Justice in Islamic Philosophical Ethics Miskawayh's Mediating Contribution

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Justice in Islamic Philosophical Ethics: Miskawayh's Mediating Contribution Author(s): Majid Fakhry Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall, 1975), pp. 243-254 Published by: on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40014897 . Accessed: 16/01/2013 23:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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JUSTICE IN ISLAMICPHILOSOPHICALETHICS: MISKAWAYH'SMEDIATINGCONTRIBUTION Majid Fakhry ABSTRACT of the concept of justice in The author examines the development Arabic philosophical ethics, which culminates in the attempt by Miskawayh to harmonize Plato's concept of what it means to be just with Aristotle's concept of acting justly. Miskawayh's contribution, which draws upon Neo-Platonic and Stoic authors of late antiquity, is shown to shed light on possible modes of interpreting the ethical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle and even to poirit the way to the solution of some exegetical problems raised by contemporary scholars.

I The concept of justice has played a prominent role in the history of Islamic theology (Kalam) from the eighth century on. The rationalist theologians (a/Mu'tazilah) made it in due course one of the two foundation stones of their moral theology and contended, probably under the influence of Greek philosophy, that the rigid predestinarian claims of their conservative opponents, the traditionalists, were incompatible with the wisdom and justice of the Almighty. in turn, challenged this contention on the straightforward The traditionalists, ground that justice is simply the manner in which God chooses to act in the world. Indeed, the very distinction between justice and injustice, good and evil, or will. In they argued, depends exclusively on God's arbitrary determination acting freely and imperiously in the world, God can never be accused of injusJRE 3/2 (1975), 243-254


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tice, insofar as He is not answerable to any superior authority, or subject to any transcendent norms which could limit or condition His will. It is not with this intriguing interplay of theological rationalism and voluntarism,.1 which is reminiscent of the theological and moral speculation of Tertullian and Duns Scotus, that we are concerned here; but rather with the development of the concept of justice in Arabic philosophical ethics. In this ethics, which culminates in the writings of Miskawayh (d. 1030), the most important ethical writer of Islam, the moral theories of Plato and Aristotle are brought into active interrelationship, and harmonized through the exegetical intermediary of Neo-Platonic and Stoic authors of late antiquity. Of these authors, there is little doubt that the two most influential were Porphyry (d. ca. 304), who is known exclusively from Arabic sources (Flugel, 252; Walzer, 1962:225) to have written a twelve-book commentary (now lost), on the Nicomachean Ethics; and Galen (d. 199) whose Peri Ethon (Uepl r\Q&v) is lost, but of which a substantial epitome and some excerpts have survived in Arabic (Kraus, 1937; Mattock, 1972). The harmonizing procedure of those philosophers is not merely of great historical interest; it can also shed some light on possible modes of interpreting the ethical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, and even point the way to the solution of some exegetical problems raised by contemporary philosophers and scholars. Although it will be necessary in the present paper to refer briefly to major aspects of medieval Islamic ethics, it will be primarily on justice that our attention will be focused. Miskawayh and his predecessors stress in unequivocal terms the organic correlation of psychology and ethics, an unmistakable feature of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics, as well as Peripatetic and Stoic writings on ethics in late Hellenistic antiquity (see Walzer, 1962:32 et passim). For them, as indeed for the two Greek masters, psychology serves as the groundwork of ethics; to determine what man ought to do, we must first determine what his nature actually is. And by his nature, they frequently understood in Platonic fashion his soul. The soul is then divided into three parts: the rational, the irascible and the concupiscent- a straightforward transcription of the Platonic trichotomy of the soul, to correspond, according to them (probably under the influence of alleged to the Aristotelian trichotomy of the human, animal and vegetative Galen) souls.2 Part of the fascination of the Platonic trichotomy is that it enabled them, as it had enabled Plato, to develop an attractive theory of justice which appeared very logical and accordant with the common sense of mankind; part of it was the unwavering commitment of its author to an unequivocal theory of immortality, on which Aristotle had vacillated so much. Thus al-Razi (d. ca. 925), who followed the lead of Plato in cosmology, psychology and ethics, states (1939:28) that according to Plato, "the master of the philosophers and their chief," the soul has three parts: 'The rational or


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divine, the irascible or animal, the concupiscent or vegetative." The relationship between these three parts is described as one of subordination or subservience: the vegetative soul exists in order to nourish the body, which is its instrument; whereas the irascible exists in order to assist the rational, by holding the concupiscent in check. It is through the cultivation of the art of persuasion by means of demonstrative argument (called by al-Razi the spiritual medicine), that man achieves "the rectitude or justice (ta'dil) of actions of these several souls, so that they may neither fall short of their objective nor exceed it" (al-Razi, 1939:29; cf. Arberry, 1950:32). Not only Plato and Socrates but every reasoning man, to him, recognizes that the essence of moral uprightness consists in the according of the passions, by gradually habituating the rational soul to dominate curbing and direct the concupiscent until the latter has grown gentle and submissive. The Jacobite theologian and logician, Yahia ibn 'Adi (d. 974), describes in his ethical treatise, Tahdhib al-Akhfaq (Ibn 'Adi, 1913:20, 29), the rational soul as the faculty which sets man apart from other animals, and enables him to restrain his two other powers, the irascible and the concupiscent, and holds them in check. The equity (taqassut) and uprightness which result from the management of his psychic powers is the essence of justice. In a somewhat similar manner, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (d. 1198), the great Arab Aristotelian, argues in his Commentary on Plato's Republic (Rosenthal, 1956: 161f.) that by justice we are to understand the orderly manner in which each of the three parts of the soul performs the function assigned to it, at the right time and in the right manner; in other words, the harmony which imparts health and rectitude to the soul or the state, when the rational faculty or part is allowed to rule as undisputed master. II The fullest and most systematic discussion of ethical questions is to be found in the writings of Miskawayh, to whom we will now turn. This philosopher has written the most important ethical treatise in Arabic, Tahdhib alAkhfaq (Miskawayh, 1961; English translation, Zurayk, 1968), in which Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic elements are woven into a single fabric. As one might expect, the discussion of justice figures prominently in it, and in another much shorter treatise on the Essence of Justice. As I have already mentioned, Miskawayh's theory of justice is fitted into a Platonic psychological framework; although the detailed analysis of this virtue is essentially Aristotelian, with strong Stoic and Pythagorean interpolations. One may be tempted to ask in the circumstances whether this philosopher (or his Greek source or sources) was aware of the tensions between Platonic and Aristotelian ethics in general, and the concept of justice in particular. Plato was after all primarily concerned to determine what it means (for the individual or the state) to be just; whereas Aristotle was concerned to determine what it means to act justly.


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David Scahs (1963) has argued in an article which has become the object of some controversy that Plato is guilty of the 'fallacy of irrelevance/ in asserting without proof that his just man can also be 'vulgarly' just. "Attempts to show that Platonic justice entails ordinary morality/' he writes, "are strikingly missing from the Republic, Plato merely assumes that having the one involves having the other" (Sachs, 1963:47). In fact, if the Platonically just man chanced to act he will do so purely accidentally, so to speak; since there is no necesmorally, sary logical connection between the two concepts of justice and morality. In his response, Raphael Demos (1964) concedes that there is a 'gap' between the two conceptions, if not a fallacy. He believes, however, that we can fill this gap if we recognize that: (a) an important meaning of justice for Plato is the rendering to every man his due, and (b) that reason is both the apprehension and the aspiration to the ideal, for Plato. In this way, the missing link between 'Platonic' justice and 'vulgar' morality is found; since "to aim at the good is also to aim at the production of good things; thus for an individual to aim at justice means that he cares not only for justice in the abstract, but also that justice should be embodied in human beings in general" (cf. Vlastos, 1971b:esp. 91-92). It is not without historical interest to consider the skillful manner in which Miskawayh was able to take the divergences between Plato's and Aristotle's theory of justice in his stride, and in particular, to bridge the gulf between and 'vulgar' justice, on which controversy has centered in the foregoing discussions. As in these recent discussions, one fruitful line of investigation will be the correlation between justice and happiness; another, the way in which justice actually yields, according to Miskawayh, a number of subsidiary divisions or positively active sub-virtues, which can fill the gap in question. 'Platonic'

Ill I will

start with justice and happiness. Miskawayh (1961 :83f.; Zurayk, contrasts the views of Plato and Aristotle on the subject of happi1968:77f.) ness. Plato, he argues, regarded happiness as a predicate of the soul and contended that it can only be attained fully in the life-to-come; whereas Aristotle regarded it as a predicate of the whole man who is a compound of body and soul; and he believed it in consequence to be attainable in this life as well. (In the same category he includes the Stoics and other unspecified naturalists.) To reconcile the two views, it is necessary, according to Miskawayh, to distinguish between two grades of happiness, corresponding to man's dual nature: the corporal and the spiritual. The latter, which is the superior grade, is only attainable through the apprehension of the intelligibles, attendant upon attaining the conditjon of wisdom or philosophy. Whoever has achieved this condition will not be visited by adversity or tried by grief; he will attend to the needs of his body to the extent its preservation requires and no more. By pursuing this mode of living, man will eventually achieve a 'divine condition' in which every action of his is performed for its own sake, as befits the divine mode of action. For in



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this action, whatever is performed is primarily ordered towards the essence of the agent, which is the divine intellect. Even actions performed at this level for the sake of one's fellowmen will not be performed for the sake of those fellowmen, but "rather for the sake of the action itself or for the sake of virtue and goodness themselves" (Miskawayh, 1961:92; Zurayk, 1968:80).3 Despite the self-regarding character of this moral condition which is a mode of self-divinization, the truly happy man must also be just, temperate and couraFor such will possess a constant character or moral state (hay'ah) a man geous. which will ensure that he will always act in accordance with the norms of justice. All his faculties, actions and transactions will be conditioned by his desire to live up to these norms. Justice, on this view, is a 'moral state' whereby man is able to moderate the excesses of his passionate nature, an equilibrium or proportion (i'tidal), which is akin to unity, the principle of order and subsistence in the world (Miskawayh, cf. Republic, IV, 443B; Miskawayh, 1964:20) .4 1961:109; Zurayk, 1968:101; For to the extent an entity partakes of unity and is free from multiplicity, it is higher in the order of reality and virtue, and this indeed is the essence of that 'divine justice' which the Pythagoreans identify with number, the principle of order in the world, according to them. Plato is then credited with this saying: "When man has acquired justice, every part of his soul will be illuminated by every other, on account of his soul's possession of all the virtues belonging to it. Then the soul will arise and perform its proper activity in the best way possible" (Miskawayh, 1961:118; Zurayk, 1968:110). Despite these Pythagorean and Platonic digressions, Aristotle's theory of the 'mean' and his conception of happiness as a condition of self-divinization provide us, on the whole, with the mediating principle in Miskawayh's attempt to fill the gap between 'Platonic' and 'vulgar' justice, and one might conjecture that Porphyry's lost commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, already mentioned, served as the basis of this attempt to bring Platonic ethical concepts into line with Aristotelianism. That justice, conceived as psychic harmony, is essential for moral uprightness and is a basic ingredient of happiness, was, in any event, axiomatic, according to this tenth-century ethical philosopher. As I mentioned earlier, the detailed analysis of justice, both as a state of character and as a kind of equality or proportion, follows familiar Aristotelian lines. Thus, there are for Miskawayh (1961:110; Zurayk, 1968:101) three types of justice corresponding to the three different areas of human activity: (a) that of distribution of goods or honors, (b) that of voluntary transactions, and (c) that of (involuntary) transactions involving violence or injustice.5 With regard to (a), justice is determined by arithmetical proportion, called as in the ratio 1:2:3:4. With regard to (b), it is by Miskawayh discontinuous; determined by 'algebraic' proportion (called by him continuous), as in the proportion of A (a tailor) to B (a cobbler) = a (a garment) to b (a pair of shoes) (Miskawayh, 1961:110; Zurayk, 1968:102; cf. N. E., V, 1131a 15f.). With regard to (c), justice is determined by geometrical (masahiyah) proportion. If a


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man, for instance, had a certain proportion or relation to another that was disturbed by an act of injustice or injury, justice would require that a "similar injury be inflicted on him, so that the (original) proportion may be restored" (cf. N. E., V, 1 132a 20f.). Hence, the just may be defined in this case as one who restores equality, with respect to unequal things. A key concept in the whole discussion of proportion, both for Aristotle and Miskawayh, is that of a measure or norm. In social or political relations, the law (al-shari'ah) is the measure, in one sense, whereas it is the ruler in another. In economic relation, on the other hand, the measure is money which is the principle regulating and equalizing commercial transactions. After commenting on the etymological kinship of the word for law (nomos = riarrius)in Greek with that for money (nomismos) (see N.E., V, 1133a 30), Miskawayh goes on to quote a statement from the Nicomachean Ethics purporting to assert that of the three norms, the highest is the law emanating from God. Even the second norm, the ruler, acts on behalf of God (Miskawayh, 1961:111; Zurayk, 1968: 103).6 Now to these three laws correspond three modes of justice. For he who clings to the divine law will act in accordance with the precepts of justice and thereby acquire perfection of character and happiness. He who deals with his fellowmen equitably in money matters will contribute to the prosperity of the state, which is the essence of 'political justice/ (Likewise, he who submits to the authority of the ruler is just.) Contrariwise, he who flouts the divine law, repudiates the authority of the ruler (identified by Miskawayh with the Caliph or Imam), or appropriates what does not belong to him is unjust (Miskawayh, 1961:112; Zurayk, 1968:104); there being three types of injustice, corresponding to the three types of justice already discussed, and identified in the sequel, on the basis of Aristotle's words, with our duty to God, our superiors and our ancestors (Miskawayh, 1961:114; Zurayk, 1968: 106f.).7 IV Another principle of mediation appears to have been suggested by certain Stoic and Peripatetic developments, in late Hellenistic antiquity, of the Aristotelian-Platonic table of the virtues. Upon each of the four cardinal virtues was grafted a series of subordinate virtues, or subsidiary ramifications or subdivisions. Regardless of what Greek source the scheme developed by Miskawayh ultimately derives from, it is significant that these sub-virtues provide us with the missing link between 'Platonic' and 'vulgar' justice, and thereby fill the gap referred to by Sachs, Demos, and Vlastos. The complete list given by Miskawayh (1961:26-28; Zurayk, 1968:20) includes: friendship, concord, loyalty to one's kin, retribution, fair dealing, reciprocity, complaisance and piety. Now a careful examination of these subsidiary virtues would reveal that, unlike Platonic justice, they are all outward-directed; they possess the character of 'intentionality' that Platonic justice is alleged, af least by some interpreters,



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not to possess. For surely none of these eight sub-virtues would have any meaning apart from fellowship with others. One is reminded here of Aristotle's statement, which reflects a clear awareness of the problem of the 'intentionality' of justice, in N.E., Vf 1 129b 30f.: "And therefore justice is often thought to be the greatest of virtues .... And it is complete virtue in its fullest sense, because it is the actual exercise of complete virtue. It is complete because he who possesses it can exercise his virtue not only in himself, but towards his neighbours also." (Italics mine.) Of the eight subsidiary divisions of justice, friendship is perhaps the key concept in this elaborate scheme of 'externalizing' justice. Miskawayh has devoted considerable space to its analysis, but his discussion is not free from inconsistencies. For instance, he defines it (Miskawayh, 1961:27; Zurayk, 1968:21) as "a sincere love that causes one to take an interest in all that concerns one's friend and to wish to do all the good things he can for him," and argues (Miskawayh, 1961:125; Zurayk, 1968:118), following Aristotle (/V.E., VIM, 1155a-25) that the bond of friendship dispenses its subjects with the need for justice. He does not appear to be aware of the logical complication that, as a species of justice, friendship in this scheme must surely presuppose justice, as its necessary pre-condition or ground. Aristotle appears to assume, that friendship, as the more generic of the two, is logically prior; since, as he has put it: (a) "lawgivers (appear) to care more for it than justice" (N.E., 1155a-23) and (b) "the purest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality" (N.E., 1155a-23). It may be, however, that Miskawayh was thinking of the universal bond of love (mahabbah as against sadaqah) which, in Empedoclean fashion, is said to hold all things together; and as such is posited as the ground of all being and virtue in the universe. This might be inferred from his statements in the Tahdhib, but is the keynote of his short treatise on the Essence of Justice, to which I have already referred. In this treatise (Miskawayh, 1964:12f.), he distinguishes between three types of justice: the natural, the conventional and the divine. All these types are instances of the universal category of the good, by which Miskawayh understands in Plotinian and Proclean fashion that pure and true unity which is entirely free from otherness or multiplicity and in which the "perfection of being" consists. In fact, by these three terms, "perfect bejng," "true unity," and "perfect goodness," we are to understand one and the same thing. The difference between them is purely semantic; for good is applied to being (whose perfection is unity), only insofar as it is the object towards which things essentially tend.9 Contrariwise, by evil we are to understand non-being and non-unity, or briefly expressed, "not-being in multiplicity." Matter (hayula), as the substratum of all forms which in itself is devoid of all form, is the concomitant of all privation, and is on that account "the source of evil and its tfountainhead"; whereas its opposite, which endows this matter with a particular being and form, is the source and fountainhead of goodness (Miskawayh, 1964:17). Now because physical objects are never free from multiplicity, by virtue of


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their diverse dimensions, properties and contrary forms, it follows that they can never partake fully of unity, but rather of its nearest 'similitude' or surrogate, which is equality. In this equality physical objects receive a certain unity or proportion which ensures that they retain their own identity or integrity, and are not dominated or transformed by other objects. This is the essence of that natural justice without which the whole world would fall into ruins (Miskawayh, 1964:17). As to conventional justice, which the author divides into general and particular, it is purely the attribute of those modes of legislation or action which have been approved, for the sake of convenience, either universally by the whole of mankind; or particularly by a given state, nation or household. However, the norms of conventional

or injustice are neither immutable nor absolute; according to changing times or circumstances (Miska-

justice

they change constantly wayh, 1964:19). Divine justice, on the other hand, applies "in the metaphysical realm and in regard to entities which are eternal and everlasting" (Miskawayh, 1964:70). It differs from natural justice, which is equally eternal, in that its object is the immaterial, whereas that of natural justice is the material only. That is why the Pythagoreans speak of it in terms of number. For, when "number is abstracted from what is numbered, it is found to possess in itself certain essential properties 10 and a certain order, which is not liable to change" (Miskawayh, 1964:20). Platonic justice, which he designates as human or voluntary justice, is said to cut across the three subdivisions already mentioned; and he defines it in this treatise, as the manner in which "the powers of the soul Pythagorean-inspired are at peace with each other, and are neither in mutual strife or oppression. It is to the soul what health is to the body" (Miskawayh, 1964:19; cf. Republic, IV, 444B). This fourfold division11 of justice has some interesting analogies with St. Thomas' fourfold division of law in Summa Theologies, l-ll, q. 91; and without going into the question of historical transmission, one might dwell on the enduring influence of Stoicism and Peripateticism on the thought of philosophers of such divergent national and cultural affiliation. St. Thomas divides law into: (a) eternal, (b) natural, (c) human, and (d) divine. With respect to (a), he writes: "Now it is evident, granted that the world is ruled by divine providence . . . that the whole community of the universe is governed by the divine reason. . . . And of things is not subject to time, but is since the divine reason's conception eternal . . . therefore it is that this kind of law must be called eternal." Of (b), he writes: "since all things subject to divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law . . . , it is evident that all things partake in some way in the devised by eternal law." (c) is then described as "particular determinations, human reason," and complying with the "other essential conditions of law." Finally, (d) is said to be the complement of the previous two, directing man to his supernatural end. In Miskawayh, however, we discern a Pythagorean motif which was the



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distinctive feature of the ethical and metaphysical speculation of the tenthcentury esoteric philosophical society, the Brethren of Purity, with whom Miskawayh unquestionably came into contact. Despite a certain eclecticism, we believe, this philosopher succeeds admirably in bridging the gulf between the Platonic, introverted conception of justice, and the more open-ended, extraverted Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions. The two principles of mediation, as we have seen, were the Aristotelian concept of happiness as the active exercise of the moral and intellectual virtues, in which human nature is thoroughly fulfilled and approximates the divine; and the Stoic, Peripatetic table of the subdivisions of the genus justice into a series of species or sub-virtues which guarantee its expansion, so to speak, into the world of inter-subjective relations. This success is an instance of a much wider preoccupation with synthesis that characterized Arabic-Islamic thought in general and Miskawayh's ethics in particular; and although it naturally verged in many cases on eclecticism, it was not altogether futile or haphazard. In many instances, as illustrated by the foregoing case of justice, it yielded important results which, we believe, are significant in their own right.

NOTES 1G. Hourani (1971:13) has called it 'theistic subjectivism,' but I prefer voluntarism, because it is the divine will that is the determinant of right and wrong. 2See Galen (Kraus, 1937:22, 26 and 35). Cf. Ikhwan al-Safa, 1957:1, 313. Aristotle, as is well known, rejected the trichotomy of the soul (cf. De anima, I, 411b1-30) and asserted that the soul is the principle of unity holding the organism together, and that ultimately it is 'man' the compound of body and soul, who is the center of psychic actions and affections. (De anima, I, 408b9-16.) The Nicomachean Ethics, however, presupposes the psychological dichotomy of reason and desire (Aoycx;-dpe£cc), corresponding to the dichotomy of intellectual and moral virtues. Cf. N.E., I, 13 and VI, 1.


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3This view is supported by a long quotation which purports to come from Aristotle's Virtues of the Sou/, but is in fact part of a Neo-Platonic work of unknown authorship. See S. Pines, 1956. In his Vita Pythag., pp. 130-1, Jamblichus reports that Pythagoras had identified justice with proportion, harmony or equilibrium, which he interpreted mathematically. Cf. A. Delatte, 1922:57f. 5Cf. N.E., V, 1 130b 29f., where Aristotle divides 'particular' acts of justice into: 1. Those involving distribution of goods and honors; 2. Those involving rectification of wrongs either in (a) voluntary transactions (b) involuntary transactions, which are either (i) clandestine, or (ii) violent. 6The Aristotelian source of this alleged statement is uncertain. The two tables do not correspond fully, unless ancestors are regarded as a sub-class of business partners. The Aristotelian source of this classification is uncertain. However, in the spurious De Virtutibus et Vitiis, 5, 1250 b43f., Aristotle gives a fivefold division of justice: (a) towards the Gods, (b) towards demons (spirits), (c) towards the fatherland, (d) towards parents, and (e) towards the dead. (See Grant [1874:38f.] .) Q

Both Arius Didymus (as reported by Stobaeus) and the anonymous author of the pseudo-Aristotelian De Virtutibus et Vitiis developed such schemes. See R. Walzer, 1962:222-223, and Arnim, 1905-24:111, 63-72. Cf. A. Grant, 1874:1, 38f. 9ln Enneads, VI, 9, 2 & 3, the One is declared to be above being, and yet to be the source of all being. Proclus, known to the Arabs through the Liber de Causis, declares Being (al-anniyah) to be the first emanation from the One, and as such to partake of its unity, only to a limited degree. See Badawi, 1955: Props. 4, 5, 6. Cf. M. Fakhry, 1970:33f. and 40f. See also J. Rist, 1967:21f. The possible Greek (Pythagorean) sources of this treatise cannot be easily determined. A nepl vojjlov koX StKcuoovvrjc;is ascribed to Archytas (pseudoArchytas) in Stobaeus, F/or/7., II, T. 43, 132-34. Another treatise, neplvdjJiov/is ascribed to the Pythagorean author Ocellus Lucanus. In this treatise, harmony is said to preserve the universe, whose cause is God; whereas households and cities are preserved by concord (pnopoia) whose cause is law. See Stobaeus, Eclog., I, 13,2. Cf. Delatte, 1922:172-173. 11Miskawayh (1964:12) maintains, somewhat inconsistently, that human or voluntary justice forms part of each of the remaining three, and is not a separate type, although he concedes that it is primarily human.



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Justice in Islamic Philosophical Ethics Miskawayh's Mediating Contribution

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