Eternity of Moral Values
Martyr Murtada Mutahhari
Translated by A. N. Baqirshahi
The original in Farsi, entitled "Jawidanegi wa akhlaq," appeared in a memorial volume Yadnameh ye Ustad Shahid Mutahhari (Tehran: Sazman-e Intisharat wa Amuzish-e Inqilab-e Islami, 1360 H. Sh./[1981]).
Before entering the discussion concerning the eternity of moral values it should be noted that according to the philosophies of being' reality and knowledge as well as moral values are considered to be permanent. Though here I will not be concerned with the permanence of reality, but it is necessary to deal with the question as to why reality and ethics are dealt with separately.
What is the difference between moral principles and other principles which we refer to as reality'? After all moral values also constitute certain principles and that which is said concerning scientific principles, that they are eternally true, should also apply to moral values.
However, I also think that the right thing is to keep these two issues separate. But first of all I must refer to a minor issue to establish that the issue of eternity of moral values is very important for us and that it is closely related to the eternity of Islam.
Ethics comprises certain teachings, and if we believe the moral, humane, and social teachings of Islam to be transitory then the conclusion will be that the teachings of Islam dealing with morality and education are also subject to change. That is, it would imply that such principles had a validity in their own their time, and with changes in conditions these moral principles should also change and so should the basic teachings of Islam. As a result the major part of Islam would be obsolete and should be abolished.
Of course, the issue of evolution of reality is related to this matter, but the issue of relativity of moral values has a greater bearing on the eternity of Islam. Let us now proceed to clarify the point as to why the issue of ethics is separated from the issue of reality.
Speculative Wisdom and Practical Wisdom:
Reality relates to theoretical principles and ethics deals with practical principles. In other words, ethics is subsumed under practical wisdom (hikmat-e amali) and reality is subsumed under theoretical wisdom (hikmat-e nazari); therefore, we cannot apply the principles of practical wisdom to reality, for theoretical wisdom deals with facts as they are or were; whereas practical wisdom is confined to man and deals with things as they ought to be-that is, as to how man is to conduct himself-and hence is prescriptive (insha).
But the nature of theoretical wisdom is descriptive (ikhbar), that is, it deals with the question as to whether a certain proposition corresponds to facts or not, and if it is does, whether it is eternally true. But such questions do not arise in ethics.
In our philosophical literature, theoretical reason and practical reason are regarded as two different types of human faculties. But Muslim philosophers did not discuss their features and differences in sufficient detail. However, they have left useful hints concerning the issue. They suggest that the former faculty is inherent in the soul by means of which it tries to discover the external world; whereas the latter consists of a series of perceptions of the soul, which administers the body, for the body's management.
Practical reason is considered to be a natural arm of the soul and theoretical reason as a metaphysical arm. Thus the soul possesses two perfections: theoretical perfection and practical perfection (the philosophers hold that the essence and nature of human being is knowledge and its perfection lies in knowledge, whereas the mystics do not consider knowledge as the ultimate perfection of man and are of the view that a perfect man is one who attains to reality not one who discovers it).
Regarding the faculty of practical reason, they hold that the soul as the administrator of the body is subject to certain principles for better governing the body as a prelude to its attaining perfection.
Early Muslim philosophers defined justice in terms of freedom (justice in body). The soul stands in need of-the body and it cannot attain theoretical perfections without it, but in order that the soul should be able to make the best use of the body, it must establish a kind of balance between its faculties.
The faculty which establishes such a balance between. soul and body is an active faculty. In case this balance is established, the soul is not dominated by the body, rather it is the body which is subordinated to the soul. They considered justice to be a kind of subordination of the body to the soul in which the body is controlled by the soul. This is all that our early philosopher have said on this issue. It seems that, relatively speaking, Ibn Sina (980-1030) has treated the issue of theoretical and practical wisdom more thoroughly than any other Muslim philosopher.
In the section on theology of his al-Shifa', Ibn Sinaa classifies wisdom into practical and theoretical. In the section on logic of the Shifa'; he treats it in more detail and probably in his Mubahathat he discusses it in greater detail than in any other place. On the whole these old discussions provide a good ground for study, but they have not treated the -subject sufficiently and there even exists some ambiguity about practical reason. That which can be inferred from the statements of some of them is that practical reason is a kind of cognitive faculty of the soul.
That is, they maintain that our intellect possess two kinds of cognitive faculties, one is the faculty of cognition used in theoretical sciences and the other is the faculty used in practical sciences. But others like Mulla Hadi Sabzawari (1833-1910) hold that the term intellect' (aql) is used equivocally for theoretical and practical reason and that practical reason is not a cognitive faculty, that it is a faculty of action and not one of cognition.
Hence their statements do not make clear whether or not practical and theoretical reason are two cognitive faculties (regardless of whether they are two distinct faculties or two aspects of one faculty), or if one of these is a cognitive and the other a practical faculty. In the later case, using the term reason' for practical reason is equivocal, that is, practical reason is not reason in the sense of a cognitive faculty.
Subjectivity of Normative Judgements:
It should be noted that Allamah Tatatabais discussion of i 'tibariyat (subjective or normative ideas) in the sixth chapter of his book Usul-e falsafeh wa ravish-e realism (The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism') is undoubtedly an invaluable and original idea (unfortunately I was not able to write complete footnotes on it). Its only demerit is that he has himself conceived this idea and then followed it up without relating it to the statements of his predecessors which could help us in tracing the roots of these issues in the words of thinkers like Ibn Sina and others on practical reason and theoretical reason.
It would have been better if he had started from their statements. The reason for such a gap is that his point of departure was jurisprudence ('ilm al-usul) not philosophy. He was inspired by the ideas of the late Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Isfahani regarding itibariyat. Therefore, he did not relate it to the views of the philosophers.
Allamah Tabatabai maintains and this is of course my interpretation-that whatever we ascribe to practical wisdom relates to the world of i'tibari (subjective) notions. Thus, theoretical wisdom or objective truth consists of objective ideas which are the real face of things. Practical ideas are normative notions. Normative ideas comprise of commands and prohibitions and all those notions which are dealt with in 'ilm al-usul.
The Allamah considers all itibariyat of the type where an objective idea is extended and applied to something else; human reason or the soul as a cognitive faculty cannot originate or create a concept,