Allamah Tabatabei on Socially-posited Concepts and their Methodological Implications in Social Sciences

Allamah Tabatabaei's theory of mentally-posited concepts characterizes social concepts as socially-posited ideas coming into being only after the formation of a society; they may acquire their meanings merely in a society making social activities possible; they are mainly changeable though fixed in a few cases; and they might be used as tools in order to help us meet our needs and achieve our social perfection.     Such socially-posited concepts are influenced by objective realities, though they may not come into being unless through the agreements of the peopel and social contracts. They, accordingly, do not exist independently in the outside world, or rather they exist intersubjectively. The dependence of socially-posited concepts on social contract and their mere intersubjective existence lower the grade of social propositions from certainty to that of well-known admitted or axiomatic premises. This will change the methodology of social sciences and practical philosophy in general and deprive this branch of knowledge from apodictic demonstration into dialecticism. In the tradition of Muslim philosophers, however, practical philosophy and the social sciences developed thereunder have always been supported by apodictic demonstration methods.      As a result, Allamah Tabatabaei's theory of mentally-posited concepts and its impact on the decline of methodology of practical philosophy and the social sciences developed thereunder demands a serious revision. At least, we are demanded to reconstruct the above theory in the field of socially-posited concepts and to refer to the tradition of Muslim philosophers in this field.