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Immanence, Self-Experience, and Transcendence in Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein and Karl Jaspers

Immanence, Self-Experience, and Transcendence in Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein and Karl Jaspers

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Publisher: www.researchrepository.ucd.ie
English

This book is corrected and edited by Al-Hassanain (p) Institue for Islamic Heritage and Thought

Immanence, Self-Experience, and Transcendence in Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein and Karl Jaspers

Dermot Moran

(University College Dublin)

Table of Contents

Phenomenology and Transcendence: The Problem   4

Immanence and Transcendence in Husserl’s Phenomenology  8

Transcendence in Husserl’s Ideas I (1913) 11

Karl Jaspers on Transcendence 16

Edith Stein’s Starting-Point: Natural Experience 19

Phenomenology and the Meaning of Being  21

Edith Stein and the Recognition of the Eternal at the heart of the Finite 22

Notes 26

In memory of Gerry Hanratty

Phenomenology and Transcendence: The Problem

Phenomenology’s relationship with the concept of transcendence is not at all straightforward. Indeed, phenomenology, from its inception, has had an ambiguous, uneasy relationship with transcendence, with the wholly other, with the numinous. Phenomenology, as the French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion has recently emphasised, ispar excellence the philosophy of givenness, reflecting specifically on the ‘givenness’ of the given, on what Husserl speaks of as the ‘how’ (Wie ) or ‘mode’ (Art ,Weise ) of givenness.[1] Phenomenology deliberately restricts itself to describing carefully and without prejudice whatever isgiven to experience in the manner in which it is so given. Marion frames the essential question of phenomenology as: ‘Can the givenness in presence of each thing be realised without any condition of restriction?[2] But, if phenomenology is restricted to givenness, what becomes of that which is withheld or cannot in principle come to givenness? As such, and from the outset, then, theepoché of Husserlian phenomenology brackets the transcendent, and, specifically, traditional metaphysical or ontotheological conceptions of God as a transcendent being outside the world. Is, then, the relation between phenomenology and transcendence always one of distance and renunciation, or is another way of relating possible?

In this paper[3] I want to re-examine the role of the concept of ‘transcendence’ in phenomenology, focusing explicitly on the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Edith Stein (1891-1942), but I shall also refer briefly to the German philosopher of existence Karl Jaspers (1883-1969),[4] precisely because he made transcendence a central theme of his philosophy, and because of his influence on Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).[5] Heidegger’s conception of the transcendental and of transcendence appears to have come from hisAuseinandersetzung with his mentor Husserl,[6] but also from his close personal relationship during the 1920s with Karl Jaspers, the medic turned philosopher, who himself was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and existential philosophy. Following a discussion of the Husserlian problematic of transcendence, I shall examine Edith Stein (1891-1942), specifically her work attempting to relate phenomenology to Thomistic ontology. Here I shall be concentrating on her understanding of being asfullness and of theego as the primary sense of being, as somehow encapsulating the mystery of being. Stein sees a way of combining the insights of Husserlian eidetic phenomenology with traditional Thomistic talk about the divine, to find a new way of articulating transcendence. What unites Husserl, Stein, Jaspers, and Heidegger is that they all accord a special place to the transcendence of the self, the transcendence of human existence, or the transcendence of Dasein. The paradox at the centre of their philosophies is that the most immanent self-experience is precisely that which reveals transcendence.

Transcendence means literally ‘going beyond’. In one sense, transcendence refers to the region of ‘otherness’, whatever lies beyond or is other, especially other than one’s self.[7] In this regard the French phenomenologist Natalie Depraz has claimed, for instance, that phenomenology isthe philosophy of otherness.[8] But, in Husserl’s

phenomenology, transcendence as going-beyond is intrinsically related to a deeper experience of selfhood or ‘self-experience’ (Selbsterfahrung ) such that, paradoxically, genuine transcendence has to be discovered in immanence. The original transcendence, for Husserl, is the living ego itself, in that it is directly experienced, and is temporally constituted and hence never completely capturable in a totalising view. The self is essentially self-transcending. Heidegger makes this ‘transcendence of Dasein’ into an essential part of existential analytic of human existence.

Both Husserl and Stein begin, as do in their own ways Saint Augustine and Descartes, with one’s own first-person experience of one’s own being. Self-experience, as Husserl argues in theCartesian Meditations [9] has to be the starting point and the measure for all other experiences if these experiences are to be captured purely under theepoché . Of course, that is not to say that self-experience ought to be considered as self-enclosed and solipsistic. Quite the reverse. Husserl and Stein both saw subjectivity as a one-sided abstraction from the interrelated nexus of concrete intersubjectivity. On the other hand, it would be phenomenologically inaccurate to deny that experience is deeply ‘egoic’ and first-personal in its core originary nature.

Stein received her doctoral training under Edmund Husserl, and was intimately involved in the theory and practice of Husserlian phenomenology (at Göttingen); but she later moved to embrace Catholicism, and in her mature writings offers a very original and independent re-conceptualisation of the Thomistic heritage illuminated by her phenomenological background. This work of synthesis between phenomenology and Thomist metaphysics receives its fullest articulation in herEndliches und Ewiges Sein (Finite and Eternal Being , 1936)[10] , a book written, as she said echoing Husserl’s own view of himself as a phenomenologist, ‘by a beginner for beginners’ (FEB, p. xxvii), to explain Thomistic philosophy for the modern mind. In this work, Stein explicitly acknowledges that she wants to use Husserlian phenomenology as a way of gaining access to Thomistic or ‘scholastic’ thought (FEB, p. 12).Finite and Eternal Being , a vast compendium of speculative commentary on key Aristotelian and Thomistic concepts, including a kind of new cosmology, is at its core a very deep appreciation of the experience of being asfullness , a concept that unites Husserl and Aquinas, albeit that Husserl is attempting to approach being precisely from its experiential meaningfulness as given.

Husserl’s own leanings towards empiricism and his suspicion of Hegelian invocations of the absolute led him to distrust metaphysical speculation that was not grounded phenomenologically. Furthermore, when he embraced the Kantian critical and ‘transcendental’ approach, he further distanced himself from naïve discussions of the transcendent. But transcendence is problematic for Husserl for an even more essential reason, namely because of the methodological strictures phenomenology imposes on itself with regard to the importation of speculative assumptions. Indeed, it is one of the explicit functions of Husserl’s ‘bracketing’ or ‘suspension’ (epoché ) to exclude consideration of the transcendent, at least in the sense of that which may in principle be considered apart from consciousness. If there

is to be transcendence, for the mature Husserl, then this is always transcendence under theepoché ; it is ‘transcendence-within-immanence’ hence not pure ‘transcendence’. As Husserl says in his programmaticIdeas I (1913)[11] , the eidetic attitude of phenomenology after the reduction ‘excludes every sort of transcendence’ (Ideas I § 86, p. 209; III/1 178). Yet, paradoxically, as Husserl will attest in hisFormal and Transcendental Logic (1929)[12] , it is an essential part of phenomenology’s brief to explore ‘the sense of transcendence’ (Sinn der Transzendenz , FTL § 93c, p. 230; Hua XVII: 237), that is, the manner in which we have experience of an objective world as such.

While Husserl always insisted that phenomenology proceeds in immanence, in an important essay on the relation between Thomism and phenomenology, Edith Stein points out that Husserl was seeking a region ofgenuine immanence in the sense of a region of immediate, inviolable self-givenness, from which all doubt is excluded, but no matter how much he attempted to transcendentally purify his starting point, ‘traces of transcendence showed up’[13] . Stein maintains this is because Husserl’s ideal of knowledge is in fact divine knowledge, where knowing and being are one and where there is no transcendence (a version of the ‘view from nowhere’), where knowledge is simply disclosure of the given without mediation or obstruction or slant. In other words, for Stein in her critique of Husserl, his philosophy of pure immanence cannot escape transcendence. The finite and determined has to open up to the infinite, undetermined and indeterminate.

In thinking of ‘transcendence’, Husserlian phenomenology begins by rejecting thinking of transcendence framed in Cartesian terms, paradigmatic in modern epistemology, whereby the central question is how totranscend the closed sphere of subjectivity in order to attain to an ‘external’ objectivity beyond the subject. This conception of trancendence as objectivity opposed to subjectivity is precisely what comes to be challenged in Kantian critical philosophy. Consider the question famously formulated by Immanuel Kant is hisLetter to Markus Herz of 21 February 1772 (translated in Zweig, 1967, 70-76), a letter written some years before the First Critique but still considered to express the essentials of the transcendental turn. Kant asked:

What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call “representation” [Vorstellung ] to the object [Gegenstand ]? If a representation is only a way in which the subject [subiect ] is affected by the object, then it is easy to see how the representation is in conformity with this object, namely, as an effect in accord with its cause, and it is easy to see how this modification of our mind canrepresent something, that is, have an object. … In the same way, if that in us which we call “representation” were active with regard to the object [des obiects ], that is, if the object itself were created by the representation (as when divine cognitions are conceived as the archetypes of all things), the conformity of these representations to their objects could be understood. … However, our understanding, through its representations, is not the cause of the object (save in the case of moral ends) nor is the object [Gegenstand ] the cause of the intellectual representations in the mind (in sensu reali ). Therefore the pure concepts of the understanding must not be abstracted from sense perceptions, nor must

they express the reception of representations through the senses; but though they must have their origin in the nature of the soul, they are neither caused by the object [vom Obiect ] nor bring the object [das obiect ] itself into being. (Zweig, 1967, 71-2)[14]

Kant is the source of most twentieth-centurty worries about transcendence (in so far as ‘things in themselves’ transcend every possibility of being meaningfully cognised) and his recommendation of a transcendental turn, whereby we reflect on the subjective conditions that make transcendent objecthood possible, has dominated post-Kantian philosophy.

But Kant also recognises the inalienability of the human desire for transcendence, and this recognition inspired philosophers such as Jacobi to attempt to find again a place for a faith that grasped the transcendent in a way inaccessible to reason. As Hegel comments in his ‘Faith and Knowledge’ essay:

Reason, having in this way become mere intellect, acknowledges its own nothingness by placing that which is better than it in afaith outside and above itself, as abeyond [to be believed in]. This is what has happened in thephilosophies of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte. Philosophy has made itself the handmaid of a faith once more.

Husserl actually tries to find a new way to understand transcendence, not by assigning it to a suprarational faculty or to faith, but rather by rethinking it from within the concept of phenomenologicalgivenness , as we shall see.

Both senses of transcendence (as that which cannot be attained but also as that which must be sought) found in Kant continue to play a significant role in Husserlian and especially in post-Husserlian phenomenology (Levinas, Marion, Henry). Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), for instance, speaks of the desire for the absolutely ‘other’,Autre But this tendency in Levinas and recent phenomenology is somewhat at odds with Husserl and Stein who begin with self-experience. Let us now examine Husserl in more detail.

Immanence and Transcendence in Husserl’s Phenomenology

There are a number of concepts of transcendence at play in Husserl’s thought and it is not clear that these different senses of transcendence ever get fully resolved in his writing. The term ‘transcendence’ does not occur in the First Edition of theLogical Investigations (1900-01). It appears in his writing more or less simultaneously with his discovery of the reduction (c. 1905) and is prominent inThe Idea of Phenomenology lectures of 1907.[15] As Stein puts it, Husserl’s ‘absolute starting point’ for phenomenology is theimmanence of consciousness to which is contrasted the transcendence of the world.[16] But in fact this only a first sense of transcendence. In his mature publications beginning withIdeas I, Husserl explores a deeper sense of transcendence, as we shall see, whereby corporeal things are transcendent because their essence contains a kind of infinity that is never intuitable in a completely adequate and fulfilled way. Every thing is graspable only through a manifold of ‘adumbrations’ (Abschattungen ) and ‘aspects’ (Aspekte ), which can never be fully actualised by a finite cognising mind. Even the corporeal thing, then, is in essence what Husserl calls a ‘Kantian idea’, a manifold of infinite perspectives.

As the French phenomenologist Michel Henry has recognised, one of the first places where Husserl tackles the issue of transcendence and immanence is in his 1907Idea of Phenomenology lectures.[17] Husserl begins with the classic epistemological problem – how do I know that I know? How do I know that my knowledge is secure? Husserl characterises this classic epistemological problem as the problem of transcendence (IP, p. 28; Hua II: 36). The ‘riddle’ of knowledge is put in Kantian terms as the possibility of its contact with the transcendent (IP, p. 33; Hua II: 43). Nothing transcendent can be taken as pre-given; as Husserl writes: ‘The transcendence of the thing requires that we put the thing in question’ (IP, p. 38; Hua II: 49)

According to Husserl, the very nature of thecontact (Triftigkeit - a phrase inherited from Kant) with the transcendent is precisely what the traditional epistemologist cannot master. Some philosophers have abandoned the possibility that knowledge can be in contact with the transcendent and, at that point, what remains to be explained in how the prejudice has arisen whereby it is assumed that human knowledge does reach the transcendent. For Husserl, it is Hume who took this latter route. For Husserl, on the other hand, the epistemological reduction must be performed whereby every transcendence is excluded, and intentional connections of meaningfulness are revealed.

Overcoming the probematic of traditional epistemology, Husserl defines a new kind of givenness -- ‘absolute givenness’ -- which he attaches to the very act of conscious experiencing itself, to every ‘thought’ or cogitatio. This leads Husserl to declare in the Second Lecture of the Idea of Phenomenology:

Every intellectual experience, indeed every experience whatsoever, can be made into an object of pure seeing and apprehension while it is

occurring. And in this act of seeing, it is an absolute givenness. (IP, p. 24; Hua II: 31 )

The stream of experience given in reflection has ‘absolute givenness’. Husserl goes on to discuss the manner in which the given is immanent in our experience while at the same time emphasising that there is no actual thing present or immanent in the actual occurringErlebnis . This leads to a double meaning for transcendence:

…it can refer to the fact that the known object is not really [reell ] contained in the act of knowing (IP, p. 27; Hua II: 35)

But

…there isanother sense of transcendence , whose counterpart is an entirely different kind of immanence, namely,absolute andclear givenness ,self-givenness in the absolute sense . (IP, p. 27; Hua II: 35)

This absolute self-givenness consists in ‘an immediate act of seeing and apprehending the meant objectivity itself as it is’. Only the immanentcogitatio is given. The problem now becomes for Husserl how to safeguard the purity of the phenomenon of thecogitatio from contamination by our prejudices including the psychological reading of thecogitatio (as a psychological fact, a datum in space-time, and so on). This purification for Husserl goes beyond the epistemological reduction and he calls it the ‘phenomenological reduction’ (IP, p. 34; Hua II: 44) whose aim is to purify the ‘psychological’ phenomenon into the absolute givenness of pure phenomenon. Husserl contrasts this absolute givenness of the immanent with the ‘quasi-givennesses’ (Quasi-Gegebenheiten , Hua II: 45) of transcendent objects. The pure phenomenon contains an intentional referring beyond itself but that must be treated precisely as it is given in immanent seeing and this brings us squarely into the phenomenological perspective, or as Husserl puts it, ‘and thus we drop anchor on the shore of phenomenology’ (und so werfen wir schon Anker an der Küste der Phänomenologie , IP, p. 34; Hua II: 45).

Continuing the metaphor Husserl warns that this shore has its share of rocks, is covered by clouds of obscurity and threatened with the gales of scepticism. We have what is given absolutely and purely in immanence:

On the other hand, the relation to something transcendent, whether I question the existence (Sein ) of the transcendent object or the ability of the relation to make contact (Triftigkeit ) with it, still contains something that can be apprehended within the pure phenomenon. The relating-itself-to-something transcendent (Das sich-auf-Transzendentes-beziehen ), to refer to it in one way or another, is an inner characteristic of the phenomenon. (IP, p. 35; Hua II: 46)

It is worth rehearsing Husserl’s first tentative uncovering of the transcendent at the heart of the immanent in these lectures as a guide to what is the relation between phenomenology and transcendence. Not every transcendence is excluded; there is a genuine transcendence recognised that is the counterpart of the pure immanence of absolute givenness. But about this genuine transcendence Husserl has little to say in these years other than to point to the subject-transcending nature of validity, truth and other values.

From out of the ‘Heraclitean stream ofErlebnisse (IP, p. 36; Hua II 47) comes a consciousness of unity, of identity, of transcendence, objectivity, and so on. How is that possible? Husserl furthermore acknowledges that the mere apprehension of thecogitatio in itself is of little value, what matters is the turn towards theeidos . Indeed, the possibility of the critique of knowledge depends on the recognition of forms of givenness other than the singularhic et nunc . We already move beyond thesecogitationes themselves when we make judgements about what is true, valid, and so on.

The first genuine transcendence within immanence is then the intuition of theeidos . In later works, specificallyIdeas I andCartesian Meditations , Husserl is particularly interested in the manner in which the givenness of the world transcends the imperfect type of evidences that display it (CM § 28 Hua I: 61-2) and no imaginable synthesis can bring the world to adequate evidence. The being of the world necessarily transcends consciousness; nevertheless the world is inseparable from transcendental subjectivity.

Transcendence in Husserl’s Ideas I (1913)

InIdeas I (1913), transcendence is again discussed in a number of places from different points of view. As inThe Idea of Phenomenology lectures, the transcendence of the physical thing is contrasted with the ‘immanence’ of the conscious experience apprehending it (Ideas I § 42, p. 89; Hua III/1: 76). This transcendence is not merely the fact that the thing is not ‘inside’ the conscious experience. There is also the eidetic insight that a physical thing can never be captured by anyErlebnis and this distinguishes it essentially from any episode of consciousness. This is not the same as the transcendence in which another person’s conscious experiences are recognised in empathy, Husserl says.

The physical thing is said to be, in itself, unqualifiedly transcendent. (Ideas I § 42, p. 90; Hua III/1: 77)

There is an essential contrast between the ‘mode of givenness’ (Gegebenheitsart ) of something immanent and that of something transcendent. A physical thing is adumbrated while a mental process is not. For Husserl, is almost an article of faith that what is absolutely given in immanent consciousness cannot in principle be given in profiles or adumbrations.

However, it is at this point that Husserl’s idealist commitments enter the picture because he goes on to talk about the merely ‘phenomenal being’ of the transcendent as opposed to the absolute being of the immanent ((Ideas I § 44). A physical thing is ‘undetermined’ (unbestimmt ) as to its hidden sides, but it remains infinitely ‘determinable’ (bestimmbar ). The thing is graspable in a highly regulated series of possible perceptions but there always remains a ‘horizon of determinable indeterminateness’ (ein Horizont bestimmbarer Unbestimmtheit ,Ideas I § 44, p. 95; III/1 81). No God can alter that, Husserl remarks. In this sense, the physical thing is really an ‘Idea in the Kantian sense’ (Ideas I § 143, p. 342; III/1 297-8). The idea of a physical thing has ‘dimensions of infinity’ included in it (III/1 § 143, p. 360; 313).

As Christian Lotz has shown[18] , Husserl applies the language of regulative ideas in a rather loose manner, namely, to the constitution of perceptual objects , to the unity of theErlebnisstrom (Ideas I § 83, p. 197, III/1: 166), to the world as such (Hua VII: 276; CM I: 98), to essences of exact types (Hua III/1: 6; also § 74, p. 166; Hua III/1: 138), and, finally, in a certain sense, to his own philosophy and the infinity of the phenomenological task. There are therefore many transcendencies in Husserl but a central intuition is that the experience of time is intimately wrapped up with the experience of the transcendent (Ideas I § 149).

Essentially correlated with the notion of givenness is the notion of a possible consciousness perceiving it (Ideas I § 142). Husserl more and more wants to examine the nature of the transcendental ego as that which is there to apprehend the givenness of thr world. The primary infinity, for the mature Husserl, is the transcendental ego itself, which he calls the most basic or ‘original concept’ (Urbegriff, Hua XXXV: 261) of phenomenology. Moreover, as he will put it in theCartesian Meditations , the science of

transcendental subjectivity is the sphere of ‘absolute phenomenology’ (CM § 35), the ultimate science (FTL § 103). Thus, in 1927, Husserl could write:

The clarification of the idea of my pure ego and my pure life - of my psyche in its pure specific essentiality and individual uniqueness is the basis (das Fundament ) for the clarification of all psychological and phenomenological ideas. (Hua XIV: 438, my translation)

Husserl’s analysis of the ego widened to include a range of related issues: the unity of consciousness, the nature of self, subjectivity, and personhood, the ‘communalisation’ of the self (Vergemeinschaftung , Hua I: 149) with the ‘open plurality of other egos’ (FTL§ 104), amounting to the whole ‘intersubjective cognitive community’ (FTL § 96), or what Husserl in his ‘reconstruction’(Hua XV: 609) of Leibniz, callsmonadology (see CM § 55).

FromIdeas I onwards, Husserl characterises the ego as an ‘I-pole’ (Ichpol ) or ‘I-centre’ (Ich-Zentrum ), ‘the centre of all affections and actions’ (IV 105). It is a ‘centre’ from which ‘radiations’ (Ausstrahlungen ) or ‘rays of regard’ stream out ortowards which rays of attention are directed. It is the centre of a ‘field of interests’ (Interessenfeld ), the ‘substrate of habitualities’ (CM Hua I: 103), ‘the substrate of the totality of capacities’ (Substrat der Allheit der Vermögen , Hua XXXIV: 200). This I ‘governs’, it is an ‘I holding sway’ (das waltende Ich , Hua XIV: 457) in conscious life (IV 108), yet it is also ‘passively affected’. In its full concretion’ (Hua XIV: 26), it is aself with convictions, values, an outlook, a history, a style, and so on: ‘The ego constitutes itselffor itself in, so to speak, the unity of a history’ (CM IV, p. 75; Hua I: 109). It is present in all conscious experience and ‘cannot be struck out’ (undurchsteichbar ). It is more than a formal principle of unity (in the sense of Kant’s unity of apperception), since it has a living, growing, unifying nature. It is also grossly misunderstood if it is treated as a ‘piece of the world’; it is not a ‘thing’ orres at all, rather it both asanonymous source of all meaningfulness and as a growing, developing self, with a history and a future, in relation to other selves, possessinglife in the fullest sense of the word. The transcendental ego covers ‘the universe of the possible forms of lived experience’ (CM § 36).

Husserl sees the ‘self-explication’ (Selbstauslegung XXXIV 228) of the transcendental ego as a set of ‘great tasks’ (CM § 29), but it is beset by paradoxes such as: How can the ego be that which constitutes the world and also that which is concretised, mundanised and corporealised in the world? How can the transcendental ego, the source of all meaning and being, inquire into itself as a meaning- and being-constituting entity? Part of the complexity stems from the very self-referentiality of the ego’s self-knowledge. How can I inquire into what founds me as a self? When I as investigator turn to examine the ego, I am in factdoubling back on myself, inquiring into what constitutes meas functioning self. This necessarily involves a ‘splitting of the ego’ (Ichspaltung ), and is extraordinarily difficult to carry out without lapsing into various forms of transcendental illusion. Indeed, Husserl acknowledges, even to say that I who reflects is ‘I’ involves a certain equivocation (VI 188). Yet, there is both identity and difference in this I. The reflecting ego is in a different attitude and different temporal

dimension from the ego reflected on, yet there is a consciousness of the unity or ‘coincidence’ (Deckung ) of the two.

Husserl’s transcendental idealism claims that the objectivity of the transcendent real world outside of us is an achievement of ‘transcendental intersubjectivity’. This is already articulated in his 1910/1911 lectures (e.g. Hua XIII: 184) but it is constantly reiterated in later works, e.g. the 1928Amsterdam Lectures :

Transcendental intersubjectivity is the absolute and only self-sufficient foundation (Seinsboden ). Out of it are created draws the meaning and validity of everything objective, the totality of objectively real existent entities, but also every ideal world as well. An objectively existent thing is from first to last an existent thing only in a peculiar, relative and incomplete sense. It is an existent thing, so to speak, only on the basis of a cover-up of its transcendental constitution that goes unnoticed in the natural attitude.[19]

Everything we experience as transcendent has the ‘value’ written on it ‘valid for all’,für Jedermann . Everything I experience outwardly is in principle what someone else could experience. This is the very meaning of objectivity (note that Husserl reconstrues the assertions of ideality of LU into the language of intersubjective constitution in later works). The world of spirit coheres into a unity, for Husserl. It is a goal-oriented, rational, communicative world, a ‘community of monads’ (Monadgemeinschaft ), a ‘world of development’ (eine Welt der Entwicklung ), where, according to one lecture, as in Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy, everything takes place for the sake of the Good.[20]

According to Husserl, the discovery of the transcendental brings with it a responsibility to live life on a new level. One remains a ‘child of the world’ (Weltkind , VIII 123; XXXIV 12), but one is also a disinterested spectator grasping this natural life as the unfolding work of the transcendental ego. The meditator must live thereafter in the very splitting of consciousness brought about by theepoché . There is no going back from theepoché , no healing of the split in consciousness. Genuine transcendental idealism requires livingboth in the natural attitude and in the transcendental philosophical attitude, and somehow achieving a ‘synthesis’ of these two attitudes (Hua XXXIV: 16-17). For Husserl the adoption of the transcendental attitude is like a person born blind who recovers his sight as a result of an operation (Hua VIII: 122). The newly disclosed world looks completely new and one cannot rely on any of one’s previous habits and convictions with regard to this entirely new landscape. We have left behind the childhood of naïve natural existence and have entered, to invoke Husserl’s own frequent religious imagery, ‘the kingdom of pure spirit’ (Reich des reinen Geistes , Hua VIII: 123).

In theCartesian Meditations it is precisely the realisation that all being and sense comes from the transcendental ego that provokes the profound meditation in the Fifth Meditation on the meaning of the experience of the other. How can the other in principle show itself within the horizons of my self-experience? Husserl here talks of an ‘immanent transcendence’ (CM V, § 47):

Within this “original sphere ” (the sphere of original self-explication) we find also a “transcendent world”… (CM § 47, pp. 104-5; Hua I 135).

The puzzle is that the objective world, the ‘first transcendence’ is always already there for me as fully formed, but at the same time it is somehow a result of constitution by the transcendental ego.

As I mentioned at the outset, one of phenomenology’s tasks is to explore ‘the sense of transcendence’ (Sinn der Transzendenz , FTL § 93c, p. 230; Hua XVII: 237). Again:

If what is experienced has the sense of ‘transcendent’ being, then it is the experiencing that constitutes this sense, and does so either by itself or in the whole motivational nexus pertaining to it and helping to make up its intentionality. (FTL § 94, p. 233; XVII: 240).

Husserl makes the very important point inFormal and Transcendental Logic § 99 that nothing (neither world nor any existent) comes to me ‘from without’ (he uses the Greek adverb:thúrathen ) Rather

Everything outside (Alles Aussen ) is what it is in this inside (in diesem Innen ), and gets its true being from the givings of it itself (Selbstgebungen ), and from the verifications (Bewährungen ), within this inside - its true being, which for that very reason is itself something that itself belongs to this inside: as a pole of unity in my (and then, intersubjectively, in our) actual and possibile multiplicities (Mannigfaltigkeiten ), with possibilities as my abilities, as ‘I can go there’, ‘I could perform syntactical operations, and so on. (FTL § 99, p. 250; XVII 257)

Transcendental phenomenology, according to theCrisis of European Sciences (1936)[21] even expresses the inner essence of religion (Crisis § 53, Hua VI: 184) and provides Husserl as a deeply religious in unconventional Christian - with the only philosophically justified basis for comprehending God, given the ‘absurdity’ of thinking of Him as an item in the factual world (seeIdeas I § 51Anmerkung ). As he puts it in FTL:

Even God is for me what he is, in consequence of my own productivity of consciousness. (FTL § 99, p. 251; Hua XVII: 258).

Husserl goes on to insist that this does not mean that consciousness ‘makes’ or ‘invents’ (erfinde ) God, this ‘highest transcendence’ (diese höchste Transzendenz , XVII 258).

As we have seen, the concept of the transcendent in Husserl is multifaceted. In his mature writings it is most often encountered in relation to discussions of transcendental philosophy. InCrisis § 14 for instance, Husserl contrasts traditional objectivism in philosophy with what he calls ‘transcendentalism’. Here he defines transcendentalism as follows:

Transcendentalism, on the other hand, says: the ontic meaning of the pregiven life-world is a subjective structure [Gebilde ], it is the achievment of experiencing, pre-scientific life. In this life the meaning and the ontic validity [Seinsgeltung ] of the world are built up - of that particular world that is, which is actually valid for the individual experiencer. As for the “objectively true” world, the world of science, it is a structure at a higher level, built on prescientific experiencing and thinking, or rather on its accomplishments of validity (Geltungsleistungen ). Only a radical inquiry back into subjectivity - and specifically the subjectivity which ultimately

brings about all world-validity, with its content, and in all its prescientific and scientific modes, and into the “what” and the “how” of the rational accomplishments - can make objective truth comprehensible and arrive at the ultimate ontic meaning of the world. (Crisis , p. 69).

Husserl sees the traditional, Cartesian problematic of epistemology as the problem of transcendence (CM IV, p. 81; I 115): how can the certainties I arrive at in the immanent stream of my conscious life acquire objective significance? (CM IV, p. 82; I 116). How can evidence claim to be more than a characteristic of consciousness and actually build up to the experience of an objective world as a whole? What the reduction shows is that this is a non-question because all transcendence is constituted within the domain of transcendental subjectivity:

Transcendence in every form is a within-the-ego self-constituting being-sense. Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being, whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being. (CM IV, p. 83-84; Hua I: 117, trans modified).

The transcendental ego is the ‘universe of possible sense’ and hence to speak of an ‘outside’ is precisely nonsense (CM Hua I: 117).

His letters

Some letters of the imam disclose an important side of the religious life which was confused at that age. The following are some of his letters to his adherents:

1. To Isaaq an-Naysaburi

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) sent a letter to Isaaq bin Isma’il an-Naysaburi saying in it,

“May Allah protect us by His protection, and take care of you in all your affairs by His favor. I understood your letter, may Allah have mercy on you. We, praise be to Allah and by His blessing, are people of a house who pity our followers and feel delighted for the succession of the favors of Allah on them, and feel happy for every blessing that Allah the Almighty endows them with. O Isaaq, may Allah endow you with all blessings and endows whoever is like you whom Allah has had mercy on and given insight like yours…and may He determine the Paradise for you…

And I say: praise be to Allah as the best praise He has ever been praised with and forever for His mercy on you, His saving you from perishment, and smoothing your way on the obstacle. By Allah, it is insurmountable, impassable, difficult obstacle with great distresses that had been mentioned in the first Books. At the time of the deceased (Imam al-Hadi), peace be on him, and at my time you had done some things that neither I was satisfied with you nor were you right in them.

O Isaaq, know well that whoever comes out of this world blind will be blind in the afterworld and more astray. O Isaaq, it is not the eyes that become blind but the hearts that are in the chests. Allah says about the unjust,(He shall say: My Lord! why hast Thou raised me blind and I was a seeing one indeed? He will say: Even so, Our revelations came to you but you neglected them; and thus you shall be forsaken this day) .[102] Is there a sign greater than the excuse of Allah on His creation, His trustee in His earth, and His witness on His people…after those who had left from his first fathers the prophets and his last fathers the guardians (peace and blessings of Allah be on them all). So where do you go astray and where do you go like beasts? You deviate from the truth and believe in falsehood and disbelieve in the blessings of Allah. Are you from those who believe in a part of the Book and disbelieve in the other? So what is the reward of him who does that from you and from other than you? It is but meanness in this life and eternal torment in the afterlife. By Allah, it is the great disgrace! When Allah imposed on you, by His favor and mercy, the obligations, He did not impose them on you because He was in need of you, but out of His mercy on You-there is no god but Him-to distinguish the good from the bad, and to try what there was in your chests, and test what there was in your hearts so that you would compete for the mercy of Allah and that your positions in His paradise would be one better than another. He imposed on you hajj, umrah (minor hajj), prayer, zakat, fasting, and the following of the Ahlul Bayt (a.s). He made to you a door by which you open the doors of the other obligations and as a key to His way. Except for Muhammad (blessings of Allah be on him), and the guardians from his progeny you would be confused like beast knowing nothing of the obligations. Is a town entered except from its gate? When Allah favored you by appointing the guardians after your prophet, He said,(This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favor on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion) .[103] He imposed on you rights for His guardians and ordered you to carry them out so that your wives, properties, foods, and drinks would be lawful to you. Allah said,(Say: I do not ask of you any reward for it but love for my near relatives) ,[104] and know well that(whoever is niggardly, is niggardly against his own self; and Allah is Self-sufficient and you are the needy) .[105] There is no god but Allah, and my speech became too long on what was for you and what was required from you.

Except for that Allah wanted to complete his favor on you, you would neither see a line from me nor would you hear a word after the leaving of the deceased (Imam al-Hadi), peace be upon him, while you are in inadvertence to your end, and after my appointing Ibrahim bin Abdah to you, and after my book that Muhammad bin Musa an-Naysaburi had brought to you, and Allah is He whose help is sought in any case. Beware to be unmindful towards Allah so that you shall be from the losers! Away with him he who turns his back to the obedience of Allah and does not accept the advice of His guardians! Allah has ordered you to obey Him, to obey His messenger, and to obey those in authority among you. May Allah mercify your weakness and inadvertence, and make you patient with your affair. What has beguiled man from his Lord?! If mountains understood some of that which was in this book, they would crack and split because of the fear of Allah, and turn back to the obedience of Allah.  Do whatever you like(so Allah will see your work and (so will) His Messenger and the believers; and you shall be brought back to the Knower of the unseen and the seen, then He will inform you of what you did) .[106] Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and His blessings be on Muhammad and all his progeny.”[107]

2. His letter to the people of Qum and Aabeh

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) sent a letter, some parts of which were lost, to his Shia from the people of Qum and Abeh (Aveh) saying to them,

“Allah the Almighty with His generosity and kindness has favored His people with His prophet Muhammad (a.s.) as a bearer of good tidings and a warner, and has made you succeed in accepting His religion, granted you with His guidance, and planted into the hearts of your past ancestors (may He have mercy on them) and your living offspring (may He suffice and make them live long) the love of the pure progeny (of the Prophet). They, who had left, left on the way of righteousness, and the path of truth and success, and they went to the place of successors, got the fruits of what they had sowed, and found the result of what they had done before…

Our intention is still firm, and our selves are satisfied with your good thoughts. The fixed relation between us and you are firm. It is a will that our ancestors and your ancestors had recommended, and a covenant that had been entrusted to our youth and your old men. They are still on their faith, and Allah has gathered us in the close relation, and close kinship. The Alim (peace of Allah be on him) said, ‘A faithful is a brother of a faithful from his father and mother…”[108]

3. His letter to Ali bin al-Husayn

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) sent a letter to the famous jurisprudent Abul Hasan Ali bin al-Husayn bin Musa bin Babwayh al-Qummi, the notable of the Shia and prominent personality in Hadith, jurisprudence, and the rest of the Islamic sciences. Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said in his letter,

“Praise be to Allah the Lord of the worlds, and the end is for the righteous, the Paradise is for the monotheists, the Hell is for the atheists, and there should be no hostility except against oppressors, and there is no god but Allah the best of creators, and blessing be on the best of His creation Muhammad and his pure progeny.

O my sheikh, trustee, jurisprudent Abul Hasan Ali bin al-Husayn al-Qummi-may Allah be satisfied with you, and make from your progeny good children- I recommend you to fear Allah, offer prayers, and give zakat because no prayer is accepted from one who does not give zakat. I also recommend you to pardon others, suppress anger, continuously associate with kin, comfort brothers and try to carry out their needs at difficulty and ease, be patient, learn religion, be certain of things, undertake the Qur'an, behave with good morals, enjoin the good, and to forbid the wrong. Allah says,(There is no good in most of their secret counsels except (in his) who enjoins charity or goodness or reconciliation between people) .[109] I recommend you to avoid all sins and vices. You are to keep on offering Night Prayer, for the Prophet (a.s) had recommended Ali saying to him, ‘O Ali, you are to keep on the Night Prayer.’ He repeated that three times. Whoever disregards the Night Prayer is not from us. Act according to my recommendation and order my Shia to act due to that. Wait for deliverance, for the Prophet (a.s) said, ‘The best deed of my nation is the waiting for deliverance.’ Our Shia shall be still in sorrow until my son, whom the Prophet (a.s) brought good news about, shall appear. He will fill the earth with justice and fairness after it has been filled with injustice and oppression. O my sheikh, be patient and order all my Shia to be patient;(Surely the earth is Allah's. He gives it as inheritance to whom He will and the end is (best) for the righteous) .[110] Peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be on you and on all our Shia, and Allah is sufficient for us; the best Protector is He, the best Patron, and the best Helper.”[111]

4. His letter to one of his followers

One of the Shia wrote to Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) telling him about the disagreement between the Shia. The imam replied to him in this letter,

“Allah has addressed reasonable people…people concerning me are in different classes; a discerning one is on the way of deliverance, keeping to the truth, clinging to the branch of the origin without being doubtful or suspicious, and finding no resort other than me. There is another class of people who do not take the truth from its owners; they are like a traveler in the sea. They wave whenever the sea waves, and calm whenever the sea calms. Another class of people are those who have been overcome by Satan. They just resist the people of truth, and fight truth by falsehood out of envy. So let alone whoever goes right or left, because when a shepherd wants to gather his sheep, he gathers them with the least effort. Beware of showoff and panting after authority because they lead to perishment…’[112]  

5. His letter to another one of his followers

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) sent a letter to one of his followers expressing his grief from some rabble of the Shia who had deviated from the right path. He said,

“No one of my fathers had been afflicted like what I have been afflicted with the suspicions of this group…if this matter (imamate) was a matter that you had believed in and kept on it until a certain time and then stopped, then suspicion would have certain case, but if it (imamate) is continuous as long as the affairs of Allah are continuous, then what is the meaning of this suspicion?...’[113]

6. His letter to Abdullah al-Bayhaqi

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) sent the following letter to Abdullah bin Hamdwayh al-Bayhaqi:

“I have sent Ibrahim bin Abdah so that the (other) districts and the people of your district pay my dues on you to him and I made him my trust and agent before my followers there. Let them fear Allah and pay the dues and they have no excuse in not doing that or delaying it. May Allah not distress them for disobeying His guardians and may He have mercy on them and on you through my mercifulness to them, and Allah is Ample-giving, Generous.”[114]

7. His letter about Ibrahim

Imam Abu Muhammad al-Askari (a.s.) had appointed Ibrahim bin Abdah as his agent to receive the legal dues and to spend them on religion and on the needy, and given him a letter mentioning in it his reliability and high position. Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) was asked whether this letter was written by him or not, and he replied,

“My book that came to Ibrahim bin Abdah on appointing him as my agent to receive my rights from our followers there…yes, it was my book written by my hand to him. I have appointed him to them in their country. It is true and not false. Let him fear Allah as He should be feared, and let them take out my rights and give them to him, for I have permitted him to do with them as required. May Allah give him success and save him from failure.”[115]

8. His letter to his followers

He sent this letter to some of his followers:

“May Allah gift you with asceticism in this life and success as He pleases, assistance for His obedience, protection from disobedience, guidance from deviation, and may He gather for us and for our followers the good of the two abodes (this life and the afterlife).

I was informed of the disagreement of your hearts, and the separation of your desires, and the incitement of Satan until he caused separation among you, disbelief in religion, attempting to destroy what your ancestors had built in the religion of Allah and proved the rights of His guardians. He (Satan) took you to the way of deviation, and away from the path of the truth, and so many of you receded as if you had not read the Book of Allah and not understood any of His commands and prohibitions. I swear that if your fools rely on their delusions and fabricate false traditions, they shall deserve torment, and if you are satisfied with that from them and do not deny it by your hands, tongues, hearts, and intentions, you shall be participants with them in what they have fabricated against Allah, His messenger, and the guardians after him. If it was not so, the people of az-Zabad would not lie in their claim, nor al-Mughirah in their disagreement, nor al-Kaysaniyyah on their man, nor other liars and the deviants who have turned away from us. Indeed, you are worse than them…and most of them were obliged to submit to the command of Allah, except some group that if I want, I shall mention it by the name…Satan has overcome them and made them forget the mention of Allah, and whoever forgets the mention of Allah…Allah will throw him into Fire, and it shall be an evil abode.

My this book is an authority on them, and an authority for your absents on your presents, except one who is informed and carries out his duty. I pray Allah to gather your hearts on guidance, protect you by piety, and make you do what pleases Him, and peace, blessing, and mercy of Allah be on you.’[116]     

9. His letter to one of his adherents

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said in this letter to one of his followers:

“Every predestined thing would come true. Rely on Allah the Almighty and He will suffice you, and trust in Him and He will not disappoint you! You have complained against your brother. Know well that Allah does not help in the rapture of relations, and Allah is over any oppression of every oppressor. Whoever is oppressed surely Allah will help him, and Allah is Strong, Mighty. You have asked me to pray for you. May Allah the Almighty keep you safe, and be your helper and protector. I pray Allah the Generous, Who has made you know His right and the right of His guardians that others than you were ignorant of, not to remove from you any blessing He has endowed you with, He is Patron worthy of all praise.’[117]

10. His letter to one of his Shia adherents

One of the Shia wrote a letter to the imam complaining against an oppressor who oppressed and did him wrong. Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) replied to him:

“We satisfy ourselves with Allah the Almighty this day against every oppressor, wrongdoer, and envier. Woe unto whoever says something that Allah knows its opposite. How terrible is that which he shall meet from the Master of the Day of Judgment! Surely Allah the Almighty is the Helper and Assistant to the oppressed. Trust and rely on Him and He will relieve your distress and save you from the evil of every evildoer. May Allah do that for you and favor us with you, He is powerful over everything. May Allah overcome every oppressor this moment! No one, who wrongs and oppresses, shall be successful. Woe unto whoever is taken by the fingers of the oppressed! Do not be distressed but trust in Allah and rely on Him, and He will bring your deliverance soon.  Surely Allah is with those who are patient and who do good to others.’[118]

Words of light

A good collection of maxims and wonderful words on different social and educational issues were transmitted from Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) and considered from the treasures of the Islamic literature. Here we present to readers some of the imam’s wonderful sayings:

The Preference Of The Ahlul Bayt (A.S)

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said,

“We have ascended the tops of facts by the feet of prophethood and guardianship, and lit the seven ways with the banners of magnanimity. We are lions of battles, sources of generosity. Sword and pen are among us now, and the banner of praise and knowledge later on. Our grandsons are the successors of religion, allies of certainty, lamps of nations, and the keys of generosity. A generous one has put on the garment of choice for loyalty that we have known in him, and the Holy Spirit in the Heavens, and he tasted from our gardens early fruits. Our Shia are the rescued party, and the pure group. They have been as dress and protection for us, and assistance against oppressors…Springs of life will gush out for them after flames of Fire…and all bad years…’

Sheikh al-Majlisi commented on this word by saying, ‘This is absolute wisdom, and an ample blessing that deaf ears can hear and high mountains shake for. Peace and blessings of Allah be on them…’[119]

The imams of the Ahlul Bayt (a.s) had a very high position near Allah Who had endowed them with virtues and knowledge that no one of the human beings other than them had ever been endowed with. Allah had made them the guides to His contentment, and the leaders to His obedience. They all were and are lamps to nations and keys of generosity in this life, and in the afterlife they will be the intercessors and bearers of the banner of Hamd (praise), and Allah has given them the Highest Paradise.

His Recommendation To His Adherents

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) preached and advised his Shia by saying,

“I recommend you to fear Allah, be pious in your religion, strive for Allah, be truthful in speaking, give deposit back to its owner good or bad he is, increase prostration, and to be good to neighbors. By these (principles) Muhammad (a.s.) came with his mission. Associate with your kin, attend their funerals, visit their sick, and carry out their rights, for if anyone of you is pious in his religion, truthful in his speech, he gives deposit back to its owner, and treats people kindly, it shall be said about him: “this is a Shia”, and this shall please me.

Fear Allah, be good and do not be bad! Attract every love to us, and keep any obscenity away from us, because whatever good is said about us we deserve it, and whatever bad is said about us is not in us. We have a right in the Book of Allah, kinship to the messenger of Allah, and purification from Allah that no one other than us claims but a liar. Mention Allah too much and remember death! Recite the Qur'an and send peace and blessings on the Prophet (a.s), because the sending of blessings on the Prophet (a.s) has ten good deeds. Keep in mind what I have recommended you! I pray Allah to protect you (I farewell you), and send peace on you.’[120]

A Valuable Advice

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said,

“Avoid begging people as long as you can tolerate, for every day has a new goodness. Insisting on asking others deprives one of his gravity except when a door may be opened to you for a good entrance. And how near slapping is to a rash one! Jealousy might be a kind of the manners of Allah the Almighty. Lucks have degrees, so do not hasten towards a fruit that it is not ripe yet because it is got at its time! He, Who manages your affairs, is more aware of the time that is good for you. Trust in His experience in your affairs and do not hurry for your needs at the beginning of your time and then your heart may be distressed and despair may overcome you! Know that coyness has a certain extent and if it exceeds, it shall turn to weakness, generosity has a certain extent and if it exceeds, it shall be wasting, economy has a certain extent and if it exceeds, it shall be stinginess, and courage has a certain extent and if it exceeds, it shall be recklessness…’[121]

Preaching

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) often and always advised his companions, reminded them of the afterlife, and warned them against the sedition and deception of the worldly life. Once, he said,

“You are in short lives, and few days, and death comes unexpectedly. Whoever sows good shall harvest happiness, and whoever sows evil shall harvest regret. Every sower shall get what he has sowed. No slow one is preceded by his luck, and no careful one gets what has not been determined for him. Whoever is given good, Allah has given him that, and whoever is saved from an evil Allah has saved him from it.’[122]

Pondering On Allah

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said,

“Worship is not the abundant fasting and praying, but worship is the abundant pondering; it is the continuous thinking of Allah.’[123]

In his traditions, the imam established the bases of the faith in Allah, and the most important one of which was the thinking of Allah, and pondering on His wonderful creation because that would lead man to the absolute faith in Allah, the Great Creator.

Wisdom Of Fasting

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said, ‘Allah has imposed fasting so that the wealthy might suffer hunger and be kind to the poor.’[124]

Dispraising The Hypocrites

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said, ‘What a bad man he is who has two faces and two tongues! He praises his brother when he is present and eats his flesh (backbites him) when he is absent. He envies him if he is given (becomes in good state), and betrays him if he is afflicted.’[125]  

Pious And Impious

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said, ‘The love of the pious to the pious is a virtue for the pious, the hatred of the impious towards the pious is a merit for the pious, and the hatred of the pious towards the impious is disgrace for the impious.’[126]

Wonderful Short Maxims

The following are some of the wonderful maxims transmitted from Imam Abu Muhammad al-Askari (a.s.). He said,

1. “If fate is inevitable, then what for is the supplication (of man to other than Allah)?”

2. “A believer is a blessing for a believer and an authority on an unbeliever.”

3. “The heart of a fool is in his mouth, and the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.”

4. “Anger is the key of every evil.”

5. “A spiteful one is the least comfortable.”

6. “The most pious of people is he who refrains before suspicion. The most worshipping of people is he who keeps on obligations. The most ascetic one is he who refrains from unlawful things. The best mujtahid is he who refrains from sins.”

7. “Let no secure livelihood make you busy away from an obligatory deed!’

8. “He, who exceeds in something, is like one who lacks that thing.”

9. “Whenever a mighty one gives up the truth, he becomes low, and whenever a low one keeps to it, he becomes mighty.”

10. “The friend of an ignorant is always tired.”

11. “There are two qualities that no quality is over them; the faith in Allah and the serving of brothers.”

12. “The daring of a child in childhood before father makes him undutiful in adulthood.”

13. “It is not from politeness to show joy before a distressed person.”

14. “Better than life is that which if you lose, you shall hate life, and worse than death is that which if comes to you, you shall love death.”

15. “Taming an ignorant and preventing a habitual from his habits are as a miracle.”

16. “Humbleness is a blessing that is not envied.”

17. “Do not be generous to someone with what may be heavy to him!”[127]

18. “He, who advises his brother secretly, does him good, and he, who advises him openly, does him wrong.”

19. “How bad from a faithful it is when he has a desire that degrades him.”

20 “It suffices you to be polite that you avoid what you hate in others.”

21. “Beware of every silent, intelligent one!”

22. “If all people of this world are intelligent, the world would be ruined.”

23. “The weakest of enemies in cunning, is he who shows his enmity.”

24. “The best of your brothers is he who forgets your wrong against him, and remembers your kindness to him.”

25. “Good figure is apparent beauty, and good mind is hidden beauty.”

26. “He, who is friendly with Allah, feels aversion towards people.”

27. “He, who does not regard people, does not regard Allah.”

28. “Vices have been put in a house whose key is lying.”

29. “When hearts are active, put into them, and when they detest, farewell them!”

30. “Following after one whom you hope is better than remaining with one whom you do not feel safe from his evil.”

31. “Ignorance is an enemy and discernment is authority, and he, whom patience does not make suffer agonies of anger, shall not feel the ease of heart.”

32. “The gift of a generous one makes you beloved to him, and the gift of a mean one makes you low to him.”

33. “Whoever piety is his habit and virtues are his garments shall win on his enemies by good praise, and shall be fortified against defects by good mention.”

34. “He, who praises an undeserving one, becomes as accused.”

35. “No one knows (the reality of) a blessing except the grateful, and no one is grateful to a blessing except the knowing.”

36. “Staying up makes sleep more pleasant, and hunger makes food more delicious.”

37. “Getting to Allah the Almighty is a travel that is not achieved except by riding the night.”[128]

38. “He, who does not know how to prevent, does not know how to give.”

39. He said to al-Mutawakkil, the Abbasid caliph, “Do not expect good will from one whom you have offended, or loyalty from one whom you have betrayed, or sincerity from one whom you have suspected, because the hearts of others towards you are like your heart towards them.”

40. “It is from ignorance to laugh with no reason.”

41. “The speech of Allah has preference to all speech as His preference to His creation, and our speech has preference to the speech of people as our preference to them.”

42. “It is from humbleness to greet everyone you pass by, and to sit in other than the distinctive place in a meeting.”

43. “The worthiest people of (your) love are those who comfort you.”

44. “From the disasters that break one’s back is a neighbor who if sees a good deed, he puts it out and if sees a bad deed, he spreads it.”

45. “(In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful) is closer to the greatest Name of Allah than the iris of the eye to its white.”

46. “Do not dispute with others so that your gravity goes away, and do not joke so that it is dared against you.”

47. “Whoever is satisfied to sit in other than the distinctive place in a meeting, Allah and His angels send blessings on him until he leaves the meeting.”

48. “Polytheism in people is hidden more than the creeping of ants on a black cloth in a dark night.”

49. “Hearts have ideas from fancy, while minds shake and get more knowledge out of experiments, and taking lessons leads to reasonability.”

50. “Predominant fates are not resisted by struggle, and determined livelihoods are not gained by greediness and requesting…submit yourself to fates and know that you shall not get except what has been determined for you.”

With the Holy Qur’an

The infallible imams of the Ahlul Bayt (a.s) paid too much attention to the interpretation (tafsir) of the Holy Qur'an. Each one of them had a school of tafsir, and definitely they were the most aware of the contents of the Qur'an and all its sciences. The master of the pure progeny Imam Ali (a.s.) was, among all the Prophet’s companions, the most aware of the facts and minute details of the qur’an, its muhkam (clear) verses and mutashabih (ambiguous) verses, and he knew when and where each verse was revealed.

As for Imam Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Askari (a.s.), he was one of the masters of interpreters. A special tafsir known as “tafsir Imam al-Askari” was transmitted from him. Here we mention in brief some holy verses that the imam had interpreted:

1. Abu Hashim al-Ja’fari said, ‘Once, I was with Abu Muhammad (a.s.) and asked him about this saying of Allah:(Then We gave the Book for an inheritance to those whom We chose from among Our servants; but of them is he who wrongs himself, and of them is he who takes a middle course, and of them is he who is foremost in deeds of goodness by Allah's permission) .[129] He said, ‘It has been revealed about the progeny of Muhammad (a.s.). One, who wrongs himself, is the one who does not acknowledge the imam, and one who takes a middle course is the one who acknowledges the imam, and one who is foremost in deeds of goodness by Allah’s permission is the imam.’

My eyes shed tears and I thought with myself of what Allah had given to the progeny of Muhammad (a.s.). The imam looked at me and said, ‘How great is that which your self told you about the great importance of the progeny of Muhammad! Thank Allah for He has made you love them! You shall be called with them on the Day of Resurrection when every human being shall be called with his imam. Be delighted Abu Hashim! You are in good.’[130]   

2. Muhammad bin Salih al-Armani asked Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) about this verse(Allah effaces and establishes what He pleases, and with Him is the basis of the Book) [131] and he replied, ‘Does Allah efface but what has been established, and does He establish but what has been not existent?...The Almighty is far above all things. He is Aware of all things before their existence, the Creator when there was no creation, the Reckoner.’ Muhammad bin Salih said to the imam, ‘I bear witness that you are the authority of Allah and His guardian, and you are on the true path of Imam Ameerul Mo'minin.’[132]

3. Muhammad bin Salih al-Armani asked Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) about this saying of Allah(Allah's is the command before and after) [133] and the imam said, ‘The command is His before He issues it, and the command is His after He commands as He wills.’ I said to myself, ‘This is the saying of Allah(Surely His is the creation and the command; blessed is Allah, the Lord of the worlds) .[134] ’ The imam looked at me, smiled, and then said, ‘(His is the creation and the command; blessed is Allah, the Lord of the worlds) .’[135]

4. Abu Hashim said, ‘I was with Abu Muhammad (a.s.) when ibn Salih al-Armani asked him about this verse,(And when your Lord brought forth from the children of Adam, from their backs, their descendants, and made them bear witness against their own souls: Am I not your Lord? They said: Yes, we bear witness) .[136] Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said, ‘The knowing was proved and they forgot that situation, but they will remember it, and without that no one would know who his creator and provider is.’

I was astonished with myself at the great favors Allah had endowed His guardian (Imam Abu Muhammad) with and the great task He had entrusted him with. Abu Muhammad turned to me and said, ‘O Abu Hashim, the matter is greater and more astonishing than what you have been astonished at. What you think about some people whom whoever acknowledges, acknowledges Allah, and whoever denies, denies Allah? There is no believer that does not believe in them and is not certain in knowing them.’[137]

5. Sufyan bin Muhammad as-Sayfi said, ‘I wrote to Abu Muhammad (a.s.) asking him about the “waleejah: friend or protector” mentioned in this saying of Allah,(and take none for friends and protectors except Allah, His Messenger, and the believers) .[138] I said with myself: ‘Whom does he think the “believers” are here?’

His reply came to me saying, ‘The “waleejah” is that which is set for the “guardian”. Your self talked to you that who were meant by the “believers” in this verse. They are the imams who believe in Allah, and namely we are those “believers”.’

The Tafsir Ascribed To Him

The tafsir called Tafsir al-Askari was ascribed to Imam Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Askari (a.s.) but suspicions were aroused about it; some proved it was his and some others denied that. Here we should have a stop to ponder on it.

Those Who Depended On This Tafsir

Some of the great ulama of the Twelver Shia depended on this tafsir and believed certainly it was Imam Abu Muhammad’s tafsir. The following are the names of some of those ulama:

1. Shaikh as-Saduq[139]  

2. Shaikh at-Tabarsi[140]

3. Al-Muhaqqiq al-Kurki[141]

4. The Second Martyr[142]

5. Muhammad Taqiy al-Majlisi[143]

6. Ibn Shahrashub[144]

7. Al-Muhaqqiq Agha Buzurgh[145]

These great men did not suspect the ascribing of this tafsir to Imam al-Askari and believed it was really his.

The Sanad[146] Of This Tafsir

The sand of this tafsir was mentioned in the beginning of the book (Tafsir al-Askari) as the following:

Muhammad bin Ali bin Muhammad bin Ja’far bin Daqqaq said, “The two jurisprudent sheikhs Abul Hasan Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Ali bin al-Hasan bin Shathan and Abu Muhammad Ja’far bin Muhammad bin Ali al-Qummi told me from Abul Hasan Muhammad bin al-Qassim al-Astrabadi the interpreter and preacher that Abu Ya’qub Yousuf bin Muhammad bin Ziyad and Abul Hasan Ali bin Muhammad bin Sayyar, who were from the Twelver Shia, said, ‘Our parents were Twelver Shia. The Zaydites were prevailing in Astrabad. We were under the rule of al-Hasan bin Zayd al-Alawi called as ad-Da’iy ilal-Haqq.[147] He was the imam of the Zaydites. He often listened to them (the Zaydites) and killed people according to their slanders. We feared for ourselves , and so we resorted with our families to Imam Abu Muhammad al-Hasan bin Ali bin Muhammad the father of al-Qa’im (Imam al-Mahdi) (peace be on him). We asked permission to visit the imam. When he saw us, he said, ‘Welcome to the two comers to us and resorters to our protection. Allah has accepted your efforts, calmed your fear, and relieved you from your enemies. Go (back) and feel safe about yourselves and properties!’ We were astonished at his saying though we did not doubt the truthfulness of his speech. We said, ‘O Imam, what do you order us to do on our way until we get to the country that we had got out of? How shall we enter that country which we had fled from, and the ruler searched for us and his threatening against us was severe?’

He (peace be on him) said, ‘Leave your these two sons with me and I will teach them the knowledge that Allah will honor them with. As for you, do not pay attention to the slanderers nor to the threat of the ruler, because Allah the Almighty will end it with happiness and bring them to your intercession with him whom you had run away from…’

Abu Ya’qub and Abul Hasan said, ‘They (their fathers) obeyed what they were ordered of and left, but they left us there. We often visited him (the imam) and he met us with the kindness of fathers and close relatives. One day, he said to us, ‘If the news of the satisfaction of your fathers and the disgrace of their enemies by Allah comes to you and my promise to them comes true, I shall thank Allah by teaching you the interpretation of the Qur'an and some traditions of Muhammad’s progeny (a.s.) so that Allah will exalt you.’

We became delighted at that and said, ‘O son of the messenger of Allah, then we shall learn all sciences and meanings of the Qur'an.’

 He said, ‘No! (Imam) as-Sadiq taught some of his companions what I want to teach you.’

They became delighted and said, ‘O son of the messenger of Allah, you have had all knowledge of the Qur'an.’

He said, ‘I have had much good, and been granted great virtue, but nevertheless it is less than the least part of the Qur'an’s knowledge. Allah the Almighty says,(Say: Though the sea became ink for the Words of my Lord, verily the sea would be used up before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even though We brought the like thereof to help) ,[148] and (And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to help it, (were ink), the words of Allah could not be exhausted) .[149] This is the knowledge and meanings of the Qur'an and the wonders it has. What amount do you think I have taken from all this Qur'an?’

We said, ‘But even this amount that you have taken, Allah has preferred you by it to all those who do not know like your knowledge and do not understand like your understanding.’

We did not leave him until a messenger came to us from our fathers with a letter saying that al-Hasan bin Zayd al-Alawi killed some man and confiscated his properties after the slander of those Zaydites. Then books came to him from different countries and villages written by the Zaydites scolding and blaming him and saying that the killed man was the best one of the Zaydites in the earth and that those some Zaydites informed against him just because of his virtue and wealth. Al-Hasan bin Zayd thanked those people and ordered to cut the noses and ears of those Zaydites, and some of them were mutilated and others ran away. Al-Hasan bin Zayd felt very sorry and he repented, and paid great monies as charity after he gave back the properties of the killed man to his heirs and gave them much more than the specified blood money. He asked them to pardon him and they said to him, ‘As for the blood money, we exempt you from it, but as for the blood, it is not ours but it is the killed man’s blood and Allah is the Judge.’ Al-Hasan bin Zayd vowed for the sake of Allah that he would not interfere with the beliefs of people.

It was mentioned in the letter of our fathers that al-Hasan bin Zayd sent to us one of his trusted men with his book that was sealed with his seal assuring that we would be safe and that our properties would be given back to us, and that he would recompense the harms and losses we had met. We shall go back to our country according to his promise.

Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) said, ‘Allah’s promise is true.’

On the tenth day, a letter came to us from our fathers saying that al-Hasan bin Zayd had carried out all his promises and permitted us to keep to the great-blessed imam whose promise was true. When the imam knew that, he said, ‘This is the time to carry out my promise of teaching you the interpretation of the Qur'an. I have prepared something everyday for you to write down. Keep to me and be careful to the good lucks of happiness Allah has given you.’

The first thing he dictated to us was traditions about the preference of the Qur'an and of its people, and then he dictated to us the tafsir. We wrote down throughout the period of our staying with him. It was seven years, and every day we wrote down as possible as we could…’

Defects

This tafsir was criticized that it had some defects:

First, it was accused that it was weak in its sanad. From the chain of narrators, there was Muhammad bin al-Qassim al-Mufassir al-Astrabadi who was weak. Ibn al-Ghadha’iri said, ‘Muhammad bin al-Qassim al-Mufassir al-Astrabadi was weak and a liar. Abu Ja’far bin Babwayh narrated from him. A tafsir was transmitted from him that he had narrated from two unknown men one called Yousuf bin Muhammad bin Ziyad and the other was Ali bin Muhammad bin Yasar from their father from Abul Hasan the Third (Imam al-Hadi) (a.s.), and the tafsir was written down by Sahl ad-Dibaji from his father.[150]

What was mentioned by al-Ghadha’iri can be refuted in some ways: first, he mentioned that this tafsir was narrated by Yousuf bin Muhammad bin Ziyad and Ali bin Muhammad bin Yasar from their father. This is a mistake because they did not narrate it from their father, but they narrated it without an intermediary from Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.). Second, Ibn al-Ghadha’iry ascribed this tafsir to Abul Hasan the Third (a.s.) whereas it was ascribed to Imam Abu Muhammad al-Askari (a.s.). Third, He said that this tafsir was authored by Sahl ad-Dibaji from his father. This is very odd because Sahl was not mentioned among the chain of narrators of this tafsir. Anyhow, what al-Ghadha’iry mentioned in weakening this man cannot be depended on.

Sayyid al-Khoei said, ‘No one of the past scholars mentioned the reliability of Muhammad bin al-Qassim even Sheikh as-Saduq who mentioned many traditions from him without an intermediary, and also he did not mention that he was weak…The right thing is that this man was unknown whose neither reliability nor weakness were proved,[151] and therefore one cannot depend on his narrations.

In addition, al-Mufassir al-Astrabadi narrated this tafsir from Yousuf bin Muhammad bin Ziyad and Ali bin Muhammad bin Yasar who both were unknown and unreliable in their narrations from Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) as Sayyid al-Khoei says.[152]

Second, this tafsir is weak and full of defects which means that it is not true to ascribe it to Imam al-Askari (a.s.), and whoever looks into it thinks with no doubt that it was falsely ascribed to the imam as Sayyid al-Khoei says.

Third, Imam Abu Muhammad (a.s.) was surrounded by a big number of intelligencers, security forces, and policemen of the Abbasid government that prevented the Shia from associating with him, so how could these two persons frequented to him throughout seven years without being prevented from visiting him?

Fourth, the care of the imam for these two men and his asking their fathers to leave them with him to teach them the knowledge that Allah would honor them with, as mentioned in the beginning of the book, though they were unknown, would be doubted somehow. Would it not be better for the imam to favor the great ulama and jurisprudents of his Shia with this honor?

Anyhow, it is certain that this tafsir was not Imam Abu Muhammad’s but it was fabricated and ascribed to him. In addition to the defects it has, it is not eloquent in many of its chapters, and of course, this does not fit the imam who had been endowed with wisdom and eloquence, and he was the most eloquent man in his time. So how could this tafsir, which had no any feature of eloquence, ascribed to this great imam? Besides that, it has some traditions that have excessiveness as I think, and this was too far from the imam (a.s.).