Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics

269 Pages·2008·1.65 MB·English

by  Sophia Vasalou

Moral Agents and Their Deserts
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Moral Agents and Their Deserts
Th e Character of Mu῾tazilite Ethics
Sophia Vasalou
Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2008 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire
ox20 1sy
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cata loging- in- Publication Data
Vasalou, Sophia.
Moral agents and their deserts : the character of Mu‘tazilite ethics / Sophia Vasalou.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 691- 13145- 0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Motazilites. 2. Islamic ethics. I. Title.
BP195.M6V37 2008
297.5—dc22 2007036849
British Library Cata loging- in- Publication Data is available
Th is book has been composed in Minion.
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my family
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Contents
Preface ix
Ac know ledg ments xiii
1 Th e Framework: Th e Mu῾tazilites 1
2 Reading Mu῾tazilite Ethics 12
Ethics as Th eology 12
Approaches to the Study of Mu῾tazilite Ethics 26
3 Th eology as Law 38
Moral Values between Rational Knowledge and Revealed Law 38
Rights, Claims, and Desert: Th e Moral Economy of H.uqūq 58
4 Th e Bas.ran Mu῾tazilite Approach to Desert 67
“To Deserve”: Groundwork 67
Justifying Reward and Punishment: Th e Values
of Deserved Treatments 76
Justifying Punishment: Th e Paradoxical Relations
of Desert and Goodness 87
Th e Causal Effi cacy of Moral Values: Between Sabab and ῾Illa 95
Th e Right to Blame, the Fact of Blame: Views of the Person
ab Extra 102
5 Moral Continuity and the Justifi cation of Punishment 116
Time and Deserving 116
An Eternity of Punishment: Th e Bas.ran Justifi cation
of Dawām al-῾Iqāb 121
vii
Moral Identity and the Resources of Bas.ran Mu῾tazilite Ontology 132
Th e Primacy of Revealed Names: Al- Asmā᾽ wa᾽l-Ah.kām 148
Why Not Dhimma? 152
6 Th e Identity of Beings in Bas.ran Mu῾tazilite Eschatology 157
Resurrection and the Criterion of Identity 157
Accidents and the Formal Reality of Resurrected Beings 169
appendix
Translation from Ma¯nkd¯ım Sha¯shd¯ıw, “Th e Promise and the Th reat,” in
Sharh. al- us.u¯l al-khamsa 181
Notes 197
Bibliography 239
Index 247
viii Contents
Pre fac e
Th e study that follows needs to be prefaced by a word of explanation to clar-
ify its aims and orientation, and inoculate it against certain misunderstand-
ings to which it may prove vulnerable. Perhaps the best way to do this is by
saying something about the history of shift s that the conception of the task
underwent in the proc ess of writing this book, and while by now buried
deep within the palimpsest that is the fi nished product, have played a large
enough role in giving it its current shape to hold the key for the intelligibil-
ity of some of its most important features.
Th e original route mapped for this study had been to chart the way in
which Mu῾tazilite thinkers developed the meaning of merit and desert in
their scheme of rationalist ethics. Th is ethics, so preoccupied with the ontol-
ogy of moral value, could not but show a similar interest in questions con-
cerning the nature of the connection between the acts a person does and the
treatments one deserves on their account. What is this moral force or con-
nection that makes it reasonable to administer pain or plea sure to people
because of acts once undertaken, and makes one’s conduct a decisive deter-
minant of one’s otherworldly destiny—whether heaven or hell?
In response to this kind of query, the Mu῾tazilites positioned themselves
by intimating a causal connection: one’s conduct in this world has as a conse-
quence pain or plea sure in the hereaft er; the one leads to the other. As al-
Ghaza¯l¯ı might have put i t—though not himself a friend of Mu῾tazilite ethical
rationalism—“Th e present world is as a sowing fi eld for the next,” as “provi-
sions.” Such are the values of the acts one has performed over a lifetime: sowed
in this world, they germinate in the next. Th is causal characterization made
sense in the context of the overall moral objectivism to which the Mu῾tazilites
subscribed, according to which values are intrinsic properties of acts—for it is
acts that for them constitute the primary bearers of value—and are not, as
Ash῾arite theologians maintained, generated by divine command. Th at desert
should be conceived as a feature of the moral economy characterized by the
ix