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Thesis The Mu’tazila were right: reason can know that injustice is wrong before any revelation

Layla Sfeir Fellow
· 6 replies
Meta-ethicsIslamicJewishAsh'arismKalamMu'tazilaAl-Ash’ariAl-Ghazalial-MāturīdīAl-ShatibiSaadia Gaon#divine-command#kalam-ethics#moral-rationalism#mutazila
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Its coordinates: 3.1 Meta-Ethics · 3.1.1 Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism · 3.1.2 Moral Semantics +1 more

Where it stands

I want to defend the losing side of one of the great arguments in kalām.

The Mu'tazilī theologians held that acts have moral qualities that reason can recognise: that injustice and lying are bad, that gratitude to a benefactor is owed, and so on. God, being just, commands in accordance with these qualities. Their Ash'arī opponents held that the moral status of an act comes from the divine command, and that reason unaided cannot establish it.

The Mu'tazila are known mostly through their opponents, which has not helped their reputation. Much of what survives of Qāḍī 'Abd al-Jabbār's great compendium was preserved in Yemeni manuscripts rediscovered only in the twentieth century. Read on their own terms, I think they win on three points.

First, the Qur'an praises God as just and repeatedly asks its hearers whether they do not reason. If “just” simply means “whatever God wills”, the praise is empty. The Mu'tazila keep it meaningful.

Second, revelation itself has to be recognised as coming from a truthful source. If reason cannot know that lying is bad, it is not clear how it could know that a prophet who claims to speak for God is not lying.

Third, a shared moral reason makes it possible to argue with people of other faiths, and with none, without first converting them.

I am not claiming revelation adds nothing. The Mu'tazila agreed it adds a great deal, especially the forms of worship. My thesis is narrower: on whether reason can know basic moral truths, they had the better argument. Please argue back.

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6 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Khalid Mahmood Awan

    For Fellow

    I spent thirty years reporting on law that the textbooks said rested on command, and I can tell you that the jurists reasoned constantly about why the law said what it said. Al-Shāṭibī's account of the purposes of the sharia, protecting religion, life, intellect, lineage and property, only makes sense if those goods are recognisable as goods. On the ground, Layla, the practice of fiqh was more Mu'tazilī than its official theology.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Bilal Rashid

    For Fellow

    The Māturīdīs are usually placed between the two, and they deserve a mention because a large part of the Sunni world follows them. Broadly, they held that reason can recognise the goodness or badness of some acts, while there was internal disagreement about whether obligation arises before revelation. So the choice is not only between Layla's champions and Abdulrahman's. In my experience the middle position is where most believers actually live.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Miriam Adler

    For Fellow

    A Jewish footnote that is more than a footnote. Saadia Gaon, writing in Arabic under the influence of kalām, distinguished commandments that reason can reach by itself from those known only through revelation. He also asked why reason-accessible commandments were revealed at all, and his answer was that revelation brings them sooner and to everyone, so that people do not have to wait for slow arguments. That is a useful reply to anyone who thinks rationalism makes revelation idle.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 2

  1. Abdulrahman Al-Bassam

    Against Fellow

    I will take the Ash'arī side, since I came to these questions through them. Your first point assumes that if God's justice is not measured by an independent standard, calling God just says nothing. The Ash'arī answer is that God's justice means God acts within His own right over His creation; it is not empty, just not measured against something above God.

    And later Ash'arīs did not deny reason any role in ethics. They distinguished senses of “good”: what is a perfection, what serves a purpose, and what deserves praise and reward from God. Reason can know the first two. Only the third needs revelation. That is less extreme than the Mu'tazila made it sound.

    1. Layla Sfeir

      Fellow

      Abdulrahman's three senses of “good” narrow the gap more than I allowed, and I concede the Ash'arī position is subtler than its Mu'tazilī caricature. Nur's worry is real, but I think it cuts both ways: interpretations of revelation also get bent by interest.

      Where I still stand: my second point has not been answered. To trust a revelation you must already trust that the revealer does not deceive, and that is a moral judgement reason makes first.

      Helpful · 1
  2. Nur Aisyah Rahman

    Against Fellow

    I side with the Ash'arīs, for a practical reason. In my work I watch “reason” produce whatever the people paying for the model want it to produce. Al-Ghazālī's worry, as I read him, was that human reason in ethics is easily bent by interest and habit. The Mu'tazila assumed a clarity of moral reason that history does not show.