abstract The chief purpose of this paper is to argue for the possibility of immediate knowledge of God through knowledge by presence from Sadra’s philosophical perspective.
comDate of Receive: 14/10/90 Date of Accept: 3/4/91 justification of immediate knowledge of God. In fact, on the basis of Sadra’s philosophy, as a mystical way to perceive God, knowing Him by presence is rooted in Shi’ite theology.
In other words, knowledge by representation is where the concept and form of the object is present before the subject, like knowledge of external objects, such as tree, sky, car, human etc.
So, immediate knowledge of God is not even a candidate for being a source of justification for beliefs about any objective reality, because there is no physical body for God so that we can identify Him. One of the differences between knowledge of physical objects and knowledge of God that shows the disanalogy between these two sorts of knowledge is that in sense perception we encounter physical objects, whereas when the religious believer claims he knows God by presence, it does not mean he has encountered God’s body, because God does not have a body."