Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tehran
Abstract
Comparison between philosophers and philosophical systems has been there since the beginning of the history of philosophy until our time, as Farabi in his book, Al-Jam’ Bayn Rai’ al-Hakimayn, somehow has comparatively studied the viewpoints of Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, it was Paul- Masson Oursel, who in the early twentieth century, through a historical approach, focusing on Western thought, launched an integrated methodological discussion of this issue in his book, Comparative Philosophy (1931), and comparatively studied philosophical viewpoints and idea. The present paper, while reflecting on the nature, possibility, conditions and objectives of comparative philosophy, is an attempt to study the intellectual and cultural backgrounds of the idea of comparative philosophy and condition and pathology of its teaching and research in contemporary Iran. Also in a positive step, attempts have been made to introduce and analyze three models of comparative philosophy in contemporary era – that is, the comparative approaches of Étienne Gilson, Henry Corbin and Toshihiko Izutsu in the light of their comparative works – which underline the possibilities and limitations of comparative philosophy with regard to the tradition of Islamic philosophy. Reflecting on the pivotal status of Kant in the history of Western philosophy and significance of paying attention to it in comparative philosophical studies constitute the concluding part of this paper.
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