Self

The problem of "alienation" and the "alienated man" is one of the most attractive features of the critique of modernity. Ali Shariati, the contemporary Iranian theorist who was highly concerned with the critique of both tradition and modernity, introduced the idea of a "third way". As the main cause for decadence, defining and defying alienation was at the core of Shariati's intellectual agenda. In this paper, we will explain his view on alienation and his recommended solution which invites peoples of the third world to return to their very identity. Then, some critical arguments raised by his critics will be explored and assessed.

Communitarianism is considered as one of the most pivotal schools of thought in contemporary normative political theories. In fact, it is a label for a group of people who share common characteristics such as critiques on liberalism, and some concepts like “community”, “tradition” and “self”. Since most communitarians belong to the analytical philosophy, which focus on language and logic, they could not be regarded as contextualists. On the other hand, their analysis is related to “tradition”, “here and now”, and “particularism” which denotes the importance of historical, political and sociological situation. It seems that not only the enrichment of morality and human rights in communitarianism is possible, but also it implies somehow relationship with context, cultural diversity and relativism. It seems that communitarianism needs a “third way” between text and context.

The effect of assessment types (self, peer, and teacher) on the EFL writing strategies development was examined in this study. Sixty upper-intermediate EFL learners at Qazvin Islamic university in four groups (one control and three experimental groups) were studied. One-way ANOVA checked homogeneity of the groups prior to the treatments and, then, the participants’ records and diaries were employed to gather data. Explanatory and descriptive analyses were implemented to analyze and classify the strategies the EFL learners picked up. This provided the type, frequency, and percentage of the strategies the participants mostly employed. The results revealed that the experimental groups, namely, self-assessment group, peer assessment group, and teacher assessment group employed more cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies than the control group. Affective strategies were more appealing to the control group. Focusing on the diction of the words, concentrating on the complex structures used by different writers, and making use of the structures the participants became interested in or found suitable were the most frequently referred to strategies. Teaching strategies the participants more picked up in this study might enhance EFL learners’ writing development at TEFL centers.

Although today it is common to categorize spiritual tourism separately as a type of tourism, spirituality can be found at the heart of any travel. What might be taken as granted is that the tourist is going to add something to his/her self and, in this respect, some degree of spirituality can be sought in every type of tourism. Therefore, through entrepreneurship and innovation it would be possible to focus on the development of businesses which are able to offer some degree of spirituality to tourists according to their needs. This paper seeks to provide a deeper view of the relationship between authentic experiences and spiritual tourism and the role of entrepreneurship in utilizing this relationship in order to enrich tourists’ experiences. In other words, the spiritual dimension of every type of tourism is discussed and the necessity of its reinforcement through entrepreneurship in tourism and a systematic approach towards the issue is considered.

What this essay is to discuss is Mullā Ṣadrā and John Hick’s viewpoint about the "nature of the soul". Mullā Ṣadrā considers the real nature of human beings to be "the immaterial soul" based on his own principles in the science of the soul. He explains the nature of the soul with respect to substantial motion that the human being is corporeal in coming into being and the immateriality of the human soul in survival and afterlife. John Hick considers the consciousness as the most basic characteristic of mind, which is identical with the soul. He considers the nature of the soul as “human self” which forms his truth. Most of the viewpoints of both thinkers are similar or close to each other such as belief in the existence of the soul and being two-dimensional, quality of Genesis, substantiality, incorporeity, and corporeality of coming into the soul.

The problem of personal identity among others may stem from the following question—what does be the person that you are, from one day to the next, necessarily consist of? The diachronic problem of personal identity raises question on the necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of the person over time. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time. To answer these questions, John Locke discarded the soul and the body as necessary and sufficient substances for personal identity over time. He accepted consciousness as the only criterion for personal identity; the only thing capable of remaining the same and preserving personal identity through change. Though Locke’s argument is somewhat clear and coherent but what remains vague and incoherent is embedded in the question—what exactly is consciousness? How and why should it be the basis or criterion for the determination of personal identity? Using the method of critical analysis, I argue that Locke’s choice of consciousness as the determinant of personal identity, though quite novel, is incoherent and vague. Secondly, Locke had already presumed and anticipated clearly though fallaciously the very thing he wishes to substantiate. I therefore conclude that Locke’s argument is just another way of trying to escape but inadvertently prolonging the difficulty of apparently articulating a distinction between the psychological approach and physiological approach to the problem of personal identity. However, in my submission, I propose the concept of the “other” as alternative approach— a sort of an extrinsic-intrinsic approach to the problem of personal identity.

The question of the probability of life after death has been of the highest importance throughout the ages for great numbers of people. The denial of its possibility is frequently based on a conception of a person as a completely material (or physical) being by appealing to both empirical evidence and philosophical argument. In this study, based on Lund’s view, we will present and defend a mind-body dualism in which the immaterial self does not consist in, and might not depend for its existence upon, the existence of the body and so might continue to exist after bodily death. The close association of these two distinct entities is due to a causal connection — a connection that fails to establish that the physical brings the mental into existence and is compatible with theories that the source of consciousness is not in the brain (e.g., the transceiver theory). In view of this, the continued existence of the self beyond the death of its body would be not only metaphysically possible but might be in accord with the laws of nature (i.e., naturally possible) as well. Arguments will be advanced in support of this form of dualism. They may be classified as follows: 1. the nature of the self (as known through acquaintance or phenomenology) and what it is to be a person, 2. Interactionist dualism and “transceiver” theory, 3. The self as an ontologically basic particular that experiences the world. 

In the history of philosophy, the concept of the self has long been a subject of intense debate and scrutiny. Within Kant's critical philosophy, the self holds a significant position and is deemed essential for the very notion of experience. This article aims to clarify Kant's viewpoint on the concept of self. Kant posits the existence of an inner sense faculty, through which he introduces the empirical or phenomenal self, a concept that aligns with Hume's stance on the self. Furthermore, Kant introduces the idea of a noumenal self through the faculty of understanding and apperception, suggesting that this noumenal self is the foundation upon which all our experiences are made possible. Our primary objective is to clarify the distinctions between the two forms of self, which will be succeeded by an assessment of each. Although numerous scholars tend to view Kant's perspective on the self as a negative concept, an alternative viewpoint emerges, proposing a potential positive interpretation of Kant's concept of the self. Subsequently, we present Gallagher's Pattern theory of the self and conduct a comparative analysis between the Kantian self and the components that constitute the self.

The view that academic writing is purely objective, impersonal and informational, which is often reflected in English for Academic Purposes materials, has been criticized by a number of researchers. By now, the view of academic writing as embodying interaction among writers, readers and the academic community as a whole has been established. Following this assumption, the present study focused on how second/foreign language writers enact, construct, and invent themselves through writing. In this study, the theoretical stance on identity is grounded on Ivanič’s (1998) four interrelated aspects of writer identity, namely autobiographical self, discoursal self, authorial self, and possibilities for self-hood in the socio-cultural and institutional contexts. Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2004a) was used as the analytical tool for analyzing texts. Based on a corpus of 30 research articles, the overall distribution of evidential markers, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions were calculated across four rhetorical sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Discussion and Conclusion) of the research articles. According to the results of this study, identity is a critical aspect of writing which should be brought into the mainstream of second/foreign language writing pedagogy through consciousness -raising or the specific teaching of certain features.

Focusing on the intersection of translation and activism, the current study aimed to address the issue of publishers’ activist agency in the socio-political context of post-revolutionary Iran. In so doing, it mainly drew on Tymoczko’s (2010a) conceptualization of political and ideological agency and activism as engagement and her classification of its different forms. The data came from a body of publishers’ notes, written on Persian translations of six English books selected through criterion sampling from the works that apparently enjoyed a level of prestige among the international readers , and reflected the Other’s views on religious, philosophical, political, and socio-cultural issues, which considering the fundamental values of the Islamic Republic of Iran that the post-revolutionary State tries to keep, could make them a possible site of translational activism. The results showed that in their notes the publishers had encoded their engagement by using a combination of different forms of engagement, i.e., publicizing, witnessing, rousing, inspiring, and mobilizing; they also revealed their interest in introducing the unfamiliar territory of the foreign to the Persian-speaking readers, and in increasing their understanding of the Other’s culture. They emphasized the importance of tolerance, pluralism, openness, and mutual respect in cultural exchanges but introduced the source Islamic culture and its set of moral values as criteria for determining the validity of the Other’s presented ideas and beliefs and rejecting what did not meet such criteria.

This study aims to examine the representation of the Iranian Self in Persian movies through English fansubtitles, exploring how the subtitling process shapes the socio-cultural image presented to non-Iranian audiences. To this end, eleven award-winning Persian films produced by prominent Iranian filmmakers Asghar Farhadi, Majid Majidi, and Abbas Kiarostami and their English subtitles were analyzed using an integrated framework specifically developed for this research. Image-representative elements in the films were identified according to the framework, and the translation strategies employed in the English subtitles for rendering these image-representative elements were examined. The effects of these strategies on the representation of the image were then categorized into five observed outcomes: intensification of the image, weakening of the image, positive recasting of the image, preservation of the image, and omission of the image. The findings indicate that universally recognized elements were generally preserved in fansubs, while elements associated with Iranian religious or legal contexts were more frequently omitted or weakened, potentially diminishing the representation of these culturally distinct aspects for non-Iranian audience. This study highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity and accuracy in audiovisual translation, offering valuable insights for fostering cross-cultural understanding and enhancing the portrayal of cultural identity in translated media.

In the aftermath of conflict, the role of translation extends into the realm of conflict resolution. This study examines how translation prefaces address conflict resolution in the context of post-revolutionary Iran following the Iran-Iraq War, focusing on the resolution strategies employed. To achieve this, criterion sampling was used to select three English books on the Iran-Iraq War, originally written from Iraqi or Other perspectives and translated into Persian by Marz-o-Boom Publications. Data were collected from the prefaces of these translations, emphasizing their treatment of the war and the contentious themes in the source texts. Using Salama-Carr’s (2007) and Webne Behrman’s (1998) definitions of conflict, conflict cases were identified and categorized based on Thomas and Kilmann’s (1974) conflict resolution model. The findings indicate that the competing strategy was predominantly employed (44.4%–54.6%), reflecting strong assertiveness in promoting Iranian state perspectives. The compromising strategy was used to a moderate extent (18.6%–34.4%), indicating some engagement in negotiation, while the collaborating strategy ranged from 18.1% to 33.4%, reflecting fluctuating openness to diverse viewpoints. The accommodating strategy appeared only once (2.3%), highlighting a reluctance to embrace alternative perspectives, while the avoiding strategy was entirely absent, suggesting a deliberate effort to confront the complexities of the conflict. Overall, the findings reveal a pattern of using collaboration within a competitive framework as a nuanced approach to conflict resolution in sensitive translation contexts. This strategy demonstrates a strong commitment to constructive dialogue, enriches the discourse on the conflict, and enhances readers’ understanding of its multifaceted nature.