During the book review session of ‘Historical Concepts of Philosophy II’ Mohammadreza Beheshti stated that Baroque music can manifest the idea of unity within plurality; Leibnitz belongs to this historical period and the same idea is also found in his philosophy.

IBNA: During the review session held on Wednesday evening (May 23) at the House of Literati, Mohammadreza Beheshti academic member of the University of Tehran and translator of the book, Bahman Pazuki editor of the book, Masoud Zamani philosophy professor and Shojai Jashoqani secretary of the session made speeches. 

At the beginning, Shojai said: the second volume of ‘Historical Concepts of Philosophy’ that is supposed to reach three volumes is recently released by Iran Philosophy Institute. Focusing on theology, the book tends to familiarize Iranian readers with the new concepts in theology, such as civil theology, revolution theology and theology of reconciliation. 

Beheshti, the second speaker, began his speech with the necessity of translating the book to Persian and said: “History of philosophy is not set exterior to philosophical space and does not take us beyond philosophy. Yet philosophical thought does not take place in vacuum but it is formed in the context of other thoughts. The author in this book studies philosophy from this point of view. By reading the book we realize that concepts are transformed not only through philosophical trends but also within the thought of a single philosopher.” 

He continued: “The transformation of historical concepts is not linear and despite other sciences, they do not change synergically. The story of the mixture of horizons that we have learnt about via hermeneutics reveals itself in this work.” 

Beheshti added: “Another interesting point this book has shown us is that philosophical thought manifests itself also in the works of art. Philosophical concepts are not limited to the philosophical space and actually manifest themselves in artistic works such as architecture, music and painting. For instance, Baroque Music can best reveal the idea of unity within plurality; Leibnitz belongs to this historical period and the same idea is also found in his philosophy.” 

The next speaker, Pazuki said: “The history of philosophical concepts does not equal pure philosophy. In fact, it is like a dictionary for steering philosophical studies.” 

He added: “Historical view may imply that in order to explain historical concepts one should admit relativity. Yet the historical view emerged in order to avoid relativism and through this we can get rid of the problems of historicism and get to a kind of unity in the history of philosophy.” 

“We should not forget that by tracing the history of a concept one cannot reach the end of that philosophical concept, as philosophical concepts abide closure. Philosophical concepts do not have direct beginnings but this does not imply their relativity. Each philosopher may have his own meaning and concepts in different periods, and by reading these texts we may not come up with any organized unity among their implied terms. A historical approach is to remove such obstacles.” 

Then Masoud Zamani mentioned that the work is being translated from original German to Persian. “Translating from German, compared with English and French, is more difficult but the translators have undertaken it quite well and in my opinion the book is honestly speaking fine. The translators are professors of translation and that is why they have chosen a reasonable mode of language for this translation. Yet this does not mean that it has no defects.” 

Then he referred to a number of problems and vague terms in the Persian translation.

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