Eternity of Moral Values

Ustad Shaheed Murtada Mutahhari

Translated from the Farsi by A. N. Baqirshahi

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 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 (insh'Allah).

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 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 perfection 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 philosophers 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 Sina 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 Tabataba'i's 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 i'tibariyat. Therefore, he did not relate it to the views of the philosophers.

Allamah Tabataba'i 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 i'tibariyat 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, as in its literal and metaphorical use of words. A metaphor consists of the application of the literal and non-metaphorical meaning in a metaphorical sense. Whether we agree with Sakkaki's view and hold that the word retains its original meaning and some other thing is imagined as its instance, or disagree with him and believe that the word is used in another meaning, one thing is clear: that the intellect and the soul are unable to spontaneously create concepts like ownership. On the contrary it borrows a concept that already exists in its objective form and applies it in its metaphorical sense.

He started from this point and followed it up opening up a very extensive field. In this approach all moral concepts, including good and evil and the like, are considered to be i'tibari concepts. He has discussed in detail whether the notion of good' is derived from ought' or ought' from good.' Earlier in Najaf he had written an article in Arabic on the normative sciences ('ulum-e i'tibari) and the article in Farsi (i.e. the sixth chapter of his above-mentioned book) is based on its contents.

Regarding the concept of ought', he arrived at the conclusion that all 'oughts' stem from the fact that nature in itself has some ends towards which it moves. In all activities in the domains of inanimate objects, plants, animals, and man, so far as they fall within the domain of instinct and are not voluntary, it is nature that moves towards its goal. At the human level there are certain acts which takes place by the means of volition and thought. In such acts, too, man has certain objectives which have to be attained voluntarily. These ends are also the ends of nature, but it cannot achieve them directly but only through the agency of man's will and thought. It is here that a need for these normative notions arises and they come into existence spontaneously. For example, man's nature, like that of plants, needs food, but he should obtain it by means of volition and thought, unlike plants, which obtain food from the ground directly through their roots, and unlike animals, which are drawn towards food by instinct (whose nature is also not well understood). But man has to do this by conscious volition and effort, without being aware that the system of nature uses his apparatus of thought as its instrument in order to achieve its goals. Man innately possesses two systems: the system of nature as well as the system of thought and will. The latter is subordinate to the former and it is directed to achieving nature's ends. The natural end is reflected in the form of a need or desire in man's soul, for instance, the inclination towards food.

Early Muslim philosophers defined the process of voluntary action as follows: first there is conception of the action, followed by judgement of its usefulness and inclination towards it (there were different views of it), then the stage of resolution, which is followed by emergence of will, after which the voluntary act takes place.

Allamah Tabataba'i agrees with this description, but he considers the role of judgement as fundamental. However, here the judgement of the soul is not the kind of theoretical (descriptive) judgment which earlier Muslim philosophers used to call assent of benefit,' but is a prescriptive judgement (You ought to do this).

He stresses mainly on the point that all voluntary acts contain a kind of command and a prescriptive and normative judgement, for example, "This ought to be done," "This ought not to be done." It is such oughts that cause man to be drawn towards the natural end. The Allamah probably conceives all acts of volition as terminating in knowledge.

These ideas came to the mind of Allamah Tabataba'i and he followed them up independently without studying others' views in this regard. Once I even asked him whether what he says in this regard is in agreement with the ideas of the early Muslim philosophers regarding the difference between practical and theoretical wisdom and their view about the normative character of the notions of good and evil.

In their debates with the theologians (mutakallimin) our early philosophers mention certain basic criteria for logical argument and they mention good and evil as criteria that pertain to rhetoric and dialectics, and maintain that the notions of good and evil cannot be employed in logical arguments. They are of the view that good and evil derive from custom and cite