Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

CHAPTER 4: THE MODERN PERIOD

BACKGROUND

The modern period has been characterized by an awakening of reflection, a revolt against authority and tradition, a dual concern with empiricism and rationalism - where, by rational we mean the use of reason over revelation for in the other predominant use of rationalism all modern systems are rational in their ideal. The other use of rationalism is the view that genuine knowledge consists of universal and necessary judgments - considered by most modern thinkers as ideal - whether realized, realizable or not. A further concern in the modern era is the origin of knowledge and this concern has received considerable impetus from the modern biology starting around the intellectual trends characterized by the publications c. 1855 by Alfred Russell Wallace and of Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859

The approach here will be to briefly consider selected seminal and typical modern philosophers.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance has been characterized as a period of revolt against authority, a new humanism, a serious start to study of Plato and Aristotle, the pantheism of Nicolas of Cusa (1401 - 1464), reform of science, philosophy and logic, social and political philosophy of Campanella and Machiavelli 1469 - 1527… the Renaissance is commonly used as a label for the multifaceted period between medieval universalism, and sweeping transformations of 17th century Europe.

This sets the Spirit of modern philosophy ‘as an awakening of the reflective spirit, a quickening of criticism, a revolt against authority and tradition, a protest against absolutism and collectivism, and a demand for freedom in thought, feeling and action’

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1550 - 1670

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

The Reform of Science: Bacon is, in many ways, typical of the modern spirit: He is opposed to ancient authorities…he understood and emphasized the importance of systematic and methodical observation and experimentation in natural science; (the other and most important phase, mathematics, he mentions and considers essential)

Inductive methods

…a ‘novum organum’: the old syllogism (syllogistic logic is useless for scientific discovery)…the only hope - in knowing nature - is genuine induction: we must ascend gradually in an orderly and methodical way from experience to propositions of higher and higher generality until we finally come to the most general and best defines axioms.

Programs of philosophy

Primary philosophy busies itself with the concepts and axioms common to several sciences, with what we now call basic scientific categories and presuppositions of science.

Philosophy of man

Man is a human and political (or civil) philosophy. Human philosophy studies body and soul and their relation…in envisioning a comprehensive science of man, Bacon founded scientific humanism…the faculties of the soul (psychology) were understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, will, and all those with which logic and ethics are concerned: logic treats of the understanding and reason; and ethics of the will, appetite and affections: the one produces resolutions, the other actions; ethics describes the nature of the good and prescribes rules for conforming to it (right, perhaps)…Man is prompted by selfish and by social impulses. The social good is called duty, and it is the business of the science of government to discover the fountains of justice and public good and to reinforce their claims even when they conflict with the interests of the individual…philosophy in the broad sense is at the apex of knowledge.

Bacon as an empiricist

(Although his empiricism is not fully worked out, he can be called an empiricist.) Teleology is banished from physics and becomes a part of metaphysics.

Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)

‘One of the boldest and most typical representations of the modern spirit.’

Theory of knowledge

Philosophy, according to Hobbes, is a knowledge of effects (sense perception) from their causes (principles) and of causes from their effects…Hobbes is a nominalist, regards logic as a kind of calculation…The problem, therefore, is to find a first principle -–a starting point for our reasoning: this is motion: everything can be explained by motion: the nature of man, the mental world, the physical world.

The origin of all our thoughts are from the senses…but the picture of the world obtained through the senses is not the real world…so how do we know the nature of the world (e.g., motion is the primary principle)? Hobbes is not troubled by the question.

Metaphysics

A real world of bodies in space exists…substance and body are identical.

Psychology

Mind is motion in the brain…Hobbes subscribes to what modern writers call epiphenomenalism: consciousness is an after appearance…there is also a motive power: pleasure and pain arouse appetite (or desire) and aversion: appetite is an endeavor toward something, aversion is an endeavor away from something.

That which pleases a man he calls good, what displeases him he calls evil.

The imagination is the first beginning of all voluntary motion. Will in man is not different from will in other animals. A man is free to act but not free to will as he wills, he cannot will to will.

Politics

Man is a ferocious anima (Homo homini lupus)…competition for riches, honor and power inclines man to contention, enmity, war because only in this way can one competitor fulfill his desire to kill, subdue, supplant or repel his rivals.

(But) reason dictates that there should be a state of peace and that every man should seek after peace. The first precept of reason, or law of nature, commands self-preservation: the second, that man lay down his natural right and be content with as much liberty for himself as he is prepared to allow others in the interests of peace and security…no man can be expected to transfer certain rights such as the right to self-dense (since he transfers his rights for the very purpose of securing defense)…The third law of nature is that men keep the covenants they have made: this is the fountain and origin of justice…these laws are immutable, eternal…they are (called) natural because they are the dictates of reason; they are moral because they concern men’s manners towards one another: they are also, according to Hobbes, divine.

The only way to erect a commonwealth and insure peace is to confer the total power and strength of men upon one man or assembly of men, whereby all their wills, by a majority vote, coalesce into one will.

Blaise Pascal (1632 - 1662)

Mathematician, Jansenist, anti-Jesuit

Man has certain immediate insights - space, time, movement, number, and truth. Sense and reason deceive each other; then feeling functions, bringing satisfaction. Religious feeling, in which alone there is peace, is independent of understanding. Belief in God is a wager on which one can lose nothing.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM

Together, Continental rationalism and British empiricism may be said to mark the beginning of the ‘true period of modern philosophy.’

René Descartes (1598 - 1650)

Descartes problem

(Like Bacon) Descartes sets his face against old authorities and emphasized the practical character of philosophy and (unlike Bacon) he took mathematics as the model of his philosophical method…he offers a program of human knowledge and sought to construct a system of thought which would possess the certainty of mathematics. He was in agreement with the great natural scientists of the new era: everything in (external) nature must be explained mechanically - without forms or essences, but he also accepted the fundamental principles of the time-honored idealistic philosophy and attempted to adapt them to the demands of the new science: his problem was to reconcile the mechanism of nature with the freedom of the human soul.

Classification of the sciences

(1) The first part of true philosophy is metaphysics, which contains principles of knowledge - what came to be called epistemology, such as the definition and principle attributes of God, immortality of the soul, and of all the clear and simple ideas that we possess; (2) physics, true principles of material things, structure and origin of the universe, nature of the earth, of plants, animals and man.

Method and criterion of knowledge

Aim: to find a body of certain and self-evident truths. The method of mathematics is a key: begin with axioms which are self-evident, then deduce logical consequences…This method must be extended to philosophy. Descartes combs through the elements and levels of knowledge, examines and discards all those claims which are uncertain and arrives at…one thing is certain: that I doubt or think - It is a contradiction to suppose (think) that that which thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. (Perhaps Descartes’ analysis proves only: thought occurs)

Proofs of the existence of God

Descartes provided a detailed proof according to the recipe: I, a finite being, cannot conceive a greater being through my own lesser intellect. I conceive the perfect being God - this concept can only have been placed thereby God - who, therefore, exists. Descartes gives a detailed construction of the proof and a refutation of certain counter-arguments. The interest in such arguments - to me - is the idea of construction of metaphysics (whether or not the specific construction is valid)

Truth and error

The source of (human) error is the disparity between the finitude of human intellect and the infinitude of the human will.

Existence of the external world

God induced in us a deeply rooted conviction of the existence of an external world; if no such world existed he could not be defended against the charge of being a deceiver (similar to the evolutionary argument). The existence in my mind of dreams and hallucinations is not a counter argument since God has endowed me with the power of intellect to dispel and correct such delusions. This God is not a deceiver, but a truthful being, and our sensations must therefore by caused by real bodies…Descartes, strictly speaking, affirms one absolute substance - God and two relative substances - mind and body, which exist independently of each other but depend on God…Descartes holds that God has given the world a certain amount of motion: motion is constant: the germ of the principle of conservation of energy.

Relation of mind and body

We cannot conceive of mind or soul without thought: the soul is res cogitans: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and un-extended thing. Hence it is certain that I (my mind) through which I am what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body and may exist without it…What attracted Descartes to this extreme dualism was that it left nature free for the mechanical explanation of natural science (and the mind to idealism, etc., or to the Church)…These two substances exclude each other: mind cannot cause changes in the body and body cannot cause changes in the mind…However there are facts which point to the intimate union of matter and mind (appetites, emotions, sensations…)…God has put them together, but they are so separate in their nature that either could be conserved by God apart from the other. Descartes’ vacillation is due to his desire to explain the corporeal world mechanically but retain a spiritual principle…yet at times he accepts the theory of causal interaction without hesitation.

Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

Spinoza is a pantheistic (a probable interpretation: God is the universe conceived as eternal and necessary unity; Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God) and a rationalist (Descartes had given an example of the application of the geometric method - deduction from necessary and self-evident axioms to conclusions - in the appendix to his mediations; Spinoza follows the same method in Cogitata Metaphysica, an exposition of Descartes’ philosophy, and in Ethics, his chief work)…He is successor to Descartes (in aim to construct a universal theory on rationalist principles and method: mathematical-geometric); even though Spinoza is a monist (God is the one absolute from which all else is derived) whereas Descartes was a dualist (mind and body…) Spinoza’s monism is derived from Descartes’ notion of God as the absolute substance (…this implies in fact that Descartes’ philosophy is not perfectly defines as to monism and dualism and though predominantly dualist has, also, elements of monism)

The origin of Spinozism has also been sought in Averroism (Averroës (1126 - 1198), of the Spanish-Arabian school flourishing in the Moorish Caliphate of Spain, particularly at Cordova, derived from Arabian –Mohammedan philosophy, conceived of the universal active mind), in the cabalist and pantheistic literature of the Middle Ages, in the writings of the Jewish scholars Moses Maimonides and Creskas (Maimonides holds that to conceive God as the bearer of any attributes would destroy his unity, while Creskas defends this view), and in the speculations of Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600) (with Nicolas of Cusa, Bruno conceived God as immanent in the active universe, the active principle as the unity of all opposites, as the unity without opposites, as the one and the many whom the finite mind cannot grasp)

Rationalism

Like Descartes, Spinoza is a rationalist: the goal of philosophy is complete knowledge of things, and this can be reached by clear and distinct thinking.

Method

The problem of the nature of the world is handled by Spinoza like a problem in geometry.

The universal substance

God is in the world and the world is in him, he is the source of everything that is (Pantheism); God and the world are one.

Attributes of god

The infinitude of God is of the second order - he possesses an infinite number of attributes each of which is infinite in extent; of these the mind of man can grasp but two: the attribute dimensions of man himself: physical and mental.

Theory of knowledge

Three levels of cognition: (1) Obscure and inadequate ideas have their source in sensation and imagination: (2) adequate knowledge - clear and distinct ideas, rational knowledge; (3) intuitive knowledge - the highest kind of knowledge.

Ethics and politics

‘The Mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God and the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.’

In the state of nature every man has the right to do what he can; might makes right. But conflict would rise in such a situation, for men would overshoot their powers; hence it is necessary that men relinquish their natural rights in order that all may live in peace (social contract)

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH EMPIRICISM

John Locke (1632 - 1704)

(From the Continental rationalists Descartes, Spinoza…we now turn to the British Empiricists. John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume are the exponents of British Empiricism in the early phase.)

Locke’s problem

(Hobbes held, with Descartes, the rationalist ideal: mere experience will not give us certain knowledge; and with Bacon, that sensation is the source of knowledge)…to Locke the sensationalist origin of knowledge appeared to undermine its validity and destroy its certainty. Locke, along these lines, undertakes to examine the nature, origin and validity of knowledge.

Origin of knowledge

Philosophy, according to Locke, is true knowledge of things, including the nature of things (physics), that which man ought to do as a rational voluntary agent (practica, or ethics), and the ways and means of obtaining and communicating such knowledge (semiotics, logic). The most important of these three is the problem of knowledge…But we must first study the origin of our ideas…for if it is true (as Descartes and others held) that we have innate knowledge of principles, there would seem to be no reason to question its validity. The problem of innate ideas is therefore taken up in the first book (written last) of Locke’s main work: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. …In short, ideas and principles are just as little innate as the arts and sciences, concludes Locke by examining different classes of humanity (children, savages, tribes) and relativism and moral decay. Then: whence does the mind derive all the materials of reason and knowledge? Locke’s Answer: Experience: the two sources: sensation and reflection (internal sense - Locke), such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing: these are the primary capacity of the human mind…By idea Locke means whatsoever the mind directly apprehends: the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding…These are simple ideas which mind has the power to repeat, compare, combine in endless variety resulting in complex ideas. Some ideas are received by one sense only, some by reflection only and some by combinations of senses and reflection.

The power which objects have to produce definite ideas in us we call qualities; original or primary qualities belong to the object, secondary qualities are (nothing in the object themselves but) powers to produce various sensations by primary qualities. Examples: primary: solidity, extension, motion, rest…secondary: colors, sounds, tastes…

Complex ideas - three types: modes, substances, relations: (1) ideas of modes are complex ideas which…are (although Locke does not seem to use the word) forms: dependencies on or affections of substances: e.g., triangle, gratitude… (2) ideas of substances are complex ideas: combinations of ideas of qualities, supposed to represent a distinct particular thing and the confused idea of a support or bearer of these qualities (modes lack this aspect: the idea of a bearer)…(3) ideas of relation are obtained by comparing things; the most comprehensive idea of relation is cause and effect: that which produces a(simple or complex) idea is cause, that which is produced: effect.

Nature and validity of knowledge

Ideas should be clear and distinct, real (having foundation in nature and being in conformity with the real existent things)…Simple ideas are all real not because they are representations of what exists - only primary qualities of bodies are that, but because they are effect of powers outside of our minds…(simple modes are variations of the same simple idea and therefore real: mixed modes are compounded of simple ideas of several kinds; e.g., beauty - a combination of color, figure, causing delight in the beholder). Mixed modes are real only in that they are so framed that there is a possibility of something existing conformable to them. They are archetypes and so cannot be chimerical unless inconsistent ideas are jumbled together in them…complex ideas of substances are real only insofar as they are such combinations of simple ideas as are not really united in things outside us…Ideas are adequate which perfectly represent the archetypes from which the mind supposes them to have been taken while inadequate ideas are a partial or incomplete representation of these archetypes. Whenever mind refers any of its ideas to things extraneous to them, the ideas are then capable of being called true or false; i.e., it is the tacit supposition of their conformity to these things which may be true or false.

There are different degrees of evidence in knowledge…intuition or intuitive knowledge is perception of agreement or disagreement of these ideas by direct inspection, without the intervention of any other ideas; demonstrative knowledge results from the comparison of two ideas by comparing them with one or more other ideas - i.e., indirectly. Both intuitive and demonstrative knowledge provide certainty; whatever falls short of one of these is faith or opinion but is not knowledge in the strict sense…But: is there anything more than the ideas…is there a real world? Sometimes, as in dreams, we have ideas to which nothing corresponds at the time. Yet, ordinary perception (when we hare aware and presumably subject to neither hallucination nor illusion) affords a kind of evidence which is beyond any reasonable doubt; Locke calls it sensitive knowledge.

Limits of knowledge

Since knowledge is a perception of agreement or disagreement of our ideas, it follows that our knowledge cannot reach further than our ideas…the only knowledge that really satisfies one is knowledge of universal self-evident truths; but there are large areas of experience in which such knowledge seems unobtainable…Absolute certainty of a general sort is never to be found except in the agreement and disagreement of our ideas. We have no self-evident propositions as to real existence - except in the case of God and ourselves…Faith is a settled and certain principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no room for doubt or hesitation. But we must be sure that it is a divine revelation. Consequently our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence of its being a relation.

Metaphysics

(Due to lack of present interest in Locke’s metaphysics - I omit)

Ethics

In harmony with his philosophical empiricism, Locke offers an empirical theory of ethics which ends by being an egoistic hedonism. Men attain knowledge of moral rules and are convinced of their obligation to conform to them through experience (the source of all knowledge, according to Locke)…Moral laws originally came to be established through pleasure and pain: the great teachers of morality…it would be useless for one intelligent being to prescribe rules for actions of another if he did not have the power to reward obedience and to punish disobedience…There are three sorts of law: divine law, civil law and the law of opinion or private censure: by which the great majority of men govern themselves chiefly.

Free will

Is an idea pertaining not to volition but to the person having the power of doing or forbearing to do as the mind shall choose or direct. The free will problem is, in Locke’s opinion, meaningless; for the concept of freedom has significant power of application to man’s power of action but not his will.

Political philosophy

Locke’s theory of the State is presented in his two Treatises on Government…He opposes the view that the best government is absolute monarchy, that kings have a divine right to absolute power, that mankind has no right to natural freedom and equality. Men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom…also, in a state of equality of nature, no man having more power and jurisdiction than another. The law of nature teaches all mankind that, all being equal and independent no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty and possessions. The basis of Locke’s philosophy is egoistic (i.e., self-preservation is the motive fore preservation of the state)…The state of nature is not, as Hobbes had supposed, a state of war, but a state of peace, good will, and mutual assistance…When men, by consent, have formed a community they have made that community one body with power to act as such according to the will and determination of the majority. After such a society has been formed, every man puts himself under an obligation to everyone of that society to submit to the rule of the majority…but, by considering the formative principle of society, the power of society can never be supposed to extend further than is required by the common good.

The first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative authority itself, is the preservation of society and - so far as it consonant with the public good - of every person in it. The first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealth is the establishing of the legislative power.

It is not desirable that those who have the powers of making laws should also have the power to execute them…The federative power and executive pow4r are best placed in one hand. (The federative powers are the power of war, peace, to enter leagues and alliances, to engage in all transactions with all persons and communities outside the commonwealth; to the executive is delegated the supreme execution of the laws. The legislative power may, when it finds cause, take both the executive and federative powers out of the hands in which it has placed them, and punish any maladministration.)

The people have supreme power to remove and alter the legislative when they find it acting contrary to the trust reposed in it. But while the government exists, the legislative is the supreme power. The power of choosing it rests with the people.

Theory of education

Like all great philosophers of the modern era, Locke finds fault with the method of instruction which had come down as a heritage from Scholasticism, and presents a new program of education based on his empirical psychology of ethics…The individuality of the child is to be developed in a natural manner; hence private instruction is preferable…social education should not be lost sight of: the youth is to be trained to become a useful member of society.

Economic theory

In opposition to (Lord) Shaftesbury (Characteristics 1711: man possesses self-affections and social affections; virtue consists in the proper balance between the two, and the moral sense tells us whether they are in harmony or not), Bernard Mandeville (The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turned Honest 1705, The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices Public Benefits 1714) tries to show that selfishness (private vices) contributes more to the public good than does benevolence. The Frenchman Helvetius (De L’esprit 1758m De L’homme 1772) follows Hobbes and Mandeville in making egoism the sole motive of human action, and enlightened self-interest the criterion of morals. The only way to make a man moral is to make him see his welfare in the public welfare, and this can be done by legislation only; i.e., by proper rewards and punishments. The science of morals is nothing but the science of legislation…This individualistic view, which is found in Locke and Pauley, and which also appears in Butler’s theory, is reflected in the economic theories of the French physiocrats (Françoise Quernay (1694 - 1774); A. Turgo (1727 - 1781)) and in Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith 1723 - 1790; all of these oppose the old mercantile system which sprang up in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages…The new economic philosophy is based in the idea that the individual has a natural right to exercise his activity in the economic sphere with the least possible interference from society (laissez faire). The assumption is that the unrestricted competition and with the removal of unnatural restraints - such as monopolies or privileges - the freedom of exchange, the security of contract and property, enlightened self-interest will promote not only the good of the individual, but also public welfare. The conception of laissez faire is an expression of the general theory of natural rights…The theory rendered service in helping to discredit and overthrow the old economic system and to deliver the individual from harmful restraints. The origin of economic liberalism of the laissez-faire type may be traced to the ethical and political individualism of Locke’s philosophy.

Locke’s influence

General: His Essay was the first attempt at a comprehensive theory of knowledge in modern philosophy and inaugurated the movement which produced Berkeley and Hume and culminated in Kant…His empirical psychology and ethical philosophy started modern lines of development…His theory of education influenced Rousseau and thence the entire world…His political ideas found brilliant elaboration in Voltaire’s writings, in Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, and a radical reformulation in Rousseau’s Contrat social…He represents the spirit of the modern era, spirit of independence and criticism, of individualism, of democracy, the spirit which had sought utterance in the Reformation and the revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which reached its climax in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. No modern philosopher has been more successful than Locke in impressing his thought on the minds and institutions of men.

George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

In An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), Berkeley examined visual distance, magnitude, position, and problems of sight and touch, and concluded that ‘the proper (or real) objects of sight’ are not without the mind, though ‘the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects.’ In Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), he brought all objects of sense, including tangibles, within the mind; he rejected material substance, material causes, and abstract general ideas; he affirmed spiritual substance. Thus Berkeley is an empiricist; he may be regarded as an idealist if he is interpreted as say that what is real is in the mind or agnostic on the issue of the real if interpreted as being non-committal as to the true nature of things. In the latter case he would be saying that we do not know the true nature of things or whether such a nature exists; rather things or their signs are presented in mind. Thus, Berkeley is an empiricist with regard to both perceptions and ideas.

David Hume (1711 - 1776)

Hume’s problem

David Hume accepts the empirical theory of the origin of knowledge (Locke) and the Berkeleyan view that esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived…there is no such thing as an unperceived body…All our knowledge is confined to the facts of experience; we have a direct knowledge only of our ideas. We also know that there is an external world, but this knowledge is not as self-evident as the knowledge of our own ideas…the chief reason for the opinion that external objects - houses, mountains - have a real existence, distinct from being perceived, is the doctrine that the mind can frame abstract ideas. But the mind is, in fact, incapable of framing abstract ideas…George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)) and Hume draws what seem to him to be the logical conclusions…

Hume’s view is empirical: our knowledge has its source in experience; it is positivistic: our knowledge is limited to the world of phenomena; it is agnostic: we know nothing of ultimates, substances, causes, soul, ego, external world, universe; it is humanistic: the human mental world is the only legitimate sphere of science and inquiry.

Science and human nature

The most important task is to inquire into the nature of the human understanding…to show3 that it is not fitted for the abstruse and remote subjects which traditional philosophy has set before it…

Origins of knowledge

The chief problems which occupy Hume are those of the origin and nature of knowledge…All the materials of our thinking are derived from outward and inward impressions. All our thoughts and ideas are copies of such impressions…Knowledge results from compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials furnished us by the senses and experience…Our thoughts or ideas, however, are not entirely loose and unconnected, or joined by chance…one calls up another: a picture naturally leads our thought to the original (resemblance), the mention of a room in an apartment suggests an adjoining one (contiguity), the thought of a wound calls up the idea of pain (cause and effect). This phenomenon is called: association of ideas.

Relation of cause and effect

All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are based on the relation of cause and effect (which I subsume under explanation); that is, we always seek a connection between a present fact and another…the mind cannot deduce the effect from the cause…for the effect is totally different from the cause and can never be discovered in it. We cannot demonstrate that a certain cause must have a certain effect…(but) having found, in many instances, that any two kinds of objects have always been conjoined, we infer that the objects are causally related, that one is the cause of the other…the mind is led by habit or custom to believe that the two objects in question are related…we are determined by custom to believe that the two objects in question are connected…this belief is an operation of the mind, a species of natural instinct…In the Treatise on Human Nature 1739 - 1740, Hume is still uncertain as to the psychology of belief: he connects it with imagination, but the matter remains obscure and unsatisfactory to him.

To sum up: we can never discover any power (‘effective or moving cause’) at all, all we see is one event following another…objects are not necessarily connected, but the ideas are connected in our mind by association.

Validity of knowledge

All objects of human knowledge may be divided into two kinds; relations of ideas and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the truths of geometry, arithmetic, algebra - in short, every affirmation which is intuitively or demonstratively certain…All evidence of matters of fact which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory is derived entirely from the relation of cause and effect…Of substances we have no idea whatever, and they have no place in knowledge…Thus we have no absolute, self-evident or certain knowledge or matters of fact…Regarding knowledge of the external world, Hume if the final skeptic: we can never hope to attain any satisfactory knowledge with regard to the origin of our impressions or the ultimate constitution of a universe behind our impressions and ideas.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: RATIONALISM IN GERMANY

Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

Leibniz is regarded as one of the great minds of Europe. As a scientist he made contributions to dynamics substituting the concept of kinetic energy over Descartes’ conservation of motion. Leibniz is one of the founders of the differential and integral calculi.

Leibniz’ noted Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas) was published c. 1684 - it expounded his theory of knowledge: things are not seen in God but rather there is a strict relation, between God’s ideas and man’s, between God’s logic and man’s; this clearly has a Platonic interpretation. In February 1686, Leibniz published Discours de métaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics). Leibniz held that for every true proposition - necessary or contingent - the predicate is contained in the notion of the subject. At this time, excepting the word monad (appearing in 1695), his philosophy of monadology was defined.

In Leibniz’ monadology, monads are basic atomic substances that make up the universe but lack spatial extension and hence are immaterial. Each monad is a unique, indestructible, dynamic, entity whose properties are a function of its perceptions and motivations. There is no true causal relations among monads, but all are mutually perfectly synchronized by God in a pre-established harmony. The objects of the world are appearances of collections of monads.

Christian Wolff (1679 - 1754)

His series of essays all beginning under the title Vernünftige Gedanken (‘Rational Ideas’) covered many subjects and expounded Leibniz’s theories in popular form. For Wolff, that every event must have a cause or there arises the impossible possibility that something might come out of nothing. Rationalism and mathematical methodology formed the essence of this system, which was an important force in the development of German philosophical thought.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Some comments on The Enlightenment and its main representatives will be appropriate here, even though detailed consideration is not necessary for the present purpose.

The main issues of present relevance are (1) generally, the enlightenment glorified knowledge, the sciences and the arts, civilization and progress, and boasted of the achievements of the human race. This is useful as a negative example. While it is interesting to review and understand the nature of this pride, and while I may use elements of it, it is in some ways a false pride and this I wish to avoid; (2) the social philosophy of the enlightenment, especially that of Jean Jacques Rousseau, is significant in its influence on later philosophers and on advances in political theory and practice. (It is Rousseau, incidentally, by whom the pride of the Enlightenment was rudely shaken: he characterized the arts and sciences as fruit of luxury and indolence and the sources of moral decay.)

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

The brilliant and versatile propagandist of the Enlightenment popularized and applied Lockean ideas…his thoughts, for the most part, express the spirit of Locke’s philosophy. He ruthlessly attacked superstition and ecclesiastical domination all his life…In spite of his liberalism he is not an apostle of democracy: he had no faith in the capacity of the lower classes for self-government.

Materialism and evolutionism

The Enlightenment was largely responsible for popularizing materialism: there is no soul - thought is a function of the brain; matter alone is immortal. The human will is strictly determined; there is no design in nature outside nature, no teleology, no God…this was the extreme expression; the general tenor, though materialist, was not as extreme: the phenomena of nature, be they physical or mental, are governed by law, that the mental and moral life of man is a necessary product of nature.

Evolutionary conceptions appear in the writings of many thinkers of the time, for example in La Mettrie’s L’homme plante and L’système d’Epicure 1748; in Diderot’s De la nature 1754 and Bonet’s La palingénérie philosophique 1769. These men may be regarded as the forerunners of Lamarck and Darwin.

Progress of the sciences

(Beyond the working out of general philosophical ideas), progress of the sciences was significant as exemplified by the great names: in mathematics and mechanics: Euler, Laplace and Lagrange; in astronomy: Herschel and Laplace; in physics: Galvani and Volta; in chemistry: Lavoisier, Priestley, Davy, Harvey and Berzelius; in biology: Linné, Haller, Bichat, and C. F. Wolff; in politics and jurisprudence: Montesquieu; in the new economic theory: Quesnai, Turgot, and Adam Smith 1723 - 1790; in esthetics: Baumgarten; Alexander von Humboldt who was eminent in many sciences.

Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1685 - 1754)

Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws, 1750) was a major contribution to political theory. He was thoroughly familiar with all previous European political thought but did not identify himself with any of the previous schools. His major contributions are to the classification of governments, the theory of the separation of powers, and the political influence of geographical climate. L’Esprit des lois is considered one of the great works in the histories of political theory and of jurisprudence and his contributions to all topics is significant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)

Human nature

The original state of nature is portrayed as idyllic…the ‘noble savage’ is governed by free impulse, displaying pity and sympathy for his fellows (contrasts with Hobbes’ view of the state of nature: war of all against all)…Rousseau’s state of nature: a social and political fiction to help understand one aspect of human nature which is operative at all times…the primitivism embodied in the injunction ‘return to nature’ is not a demand to return to nature in its naiveté and simplicity: rather, it is an injunction to man, within the framework of civilized society, to remake himself by cultivating those feelings which promote equality and social justice, to remold social institutions to realize a just and democratic government.

Political philosophy

Rousseau prefers representative to direct government…takes Locke’s democratic ideal seriously…if all men are created free and equal they should have equal political rights (Rousseau’s ideas found their way into The Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 and 1793)

Educational philosophy

Rousseau makes a plea for natural education, for the free development of the child’s natural and unspoiled impulses - (although Kant admired Rousseau through whom he was ‘learning to respect mankind’…Bertrand Russell despised him as the source of much confusion of ‘sentiment’ and reason and as the source of the reign of Robespierre and the dictatorships in Russia and Germany)

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: IMMANUEL KANT (1724 - 1804)

Kant’s heritage

The spirit of criticism which had undermined authority and tradition and enthroned reason was now (especially in the hands of Berkeley and Hume) bringing reason itself to the bar and denying reason’s authority.

Kant’s problem

Philosophy was now compelled to make some answer…Kant’s problem was to ‘limit Hume’s skepticism on the one hand, the old dogmatism on the other, and to refute and destroy materialism, fatalism, atheism, as well as sentimentalism and superstition’ (according to one of Kant’s contemporaries)…Philosophy, Kant thinks has hitherto been dogmatic: it has proceeded without previous criticism of its own powers. It must enter upon an impartial examination of the faculty of reason in general; with this end in view, Kant writes his three critiques: Critique of Pure Reason - an examination of theoretical reason or science; Critique of Practical Reason - an examination of practical reason or morality; and Critique of Judgment - an examination of our esthetic and teleological judgments, or purposiveness in art and nature.

Genuine knowledge Kant defines as universal and necessary knowledge. He agrees with the rationalists that there is such knowledge, but only of the basic assumptions of the sciences of physics and mathematics…With the empiricists he agrees that we can know only what begins in, or that which we can experience: the senses furnish the materials of knowledge and the mind arranges them in ways made necessary by its own nature. Hence we have universal and necessary knowledge of the order of ideas, though not of things-in-themselves (refer to later discussion of Ding-an-sich)…Nevertheless things-in-themselves exist; we can think them but not know them.

The problem of knowledge

…is fundamental for Kant: What is knowledge and how is it possible? Knowledge always appears in the form of judgments in which something is affirmed or denied…Kant first considers analytic judgments - in which the predicate elucidates what is already contained in the subject; e.g., a tall man is a man. To qualify as knowledge, a judgment must by synthetic: it must extend our knowledge, not merely elucidate it. However, not all synthetic judgments are universal and necessary (a priori). Some are empirical: derived from experience; these inform us, for example, that an object has certain properties - but not that it must have those qualities. Empirical judgments are not genuine knowledge, are not necessary, are after the fact: a posteriori. Again, empirical or a posteriori judgments are not universal (i.e., they cannot be claimed to be universal on the basis of experience); we cannot say that because some objects of a class have certain qualities (no matter how often this is confirmed and even if no exceptions have been observed), that all have them. It would seem that all synthetic judgments must be empirical (at least to ‘scientifically’ minded people). Indeed, before Kant, synthetic and empirical (or a posteriori) were often not distinguished. (My comment: yet it is clear to imagine ways in which synthetic judgments may be universal and necessary: our very formation may be so in attune with the universe that certain facets of our perceptual-cognitive systems may render synthetic (contentful) judgments that are always true (universal) and represent the very nature of the universe (necessary). This argument is plausible on the grounds that the principles of our formation are the principles of the universe; e.g., formation is evolution, or both mind and universe were formed by the same power.) But Kant’s claim is that knowledge consists of synthetic a priori (necessary and universal) judgments - that such judgments are possible…(note: for a class of objects which is necessarily finite, the distinction a priori or a posteriori may disappear for practical purposes.)

That there are synthetic a priori judgments Kant did not doubt for a moment: we find them in the basic principles of physics, and in mathematics; as regards the existence of such knowledge in metaphysics, Kant had serious reservations…Kant accepts synthetic a priori judgments - universal and necessary knowledge as existing; he does not ask whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible, but only how the are possible…: Kant’s critical method is, at lease in one of its phases, dogmatic: the theory of knowledge is, as he himself says, a strictly demonstrable science, an a priori or pure science, one that bases its truth on necessary principles a priori. His method is not psychological but logical or transcendental: he asks, not how did real knowledge - such as the propositions of mathematics or the principles of physics - come about, but what does the existence of such knowledge logically presuppose.

The problem then is: How are synthetic judgments a priori possible in mathematics, in the foundations of physics, or, how are pure mathematics and pure physics possible? The parallel question regarding metaphysical knowledge cannot be asked in quite the same way because Kant holds metaphysics suspect.

Knowledge presupposes a mind

Sensitivity furnishes us with the sense qualities which are the constituents of perceptual objects. These perceptual objects must also be thought, understood or conceived by the understanding - the concepts of the understanding play their indispensable role in knowledge…’Percepts and concepts constitute the elements of all our knowledge.’ Percepts without concepts are blind, concepts without percepts are empty.

The first transcendental method

Kant’s formulation of the transcendental method is perhaps the first attempt in modern philosophy to devise a distinctively philosophical method…The argument from experience to its necessary presuppositions is the crux of the transcendental method… ‘although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises out of experience’…The critical problem is: What are the necessary conditions of the very possibility of an experience, the formal features of which are space, time and the categories? Kant’s reply: Experience is possible only on the assumption that the formal features formed in experience are a priori conditions of existence. (Charles Handel - in the introduction to Ernst Cassirer’s work on symbolic forms - notes that Kant integrates the idealistic and realistic attitudes and capabilities over the range of human experience…but not beyond this experience)

I call Kant’s the first transcendental method because I later identify two others, the second or Heidegger’s and the third transcendental methods. The third transcendental method is transcendental logic i.e. the possibility of derivation of synthetic / empirical propositions by pure logic. The third method, outlined in Journey in Being may seem to not truly make derivations possible by logic alone because it appears to assume the single fact there ‘is existence.’ However, it is shown in that essay that existence is and must be regarded as given. The possibilities for the third method, contrary to what might be expected, are substantial. As an alternative to derivation from a single fact, the third method may be regarded as an a way to generate an axiomatic system from a single axiom and the laws of logic. Various systems may result from additional axioms that purport to model the nature of our world; these would include the first and second methods. Also included would be the variety of logics. A question that arises is ‘Do the laws of logic have synthetic foundation?’ or ‘What is the nature of the world such that logic is possible?’ This may be a starting point for the development of theories of logic. By varying both the axioms of the third method and the systems of logic, various axiomatic systems may result.

Note that I have not here referred to Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology as a transcendental method.

Preliminary analysis of experience

…Kant’s empiricism is a ‘radical empiricism’ precisely in William James’ sense because it finds in experience, relations as well as the base sense qualia (also: Whitehead)…(A phenomenology:) Form, in Kant, embraces everything structural and relational in experience: matter pertains to qualia subsumed under the forms. ‘That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term matter; but that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the form of appearance’…Any object of experience may be analyzed into three constituents (1) discrete qualia - the ‘impressions’ of Hume’s analysis, (2) the spatial and temporal continua - the so-called forms of intuition, and (3) the pure concepts or categories. Under item 1 are embraced all material ingredients of our experience; external sense qualia: colors, sounds, tastes…as well as qualia of the inner sense: emotional, volitional and hedonic data. Items 2 and 3 together constitute the sole formal ingredients of experience and it is with them that the transcendental method deals…(There is no pretension that this analysis is exhaustive or correct.)…The analysis was devised for extrospective experience but it was equally intended for introspective experience, and presumably to the apprehension of other minds…For introspective analysis of individual minds, there are on the side of ‘matter’ the sense qualia which, as presentations, are members of the conscious series; moreover there are certain hedonic, emotional, and volitional items peculiar to the conscious series (is this distinction valid: regarding validity of inner and outer for, as sense qualia - the ‘internal ones ‘ have ‘origin’ in the external world, so may the inner qualia have origin in the body…further, may external volitions, etc., be ‘other minds’: this would further break down the distinction inner and outer by making inner and outer more completely symmetric). On the formal side, time is the peculiar form of conscious process and the categories are no less applicable to empirical consciousness than to physical objects. Kant’s entire philosophical procedure could have departed either from the introspected self or the perceived object; his preference for the latter is convenience.

Kant’s initial analysis of experience - regardless of the success or failure of any subsequent construction resting upon it - is a truly significant contribution to the empirical and phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Kant’s empiricism is more radical than even that of Hume; the latter dissolved experience into discrete and atomistic impressions; Kant discerned the relational and structural features of every genuine experience…saw that atomistic impressions, though real constructs of experience, are mere abstractions when taken out of their structural context. Kant’s analysis of experience thus has the virtues of comprehensiveness and completeness, not as Kant had claimed an absolute and demonstrable completeness - this claim is gratuitous since, in the empirical tradition, no observer, however competent and circumspect, can be certain that some essential ingredient of experience may not have eluded him - but the completeness attained by a reasoning - by discerning and circumspect analyst.

The theory of sense perception

First take up the ‘transcendental esthetic’: the logical preconditions of sense perception: Perception can be analyzed into sensations, constituting the matter or content of experience, and space and time constituting the form - for mere sensation would not be knowledge but mere modification of consciousness. The formal and the material together constitute percepts. (What about for the infant?) The mind not only receives sensation but by virtue of its faculty of intuition (intueri: envision) perceives them: it sees the color (hears the color) outside of itself (the mind) in spatio-temporal order. (Comment: (1) Surely the channel of communication must be organized and/or the communication itself coded regarding transfer from sense organs to consciousness, etc. - so that the information pertaining to the intuition be conserved, and (2) time may be –seems to be - more fundamental than space in that a primitive sensor - say a binary one - could perceive a time series containing a minimum of two bits - now and then - without spatial organization)…The functions or forms of arranging sensations in space and time cannot themselves be sensations - are not empirical or a posteriori forms of intuition, are inherent in the very nature of mind - a priori. Time is the form of inner sense (or has both outer and inner aspects in some parallel fashion): psychic states cannot be apprehended otherwise than as one following another in temporal succession; while space is the form of outer sense: we must apprehend spatially that which affects our sense organs. But since everything given or presented to sense is a modification of consciousness and so belongs to the inner sense, time is a necessary condition of all our representations, whether of the inner or outer sense.

Space and time are not realities or things - are ways our sensibility has of apprehending objects, are forms or functions of the sense; if there were no beings in the world endowed with intuition or perception of space and time, the world would cease to be spatial and temporal (except for interaction). ‘Take away the thinking subject and the entire corporeal world will vanish, for it is nothing but the appearance in the sensibility of our subject(again, except for interaction). We can never imagine that there is no space (but we can imagine that there is no extension if we are a point sensor of single mode) although we can conceive that it contains no objects. That is, we are compelled to perceive and imagine in terms of space. Space is a necessary precondition of phenomena and hence a necessary a priori idea. This is an example of Kant’s philosophical method - the transcendental method…the same line of argument applies to time.

How then, is pure mathematics possible: we have synthetic judgments a priori in mathematics because the mind has space and time forms.

We cannot apply the space and time forms beyond the world of our experience. But this restriction need not disturb us since the certainty of our experiential knowledge is left untouched (whether space and time inhere in things-in-themselves or are the necessary forms of our perception of things)…What things-in-themselves are apart from our sensibility, we simply do not know. (And there may be universes of things-in-themselves with new forms not yet communicating through experience, or communicating through the a-conscious.)

The theory of the understanding

The spatio-temporal organization of our experience is, however, not enough…would not yield knowledge…the forms of sensibility are intuitional; the understanding, however, is conceptual: we think in concepts…The understanding by itself cannot intuit or perceive anything; the senses by themselves cannot think anything. Knowledge is possible only in the union of the two. The science of the rules of sensibility: ‘Transcendental Esthetic’: the science of the rules of understanding: ‘Transcendental Analytic’

In addition to the (spatio-temporal) forms of intuition, then, are certain ways of understanding the world or, more correctly, ways of understanding experience, which, themselves, are necessary, not derived from experience but from the innate organizing, relating…ability of the mind. What is sought is a system of forms in which judgments (propositions) appear…again, no such system can be known to be complete. However, forms of propositions or judgments have been set out in common logic; Kant uses these forms of judgment as a basis for the forms of understanding or categories.

In classical (common, Aristotelian) logic there are twelve forms of judgment arranged in four groups of three: Group I quantity: (1) the universal judgment (all metals are elements), (2) particular judgment (some animals are four-legged), (3) singular judgment (Napoleon was Emperor of France); II quality: (4) the affirmative judgment (heat is a form of motion), (5) the negative judgment (mind is not extended), (6) the infinite or unlimited judgment (mind is unextended): III relation: (7) the categorical judgment (this body is heavy). (8) the hypothetical judgment (if air is warm, its molecules move fast), (9) the disjunctive judgment (the substance is either fluid or solid), IV modality: (10) the problematical judgment(this may be a poison), (11) the assertory judgment (this is a poison), (12) the apodictic judgment (every effect must have a cause)

Kant’s forms of understanding

The correlation of forms of judgment and categories:

JUDGMENTS CATEGORIES

I. QUANTITY I. OF QUANTITY

1. UNIVERSAL 1. UNITY

2. PARTICULAR 2. PLURALITY

3. SINGULAR 3. TOTALITY

II. QUALITY II. OF QUALITY

4. AFFIRMATIVE 4. REALITY

5. NEGATIVE 5. NEGATION

6. INFINITE 6. LIMITATION

III. RELATION III. OF RELATION

7. CATEGORICAL 7. INHERENCE AND SUBSISTENCE

8. HYPOTHETICAL 8. CAUSALITY AND DEPENDENCE

9. DISJUNCTIVE 9. COMMUNITY

IV. MODALITY IV. OF MODALITY

10. PROBLEMATIC 10. POSSIBILITY - IMPOSSIBILITY

11. ASSERTIVE 11. EXISTENCE - NONEXISTENCE

12. APODICTIC 12. NECESSITY - CONTINGENCY

Validity of judgment

The problem then arises, what right have we to apply these forms of the mind to things? What we need is a proof: a transcendental deduction of the categories. Kant’s proof consists in showing that without them intelligible experience would be impossible. Understanding is judgment, the act of bringing together in one self-consciousness (unity of apperception) the many perceived objects. Without a rational mind that perceives things in certain ways (space and time) and judges or thinks in certain ways (the categories), that is so constituted that it must perceive and judge as it does, there could be no universal and necessary object of experience…Categories serve to make experience possible: that is their sole justification…This is what Kant meant when he said that understanding prescribes its own laws to nature; this is the ‘Copernican revolution’ which he effected in philosophy.

Since, then, mind prescribes its laws to nature, it follows that we can know a priori the universal forms of nature. (But there may be elements and forms of nature, actually, essentially outside of experience - or at least of the human mind.) We cannot, therefore, go wrong in applying the categories to the world of sense. But…they can be legitimately employed only in the field of actual or possible experience, only in the phenomenal world…we cannot transcend experience nor have conceptual knowledge of the super sensuous, of things-in-themselves.

But how can categories which are intellectual, be applied to percepts, to sensible phenomena? Pure concepts and sense percepts are absolutely dissimilar or heterogeneous according to Kant; how, then, can we get them together? There must be a third something, a mediating entity (which must be pure: without anything empirical, and, at the same time, sensuous)…This something Kant calls the transcendental schema. The employment of such a schema is the schematism of understanding. The time-form fills the requirements laid down: it is both pure and sensuous. All our ideas are subject to the time form…the time form is at once percept and concept and through this the general system of transcendental schemas relating the forms of perception to the categories of understanding may be constructed…consider, first, quantity: the time form is experience as a linear series and this generates quantity (number of elements in a sub series) and the operations of quantity (addition is the union of disjunct sub series, etc.) One moment in time represents singularity: several moments express particularity; al, totality of moments, universality.

(I) Thus the category of quantity is expressed in the schema of time-series: similarly (II) the category or concept of quality is expressed in the schema of time: content: the intellect imagines sensations occurring in a time: a content in time, something in time, or it imagines nothing in time: reality, limitation, negation.

(III) The category of relation is expressed in the schema of time-order; the intellect looks upon what is real in the following ways: what remains when all else changes - permanence, substance; or something upon which something else invariably follows in time - causality; qualities of one substance and qualities of another substance invariable appearing together in time: reciprocal action or the category of community.

(IV) The category of modality is expressed in the schema of time: comprehension: the intellect thinks of something existing at any time (possibility) (some time), at a definite time (actuality), at all times (necessity)

The Unity of Self-Consciousness: The culmination of Kant’s transcendental procedure is his doctrine of the transcendental unity of apperception. This unity of self-consciousness is presupposed by the categories as the categories are presupposed by experience; or, rather, it is directly presupposed by experience in so far as it is categorized.

The transcendental unity of apperception is a sine qua non (essential) of experience because it is presupposed by the categories which in turn are presupposed by experience. Thus, the transcendental unity of apperception occupies the unique position in the sphere of the transcendental, in that it is the final term in the retrogressive series, experience and the categories presuppose it but it presupposes nothing else. The transcendental unity of apperception accordingly occupies a position in Kant’s system analogous to that of substance in systems which define substance as the ultimate…; it is the ultimate a priori…The backward movement from experience to its logical precondition having been carried to its culmination, Kant, in the third and final step of the transcendental argument, reverse the direction of his thought and moves forward from the a priori forms to the a priori truths which they validate.

Knowledge of things-in-themselves

(Noumena: German Ding-an-sich)…The concept of the thing-in-itself, or noumenon, as something not knowable by the senses, but as something capable of being known by intellectual intuition, is at least thinkable. It is a limiting concept; it says to the knowing mind: here is your limit, you can go no further, here is where your jurisdiction ceases…Kant insists that the noumenon exists but is compelled by the nature of his system to make it a very elusive and hazy factor…We cannot know the supersensible by means of our senses. We cannot know it - in the Kantian sense of genuine knowledge - for we are not entitled to apply our categories to it: if we do so, then at least within the Kantian framework, the application has no objective validity.

Impossibility of metaphysics

We cannot have knowledge of the supersensible in metaphysics (the science of being as being); metaphysics is a pseudoscience. Kant’s rejection of metaphysics is not, however, complete and unqualified. There are several senses in which he regards metaphysics as possible: (1) as a study of theory of knowledge, (2) as absolute knowledge of the laws and forms of nature, (3) as absolute knowledge of the laws and forms of will, (4) as knowledge of the spiritual world, based on moral law, (5) as a hypothesis of the universe having a certain degree of probability…Consider some of the grounds on which Kant rejects ‘dogmatic’ or speculative metaphysics of the kind advanced by his rationalist predecessors. The reason, when it enters the world of the supersensible, confuses percepts with mere thought, and in this way falls into all kinds of ambiguities, equivocation false inferences, and contradictions. Questions which have a meaning when asked with respect to our world of experience have none when we transcend phenomena. Categories like cause and effect, substance and accident have no meaning when applied to the noumenal world. Metaphysics, in making this illegitimate application, falls into error and illusion which as distinguished from ordinary sensory illusion, Kant calls transcendental illusion. Principles applied within the confines of ordinary experience are immanent: those which transcend these limits are transcendent principles or concepts of reason, or ideas. Such higher laws of reason are (merely) subjective laws of economy for the understanding striving to reduce the use of concepts to the smallest number: this speculative enterprise aims at unification of the judgments of understanding. This supreme Reason does not prescribe laws to objects, nor does it explain our knowledge of them; its sole function is to guide and direct our inquiries. Thus reason strives to bring all mental processes under a single head, or Idea of a soul in rational psychology; all physical events under the Idea of nature in rational cosmology; all occurrences in general under the Idea of God in rational theology. The notion of God would, therefore, be the highest Idea, the one absolute Whole comprehending everything…Such Ideas are, however, transcendent, beyond experience: they can never be empirically fulfilled or exemplified: we can never represent the Idea of an absolute totality in the form of an image. It is a problem without a solution. Yet these ideas have value: they are regulative rather than constitutive.

Rational cosmology

Kant’s famous antinomies: (1) the world has a beginning and is limited in space; the world is eternal and unlimited, (2) bodies are infinitely divisible; they are not (-are made of atoms), there is freedom in the world; everything takes place according to the (deterministic) laws of nature, (4) there exists an absolutely necessary being either as part of the world or as cause of it; there is no such being…Every right-thinking man prefers, in each case, the thesis if he knows his true interests. (The speculative interest is the counter-dogmatism of the empiricist by denying what goes beyond the sphere of intuitive knowledge.) Kant solves the difficulties by pointing out that for each case the antithesis holds for the phenomenal world…and therefore practical reason requires the existence of the transcendent, noumenal world…There is no paradox because it is true that our sense-perceived world has no beginning in time and no extreme limit in space…nonetheless we cannot genuinely know the noumenon and have no right to search for spiritual beings in space and for spatial beings in the supersensible realm (but this does not rule out unknown or unexpected ‘spirit-like’ phenomena in space…)

By the type of argument above freedom and necessity can be reconciled. The phenomena can be regarded as ‘caused’ by the thing-in-itself, the noumenal cause, which is not perceived, but whose phenomenal appearances are perceived and arranged in an unbroken causal series…(The necessity of freedom and the determinate nature of the sensible world demonstrates the existence of the noumenal world…of course, can we say by quantum physics that the sensible world is not causal? Perhaps! But alternatively we can regard quantum phenomena as supersensible, the non-deterministic world…I know this argument confuses causal and deterministic, but for the present purpose this is not problematic…there are also other subtleties of interpretation as to what aspect or point of contact of quantum phenomena is the sensible but I should go into this at a later time.)

Applying this insight to humans we have the following interpretation of human action and conduct. Looked at through the spectacles of sense and understanding, man is a part of nature; in this aspect he has an empirical character; he is a link in a chain of causes and effects. But in reality man is an intelligible or spiritual being. To such a being some forms do not apply; such a being can originate acts. Human cognizance of this power is attested by the fact that an individual holds himself responsible for his decisions and actions…

Use of metaphysics in experience

As we have seen above, the transcendental Ideas have no constitutive use; that is, they are not concepts productive of objects; they have a regulative use; that is, they direct the understanding in its inquiries: they unify the manifoldness of concepts, just as the categories bring into unity the manifoldness of objects…Nature can be divided into species. Reason demands that no species is the lowest and that between every species and subspecies is an intervening species is always possible - by (a presupposed) transcendental law of nature - the law of continuity in nature…The only purpose of the Idea of a Supreme Being is to preserve the greatest systematic unity in the empirical use of our reason. The idea of a ground or cause of objects in our experience helps us organize our knowledge…The Ideas of the reason are not mere fictions of the mind but are highly useful, indeed necessary methodological ideals…Human knowledge begins with percepts, proceeds to concepts, and ends with ideas. It has a priori sources of knowledge with respect to all three elements.

Use of teleology in nature

Included among the ideas which reason applies in the contemplation of nature is the idea of purpose, or the teleological idea (as explanation of function). The understanding conceives every existent whole of nature solely as the effect of the concurrent forces of its moving parts. In the case of organic bodies, however, the parts seem to depend on the whole, to be determined by the form or plan or idea of its whole. Every part is both a means and an end…Here, again, we have an antinomy and a dialectic of which the thesis is: the creation of all material things is possible by mechanical laws; the antithesis: the creation of some is not possible according to mechanical laws. The contradiction is removed when we take these propositions not as constitutive principles but as regulative principles. When so interpreted, the thesis invites us to look for mechanical causes in nature; the antithesis: to search for final causes or purposes in certain cases - even in nature as a whole - when the mechanical explanation does not seem to suffice.

Ethics

Kant’s moral philosophy, which he represents in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and Metaphysics of Morals, may be regarded as an attempt to settle the quarrel between intuitionism and empiricism, idealism and hedonism…moral consciousness implies freedom of will. It also implies the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, notions which the Critique of Pure Reason had shattered as scientifically demonstrable dogmas, but had left as possibilities…There is a moral proof of these dogmas based on the categorical imperative…’The’ categorical imperative, or the moral law: always act so that you can will the maxim or determining principle of your action to become universal law. (The category may be regarded as the determining principle in the form of free action of will.) It is imperative because it is to done out of duty. The categorical imperative is a universal (analytically) and necessary law, a priori, inherent in reason itself…

In Critique of Pure reason Kant rejects all the old arguments for the freedom of the will, the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul. In Critique of Practical Reason, these three notions are reinstated on the basis of the moral law.

Kant’s critics and successors include: J. G. Herder (1744 - 1803) and E. H. Jacobi (1743 - 1819)

Some comments on the successors of Kant

The first, and perhaps not the least difficult, task consisted in understanding the nature of Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ in philosophy - his contention that mind prescribes laws to nature, and not vice versa…Jena became the home of a new school of philosophy and through the efforts of Schiller, Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel who taught there, philosophy became one of the most honored subjects of study in Germany…Among the other tasks that confronted the successors of Kant were the development of his epistemology, the unification of its principles, the solution of problems following from his dualism between the intelligible and phenomenal worlds, freedom and mechanism, form and matter, knowledge and faith, practical reason and theoretical reason; and in the removal of the inconsistencies introduced by the notion of the thing-in-itself. Another work to be undertaken was the construction of a universal system on the critical foundation laid by Kant; this became the chief occupation of the most famous successors of the great reformer: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY AFTER KANT

The philosophy of Kant is a focal point in Western philosophy. The problem areas and philosophical areas of his predecessors receive, to a significant degree, a resolution and an integral treatment. The areas are natural science; metaphysics: being as being: the thing-in-itself; alternative concepts of cause and explanation: teleology; and morals. The different approaches to knowledge finding some degree of mutual and integral expression in Kant’s critical philosophy are:

Empiricism: source of knowledge in sense and experience.

Idealism: source of knowledge, true being as ideas, mind and/or values founded in ideals.

Realism: external reality exists independently of a mind, knower.

A brief review of Kant’s progression of thought or presentation:

Starts with empiricism: percepts; sees how far the understanding of percepts can go through concepts - the a priori; forms a transcendental system of relations (schema) between percepts and concepts.

Once the limit of this approach is reached, comes back to the given: the existence of moral law: to derive the existence of the thing-in-itself…thus proceeds from elements of realism to idealism.

Of course Kant’s system is inadequate (being based on notions of space, time and the mathematics and Newtonian mechanics of the time as absolute), incomplete (Kant was not aware of the process of formation of human beings and the implications for the levels of understanding), and non-unified (Kant does not proceed from a monism but rather takes each approach as far as he can and then, for further understanding, dips again from the well of reality)

His philosophy has multiple starting levels (modes of description) which interact…Relative to his time these are strengths, leaving, for a later day, unification and completeness (or progress in these directions)

Philosophy after Kant owes much to his critical synthesis. While there is some debate over the question of Kant’s rank as a philosopher (some holding him to be the greatest of the modern era) there is no question that he resolved significant questions that had been raised by philosophy before him, that he achieved a high degree of synthesis, that he influenced and, in a sense, made possible much subsequent philosophy. Irrespective of his rank, he stands at a focal point in the history of modern philosophy…The rays emanating from Kant are three:

The legacy of Kant

Idealism

The fundamental principle is mind, idea, will, ego…and the fundamental goods are the products of the mind (idea, will, ego, spirit…). Related to rationalism: emphasizes the mind in constructing reality. There are numerous variants to idealism in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology…and in non-Western thought. Derivatives are: intuitionism, existentialism.

Realism

The object of knowledge is perception, memory, abstract logical, mathematical thought. In science is a reality which exists independently of the knowing mind. Derivatives are German phenomenology, naïve realism (G. E. Moore); objectivism, perspectivism, neutral monism; representative realism, new-realism (monistic), dualistic realism (including critical realism)

Empiricism

Which tends to be anti-realistic and leads into logical empiricism. Derivatives are conventionalism (anti-realistic); pragmatism; positivism; and analytical philosophy.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN IDEALISM

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 - 1814)

Basal insight, keystone of the critical philosophy: freedom leads to will, ego: not part of the causal link, but free, self-determining.

The will, ego is derived from moral law.

The pure ego: objective idealism.

Nature is the incentive to will.

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775 - 1854)

Rejects the idea of nature as the incentive to will.

Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature.

Evolution of self-consciousness: primary sensation leads to creative imagination.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834)

Deeply religious, marked intellectual capability

His problem

To develop a conception of reality to satisfy the intellect as well as the heart: included romanticism.

Object

Construction of a great system of Protestant Theology

Knowledge and faith

Human intelligence analyzes and is thus limited in its knowledge of the unity of the divine nature: the identity of thought and being…the ideal is achieved only in religious feeling or divine intuition.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831): the culmination of rational idealism.

Nature, mind are one: being and reason are identical.

Processes at work in reason are at work everywhere…the universe is logical.

Dialectic method

Abstract concepts cannot absorb reality…thought therefore proceeds by the dialectic process; truth is a living logical process.

In a sense, philosophy culminates in Hegel: history is logic; philosophy is logic…the logic of history and the logic of mind meet in philosophy.

Hegelian philosophy: the final synthesis in which Absolute Mind becomes conscious of itself.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AFTER HEGEL

Johann Friedrich Hebart (1776 - 1841)

At first, after Hegel, there is a realistic reaction, due to the influence (1840 - 1860) of science: Meyer, Darwin are expressed in Hebart and others interlaced through this period.

Realism of Hebart:

Reality is absolutely self-consistent.

Realistic philosophy, metaphysics and psychology, science of values (not dealing with reality, but with values)

His greatest influence was in education: ends are ethics: instruction, apperception, interest are important in education.

A return to idealism: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

Thing-in-itself is will.

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 - 1887)

Pan psychism: the entire universe and its strata of various scales (micro to macro) contain minds.

Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 - 1881)

Bridged the gap between classical German philosophy and 20th-century idealism.

Reconciled: monism - pluralism: mechanism - teleology; realism - idealism; pantheism - theism.

‘Theistic idealism’…included in his objective: to do justice to the ethical-religious idealism of Fichte and the scientific interpretation of natural phenomena (‘A thinker well-fitted by training and temperament to re-establish philosophy’ after the realistic reaction to Hegelian idealism.)

Friedrich Albert Lange (1828 - 1875)

German Neo-Kantian and Socialist, wrote Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1866; History of Materialism) in which he refuted materialism.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

Knowledge flows from the facts of consciousness.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

Will to power: the active principle.

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1846 - 1926)

German Idealist philosopher, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1908), interpreter of Aristotle, and author of works in ethics and religion.

Universal spirited process forms the ground of all being.

Wilhelm Windelbland (1848 - 1915)

A historian of philosophy who did not systematically expound his views but expressed them in unconnected essays. He regarded himself as in the tradition of German idealism but did not see himself as Neo-Kantian, Neo-Fichtean or Neo-Hegelian. His main position was that whereas science determines facts, philosophy determines values - a system of philosophy in which value has a central role.

Ernst Cassirer (1874 - 1945)

Noted for his analysis of cultural values

Cassirer felt it necessary to revise Kantianianism to include a wider range of human experience. Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vol. (1923–29; The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms), is an examination of mental images and functions of the mind that underlie every manifestation of human culture. Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910; Substance and Function), treats concept formation to which he brought a Kantian slant - a concept is already pre-existent before any task involving the classification of particulars can even be performed; humankind is essentially characterized by a unique ability to use the ‘symbolic forms’ of myth, language, and science in structuring or imaging experience and in understanding.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FRENCH AND BRITISH NINETEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

Beginnings of Positivism, And its Interaction with Empiricism

After the French Enlightenment, there was a positivist reaction against sensationalism and materialism in France, but the various movements do not possess the vigor to satisfy an age which still held the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 - 1825): a new science of society.

To reform society - with a basis in Christian love - we need to turn away from the (then) period of skepticism - negation and criticism - we need a positive philosophy.

August Comte (1798 - 1857)

His motive: social reform requires social science. Science is natural laws which are facts and relations which are positive knowledge.

Stages of knowledge

According to Comte: The theological precedes the metaphysical which precedes the positive which is real, useful (origins: utilitarianism), exact (not mere negative, that is, criticism)

Comte’s scheme of sciences

Builds to the last and most complex science which, according to the early Comte, is social science. Social science includes:

An ideal of humanity (definitive stage is positive)

Antidote to misgovernment is public opinion (he was against representative government)

A theory of history

Progress to the ideal

Ethics

Later in his career Comte adds ethics as the seventh and highest science:

Feelings and practice paramount.

Subjective method

(A progression in his view over his positivism.)

MODERN PHILOSOPHY: BRITISH UTILITARIANISM

We have seen the origin of utilitarianism in Comte’s ideas - utilitarianism must share with positivism the idea of a positive calculation: that a positive calculation of utility is possible and meaningful.

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832):

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. The utility principle based on pleasure and pain (sources of pleasure and pain: physical, political, social, religious)

The Hedonistic Calculus: a quantitative measure of pleasures and pains is to be used in determining actions. Factors or dimension are:

1. Intensity, 2. Duration, 3. Degree of certainty, 4. Remoteness, 5. Fecundity (chance of being followed by a similar sensation), 6. Purity (opposite of fecundity), 7. Extent (number of persons affected)

Precursor of utility theory, optimization theory as a tool

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

Mill threads together empiricism and positivism (Mill’s philosophy is significantly positivist even when it is not overtly so): Later day British Empiricism (this includes Mill) has much in common with positivism (and herein lies the weakness of Mill’s method of empirical logic and inductive inference, his law of causation, and rejection of a priori truths…despite his great prolificacy and practical influence)

Mill’s interest in science, like Saint-Simon’s and Comte’s, is motivated by his interest in social reform.

The external world and the self

Mill holds that we can know only phenomena (though he admits the thing-in-itself)…Mill’s metaphysics is too limited to hold present interest.

Mental and moral sciences

For social reform Mill calls for a reform of the mental and moral sciences.

Psychological determinism

(1) cause and effect, (2) humans are free regarding inner desires, (3) the will is not always hedonistic.

Ethology

Science of formation of character

Social science

Mill’s method would be complex: more like that of the complex physical sciences than of geometry: predictions are tendencies rather than positive statements.

Science of government is part of the science of society.

History when judiciously examined illustrates the empirical laws of society…which can be checked - verified - by psychological and ethological laws…

Social stasis and stability result from consensus…dynamics is progression.

Ethics

The greatest good of the greatest number…unlike Bentham: the quality of pleasure is important. Mill vacillates between (1) the empirical - hedonistic - egoistic –deterministic, and (2) the intuitionistic - perfectionistic - altruistic - free-willistic. This accommodating feature of Mill’s theories made them attractive to many and useful in practice: his utilitarianism instituted a critical and intelligent conformity to conventional morality for a blind one.

Liberalism

Mill fought intellectual battles for democracy and the rights of women…pointed out the ‘importance to man and society, of a large variety of types in character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting dimensions.’

Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903)

Subscribed to a synthetic unity of knowledge whose evolution is a compromise between intuitionism (the a priori) and empiricism… His major work is First Principles 1860 - 1862. Spencer is sometimes regarded as the originator of Darwinism as the idea that Darwin’s principles of evolution by natural selection is of universal application. Spencer published ideas on the evolution of the species before the publication of the works of Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin on the same topic but his theory of evolution was originally Lamarckian. He later accepted the theory of natural selection and in Principles of Biology, 1864, coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.’

His evolutionary philosophy was Lamarckian, passive, mechanistic and noninteractive. Absolute uniformities of experience generate absolute uniformities of thought…external uniformities over generations lead over generations (by evolution) to fixed association of ideas and necessary forms of thought. He does not tell ‘how it was possible for connections to be made at the dawn of knowledge which today are (or seem) impossible without an a priori synthetic mind.’

Laws of evolution

Concentration –differentiation - formation

Biology

Adaptation of internal to external relations

Psychology

Consciousness is adaptation of serially ranged inner states to outer states.

External world

Idealism is a disease of language…’realism forced on us by the basal law of consciousness, the universal law of reason.’ ‘Ontological order and relation are the source of the phenomenal.’

Ethics

Welfare of units and groups, not society, is the end (target) of morality:

Justice

The limit of evolution in which all humans achieve ends in harmony.

Beneficence: mutual aid.

Optimism

Life brings more happiness than misery.

Hedonism

Good is the pleasurable.

Politics

Spencer is against socialism and state interference; he is for competition and laissez faire in social, economic and political spheres.

Supplement

That philosophy was admittedly only a set of conjectures - unencumbered with any test or proof; but the Muslim philosophers felt no remorse in treating its views on the system of skies, orbits, natural elements and other related subjects as the absolute truth with which the exegesis of the Qur'an had to conform.

The Sufis kept their eyes fixed on esoteric aspects of creation; they were too occupied with their inner world to look at the outer one. Their tunnel-like vision prevented them from looking at the things in their true perspective. Their love of esoteric made them look for inner interpretations of the verses; without any regard to their manifest and clear meanings. It encouraged the people to base their explanations on poetic expressions and to use anything to prove anything.

The condition became so bad that the verses were explained on the-basis of the numerical values of their words; letters were divided into bright and dark ones and the explanations were based on that division. Building castle in the air, wasn't it? Obviously, the Qur'an was not revealed to guide the Sufis only; nor had it ad- dressed itself to only those who knew the numerical values of the letters (with all its ramifications); nor were its realities based on astrological calculations. Of course, there are traditions narrated from the Prophet and the Imams of Ahlul-Bayt (A.S.) saying for example:

"Verily the Qur'an has an exterior and an interior, and its interior has an interior upto seven (or according to a version, seventy) interiors..". But the Prophet and the Imams gave importance to its exterior as much as to its interior; they were as much concerned with its revelation as they were with its interpretation.

We shall explain in the beginning of the third chapter, "The Family of 'Imran", that "interpretation" is not a meaning against the manifest meaning of the verse. Such an interpretation should more correctly be called "misinterpretation". This meaning of the word, "interpretation", came in vogue in the Muslim circles long after the revelation of the Qur'an and the spread of Islam. What the Qur'an means by the word, "interpretation", is some- thing other than the meaning and the significance.

In recent times, a new method of exegesis has become fashionable. Some people, supposedly Muslims, who were deeply influenced by the natural sciences (which are based on observations and tests) and the social ones (that rely on induction), followed the materialists of Europe or the pragmatists.

Under the influence of those anti-Islamic theories, they declared that the religion's realities cannot go against scientific knowledge; one should not believe except that which is perceived by any one of the five senses; nothing exists except the matter and its properties.

What the religion claims to exist, but which the sciences reject-like The Throne, The Chair, The Tablet and The Pen-should be interpreted in a way that conforms with the science; as for those things which the science is silent about, like the resurrection etc., they should be brought within the purview of the laws of matter;

the pillars upon which the divine religious laws are based-like revelation, angel, Satan, prophet- hood, apostleship, imamah (Imamate) etc.-are spiritual things, and the spirit is a development of the matter, or let us say, a property of the matter; legislation of those laws is manifestation of a special social genius, who ordains them after healthy and fruitful contemplations, in order to establish a good and pro- gressive society.

They have further said: One cannot have confidence in the traditions, because many are spurious; only those traditions may be relied upon which are in conformity with the Book. As for the Book itself, one should not explain it in the light of the old philosophy and theories, because they were not based on observations and tests-they were just a sort of mental exercise which has been totally discredited now by the modern science.

The best, rather the only, way is to explain the Qur'an with the help of other Qur'anic verses-except where the science has asserted something which is relevant to it. This, in short, is what they have written, or what necessarily follows from their total reliance on tests and observations.

We are not concerned here with the question whether their scientific principles and philosophic dicta can be accepted as the foundation of the Qur'an's exegesis. But it should be pointed out here that the objection which they have leveled against the ancient exegetes -that theirs was only an adaptation and not the explanation- is equally true about their own method; they too say that the Qur'an and its realities must be made to conform with the scientific theories.

If not so, then why do they insist that the academic theories should be treated as true foundations of exegesis from which no deviation could be allowed? This method improves nothing on the discredited method of the ancients. If you look at all the above-mentioned ways of exegesis, you will find that all of them suffer from a most serious defect:

They impose the results of academic or philosophic arguments on the Qur'anic meanings; they make the Qur'an conform with an extraneous idea. In this way, explanation turns into adaptation, realities of the Qur'an are explained away as allegories and its manifest meanings are sacrificed for so-called "interpretations". As we mentioned in the beginning, the Qur'an introduces itself as the guidance for the worlds (3:96); the manifest light (4:174), and the explanation of every thing (16:89).

But these people, contrary to those Qur'anic declarations, make it to be guided by extraneous factors, to be illuminated by some outside theories, and to be explained by something other than itself! What is that "something else"? What authority has it got? And if there is any difference in various explanations of a verse and indeed there are most serious differences-which mediator should the Qur'an refer to?

What is the root-cause of the differences in the Qur'an's explanations? It could not happen because of any difference in the meaning of a word, phrase or sentence.

The Qur'an has been sent down in plain Arabic; and no Arab (or Arabic-knowing non-Arab) can experience any difficulty in understanding it. Also, there is not a single verse (out of more than six thousand) which is enigmatic, obscure or abstruse in its import; nor is there a single sentence that keeps the mind wandering in search of its meaning.

After all, the Qur'an is admittedly the most eloquent speech, and it is one of the essential ingredients of eloquence that the talk should be free from obscurity and abstruseness. Even those verses that are counted among the "ambiguous" ones, have no ambiguity in their meanings; whatever the ambiguity, it is in identification of the particular thing or individual from among the group to which that meaning refers.

This statement needs some elaborations:- In this life we are surrounded by matter; even our senses and faculties are closely related to it. This familiarity with matter and material things has influenced our mode of thinking. When we hear a word or a sentence, our mind races to its material meaning.

When we hear, for example, the words, life, knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, will, pleasure, anger, creation and order, we at once think of the material manifestations of their meanings. Likewise, when we hear the words, heaven, earth, tablet, pen, throne, chair, angel and his wings, and Satan and his tribe and army, the first things that come into our minds are their material manifestations. Likewise, when we hear the sentences, "Allah created the universe", "Allah did this", "Allah knew it", "Allah intended it" or "intends it", we look at these actions in frame of "time", because we are used to connect every verb with a tense. In the same way, when we hear the verses:

and with Us is more yet (50:35), . We would have made it from before Ourselves (21:17), . and that which is with Allah is best. . (62:11), . and to Him you shall be brought back (2:28, etc.).

we attach with the divine presence the concept of " place", because in our minds the two ideas are inseparable. Also, on reading the verses: And when We intend to destroy a town (17 :16), And We intend to bestow a favour . (28: 5), And Allah intends ease for you (2:185), we think that the "intention" has the same meaning in every sentence, as is the case with our own intention and will.

In this way, we jump to the familiar (which most often is material) meaning of every word. And it is but natural. Man has made words to fulfill his social need of mutual intercourse; and society in its turn was established to fulfil the man's material needs. Not unexpectedly, the words became symbols of the things which men were connected with and which helped them in their material progress.

But we should not forget that the material things are constantly changing and developing with the development of expertise. Man gave the name, lamp, to a certain receptacle in which he put a wick and a little fat that fed the lighted wick which illuminated the place in darkness.

That apparatus kept changing until now it has become the electric bulb of various types; and except the name "lamp" not a single component of the original lamp can be found in it. Likewise, there is no resemblance in the balance of old times and the modern scales -especially if we compare the old apparatus with the modern equipment for weighing and measuring heat, electirc-current's flow and blood-pressure.

And the armaments of old days and the ones invented within our own times have nothing in common, except the name. The named things have changed so much that not a single component of the original can be found in them; yet the name has not changed. It shows that the basic element that allows the use of a name for a thing is not the shape of that thing, but its purpose and benefit. Man, imprisoned as he is within his habitat and habit, often fails to see this reality.

That is why al-Hashawiyyah and those who believe that God has a body interpret the Qur'anic verses and phrases within the fame-work of the matter and the nature. But in fact they are stuck with their habit and usage, and not to the exterior of the Qur'an and the traditions. Even in the literal meanings of the Qur'an we find ample evidence that relying on the habit and usage in explanation of the divine speech would cause confusion and anomaly. For example, Allah says:

Nothing is like a likeness of Him (42:11); Visions comprehended Him not, and He comprehends (all) visions; and He is the Knower of subtilities, the Aware (6:73); glory be to Him above what they ascribe (to Him) (23:91; 37:159).

These verses manifestly show that what we are accustomed to cannot be ascribed to Allah. It was this reality that convinced many people that they should not explain the Qur'anic words by identifying them with their usual and common meanings. Going a step further, they sought the help of logical and philosophical arguments to avoid wrong deductions. This gave a foot-hold to academic reasoning in explaining the Qur'an and identifying the individual person or thing meant by a word. Such discussions can be of two kinds:

i) The exegete takes a problem emanating from a Qur'anic statement, looks at it from academic and philosophical point of view, weighs the pros and cons and with the help of the philosophy, science and logic decides what the true answer should be. Thereafter, he takes the verse and fits it anyhow on that answer which, he thinks, is right. The Muslim philosophers and theologians usually followed this method; but, as mentioned earlier, the Qur'an does not approve of it.

ii) The exegete explains the verse with the help of other relevant verses, meditating on them together-and meditation has been forcefully urged upon by the Qur'an itself-and identifies the individual person or thing by its particulars and attributes mentioned in the verse. No doubt this is the only correct method of exegesis. Allah has said:

and We have revealed the Book to you explaining clearly everything (16:89).

Is it possible for such a book not to explain its own self? Also He has described the Qur'an in these words:

a guidance for mankind and clear evidence of guidance and discrimination (between wrong) (2:185);

and He has also said:

and We have sent down to you a manifest light (4:174).

The Qur'an is, accordingly, a guidance, an evidence, a discrimination between right and wrong and a manifest light for the people to guide them aright and help them in all their needs. Is it imaginable that it would not guide them aright in its own matter, while it is their most important need? Again Allah says:

And (as for) those who strive hard for Us, We will most certainly guide them onto Our ways (29:69).

Which striving is greater than the endeavour to understand His Book? And which way is more straight than the Qur'an? Verses of this meaning are very numerous, and we shall discuss them in detail in the beginning of the third chapter, The Family of 'Imran. Allah taught the Qur'an to His Prophet and appointed him as the teacher of the Book:

The Faithful Spirit has descended with it upon your heart that you may be of the warners, in plain Arabic language (26 :193-4);

and We have revealed to you the Reminder that you may make clear to men what has been revealed to them, and that haply they may reflect ( 16: 44);... an Apostle who recites to them His communications and purifies them, and teaches them the Book and the Wisdom (62:2).

And the Prophet appointed his progeny to carry on this work after him. It is clear from his unanimously accepted tradition:

I am leaving behind among you two precious things; as long as you hold fast to them you will never go astray after me: The Book of Allah and my progeny, my family members; and these two shall never separate from each other until they reach me (on) the reservoir.

And Allah has confirmed, in the following two verses, this declaration of the Prophet that his progeny had the real know- ledge of the Book:

Allah only desires to keep away the uncleanliness from you, O people of the House! and to purify you a (thorough) purifying(33:33);

Most surely it is an honoured Qur'an, in a Book that is hidden; None do touch it save the purified ones (56 :77-79).

And the Prophet and the Imams from his progeny always used this second method for explaining the Qur'an, as may be seen in the traditions that have been narrated from them on exegesis, some of which will be quoted in this book in appropriate places. One cannot find a single instance in their traditions where they might have taken help of an academic theory or philosophical postulate for explaining a verse.

The Prophet has said in a sermon: "Therefore, when mischiefs come to confuse you like the segments of darkened night, then hold fast to the Qur'an; as it is the intercessor whose intercession shall be granted; and a credible advocate; and whoever keeps it before him, it will lead him to the Garden; and whoever keeps it behind, it will drive him to the Fire; and it is the guide that guides to the best path; and it is a book in which there is explanation,

particularization and recapitulation; and it is a decisive (world), and not a joke; and there is for it a manifest (meaning) and an esoteric (one); thus its apparent (meaning) is firm, and its esoteric (one) is knowledge; its exterior is elegant and its interior deep; it has (many) boundaries, and its boundaries have (many) boundaries; its wonders shall not cease, and its (unexpected marvels shall not be old. There are in it the lamps of guidance and the beacon of wisdom, and guide to knowledge for him who knows the attributes.

Therefore, one should extend his sight; and should let his eyes reach the attribute; so that one who is in perdition may get deliverance, and one who is entangled may get free; because meditation is the life of the heart of the one who sees, as the one having a light (easily) walks in darkness; therefore, you must seek good deliverance and (that) with little waiting .

'Ali (a.s.) said, inter alia, speaking about the Qur'an in a sermon: "Its one part speaks with the other, and one portion testifies about the other."

This is the straight path and the right way which was used by the true teachers of the-Qur'an and its guides, may Allah's blessings be on them all! We shall write, under various headings, what Allah has helped us to understand from the honoured verses, by the above- mentioned method. We have not based the explanations on any philosophical theory, academic idea or mystical revelation.

We have not put into it any outside matter except a fine literary point on which depends the understanding of Arabic eloquence, or a self-evident or practical premises which can be understood by one and all.

Supplement 2

From the discussions, written according to the above- mentioned method, the following subjects have become crystal-clear:

1. The matters concerning the names of Allah, and His attributes, like His Life, Knowledge, Power, Hearing, Sight and Oneness etc. As for the Person of Allah, you will find that the Qur'an believes that He needs no description.

2. The matters concerning the divine actions, like creation, order, will, wish, guidance, leading astray, decree, measure, compulsion, delegation (of Power), pleasure, displeasure and other similar actions.

3. The matters concerned with the intermediary links between Allah and man, like the Curtain, the Tablet, the Pen, the Throne, the Chair, the Inhabited House, the Heavens, the Earth, the Angels, the Satans, and the Jinns etc.

4. The details about man before he came to this world.

5. The matters related to man in this life, like the history of mankind, knowledge of his self, the foundation of society, the prophethood and the apostleship, the revelation, the inspiration, the book and the religion and law. The high status of the prophets, shining through their stories, come under this heading .

6. The knowledge about man after he departs from this world, that is, al-Barzakh.

7. The matters about human character. Under this heading come the various stages through which the friends of Allah pass in their spiritual journey, like submission, faith, benevolence, humility, purity of intention and other virtues. (We have not gone into details of the verses of the law, as more appropriately it is a subject for the books of jurisprudence.) As a direct result of this method, we have never felt any need to interpret a verse against its apparent meaning. As we have said earlier, this type of interpretation is in fact misinterpretation.

As for that "interpretation" which the Qur'an has mentioned in various verses, it is not a type of "meaning"; it is something else. At the end of the commentaries, we have written some traditions of the Prophet and the Imams of Ahlul-Bayt ( a.s.), narrated by the Sunni and Shiah narrators. But we have not included the opinions of the companions and their disciples, because, first, there is too much confusion and contradiction in them; and second, they are not vested with any authority in Islam.

On going through those traditions of the Prophet and the Imams (peace be on them all!), you will notice that this "new" method of exegesis (adopted in this book) is in reality the oldest and the original method which was used by the Teachers of the Qur'an (peace of Allah be on them all!).

Also, we have written separately various topics - philosophical, academic, historical, social and ethical- when there was a need for it. In all such discussions, we have confined our talk to the basic premises, without going in too much detail. We pray to Allah, High is He, to guide us and keep our talk to the point; He is the Best Helper and the Best Guide.

(Allamah Tabataba'i, Al-Mizan, p. 3-16).

Reading through The Glorious Quran Noor al-Qur'an

Sura Al-Fatihah

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful Contents of the Sura The Holy phraseIn The Name of Allah,The Beneficent,The Merciful' / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / is, in fact, mentioned both at the onset of the Qur'an and at the beginning of every Sura, except Sura 9, (Sura Taubah - Repentance).

And, since the purpose of Allah's Word, i.e. the whole Qur'an, is to guide people; as Sura Al-Ma'idah, No. 5, verses 15-16 say : "...Indeed, there has come to you a light and a clear Book from Allah ", " With it Allah guideth him who follows His pleasure to the ways of peace and safety ..."; therefore, this guidance, being a grant and a fundamental principle, begins with Allah's Holy Name.

This Sura, among all Suras of the Qur'an, has an extraordinary radiance which originates from the following merits : 1. The Tone of the Sura : This Sura, The Opening, in comparison with other Suras of the Qur'an regarding its tone and melody, has a particular style which is clearly different and extraordinary.

The other Suras contain instructions from Allah, Who gives commands and admonishments to His servants, but, in this Sura, His words are uttered on behalf of the servants. In other words, in this Sura, Allah has taught His servants how to supplicate and speak to Him, simply and without a mediator.

2. Al-Fatihah, the Basis of the Qur'an :

It is narrated that the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) has said : " By the One, in Whose hand is my soul, Allah has not sent down a similar Sura to this Sura (Al-Fatihah), neither in the Turah, nor in the Gospel, nor in the Psalms, nor even in the Qur'an, and it is Umm-ul-Kitab ";(1) which means that it is the basis and origin of all excellence.

In fact, besides referring to the Resurrection, this Sura presents facts concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence, Unity of Attributes, Unity of Divine Acts, and Unity of Worship. It is the essence of the whole meaning of the Qur'an.

It is narrated from Hadrat Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) that :

" All secrets of Allah are in Divine Books; and the contents of all those Divine Books are comprised in the Qur'an;and what is found in the Qur'an is condensed in Sura Al-Fatihah, and what is in Al-Fatihah is gathered in /bismillah /, and what is in / bismillah / is concentrated in /b/, (the first letter of Bism-il-lah ' )..."(2) Based on the entirety of great commentators' statements, it is understood that this tradition indicates clearly the importance of both the Holy Qur'an and /bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ in which science and knowledge, from the beginning to the end, is comprised. The interpreter and elucidator of these sciences is the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.), and after him there are his true vicegerents including Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.).(3) . Al-Fatihah, Magnificent Honour of the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) :

Sura Al-Fatihah, more so than the other Suras in the Holy Qur'an, was revealed to the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) as a great bounty. It stands on a par with the whole Qur'an. The seven verses in the Sura sum up the whole Qur'an : " And We have bestowed upon thee the Seven Oft-repeated (verses) and the Grand Qur'an ", ( Sura Al-Hijr, No. 15, verse 87 ).

This meaning is also referred to in a narration from Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) quoting the Prophet's (p.b.u.h.) tradition who said :" Verily, Allah, the Exalted, has bestowed (His) favours on me particularly for The Opening ' (Al-Fatihah) and has positioned it on a par with the whole Grand Qur'an, and surely Fatihat-ul-Kitab (the Opening of the Qur'an) is the dearest (item) in the treasures of the Arsh, (Throne of Heaven) ".(4) . The Importance of its Recitation :

The recitation of this Sura, because of its extreme importance, is frequently emphasized in Islamic traditions and narrations.

As for its virtue, it is narrated from the holy Prophet(p.b.u.h.) that: " The reward of any Muslim who recites the Sura Opening ', is like that of a person who has recited two thirds of the Qur'an, and so much reward would he receive as if he has given every believing Muslim, man or woman, a free will offering ".(5) . The Titles of the Sura :

There are ten titles given to this Sura, as taken from Islamic narrations and commentary books, thus: Fatihat-ul-Kitab, Umm-ul-Kitab, Umm-ul-Qur'an, Sab-ul-Mathani, Al-Wafiyah, Al-Kafiyah, Ash-Shafiyah, Al-Asas, As-Salat, and Al-Hamd. (6)

* * * Sura Al-Fatihah (The Opening) No. 1 (Verses 1-7)

1. " In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful."

2. " (All) praise is (only) Allah's, the Lord of the Worlds."

3. " The Beneficent, The Merciful."

4. " Master of the Day of Judgement."

5. " Thee (alone) do we worship and of Thee (only) do we seek help."

6. " Guide us (O' Lord) on the Straight Path."

7. " The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed Thy bounties,

not (the path) of those inflicted with Thy wrath, nor (of those) gone astray."

1. " In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful." Commentary :

It is a custom among most people of the world to recite the name of one of their great and very beloved personalities that the worthiness of their work might be elevated. That is, they relate that work to that personality from the very beginning of their endeavour.

Among all beings, the One Who is eternal is only Allah, and, therefore, everything and every activity should begin with His Holy Name. It should be enveloped in His Light, and help should be always asked only from Him. So, in the first verse of the Qur'an, we recite Bism-illah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim', ( In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful ).

This action should not be done only with the tongue, but it should be done truly and meaningfully, because this kind of connection with Him sets work in the right direction and keeps it far from any deviation. For this very reason, such a work will certainly be successful and blessed.

The holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.), in a tradition, has said : " Any important work that begins without mentioning / bismillah /, will remain invalid. "(7) After narrating this tradition, Hadrat Aeir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) added: " For every action that a person wants to do, he/she should recite / bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim /, which means that he/she begins the action with the Name of Allah, and every action that begins with the Name of Allah is blessed. "(8) On the excellence and importance of / bism-il-lah /, it is narrated from Ali-ibn-Musa-r-Rida (a.s.), who has said thus: "

(The holy phrase) Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' is closer to the Exalted Name of Allah' than the pupil is to the white of the eye ".(9) Again, Ibn-Abbas narrates from the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) thus:

"As soon as a teacher tells a child to say Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' and the child says it, Allah records immunity (from fire) for the child,his or her parents and the teacher".(10) Imam Sadiq (a.s.) has said: " No Holy Book ever came down from heaven but that it began with Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' ".(11) In Khisal' by Shaykh Saduq it is cited that Imam Baqir (a.s.) has said: "... When we begin an action, great or small, it is appropriate to recite /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ and that action may be blessed ".(12) In short, the stability and permanence of an action is due to this very relation to Allah.

The phrase / bism-il-lah / at the start of the Sura, teaches us to seek the help of Allah from His pure perfect Essence when we begin any action. That is why Allah, the Exalted, in the first verses revealed to the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) instructed him to ِ initiating the proclamation of Islam ِ perform this great task with the Name of Allah: " Proclaim in the Name of your Lord...",( Sura Al-Alaq, No.96, verse 1 ); and the words of Noah (a.s.) to his followers, at the time of the Flood are: " So he said: Embark ye on the Ark, in the Name of Allah, whether it moves or be at rest! " ( Sura Hud, No. 11, verse 41 ).

Again, Soloman's letter to the Queen of Sheba begins, thus: " It is from Soloman, and is (as follows):In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful' ", ( Sura An-Naml, No. 27, verse 30 ).

Based on the same principle, all of the Suras of the Holy Qur'an, (except Sura At-Taubah, No. 9) begin with /bism-il-lah/(13) in order to pursue the essential aim of guiding man and leading him to prosperity with success, far from getting a taste of defeat.

In any event, when we begin our work with reliance upon the Supreme Power of Allah, Whose Power is above all power, we feel, psychologically speaking, far more powerful; therefore, we may be more confident. We may try more, be more persevering, and more courageous in challenging with difficulties, more hopeful, and, similarly, our intentions and the essence of our actions may be more purified. At the time of beginning any affair, reciting the Name of Allah is the secret to its success.

To whatever extent we further explain this verse, it will still be seen insufficient, because, according to a narration, Hadrat Ali (a.s.), regarding the commentary of the verse, talked to Ibn-Abbas from the beginning of a night until the next morning, but it was only for the commentary of /b/, the first letter of /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/.

(14) * * * Explanation : Is the Phrase Bism-il-lah' a Part of Each Sura ? Almost all Islamic scholars unanimously hold the opinion that / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ is, as was stated before, a part of Sura Al-Fatihah and, also, of the other Suras of the Qur'an (except Sura At-Taubah, No. 9). In essence, the inclusion of /bism-il-lah/ at the beginning of all Suras of the Holy Qur'an, except the above mentioned one,is a vital piece of evidence bearing witness to this very fact, and the belief is so firm that no change has been made in the Qur'an and nothing has been added to it since it was revealed to the Prophet of Islam (p.b.u.h.).

Muawiyat-ibn-Ammar, one of the companions of Imam Sadiq (a.s.), said that he had asked the Imam whether he should say /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / at the beginning of Sura Al-Fatihah when he stood for prayer, and he (a.s.) replied: " Yes ". He had questioned him (a.s.), again, as to if he should recite /bism-il-lah/ when Sura Al-Fatihah ended and before reciting the next Sura.

Then, Imam Sadiq (a.s.), again, answered: " Yes ".(15) Dar Qutni, a Muslim learned researcher, according to a sound document, narrates from Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) that someone asked him (a.s.):" What is As-Sab-al-Mathani (Seven Verses)?" " It is Sura Al-Hamd ",he (a.s.) answered. The man said: " Sura Al-Hamd consists of six verses ". He (a.s.) replied: " Bism-illah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim ' is also one verse. "

(16) Moreover, Muslims have always preserved the practice of reciting / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / at the beginning of every Sura ( except Sura 9 ) when reciting the Holy Qur'an, and it has been proven, on numerous accounts, that the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) used to recite it, too.

It has been said that Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) was asked to say whether / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / was a part of Sura Al-Fatihah. He (a.s.) answered: " Yes, the Messenger of Allah used to recite it and considered it one verse (of the verses) of the Sura, and he said that Fatihat-ul-Kitab (The Opening) is the same as Sab-al-Mathani ' (seven verses) "

(17) Allah, the Most Inclusive Name of God The term / ism / in the phrase / bism-il-lah /, as men of letters in Arabic literature say, is originally derived from / sumuww / with the meaning of height, elevation'. The reason why any noun' is called by an appellation ' is that after choosing to call a noun' by the particular given name' (ism), the hidden meaning of the expression appears, and the sense of the name' is elevated, therefore forsaking meaninglessness.

In the phrase / bism-il-lah /, the word Allah is the most complete and comprehensive name among the Lord's many names. This is because each of Allah's names, which are found in the Holy Qur'an, as well as in other Islamic sources, truly reflects one particular aspect of Allah's Attributes. In other words, the only name that refers to all of His Attributes of Glory and Beauty, is Allah. That is why other names are often used as modifiers for the word Allah'.

For example, " Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful",(Sura Al-Baqarah, No. 2,verse 226), refers to Allah's forgiveness; " ...Allah heareth and knoweth all things ", (No. 2, verse 227) shows His being well-acquainted with what is audible and what comes to pass, respectively; " And Allah sees well all that you do", (Sura Al-Hujurat, No. 49, verse 18) states that He has information on every thing that is done by anyone; " Surely Allah is He Who gives (all) sustenance, the Lord of Power, steadfast (for ever) ", (Sura Ath-Thariyat, No. 51, verse 58) points to His giving sustenance to all creatures and, at the same time, discloses that He is powerful and firm in His actions.

And, finally, Sura Al-Hashr, No. 59, verses 23,24 reveals some other Attributes of Allah. The terms Creator ' and Evolver ' are suggestive of His creativeness and inventiveness, and Bestower of Forms ' indicates His giving shapes: " Allah is He, than Whom there is no other god; the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace (and Perfection), the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme (in creating all creatures)...."

He is Allah, the Creator, the Evolver, the Bestower of Forms, to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names... ." Another piece of evidence which is a clear indication that this Name, Allah, is all-inclusive is that the acceptance of Faith, in Islam, is possible only by reciting the sentence: / la ilaha illalah / " There is no god, but Allah "; and each of the other phrases such as: All-Knowing ' or Creator ', or Bestower of Sustenance ', and the like, alone, is not sufficient enough to proclaim as evidence of Monotheism in Islam.

And, that is why in religions other than Islam, the God of Muslims is referred to as Allah ', because it is only Muslims who use Allah ' to refer to what they do worship. * * * Allah's General and Specific Mercy:

The words ar-Rahman' (The Beneficent) and ar-Rahim' (The Merciful) are adjectives, both derived from ar-Rahmah' (Mercy).

The former word, the Beneficent, as it is popularly recognized among some commentators, refers to the General Mercy of Allah which is bestowed upon all creatures, among them are the believers and the disbelievers, good-doers and evildoers. And, as we can see, the Divine bounties of life are distributed everywhere and all human beings enjoy the endless merits therein. This is their sustenance. They draw it out of the abundant blessings encompassing the whole world of existence.

The word ar-Rahim' (The Merciful) refers to that Specific Mercy that is endowed upon the believing, obedient servants alone. The believers, because of their true belief, good actions, and faithful active obedience, deserve this special, exclusive mercy, of which the disbelievers are deprived.

The particular fact ratifying this topic is that the word Rahman is always used in the Qur'an with the meaning of an infinite form of mercy, which is a sign of its generality, while the word Rahim is sometimes used with the meaning of a finite form, which is a sign of its specificity such as: "... And He is full of Mercy to the Believers ", (Sura Al-Ahzab, No. 33, verse 43). And it is sometimes used in an infinite form such as in Sura Al-Fatihah.

A narration from Imam Sadiq (a.s.) says: " Allah is the God of all things and is Beneficent to all His creatures, and He is Merciful, especially to the believers."(18) Therefore, at the moment that we initiate any action, when we begin with the Name of Allah, we must seek His Mercy, General and Specific Mercy, both.

It is interesting to note that this power, which has a broad concept much the same as gravitational pull, and has the ability to draw hearts closer together, is the very Attribute of Mercy. This Attribute of Mercy is the very means by which men can attain a close relationship with the Creator, also.

Supplement

That philosophy was admittedly only a set of conjectures - unencumbered with any test or proof; but the Muslim philosophers felt no remorse in treating its views on the system of skies, orbits, natural elements and other related subjects as the absolute truth with which the exegesis of the Qur'an had to conform.

The Sufis kept their eyes fixed on esoteric aspects of creation; they were too occupied with their inner world to look at the outer one. Their tunnel-like vision prevented them from looking at the things in their true perspective. Their love of esoteric made them look for inner interpretations of the verses; without any regard to their manifest and clear meanings. It encouraged the people to base their explanations on poetic expressions and to use anything to prove anything.

The condition became so bad that the verses were explained on the-basis of the numerical values of their words; letters were divided into bright and dark ones and the explanations were based on that division. Building castle in the air, wasn't it? Obviously, the Qur'an was not revealed to guide the Sufis only; nor had it ad- dressed itself to only those who knew the numerical values of the letters (with all its ramifications); nor were its realities based on astrological calculations. Of course, there are traditions narrated from the Prophet and the Imams of Ahlul-Bayt (A.S.) saying for example:

"Verily the Qur'an has an exterior and an interior, and its interior has an interior upto seven (or according to a version, seventy) interiors..". But the Prophet and the Imams gave importance to its exterior as much as to its interior; they were as much concerned with its revelation as they were with its interpretation.

We shall explain in the beginning of the third chapter, "The Family of 'Imran", that "interpretation" is not a meaning against the manifest meaning of the verse. Such an interpretation should more correctly be called "misinterpretation". This meaning of the word, "interpretation", came in vogue in the Muslim circles long after the revelation of the Qur'an and the spread of Islam. What the Qur'an means by the word, "interpretation", is some- thing other than the meaning and the significance.

In recent times, a new method of exegesis has become fashionable. Some people, supposedly Muslims, who were deeply influenced by the natural sciences (which are based on observations and tests) and the social ones (that rely on induction), followed the materialists of Europe or the pragmatists.

Under the influence of those anti-Islamic theories, they declared that the religion's realities cannot go against scientific knowledge; one should not believe except that which is perceived by any one of the five senses; nothing exists except the matter and its properties.

What the religion claims to exist, but which the sciences reject-like The Throne, The Chair, The Tablet and The Pen-should be interpreted in a way that conforms with the science; as for those things which the science is silent about, like the resurrection etc., they should be brought within the purview of the laws of matter;

the pillars upon which the divine religious laws are based-like revelation, angel, Satan, prophet- hood, apostleship, imamah (Imamate) etc.-are spiritual things, and the spirit is a development of the matter, or let us say, a property of the matter; legislation of those laws is manifestation of a special social genius, who ordains them after healthy and fruitful contemplations, in order to establish a good and pro- gressive society.

They have further said: One cannot have confidence in the traditions, because many are spurious; only those traditions may be relied upon which are in conformity with the Book. As for the Book itself, one should not explain it in the light of the old philosophy and theories, because they were not based on observations and tests-they were just a sort of mental exercise which has been totally discredited now by the modern science.

The best, rather the only, way is to explain the Qur'an with the help of other Qur'anic verses-except where the science has asserted something which is relevant to it. This, in short, is what they have written, or what necessarily follows from their total reliance on tests and observations.

We are not concerned here with the question whether their scientific principles and philosophic dicta can be accepted as the foundation of the Qur'an's exegesis. But it should be pointed out here that the objection which they have leveled against the ancient exegetes -that theirs was only an adaptation and not the explanation- is equally true about their own method; they too say that the Qur'an and its realities must be made to conform with the scientific theories.

If not so, then why do they insist that the academic theories should be treated as true foundations of exegesis from which no deviation could be allowed? This method improves nothing on the discredited method of the ancients. If you look at all the above-mentioned ways of exegesis, you will find that all of them suffer from a most serious defect:

They impose the results of academic or philosophic arguments on the Qur'anic meanings; they make the Qur'an conform with an extraneous idea. In this way, explanation turns into adaptation, realities of the Qur'an are explained away as allegories and its manifest meanings are sacrificed for so-called "interpretations". As we mentioned in the beginning, the Qur'an introduces itself as the guidance for the worlds (3:96); the manifest light (4:174), and the explanation of every thing (16:89).

But these people, contrary to those Qur'anic declarations, make it to be guided by extraneous factors, to be illuminated by some outside theories, and to be explained by something other than itself! What is that "something else"? What authority has it got? And if there is any difference in various explanations of a verse and indeed there are most serious differences-which mediator should the Qur'an refer to?

What is the root-cause of the differences in the Qur'an's explanations? It could not happen because of any difference in the meaning of a word, phrase or sentence.

The Qur'an has been sent down in plain Arabic; and no Arab (or Arabic-knowing non-Arab) can experience any difficulty in understanding it. Also, there is not a single verse (out of more than six thousand) which is enigmatic, obscure or abstruse in its import; nor is there a single sentence that keeps the mind wandering in search of its meaning.

After all, the Qur'an is admittedly the most eloquent speech, and it is one of the essential ingredients of eloquence that the talk should be free from obscurity and abstruseness. Even those verses that are counted among the "ambiguous" ones, have no ambiguity in their meanings; whatever the ambiguity, it is in identification of the particular thing or individual from among the group to which that meaning refers.

This statement needs some elaborations:- In this life we are surrounded by matter; even our senses and faculties are closely related to it. This familiarity with matter and material things has influenced our mode of thinking. When we hear a word or a sentence, our mind races to its material meaning.

When we hear, for example, the words, life, knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, will, pleasure, anger, creation and order, we at once think of the material manifestations of their meanings. Likewise, when we hear the words, heaven, earth, tablet, pen, throne, chair, angel and his wings, and Satan and his tribe and army, the first things that come into our minds are their material manifestations. Likewise, when we hear the sentences, "Allah created the universe", "Allah did this", "Allah knew it", "Allah intended it" or "intends it", we look at these actions in frame of "time", because we are used to connect every verb with a tense. In the same way, when we hear the verses:

and with Us is more yet (50:35), . We would have made it from before Ourselves (21:17), . and that which is with Allah is best. . (62:11), . and to Him you shall be brought back (2:28, etc.).

we attach with the divine presence the concept of " place", because in our minds the two ideas are inseparable. Also, on reading the verses: And when We intend to destroy a town (17 :16), And We intend to bestow a favour . (28: 5), And Allah intends ease for you (2:185), we think that the "intention" has the same meaning in every sentence, as is the case with our own intention and will.

In this way, we jump to the familiar (which most often is material) meaning of every word. And it is but natural. Man has made words to fulfill his social need of mutual intercourse; and society in its turn was established to fulfil the man's material needs. Not unexpectedly, the words became symbols of the things which men were connected with and which helped them in their material progress.

But we should not forget that the material things are constantly changing and developing with the development of expertise. Man gave the name, lamp, to a certain receptacle in which he put a wick and a little fat that fed the lighted wick which illuminated the place in darkness.

That apparatus kept changing until now it has become the electric bulb of various types; and except the name "lamp" not a single component of the original lamp can be found in it. Likewise, there is no resemblance in the balance of old times and the modern scales -especially if we compare the old apparatus with the modern equipment for weighing and measuring heat, electirc-current's flow and blood-pressure.

And the armaments of old days and the ones invented within our own times have nothing in common, except the name. The named things have changed so much that not a single component of the original can be found in them; yet the name has not changed. It shows that the basic element that allows the use of a name for a thing is not the shape of that thing, but its purpose and benefit. Man, imprisoned as he is within his habitat and habit, often fails to see this reality.

That is why al-Hashawiyyah and those who believe that God has a body interpret the Qur'anic verses and phrases within the fame-work of the matter and the nature. But in fact they are stuck with their habit and usage, and not to the exterior of the Qur'an and the traditions. Even in the literal meanings of the Qur'an we find ample evidence that relying on the habit and usage in explanation of the divine speech would cause confusion and anomaly. For example, Allah says:

Nothing is like a likeness of Him (42:11); Visions comprehended Him not, and He comprehends (all) visions; and He is the Knower of subtilities, the Aware (6:73); glory be to Him above what they ascribe (to Him) (23:91; 37:159).

These verses manifestly show that what we are accustomed to cannot be ascribed to Allah. It was this reality that convinced many people that they should not explain the Qur'anic words by identifying them with their usual and common meanings. Going a step further, they sought the help of logical and philosophical arguments to avoid wrong deductions. This gave a foot-hold to academic reasoning in explaining the Qur'an and identifying the individual person or thing meant by a word. Such discussions can be of two kinds:

i) The exegete takes a problem emanating from a Qur'anic statement, looks at it from academic and philosophical point of view, weighs the pros and cons and with the help of the philosophy, science and logic decides what the true answer should be. Thereafter, he takes the verse and fits it anyhow on that answer which, he thinks, is right. The Muslim philosophers and theologians usually followed this method; but, as mentioned earlier, the Qur'an does not approve of it.

ii) The exegete explains the verse with the help of other relevant verses, meditating on them together-and meditation has been forcefully urged upon by the Qur'an itself-and identifies the individual person or thing by its particulars and attributes mentioned in the verse. No doubt this is the only correct method of exegesis. Allah has said:

and We have revealed the Book to you explaining clearly everything (16:89).

Is it possible for such a book not to explain its own self? Also He has described the Qur'an in these words:

a guidance for mankind and clear evidence of guidance and discrimination (between wrong) (2:185);

and He has also said:

and We have sent down to you a manifest light (4:174).

The Qur'an is, accordingly, a guidance, an evidence, a discrimination between right and wrong and a manifest light for the people to guide them aright and help them in all their needs. Is it imaginable that it would not guide them aright in its own matter, while it is their most important need? Again Allah says:

And (as for) those who strive hard for Us, We will most certainly guide them onto Our ways (29:69).

Which striving is greater than the endeavour to understand His Book? And which way is more straight than the Qur'an? Verses of this meaning are very numerous, and we shall discuss them in detail in the beginning of the third chapter, The Family of 'Imran. Allah taught the Qur'an to His Prophet and appointed him as the teacher of the Book:

The Faithful Spirit has descended with it upon your heart that you may be of the warners, in plain Arabic language (26 :193-4);

and We have revealed to you the Reminder that you may make clear to men what has been revealed to them, and that haply they may reflect ( 16: 44);... an Apostle who recites to them His communications and purifies them, and teaches them the Book and the Wisdom (62:2).

And the Prophet appointed his progeny to carry on this work after him. It is clear from his unanimously accepted tradition:

I am leaving behind among you two precious things; as long as you hold fast to them you will never go astray after me: The Book of Allah and my progeny, my family members; and these two shall never separate from each other until they reach me (on) the reservoir.

And Allah has confirmed, in the following two verses, this declaration of the Prophet that his progeny had the real know- ledge of the Book:

Allah only desires to keep away the uncleanliness from you, O people of the House! and to purify you a (thorough) purifying(33:33);

Most surely it is an honoured Qur'an, in a Book that is hidden; None do touch it save the purified ones (56 :77-79).

And the Prophet and the Imams from his progeny always used this second method for explaining the Qur'an, as may be seen in the traditions that have been narrated from them on exegesis, some of which will be quoted in this book in appropriate places. One cannot find a single instance in their traditions where they might have taken help of an academic theory or philosophical postulate for explaining a verse.

The Prophet has said in a sermon: "Therefore, when mischiefs come to confuse you like the segments of darkened night, then hold fast to the Qur'an; as it is the intercessor whose intercession shall be granted; and a credible advocate; and whoever keeps it before him, it will lead him to the Garden; and whoever keeps it behind, it will drive him to the Fire; and it is the guide that guides to the best path; and it is a book in which there is explanation,

particularization and recapitulation; and it is a decisive (world), and not a joke; and there is for it a manifest (meaning) and an esoteric (one); thus its apparent (meaning) is firm, and its esoteric (one) is knowledge; its exterior is elegant and its interior deep; it has (many) boundaries, and its boundaries have (many) boundaries; its wonders shall not cease, and its (unexpected marvels shall not be old. There are in it the lamps of guidance and the beacon of wisdom, and guide to knowledge for him who knows the attributes.

Therefore, one should extend his sight; and should let his eyes reach the attribute; so that one who is in perdition may get deliverance, and one who is entangled may get free; because meditation is the life of the heart of the one who sees, as the one having a light (easily) walks in darkness; therefore, you must seek good deliverance and (that) with little waiting .

'Ali (a.s.) said, inter alia, speaking about the Qur'an in a sermon: "Its one part speaks with the other, and one portion testifies about the other."

This is the straight path and the right way which was used by the true teachers of the-Qur'an and its guides, may Allah's blessings be on them all! We shall write, under various headings, what Allah has helped us to understand from the honoured verses, by the above- mentioned method. We have not based the explanations on any philosophical theory, academic idea or mystical revelation.

We have not put into it any outside matter except a fine literary point on which depends the understanding of Arabic eloquence, or a self-evident or practical premises which can be understood by one and all.

Supplement 2

From the discussions, written according to the above- mentioned method, the following subjects have become crystal-clear:

1. The matters concerning the names of Allah, and His attributes, like His Life, Knowledge, Power, Hearing, Sight and Oneness etc. As for the Person of Allah, you will find that the Qur'an believes that He needs no description.

2. The matters concerning the divine actions, like creation, order, will, wish, guidance, leading astray, decree, measure, compulsion, delegation (of Power), pleasure, displeasure and other similar actions.

3. The matters concerned with the intermediary links between Allah and man, like the Curtain, the Tablet, the Pen, the Throne, the Chair, the Inhabited House, the Heavens, the Earth, the Angels, the Satans, and the Jinns etc.

4. The details about man before he came to this world.

5. The matters related to man in this life, like the history of mankind, knowledge of his self, the foundation of society, the prophethood and the apostleship, the revelation, the inspiration, the book and the religion and law. The high status of the prophets, shining through their stories, come under this heading .

6. The knowledge about man after he departs from this world, that is, al-Barzakh.

7. The matters about human character. Under this heading come the various stages through which the friends of Allah pass in their spiritual journey, like submission, faith, benevolence, humility, purity of intention and other virtues. (We have not gone into details of the verses of the law, as more appropriately it is a subject for the books of jurisprudence.) As a direct result of this method, we have never felt any need to interpret a verse against its apparent meaning. As we have said earlier, this type of interpretation is in fact misinterpretation.

As for that "interpretation" which the Qur'an has mentioned in various verses, it is not a type of "meaning"; it is something else. At the end of the commentaries, we have written some traditions of the Prophet and the Imams of Ahlul-Bayt ( a.s.), narrated by the Sunni and Shiah narrators. But we have not included the opinions of the companions and their disciples, because, first, there is too much confusion and contradiction in them; and second, they are not vested with any authority in Islam.

On going through those traditions of the Prophet and the Imams (peace be on them all!), you will notice that this "new" method of exegesis (adopted in this book) is in reality the oldest and the original method which was used by the Teachers of the Qur'an (peace of Allah be on them all!).

Also, we have written separately various topics - philosophical, academic, historical, social and ethical- when there was a need for it. In all such discussions, we have confined our talk to the basic premises, without going in too much detail. We pray to Allah, High is He, to guide us and keep our talk to the point; He is the Best Helper and the Best Guide.

(Allamah Tabataba'i, Al-Mizan, p. 3-16).

Reading through The Glorious Quran Noor al-Qur'an

Sura Al-Fatihah

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful Contents of the Sura The Holy phraseIn The Name of Allah,The Beneficent,The Merciful' / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / is, in fact, mentioned both at the onset of the Qur'an and at the beginning of every Sura, except Sura 9, (Sura Taubah - Repentance).

And, since the purpose of Allah's Word, i.e. the whole Qur'an, is to guide people; as Sura Al-Ma'idah, No. 5, verses 15-16 say : "...Indeed, there has come to you a light and a clear Book from Allah ", " With it Allah guideth him who follows His pleasure to the ways of peace and safety ..."; therefore, this guidance, being a grant and a fundamental principle, begins with Allah's Holy Name.

This Sura, among all Suras of the Qur'an, has an extraordinary radiance which originates from the following merits : 1. The Tone of the Sura : This Sura, The Opening, in comparison with other Suras of the Qur'an regarding its tone and melody, has a particular style which is clearly different and extraordinary.

The other Suras contain instructions from Allah, Who gives commands and admonishments to His servants, but, in this Sura, His words are uttered on behalf of the servants. In other words, in this Sura, Allah has taught His servants how to supplicate and speak to Him, simply and without a mediator.

2. Al-Fatihah, the Basis of the Qur'an :

It is narrated that the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) has said : " By the One, in Whose hand is my soul, Allah has not sent down a similar Sura to this Sura (Al-Fatihah), neither in the Turah, nor in the Gospel, nor in the Psalms, nor even in the Qur'an, and it is Umm-ul-Kitab ";(1) which means that it is the basis and origin of all excellence.

In fact, besides referring to the Resurrection, this Sura presents facts concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence, Unity of Attributes, Unity of Divine Acts, and Unity of Worship. It is the essence of the whole meaning of the Qur'an.

It is narrated from Hadrat Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) that :

" All secrets of Allah are in Divine Books; and the contents of all those Divine Books are comprised in the Qur'an;and what is found in the Qur'an is condensed in Sura Al-Fatihah, and what is in Al-Fatihah is gathered in /bismillah /, and what is in / bismillah / is concentrated in /b/, (the first letter of Bism-il-lah ' )..."(2) Based on the entirety of great commentators' statements, it is understood that this tradition indicates clearly the importance of both the Holy Qur'an and /bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ in which science and knowledge, from the beginning to the end, is comprised. The interpreter and elucidator of these sciences is the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.), and after him there are his true vicegerents including Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.).(3) . Al-Fatihah, Magnificent Honour of the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) :

Sura Al-Fatihah, more so than the other Suras in the Holy Qur'an, was revealed to the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) as a great bounty. It stands on a par with the whole Qur'an. The seven verses in the Sura sum up the whole Qur'an : " And We have bestowed upon thee the Seven Oft-repeated (verses) and the Grand Qur'an ", ( Sura Al-Hijr, No. 15, verse 87 ).

This meaning is also referred to in a narration from Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) quoting the Prophet's (p.b.u.h.) tradition who said :" Verily, Allah, the Exalted, has bestowed (His) favours on me particularly for The Opening ' (Al-Fatihah) and has positioned it on a par with the whole Grand Qur'an, and surely Fatihat-ul-Kitab (the Opening of the Qur'an) is the dearest (item) in the treasures of the Arsh, (Throne of Heaven) ".(4) . The Importance of its Recitation :

The recitation of this Sura, because of its extreme importance, is frequently emphasized in Islamic traditions and narrations.

As for its virtue, it is narrated from the holy Prophet(p.b.u.h.) that: " The reward of any Muslim who recites the Sura Opening ', is like that of a person who has recited two thirds of the Qur'an, and so much reward would he receive as if he has given every believing Muslim, man or woman, a free will offering ".(5) . The Titles of the Sura :

There are ten titles given to this Sura, as taken from Islamic narrations and commentary books, thus: Fatihat-ul-Kitab, Umm-ul-Kitab, Umm-ul-Qur'an, Sab-ul-Mathani, Al-Wafiyah, Al-Kafiyah, Ash-Shafiyah, Al-Asas, As-Salat, and Al-Hamd. (6)

* * * Sura Al-Fatihah (The Opening) No. 1 (Verses 1-7)

1. " In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful."

2. " (All) praise is (only) Allah's, the Lord of the Worlds."

3. " The Beneficent, The Merciful."

4. " Master of the Day of Judgement."

5. " Thee (alone) do we worship and of Thee (only) do we seek help."

6. " Guide us (O' Lord) on the Straight Path."

7. " The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed Thy bounties,

not (the path) of those inflicted with Thy wrath, nor (of those) gone astray."

1. " In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful." Commentary :

It is a custom among most people of the world to recite the name of one of their great and very beloved personalities that the worthiness of their work might be elevated. That is, they relate that work to that personality from the very beginning of their endeavour.

Among all beings, the One Who is eternal is only Allah, and, therefore, everything and every activity should begin with His Holy Name. It should be enveloped in His Light, and help should be always asked only from Him. So, in the first verse of the Qur'an, we recite Bism-illah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim', ( In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful ).

This action should not be done only with the tongue, but it should be done truly and meaningfully, because this kind of connection with Him sets work in the right direction and keeps it far from any deviation. For this very reason, such a work will certainly be successful and blessed.

The holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.), in a tradition, has said : " Any important work that begins without mentioning / bismillah /, will remain invalid. "(7) After narrating this tradition, Hadrat Aeir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) added: " For every action that a person wants to do, he/she should recite / bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim /, which means that he/she begins the action with the Name of Allah, and every action that begins with the Name of Allah is blessed. "(8) On the excellence and importance of / bism-il-lah /, it is narrated from Ali-ibn-Musa-r-Rida (a.s.), who has said thus: "

(The holy phrase) Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' is closer to the Exalted Name of Allah' than the pupil is to the white of the eye ".(9) Again, Ibn-Abbas narrates from the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) thus:

"As soon as a teacher tells a child to say Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' and the child says it, Allah records immunity (from fire) for the child,his or her parents and the teacher".(10) Imam Sadiq (a.s.) has said: " No Holy Book ever came down from heaven but that it began with Bism-il-lah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim' ".(11) In Khisal' by Shaykh Saduq it is cited that Imam Baqir (a.s.) has said: "... When we begin an action, great or small, it is appropriate to recite /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ and that action may be blessed ".(12) In short, the stability and permanence of an action is due to this very relation to Allah.

The phrase / bism-il-lah / at the start of the Sura, teaches us to seek the help of Allah from His pure perfect Essence when we begin any action. That is why Allah, the Exalted, in the first verses revealed to the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) instructed him to ِ initiating the proclamation of Islam ِ perform this great task with the Name of Allah: " Proclaim in the Name of your Lord...",( Sura Al-Alaq, No.96, verse 1 ); and the words of Noah (a.s.) to his followers, at the time of the Flood are: " So he said: Embark ye on the Ark, in the Name of Allah, whether it moves or be at rest! " ( Sura Hud, No. 11, verse 41 ).

Again, Soloman's letter to the Queen of Sheba begins, thus: " It is from Soloman, and is (as follows):In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful' ", ( Sura An-Naml, No. 27, verse 30 ).

Based on the same principle, all of the Suras of the Holy Qur'an, (except Sura At-Taubah, No. 9) begin with /bism-il-lah/(13) in order to pursue the essential aim of guiding man and leading him to prosperity with success, far from getting a taste of defeat.

In any event, when we begin our work with reliance upon the Supreme Power of Allah, Whose Power is above all power, we feel, psychologically speaking, far more powerful; therefore, we may be more confident. We may try more, be more persevering, and more courageous in challenging with difficulties, more hopeful, and, similarly, our intentions and the essence of our actions may be more purified. At the time of beginning any affair, reciting the Name of Allah is the secret to its success.

To whatever extent we further explain this verse, it will still be seen insufficient, because, according to a narration, Hadrat Ali (a.s.), regarding the commentary of the verse, talked to Ibn-Abbas from the beginning of a night until the next morning, but it was only for the commentary of /b/, the first letter of /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/.

(14) * * * Explanation : Is the Phrase Bism-il-lah' a Part of Each Sura ? Almost all Islamic scholars unanimously hold the opinion that / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim/ is, as was stated before, a part of Sura Al-Fatihah and, also, of the other Suras of the Qur'an (except Sura At-Taubah, No. 9). In essence, the inclusion of /bism-il-lah/ at the beginning of all Suras of the Holy Qur'an, except the above mentioned one,is a vital piece of evidence bearing witness to this very fact, and the belief is so firm that no change has been made in the Qur'an and nothing has been added to it since it was revealed to the Prophet of Islam (p.b.u.h.).

Muawiyat-ibn-Ammar, one of the companions of Imam Sadiq (a.s.), said that he had asked the Imam whether he should say /bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / at the beginning of Sura Al-Fatihah when he stood for prayer, and he (a.s.) replied: " Yes ". He had questioned him (a.s.), again, as to if he should recite /bism-il-lah/ when Sura Al-Fatihah ended and before reciting the next Sura.

Then, Imam Sadiq (a.s.), again, answered: " Yes ".(15) Dar Qutni, a Muslim learned researcher, according to a sound document, narrates from Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) that someone asked him (a.s.):" What is As-Sab-al-Mathani (Seven Verses)?" " It is Sura Al-Hamd ",he (a.s.) answered. The man said: " Sura Al-Hamd consists of six verses ". He (a.s.) replied: " Bism-illah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim ' is also one verse. "

(16) Moreover, Muslims have always preserved the practice of reciting / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / at the beginning of every Sura ( except Sura 9 ) when reciting the Holy Qur'an, and it has been proven, on numerous accounts, that the holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) used to recite it, too.

It has been said that Amir-ul-Mu'mineen Ali (a.s.) was asked to say whether / bism-il-lah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim / was a part of Sura Al-Fatihah. He (a.s.) answered: " Yes, the Messenger of Allah used to recite it and considered it one verse (of the verses) of the Sura, and he said that Fatihat-ul-Kitab (The Opening) is the same as Sab-al-Mathani ' (seven verses) "

(17) Allah, the Most Inclusive Name of God The term / ism / in the phrase / bism-il-lah /, as men of letters in Arabic literature say, is originally derived from / sumuww / with the meaning of height, elevation'. The reason why any noun' is called by an appellation ' is that after choosing to call a noun' by the particular given name' (ism), the hidden meaning of the expression appears, and the sense of the name' is elevated, therefore forsaking meaninglessness.

In the phrase / bism-il-lah /, the word Allah is the most complete and comprehensive name among the Lord's many names. This is because each of Allah's names, which are found in the Holy Qur'an, as well as in other Islamic sources, truly reflects one particular aspect of Allah's Attributes. In other words, the only name that refers to all of His Attributes of Glory and Beauty, is Allah. That is why other names are often used as modifiers for the word Allah'.

For example, " Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful",(Sura Al-Baqarah, No. 2,verse 226), refers to Allah's forgiveness; " ...Allah heareth and knoweth all things ", (No. 2, verse 227) shows His being well-acquainted with what is audible and what comes to pass, respectively; " And Allah sees well all that you do", (Sura Al-Hujurat, No. 49, verse 18) states that He has information on every thing that is done by anyone; " Surely Allah is He Who gives (all) sustenance, the Lord of Power, steadfast (for ever) ", (Sura Ath-Thariyat, No. 51, verse 58) points to His giving sustenance to all creatures and, at the same time, discloses that He is powerful and firm in His actions.

And, finally, Sura Al-Hashr, No. 59, verses 23,24 reveals some other Attributes of Allah. The terms Creator ' and Evolver ' are suggestive of His creativeness and inventiveness, and Bestower of Forms ' indicates His giving shapes: " Allah is He, than Whom there is no other god; the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace (and Perfection), the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme (in creating all creatures)...."

He is Allah, the Creator, the Evolver, the Bestower of Forms, to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names... ." Another piece of evidence which is a clear indication that this Name, Allah, is all-inclusive is that the acceptance of Faith, in Islam, is possible only by reciting the sentence: / la ilaha illalah / " There is no god, but Allah "; and each of the other phrases such as: All-Knowing ' or Creator ', or Bestower of Sustenance ', and the like, alone, is not sufficient enough to proclaim as evidence of Monotheism in Islam.

And, that is why in religions other than Islam, the God of Muslims is referred to as Allah ', because it is only Muslims who use Allah ' to refer to what they do worship. * * * Allah's General and Specific Mercy:

The words ar-Rahman' (The Beneficent) and ar-Rahim' (The Merciful) are adjectives, both derived from ar-Rahmah' (Mercy).

The former word, the Beneficent, as it is popularly recognized among some commentators, refers to the General Mercy of Allah which is bestowed upon all creatures, among them are the believers and the disbelievers, good-doers and evildoers. And, as we can see, the Divine bounties of life are distributed everywhere and all human beings enjoy the endless merits therein. This is their sustenance. They draw it out of the abundant blessings encompassing the whole world of existence.

The word ar-Rahim' (The Merciful) refers to that Specific Mercy that is endowed upon the believing, obedient servants alone. The believers, because of their true belief, good actions, and faithful active obedience, deserve this special, exclusive mercy, of which the disbelievers are deprived.

The particular fact ratifying this topic is that the word Rahman is always used in the Qur'an with the meaning of an infinite form of mercy, which is a sign of its generality, while the word Rahim is sometimes used with the meaning of a finite form, which is a sign of its specificity such as: "... And He is full of Mercy to the Believers ", (Sura Al-Ahzab, No. 33, verse 43). And it is sometimes used in an infinite form such as in Sura Al-Fatihah.

A narration from Imam Sadiq (a.s.) says: " Allah is the God of all things and is Beneficent to all His creatures, and He is Merciful, especially to the believers."(18) Therefore, at the moment that we initiate any action, when we begin with the Name of Allah, we must seek His Mercy, General and Specific Mercy, both.

It is interesting to note that this power, which has a broad concept much the same as gravitational pull, and has the ability to draw hearts closer together, is the very Attribute of Mercy. This Attribute of Mercy is the very means by which men can attain a close relationship with the Creator, also.