ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Eternity of Moral Values Subjectivity of Normative Judgements It should be noted that Allamah Tatatabais 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 itibariyat. Therefore, he did not relate it to the views of the philosophers. Allamah Tabatabai 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 itibariyat 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.