Baqir Sadr has brilliantly written this book as an introductory text for university level students. The language is very accessible. Ideas and arguments presented are clear, well organized, and coherent. Above all, Baqir Sadr has not let students go baffled at any point while discussing ancient, medieval, and the modern philosophical doctrines.
Part one contains discussion on Theory of Knowledge; on sources and scope of Knowledge. The author critically examines the different philosophical doctrines including the ancient, rational, empirical, and marxist ones, and presents the Islamic philosophical doctrine on Knowledge that as I understood can be characterized as rational but is different from other rational doctrines (for example, from that of Descartes'). The author in part two moves on to expound the realist world view advanced by Islamic philosophers and contrasts it with others including the idealist, empiricist, relativists, and marxist ones.
Baqir Sadr, surely a great Islamic scholar of this century, intended this book as first of a series that remained incomplete due to his sad martyrdom by the ruthless ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The second of this series is "Our Economy", another original work this time on Islamic economy. Much information on Sadr's biography, his struggle, and his publications is available on net.
