This paper examines the liberal society that Popper lauds, that aims to be truly open, and discusses why another, more communitarian kind of society, particularly societies in Africa, may also reflect the quest for intellectual openness that is Popper’s ideal. Moreover, this paper avers reasons why Popper should be comfortable with such a liberal-communitarian mix. The inter-subjectivity in his critical rationalism is a balance of an explicit individualism, and an implicit social element (Afisi, 2016a). Popper is indeed an author of such a balance. For a society to be truly open requires the careful recognition and protection of individual freedom. However, the extent to which individuals are free to perform actions that they desire without external constraints, and the level of their individuality in relation to others when performing such actions, remain a contentious issue between liberals and more communitarian thinkers. Popper’s critical rationalism provides the necessary impetus to this contention through his view of freedom that I contend can best be viewed as carefully balanced, a view which combines individuality with a social element that upholds community values necessary for openness of society. With this combination, Popper’s politics of liberalism provides an effective model of how a truly open society can be achieved. The values inherent to Popper’s liberalism including those concerning intellectual openness, individual freedom, mutual respect, measured self-respect, welfarism, humanitarianism, accountability, critical debates and feedback from the citizens, together concern the conditions for a society to be truly open. There are many competing thoughts as to what openness might be in Popper’s philosophy. The present study of Popper does not presume to address them all. The focus here is specifically on using Popper’s idea of critical rationalism to balance relations between liberal politics of individual rights and freedom, and communitarian politics of the common good, as it relates to situations about how socio-economic and political conditions in Africa societies should be structured. While I contend that Popper’s works in political philosophy focused centrally on Western political tradition, and not about Africa in its strict sense, significant lessons can be distilled from Popper that can offer suggestions on social reforms in Africa. This paper explores Popper’s project of the open society across the plurality and differences of societies, so that his liberal ideas of individual freedom are not undermined, and the progress of the communitarian idea of the common good, that Africa societies are built upon, is also well enhanced. Liberal individualism and community values inherent to communitarianism are both well accommodated within Popper’s critical rationalism.

Examining the relation of religion with cosmology and ideology is regarded as an interesting and challangable discussion in religious studies. This study, with a theoric and analytic approach, has intended to explaining such problem as religion’s position to ideology, validity or invalidity of religion’s ideologizing, consequences of ideologic religion and reconsidering Dr. Shari’ati’s opinions has been performed. Muslim and western scholar’s interpretation of ideology and Shariat’s idea with regard to the interpretation of Islamic ideology as well as consequences of ideologic religion have been discussed in the paper. It has been understood that: 1. In one phrase, religion is more than ideology, though it may be of ideologic aspect also; 2. In some cases as Shariati’s thought, religion is not identical to ideology, it has been changed to institution; 3. One may not necessarily count ideology religious as is seen in Marx that is irreligious; 4. Though religion is not identical to ideology, Divine religions have been of ideologic message.

Since metaphors occur in language, it is an appropriate tool to identify ideology with. The choice of different metaphors in a text by language users would reveal its dominant ideology. Contrary to this, different ideologies may produce different metaphors to support their basic beliefs. Taking conceptual metaphor theory and Teun van Dijk’s theory of ideology as the basic definitions in this paper, the functions of metaphor in an ideological system and also the role of metaphor in different social contexts are being studied.

As a prominent philosopher in hermeneutical tradition, Paul Ricoeur is known for his multi-layer thoughtfulness. Published in the 70s, From Text to Action, is among the books identifying Ricoeur’ s evolution from textual criticism to ethical activism in politics and philosophy, the 3rd part of which has been translated into Persian in 2016 as Ideology, Ethics & Politics. While Ricoeur in the chapters entitled in this part has critically reviewed philosophers’ thoughts such as Georg Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, and Max Weber, his points of departure in his philosophical endeavors are traced. Exploring Ricoeur’ s thought in general and the book’ s main points in particular, the present study attempts to critically review both the text and the translation. In such a critique, Ricoeur’ s different philosophical periods besides the core ideas of the book chapters are explored.

In search for the roots and causes of Arab world undevelopment Al-Jaberi criticizes religious discourses and their philosophical elements and points to the age of establishment as the initiation and decline spot of Arabic-Islamic civilization. The age of establishment is a period in which Islamic wisdom was formed based on text of the Holy Quran in the framework of different Islamic philosophies (Religious Rational Concepts) along with unreligious philosophical systems (Foreign Rational Concepts). From the Al-Jaberi’s point of view epistemic internal systems based on religious rational concepts are the outcome of Sunni scholar’s scientific jihad and other epistemic external systems are represented by Shiites and/ or other denominations. From a geographical view he also describes a distinction between the Arabic west and east. He considers the initiatives of sheer Islamic reason and philosophy to root in the west of the Arabic-Islamic world and relates eclectic philosophies and foreign unreligious conceptual systems to Iran or east of the Arabic world. He claims that the answer to the question of Arabic decline is to get rid of ideologies and philosophies of the east of Arabic world and to join the sheer wisdom of the west Arab world especially that of the Ibn Rushd: 6th to 8th Hijra centuries. This paper criticizes the foretold dogma of argue against Shiite school of thought as part of the existent discourses in domain of Islamic world and rules out his refutation of Islamic scientific and philosophical realities.

This article explain unsuccessful Iranian intellectuals' attempts in the fields of thoughts and politics through surveying ideas of Ehsan Tabari and Jalal Ale-Ahmad. It tries to show that theirs ideas have been under hegemony of political formalism; so their naïve attitudes has converted their thought to an ideology which serve to political aims based on a political formalism.

This study is an attempt to analyze the role of anecdote in formation, evolution and spreading the mystic viewpoints from the 5th to 7th century. The analysis of this subject started with Kashfolmajoob, one of the oldest mystic texts, in which the Persian mystic anecdote is observed; it was also followed in Asraroltohid, TabaqatolSofiaya, KashfolAsrar, TazakorolOliya. Based on the findings of this study, narrativization in the growth and nurturing of the mystic viewpoints first leads to linguistic ontology of intuitive perception, concept formation, and categorizing of concepts, and then it becomes an instrument in transferring the viewpoints, attracting homogeneous views, spreading knowledge, creating changes, disciplining the views, and finally it becomes the guardian of the mystic viewpoints in the form of anecdote.

Ideology is one of the concepts discussed and scrutinized by many scholars in various branches of science. However, there is no comprehensive definition of the word accepted by a majority of scholars. With respect to the features of Ideology which has been put forward by scholars, they can be divided into three main groups. The first group has a positive attitude toward ideology and regards it as a necessity for human life. The second one, offering negative definitions of ideology, does not evaluate it positively; rather, seeks to negate it as leading to division and separation. The last group introduces ideology as a neutral concept to which both positive and negatives features raised by different thinkers can be attributed. Jiddu Krishnamurti is one of the thinkers who have a negative attitude toward ideology and rejects it for some alleged qualities, including divorce, separation, seduction, and so on. This attitude is rejected by both religious and secular thinkers.