A Revision of Robert Adams’s Theory of Resemblance about Values and its Comparison with Mullā Ṣadrā’s Theory of Existential Gradation

Robert Merrihew Adams‒the contemporary moral philosopher‒has offered an ontological theory of goodness known as the “theory of resemblance.” By “goodness” he means to refer to a kind of intrinsic goodness which he calls “excellence.” Nevertheless, Adams’s theory includes both moral goodness (in his own terms, “moral excellence”) and the intrinsic goodness which is irrelevant to morality, such as aesthetic goodness. In his view, God is the highest good and the most perfect instance of goodness, and the goodness of other things arises from their resemblance to God. On this account, “goodness,” or in Adams’s words, “excellence” of something depends on its resemblance to God. Ṣadrā’s philosophy introduces the theory of existential gradation (tashkīk) to establish the highest degree of goodness for the highest degree of existence‒that is, God. In his view, other degrees of existence count as good to the extent of their closeness to God’s essence. Although Adams provides a theological account of the moral end, in response to the fundamental non-theological ground of morality, his theory has failed to evade the problem of arbitrariness. In this paper, I compare Adams’s resemblance theory with the theory of existential gradation in Ṣadrāean philosophy, and then improve some flaws of the resemblance theory in terms of the Islamic philosophical account.