It is good only for those who have such a goal.

It is good only for those who have such a goal. Otherwise if one had an opposite goal it would not be good for him. Bertrand Russell and other philosophers applied their logical analysis to ethics. They come to the conclusion that `good' or `evil' are normative in nature. The mistake of the philosophers down to the present day is that they have thought ethical issues to be like those of mathematics or science.

Their approaches to ethics has been similar to their approach to mathematics and physics. For example, as in physics one studies the nature of the magnet to discover its properties, in ethics as well they thought that good and evil are discoverable properties of things. Q: Ethical issues are like scientific issues with the difference that they belong to different realms; otherwise the criterion is the same in both the cases. A: There is no difference between this domain or that.

For example, when man speaks, his speaking is a concrete fact no matter whether what he says is true or false. Does this speech have an external and objective property called `good' or `evil'? No. Truth or falsehood do not have any objective quality called good or evil. Basically, the meaning of good and evil are determined in term of goals. Truth helps one to achieve one's goal, therefore, one must be truthful. Here the property of goodness is attributed to truthfulness.

Lying, owing to its effects, prevent individuals and society from achieving their goal. Therefore, one must not lie and lying is bad. Here one does not have anything except "one ought to say" and "one ought not to say" Good and evil are abstracted from `ought' and `ought not.' Of course, it does not mean that ethics is devoid of reality. Later on we will explain it.

The Europeans thought that they had discovered a very new idea and even today it is a live issue in European philosophy and enjoys wide acceptance. In their view, the ethical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and the like are outdated. They have finally reached this viewpoint. As I said, the early Muslim philosophers also have dealt with this issue and a shortcoming of Allamah Tabataba i s work is that he does not relate it to their ideas. According to Mr.

Ha'iri, one of the questions he was asked to answer in a test (in the West) was concerning the relation between theoretical and practical sciences. As the theoretical sciences are related to the practical sciences, they are not isolated from one another.