University of Tehran Press Philosophy of Religion 2008-7063 14 1 2017 03 21 Fakhr Razi's approach to the semantic analysis of "knowledge" and related words in religious text Fakhr Razi's approach to the semantic analysis of "knowledge" and related words in religious text 1 20 62416 10.22059/jpht.2017.62416 FA Keyhan Soltanian PhD student PNU, Iran,Tehran. Reza Akbari professor at Imam Sadiq University, Iran, Tehran, Department of Philosophy and Islamic theology. Mohammad Hussein Mahdavinejad Associate Professor at PNU, Iran, Tehran, Department of Philosophy and Islamic theology. Alireza Parsa Associate Professor at PNU, Iran, Tehran, Department of Philosophy and Islamic theology Journal Article 2016 01 03 By analyses of vocabulary related to the concept of knowledge, such as consciousness (shuʻ ūr), perception (ʼidrāk), understanding (fiqh), comprehension (fahm) and so on, that has been extracted from religious texts Razi provides us some epistemological consequences. Among the findings is that human knowledge is possible and yet limited; knowledge is gradated; people on the basis of their talents are in one of the levels of knowledge; it is not the case that all human beliefs are justified; knowledge by divine gift (‘ilm ladunnī), knowledge through guess (‘ilm ḥadsī), foresight (‘ilm farasah) cannot be rationally justified. Fakhr’s analysis shows that knowledge has interaction with other aspects of human existence. Furthermore, his analysis helps us to withdraw important points to have a religious definition of knowledge. This definition, in addition to belief and truth, reveals the important role of qualitative and quantitative variety of human cognitive powers and the role of trust in others, especially the prophets. This definition is externalistic and shows that issues such as behavior and supernatural factors have effects on knowledge especially on its belief part. The aim of this paper is to offer a new definition of knowledge in the epistemological debates over the use of the content offered by Razi and we used descriptive and analytical methods for this purpose.         By analyses of vocabulary related to the concept of knowledge, such as consciousness (shuʻ ūr), perception (ʼidrāk), understanding (fiqh), comprehension (fahm) and so on, that has been extracted from religious texts Razi provides us some epistemological consequences. Among the findings is that human knowledge is possible and yet limited; knowledge is gradated; people on the basis of their talents are in one of the levels of knowledge; it is not the case that all human beliefs are justified; knowledge by divine gift (‘ilm ladunnī), knowledge through guess (‘ilm ḥadsī), foresight (‘ilm farasah) cannot be rationally justified. Fakhr’s analysis shows that knowledge has interaction with other aspects of human existence. Furthermore, his analysis helps us to withdraw important points to have a religious definition of knowledge. This definition, in addition to belief and truth, reveals the important role of qualitative and quantitative variety of human cognitive powers and the role of trust in others, especially the prophets. This definition is externalistic and shows that issues such as behavior and supernatural factors have effects on knowledge especially on its belief part. The aim of this paper is to offer a new definition of knowledge in the epistemological debates over the use of the content offered by Razi and we used descriptive and analytical methods for this purpose.         https://jpht.ut.ac.ir/article_62416_85fdf4b2eb6c6acd0853cc1a4225646d.pdf