Moral Agents and Their Deserts
By Sophia VasalouPrinceton University Press
Copyright © 2008 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-13145-0
Chapter One
The Framework: The Mu'tazilites Questions about the nature of moral values and the conditions that determine one's otherworldly destination-whether to paradise or the Fire-had formed an important part of the Islamic theological curriculum from early on, and generated lively debate. Many of the distinctive features of these debates were molded from the earliest days of the nascent Islamic caliphate when political developments revolving around the succession to Muhammad placed them at the top of the agenda, and the parameters and membership conditions of the Islamic community came under dispute. At the time from which I will pick up the narrative, two types of responses to the broader questions about moral value and the narrower ones about desert stand out in the Islamic theological milieu, and in particular, in the practice of dialectical theology known as kalam: the responses of the Ash'arites and those of the Mu'tazilites. The latter thinkers shall be my interlocutors in this study, and by way of introducing them, I shall here attempt a brief-and perhaps impressionistic-sketch of their thought and their relation to Ash'arism.
The name of the Mu'tazilites is usually associated with an approach that gives supremacy to reason at the expense of revealed data, and the master script for the rise of the schools of Islamic theology is usually recounted along the following rough lines: at the time of the caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813-33), a famous Inquisition took place at the instigation of a set of Mu'tazilite theologians well versed in and much enamored of disputational inquiries into matters of belief, and wielding great influence over the caliph. Th e aim of the Inquisition was to compel acquiescence in the doctrine that the Qur'an was created and not eternal. The Inquisition excited great opposition among prominent traditionalists, who rejected this view and opposed themselves to this type of theological dispute on questions of faith, including the influential Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 855), who was imprisoned but refused to deliver the required profession of doctrine. The abolition of the Inquisition with al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-61), the latter's prohibition of such disputes about the Qur'an , and the release of a triumphant Ahmad b. H. anbal marked the beginning of the fall from grace for Mu'tazilite thinkers. The Mu'tazilites continued to flourish until, some time in the first quarter of the tenth century, a great defection from their ranks occurred that was to alter the course of Islamic theology. After many years of apprenticing in the circle of Abu 'Ali al-Jubba'i (d. 915), one of the most renowned leaders of the Mu'tazilites in the tenth century, Abu'l-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d. 935) dramatically disavowed Mu'tazilite doctrines. He then committed himself to the recovery and stout defense of the traditionalist view of such matters, thereby becoming the founder of the eponymous school of the Ash'arites, arguably the most prominent theological tradition in medieval Islam. In the writings of al- Ash'ari and his followers-al-Baqillani (d. 1013), al-Juwayni (d. 1085), al-Ghazali (d. 1111), al-Shahrastani (d. 1153), and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210) are only a few of the glittering names the school boasts-Mu'tazilism was subjected to a devastating critique, and the uncompromising rationalism of Mu'tazilite theology was repudiated in favor of an approach that gave primacy to revelation across the entire spectrum of positions discussed in the Islamic theological curriculum.
This story may verge on the mythological in its stark simplicity and paucity of detail, but for the purposes of the present study it can function as a backdrop for a brief account of the contents of the categories "Mu'tazilite" and "Ash'arite." The Mu'tazilites identified themselves by a set of five principles that were unanimously affirmed by all, whatever their diff erences on other, secondary theological questions. Most of these principles are given to us in the account of the Mu'tazilite Abu'l-Qasim al-Balkhi (also called al-Ka'bi, d. 931) in the following way:
The Mu'tazilites unanimously agree that God-may He be exalted-is in no way like any other thing, that He is neither a body nor an accident, but rather the Creator of bodies and accidents, and that the senses cannot perceive Him neither in this life nor the next.... And they unanimously maintain that God does not love depravity, and that He does not create the acts of human beings, but it is the latter who do the acts they have been commanded to do and prohibited from doing, by virtue of the capacity for action [qudra], which God has created for them and instated within them, that they may obey through it and desist from disobedience.... And He willed-great and exalted is He-that they might come to believe out of their own accord and not by compulsion, that they may thus be tried and tested, and that they may deserve the highest form of reward.... And they unanimously agree that God-great and exalted is He-does not forgive those who commit grave sin [murtakibi al-kaba'ir] unless they repent ... and that the grave sinner does not deserve to be designated by the noble name of faith [iman] and submission [islam], nor by that of unbelief [kufr], but by that of grave sin [fisq], as he was called by God, and as the community unanimously affirms.
This passage may appear somewhat opaque without a knowledge of the turns of phrase and concept that characterize Islamic theological discussions, and a full explanation of the principles would take us out of our remit. These principles can be gathered together under two main headings, after a practice initiated by the Mu'tazilite masters themselves: principles of divine unity (tawhid) and principles of justice ('adl). All Islamic factions affirmed God's unity, and all subscribed to the Qur'anic description of God as a being like whom there is none (laysa kamithlihi shay', 42:11), but the Mu'tazilites' approach was distinguished by their austere view of His simplicity and their anxiety over all things anthropomorphic. Things anthropomorphic included the bodily parts (e.g., God's eyes or His hands) and functions (e.g., sitting on the throne) ascribed to God in various Qur'anic passages, which the Mu'tazilites duly interpreted by the device of ta'wil, or allegorical interpretation, in ways that deflected the possibility of corporeality from God. One of the most contentious extensions of their doctrine was their denial of the beatific vision in the afterlife, since the denial of corporeal aspects entailed that God could not be perceived by sight.
Their adherence to divine unity was expressed in the view they took of the divine attributes, where they affirmed that God's essential attributes were identical with Him, and were not different entities or hypostases. Th us, when one affirms that God is knowing, powerful, eternal, living, one is not thereby affirming any separate "entitative accidents"-a term I will say more about below-or essences. One does not affirm a divine knowledge or life in affirming God as knowing or living. This was not a blanket approach taken toward all the divine attributes, nor was it one that found Mu'tazilites unanimous about the details. Certain other attributes-those that were designated as "attributes of action" (sifat fi'liyya)-were not ascribed to God by virtue of His essence; for example, God's being willing (murid) was theorized in a different way, to deal with certain constraints set down by the Mu'tazilite commitment to freedom of will, and was ascribed to God by virtue of a temporally originated "accident" of willing. Similarly with divine speech (kalam)-another unpopular and controversial Mu'tazilite tenet-which was not seen as an attribute predicable of God eternally and by virtue of His essence but one that was predicated of Him by virtue of and at the time of His creating the entitative accident of speech. Th is view grounded the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur'an, which some scholars have suggested may have been adopted partly as a solution to certain questions relating to human freedom of will. It is worth stressing the degree of diversity characterizing Mu'tazilite theological professions as well as the inevitable revisions of doctrine that came with the passage of time, among the most significant of which was Abu Hashim's (d. 933) theory of modes or states (ahwal) as a means of understanding the divine attributes, developed in the first part of the tenth century.
In this ontological economy the Mu'tazilites were at odds with the wider Islamic view, which was represented by traditionalists such as Ahmad b. Hanbal, who recoiled from the rationalism characterizing the Mu'tazilite approach and the way it seemed to undermine Qur'anic authority. If the Qur'an affirms knowledge of God, who are the Mu'tazilites to so boldly interpret it away? If the Qur'an speaks of God's hands or God's eyes, then what hermeneutic device can legitimize the denial of them' Which is not to say that God has hands and eyes in the way in which we normally understand these features; we must simply accept such aspects of God without asking how (bi-la kayfa) and resign our claims to knowledge of their modality. When al-Ash'ari opted out of Mu'tazilism and took up the Hanbalite banner, it is this sort of return to a primitive acceptance of scriptural authority that he advocated, and the denuded, achromatic, and unQur'anic God of the Mu'tazilites that he was rejecting.
Yet al-Ash'ari did not wholly repudiate the methods of kalam that had served as means for the exposition of Mu'tazilite ideas, and this meant that the door to the temptations of rationalism remained open; so while on certain matters the rich Ash'arite tradition that sprouted after him continued to challenge Mu'tazilite views on the nature of the divine attributes-for example, in denying the identity of God's attributes with His essence and affirming His knowledge, power, and so on-soon the Ash'arites began to inch closer to their opponents in several respects, such as their discontent with a no-questions-asked, uninterpreted acceptance of the anthropomorphic features of God. In this, they provided grounds for an abiding hostility on the part of the traditionalist camp, which had been distrustful of al-Ash'ari's self-appointment as defender of their cause from early on.
It is the second principle or general heading, however, that gives this study its subject matter. It would make little sense to issue unrestricted judgments about the relative importance of these two principles. Both were the subject of acute controversy that continued to engage the energies of theologians from both sides for centuries after their initial launch. Moreover, the topics grouped under one principle are never entirely insulated from those discussed in another (it is, after all, the demand for a perfect consistency, and thus for a communication between all constituent parts of the doctrine affirmed, that made of kalam such a techne). Nevertheless, what may be said is that the topics discussed under the principle of justice percolated into seminal streams of Islamic thought and practice to a greater extent than did the theological discussions of divine unity. This was in great part a function of the relations these topics bore to legal thought, in which the values of acts were theorized, making works on legal theory (usul alfiqh) and often also substantive law (fiqh) vehicles for the expression of theological commitments. This, in turn, was a reflection of the multiple roles Muslim thinkers frequently bore, for they were never just jurists or theologians but quite often served in both capacities.
The positions gathered under the Mu'tazilite principle of justice converged on the affirmation that God is just and good, and will not commit acts that are wrong or evil. If the principle of unity in many respects emphasized the unlikeness of God to human beings, the principle of justice laid greater stress on the likeness. The standards of good and evil, justice and injustice, are those that we human beings know by our own reason, and are univocally applied to God and human beings. God and human beings are bound alike by a single code of moral values, though God is unlike human beings in that He will not commit evil due to His lack of need (that is, self-sufficiency) and knowledge of moral values. Moral values are intrinsic qualities that attach to acts by virtue of their satisfying certain descriptions that are accessible to reason: if an act is a lie, it is evil; similarly if an act is injustice; gratitude is always obligatory, and so is the repayment of debts. Th e Mu'tazilite thesis that human acts are not determined by God was linked to the defense of divine justice, for the evil acts of human beings would otherwise be fixed on God. God does not prejudice anyone's ability to become a believer, lead anyone astray, or close anyone's heart against belief-as some Qur'anic passages and prophetic traditions seemed to suggest.
The Zaydite Mu'tazilite Mankdim Shashdiw (d. 1034) provides us with a pithy portrait of the God of the Mu'tazilites when he describes Him in these words:
His acts are all good, He does not do evil, He does not fail to perform what is obligatory on Him, He does not lie in His message nor is He unjust in His rule; He does not torment the children of pagans for the sins of their fathers, He does not grant miracles to liars, and He does not impose on people obligations that they can neither bear nor have knowledge of. Far from it, He enables them to accomplish the duties He has imposed on them, and acquaints them with the qualities of these duties ... so that he who perishes, perishes in the face of clear signs, and he who is saved, is saved in the face of clear signs. If obligation is imposed on a person and he fulfills it as he is bidden to, then He will necessarily reward him. And when He-glory to Him-afflicts people with pain and sickness, He does so in their interests and for their benefit, for otherwise He would be failing to perform what is obligatory.
The Mu'tazilite defense of the belief that God is bound by the same code of value as human beings was often conducted via a defense of the view that moral values are independent from revelation, since the contrary perspective, taken up by the Ash'arites, consisted of the belief that acts acquire their values when divine command or prohibition attaches to them, and that it was revelation that promulgated the values of certain acts. The universal human knowledge of such moral truths-even on the part of those who adhere to no religion-was cited by the Mu'tazilites as proof of their independence from revelation. The claim that moral truths are apprehensible by reason was linked with the claim that the moral obligation to reflect on the existence of God is a rational one that precedes revelation; indeed, were there no such prerevelational moral imperative, it is hard to see how human beings could be held accountable for their failure to believe.
The Mu'tazilite claims about moral value tied in with their views on desert and posthumous destinies, which formed the subject matter of the principle of "the promise and the threat" (al-wa'd wa'l-wa'id). Since the moral values of acts are independent of God's will and command, so is the desert one acquires through such acts. Reward and punishment in the afterlife-what I shall call posthumous treatments-were inexorably determined by one's deeds, though here two separate principles collaborated to guarantee this determination: not simply the moral value of one's acts but the word God had sent forth once and for all by promising and threatening certain treatments in scriptural passages. God would not retract, for lying is intrinsically evil.
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Excerpted from Moral Agents and Their Desertsby Sophia Vasalou Copyright © 2008 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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