Document Type : Research Paper
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Abstract
Cause and effect, essence and accident, existence and nonexistence, unity and plurality and necessity and contingency are among the concepts which do not enter the mind through senses. This has caused controversies among the philosophers. Some consider them to be innate. Others seek to justify their acquisition through senses. A third group believes them to be rooted in the nature and mankind’s soul and, thus, illusive. Muslim philosophers consider them to be secondary intelligibles and real concepts. As a Muslim philosopher, Allameh Tabataba’i holds a noble theory about the acquisition of knowledge. Moreover, Kant has a theory about the said concepts. He considers them to be mental categories or a priori forms of knowledge. This paper investigates the possibility of Kantian and non-Kantian a priori forms of knowledge and concludes that they do not exist at all.
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