Allamah Misbah’s theory of Primary Self-evident Propositions’ reference back to the Knowledge of Presence and its impact on the foundations of humanities

One of the most important and productive discussions in the philosophy of humanities is to prove the realism of human values and reject relativism. According to the Islamic philosophy foundations in the philosophy of humanities, the human values have their roots in objective realities and human mind, irrespective of the conditions that surround it, can comprehend those realities and make others know them too. This means that if we want to comprehend the realities of humanities and the values discussed in it, we must completely free our minds from the personal tastes and understandings, as well as the general tastes and collective agreements, and rely on the intellect and the intellectual arguments. But some believe that even with this assumption, freeing the mind from such conditions is not possible, since the course of the intellectual argument must eventually end at two fundamental self-evident propositions and there is no proof of their conformity with the real world but that the mind and the mental structure, at present, is such that it prefers these propositions over their contradictions. Thus the self-evident propositions, instead of conforming to reality, are accepted due to their conformity with the mental structure and its conditions. Hence they are relative. When the fundamental self-evident propositions are considered relative, all the propositions based on them, especially the humanities, are relative as well and dependent on the mental structure. On the other hand, some Muslim thinkers have answered this issue by dividing the self-evident propositions to propositions of inner experiences (wijdāniyāt) and primary premises (awwaliyāt). Their answer with regards to the wijdāniyāt is clear and acceptable due to the fact that its representation is present near the soul. But the criterion for the truth of primary self-evident premise is always under discussion and is subject to many controversies. Here, Allamah Misbah guides us towards a novel answer. He seeks the criteria of truth of these propositions in the return to the knowledge of presence. The main objective of this paper is to precisely explain this theory in the section on the primary self-evident premises and their strong relationship with the subjective consideration of humanities. Therefore, with hope in Allah, using the descriptive analytical approach, we try to present a convincing discussion on the value of comprehending the humanities and answer the concerns of thinkers, raised as a result of ambiguity in the criteria of truth of primary self-evident premises.