فصلنامه قبسات
پیاپی 30-31 (بهار 1383)

This essay deals with the philosophy of history from Ayatollah Motahhari’s viewpoint. Although the main motive behind raising the subject returns to prevalence of Marxist views on the drivers of the history and the social movements at the time, yet the philosophy of history, per se, is worthy of a deep deliberation.The essay first, examines the social character of man and the different views on this matter. The relevance of the theory of collectivism along with the relevance of individualism, religious socialism, the ultimate victory of the righteous or the depressed ones and the relationship between waiting for the rise of the twelfth Shiite Imam and the reform of the society from Ayatollah Motahhari’s viewpoint are discussed as well.Martyred Ayatollah Motahhari’s favorite view is pointed out in all of the aforementioned cases.

The essay aims at discussing the moral philosophy from Ayatollah Motahhari’s viewpoint. First, it deals with the definition of the Moral philosophy and its sub-branches and its relation with the practical wisdom and the criteria for moral act. It, then, discusses the other major branches of the moral philosophy namely, the normative ethics and the meta-ethics. The normative ethics is concerned to find out (through rational analysis) the criteria and the rules, by which one can determine and distinguish what is good and what is evil. In this regard, the teleological ethics and the deontological ethics are spelt out. Finally, Ayatollah Motahhari’s theory of the worship in Ethics has been scrutinized. The author goes on to review the different theories in meta-ethics that refer to the normative ethics and elucidate the ethical terminologies:1) moral naturalism;2) moral non-naturalism or intuitive ethics;3) non-cognitivist ethics.In conclusion, the author raises Ayatollah Motahhari’s theory in the area of meta- ethics to prove its strengths in light of other theories.

The paper, first, presents a brief description of the mentally - posited theory of Allamah Tabatabaie, particularly with regard to the ethical concepts. It attempts, then, to clarify the dark dimensions of the subject, in light of the descriptions and explanations made by Ayatollah Motahhari in this regard. The most important issue that Motahhari tries to solve is the issue of eternality of the ethical principles. It seems that the previously mentioned theory results in relativism. Motahhari attempts to justify the mentally - posited and the eternality of the ethical principles. The justification is based on the concept of “man-e-elwi” (the transcendental self).Describing martyred Motahhari’s attempts in this regard, the paper shows that accepting the “transcendent self theory” and referring ethical concepts to the relation of consistency of human acts with “transcendental self” is practically standing aloof from Tabatabaie’s theory of cridotries.

No doubt, Ayatollah Motahhari is a prominent figure, and a creative, and innovative thinker in the contemporary Islamic thinking. His long and active presence in religious teaching centers, his vast knowledge of different fields of the modern sciences, and his remarkable talents, commitments, and sincerity in uplifting the cause of religion has made his contributions and services to religion and the new generation a unique and matchless experience. Beside his familiarity with the Western philosophy, he had a comprehensive and deep knowledge of Islamic philosophy and paid serious attention to the fundamental questions of the time including the question of epistemology. The paper explains Ayatollah Motahhari’s views in response to the most important question of epistemology that is the reliability of the knowledge. Emphasizing on the obviousness of the reliability of the science he believes that the criterion for this is the essential unity of the subjective and objective images. With regard to the way of achieving a soul capable of understanding the nature of external objects, he emphasizes on the mystical views and discards the other initial solutions.The paper attempts to show that though the views of Ayatollah Motahhari has considerably contributed to the elucidation of subject, yet there is a long way to get this deep question solved. Therefore, it is the obligation of the contemporary scholars to follow the path of Ayatollah Motahhari with a firm intention. Needless to mention that if we were not deprived of his presence, the subject would have witnessed a remarkable progress so far.

Generally, there are two approaches with regard to the scope and the domain of religion: 1) The minimalist approach, which limits the religion in a specific domain and prevents it from interfering in most of social, political, and jurisprudential affairs;2) Maximalist approach, that emphasizes on a comprehensive perspective with regard to religion.The present paper supports the Maximalists theory with an emphasis on Ayatollah Motahhari’s views and challenges the minimalist theory. Furthermore, the following issues are also discussed in the paper: The scope of the message of the prophets, the comprehensiveness of religion, the religion, and the politics and the domain of jurisprudence.

Man, from different aspects, has always been the center and the subject of debates of all schools of thought and worldviews. In the meantime, the explanation of human perfection and prosperity and the way to achieve them has been of a great sensitivity and significance. In an era of extremist humanism, the martyred Ayatollah Motahhari, a renowned Islamic thinker and an up-to-date scholar, has examined and reviewed the views of different schools of thought with regard to the idea of the ideal and perfect man emphasizing that: a perfect man is the one who has grown and developed all of human values consistently in himself. As we know the views of Ayatollah Motahhari have been expressed in public conferences and lectures, and he did not have the opportunity to organize and arrange them in a logical order. Therefore, this essay aims to sum up the views and critiques of this distinguished scholar on the characteristics and attributes of a perfect man and present Islam’s perspective for those who are in quest for a true and real prosperity.

In this essay, the author attempts to explain the different dimensions of the Salvation and the ultimate destiny of man from Ayatollah Motahhari’s viewpoint and clarify its anthropological and ontological foundations. Emphasizing on the Quranic teachings and Islamic traditions, in a deep and all-inclusive research, Ayatollah Motahhari, categorizes the people into different categories by their fate in the next world.Distinguishing between true and apparent Muslim, believer, and non-believer Muslim, hostile and non-hostile infidels, believer and non-believer non-Muslims, culpable and non-culpable infidels etc. are among the serious debates that help to have a better understanding of the specific logic of holy Quran with regard to the subject under discussion. Besides explaining the logic of the holy Quran with regard to human Salvation, Ayatollah Motahhari scrutinizes the following major points: The distinction between those who are safe from hill and those who will rest in the heaven, those who will neither enter to the heaven nor to the hill, and the possibility of a case wherein those who are non-believers apparently may be the true believers, and the recognition of the truth of religion.

There are two paradoxes with regard the nature of freedom and its relation with religiousness. First, freedom means no limitation. However, some believe that there is a limitation to freedom. The question is that if freedom is the basic principle then why there should be a limitation. In addition, if the limitation is prior, then, is there any room for freedom? Anyway, according to the mainstream thinking, the freedom is only restricted by the freedom of the others. Referring to the views of Ayatollah Motahhari, one can show that this theory is logically irrational. The only thing that has the capability to limit the freedom is the objective of freedom.The second paradox arises in the relation of freedom with religiousness. If there is no compulsion in religion, than how certain religious obligations such as jehad (holy war) and amre ba ma’ruf wa nahie az monkar (inviting people toward good deeds and preventing them from evil) are justifiable? If the religion were based on obligation, then how one would speak of freedom of the choice in religion? Martyred Ayatollah Motahhari has solved this dilemma by distinguishing between the freedom of thought and the freedom of belief. Some are of the opinion that this is not but an argumentation by what itself is the source of controversy. However, taking the intellectual foundations of his views, it seems that; first, the aforementioned distinction is rational. Secondly, it may solve the related paradox.

The intellectual comprehensiveness of the martyred Ayatollah Motahhari led him to get involved in most of intellectual issues of his time and find a solution for them. On the one hand, economics was not the field of his specialization and on the other hand, Islamic economics was not a recognized discipline until that time. Yet, in addition to the independent books written by him on the subject, he has also raised certain valuable points on a number of occasions in his other works. Referring to Ayatollah Motahhari’s works, the author has attempted to introduce an Islamic economic framework from Motahhari’s perspective.Of course, any judgment about Motahhari’s economic views requires that the two following points must be taken into account: a) Theses views were written under certain circumstancesb) Some of the works of Motahhari cited here were his incomplete or non-finalized notes.Pointing to some controversies on the nature of Islamic economic system and Islamic economics the author extracts the basis and the objectives of Islamic economic system. The paper ends with an examination of the size of private and public sectors and the terms of references of the state in this system.

Reviewing the works of Martyred Ayatollah Motahhari, the paper aims at extracting and presenting his critiques on the sociological views. As a courageous, a highly qualified, and a unique muslim thinker, Ayatollah Motahhari has strongly challenged the modern theories developed by westerners in the field of sociology; the theories that were taken for granted due to the intellectual dominance of the West. This paper is devoted to compile and classify the critiques raised by Mortaza Motahhari.

The essay aims at examining the mysticism from Ayatollah Motahhari’s perspective and explains his mystical approaches and tendencies. Ayatollah Motahhari believes that mysticism is a type of intuitive cognition based on the practical mystical conducts, through which a mystic evolves from the phase of cognition to the phase of spiritual presence. The mystic attains, and enjoys different stages of the Unity. Taking the high correlation between mysticism and the pure Unity and perfect human being into consideration, Ayatollah Motahhari discusses some mystical principles such as the personal unity of existence, conduct and intuition, asceticism, love and adoration. Ayatollah Motahhari emphasizes that the “unity of existence” is a simple concept but simultaneously it is very hard to imagine. He states that only few people are concerned to the reality of its meaning and nature.According to Ayatollah Motahhari, one should distinguish between the mysticism and Sufism. The first concept is to be regarded as a cultural issue and the second one as a social issue. He strongly emphasizes on the originality, independence, and richness of Islamic mysticism and its rise, growth and progress in light of the Quranic culture and teachings. He rejects the theory suggesting that Islamic mysticism is far away from Islamic teachings or it is a combined product of Islamic, Hinduism and Christian mysticism, though he does not reject the mutual influences of moral-mystical cultures and Islamic mysticism on each other.The paper also attempts to point out certain manifestations, symbols, and samples of Ayatollah Motahhari’s mystical approaches and the evolutionary transformation of his thoughts, motives, and acts from philosophy and wisdom towards mysticism, particularly in the last years of his precious life.

The theory of equivalence of matter and energy emerged with the horrible equation of E=mc2. When the equation, first, was intrepidly introduced by Einstein, not only the physicist but the philosophers were taken by surprise. Since than (1905) different approaches have emerged in this area. All of these approaches are from western scholars. However, so far, no physical-philosophical system with accepted and rational cosmological foundations has been presented by the philosophers and the physicists. Certain theological and baseless metaphysical approaches along with extremist views in the philosophy of science (physics and mathematics) have led the subject to become more complicated than its initial phase.The correct and logical approach that could suggest an acceptable philosophical system is imaginable only in the framework of a realistic cosmology. This framework is the dynamic framework of Islamic philosophy. Among Muslim scholars in the last century, only allamah Tabatabaie and Ayatollah Motahhari have taken the subject serious and studied it in depth. An assessment of the approaches of these two distinguished scholars will result in highly precious achievements in the Islamic philosophy and physics. The present paper investigates the questions, debates and the theories presented by these two scholars, and hope to set forth new and novel achievements with regard to the reality of the matter and energy.