Abstract

Soren Kierkegaard and Baba Afdal Kashani are two philosophers havingaxial philosophical arguments on self-knowledge. Kierkegaard's philosophyis learnt through its contrast with Hegel's, as he believes that the truth issubjective. He severely denies learning through objectivity and sees the onlypath to faith and reaching self-consciousness to be subjectivity in thethinking process, which leads to inwardness. Stages of self-consciousness,after the ecstatic stage, in Kierkegaard' opinion, include stages of rationalethics, religious ethics and faith. Self’s perfection in his judgment is attainedthrough trusting in God. In the faith stage, however, an individual reachesbeyond "self". The definition of anxiety, despair and sin in his opinion, arecauses which lead to a leap to the subsequent or the former stage in the selfconsciousnessstages.Baba Afdal Kashani, however, knows the best way to reaching selfconsciousnessto be through philosophy. In reality, his practice can beexplained with the composition of philosophy, mysticism, intellect and deed.He sees a rather important role for intellect and thinks highly of rationalthinking, with the difference that the existence of intellect is the knowledgeand understanding of self, and objectivity is only accredited when it isreached through subjectivity. This is because the human being consists of allbeings and the path towards objectivity passes through self-consciousness.Baba Afdal too, perceives the humans' self-consciousness to fall in threelevels of praiseworthy deficient, blameworthy deficient and the utmost level