A Review of Moral Semantics in Mohaghegh Tusi’s Theory

Moral semantics is one of the subjects of moral philosophy which discusses the semantic analysis of moral conceptions and propositions. Moral semantics has a close relationship with the ontology of ethical terms. The major issues in moral semantics are the study of the concepts of subject, predicate, and concepts in morality. The present study aims to investigate Mohaghegh Tusi's innovations by reviewing ethical concepts in his thought. Mohaghegh Tusi has studied the basic virtues in examining the concepts that are used in the subject and classifies the four famous virtues with the two criteria of quantity and quality. Like the famous thinkers of ancient Greece, he considered the basic virtues to be justice, wisdom, courage, and chastity. He has sometimes categorized these virtues by quantitative criteria. That is, justice is the degree of attainment of perfection of the other three virtues, namely wisdom, courage, and chastity, and each of these three virtues includes many other virtues. Justice includes all other virtues, has more territory, and wisdom in its sub-category and is higher than wisdom because, in addition to pure wisdom, it also has other virtues. In the qualitative classification, Mohaghegh Tusi considers wisdom to have a higher degree. In the qualitative division of virtues, he first divides virtues into two categories: virtues related to the soul, and virtues related to the body. Wisdom is a carnal virtue related to thought, and other basic virtues are related to the action and behavior. The manifestation of wisdom is the rational soul. In the importance of theoretical virtue, it is enough that theoretical virtue is more stable, but other virtues are not. In an innovative division, Mohaghegh al-Tusi divides the power of the human soul into two basic categories: the power of perception by essence, and the power of voluntary stimulation. Each of the two types has a secondary category. The power of perception by essence creates wisdom on the basis of the evidence of theoretical reason while on the other hand brings about justice on the basis of the evidence of practical reason. The power of voluntary stimulation is also divided into lust and anger resulting in moderation, chastity, and courage. In defining justice as a widely used concept in the subject of moral sentences, Mohaghegh Tusi believes that justice means equality, but equality means equality based on proportion in objects. Wisdom, as another widely used concept in the subject of moral sentences, according to Mohaghegh Tusi, refers to knowing things as they are and knowing voluntary actions as they should be, so that man can achieve happiness through those actions. Thus, wisdom is divided into two types: practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom means the result of knowledge of beings and facts, which includes metaphysics, mathematics, and physics while practical wisdom is the perception of man's voluntary actions. In another division, practical wisdom is divided into two types: individual actions that have nothing to do with the society, and social actions that take place with social participation. Individual actions are called personal ethics, and social ethics is divided into house and civil politics. Mohaghegh Tusi considers the meaning of moral good and evil as the real relationship between "happiness and cruelty of the behavior" and "praiseworthy and reprehensible". Explaining the concept of perfection, which is a widely used concept in ethics, he believes that every creature has a property due to its nature. That is, a property in which no other being participates with this being, and this is his perfection. Mohaghegh Tusi paid close attention to the semantics of virtues and vices and introduced innovations in the theory of mediocrity so that by considering the quality in mediocrity, he has more accurately expressed the realms of basic virtues and vices. However, he does not seem to have paid enough attention to the good and bad moral semantics that have accepted the separation of the three meanings from Fakhr-e Razi, because it is possible to combine these meanings in one category. It seems that he has not proved the true relationship between the granting of divine blessings and the necessity of worship in explaining the ontology of morality. In any case, Mohaghegh Tusi is considered as realistic, absolutist, and morally monist