During
the critical session on book 'Islamic Art Philosophy' held on Tuesday evening,
author Hassan Bolkhari, Professor Esmail Baniardalan, and architecture
professor Seyyed Gholamreza Eslami made speeches.
At
the outset of the session, Mohammadkhani manager of Book City Center considered
the philosophy of art an old field of science that is based on imagination and
allegory.
Then
referring to the ups and downs of art philosophy in the 2nth century, Bolkhari
said: "There is a discrepancy over the definition of art among western
thinkers: the first group led by Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein term art as
an open and indefinable concept, whereas the second group consisting of
sociologists of art find art as a social matter that changes according to
social changes and is therefore indefinable. Yet Islamic scholars have no
controversy over the nature of art; they even categorize poetry under art since
it also applies imagination."
The
next speaker, Baniardalan, said "Islamic Art Philosophy" presents
challenging issues on philosophy of art and added: "A western approach to
the philosophy of Islamic art is futile; unfortunately this has been our main
approach to different fields of human sciences in the last hundred years."
"In our tradition, art is inseparable from wisdom and
beauty, whereas the west does not believe in the connection between beauty and
ontology," he added. "Islamic art philosophy should not be merely
viewed according to Muslim philosophers. For instance, Frabai and Avicenna both
had mastery on Aristotle's metaphysics and logic and critiqued them, but why
have they been indifferent to his Poetics?"
"Avicenna departs from Aristotle on poetics, as he follows
Iranian thought. According to Aristotle, imagination is inspired by exterior
motifs, whereas Avicenna's imagination is fed by the other world. Iranians
believed in something higher than philosophy – the so-called 'Javidan-Kherad'
(perennial wisdom) in Pre-Islamic era. Philosophy was freely practiced in Iran
despite Greek where philosophers were usually banned and suffered."
According
to Baniardalan, the main characteristic of Javidan Kherad was that it was
divine and attended truth, features that Greek philosophy lacks.
The
last speaker, Seyyed Gholamreza Eslami, professor of architecture at the
University of Tehran, stressed on the terrestrial realization of arts like
architecture and added: "by applying Islamic-Iranian philosophers' thought
in architecture, we can reconstruct the DNA of our civilization otherwise a
catastrophe will take place. Any imitation of ideas is doomed to failure as
ideas should be born of our own minds."
Source:
IBNA News Agency