An Analysis of History, Causality and Evolution in Islamic, Iranian and Polish Philosophy

Abstract

The historical issue of the clash of civilizations from traditional to postmodern has led to emergence of reactionary and evolutionary ideas. My goal is to compare the philosophy of history in Polish Catholic and Iranian Islamic philosophical schools. Avicenna, AL-Farabi, Ibn Muskawiyyah, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun have presented political hypotheses about the progress of history and its degeneration, and they discovered laws governing history that are the key for analysis causality in history. The end of history in Shiite and Catholic thought, is related to the emergence of an expected man, a Savior, who gives a meaning and significance to religion, politics, sociology, and brings a society to perfection. The belief in Jesus in Christianity as an expected Man is the cause of progress and social changes. This evolutionary approach in the form of Messianism and issue of evolution are the main topics of religious philosophy. It is common to Iranian and Polish political philosophy to consider the unseen unity of existence. A significant trace of Polish thought about philosophy of history has emerged in the post-Hegelian philosophy of August Cieszkowski (1814-1894), who called his philosophy of history "historiosophy". It is based on the acceptance of unseen world. Concepts of causality in ideas based on stillness of history and Marxism and any other materialist thinking that do not believe in the unseen or the spiritual have never completely convinced Iranian and Polish thinkers. Among contemporary Polish philosophers W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz has focused on the issue of evolution. He is an interpreter of the philosophy of Josef Hoene-Wronski (1778-1853), who was the founder of independent school of Polish religious philosophy in 19th century and has developed the concept of Messianism. In many of his works, Korab-Karpowicz has criticized philosophical systems of communism, liberalism, and capitalism in the context of the Catholic Christian thought whose influence has continued in Poland in the postmodern period. He has also referred to the philosophical work of Al-Farabi. The result of Al-Farabi's classical philosophy is thus an influence on two philosophical systems, both Western and Eastern, whose practical outcome is a theory of evolution. It is because Al-Farabi has set theoretical foundations of progressive and degenerative processes in societies. His work is like a gold mine of political philosophy based on Plato, Aristotle and Islamic political philosophy from which the rules governing evolution can be extracted. This influence can be seen as an inspiration of Korab-Karpowicz's ideas of human evolution and attainment of happiness. They are fully compatible with theoretical foundations of Al-Farabi political philosophy.