Theosophia Islamica

Traditionally, Christians and Muslims have held that a human person is (or has) an immaterial soul. Since there does not seem to be a place for immaterial souls in the natural world, I offer an alternative view that I call ‘Person-Body Constitutionalism’. Person-Body Constitutionalism holds that there are no (finite) immaterial entities like souls. Instead of distinguishing between souls and bodies, Constitutionalism distinguishes between whole persons and bodies. Human persons are essentially embodied, but do not essentially have the bodies that they in fact have at any given time. So, human persons, though spatially coincident with their bodies, are not identical to their bodies. Persons are distinguished from their bodies by having first-person perspectives essentially. I shall try to show that Constitutionalism is consistent with Christian doctrines. First, I set out Constitutionalism. Then, after critically discussing Thomas Aquinas’s view of Resurrection, I discuss the compatibility between Constitutionalism and the Resurrection, and an intermediate state between death and a general resurrection (e.g., Purgatory). Finally, I have a brief discussion of Constitutionalism and the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. The conclusion is that Person-Body Constitutionalism is congenial to these central Christian doctrines, and the existence of immaterial souls is not required for traditional Christianity.

"Substance dualism" or the thesis that a person is an embodied nonphysical being (mind or soul) is systematically caricatured in philosophy of mind literature as involving an untenable bifurcation. Instead of such a splintered, divided concept of the person, I defend integrative dualism, the thesis that while a person is a nonphysical subject (and thus a being that can survive the death of the body), in this life he or she functions as a united, embodied being. Embodiment consists of six nonmoral goods (they are good but not as in "moral goods" such as justice and courage): the virtues of sensations, agency, causal constitution, cognitive power, intelligible coherence, and affective incorporation. This united concept of an embodied person places values at the heart of the philosophy of human nature. This value-oriented concept of embodiment can be a rich, common resource for Christian-Muslim dialogue. This value-oriented concept of embodiment can be a rich, common resource for Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Subscribing to the principles of logically valid reasoning and parsimony of presuppositions in the framework of a religion that hinges on a revealed eschatological message, the medieval Islamic philosophers were bound to interpret the Qurʾānic account of the afterlife in ways that may have compromised at least some of its literal meanings. However, to what extent precisely do these interpretations go against the grain of Revelation has to be determined separately in each particular case. Wholesale statements regarding the alleged coherence or incoherence of general types of philosophical theories with Revelation risk neglecting important variations between theories, and thereby rendering us blind to the scope of possibilities in the concepts involved. From this perspective, I will consider the eschatological implications of the psychological theories of Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā, who both subscribe to a dualistic view of human being and consequently claim that the afterlife does not concern one's body. Two questions will then emerge as especially central to dualistic accounts of the afterlife. (1) How do we make sense of the kind of first-personality that must be an irreducible constituent of existence in the hereafter, provided that the latter fulfills the eschatological promise given in the Revelation? For in order to be a justified reward or punishment for my acts in this life, the afterlife must be in an equally strong sense mine. In the Arabic Peripatetic tradition, many of the central doctrines of which Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā subscribe to, individuality entails materiality, which seems to suggest that human being can have a distinctly first-personal existence only when some kind of connection is preserved to the body as the necessary condition of one's individuation. (2) How do we account for the emphatically sensual descriptions of the hereafter in the Revelation? Again, in the Peripatetic tradition all cognitive acts that involve objects with sensible characteristics require bodily instruments of cognition, in the absence of which the revealed account is in danger of becoming a mere metaphor. In the light of these two questions, I will argue that Avicenna's dualism ends up with a rather narrow conception of the afterlife. He does try to give an account of a genuinely first-personal afterlife, and thereby presents a carefully argued departure from the Peripatetic tradition. But because of the way in which Avicenna separates the soul from the body, Avicennian afterlife is bound to remain exclusively intellectual. Thus, with regard to the second question Avicenna seems forced to interpret the Revelation in almost exclusively metaphorical terms. On the other hand, while following Avicenna in the first question, Mullā Ṣadrā conceives of the separate existence of the human soul in much broader terms than his predecessor. By means of the concepts of mental existence ( wujud dhihniyy ) and the world of images ( 'ālam al-mithāl ), he ends up with a conception of human afterlife that is rich in terms of experiential content, and thereby potentially more coherent with the revealed account.

Muslim philosophers and theologians have disputed over the animal afterlife. Most Muslim scholars hold that the Quran, Islamic narrations and rational arguments affirm the resurrection of animals in the afterlife, though there is a dispute concerning how they will be resurrected and whether they will be rewarded or punished as humans will. Beside the controversies and disputes, several reasons suggest that they have their own afterlife. To prove the animal afterlife, it is necessary to prove primarily that they have soul. Mulla Sadra has attempted to prove that animals have soul, based on the immateriality of the faculty of imagination ( al-Khayal ). Likewise, most of the reasons provided for the immateriality of human soul could be employed for the animal afterlife. The second stage is to explain the purpose of animal afterlife. Two goals could be mentioned regarding this issue: first, the compensation of evils harming them requires the afterlife. Second, some Quranic verses and Islamic narrations establish the fact that at least some animals have the intellectual faculty and thus have responsibly for their actions. Though these Quranic verses and Islamic narrations are not explicit, they can be a probable evidence for the animal afterlife. Finally, two points must be noted: first, though there are several arguments in favor of animal afterlife, there is no general agreement on it in the Islamic world. Second, the above arguments are not general, but they include merely those animals that have the faculty of sensation and have been inflicted by evils.

The issue of religious diversity is explicitly addressed in a number of āyāt of the Qur’ān. One of the recurrent themes that is found in these passages is the resolution of religious differences. The theme of religious difference is treated with assertions that diversity arose out of an original unity. There may be partial resolutions to issues over which there is contention, but ultimate resolution of differences is only to be expected in the eschaton. The morale given in such passages is a counsel of patience. The implications of this message for an Islamic theology of religions areconsidered.

One of the main problems for the doctrine of the traditional view of hell is Proportionality objection. It claims that eternal punishments for finite crimes of human beings cause undue harm and therefore are incompatible with divine justice. The proportionality principle states that the degree of punishment that a person justly merits must be proportionate to the level of his wrongdoing. One of the common ways to respond to this objection is rejecting the retributive nature of hell. Morteza Motahhari denied retributivism by distinguishing between the criminal system of the world and hereafter. He believed punishments in hell are identical to human deeds and they are nothing more than spiritual aspect of them. Regarding this view which is called 'Self-imposed punishments', God is not the punisher of the sinners, and the residents of hell suffer from their sinful actions. This paper begins with examining Motahhari's metaphysical theory of punishment as a theodicy of hell. Then I will discuss a modal argument against his theory. I shall argue there is not a necessary correlation between crimes and punishments. My conclusion is that Motahhari's theodicy would be undermined God's moral perfection either therefore it does not get God off the moral hook.