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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Critique of Marxist Philosophy Part 2 Preface Ever since man has attempted to determine his relation to the external world, the formulation of world view has been a central problem of philosophic thought. The author's aim is to present the world view of Islamic philosophy against the backdrop of other views presented by modern Western philosophy, especially Marxism.

Two issues are involved in the difference between world views: The first one relates to realistic and idealistic conceptions of the world. Realism believes in the existence of an objective reality independent of mind, while for idealism reality can be only mental. The second issue involves two separate outlooks within realism: materialism and theological realism. Materialism regards sensible matter as the common ground of all existence including mind and consciousness.

Theological realism (hitherto referred to as 'realism')goes beyond matter and asserts the existence of an eternal and infinite cause as the primary cause of all phenomena, including the mental and the material realms. Correction of Some Errors: Here, it is necessary to correct the misconceptions n of some modern writers.

The first of these errors is to consider the conflict between theology and materialism as the one between idealism and realism, as if theological thought advocated idealism and materialism was the only representative of realism. The second is the accusation that the theistic world view attributes every phenomenon to a supernatural cause and thus makes science impossible by completely eliminating causality and law from the realm of nature.

This accusation is false, because theology considers God as a cause transcending nature, as a power above nature and matter. This error involves a misunderstanding of the place of the transcendent cause in the causal chain. The third error is that of identifying spirituality with idealism, whereas spirituality can be considered as an attribute of idealism as well realism; it has a different meaning in each of these outlooks.

Thus there are three kinds of world views: idealism, materialism and theological realism. Idealism was studied in Part 1, while discussing the theory of knowledge. Materialism and theological realism will be studied in this part. A Clarification: At the outset a number of points have to be clarified.