Abstract

Afdaluddin Kashani stepped into the domain of philosophical thought in Iran at a time when, following the harsh attack of Ghazzali and Fakhr al-Din Razi, philosophy was suffering from such lassitude and stagnancy that it needed revival and reconstruction. He saw the remedy in excluding the problematic discussions of metaphysics in particular sense from the field of philosophy and introducing self-knowledge as the basis of philosophical work. Comparing to the works of philosophers before him, what can be considered as the distinctive feature of Baba Afdal's works in terms of content is dealing with philosophy from a perspective different from that of the common philosophical works of his time and before him. A study of the prevalent philosophical atmosphere of the early 5th century and all the 6th century reveals that what mostly provoked the opposition of religious people against philosophy could be found in the domain of theology. Accordingly, Baba Afdal had rightly understood that, after the destructive attacks of Ghazzali against the apparently solid and powerful foundation of Peripatetic philosophy, the continuity of philosophical thought following the method of early philosophers neither was possible nor had the necessary attraction and appeal for absorbing any audience. He correctly understood the significance of creating a fundamental change in philosophical approaches and tried to accomplish this important task in order to remove the causes of the conflicts between religious-minded people and philosophers from the field of philosophy. Moreover, he did so in order to open a new horizon before the eyes of philosophers and followed a clever method without making much ado in this regard. In fact, he tried to revive philosophy based on a Socratic method and free it from the problematic, fruitless, and soulless domain of metaphysics in particular sense and guide it into the lively and efficient realm of self-knowledge