Eternity of Moral Values

Will and Natural Urge

An explanation that is necessary here is that his application of the principle of employment to all animate beings is not acceptable. In my footnotes to the chapter I have discussed the issue in a manner which does not assume such a generalization. It is not even true of man in all his voluntarily acts but only of some of his voluntarily actions which are performed thoughtfully. It is here that the issues of moral imperative and the rational character of what is moral and immoral arise. The acts of immature persons, like infants taking milk, are rather derived from instinct.

Elsewhere I have drawn a distinction between urge and will. The animal, contrary to what is said loosely that an animal is that which moves voluntarily, acts according to inclination and urge. In a mature human being there is a relation between will and reason on the one hand and between inclination or appetite and reason on the other. Urge is a passive state.

In an animal or man that acts under urge, the greater the influence of urge the lesser is the role of thought, consciousness and reason and the action takes an involuntary form. For example, when man sees food, he feels inclined towards it and it is as if there were something external that draws him towards itself. On the contrary, when man acts according to his will, he withdraws from what is external to his being and his decision arises from his inner being.

For example, if he has feels an inclination for a certain kind of food, he thinks over its consequences and then decides to take some other food for which he feels a lesser inclination. He controls himself by his will and it is his will which enables him to dissociate himself from that which is external to his being.

Hence will is identical with freedom. Reason and will liberate man from the tyranny of urges and make him rely upon himself. Of course, sometimes both inclination and will may be present. That is, one may be inclined towards something which may be the object of one's will due to the judgement of reason.

Q: Is will totally absent in cases where there is an inclination, or is it only weak?

A: Will is there, but it is weak. What I want to point out is that will and inclination are two separate things. To the extent that man is subject to inclination, his will is proportionately weak. I do not agree with Mulls Sadra (though elsewhere he has expressed an opposite opinion), Mulls Had! Sabzawari and Ibn Sina in considering inclination and will as one thing. Elsewhere they, including even Ibn Sina, have drawn a distinction between the two. Will is the state of self-possession of the soul, a state of resolution, where reason is involved and rational calculations are made and the judgement of reason prevails.

Moral imperatives relate to man as a rational being (in the same way as early Muslim Philosophers consider them as part of practical reason), not to the soul from a practical aspect. Moral approval and disapproval are judgements of practical reason (the contemplative faculty which comprehends universals) from the aspect of the government of the body. Otherwise moral norms are irrelevant to animals or to man from the viewpoint of not being subject to the judgements of reason.

Metaphorical ideas are exclusive to man. His thought has reached the point where he can apply the term for something to another thing. For instance, he sees the moon and then sees a human being possessing beauty to whom he is drawn. He applies the term for the former to the latter and transfers to the latter his feelings evoked by the moon.

This act signifies man's developed nature and no animal is capable of such an act. This act is a kind of make up and adornment; i.e. man observes a kind of beauty in someone and then he adds to it by supplementing accidental graces, while he knows that these graces do no belong to that person but are charms borrowed from extraneous colour, water, and line but which heighten his feelings of attraction towards that person. This is what happens in metaphorical and poetical expressions.

When the poet refers to something with metaphors, that thing assumes a greater charm in his sight, as in the case of Rudaki who wrote those verses for the Samanid prince using those metaphors for Bukhara. Bukhara remained what it was but he projected the city in such charming terms that they moved the prince. These are miracles of the human mind.

Q: Is this the Pavlovian conditioned reflex?

A: No. Pavlovian conditioned reflex relates to the materialist approach to perception (not to normative concepts) which tries to give a materialist interpretation to human thought. Pavlov talks of involuntary human reflexes. The issue of conditioned reflex or association of ideas is different from the issue of values and metaphor. In the latter there is no succession and association. Here one sees something as something else. That is, he joins it to the other and applies the definition of one thing to another thing. There is no succession of ideas as in association. In metaphor there is a simultaneous unification of two things, not a succession of several things. This is what gives the power of passion and pathos to elegies.

Thus one of the objections against the Allamah's view is that he generalizes the faculty of normative formulation to all animate beings, whereas it is exclusive to man and that too to his practical reason.

Early Muslim philosophers defined practical wisdom, which includes ethics, as the science of man's voluntary actions in respect of how they ought to be and how they can be best and most perfect. This definition given by early Muslim philosophers is somewhat similar to that of theoretical wisdom which deals with the most perfect order and the question whether or not the existing order is the best and most perfect order possible. This question however relates to whether something exists or not, and in the discussion of man's voluntary acts the question relates to how something ought to be and how it can be most perfect.

According to modern philosophers ethics deals with the question, How should one live one's life, i.e. it does not deal with how men live but with how they should live. This almost amounts to the same thing with certain added qualifications. One relates to universality. When the early Muslim philosophers defined ethics as a science of man's voluntary acts they meant a universal prescription for all human beings, not for any particular person.

The other point that should be mentioned here is that when modern philosophers hold that ethics deals with how one should live one's life, a qualification is to added here-and they often add it themselves, thus coming closer to the viewpoint of ancient philosophers-stating that what is meant is a life imbued with sublimity and sanctity. The meaning of ethics is loaded with a sense of sublimity and sanctity, or value in contemporary terms.

Another point whose mention here is not without benefit is that when it said that ethics is the science of how one must live one's life, that includes behaviour and habit, that is, what kind of conduct and habits one must have to lead a worthy life.

Another point that is mentioned nowadays, which is also found in our philosophy, is that ethics deals only with how man should live and it is assumed that man's nature is already known, and it is with the knowledge of this nature that the question of how he must live so that his life possesses sublimity and sanctity arises.

As we know, the existentialists have certain views about the fundamentality of existence (Mulls Sadra's philosophy is also based on the fundamentally of existence) and they hold man to be a potential and indeterminate being. That is, his essence is not predetermined and it is man's acts which form his habits and these habits constitute man's identity and essence. Man does not have an essence apart from his habits and they constitute the substantial actuality of man's existence.

It is his habits and traits which make and determine man's being. More precisely, ethics is not only the science of how one should live but the science of what one should become.

When we talk of ethics as the science of how one should live, it is assumed that we know what we are and then go one to discuss how man with his fixed nature and essence, which is the same in all men, is to live. But if we hold that habits constitute the essence of man then ethics will take a new dimension. If man can shape his reality with his morals and habits, then his inner being and essence will change and accordingly ethics assumes a more profound meaning.

Men have the same form, but from the spiritual viewpoint their reality depends on their morals and habits. Hence the definition of `man' may apply to some persons in respect of form while in respect of their inner being the term `animal' may be true of them.

With this definition of practical wisdom let us follow up the foregoing discussion. We said that the issue of moral imperatives signifies man's relation to a certain act and stems from his feeling. That is man's nature seeks certain goals and in consonance with those ends certain feelings emerge in his conscious faculty. He desires what his nature seeks, and this finally leads him to declare, `I like that thing' and `It is good.'

Bertrand Russell and others hold-and Allamah Tabatabai's views lead to the same conclusion-that there can be no objective criterion for ethics. For instance, when I say that something is good, it means I like it, and my liking it does not mean that somebody else should also like it. Others may like something else. Those who lived in the past regarded what they liked as good, while today people regard something else as good.

Here a question arises: How can ethical issues be demonstrated?, How can we argue as to what is good and what is bad? The Allamah is of the view that these are indemonstrable, for normative matters cannot be proven. We can only test them on the basis of utility (futility). That is, the mind's normative formulations are meant to achieve certain goals and if they do not help one reach them they are invalid.

Moral issues cannot be tested except through the test of utility. They are not objective matters that can be proven by experiment or reasoning. They can be proven neither be deduction nor by the empirical method. In deduction the premises are based on self evident-principles, or on empirical experience, whereas practical wisdom is concerned with the concept of good and bad and these concepts are derive from ought and ought not, which in their turn depend upon likes and dislikes,

which are not identical in all people and vary according to their personal situation, interests, pursuits and their attachments to various creeds, groups, and nations. Therefore, every individual and groups likes certain things and therefore moral values are inevitably subjective and relative. Hence moral concepts are not objective issues susceptible to logical proof or deductive or inductive methods.