Hamidreza Saadat Niaki

This article seeks to demonstrate that Hubert Dreyfus’s claim that Heidegger anticipated Kuhn in his account of normal science and scientific revolutions has no adequate basis in either Heidegger’s philosophy of modern science or Kuhn’s philosophy of science. To establish this point, the article first examines Heidegger’s view of the nature of modern science. It then analyzes and critiques Dreyfus’s claim concerning Heidegger’s priority over Kuhn with respect to normal science. Dreyfus’s further claim that Heidegger anticipated Kuhn’s conception of scientific revolutions is subsequently examined and criticized. The article concludes that neither of these claims is sufficiently supported.

This article examines the possibility of rethinking the concept of the ideal life in modernity through the concept of Bildung. Its central problem arises from a crisis caused by the collapse of premodern metaphysical horizons and the establishment of the autonomy of the subject. Within this crisis, a unified and binding conception of the good life is weakened, giving rise to a lasting tension among individual freedom, historical plurality, and the need for normativity. The article shows that the three dominant responses to this condition—perfectionism, self-actualization, and relativism—each face a structural limitation. Perfectionism fixes a rigid model of the human being; self-actualization reduces human formation to a predominantly inward process; and relativism weakens any shared horizon of judgment and meaning. Against these approaches, the article argues that Bildung should be understood as the condition of possibility of thinking about the ideal life. Conceptual analysis shows that Bildung is grounded in a fundamental tension between force and form, individuality and a shared world, and historical openness and normativity. From this perspective, the ideal life cannot be understood as a final model. Rather, it functions as a regulative horizon that directs human formation without becoming fixed in a static form. The article ultimately shows that Bildung preserves normative judgment without falling into dogmatism, and historicity and plurality without collapsing into the absence of standards. Thus, Bildung is reconstructed not merely as an educational concept but as a philosophical structure for rethinking the relation between modern existence and the ideal life.

This article examines the fundamental tension between the historical dynamism of law in Hegel’s philosophy of right and the static orientation of the text-centered approach in legal and interpretive traditions. The central question is whether the legitimacy of law derives from a fixed, supra-historical text, or from the rational realization of freedom within history. In Hegel’s system, “right” is nothing other than the objectification of freedom in history, and law constitutes a moment in the unfolding of spirit. By contrast, the text-centered approach whether in religious, legal, or positivist form reduces law to mere text and regards fundamental change as a threat to stability. The article shows that, in Hegel’s dialectical logic, the legitimacy of law is realized only in relation to rational history and freedom. To clarify this claim, the study first outlines the theoretical foundations of Hegel’s philosophy of right: the free will and its dialectical structure, the three levels of right (abstract right, morality, and ethical life), and the roles of institutions such as family, civil society, and the rational state. Drawing on concepts such as concept (Begriff), sublation (Aufhebung), recognition (Anerkennung), national spirit (Volksgeist), and reconciliation (Versöhnung), it argues that law is inherently dynamic, and any absolutization of the text leads to alienation (Entäußerung) and a crisis of legitimacy. The article then presents three reconstructed objections of the proponents of the textcentered approach; ambiguity, historicism, and disregard for the text and provides Hegelian responses to them. The analysis demonstrates that freedom serves as the stable criterion of legitimacy, while history is the arena of its gradual realization. Finally, the implications of this approach for contemporary legal philosophy are explored, showing that the text-centered approach, whether in religious traditions or in modern Textualism, ultimately proves inadequate. Thus, Hegel’s thought opens a new horizon for rethinking legal legitimacy and for criticizing text-centered legal systems.

One of the challenges posed about human rights in Kant's practical philosophy is his racist statements. At the first glance, these statements seem contraversial to the spirit of his thinking. Some Kant scholars have justified that and some others have emphasized the existence of such conflict. In our opinion, Despite Kant's racist statements, his moral theory is immune from racist approach and has a universal form that emphasizes the preservation of the dignity of all human beings as a social- moral duty. In this article, w first consider the position of Anthropology in Kant's thought as a framework in which his racial views are outlined. Then regard his theory of race (philosophy of race) and racist statements. After that we examine the challenge between these views and the spirit of his thinking and explain and evaluate the views of Kant scholars as to this issue and allocate the final section to conclusion.

Human rights, as grounded in Kant’s philosophy, emerged within the intellectual world of the Enlightenment, a world structured around the autonomous reason of the subject (subjectivity). In Kant’s philosophy, the foundation of human rights lies in the status of the human being as an end in itself, which is rooted in autonomy. Kant’s claim, itself shaped by the Enlightenment, is likewise universal in scope. If, then, we translate this thought into our present historical context and contemporary mode of being-in-the-world, what might Kant have to offer “us” with regard to human rights? Two matters need to be addressed in order to answer this question. The first is to elucidate the glocal character of the contemporary Iranian mode of being-in-the-world; the second is to identify a conceptual framework and a hermeneutical method through which a dialogue with Kant can be established and his philosophy of human rights brought into the horizon of the world of the contemporary Iranian human being. Since any dialogue presupposes some common ground, engaging Kant in a dialogue on human rights requires us, through the approach of “diatopical hermeneutics,” to seek a homeomorphic equivalent within our own culture: one that, on the one hand, performs a function consonant with that of human rights in Kant’s philosophy, while preserving both its universal orientation and its consideration of the human being precisely insofar as they are human; and, on the other hand, rests upon a foundation compatible with the presence of indigenous cultural elements in the Iranian mode of being-in-the-world.

The notion of social welfare was created by the paradigm shift from duty‐based to right‐based morality, in which the satisfaction of human needs is a right in line with preserving human dignity. This paper investigates Kant’s view on social welfare in light of redistribution policy. Kant bases his political philosophy on external freedom. Notwithstanding the ethical principles of his philosophy, he is the first prominent thinker to clearly emphasize the necessity of a redistribution policy by the government toward providing for the needs of the poor and the needy. The important question remaining is whether or not the Kantian ideas of external freedom and redistribution for the sake of satisfying the right to social welfare can reach a compromise. It seems that Kant believes the redistribution policy to be not the right of the poor to be provided welfare by the state, but the right of the state, and as such, the states' right to task the people with providing for the welfare of the poor. Such a policy challenges the freedom of the wealthier class and apparently leads to an inconsistency between the two pillars of Kant’s sociopolitical philosophy. The current paper aims to find Kant’s response to this challenge by referring to his scattered arguments.