The other point which has been raised concerns the...

The other point which has been raised concerns the philosophy of being and the philosophy of becoming. According to the philosophy of being moral values are permanent and therefore ethical principles are eternally true. However, according to the philosophy of becoming moral values are relative and transitory; that is, they are valid during a certain time and invalid in other times. This is a very important issue, for apart from ethics it touches other judgements as well.

According to the philosophy of becoming no truth is permanent. Reality is transient and therefore prescriptions are also transitory, for the difference between truth and morality is that the former is descriptive and the latter is prescriptive, one is theoretical and the other is practical. Inevitably this question also arises in the case of all religious precepts and is not confined to what we mean by the term `ethics' (akhlaq). What they (i.e.

Westerners) imply by `ethics' is a more general sense which includes all prescriptions and the notions of good and evil. At the outset an objection may be raised here, that the philosophy of becoming does not necessarily imply that truth is changeable. For as we have said the philosophy of becoming relates to external reality, and even if one were to admit that there is nothing except becoming, it does not imply that truth (which is related to the mind) is subject to change.

Of course, we accept the implication that should facts, which include human thought, be subject to change, consequently truth as human thought will also be subject to change. But they do not make such an assertion. We believe that truth, which is the content of thought, is inseparable from external and mental existence except in conception.

For example, the statement "Zayd was standing on Friday" is always true This statement itself, apart from external or mental existence, is not something that may be said to be neither in the mind nor in external reality, a proposition that is eternally true. This proposition has either external existence or mental existence.' But when man thinks about it, he first abstracts it from mental existence, and after abstracting its meaning declares it to be eternally true.

We believe that if thought itself were changeable, its content will also be changeable, and the statement "Zayd was standing on Friday" will not be conceived today in the mind as it was conceived yesterday. It will change into something else.