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