PHILOSOPHY 224
HUMAN NATURE IN THE ISLAMIC TRADITION
AYATULLAH MURTAZA MUTAHHARI
HUMANS AND ANIMALS
• Mutahhari begins by noting the continuity of humans with
animals and characterizing the basic difference them: the
presence in humans of “insights and beliefs” (70). For
Mutahhari, this difference both distinguishes and elevates
humans.
• Animals have a limited form of consciousness, but human
consciousness is qualitatively distinct, both in terms of the
depth of its understanding and in terms of the height of its
aspirations.
• Animal awareness is limited to the senses and is thus external. It is
essentially individual, localized and immediate. Human awareness is
oriented by both the external and internal features of experience. It is
capable of achieving universal insight and is free to roam across time
and space.
• Animal desire is limited to the material. Human desire encompasses
immaterial features of existence (ex. morality, devotion to ideals). It is
general and inclusive, potentially universal in scope.
SCIENCE AND FAITH
• The cultural expression of these distinctive features of
human consciousness are identified by Mutahhari as
Science and Faith.
• Science: “the sum total of human contemplations on the
universe,” characterized by, “a special system of logic” (72).
• Faith: the “elevated, ideal, supra-animal aptitudes” of human
beings in an “ideational and credal infrastructure” (Ibid.).
• Corresponding to these two systematic
accomplishments are two distinctively human
capacities: insight and belief.
• When we recognize the distinctiveness of human beings
in their production of these two cultural products, we
can in turn define human beings by them, “…man is the
animal distinguished from the other animals by the two
features, ‘science’ and ‘faith’” (73).
FROM ANIMAL TO HUMAN
• This account of the distinctiveness of human beings
highlights a proximity with the Christian account we’ve
seen. For Islam as well, human beings are a spiritual
double with both an animal and a properly human
nature.
• This doubling produces two forms of human life: the
material (animal) life and the cultural (human) life (73).
• The question becomes, “What is the nature of the
relationship between the animal and human in us?
• Mutaharri reviews a range of social scientific answers, which all
tend toward the conclusion that it is our ‘animal’ natures which
are fundamental.
• Mutaharri’s opposes this view with a developmental one which
focuses on our ‘human’ nature as a telos (end of goal(74, ¶3).
A DIFFERENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE
• The reinterpretation of the distinction between
humans and animals allows a better
understanding of the distinction between
science and faith.
• In contrast to the tradition of the west, for which
the fall of humans is commonly equated with
reason (think about the account in Genesis),
the Islamic understanding of the Fall does not
oppose reason to faith.
• On Mutaharri's view, the are correlative (78, ¶3).
• Both are necessary, not only to us as humans, but to
each other.
DIAGNOSIS AND PRESCRIPTION
• On Mutaharri’s account, the source of the problem
for us is the temptation/tendency to live a life
consumed by the animal aspect of our natures.
• It is a life without faith, either one in which “science” is
dominant and thus without the capacities for belief that are
co-constitutive of our full humanity, or one in which there is
little or no human consciousness at all.
• We need science and faith, because faith alone
can penetrate beyond the material and it is part of
our nature to have faith (80, 82).
• That the ‘cure’ is faith is another significant overlap
between the Christian and Islamic theories of human
nature.