Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

Conventionalities and the role they play in man’s social life are considered in the different approaches used in the field of human and social sciences. Among these approaches are the monotheistic approach used in Islamic tradition and the interpretive approach used in the new Western social sciences. Examining the creative and descriptive views about social conventionalities presented by Allamah Tabatabai, a monotheistic philosopher, and the interpretive approach of Pitter Vinch, this research seeks to make explicit the way conventionalities are viewed by each of these two approaches and the similarities and diffrences between their approaches. A study of the methodological principles of these two philosophers, an analysis of their approaches to social conventionalities and a comparison between them show that, when we consider the ontological, epistemological and anthropological principles of these two thinkers, we notice that there are deep differences between them, represented in the fundamental attention given to the nature and natural perfection in Allameh Tabatabaei’s discussion about conventionalities, and in the verbal games of Vinch and the relativism adopted by him.