Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy: The Worldviews of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman 3030942643, 9783030942649

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Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy The Worldviews of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman a . z . obi e dat

Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy

A. Z. Obiedat

Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy The Worldviews of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman

A. Z. Obiedat Wake Forest University Winston Salem, NC, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-94264-9    ISBN 978-3-030-94265-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For the medieval masters who embraced Greek logic and philosophy, and transformed them into sophisticated jurisprudence, theology, and mysticism. And for the future masters who will embrace formal, natural, social, and human sciences, and systemize them into something new!

Acknowledgments

I am just a tree planted by caring and loving humans, and this book is one of its fruits. At the roots, my parents, uncles, aunts, and especially my grandfather, Ahmad Mubaydin, encouraged my curiosity and enjoyed my endless questioning. At the trunk, I was sustained by many wonderful and sincere teachers at the school and university levels. McGill University professors Wael Hallaq, Eric Ormsby, and Robert Myles were continuously illuminating and supportive. At the branches, many of my classmates, friends, and ideological interlocutors took me seriously, corrected me at many times, and accepted my proposals at other times. I would like to thank my classmates, Drs. Islam Dayeh, Fadi Kabatilo, Lena Salaymeh, and Scott Halse, who provided feedback to many chapters of earlier drafts. I am grateful for the enlightening feedback of Dr. Charles Kurzman and Dr. Nathan Basik. The media commentator and encyclopedic reader, Hasan Abu Hanya, was crucial in stressing the value of Taha Abd al-Rahman to me when I was 17. The Platonist-mystic Simon Staszewski was important in confirming my early evaluation of Bunge when I discovered his works at 23. Philosopher Mario Bunge was welcoming in his classes, office, and home, with unmatched humbleness and intelligence. In my professional experience, my senior faculty and chairs at Concordia University (Walid El Khachab), the University of Virginia (Robert Hueckstedt, Mohammed Sawaie, and Farzaneh Milani), and Wake Forest University (WFU; Michaelle Browers and Darlene May) allowed me to teach the classes I wanted, attend the conferences I needed, and propose vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

research projects I find suitable. For all these generous and forgiving people who took care of my tree, I dedicate this intellectual fruit to them in gratefulness. I am thankful to Dr. Michael Kary, a well-rounded intellectual, holder of a doctoral degree in Mathematics, and a lifetime student and friend of Mario Bunge. He welcomed this project, attended my dissertation defense in 2011, critiqued nearly every single page, and offered important scientific and philosophical corrections and suggestions, in a manner worthy of scientific philosophy. Being a Canadian native speaker, he possesses a wealth of semantic abilities to test my translations for many Arabic conceptions and arguments, which are not easily communicable in English. He acted as (English) language editor for the manuscript and made several of the figures. I am truly indebted to his wide knowledge, sharp thoughts, and generous time. Although we did not agree on everything, the discussion was always fruitful. I take responsibility for all the positions herein. A 2020 Humanities Institute Summer Writing Grant from WFU was extremely helpful for allowing me to dedicate time to this project. I thank the Institute for its support. I am also grateful to Philip Getz, my editor at Palgrave Macmillan, likewise Arun Prasath and all the production staff at Palgrave, for their prompt, efficient, and most helpful handling of the manuscript; and to several anonymous reviewers, whose detailed, critical, constructive comments made this a better book. Finally, all love and gratitude to my tree grafting, Jumana, and our fruit, Dahlia, who make life wonderful, meaningful, and compassionate.

A Note on Transcription and Transliteration

The differences between English and Arabic are such that to phonetically render most Arabic words into English, the romanizations must employ diacritics or other devices that mean nothing to the English reader, even to the educated English reader whose education nevertheless does not extend to the Arabic language, or romanizations of it. In A Brief History of Time, physicist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) related how publishers told him that for every equation in a book, the audience drops by half. A similar relationship probably applies for every word or name festooned with diacritical marks that have no meaning or familiarity in the language of the surrounding text. For example, consider just the short and simple name Ṭ āhā—that of a figure central to this book—as written in the system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES system1). For the English reader, even the scholarly English reader whose scholarship nevertheless does not extend to romanizations of Arabic, the diacritics provide nothing more than something to trip over while reading. Taha, or whatever similar, makes more sense: after all, the reader lacking fluency in Arabic and the IJMES system will be pronouncing it identically, and just as incorrectly, either way. 1  Technically speaking, in the IJMES system, proper names are supposed to be written without (most) diacritical marks or italics (for details see the IJMES translation and transliteration guide, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-­­ studies/information/author-resources/ijmes-translation-and-transliteration-guide). This is not ideal for either Arab readers or Western students of Arabic, so despite the specifications of the guide, in normal practice they are often written with diacritics, and sometimes in italics.

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A Note on Transcription and Transliteration

As is the usual cross-cultural remedy, not a compromise, but rather a dual approach is the most beneficial. With few exceptions, all in the service of either utility or readability, here that has meant using the most natural English romanizations in the text body, but fully Arabic transcriptions (according to the IJMES system2) in parenthetical occurrences and in the footnotes. That this book is written in English, with help from the IJMES system, brings up another cross-cultural issue. In the West, Taha Abd al-Rahman (Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān) is most well known in France. The IJMES system is intended for romanizing Arabic into English, not French. In France, Taha’s name is typically spelled Taha Abderrahman or Taha Abderrahmane. While this is primarily a concern with regard to indexing, cataloging, and internet searching, the reader should be assured that all these names do indeed refer to the same person.

2  For the benefit of both Arab readers and Western students of Arabic, with few exceptions, here Arabic proper names in the footnotes and parenthetical occurrences follow the normal practices mentioned in the previous footnote.

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 1 Worldviews  1 2 Religious and Secular  4 3 The Protagonists of Our Story: Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman  6 4 The Dialogue  9 5 Strife over Modernity 11 2 M  odernity 15 1 Conceptualization 15 2 Making Sense of Modernity in Its Descriptive and Normative Diversity 22 3 Modernity Between the Arab-Islamic World and the West 32 4 Historical Interlude: A Brief Consideration of the Rise of Islam in its Socio-political Context 36 5 Back to Modernity Between the Arab-Islamic World and the West: The Philosophies of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman 45 3 R  eligious, Secular, Scientific 51 1 The Vagueness Problem 52 2 Emergence 53 3 What Is Religion? 56

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3.1 Toward a Systemic Conception of Religion: Mario Bunge’s View 58 3.2 Religion in Terms of Its Functional Role 59 4 The Success and Failure of Religious Means 64 5 Attempts at Conceptualizing the Secular 67 6 Distinguishing Between the Religious and the Secular 70 7 The Secular and the Scientific 78 7.1 Toward a Systemic Conception of Science: Mario Bunge’s View 79 7.2 Science in Terms of Its Functional Role 79 8 Divergence and Convergence 81 4 A  n Introduction to Mario Bunge, and to the Philosophical Endeavor 85 1 Mario Bunge: A First Introduction 85 2 Philosophy, Inquiry, and Action 93 3 A Second Introduction to Mario Bunge: His Place in the Tradition of System Building107 5 T  aha Abd al-Rahman’s Islamic Worldview and the Spirit of Modernity111 1 What Is ‘Islamic Philosophy?’112 1.1 Some Background112 1.2 A Modern Understanding114 2 The Modernization Journey of Arab-Islamic Philosophy115 3 An Introduction to Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Contribution to the Fourth Stage of the Modernization Journey of Arab-­ Islamic Philosophy126 3.1 A Biographical Sketch126 3.2 On Taha’s Style129 3.3 Taha on the Spirit of Modernity133 3.4 Consequences of the Spirit of Modernity137 4 Conditions for a Genuine Realization of the Spirit of Modernity138 4.1 The Falsification, or Rejection, of the Foundations of Actual Modernity140 4.2 Taha on Critical Thinking140 4.3 Taha on Analysis143

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4.4 Taha on Universality147 4.5 Taha on Maturity154 5 Conclusion157 6 A  Modern View of the Nature of Reality and a Premodern Counterpoint: The Scientific Ontology of Mario Bunge and Five Religious Counter-arguments for the Existence of a Deity161 1 Metaphysics, or Ontology162 2 Realism Versus Phenomenalism167 2.1 Bunge’s Four-Fold Evidence for the Real Existence of the External World169 3 Some Basics of Bunge’s Scientific Ontology175 3.1 Thing175 3.2 Property179 3.3 State and Event180 3.4 Law181 3.5 Causality182 3.6 Systems, Emergence, and Submergence183 3.7 The Level Structure of Reality184 3.8 Life185 3.9 Mind187 3.10 Society, and the Composition, Structure, Environment, and Mechanism of a System188 3.11 Recap189 4 Scientific Worldview and Religious Counterpoint: Five Arguments for the Existence of a Deity190 4.1 The Psychological Argument191 4.2 The Ontological Argument192 4.3 The Cosmological Argument193 4.4 The Teleological Argument194 4.5 The Ethical Argument195 4.6 Evaluation of the Five Arguments196 4.7 A Doxastic Argument197 5 Summary of the Ontological Component of Bunge’s Worldview199 6 Interrelations, Explanations, Classifications, and Directions of Influences202 7 Concluding Remarks204

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7 M  odern Knowing via Realistic Epistemology: Mario Bunge on the Perfectibility and Unity of Modern Human Knowledge207 1 Approaching the Epistemological Problem208 2 The Underlying Nature of Knowledge212 3 Truth214 3.1 Truth Criteria and the Critical Realist Synthesis215 3.2 Evidence and Its Interpretation220 4 Summary of the Critical Realist Synthesis229 5 Understanding230 5.1 Aspects and Gradations230 5.2 Systemicity234 5.3 Two Knowledge Mappings: The Tree of Knowledge and the System of Knowledge236 8 M  odern Virtuous Ethics: Knowing the Good and Doing the Right in Scientific Humanism241 1 Ethics Ancient and Modern241 2 Prologue: A Very Brief and Naturalistic Interpretation of the Early Journey of the Religious Imagination243 3 The Ethical Imagination of Humanism250 3.1 Humanism and the Scientific Worldview254 3.2 ​The Urgency of Ethics in a Humanist Worldview256 4 Value Theory257 4.1 The Contextual Nature of Value258 4.2 Biological Value261 4.3 Psychological Values262 4.4 Social Values264 4.5 Well-Being and Happiness266 4.6 ​The Good Society269 5 Morality in Bunge’s Scientific Humanism274 5.1 Rights and Duties276 5.2 ​Moral Problems277 6 ​An Evaluation of Some Potential Criticisms281

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9 T  aha Abd al-Rahman on Modern and Postmodern Family Ethics285 1 Taha on the Modern Family286 1.1 Taha’s Characterization of the Family287 1.2 The Western Implementation of the Modern Family: Pro287 1.3 The Centrality of the Individual, and the “ethics of selfhood”288 2 Taha on the Postmodern Family, and the Inversion of Modern Values290 2.1 The Western Implementation of the Modern Family: Con292 3 Reprise: Considering Again Taha’s Views on Ethical Inversions and the Postmodern Family307 4 Taha’s Justification of the Spirit of Modernity308 4.1 Integration in the Global Conceptual Space309 4.2 Controversy over the Meaning of Postmodernity310 4.3 Promoting the Spirit of Modernity311 4.4 Distinctiveness of the Proposed Islamic Application311 10 T  aha’s Attempt at Surpassing Current Islamic Movements: A Mystical Perspective on Ethics and Politics315 1 Human Cognition and the Limitations of Political Secularism317 1.1 Taha’s Criticism of Political Secularists318 1.2 Political Secularist Wine in Modern Islamic Movement Bottles319 2 Ethical Mysticism and the Reformation of Islamic Movements321 3 Ethical Mysticism and the Reformation of Political Secularism324 4 Ethical Mysticism and Coexistence with the Cultural and Natural Environment328 5 Conclusion334 11 C  omparative Evaluation: The Paths to Philosophical Modernity of Taha and Bunge337 1 A Brief Summary of Chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 5337 1.1 Chapter 2—Modernity337 1.2 Chapter 3—Religious, Secular, Scientific339

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1.3 Chapter 4—An Introduction to Mario Bunge, and to the Philosophical Endeavor339 1.4 Chapter 5—Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Islamic Worldview and the Spirit of Modernity340 2 Comparative Evaluation342 2.1 Taha’s Islamic Philosophy and the Spirit of Modernity342 2.2 Bunge’s Scientific, Humanistic Philosophical System347 3 Conclusion351 3.1 An Islamic Path to Modernization353 3.2 Contrast Versus Conflict355 3.3 A Scientific-Humanist Path to Modernization356 3.4 Widening the Paths358 12 E  pilogue: Of Surprises and Gaps, or the Future of Philosophical System Building and the Philosophy of Religion363 1 Surprise364 2 Gaps366 2.1 Basic Philosophy Versus Derived Philosophy367 2.2 The Philosophy of Religion368 3 Coda378 Bibliography379 Author Index395 Subject Index

401

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5 Fig. 7.6 Fig. 8.1

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

Hexagonal representation of Taha’s tripartite principles and six foundations of the spirit of modernity 136 One possible schematic diagram of the level structure of the world 186 The epistemological components and main ancillary factors that together form critical (or scientific) realism 230 Black-box explanation of natural human reproduction 231 Gray (translucent)-box explanation of natural human reproduction232 More transparent box: a more mechanismic explanation of natural human reproduction 232 Some of the branches of the tree of knowledge (modified from Bunge, Understanding the World, 195) 237 The knowledge system (modified from Bunge, Understanding the World, 218) 239 Representation of Bunge’s hierarchy of societal goodness, according to the economic and cultural riches it can offer its members, and whether it does offer its fruits fully to all, without hindering the development of other societies 272 Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of selfhood got upended into the postmodern ethics of non-self 295 Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of commitment got upended into the postmodern ethics of privilege300

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List of Figures

Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4

Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of happiness got upended into the postmodern ethics of playfulness306 Taha’s geography of the actual Western and desired Islamic applications of the spirit of modernity 312

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 5.1 Table 8.1

Table 8.2 Table 8.3

Summary of some stereotypical characteristics of premodern and modern societies (adapted from Hassan) 30 Titles of Mario Bunge’s Treatise on Basic Philosophy109 Some fundamental theses of Mario Bunge’s philosophical system109 Summary of the contrasting premises underlying Westernimitative and Islamic-creative implementations of the spirit of modernity, according to Taha 158 Some leaders of Islamic resistance to oppression (jihad), whom Bunge might regard as worthy of a place in the humanist pantheon, and reasons for and against their candidacy252 Some items Bunge highlights as necessary for survival and health, ranked by him according to their importance 262 Some of Bunge’s fundamental moral dos and don’ts, to realize fundamental rights and duties 280

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1   Worldviews Literally, we see the world through a lens—or typically two of them. Metaphorically, much as the lens of the eye gathers light emanating from the external world and bends it back together to form an image on the retina, so too our minds see the world through the creative action of the lens of our worldview.1 Our worldview is our general understanding of the world: of its basic nature, of our relationship to it, of how we should conduct ourselves in it. In broad philosophical terms, a worldview comprises an ontology or metaphysics—ideas about the nature of the world, including ourselves as part of it; an epistemology—ideas about our knowledge of the world; and an ethics—ideas concerning right and wrong, good and bad. Worldviews are often held tacitly, at least to some extent. Much as we don’t generally think about the optical characteristics of the lenses of our eyes, and how they may distort or degrade the image, people don’t generally think about the underlying ideas they hold that form their view of the world. Or at least—in either case—until something goes noticeably wrong. By the fact of being often held tacitly, and accumulated eclectically, these underlying ideas are often unexamined, at variance with reality, or even 1  In the philosophical literature, the corresponding German term Weltanschauung is sometimes used. A related term, used both in the study of animal behavior and in philosophy, is Umwelt, the world as perceived or experienced by different organisms.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_1

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contradictory. Traditionally, a major portion of the philosopher’s task has been to examine and criticize these presuppositions, whether tacit or explicit, and to propose and advocate for better ones. In other words, traditionally, a major portion of the philosophical endeavor has been worldview construction and renovation. Philosophy is not confined to philosophers. Nor are worldviews, even explicit ones, necessarily or even usually formulated all in one go. The underlying hope of worldview construction and renovation is that the better our understanding of the world and our place in it, the better will be the life of the individual within society and nature. The cultural evolution of human societies involves assembling the fruits of numerous fields of endeavor, artistic, scientific, humanistic, religious, practical, into various worldviews. Magical and pagan conceptions and subsequent grand world religions, and then the scientific revolution—which originated within Western-Christian societies but drew on key contributions from Hindu and Islamic societies, and on the learning of the ancient Greeks as first transmitted through Islamic societies, all of it involving both saltations and gradual changes—exemplify perfectly the evolutionary formation of worldviews over the course of human cultural history. Worldviews can be sorted into various more or less overlapping types. There are religious worldviews and secular ones, scientific worldviews and mystical ones, systemic worldviews and piecemeal ones, comprehensive worldviews and fragmentary ones, nationalistic worldviews and pan-­ human ones, modern worldviews and ancient, premodern, and postmodern ones. As indicated by the plurals, each of these and any others can typically be parsed into further subtypes. Thus, religious worldviews can be monotheistic or polytheistic, while within the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worldviews differ, and each of these further subdivides. Perhaps every individual within these traditions has their own somewhat different version. Worldviews consist of general ideas, but even general ideas vary in their specifics, so that worldviews may potentially be sorted along sectarian, psychological, ontological, epistemological, ethical, cultural, political, economic, and any other lines. In the midst of all these divisions and divisibility, one worldview may be held out as an exception: it may be argued that the scientific worldview transcends all boundaries,2 being the same for everyone regardless of other  For an extensive discussion of the idea of the scientific worldview from a variety of perspectives, see the volume edited by Michael R. Matthews, Science, Worldviews and Education (Springer, 2009). 2

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conviction or disposition.3 Naturally, this claim hinges upon the level of analysis. Scientists do differ over basic matters—such as what if any ontological principles are presupposed by science,4 whether or not chance is real, or various quantum-mechanical and cosmological matters5—but scientists are supposed to agree on what constitutes the scientific method, at least in outline.6 If one upholds the idea that the scientific method is not just some specialized protocol or some game, but a valid and worthy method for exploring reality, then one has immediately the basic ingredients of a worldview. First, an ontological thesis: that there is a reality (ontological realism, a thesis not shared by all varieties of idealism). Second, the epistemological thesis that we can get to know valid truths about that reality (epistemological realism, a thesis not shared by various subjectivist and skeptical philosophies). Third, science has an ethical core as well, namely that truth is good and that it is right to pursue it, while falsehood is bad and deception is wrong (theses not shared by nihilist, authoritarian, or reactionary political philosophies). In general terms then, there certainly is a scientific worldview, and it is a common task of the scientifically inclined philosopher and philosophically inclined scientist to explore and elucidate that worldview, and any possible variations within it. By virtue of the pervasive success of the scientific endeavor, the vast and comprehensive sweep of the scientific enterprise, and the marvel of the scientific panorama, the same holds true for the globally aware cultural scholar. This book is concerned with the more general features of various worldviews. Its contrasts are not in the details, but in the broad outlines. In particular, it is concerned with the major differences between religious, secular, and scientific worldviews; and moreover, between modern, 3  Alternatively, it has been argued that science is independent of worldview, although worldviews may be dependent on science. See Hugh G. Gauch Jr., “Science, Worldviews, and Education”, in Matthews, ibid., 27–48. For a counter-argument see Gürol Irzik and Robert Nola, “Worldviews and Their Relation to Science”, op. cit., 81–97. 4  See, for example, Martin Mahner, “The Role of Metaphysical Naturalism in Science” (Science & Education, 2012, 21: 1437–1459), versus Yonatan I.  Fishman and Maarten Boudry, “Does Science Presuppose Naturalism (or Anything at All?” (Science & Education 2013, 22, 921–949). 5  See, for example, Jean Bricmont, Quantum Sense and Nonsense (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2018), and Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer, 2010). 6  Perhaps the broadest outline of the scientific method is the following: the scientific method is to search for truth and generality through clarity, rigor, and test. See Mario Bunge, Evaluating Philosophies (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), 13.

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premodern, and postmodern worldviews. These concerns are explored within a definite political and cultural context: postcolonial society, and in particular Arab-Islamic society, in the throes of modernization, in the context of the hegemony of the Western world.

2   Religious and Secular By now long after their humble beginnings in antiquity, the contemporary worldviews of the grand religions are comprehensive, well articulated, and richly detailed. In Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, these qualities came to maturity with the great worldview makers of the Middle Ages, such as al-­ Ghazali (1058–1111), Maimonides (c. 1135–1204),7 and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). What about religion’s modern competitor, secularism? Can it provide a comparably comprehensive, well-articulated, and richly detailed worldview?

7  Maimonides, a Latinized Greek version of his Arabic name Mus̄ a ̄ bin Maymu ̄n (phonetically almost the same as the Hebrew, all meaning Moses, Son of Maimon). The life story of Maimonides displays in miniature the cosmopolitan, progressive nature of the Islamic Golden Age at its height, as well as its subsequent decline and fall. Maimonides was a product of the many cultures and complex history of the Arab-Islamic world of the Mediterranean region. Born (c. 1135–1138) and residing in his early years in Muslim Cordoba, of Moorish Spain, he was greatly influenced by the scholarly Islamic world of his time. The cosmopolitan Muslim world of Cordoba, as with the Golden Age of Islam itself, suffered a blow when the Almohads (al-Muwaḥḥidūn) conquered that capital city in 1148 and instituted fanatical policies. Bin Maymūn and his family endured two decades of itineracy in Spain and Morocco to evade Almohad oppression, before ultimately (in 1168) finding refuge in Cairo (the capital of Islam at the time) and serving as renowned physician to the general public and to Saladin (Ṣalah̄ ̣ al-Dı ̄n al-Ayyu ̄bı ̄), who recaptured most of Palestine from the European Crusaders after defeating them decisively in 1187. Writing in the Foreword to a book on Maimonides, twentieth-century religious scholar Muṣtạ fā ʻAbd al-Rāziq (1885–1947) of al-Azhar University reminds his audience of the following: since the medieval encyclopedia of Shahrastānı ̄ (d. 1153) calls Christian Arab philosophers “Ḥ unayn Ibn Isḥāq,” to mean being among those who are “the philosophers of Islam,” then Maimonides is equally an “Arab philosopher and a philosopher of Islam.” In Muṣtạ fā ʻAbd al-Rāziq, Foreword to Israel Ben-Zeev Wilfinsun, Mu ̄sa ̄ Ibn Maymūn: Ḥ ayātuhu wa Muṣannafat̄ uh (Cairo: Lajnat al-Taʼlı ̄f wal-Tarjamah wal-Nashr, 1936), iix. For perspectives on the Arab identity, see Aḥmad Shaḥlān, Ibn Rushd wal-Fikr al-ʻIbrı ̄ al-Wası ̄ṭ (Marrakech, Morocco: al-Maṭbaʻah wal-Warraqah al-Waṭaniyyah, 1999); for expanded discussion of Maimonides’ identity in particular, see Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: A Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). See also footnote 103.

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In contrast with the long history and scholastic consensuses surrounding religious worldviews, the modern expansion of secular culture surpassed the borders of a single unified discipline and enjoys or suffers from the open-endedness characteristic of modernity’s pluralism and democratic contestation. Consequently, one of the powerful criticisms the holders of a religious worldview might level at their secular counterparts is the seeming haphazardness, incoherence, and contradictory expression of secular thought. In other words, secularism seemingly lacks a coherent worldview in the first place. The proliferation and growth of natural, formal,8 social, and human sciences have made encompassing all secular knowledge effectively impossible for any scholar. Has this made the task of articulating a comprehensive, richly detailed, but characteristically secular worldview an impossible goal? Considering the literatures of some of the key figures of the secular turn that led to today’s secular culture, such as Charles Darwin in the natural sciences, Bertrand Russell in philosophy, Karl Marx in the social sciences, and Sigmund Freud in psychoanalysis, we would be left with the impression that these influential secular contributions are disjoint at best or incompatible at worst. For example, Freud has human behavior driven by sex, Marx has it driven by economic factors, Darwin by the full complement of emotions and cognition following natural selection, while Russell advocates for logical rationality and the pursuit of human rights and peace. Secular ideas are not necessarily harmonious or even compatible merely by virtue of being secular. Many secular minds of our age are justifiably proud of the massive successes and expansion of the modern natural, formal, social, and human sciences. These achievements bolster the attacks on religious worldviews evident in Freud’s Future of an Illusion,9 Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian,10 and more recently Dawkins’ The God Delusion.11 Yet realistically, in terms of popularity, in order to challenge premodern worldviews, secular thinkers have to offer a coherent and congenial secular worldview, at least in outline. Intellectually, the followers of al-Ghazali, Maimonides, and Aquinas have the right to demand that this alternative worldview be   Formal science” is a term for mathematics and logic.  Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1989). 10  Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1967). 11  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York, NY: Mariner Books, 2008). 8“ 9

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explicated and justified coherently. A reasonable answer to this demand cannot be a descriptive amalgamation of what Darwin, Russell, Marx, Freud, and the many other contributors to secular thought proposed. A convincing answer must be a harmonious one, that is, a systemic answer that weeds out contradictory and incompatible elements. No worldview can stand on shaky foundations or a disconnected web of proposals. In counterpoint, it must be said that the religious worldview suffers even more from incompleteness and incoherence. Current science and technology have brought new worlds of thought and action unforeseen in any scripture. Some religious people do hold that holy scriptures contain all of modern science, but they are yet to give any coherent explanation of how; nor of why historically, no new science ever arose out of scripture.12 For that matter, how do biblical or other scriptural stories square with the findings of modern science, or even common sense? Thus, how is it that the story of Genesis has it that day and night were brought into existence on the first day of creation, photosynthesizing vegetation on the third, but the Sun and the other stars only on the fourth? In any case, which religious tradition is to be followed, the Eastern or the Abrahamic, the Islamic or the Jewish or the Christian? Even if the question of overall faith is settled, within, for example, Christianity, which sectarian view is the correct one, the Catholic or the Protestant, and based on which doctrinal interpretation, the conservative Protestant or the progressive feminist?

3   The Protagonists of Our Story: Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman In response to these discordant and messy positions, this book proposes an intertwining exploration of the systemic, coherent, contrasting secular and religious worldviews expounded by the Argentinian-Canadian scientist and philosopher Mario Bunge (1919–2020) and the Islamic Moroccan logician and philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b. 1944). These two champions of their respective traditions—each unknown to the other— elevate each side of the overall debate and conversation between cultures to new philosophical heights.

12  On the other hand, religious concerns have motivated some scientific study, especially in early days with regard to the calendar, astronomy, and geography—for example, to determine dates for Easter, or the direction of Mecca for prayers.

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Bunge’s philosophical oeuvre has been described as constituting “perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic philosophy of the twentieth century.”13 Michael R. Matthews, editor of the recent (2019) Mario Bunge Centenary Festschrift,14 introduced Bunge this way: Mario Bunge is a physics-trained philosopher who has made significant contributions to an extraordinarily wide range of disciplines. […] In terms of longevity, productivity, and liveliness of mind, he is in the same small and exclusive league as his own philosophical hero, Bertrand Russell. […] He has had visiting professorships at major universities in Europe, Australasia, as well as North and South America. He has published 70 books (many with revised editions and translations) and 540 articles (including translations). […] In 1971 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, awarded for ‘exceptionally productive scholarship’. In 1982 he became a Prince of Asturias Laureate for Communication and Humanities.15 In 2014 the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) in Vienna awarded him the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking. […] Bunge’s work has been celebrated in festschrifts of 40 years ago (Agassi and Cohen 1982)16 and 30 years ago (Weingartner and Dorn 1990);17 more recently in Spanish anthologies (Denegri and Martinez 2000;18 Denegri 201419); and appraised in at least three journal thematic issues (Matthews 2003,20 2012;21 Pickel 200422). Bunge briefly surveyed his own life and work in a chapter in an anthology on Latin American philosophy (Bunge 13  Andreas Pickel, “Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science: A Review Essay,” Society 38, no. 4 (2001), 71. 14  Michael R. Matthews, ed., Mario Bunge Centenary Festschrift (Cham: Springer, 2019). 15  The Prince of Asturias prizes are often referred to as “the Spanish Nobels.” 16  Agassi, J., & Cohen, R. S. (Eds.). Scientific Philosophy Today: Essays in Honor of Mario Bunge (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982). 17  Weingartner, P., & Dorn, G. J. W. (Eds.). Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990). 18  Denegri, G. M., & Martinez, G. Tópicos Actuales en Filosofía de la Ciencia. Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 80 Aniversario (Mar del Plata: Editorial Martín, 2000). 19  Denegri, G. M. (2014). Elogio de la Sabiduria. Ensayos en Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 95° Aniversario (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires (EUDEBA), 2014). 20  Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). “Mario Bunge: Physicist and Philosopher.” Science & Education, 12, nos. 5, 6, (2003), 431–444. 21  Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). “Mario Bunge, Systematic Philosophy and Science Education: An Introduction.” Science & Education, 21 (2012), 1393–1403. 22  Pickel, A. (Ed.). “Systems and Mechanisms: A Symposium on Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, nos. 2, 3 (2004), 169–210.

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2003c),23 and later in a wonderful and engaging 500-page autobiography Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist (Bunge 2016).24

On the religious side of the debate, Taha Abd al-Rahman is seen as the first Arab25 philosophical system builder since the Islamic Golden Age of philosophy.26 Taha has been described as providing to the Arab world “innovativeness in philosophy,”27 “intellectual liberation,”28 “boldness and challenge,”29 and “a discourse distinctive in form and content”30 proving the “legitimacy of philosophical difference.”31 He has also been described as “one of the shrewdest observers—and consumers—of European and Euro-American intellectual output.”32 He “is not just engaged in the business of providing philosophical answers to crucial questions that Islam-in-modernity has raised; his project in effect sets in motion a second but equally formidable prong, namely, a philosophical lexical repertoire that functions as a productive engine constantly engaged in the generation of such answers.”33 Taha’s thought serves as a good summary of contemporary Arab-­ Islamic revival, without the demagogic religious tone. Indirectly, he articulates the objections to modernity of most other Islamic thinkers. This is 23  Bunge, M. “Philosophy of Science and Technology: A Personal Report.” In G. Fløistad (Ed.), Philosophy of Latin America (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 245–272. 24  Bunge, M. Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016). 25  The Arab world is culturally and geographically part of the larger Islamic world comprising some 1.6  billion people, including Balkan, Turkish, Persian, Central Asian, Indian, Indonesian, and sub-Saharan African peoples, and many other intellectuals. Due to the Islamic world’s massive linguistic and cultural diversity, our study restricts its claims to the cultures of the Arab world. 26  This remark does not deny originality in post-Golden Age thinkers but strictly refers to analytic-synthetic system building, as seen, for example, in the philosophical works of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980–1037), Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126–1198), and Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). 27  Ibrāhı ̄m Mashrūḥ, Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān: Qirāʼah fı ̄ Mashru ̄’ih al-Fikrı ̄ (Beirut: Markaz al-Ḥ aḍārah li-Tanmiyat al-Fikr al-Islāmı ̄, 2009), 18. 28  Mashrūḥ, 21. 29  Mashrūḥ, 47. 30  Mashrūḥ, 42. 31  Mashrūḥ, 55. 32  Wael B. Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019), 2. 33  Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 28.

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why some readers see Taha as reminiscent of the medieval scholar al-­ Ghazali, who attacked major elements of classical Greek philosophy in his famous Incoherence of the Philosophers.34 Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire counts Taha as one of the top thirty-five most influential minds in the world.35 In a book devoted to Taha’s philosophy, the renowned Columbia University historian of Islamic law, Wael Hallaq, declared him “one of the most significant philosophers that the world of Islam has produced since colonialism set foot in Afro-Asia.”36

4   The Dialogue The overall vision guiding this book is of a modernity that benefits postcolonial and Western peoples without harming them. Its underlying idea is that such a modernity will come about only with the help of a culturally relevant, yet modern worldview. Its overall goal is to contribute to the formation of that modern worldview—one which it proposes as common ground between secular Western and Islamic worldviews.37 Despite the opposing secular and religious backgrounds of Bunge and Taha, logic-based rationality, clearly constructed language, deep interest in constructing philosophical systems, and ethical commitment to individual, national, and environmental rights are clear commonalities between the two. I perceive a further connection, on the basis of their philosophical struggles with the challenges of modernity. Taha’s shortcoming is being uninformed about modern natural and social sciences, while Bunge’s weakness is his scarce exploration of personal, emotional, and aesthetic philosophy, and his lack of cultural and heritage relevance.38 Each philosopher’s shortcoming is the strength of the other. Yet, both thinkers are unified on two additional fronts: against historically oppressive colonial,

34  Abū Ḥ āmid Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazzali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers: Tahāfut al-Falāsifah, trans. Michael E Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1997). 35 “   Taha Abderrahman Maroc, 1944,” Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire, January 2019, https:// www.nouveau-magazine-litteraire.com/parution/mensuel-nml-13. 36  Wael B. Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019), xiii. 37  And by extension, religious worldviews more generally. 38  That is, other than the culture and heritage of science, mathematics, and scientifically inclined philosophy.

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imperial, and neoliberal modernities; and against illogical, linguistically convoluted, and ethically uncommitted postmodernity. With these commonalities in mind, instead of drawing strong lines of separation on the basis of their differing worldviews, I place these two thinkers in something of a dialogue, as a model for future exchanges between secular Western and Islamic worldviews, wherein the benefits of modernity can be carefully separated from its potential for harm. I envision a new line of inquiry within the philosophy of culture: worldview analysis with a view to squaring the scientific worldview with humanistic ethical concerns, by clarifying what is culturally relative and what is psychologically and biologically universal. I contend that the modernization of Arabic-Islamic philosophy cannot achieve its legitimate goals of cultural relevance and pride of place—philosophical sovereignty, in a sense—without learning from the essential contributions of systemic, scientific philosophy. Yet that scientific philosophy, especially as expounded by Bunge but also by predecessors in his tradition, presents at times formidable technical obstacles to those without scientific and mathematical training. Such a background is not unknown in the Christian tradition, still to this day, and a millennium ago the Islamic tradition was on top of its philosophical requirements—but that is true no longer of the Arab-Islamic philosophers of more recent times. A merit of this book is that it presents Bunge’s scientific challenge in a more accessible form, thereby encouraging the holders of religious worldviews to respond genuinely to it. The dialogue also has significance for Bunge’s philosophy, as it reveals an incompleteness in his system, where formal, natural, and social sciences are considered in detail, while a great deal of “philosophical anthropology,” characteristic of the arts and humanities, is left out.39 The book’s accessible philosophical exposition—on the one hand of scientific philosophy unfamiliar, technically opaque, and largely

39  Philosophical anthropology is “the philosophical study of the conditions of human existence and the issues that confront the people in the conduct of their everyday lives.” See Nicholas Rescher, Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 1; Nicholas Rescher, Humanistic Philosophizing: Sensibility and Speculation in Philosophical Inquiry (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 185. In particular, “the topics of philosophical anthropology are foremost the items indicated by the format of an identity card: individuality (via a name), age, sex, nationality, religion, and work (profession)” (Rescher, Human Interests, 2. Emphases in the original.)

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unavailable in Arabic40 to today’s Arab-Islamic world; and on the other of modern Islamic philosophy unfamiliar, culturally opaque, and largely unavailable in English to the West—coupled with its critique of both relativistic postmodernism and medieval religious views, and its emphasis on common ground, should make it of interest to a wide range of students and scholars.

5   Strife over Modernity As with childbirth, as with the emergence of modernity in the Christian world of the West, the emergence of modernity in the postcolonial, Arab-­ Islamic world is full of struggle, danger, and promise. The promise sometimes comes to fruition, at other times remains unfulfilled, and still other times leads to ruin. Today’s strife over modernity is both a geopolitical struggle and a cross-­ cultural conflict of worldviews. The conflicting worldviews are not just modern and premodern, but also postmodern. Although in the West postmodern philosophy is by now a tired fad that has largely run its course, in the Arab-Islamic world, by way of historical experience—or perhaps because it is an easy target—postmodernism is seen as characteristic of the Western, secular worldview. Premodern thought, in the form characteristic of Islamic awakening movements, claims that traditional religion, with some adjustments and updates, reveals the secrets of being, knowing, and acting. The postmodern fad has it to the contrary that such philosophical endeavor is futile in the first place: we are limited instead to the culturally based, the individually arbitrated, and the playful. In a nutshell, modernity calls for the continuation of the systemic philosophy project; premodernity posits a religious or otherwise spiritual basis for such philosophy; and postmodernity calls for the deconstruction of the systemic project and, in the limit, the death of philosophy itself. Strife over modernity in the form of worldview conflict can be further spelled out by way of the following ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions raised by premodern and postmodern ways of thinking: 1. Is it true that our world is merely an illusion or temporary phase, such that reality or its full extent will be revealed in an afterlife—an infinitely better or worse one that conditionally awaits us after  An Arabic version of the present volume is planned.

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death—and should we devote our lives in this world to securing entrance to the better version? Or is it true that reality is merely a human projection of conflicting discourses and “grand narratives,”41 something that can never be revealed, merely a reflection of desire, play, or power? 2. Is sound knowledge of the world a matter of divine revelation, such that humans can never figure out such matters by themselves? Or is sound knowledge a matter of imaginative social construction through language games,42 semiotic dominance, and debate strategies? 3. Does it hold that the good and the right can be derived only from sacred laws and traditional recommendations? Or are morality and ethics only matters of cultural relevance, individual difference, and short-term utility? Contrary to both premodernists and postmodernists, in this book I argue that amid misinformation and confusion, and in the postcolonial, Arab-­ Islamic world just as much as in the West, a modern worldview born of systemic philosophy—in the form of a coordinated system of scientific ontology, realist epistemology, and humanistic ethics—is still capable of providing worthy answers to the perennial questions of being, knowing, and acting. To this end, Chap. 2 gives an overview of modernity, with attention to the book’s context of the philosophical and social modernization of the Arab-Islamic world, in its uneasy coexistence with—and under the hegemony of—the West.43 Chapter 3 discusses the overall natures of religious, secular, and scientific worldviews. Chapter 4 begins with a brief introduction to the life and works of Mario Bunge. It then engages in an exploration of the philosophical endeavor, with a focus on the project of system building and worldview construction. It ends by returning to a 41  Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Brian Massumi and Geoff Bennington (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 38. 42  Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 22. 43  For a detailed account of how Arabs put aside tribalism, sectarianism, and Muslim-­ Christian rivalry for the sake of a modern state, see Elizabeth F. Thompson, How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020).

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consideration of Bunge’s place in the tradition of philosophical system building. Chapter 5 introduces the non-Western philosophical voice of Taha Abd al-Rahman and his project for resurrecting Islamic philosophy in the modern age. Chapter 6 returns to Bunge’s philosophy, to present his scientific ontology. It also considers, as a counterpoint, five traditional religious arguments for the existence of a Deity. Chapter 7 continues with Bunge’s realist epistemology. Chapter 8 begins with a brief and naturalistic interpretation of the early journey of the human religious imagination, in preparation for its second part, a presentation of Bunge’s naturalistic and humanistic ethics. Chapter 9 turns to Taha’s indictment of modern and postmodern family ethics. Chapter 10 examines Taha’s strategy of in effect seeing the bids of current and past Islamic traditions and raising them: his strategy of betting on an ideal future, distant from failed examples of Arab-­ Islamic history. Chapter 11 summarizes the first four chapters of the book, to conclude with a comparative evaluation of the philosophies of Bunge and Taha, while Chap. 12 considers the future of philosophical system building and the philosophy of religion.

CHAPTER 2

Modernity

I am in freezing Minnesota googling a Caribbean restaurant on my ­expensive smartphone, which is designed in Silicon Valley in California, manufactured in inhumane conditions in Asia, reportedly hacked by international adversaries of the United States, while under surveillance by its National Security Agency…

1   Conceptualization We are living several contradictions: the global standard of living is rising, while concomitant environmental degradation is threatening our existence; governments are debt ridden, while plutocracy is thriving; the welfare state is withering, while wealthy corporations are getting massive subsidies; science and technology are advancing spectacularly on all fronts, while radical groups and fanatic ideologies are metastasizing; the behemoth of today’s industrial capitalism is avowedly communist China; atheism, no longer in hiding, is loud and proud, while religious fanaticism is advancing, and becoming more and more incompatible with global communal living; the global network of international and interpersonal communication is abuzz, while nationalism and nativism are on the rise; previously unheard of individual rights—ranging from the right to be accompanied on public transportation by a therapy animal of a species of one’s choice, to the right to be recognized as of the gender of one’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_2

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choice—may become normalized in the developed world, while labor rights are at a low ebb and industrial jobs have been moving to the developing world; the list could be continued indefinitely. All these trends and many more, seemingly at odds for leading in different directions, crisscross to form the fabric of contemporary life. Is this modernity? In one sense, the word simply denotes whatever is current. Eurocentrically and simplistically, it is the state that successively the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, colonialism, and globalization brought the world to. Conceived of as a larger and longer global historical process involving all of the preceding, modernity denotes too the increasing contact between the Old World and the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia; the growing challenge to the Old World religious and ideological narratives, posed by new philosophies and social movements; the gradual transformation of the medieval political order by royal concessions or antimonarchist revolutions; the mixed cooperative and violent creation of a capitalist world economic system; and the emergence of science and technology. The mix of positive and negative aspects the word connotes is likewise diverse. There is no straightforward, fully adequate conception of modernity. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists are still pondering what it is. According to one account: “I regard a society as modernized whenever small decreases in uses of inanimate sources of power could not be made up by increases in animate sources of power without far-reaching social change.”1 Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) reports another, more common view: the “ideology of the modern world first penetrated the ancient civilizations which had hitherto resisted European ideas through French influence. This was the work of the French Revolution.”2 Elsewhere he considers the machine age to be “another symbol for modernity,” and that modernity itself is a break with the past, a “manifesto of cultural revolution.”3 Hobsbawm adds that “[w]hatever the local variant of modernism, between the [world] wars it become the badge of those who wanted to prove that they were both cultured and up to date.”4 French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) brings attention to a third view: 1  Cited in David H. Levy, Marion Joseph Levy, and Bhide, Modernization Late Comers and Survivors (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1972), 3. 2  Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (New York, NY: Vintage, 1996), 53. 3  Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Vintage, 1996), 184. 4  Hobsbawm, 184.

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that “the modernity of Europe and, as a consequence, that of the world” depended on the state, while capitalism was both modernity’s cause and its effect.5 For Braudel, “capitalism was the product of state power, since luxury was for centuries on end chiefly associated with princely courts and thus with the very heart of the state,” and “war, with its ever-increasing expenses and numbers of men in the field was a measure of the vigorous and tumultuous growth of the modern state.”6 On the other hand French sociologist Alain Touraine (b. 1925) finds that modernity “is defined by the fact that it imparts non-social foundations to social phenomena, that it subjects society to principles or values which, in themselves, are not social.”7 This “leads us to define modernity by the intervention of anti-­ communitarian principles.”8 After these views, we are left puzzled; is modernity the primacy of the machine, the cultural revolution, state power, capitalism and war, or anti-­ communitarian principles? British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) offers the middle class as yet another conception of modernity: The most significant conclusion that suggests itself as arising out of a comparison of the encounters that we have now described is that the word ‘modern’ in the term ‘Modern Western civilization’ could be given a more precise and concrete connotation by being translated ‘middle class’. Western communities had become ‘modern’ as soon as they had produced a bourgeoisie capable of becoming the predominant element in Society. We think of the new chapter of Western history that opened at the end of the fifteenth century as being ‘modern’ because it was at that time, in the more advanced Western communities, the middle class began to take control. It follows that, during the currency of the Modern Age of Western history, the ability of aliens to become Westernized depended on their capacity for entering into the middle-class Western way of life.9

In short, views of modernity are diverse and sometimes contradictory— which calls for a more harmonious conception. If though there is one 5  Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Vol. II: The Wheels of Commerce, trans. Siân Reynolds (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 594. 6  Braudel, 594. 7  Alain Touraine, New Paradigm for Understanding Today’s World, trans. Gregory Elliott (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2007), 72. 8  Touraine, 72. 9  Arnold J.  Toynbee, A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes VII-X, Revised (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987), 185.

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thing that all these authors, and many others, might agree on, it is that globalized modernity can justifiably be seen as the mother of all the novel problems that humans currently face. Does it remain the most promising of all solutions? Why or why not be modern? However defined or ill-defined, modernity is not what everyone, or by extension every society, wants. There remain premodern cultures that resist its influence, while there are postmodern intellectual trends that reject and ridicule everything to do with it. Seeking to be modern is not a self-evidently desirable goal. Even if it were, the process of modernization is neither singular nor one-dimensional: the past four centuries provided us with mercantile, colonial, capitalist, imperialist, communist, fascist, welfare state, neoliberal, scientific, and technological modernizations. Rather than being unique, modernity is multiple and diverse.10 What then made modernity so appealing to such a great portion of the globe in the twentieth century, and what continues its appeal in the twenty-first? Historically, modernization has been motivated by several factors and has brought forth several fruits. For England, domestically modernization meant the emancipation of serfs,11 a freer market, and various social movements and institutions gradually reducing the power of the sovereign, in favor of increased commercial and civil rights.12 Internationally, once its “power and prosperity were visibly on the increase […] through its oceanic adventures,”13 after its victory over Spain in 1604 and through to its ultimate dominion over India, modernization meant a vast increase in wealth from control over trading routes, conquered territories and subjugated peoples; and superiority over other competing European powers. For German states during the 1800s, modernization was the path to catch up with what Britain and France had already achieved in wealth and power internationally, and in civil rights, economic growth, and cultural 10  S.  N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000), 2; Charles Kurzman and Bruce B. Lawrence, “Muslim Modernities: Interdisciplinary Insights Across Time and Space,” The Muslim World 105, no. 4 (2015), 439–45, https://doi.org/10.1111/ muwo.12105 11  David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 214. 12  Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin University Books, 1967), 14. 13  Norman Davies, Europe: A History (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 549.

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prosperity nationally. This could be interpreted as a manifestation of psychological envy, but alternatively as a rational reaction to perceived lost opportunities. A German leader might well ask: how could a remote and smaller nation such as Britain, which (in his view) matched neither the intellectual and artistic achievements of the Germans, nor their larger demographic and geographic size, be internationally stronger and nationally more developed? This might be exacerbated by a conception that the British themselves emerged partially from Germanic ancestors many centuries earlier. How then could the small English grandchild be better than the larger German grandfather and impose upon him its political and economic weight? Recognizably too in the Russia of the great Czars and of the Soviets, envy and the recognition of lost opportunities are strong motives for modernization. The ideals of the Enlightenment, and the counterpart ideals of socialism, variously influential in much of Europe, the United States, and the Russia of the great Czars and the Soviets, mark a third set of motives, including the pursuit of happiness; an appreciation of science, learning, and the arts; or a commitment to self-improvement or some version of social progress. Modernity can also be an overwhelming flood that forces a nation to modernize for other reasons. Many third-world countries fit this description to some degree, and Saudi Arabia provides one of the best examples of this process of forced modernization. The Saudi government may resist the adoption of international standards and norms, but not fully, for being a member of the United Nations and cosigner of several international treaties. Riyadh controls the local media, but its control over information is subverted by the presence of the internet and satellite channels. It may promote a Saudi way of life, but not completely, for Saudis have to sell what they can produce to buy what they cannot, and so enter the global market. In short, modernity floods Saudi society even against strong resistance. In sum, the historical experience of modernity indicates that modernization spreads due to (1) an appreciation or desire for increased civil rights, improved living standards, social progress, or other features of modernity; (2) economic and military expansionism; (3) envy of the status, power, and achievements of the more modern nations; and (4) the need for even premodern societies to interact with the modern world. The last three of these are tantamount to making modernization a global

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condition that forces its ideas, artifacts, and institutions on the non-modern, even if not sought. The above-mentioned four drivers of modernization do not come pure and isolated. They can coexist in the same nation. For example, China under Mao conquered Tibet and East Turkestan, and currently seeks international expansion, wealth, and dominance in the South China Sea. Internally, under communism China in some ways advanced civil rights, by spreading education, improving healthcare and advancing women’s rights. More recently, it has responded to some desires of its people by vastly improving infrastructure and living standards. As exemplified under Mao by the ambition for a “Great Leap Forward,” and more recently by its program of industrial catch-up, China is jealous of the achievements and status of other nations. Finally, with international pressure China has made some concessions, for example, in terms of trade policy. The coexistence of the four drivers of modernization in China holds similarly in a great number of countries. The obverse of each of these drivers of modernization explain also why some nations forego or resist modernization. For whatever reason, a nation might be incapable or undesirous of foreign wars of conquest—as with Iceland, to choose an example. Second, people can be isolated and content with their local situation. Some of the hunter-gatherer societies of Australia or Brazil fit this category. Third and likewise, peacefulness and contentedness do not have space for envy and lamentation of lost potential. Fourth, wherever modernization is unwelcome, there are still ways to deflect or mitigate some of its harmful aspects. Thus, Europe retains many traditional aspects of agriculture and food production with the help of extensive subsidies. Nonetheless, correcting and deflecting modernity involves learning its ideas, techniques, and institutions, which forces one to be modern in at least some ways, like it or not. In other words, there is hardly a way not to be modern in today’s world, interlinked as it is economically, politically, culturally, and environmentally. Modernity is no longer an ideology somewhere in Western Europe, rather a global condition that all cultures face, suffer, or enjoy. The takeaway here is that modernity is a relatively heterogeneous geographic, environmental, cultural, political, economic, and technological phenomenon that intellectuals, social movements, and governments rush to contemplate, adopt, or resist, often explicitly under the banner of modernization. Nevertheless, despite the heterogeneity of the phenomenon,

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this common usage does suggest the possibility of uncovering a relatively homogeneous and consistent underlying philosophical doctrine. Is there an ideal model for modernity? The geopolitical struggle over modernity further complicates any attempt at its philosophical conceptualization. No current or historical geopolitical entity can claim to be an ideal embodiment of modernity, geopolitical events and conditions being instead far from ideal. The United Arab Emirates admirably hosts one of the most modern urban cities and some of the most modern technological facilities. Yet these were neither produced locally nor are they operated by its citizens, which disqualifies the UAE from being an ideal candidate for modernity. China is the leading industrial nation in the world,14 with a civilization that is mostly produced locally and operated by its citizens, but it is not democratic and lacks many civil rights. Curing endemic corruption and autocracy in China demands more than advanced industrialization: people have to be fair and rational with their society, not just with their machines and tools. India is more democratic than China, but suffers from extreme poverty,15 inequality, class divisions, and possibly the world’s biggest slavery and human trafficking problem.16 The United States is industrial, wealthier, and more democratic than either of the former, but lacks standard aspects of a modern welfare state, such as universal healthcare or public education on a par with other advanced nations. On top of that, a sizable segment of the American population embraces premodern religious or racist agendas, loudly and fanatically. France achieves greater democratic participation and a better ranking regarding the standard aspects of a welfare state, but it is suffering from severe problems in assimilating its racially African and culturally Muslim sub-populations. Counter-­ modern inclinations of the radical French Right are metastasizing, proving that there are problems in the French model of modernity. Finland achieves a higher rating in all of these aspects but lacks, through no fault of its own, a sizable multicultural, multilinguistic, and multiracial population that modernity is supposed to accommodate and advance in the first place.  Darrell M. West and Christian Lansang, “Global Manufacturing Scorecard: How the US Compares to 18 Other Nations,” July 18, 2018, https://brook.gs/34umpe2 15  “In Modern India, 600 Million Lack Toilets,” The Independent, November 22, 2009, sec. House & Home, https://bit.ly/3hcImG5 16  It is estimated that in India, on any given day in 2016, nearly 8 million people (0.6% of India’s population) were living in slavery. See the Global Slavery Index (2018, Minderoo Foundation, https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/india/). 14

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In short, for countries that lack industrialization, democracy, welfare benefits, and multicultural cooperation—such as are variously the case throughout the Arab world, and comprehensively the case in Egypt—it is hardly possible to find in the former or other examples an ideal, clear-cut example of modernity to emulate. Modernity is best conceived as an intellectual ideal still in the process of being realized, which each nation needs to individually tailor and create, rather than import ready-made.

2   Making Sense of Modernity in Its Descriptive and Normative Diversity We have seen that modernity is descriptively complex and normatively controversial. Nevertheless, the simple idea of the rebellion of new against old can be helpful in distinguishing the modern from the premodern. If we momentarily put ideological differences and modernity’s winners and losers aside, what remains are the long-lasting and influential products of modernity, and meanings that have crystallized in our culture and in scholarly fields. They bring to mind historical processes—rebellions and conquests—fought on numerous battlefields, perhaps most recognizably in scientific, philosophical, political, artistic, and technological fields of endeavor: 1. Modern science brings to mind first the struggle with both superstitious views and the classical Aristotelian inheritance; the promotion of heliocentrism, and the Galilean fusion of mathematics and mechanics. It continues through a long and open-ended line of successive stages and converging breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and biology, in maturation exemplified by Newton in physics, Mendeleev in chemistry, Darwin in biology; then in explosion, by Einstein’s relativity, the quantum mechanics of Born, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, and the genetic double helix of Watson and Crick.17 2. Modern philosophy brings to mind materialism, empiricism, and realism: the rejection of spirits and divinities in ontology, the rejection of tradition, authority and revelation in epistemology, and the rejection of futility in the human quest to understand the world, all in favor of 17  Peter Watson, Convergence: The Idea at the Heart of Science: How the Different Disciplines Are Coming Together to Tell One Coherent, Interlocking Story, and Making Science the Basis for Other Forms of Knowledge (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018), xviii.

2 MODERNITY 

3.

4.

5.

6.

23

rationality and the scientific enterprise. The seeds of this philosophical rebellion were planted by the Renaissance of classical learning, to then sprout in Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum of 1620, René Descartes’ Discours de la méthode of 1637, and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of 1690, and to flower in the Enlightenment. Modern politics brings to mind the struggle against monarchic, oligarchic, theocratic, and feudal regimes, including the redistribution of wealth and power by emancipation from serfdom, separation of church and state, and increasing democratic checks on the power of the sovereign. This strife spans almost five centuries, notably from the Dutch republic in 1581, through the English Civil War, the American and French revolutions, until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the collapse of the Communist bloc, and recently the counter-­globalization movements of the right and the left. Perhaps it will remain a persistent and never-ending strife. Modern political geography brings to mind the rejection of the view of the world as flat and bordered, in favor of the first step along the way to globalization: recognition that the world is indeed a globe, and so the idea that a route to the riches of the East might be found by travel to the west. Then, unexpectedly: European contact with a New World, leading to the expansion of European control and influence from tiny Europe, indeed from a small number of European countries to the entire world. Modern art and literature bring to mind the rebellion against traditional representational styles, and their replacement by pluralistic, highly subjective depictions emphasizing personal perspectives and emotions, and sometimes, the irrationality and meaninglessness of life. These movements were underway by the mid-nineteenth century,18 with the likes of impressionism, surrealism, and nihilism; they intensified in the inter-war period; and still go on in some fields under the name of postmodernism—with the understanding that “much of what [we] now dub postmodernism is … simply a continuation of Modernism.”19 Modern technology brings to mind the revolutions of the machine gun, steam power, the internal combustion engine, anesthesia and antibiotics, electricity, the telegraph and telephone, radio and television broad-

18  Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists, ed. Tony Pinkney (New York, NY: Verso, 1990), 32. 19  Williams, 23.

24 

A. Z. OBIEDAT

casting, computers, the internet, and artificial intelligence, all of which exemplify the most historically unprecedented feature of modernity, namely the vast increase in human power over nature. Modern technology also brings to mind the interconnected web of modernity: it relies on modern science, the modern philosophical outlook, democratic politics that funds mass education and promotes dreams of social ­progress, and creative arts that fertilize the imagination, anticipate new technologies, and popularize science. All rebellions, all conquests, all battles, have their costs. In the case of modernity, those costs have been staggering. The early age of geographic “discovery” brought genocidal Spanish colonization to the native Amerindian civilizations; the later Belgian and Dutch colonizations of Africa culminated in multi-million death slaughter and apartheid; the consolidation of the British colonies in North America and the westward expansion of the United States were predicated on the ethnic cleansing of native tribes; colonial agriculture and trade relied on African enslavement and human trafficking. Europe prospered by looting the riches of the Global South—and then ironically, the crucial contributions of Chinese technology; variously Indian and Arab science, technology, mathematics, and philosophy; Amerindian and Indian riches; and African labor were rendered all but invisible by the idea of the sudden and miraculous rise of Europe out of the ancient Greco-Roman tradition.20 Incessant European strife, allied with a modernity-enabled Imperial Japan, amplified into World Wars and transmuted into the Cold War, making the entire globe the stage for European conflict, and the entire world population, its victims; the ideologies of Fascism, Communism, and Capitalism held their subjects hostage to their alleged modern Utopias; and industrial society and consumerism are depleting the world’s non-renewable natural resources, in exchange for filling it up with garbage and pollutants. Other costs have been more subtle: for example, nihilism and the loss of meaning—as evoked by Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”—depressing or shredding the psyches of many. It would seem that modernity feeds on the Earth and its inhabitants, with the balance of its benefits going overwhelmingly to the short-term material interests of the relatively few; the balance of its harms, overwhelmingly to the many. It would seem too that 20  Eric Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, 3rd edition (Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press, 2003), 225.

2 MODERNITY 

25

now the planet and the biosphere are retaliating against modernity’s mayhem, with global warming, superstorms, superbugs, and pandemics. The above six products—fruits, features, or alternatively, applications of modernity—and too its costs, strike the mind with their complex details, long historical span, and multidimensional significance. What is the value of modernity? That is a different question, with a still more complex answer. I propose the following valuational analysis that may encompass the six basic aspects of modernity, and their costs, within eight general characteristics: 1 The above-mentioned scientific, philosophical, political, artistic, and technological rebellions were not the only ones fought on the battlefields of modernity: overlapping with them, we can also recognize religious, ethical, demographic, sexual, environmental, and many other types of modernities. That is to say, modernity, and likewise its costs, may be brought to any human field: it is expansive rather than restricted. 2 Although modernization might have a breaking point, or fail, in one of its applications, it never reaches completion, or an end-point. Every advance in knowledge, every political solution, every new artistic work or technological innovation reveals more that is unknown, provides fresh inspiration, and causes new trouble. The view from any frontier reveals no final answer: modernity, like problem-­solving in general, creates new challenges and always remains open-ended. 3 Any given society or person may be modern in some respects, but this does not mean that they are equally modern in other respects. Thus, Newton was a founder of modern physics, but shockingly, he was still an alchemist and a religious deist; Descartes was a founder of modern rational epistemology, but still had premodern royalist inclinations; the United States has superlative military, medical, and aviation technologies, but its public education system, and its public legal and health services, are far lower ranked. That is to say, modernity is largely asymmetrical; or put another way, there are multiple and asymmetrical modernities. 4 Modernities were not exclusively the glorious achievements of a single race or nation. The Dutch established the first post-Roman republic in 1581; the Russians fabricated their own communist modernity; the Japanese, in synergy with American influences, created their own form of industrial modernity; and some third-world African countries, lacking a strong traditional banking i­ nfrastructure,

26 

A. Z. OBIEDAT

made the leap to cell phone banking well ahead of many first-world countries.21 Although one has to admit that there is a strong concentration of modernities around the North Atlantic countries, originating in the historical precedence of the process in ChristianEuropean societies, nevertheless modernity is pan-human. 5 Although modernities can radically alter or overthrow the ancien régime, they need not get rid of all premodern ways. The queen in Britain remains the head of the secular Kingdom and the Anglican Church at the same time. The American constitution is fairly secular, but all forty-five American presidents swore on the Christian Bible. More amazing, many Japanese engineers still embrace animistic Shintoism. Modernity is not inevitably a total revolution against the past; that is to say, modernity tends to be reconciliatory. 6 Although modernity is not homogeneous at every moment in all domains of life, modernities are highly interrelated. For example, specialized and abstract modern mathematics was essential for the formation of quantum physics, which in turn was crucial for the invention of nuclear technologies and the atomic bomb. This chain of intellectual and practical events led to the political doctrine of mutual nuclear deterrence in the Cold War, which divided the world into two dangerously competing camps, Warsaw pact versus the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In this case, highly abstract, little known, and hard-to-understand mathematics led to a massive international change, a chain going from certain relatively obscure thinkers of the abstract to the entire rest of the world. Of course this chain is only one part of a mesh of interrelated processes: the Manhattan Project—the enormous scientific, engineering, and industrial effort that was needed to fuse all these elements into functioning nuclear weapons—was spurred by the madness of another of modernity’s offshoots, World War II.  More positively, twentiethcentury political changes have repeatedly led to the adoption of free, uniform, and compulsory primary education. This often led to an increase in GDP, with associated increases in life span and decreases in birth rate. Thus, changes in national politics led to economic and biological transformations, going from the state to the individual. 21  Frank Langfitt, “Mobile Money Revolution Aids Kenya’s Poor,” NPR.org, January 5, 2011, https://www.npr.org/2011/01/05/132679772/mobile-money-revolution-aidskenyas-poor-economy

2 MODERNITY 

27

The means of modernity leverage the interrelations between ­individuals, states, and the individual and the state, more vibrantly, pervasively, and forcefully, than ever in premodernity. 7 Modernity’s appeal to the public and to the intellect hinges on its strong claim of beneficial progress. Certainly, avoiding life-­ threatening infection by vaccination is biologically and emotionally much better than awaiting a painful death. Similarly, email is an impressive improvement over horse-carried mail. Despite all of that, modernity is not necessarily a simple matter of progress. That is to say, modernity is not necessarily superior in every single bit of its innovations over past premodern conditions. Some modern proposals could be merely suitable in context, superior in some ways, and inferior in others—neither superior nor inferior overall, just different. For example, photography is current, but so too are painting and drawing. For example, traditional foods and cuisines are highly prized, and coexist with modern industrial foodstuffs that are pathetic but convenient. For example, literary learning as facilitated by the printing press is not necessarily better than oral learning by medieval lecturing and debating, since both have their own pedagogical pros and cons: oral communication can be interactive, and evolution has adapted and inclined us to it; yet literature is easier to refine, to build upon, and to transmit widely. In the same line, screen learning with internet connectivity is supplanting the experience of the paper-­printed word, creating a different mix of pedagogical pros and cons. All of these are examples of succeeding innovations, but they remain mere alternatives of contextual suitability, based on availability, convenience, and user characteristics. 8 Modernity can also be tragically regressive when it enables or assists in slavery, the exploitation of the working class, authoritarianism, colonialism, genocidal ethnic cleansing, world wars, proxy wars, environmental degradation, species extinction, and nuclear warfare—to mention a few ways the catastrophic aspect of modernity has increased human suffering. Surely many dead people would rather have remained alive in whatever premodern manner than be killed with the aid of, or for the sake of, modernity. The same applies to those exploited, enslaved, imprisoned, colonized, or chemically or radioactively poisoned by modern technology. Outside the human circle, water, air, animals, and plants do not articulate their criticism of the destruction they face from modernity, although the symptoms of

28 

A. Z. OBIEDAT

nature’s dissatisfaction are not hard to read. Ironically, the r­ ecognition and resolution of these evils is one of modernity’s main tasks. I shall not conceive of this as modernity’s “self-correction,”22 because modernity offers no guarantee of an infallible pattern of good-­seeking. Rather, modernity has the capacity, at least, to understand its fallibility and to critique it on a theoretical level, and to endeavor to correct its faults in practice. Thus, we have had the imperfect successes of emancipation, third-world independence, the long post-­ World War II peace within Western Europe, the environmental protection movement, the advancement of women’s rights, and much more. Luckily, modernity is indeed capable of admitting its mistakes, showing remorse, repenting, and partially reforming its path. To summarize. In valuational terms, modernity has an octagonal cluster of features. Modernity is expansive, with an ever-growing set of applications; it is avowedly open-ended, to remain ever-incomplete; it is asymmetrical, since not all modern applications are equally advanced; though historically and presently most conspicuous in the Northern Hemisphere, it is neither ethnically nor nationally restricted, but pan-human; it is reconciliatory, rather than inevitably in disjunction with premodern ways; it is not necessarily progressive, but merely oriented to being suitable; it is interrelated, learning from and using changes and achievements made in any field; and finally, modernity can be regressive, thus requiring insistent examination and reformation. Combining modernity’s descriptive and valuational aspects into one sentence: modernity is a historical phenomenon marked by major scientific, philosophical, political, artistic, and technological achievements and disasters that are expansive, open-ended, asymmetrical, pan-human, reconciliatory, suitability-oriented, and interrelated; it is fallible yet possibly repentant. A student of global history might object that the octagonal cluster of modernity’s features are rather symptomatic of human civilization itself, ever since it emerged in Mesopotamia, some time before 3000  BCE.23 Such a student might see many of those features thriving in the Sumerian and ancient Chinese civilizations, through the Greek and Muslim empires, to the current Europeans and Asian Tigers. More radically, an anthropologist might propose that the octagonal cluster is rather characteristic of the  Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” 25.  Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 22.

22 23

2 MODERNITY 

29

enterprise of Homo sapiens sapiens itself, as far back as the “creative explosion”24 of some 60,000 to 40,000 years ago25; while a paleontologist might venture that the modern human is none other than the Homo sapiens who emerged some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago.26 The currently expanding evolutionary approach to human behavior justifiably sees all human activities from the same lens. The response, however, is that the uninterrupted continuity and force of modernity’s advances over the past five centuries, the cumulative lineage of its philosophies and sciences, and the concomitant increasing exchange of things and ideas between the inhabitants of the globe together justify the distinctive label of modernity. All of these are aspects that cannot be strictly found in the lives of early hunter-gatherers or in the civilizations of antiquity. Further, the expanding, interrelating, and repenting features of modernity make it a living, cumulative, transforming, and potentially self-­healing enterprise—albeit one whose achievements are neither immediate nor perfect. Ihab Hassan (1925–2015), the Egyptian-born Arab-American professor of English and comparative literature known as “the father of Postmodernism,”27 has offered a by now widely cited table28 of various contrasting features of modernity and postmodernity. Hassan’s famous table inspires thoughts of various contrasts between premodernity and modernity, and further between various forms of modernity. With further inspiration from observations of David Harvey29 and correspondence with Michael Kary, Table 2.1 summarizes some stereotypical characteristics of premodern and modern societies, the latter subdivided into archetypal, utopian, and 24  Peter Watson, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 31. 25  Watson, Ideas, 33. 26  Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, “The Evolution of Modern Human Brain Shape,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): eaao5961, https://doi. org/10.1126/sciadv.aao5961; Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 33; John Hawks, “How Has the Human Brain Evolved Over the Years?,” Scientific American Mind 24, no. 3 (July 2013): 76, https://doi.org/10.1038/ scientificamericanmind0713-76b; Wright, A Short History of Progress, 33. 27  “Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades,” South Atlantic Review 60, no. 3–4 (1995), 192. 28  Ihab Hassan, “The Culture of Postmodernism,” Theory, Culture & Society 2, no. 3 (1985), 123–24. 29  David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into The Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1992), 39–65.

30 

A. Z. OBIEDAT

Table 2.1  Summary of some stereotypical characteristics of premodern and modern societies (adapted from Hassana). The actual world of today has features of all four stereotypes Stereotype Modern Aspect

Premodern

Archetypal or familiar

Utopian

Dystopian

Pace of change

Slow

Fast

On demand

Overwhelming

Dominant economic sector

Agriculture

Industry

None: balanced economy

Crime

Labor

Farmer, Employee with sharecropper, benefits serf, slave

Mixed: Employee with job security and benefits; self-employment; cooperatives

Independent contractor with no benefits

Housing

Rural

Urban

Mixed

Beehives and anthills

Economy

Feudal/ pastoral

Capitalist

Mixed

Plutocratic

Geopolitical organization

Empires

Nation-states

To be invented

Colluding deep states

Form of government

Aristocracy

Republic

To be invented

Plutocracy

Borders

Fluid

Fixed

None, or like the European Union

Penetrated by globalizers

Ethnicities

Separate, hostile

From uneasy mixture to conviviality

Equal, multiple, harmonious

Mixed, hostile

Foreign affairs

Conqueror/ subject

Colonizer/ colonized

Alliances

Proxy regimes

Reaction to perceived slight

Duel

Lawsuit

Laughter

Demonization campaign

Form of radical political dissent

Heresy

Treason

Not needed

Terrorism

The other

Infidels, barbarians, exotica

Interesting

Outdated concept

Walled out

Clash of civilizations

Military

Military, political, No clash: beneficial Nuclear economic, cooperation and cultural competition (continued)

2 MODERNITY 

31

Table 2.1 (continued) Stereotype Modern Aspect

Premodern

Archetypal or familiar

Utopian

Dystopian

Center of the world

Eurasia

North Atlantic

Wherever you are

Hidden

Kinship

Tribal

Nuclear family

Mitochondrial eve

Clonal

Gender dominance

Mostly patriarchal

Still mostly patriarchal

None

Perpetual war

Mass communications

Word of mouth

Print and electronic

Great global commons

Great National Firewall

Norms

Customary

National/legal

Compatible with what science tells us of the human condition

Pop culture

Artistic values

Traditional

Unconventional

Artistic truth

Market-based

Artistic media

Artisanal, folkloric

Anything

Green

Social media

Morality

Folk, religious

Utilitarian/ individualistic

Compatible with what science tells us of the human condition

Orwellian

Worldview

Mythological Nation-centric

Scientific

Expedient

Religion

Primary

Secondary

To be invented

State tool

Ideologies

Sacred

Partisan

Philosophical

State tool

Epistemology

Scriptural

Mostly realist

Realist

Post-truth

Ontology

Animist, spiritualist, theist

Mostly materialist

Multiple universes

State tool

Hassan, 123–24

a

dystopian versions. Certainly, many aspects of life have crossed from the premodern epoch to the modern, and even into the postmodern, with reasonable stability: for example, people are still shaking hands,30 marrying in religious ceremonies, and getting insulted by impolite comments. Thus, rather than completely differentiating the types, the table is meant to summarize some important, typical, or else new and noteworthy characteristics of them.  That is, the practice was current up until the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing as of this writing.

30

32 

A. Z. OBIEDAT

3   Modernity Between the Arab-Islamic World and the West Modernity in the West, as the fruit of many rebellions and conquests, battles of new against old in numerous fields of endeavor, evokes a matrix of positive outcomes. Science unveils the mysteries of nature; technology puts it to good use; democracy advances over tyranny; economic expansion increases living standards; modern philosophy articulates universally applicable and beneficial ethics. Perceptions of modernity in Arab-Islamic cultures, where premodernity remains deeply entrenched, can be staggeringly different. There, the dark side of modernity is prominent, as seen in a matrix of negative outcomes. Western technology led to exploitation of Arab natural resources and environmental degradation; politically, Arabs suffered Western colonialism and domestic proxy dictatorship; economically, Arabs felt the unbalanced boom in wealth going to the former colonizer and Westernized elite; and culturally, Arabs suffered mockery of the very system of ideas that historically made them literate, sovereign, and unified, that is, Islam. Many in the West obviously have a corresponding negative view of the presence of premodernity in the Arab-Islamic world. This view has most recently been shaped by experiences of Arab counter-reaction to Western influence and control, terrorism, and media coverage of underdevelopment and violations of human rights. “Why do they hate us?” is the encapsulating question posed by U.S.  President George W.  Bush regarding Arabs and Muslims, in a speech after 9/11.31 Here the Arabs and Islam are viewed as uncivilized, unjustified, and perhaps even ungrateful aggressors. Contrastingly, an uncomfortably sizable number of people in the Arab-­ Islamic world have viewed those same acts as resistance by the Arab and Islamic world against injustices imposed upon them by the West.32 But who is wrong and who is right? Is it the premodern nations who are poor, uneducated, undemocratic, and living in filthy cities; or the rich, educated, democratic, clean, and modern Western nations who have been and still are the aggressors and the perpetrators? Which are the victims, and which  C-SPAN. “User Clip: George Bush on Why Terrorists Hate America | C-SPAN.Org,” accessed May 5, 2021, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4955113/user-clip-george-bushterrorists-hate-america. 32  This is eloquently presented in Joseph A.  Massad, “Introduction: The Opposite of Terror,” in The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians (New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 1–10. 31

2 MODERNITY 

33

the oppressed? Consider two contrasting sketches of the history of relations—or of grievances—between the Arab-Islamic and Western worlds. First as viewed from a perspective stereotypical of some circles of the West (to emphasize: viewed from the perspective of some Western circles means not being balanced or fair, instead being contentious and aggravating to those outside the circles, and without the larger historical background—that has to come later): in 711 CE, Muslim Arabs and Moors33 invade the Christian Visigothic Kingdom34 of the Iberian Peninsula, to be finally driven out only in the late fifteenth century. The vast Arab and Ottoman slave trade, and the raids on Europe to support it—and the ransoms paid to recuperate captives—combine with other grievances. In the Middle Ages, Christians need to prosecute two centuries of Crusades, in an attempt to wrest control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Muslim Turks conquer the Christian city of Constantinople and change the name to Istanbul. They continue on to conquer most of the Christian Balkans and southern Ukraine by 1699. Beginning with the Napoleonic era and continuing to this day, Europeans bring modern learning and technology to the benighted Arab world. In the early twentieth century, Lawrence of Arabia, a man of diverse talents and careers, acting as a British intelligence officer in the Middle East, helps the Arabs rebel against the Turks. Shortly after, British and American capital and know-how help the Arab world become rich from oil. An agonizing hostage crisis in Lebanon extends from the 1980s into the 1990s. In the 1980s, Americans provide the decisive military aid that allows Afghan Muslims35 to expel Soviet invaders—only to be repaid with 9/11. In 2003, a Coalition of the Willing liberates Iraq from the rule of a despot, but the Arabs squander the opportunity and repay the United States with mayhem 33  Under the Umayyad dynasty, a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Islamic world from approximately 660 to 750 CE, and that ruled Moorish Spain from 756 to 1031 CE. The Moors were of mixed Arab and Berber ancestry. 34  It is important not to identify, at the time of the birth of Islam, the majority of Europe with Christianity. Christianity reached current Italy, France, and Spain in late antiquity before the emergence of Islam, but Christianization of Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe was gradually spreading parallel to the spread of Islam in the southern Mediterranean regions. Christianity was accepted in the following modern-day countries roughly by the indicated dates: England (East Anglia) in 604, Germany (Saxony) in 785, the Czech Republic (Moravia) in 831, Ukraine and Russia in 945–957, Poland in 966, and Norway in 995. 35  Who, for being Muslims dressed in traditional clothing and speaking a foreign tongue, relatively few in the West distinguish from Arabs. Although linguistically and geographically distant, Arabs and Afghans share many similar cultural and historical trajectories relating to colonialism, imperialism, and underdevelopment.

34 

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and bloodshed. In the twenty-first century, Syria, already a vassal state, further extends its fealty to Russia, a barely tolerated enemy of the West, all while imploding into barbarity and self-ruin. Now consider a contrasting sketch of historical events, largely forming the modern Arab perception of European ungratefulness, colonialism, imperialism, and aggression against the Arab world36: in 711 CE, the Moors bring advanced Muslim civilization to the benighted Christian Visigothic Kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula—only to be repaid in 1492 with mass expulsion and the Inquisition. Muslims leave behind a vast cultural heritage that still profits Spain, to include touristic wonders such as the Alhambra. In the Middle Ages, Muslims need to repel two centuries of Christian aggression during the Crusades. In 1534, Christian Spain occupies the towns of Ceuta and Melilla on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, an occupation ongoing to this day. In 1810, Britain burns many ships of the al-Qawasim37 in the current UAE and in 1820 imposes a protection treaty. France refuses to pay its grain debts to Algeria,38 instead conquering Algiers in 1830. French occupation continues until the success of the Algerian revolution in 1962. In 1860, France embarks on a (short-lived) military campaign in Lebanon; in 1881, it occupies Tunisia. Britain occupies Egypt and Sudan in 1882; Italy occupies Libya in 1911; France and Spain occupy Morocco in 1912. In 1917, British General Edmund Allenby triumphantly enters Jerusalem through the Jaffa gate and reportedly declares that “the wars of the crusades are now complete.”39 Upon invading Damascus in 1920, 36  For a full account see, William R.  Polk, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 37  The Qawasim are one of the six ruling families of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and rule two of the seven emirates: Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah. 38  When “the deys [Ottoman-allied autonomous rulers of Algeria] provided grain to France on credit—to provision French military campaigns in Italy and Egypt between 1793 and 1798—their repeated pleas to the French government to honor their commitments fell on deaf ears.” By “1827 the French had no intention of honoring debts incurred three decades earlier.” In part due to an internal political crisis and in part due to an alleged incident between the Algerian leaders and the French ambassador, under Charles X (r. 1824–1830), in June 1830 France invaded Algeria with an army of 37,000 troops. In Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History, Revised edition (London: Basic Books, 2017), 112, 113, and 114. 39  Hatem Bazian, “Revisiting the British Conquest of Jerusalem,” December 14, 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/12/revisiting-british-conquest­je-2014121381243881138.html

2 MODERNITY 

35

France’s General Henri Gouraud expresses the same medieval mentality, saying near the tomb of Saladin: “Saladin, we have returned to the Orient!”40 Britain and France occupy Iraq and greater Syria (including current Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine) by 1918. In 1948, an adventitious European Zionist movement is empowered by Britain to occupy Palestine41 and wreaks havoc in the entire Middle East. In the mid-twentieth century, the CIA overthrows a promising democracy in Iran, leaving it instead with a cruel dictator. The United States conquers Iraq in 2003 and leaves it in ruin. In 2015, Russia destroys eastern Aleppo and crushes the Syrian revolution.42 American State Department consultant and scholar William R. Polk (1929–2020) concludes the story: Hardly a conversation passes almost anywhere in Africa or Asia without reference to northern imperialism. As one young man who had studied business at an American university put it to me, “The bottom line is that no Muslim ever tried to enslave or slaughter your people. You might think of the attack on the World Trade Center, 9/11, as a counterattack. It was terrible and most of us are ashamed of it, but just remember—it killed about 25 hundred people whereas imperialists killed at least 25 million of our relatives and tried to destroy our way of life and our religion. Do you care about that?”43

Can these two contrasting timelines, these two contrasting sets of perceptions, be harmoniously integrated, historically, politically, or psychologically? Are the scores finally settled, at ruinous cost to each side? Or do scores never sum to zero, but only accumulate in perpetuity? These are questions that beg for a setting within a larger historical context. They provide a fruitful opportunity for a brief consideration of the socio-­political context of the rise of Islam, the religious and social phenomenon of central interest to this book. 40  “Nous voici de retour en Orient, Monsieur le sultan!”, In Anne-Marie Eddé, Saladin (Paris: Flammarion, 2008), 9. 41  For a careful documentation of the birth of Israel and its later evolution within Palestine, from an Israeli historian, see the following two works: Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2007); Ilan Pappe, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2017). 42  See Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History, Revised edition (London: Basic Books, 2017), 29, 109, 127, and 175–176. 43  William R. Polk, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 63.

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4   Historical Interlude: A Brief Consideration of the Rise of Islam in its Socio-political Context The Koran appeared between 610 and 632  CE, at the hands of an orphan Arab, Muhammad (570–632 CE). Muhammad’s ancestry traces back to northern Arab tribes and the Aramaic peoples of Syrian Semites.44 The intellectual significance of Muhammad’s Koranic movement is its invention of a Judeo-Christian synthesis: not as two distinct traditions joined merely with hyphens, but as one fused religion,45 written in Arabic and known as Islam, literally submission (to the creator). The historical legitimacy of the Koran is based on its acknowledgment of the legitimacy of both Abrahamic and Persian religious thought. This was culturally important in late antiquity, helping to unify the Middle East. One finds the legitimacy of the pre-Muslim Abrahamic and Persian traditions upheld in a great number of Koranic verses, such as: Surely! We did reveal the Torah, wherein is guidance and a light, by which the prophets who surrendered (unto God) judged the Jews, and the rabbis and the priests.46 Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Sabians,47 and the Christians—whoever believes in God and the last day and does good—they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve.48 Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians and the Magians49 and those who associate [others with God, e.g., idolaters]—surely God will decide between them on the day of resurrection.50 44  Chase F.  Robinson, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam: The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 156. 45  A detailed account of this view is presented in: Holger M. Zellentin, ed., The Qur’an’s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity: Return to the Origins (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019). 46  (Qur’an 5:44), emphasis is mine. 47  The Sabians were a pre-Islamic religious group of obscure origin and destination. According to the Koran their monotheistic faith, along with those of the Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, was also revealed by Allah. 48  (Qur’an 5:69), emphasis is mine. 49  The Magians refers to the Magi, a priestly caste of ancient Persia. The name the Magi for the Three Wise Men said to have brought gifts of incense, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus, refers to the same Magi. 50  (Qur’an 22:17), emphasis is mine.

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We revealed to you just as We revealed to Noah and the prophets [who came] after him, even as We revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the descendants, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and as we offered the Psalms to David.51

Arab polytheists in Mecca persecuted the followers of the new religion, as it threatened their tribal supremacy over Arabia and their idol-based pilgrimage trade, and belittled their moral customs. Eventually and for three years, the Makkans52 imposed an economic and legal embargo on the Prophet and his followers in Mecca, who then migrated to Medina— which threatened to cut the vital Makkan trade route to the Levant. For nearly five years thereafter, the Makkans waged war on the Muslims of Medina. After the Muslim victory in the eighth year of the overall conflict, on March 6, 632  CE, in the context of his farewell speech in Mecca, Muhammed pardoned all Makkans, destroyed their idols, and provided some remarkable instructions unheard of within the Greek, Persian, and Arab cultures of the time. This is an extract from that speech53: 1. O people, surely your blood and your wealth is as inviolable for you as this day and this month until you meet your Lord; 2. Anyone who has a trust belonging to another person, let him return it to him; 3. All usury is forbidden, and you will only have the capital of your wealth; you will do no wrong nor will you be wronged; 4. O people, you have certain rights over your women, and they too have right over you. Your right to them is that they will not allow any man to lie in your bed. It is incumbent upon them not to commit any act of lewdness. But if they do, then God has permitted you to desert their bed; 5. Be kind toward women, for they are helpmates, having no power for themselves; 6. O people, listen to my words and understand them: it is not lawful for anyone to take from his brother except what he gives him willingly. Do not wrong yourselves54;  (Qur’an 4:136).  Makkans: the people of Mecca, the city being Makkah in Arabic. 53  The full Arabic text is available in Maḥmūd Sharı ̄f Basyūnı ̄, Al-Watha ̄ʼiq al-Dawliyyah al-Maʻniyyah bi Ḥ uqūq al-Insān [International Documents Related to Human Rights], vol. II (Cairo, Egypt: Dār al-Shurūq, 2003), 32–33. 54  Mahmoud M. Ayoub, Islam: Faith and History (Simon and Schuster, 2013), 27–28. 51 52

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7. O people, your God is one and your father is one, all of you are from Adam and Adam is from the mud. Your most honorable is your most fearful of God. There is no supremacy of an Arab over a non-Arab except by good deeds. Have I delivered the message?55 Craig Considine, an American scholar at Rice University, and many other intellectual historians see this speech as one of the earliest calls for women’s rights, and the last line in particular as one of the earliest calls against racism.56 The acknowledgment of other religions—and several other factors— helps explain why the current Arab-Muslim world neither is religiously cleansed of resident Arab Jews57 and Arab Christians58—as is the 55  The last line in the speech is corroborated by many medieval sources (emphasis is mine). See Muḥammad Nāsị r al-Dı ̄n Albānı ̄, Silsilat Al-Aḥa ̄dı ̄th al-Ṣaḥı ̄ḥah wa Shayʼ Min Fiqhiha ̄ wa Fawāʼidihā, (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Maktabat al-Maʻārif, 1995), 449. 56  Compare Muhammad’s late-antiquity attitude concerning race and ethnicity with that of two of the giants of European Enlightenment, Hume and Kant: “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to adduce a single example where a Negro has demonstrated talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who have been transported elsewhere from their countries, although very many of them have been set free, nevertheless not a single one has ever been found who has accomplished something great in art or science or shown any other praiseworthy quality, while among the whites there are always those who rise up from the lowest rabble and through extraordinary gifts earn respect in the world.” Immanuel Kant, quoted in Kant: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings, ed. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 58. 57  The term “Arab Jews” seems a contradiction in terms to many in the West today. Yet Arab Jews have long been a seems a contradiction in terms to many in the West today. Yet Arab Jews have long been a natural component of Arab civilization, dating back to even before the rise of Islam. It is correspondingly unclear to many in the West that under French and British colonialism, puppet Arab governments planned and executed campaigns of antagonization and incentivization to get many Arab Jews out of their historical homelands in Iraq, Yemen, or Morocco, and into the Syrian province of Palestine. In this spirit, “In July 1949, the British, in an attempt to boost their declining influence in the Middle East, put forward a proposal for a population transfer and tried to persuade Nuri es-Said [Prime Minster of British dominated Iraq] to settle 100,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq. A letter sent by the British Foreign Office to its legations in the Middle East spoke of an “arrangement whereby Iraqi Jews moved into Israel, received compensation for their property from the Israeli government, while the Arab refugees were installed with the property in Iraq.” In Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006), 118. Earlier, in 1928, “The chief Rabbi of Baghdad and dignitaries of the Jewish community issued a declaration expressing opposition to Zionism, and leading public figure, Menachem Salah Daniel, rejected a request by the World Zionist Origination to organize Zionist activity in Iraq.” In Shenhav, 29. See also footnote 9. 58  It is important to stress that many leaders of contemporary pan-Arab nationalism, who were admired by Muslim majority Arabs, were Christian Arabs. For example, the Ba‘th Party

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contrary case in the Spanish Reconquista—nor, despite long and intense sectarian conflict, has formal sectarian borders, in the manner of modern Ireland. The Arab-Islamic Judeo-Christian synthesis was more than just an ethico-­cosmological exercise.59 It was also a political project, a response to several centuries of warring between the Sassanid60 Zoroastrian Empire, and first the pagan Roman Empire, and, later, the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire.61 These empires had been attempting to extend their dominions and religions to the Arabs, who at the time were split between Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and idol worshippers.62 In 614 CE, the Persians defeated the Byzantines, entered Jerusalem, and reportedly took with them the cross of Jesus’ crucifixion. Aided by dynastic quarrels in the Persian royal family, the Byzantines eventually reversed the situation,63 so that in 628, the Sassanid Persians sued for peace,64 and in 630, two years before the death of Muhammad, “the Holy Rood [the cross of the crucifixion] was restored to Jerusalem.”65 This was four years before the beginning of the Arab-Islamic conquest of the Fertile Crescent. that nominally lead Syria and Iraq for many decades was founded by the Christian Michel Aflaq (1910–1989). “The idea of Arab nationalism had begun among Christian intellectuals before it did among Muslims.” In Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh, Ideas of Arab Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1956), 53. Commenting on the more favorable treatment of Christians under Islam than of Muslims under Christianity, “as one 1676 English pamphleteer put it, the Turk was “the Common Enemy” of Christians, and yet “to our endless shame, he lets Christians live under him with more ease and freedom than Christians [let Muslims live under them].”” Quoted in Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche (Routledge, 2009), 3. 59  Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’ān (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 108. 60  The Sassanian (Sasanian, Sasanid) dynasty was an ancient Persian dynasty that ruled from 224 to 651  CE, being ultimately destroyed by the Arabs over the years 637–651. The Sassanians overthrew the (Persian) Parthians (who had ruled from 247 BCE to 223 CE) and created an empire with Zoroastrianism as its state religion. Over the course of conflict with Rome and Byzantium to the west, and the Kushans and Hephthalites to the east, the extent of the Sassanid empire fluctuated, to include many Arab regions in Iraq and Arabia. (“Sasanian Dynasty”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, April 3, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ Sasanian-dynasty) 61  Robinson, 1:8 and 81. 62  Robinson, 1:161. 63  W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 4. 64  Watt, 4. 65  Watt, 4.

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In the historical sense, Arab-Islamic civilization emerged as a social movement responding to harsh Roman-Persian domination, of the Semites of Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, and of the closely related peoples of North Africa unhappy with the Roman Empire.66 It was then a fulfillment of messianic ideals, of waiting for a liberator.67 This partially explains the total collapse of the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires in the face of small and ill-equipped Arab forces, who within thirty years were able to take a continuous span of land from Iran to Tunis. The unstable Pax Romana was replaced by the more stable Pax Islamica. As a notable historian comments: “a careful consideration of verses about peace and conciliation is 180 degrees away from that in Western polemics for the past nearly millennium and a half.”68 Yet, ideals are quickly corrupted, so popular approval of pious Muslim leadership (bay’ah) in the style of a republic lasted less than thirty years after the succession of four of Muhammad’s companions. By 661, the new Muslim-Arab leadership of the Umayyad dynasty started to emulate the former Persian-Roman monarchic and imperial style. They expanded Muslim rule beyond the Middle East, to Iberians, Armenians, and northern Indians—such that institutionally and politically, Islam came to resemble a mix of Sassanid Empire and Byzantine Christianity. Parallel to the emergence of Islam, a new and distant player, neither Middle Eastern nor European, emerged. Central Asian Turkic peoples migrated to several parts of Caucasia, the region between the Black and Caspian Seas, Persia, and Anatolia. These migrations led to the Khazar Kingdom (650–969), which eventually converted to Judaism.69 Two later  Robinson, 1:73.  Within the religious thinking of the time, some in late antiquity took the following verse in the Torah to refer to the Arabs as the cousins of the Hebrews and to predict the Muhammadan prophecy: “I will raise up for them a Prophet like you [Moses] from among their [Israelites] brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.” (Deuteronomy 18:18, New King James Version.) 68  Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (New York, NY: Bold Type Books, 2018), 201. 69  On the Turkic Khazar conversion to Judaism in medieval Arabic and Hebrew sources, see: D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton Oriental Studies Volume 16 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 89, 116. On the basis of a variety of evidence, it has been argued that this important historical event explains that today’s Ashkenazi Jews descend largely from a Turkic Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward to modern Russia and central Europe. “Modern Rabbinical scholarship continues to idealize the Khazars and their conversion. This stance is due largely to Judah Halevi (b. 1075, d. 66 67

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waves of Turkic migrants converted to Islam. The Seljuks converted in central Asia and then became established in Persia and many Arab regions around 1037. Descendants of possibly another wave led to the Ottomans. By around 1299, the Ottomans came to dominate parts of Anatolia of current Turkey. They fought the Byzantine Empire and interfered in its civil war with the Serbs.70 The Ottomans found themselves the strongest party and conquered Constantinople, the core of Byzantine Empire, in 1453. They continued on to gradually conquer most of the Christian Balkans, southern Ukraine, and Hungary.71 The Ottomans reached their greatest territorial extent in Europe circa 1680, just before the failed 1683 siege of Vienna, and the ensuing war brought about the losses formalized at Karlowitz in 1699.72 Considering then the rise of the Arabs and of Islam overall: western Arabia was less sheltered from the prevailing winds of Late Antiquity than previously thought: Muhammad was part of [Roman Emperor] Heraclius’ and [Persian Emperor] Yazdegerd’s world. What is more, as soon as the conquests had decelerated, Muslims would abandon Arabia as their political capital for Syria and Iraq, and the articulation of much early Islamic doctrine and ritual is a phenomenon of the Fertile Crescent rather than the Arabian Peninsula.73 1141), who was first to view the Khazar conversion as a central event in Jewish history.” In Omeljan Pritsak, “The Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 3 (1978), 269. More recently, the origin of Ashkenazi Jews has come under genetic investigation. “AJ [Ashkenazi Jewish] genetics defies simple demographic theories. Hypotheses such as a wholly Khazar, Turkish, or Middle-Eastern origin have been disqualified, but even a model of a single Middle-Eastern and European admixture event cannot account for all of our observations. The actual admixture history might have been highly complex, including multiple geographic sources and admixture events. Moreover, due to the genetic similarity and complex history of the European populations involved (particularly in Southern Europe), the multiple paths of AJ migration across Europe, and the strong genetic drift experienced by AJ in the late Middle Ages, there seems to be a limit on the resolution to which the AJ admixture history can be reconstructed.” In James Xue et al., “The Time and Place of European Admixture in Ashkenazi Jewish History,” PLoS Genetics 13, no. 4 (April 4, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006644 70  David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 397. 71  Joshua M. White of the University of Virginia, a specialist in Ottoman history, helpfully informed me of certain details. 72  Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2007), 557–65. 73  Robinson, 1:9.

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The seventh century was a time of Holy War. When Muḥammad was campaigning within the Ḥ ijaz on behalf of God, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, having broken from the emperors’ tradition by leading armies in person, was campaigning in Armenia and Iraq on behalf of Christ and God. It may even be that in the very year that the Prophet entered into the treaty at al-Ḥ udaybiya [with the Arabian polytheists], thus ensuring a peaceful pilgrimage to Mecca, Heraclius’ army was storming into [Persian] Sassanian Iraq, thus ensuring the return of fragments of the Cross to Jerusalem. Events in and outside Arabia had been running in parallel, but they would now intersect.74

The history of relations between the Islamic and Western worlds is thus very long and complex, with many scores to settle on both sides. Even the matter of “who started it” has some complexity to it: was the Moorish attack on Spain in 711 CE the first strike? Not from the Arab perspective, because Romans had invaded North Africa much earlier. Then in sequence, in 410 CE the Germanic Goth tribes sacked Rome; in 439 CE, the Vandal Visigoths of the Iberian Peninsula, the western tribes of Goths, “conquered Carthage [current Tunis], and with it one of the chief sources of revenue for the western empire.”75 More, the first strike question itself is ill-posed, as it presumes permanently demarcated cultural and geographic lines between civilizations that are, rather, synthesized and re-synthesized over the course of history. The complexity involves religious conversion, linguistic adoption, and geographic migration. For example, Christianity starts with the Jewish and Aramaic converts in the Semitic Levant, but its center becomes non-­ Semitic and moves to Mediterranean Constantinople and European Rome. Also, Islam starts with Semites in Western Arabia, but three quarters of today’s Muslims are non-Arabs of Balkan, Turkic, Persian, Indian, Malayan (Greater Indonesian), and African peoples, all far from Arabia. The history of conflict between northern and southern Mediterranean peoples might be pushed to its extreme in the mutual competition over the Semitic Fertile Crescent. Perhaps the first event was the expansion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire circa 522 BCE, and the second was the Greek campaigns of Alexander the Great circa 328 BCE. Needless to say,  Robinson, 1:193.  Robinson, 1:83.

74 75

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drawing a millennium-long line of causality from Alexander to Muhammad is extremely problematic. For one, Alexander is in many ways an offspring of the earlier cultural, scientific, and technical evolution of the Babylonians and Egyptians. For another, Muhammad is an offspring of the interaction within the Fertile Crescent of Hellenistic Christianity and Persian and Jewish cultures. Still, claiming that the Arab world has been subject to massive European aggression for substantial parts of the past millennium is a historically valid observation.76 Shockingly for many contemporary Western audiences, but not at all surprisingly for intellectuals and historians, Europe’s knowledge of Greek-­ Arab science,77 humanistic educational institutions,78 secular philosophy,79

 I excluded the obvious Turkish wars in Europe because the Ottoman Empire is a hybrid combination that is best seen as Euro-Asiatic and Islamo-Christian at the same time. Hence, it is attributable neither to Muslim Arabs entirely nor to European Christians completely. That the Ottoman Empire defies this stereotypical dichotomy can be seen in the following: “On a variety of levels—from international and diplomatic to local and military, from ambassadors and treaties to foot soldiers on the ground and peasants in the villages […] Christians and Christian countries were directly involved alongside the Turks in the attempt to take Vienna. From Louis XIV’s alliance with the sultan to the 100,000-strong army of Hungarian Christians who assisted the Ottoman attack; from the thousands of Greeks, Armenians and Slavs in the Ottomans’ own armies who loyally fought for the sultan to the Transylvanian Protestants and disaffected peasants who, tired of the Catholic Habsburgs’ yoke (or of their own Hungarian aristocracy) moved over to the Turkish side.” In Ian Almond, Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched with Christians Across Europe’s Battlegrounds (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 140. 77  George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011). 78  George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981). 79  “In the decades after Ernest Renan’s identification of Averroes and his followers as proponents of a secularized vision of science, mediaevalists and scholars of the Renaissance focused on the controversial questions of the eternity of the world and monopsychism. After 1940, when John Herman Randall Jr. argued that the first traces of the modern scientific hypothetical method could be found in the works of professors, influenced by their reading of Averroes, at the University of Padua in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, attention turned to questions of method and logic.” In Craig Martin, “Rethinking Renaissance Averroism,” Intellectual History Review 17, no. 1 (January 1, 2007): 3, https://doi. org/10.1080/17496970601140139. Also, see Majid Fakhry, Averroes, Aquinas and the Rediscovery of Aristotle in Western Europe (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 1997). 76

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romantic literatures,80 capitalism,81 and various new forms of music82 and architecture83 is in each case entirely or partially of Arab-Islamic origin— which makes these origins crucial for the emergence of the European Renaissance itself.84 Even the Eurocentric philosopher Hegel (1770–1831) finds in Islam inspiration for the Enlightenment, as Ian Almond of Georgetown University carefully considered: When some of the adjectives Hegel attributes to Islam are listed next to one another—abstract, energetic, sublime, lethargic, fanatical, pure, negative, poetic, free and savage—we can begin to see how many different registers Hegel used to talk about Islam and its followers. If in 1821 Arabs are described as an “uneducated people” (ungebildeten Völkern), a year later in the lectures on world history they are responsible for “the blossoming of poetry and all the sciences”. Like Herder before him, Hegel had some difficulty synthesizing his feelings towards a faith which was sometimes a disseminator of culture, and sometimes an annihilator of it.85 At times, Hegel makes the point quite explicitly; in one 1824 lecture, we are told how Islam “is the religion of the Enlightenment, of reflection, of abstract thinking, which means in fact that the truth cannot be cognized, cannot be known.”86 80  Mara Rosa Menocal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 81  “Many modern scholars have contended, in fact, that the French and English words “cheque” and “check” derived from an Arabic equivalent: shakk or s ̣akk.” In Gene W. Heck, Charlemagne, Muhammad and the Arab Roots of Capitalism (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2006), 109. It “was also now that the names of commodities prominent in East-West trade [with the Arab world] such as: alcohol, alembic, alfalfa, alkali, alkanet, aludel, alum, antimony, apricot, artichoke, baldachin, buckram, cable, candy, carob, chiffon, cinnamon (after the Chinese term “Ṣı ̄nı ̄” wood), coffee, cotton, crimson, damask, galingale, gauze, ginger, guitar, gum arabic, hashish, julep, lemon, lilac, lute, millet, mohair, mucarro (refined sugar, from the Arabic mukarrar, meaning ‘purified’), muslin, rhubarb, rice, saffron, “sarcenet,” satin, scallion, sesame, shallot, soda, spinach, sugar, syrup, tabby, tafetta, taffy, talc, turquoise, and tutty passed from East to West”. In Gene W. Heck, 217. 82  Dwight Reynolds, “Arab Musical Influence on Medieval Europe: A Reassessment,” in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 182–98. 83  Diana Darke, Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe (London, UK: Hurst, 2020). 84  Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 85  Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), 117. 86  Almond, 118.

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To sum up this dialectical or interconnected relationship, the rise of Islam was in part a response to the domination of the Arab world by the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian Sassanid Empire; in turn, seven centuries later, Islamic civilization gave the necessary spark for the European Renaissance. In modern times, the West has indeed been harassed by Arab and Islamist terrorism; but the fact remains that the totality of the Arab world became and to a large extent remains under Western domination and has suffered the mega-terrorism of Western imperialism. Indeed, the West brought modernity, and all it offers, to the Arab world; but then again, what is to be made of that?

5   Back to Modernity Between the Arab-Islamic World and the West: The Philosophies of Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman The dual timelines of modern-premodern interaction, and the dual positive and negative matrices of outcomes and perceptions, call into question any one-sided perspective on modernity between the Arab-Islamic world and the West. Instead, they invite philosophical consideration in multilateral conversation. Unfortunately, the Arab-Islamic and Western conversation regarding the philosophy of modernity is absent or immature for many reasons. In the Western camp, Arab-Islamic philosophy is perceived to have died along with the Andalusian Arab philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198), and no conversation can be fruitful with a dead counterpart.87 Conversely, within the Arab-Islamic camp, Western philosophy is 87  Recent historians of Islamic philosophy in the Arab world, for example, ʻAlı ̄ Sāmı ̄ al-Nashshār, Muḥammad ʻĀ bid al-Jābirı ̄, and Ḥ sanḤ anafı ̄, are fully engaged in cross-­ civilizational comparisons, but they write in Arabic and are not read by a global audience. They remain thus well outside the Western perception. On the other hand, recent historians of Islamic philosophy in the West are, by nature, specialized in Western-Islamic philosophical comparisons. Yet, modern developments in Arab-Islamic philosophy typically occupy only a marginal concern at the very end of their works (see, e.g., Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, third edition, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004; Oliver Leaman and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, eds., History of Islamic Philosophy, London, UK: Routledge, 2001; and Ulrich Rudolph, Islamische Philosophie: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, München, Germany: Beck C. H., 2018). Traditional histories of Western philosophy itself are faintly if at all concerned with Islamic philosophy and so remain apart from any modern cross-cultural philosophical conversation (see, e.g., Émile Bréhier, Histoire de la philosophie, PUF edition, Paris: PUF, 2012; Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Book One, Vol. I—Greece &

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perceived to have given up its task of examining the perennial questions of knowing, being, and acting. Several Arab thinkers, such as Muta Safadi (1929–2016), Abd al-Wahhab Misiri (1938–2008), and Ali Harb (b. 1941), gave up on modernity because of its perceived association with postmodern philosophies that rejected the primacy of rationality, objectivity, science, system building, and progress. But who is wrong and who is right? Is Arab-Islamic philosophy dead, or is it Western philosophy that is post-dead? Beyond their dual and contrasting timelines, the false Western perception of the death of the Arab-Islamic philosophical counterpart on the one hand, and the Arab pseudo-­ characterization of modernity as a convoluted postmodern path on the other, have further helped both Western and Arab parties fall into what I call a dual misconception—where what seems good to one seems evil to the other, and vice versa. Clearing up the mutual misrepresentation of the philosophical contributions of both sides, and moving beyond it to a second step of comparing and finding common ground between secular and Islamic worldviews, is a timely aspiration of this book. In 1962, China’s then deputy premier Deng Xiaoping famously said, “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”88 Is this advice concerning modernity in the communist world useful also for the Arab-Islamic world? In post-communist still-communist China, Western modernization has been successful, socially, culturally, and economically (though not politically or environmentally). Conversely, the Rome, Vol. II—Augustine to Scotus, Vol. III -Ockham to Suarez, New York, N.Y: Image, 1985; John Herman Randall, The Career of Philosophy, Vol. 1: From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, New  York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1962). Even more recent Western accounts of the general history of philosophy still do not pay attention to modern developments in Arab-Islamic philosophy (e.g., Rom Harré, One Thousand Years of Philosophy, Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001; Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, In Four Parts, revised edition, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010). Peter Adamson (b. 1972) of Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, is a notable exception in his determination to encompass philosophies of non-Western civilizations, but his massive survey (Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press) still has not reached the modern era. In sum then, modern developments in Arab-Islamic philosophy are indeed far from being alive in Western circles. 88  “In Quotes: Deng Xiaoping,” China Daily, August 20, 2014, http://www.chinadaily. com.cn/china/2014-08/20/content_18453523.htm

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reactionary “Islamic awakening”89 fails to catch the modern mice, that is, to recognize the strength of the modern worldview. The fact that there is neither a current ideal example of modernity, nor a common starting line for the international race for modernization, suggests that there is an opportunity to reform the regressive or abusive aspects of modernity, while allowing the premodern to benefit from its advancements. This optimism has two further justifications. The first is modernity’s best-case scenario. Just as harmful remedies and medical treatments do not disqualify medicine as a discipline, but instead are mistakes it must learn from along the way, harmful ideologies, institutions, and technologies of modernity do not disqualify modernity—provided that it too learns from and overcomes its mistakes. The second justification is that the right to criticize falsity is coupled with the duty to abide by truthfulness. Likewise, the right to object to modernity’s harm is coupled with the duty to acknowledge its benefit. The developing world, and the Arab-Islamic world in particular, has every right to counter the undisputedly malicious aspects of modernity. Yet if these efforts go to the extreme of denouncing the naturalistic, rationalistic, and humanistic basis of the modern project, then the Arab-Islamic world loses the way to elevate its impoverished and unjust conditions: science-based sustainable development and rational, democratic institutional organization.90 89  For a philosophical analysis of this movement, see: A. Z. Obiedat, “Identity Contradictions in Islamic Awakening: Harmonizing Intellectual Spheres of Identity,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (AJMEIS) 13, no. 3 (July 2019), 331–50, https://urlzs. com/Kj3vc 90  Choosing Bunge in this comparative work, as a scientific philosopher par excellence, helps add a new dimension to the current intellectual debates between East and West. Despite the diverse malicious dimensions of modernity, it still has a scientific dimension. This is not to say that the imperialism of Victorian England, the Nazism of Hitler’s Germany, the communism of Soviet Russia, or American neoliberalism—as notable historical versions of modernity—have a scientific dimension per se. Rather it is to say that genuine scientific progress, whether in Victorian England, Soviet Russia, neoliberal America, or even Nazi Germany, made for valuable, cross-cultural, influential contributions to humanity that are impossible to neglect. Science, apart from its military and social applications via technology, is inherently good because it is the totality of proven attempts to understand nature. Science is one of the foundations of knowledge. Outside sophistry, skepticism, or nihilism, is there any sound philosophy that denounces knowledge? As of this moment, there is no religion, philosophy, or culture that can challenge, let alone replace science. Hence, there is an inherent need for this dimension of modernity. Needless to say, any imperialist, fascist, communist, neoliberal, or other political, economic, or cultural aspects of any version of modernity are subject to

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If the Arab-Islamic world firmly grasps that which provides the common grounds between the civilizations—the pursuit of sustainable global human welfare—then the right to criticize misguided modernity would equally lead to the duty to accept its best-case scenario. The underlying thesis of this book is that sustainable global human welfare cannot be achieved without a realist epistemology based on a materialist ontology and squaring with humanist ethics. Systemic philosophy of this type is the implicit backbone of the United Nations’ Human Development Report of 2019.91 To deny the realistic possibility of human progress is to be blind to the need for human development and quality of life in the first place.92 To accept that possibility as goal, without materialist medical, agricultural, and infrastructural technologies, will not deliver any substantial development. Yet abiding by a realist epistemology based on a materialist ontology, but without the support of the third pillar, that is, humanist ethics, can lead to Nazi genocides, communist gulags, Stalinist purging and ethnic cleansing, and the exploitation, colonialism, and slavery of any unfettered capitalism. Only a fact-seeking and coordinated form of epistemology, ontology, and ethics—that is to say, of philosophy—can lead to a common multicultural and multinational ground for modernity. But can such a philosophical system exist? Constructing one in tune with the complexities of the human condition, the depth and breadth of modern science, and the conundrums of modern social and cultural life is certainly a gigantic challenge, one that has escaped many a famous and brilliant philosophical mind. And in our context, the challenge is dual: for criticism and replacement, without the specifically scientific aspect of modernity being targeted in the attack. 91  United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2019: Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century, ed. Pedro Conceição (New York, NY: United Nations Development Program, 2019), http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2019.pdf 92  Human development is understood here as leading to a better quality of life. One of the sophisticated frameworks “for measuring well-being and progress” includes these eight dimensions: (1) health status, (2) work and life balance, (3) education and skills, (4) social connections, (5) civic engagement and governance, (6) environmental quality, (7) personal security, and (8) subjective well-being, which is connected to artistic satisfaction and spiritual meaningfulness (see Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, How’s Life? Measuring Well-Being. Paris: OECD Publications, 2011, 19). It is hardly contested that being healthy, employed, educated, familially and socially embraced, treated with fairness, living sustainably, safely, and happily, altogether in a balanced manner, are universal goals shared between East and West.

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reasons of cultural suitability—or in other words, the hope that the ideas may one day be adopted, and so serve in practice, not just in theory—we search for creative solutions native93 to each of both the Arab-Islamic and Western worlds, yet that hold as common ground between them. As the challenge is dual, so too is the response. From the Western tradition, I focus on a representative who embodies the ideals whose existence the Arab-Islamic camp denies: clarity of language, adherence to a scientific outlook, comprehensiveness, and respect for global human and social values. From the Arab-Islamic tradition, I choose a representative who exemplifies qualities that the West denies exist in the contemporary Arab-Muslim world: knowledge of contemporary Western philosophy, organic growth from an Arab-Islamic heritage, logical consistency, and sophistication of discourse. Argentine-Canadian Mario Augusto Bunge (1919–2020) provides an ideal example of a philosopher who succeeded in constructing a coherent secular worldview. His endeavors culminated in the system of philosophy presented in his monumental eight-volume, nine-book Treatise on Basic Philosophy (1974–1989), the first philosophical synthesis since the Age of Analysis, “constitut[ing] perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic philosophy of the twentieth century.”94 Philosopher John Kekes (b. 1936) adds “I do not know of a more ambitious philosophical publishing project in the contemporary English-speaking world.”95 Bunge’s achievement is unknown to Arab-Islamic critics of the secular worldview.96 In searching for an Arab-Islamic counterpart, one might think of the famous Marxist Abd Allah al-Urawi (b. 1933), or the Freudian George Tarabishi (1939–2016). Yet their schools of thought are, by definition, Western cultural products. Therefore, they cannot serve as examples of a 93  For the importance of an endogenous source, see also Taner Edis and Saouma BouJaoude, “Rejecting Materialism: Responses to Modern Science in the Muslim Middle East”, in International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching, ed. Michael R. Matthews (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2017), 1663–90. 94  Andreas Pickel, “Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science: A Review Essay,” Society 38, no. 4 (2001): 71. 95  John Kekes, review of Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vols. I-II, by M. Bunge, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37, no. 3 (1977): 426, https://doi.org/10.2307/2106674 96  Bunge’s wide-ranging Matter and Mind (2010) is the first of his works to be translated into Arabic: Mariyū Būnjı ̄, Al-Māddah wal-‘Aql: Baḥth Falsafiy, trans. Ṣalāh Ismā‘ı ̄l (Cairo: al-Markiz al-Qawmı ̄ lil-Tarjamh, 2019). The same translator is working on Bunge’s more recent work, Doing Science in the Light of Philosophy (Singapore: World Scientific, 2016), which will appear in Arabic as Muma ̄rasat al-‘Ilm fı ̄ Ḍ aw’ al-Falsafah.

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native, creative, Arab-Islamic philosophy. The widely read and extensively debated four-volume project, Critique of the Arab Reason by Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri (1935–2010), is a strong candidate.97 Yet al-Jabiri is barely informed about Anglo-American philosophy of the twentieth century. An ideal candidate who overcomes these limitations is the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b. 1944). Taha was trained as a linguist and logician and has been venturing to resurrect the classical style of al-­ Ghazali and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), yet with unprecedented conceptions, arguments, and paradigms. His achievements are seen in his widely read works The Spirit of Modernity, The Poverty of Secularism, and The Misguidedness of Post-secularism.98 The French magazine Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire counts Taha as one of the top thirty-five most influential minds in the world.99 In his book devoted to the study of Taha’s philosophy, the renowned Columbia University historian of Islamic law Wael Hallaq declared him “one of the most significant philosophers that the world of Islam has produced since colonialism set foot in Afro-Asia.”100 Before though exploring the key portions of the philosophies of Bunge and Taha, we turn in the next chapter to a consideration of the fundamental philosophical difference underlying their respective worldviews.

97  The first volume translated into English is Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri, The Formation of Arab Reason: Text, Tradition and the Construction of Modernity in the Arab World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). 98  All originally in Arabic, with no translations into European languages as far as I know. 99  “Taha Abderrahman Maroc, 1944,” Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire, January 2019, https://www.nouveau-magazine-litteraire.com/parution/mensuel-nml-13 100  Wael B. Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019), xiii.

CHAPTER 3

Religious, Secular, Scientific

The previous chapter considered the complexities of modernity. This chapter explores the nature of one feature of modernity, secularism. This is done primarily with regard to how secularism relates to its dual, religion, and to its frequent colleague, science. After comparison and analysis, I argue that from a practical point of view, in terms of their functional roles, religious and secular worldviews are cultural means, within particular literary (or oral)1 traditions, for fulfilling certain psychological, cognitive, and social goals. Although religions and secular philosophies to some extent succeed in accomplishing those goals, they are both subject to the pitfalls of psychological superstitions, cognitive myths, and false social ideologies. The religious and the secular differ in their acceptance of foundational (canonical) change. Importantly, the foundations of a secular worldview are epistemically malleable, but religious foundations rarely are—they do not bend so much as tend to break, so that foundational change becomes also denominational change. Though open to epistemic change, a secular worldview is not necessarily scientific, in that there are irrational secular worldviews and non-­empirical secular worldviews. In brief form, the central proposal of 1  As much as it is widely used, it is widely known that the expression “oral literature” is self-contradictory. For the sake of simplicity and brevity, in what follows a terminology where “literary” includes “oral” is reluctantly adopted.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_3

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this chapter is that a scientific worldview is one that is rational, empirical, secular, and eager for epistemic progress. Science does have certain core principles, but it does not have an unassailable canonical literature. Although the concepts of ‘religion,’ ‘secularism,’ and ‘science’ diverge, clarifying them opens up the possibility for convergence, where religious, secular, and scientific worldviews may overlap.

1   The Vagueness Problem There is an active contemporary debate between secular and religious public intellectuals over whose system is superior.2 ‘Religious,’ ‘secular,’ likewise ‘scientific’—these terms circulate not only in intellectual circles; they are part of the fabric of our modern culture. It is rare that a day passes without hearing one or all of them thrown into familial, political, or academic discourses. That these terms are used with high frequency in these various discourses is no sign that the concepts they represent are clearly defined. In this chapter I hope to advance our understanding of these ideas, through analysis of their similarities and differences. The goal is for the ensuing clarifications to help resolve the Western and Arab-Islamic dual misconceptions of modernity, in favor of modernity’s best-case scenario. The trends of postmodern, hermeneutic, relativistic, and social-­ constructivist schools of thought have cast doubt on the existence or worth of scientific objectivity and rational analysis, and on the validity of the Enlightenment project and modernity in general. The whole question of the relative merits of religious, secular, and scientific worldviews may be deemed by some to be a pseudo-problem, or an outdated concern. Even those not necessarily influenced by irrationalist trends, but simply unfavorably disposed to the intellectual style of analytic philosophy, or to conceptual clarification more generally, may question the whole undertaking of this chapter. Beyond referring such individuals to Nicholas Rescher’s enlightening work Rationality: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the 2  See, for example, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (NY: Mariner Books, 2008), which has provoked a wave of responses, such as Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker’s Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God (Ohio: Steubenville, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2008); and Alister McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (SPCK Publishing, 2007).

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Rationale of Reason,3 I hope to intrigue this group with an argument that gives a new interpretation to the traditional claims of the Enlightenment and modernity over older medieval and classical systems of thought.4

2   Emergence Historians of ideas find it useful to divide the past into periods, spans of time and place identifiable by one or more characteristic features of interest.5 The near-contemporaneous emergence in the ancient world of Socratic philosophy, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism makes a highly attractive candidate for such “periodization.”6 This flowering of new, fairly comprehensive, and highly popular worldviews that continue into the modern era is a cultural phenomenon that cannot be overlooked. Controversially, the German existential philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) described the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE as the “axial age”: an era marked by the emergence of similar revolutionary thinking in China, India, and the Near East, challenging the prevailing pantheon, idolatry, and magical perspectives. Many of today’s religions and worldviews continue to be the offspring of that era.7 Jaspers says, “the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid, simultaneously and independently […]. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.”8 My goal here is not to advocate for recognition of the “axial age,”9 but to recognize the approximate similarity of premodern worldviews in relation to a modern one.10  (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988).  A comprehensive justification of Enlightenment ideals can be found in Paul Kurtz & T.  J. Madigan (Eds.), Challenges to the Enlightenment: In Defense of Reason and Science (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994). 5  Richard Bulliet et al., The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Brief Edition, 5th ed., vol. I: to 1550 (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2011), 380. 6  Socrates, 469–399 BCE; Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), c. 563–c. 483 BCE; Confucius (Kongfuze), 551–479 BCE; Zoroaster (Zarathustra), c. 628–c. 551 BCE. 7  For example, besides Buddhism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism being all still current, Catholicism has Socratic ancestry via the Islamic-Aristotelian heritage, as do scientific and skeptical worldviews; while Islam has a mix of Arabian, Hellenistic, Jewish, and Christian influences. 8  Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 98. 9  Peter Watson accepts the idea of an axial age. In Peter Watson, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (NY: Harper Collins, 2006), 107. 10  Professor Amir Hussain of Loyola Marymount University kindly brought to my attention the following work edited by Robert N.  Bellah: The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 266–267 and 3 4

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The French sociologist and positivist philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) emphasized another stage, marked by another challenge to prevailing systems of thought: the scientific one.11 If Jaspers’ classification of historical epochs based on the emergence of religions and philosophies has merit, then this “scientific age” might equally be called “the second axial age,” occurring some two millennia after the first. Ongoing since the seventeenth century, this challenge was so epistemically revolutionary and far-reaching that it could not remain confined to the geographic and cultural boundaries of Europe. The continuous changes in worldview, living conditions, and psychology brought about by science and technology permeate, in varying degrees, all the continents. We may reword Jaspers’ contention to posit that the rational and empirical foundations of modern humanity were laid over the course of the last four centuries. And these are the foundations upon which modern humanity still subsists today.12 The spread of this “scientific age” to all continents is due not only to colonialism, Western power, and Western hegemony of the global economy—as a multicultural humanist critic might justifiably complain—but also to the emergence of what might be seen as the modern worldview. Despite its novelty, a sharp transition between the modern worldview and its premodern predecessor should not be hastily assumed. It is not a matter of a total opposition, a total replacement of old with new, for the transformation has also evolutionary and contextual aspects. But for now, let us 239–240. In it there is some commendation of the axial age hypothesis, but also strong criticism, particularly for cases that do not fit the Semitic and Indo-European traditions, such as the Chinese and African cases. 11  Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (1864). Cited in: Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. IX: Modern Philosophy: From the French Revolution to Sartre, Camus, and Lévi-Strauss (New York, NY: Image, Doubleday, 1994), 78. 12  This might lead to accusations of a Eurocentric bias. To respond in the manner of a reductio ad absurdum: if a mathematically calculated calendar, physically constrained energy requirements, chemically synthesized medications, biomedically aided fertilization, and historically structured institutions and values are confined to Europe, then this is Eurocentric. Yet universal truths and universal phenomena, such as those of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and historical sociology, by fact of being universal, are not Eurocentric. Instead, concentrating on the integration of these disciplines and their relationship to human development is rather Earth-centric. Certainly, there are stark cultural differences and alternative social trajectories, but equally there are common denominators. For a well-researched analysis of human historical commonalities, see J.  R. McNeill and William H.  McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History. New  York, N.Y.: W.  W. Norton & Company, 2003.

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concentrate on the nature of the modern worldview before returning to the demarcation problem. Since the beginnings of modern science and technology in the seventeenth century, the modern worldview has been formed by a long and interconnected chain of novel ideas that cover the spectrum of human endeavor, including the natural, formal, social, and human sciences. At the heart of this worldview lies first the de-spiritualization of matter, whereby it is no longer considered fruitful to pray to the sky for rain or to consult crystal balls to reveal the future. Validity in the realm of knowledge and effectiveness in the field of action is achieved by exploring the properties, patterns, and laws of nature, and systematically investigating ways of predicting and controlling the behavior of matter. Second, the human psyche has been materialized, to be recognized as an activity of the neuroendocrine system.13 Thus, rather than seeking to evict demons from the schizophrenic patient by prayers or exorcism, medication and behavioral therapy are prescribed. Third, the complex needs and wants of the living human self became the focus of the individual and of the social order. That is to say, rational self-interest became the norm, rather than it being obscured by feudalistic exploitation, class determinism, racial superiority, and otherworldly divine rewards.14 Fourth and finally, the ideal form of society has been sought, not on the basis of color, race, or religious dogma, but on the basis of cooperation and peaceful competition for the common good. I am not under the illusion that these philosophical and socio-political ideals have been fully or even satisfactorily actualized. I do, however, posit that all four of these innovative features of the modern worldview, these bases of modern physics, psychology, economics, and sociology respectively, all stand in sharp contrast to the corresponding features of premodern worldviews: matter free of spirits versus animism; materiality of the human psyche versus transcendence of the human psyche; rational self-­ interest versus relegation of worldly self-interest; and cooperation and peaceful competition for the common good versus subjugation for the sake of the sacred path, the empire, the superior race, the royal family, or the primary gender. 13  To be precise, mental and emotional states or events are states or events of the (central) nervous system, in interaction with the endocrine system. For an exposition from a philosophical standpoint, see, for example, Mario Bunge, The Mind–Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980). 14  Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (NY: Penguin Books, 2012), 61 and 116.

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Secularism is associated with the modern worldview and religion with the premodern. Although the scientific worldview is recent, there were at least pockets of secularism in antiquity, while religion remains prominent in the modern world, arguably more so than secularism. This leads us to inquire more specifically into the distinctions between religious, secular, and scientific worldviews.

3   What Is Religion? William James (1842–1910), one of the founders of modern psychology and of American pragmatism, warned that “it would indeed be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion’s essence.”15 Sounding a similar note of skepticism, in the Arabic introduction to his widely read work Genealogies of Religion, the anthropologist Talal Asad (b. 1932) notified the reader that “none of the chapters [of his Genealogies] are based on a definition of religion” and that the book “does not seek to bring a better definition.”16 The ever-increasing variety of religions17 does caution against over-­ generalizing. One must consider though the difference between definition and description: concepts may be defined, but the real world may only be more or less well described—and sometimes, explained.18 The overlap, hence confusion, between definition and description is that we use concepts to describe and explain the real world. A definition of a concept such as “religion” in fact starts out life as a hypothesis, purporting to accurately describe something real. Only in later life, after some success, may it come to be widely accepted as a convention or a stipulation—so that, for example, some new social movement claiming to not be a religion might nevertheless be exposed as being one. The difference between definition and description, and James’ goal of deepening the understanding of religion, explain why he nevertheless steps beyond his skeptical frontiers. Thus, James does provide a definition of religion, as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in  James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 28.  Talāl Asad, Jı ̄nālu ̄jiya ̄ al-Dı ̄n, trans. Muhammad ʻAsfūr (Beirut: Dār al-Madār al-Islāmı ̄, 2017), 9. 17  It “is inevitable that a modern society will have an increasing number of religions.” In Giuseppe Giordan and Enzo Pace, Religious Pluralism: Framing Religious Diversity in the Contemporary World (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014), 50. 18  See, for example, Martin Mahner and Mario Bunge, Foundations of Biophilosophy (Berlin-­ Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1997), 100. 15 16

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their solitudes, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the Divine.”19 In my view, although James’ formulation correctly stresses the psychological dimension of religion, it leaves out its social dimension. James concentrates primarily on the personal mystical experiences of the founders of religions,20 whose followers later engaged in the institutional and social aspects of religious experience. In contrast, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), one of the founders of sociology, defines religion as “a solidarity system of beliefs and practices relative to things sacred, that is to say, set apart and taboo—beliefs and practices which bring together those who adhere to them in a moral community known as a church.”21 Thus, Durkheim, in contrast to James, anchors the basis of religion not in “experiences of individual men in their solitudes,” but rather in the community and the religious institutions that provide cohesion and protection to their members.22 Durkheim is in line with the Latin etymology of the word “religion” itself: André Comte-Sponville reminds us that the two possible roots of “religion” are “religio,” which means “to bind or commune,”23 and “relegare,” which means “to contemplate and have faith,”24 both of which are covered by the Durkheimian view of religion as a system of beliefs and institutions. In contrast to the aforementioned psychological and social definitions, John Dewey (1859–1952), another pillar of American pragmatism and also one of modern education, bases his analysis of religion on a definition taken from an English dictionary.25 It defined religion as the “[r]ecognition on the part of man of some unseen higher power as having control of his destiny and as being entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship.”26 19  William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (NY: Penguin Books, 1985), 31. 20  Ibid., 3. 21  Quoted in André Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality (NY: Viking, 2007), 3. 22  By stressing the social dimension of religion, Durkheim aims to in a sense regularize religion, to de-emphasize its difference with the secular—the sacred in Durkheim’s view touching all aspects of social life. (I owe this understanding of Durkheim’s view to an anonymous reviewer.) 23  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 13. 24  Ibid., 19. 25  W. A. Craigie and Henry Bradley, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, ed. Sir James A.  H. Murray, vol. VIII Q, R, S-SH (London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1914), 410, definition 5, https://bit.ly/2uKQqtR. 26  John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 3.

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With this Dewey adds an interesting emphasis on the role of human cognition, in relation to the cosmological worldview that a religious person adopts and its implications for their behavior. For Dewey what is significant is strictly neither what one psychologically feels in “solitudes,” as James proposes, nor what a “moral community” shares, as Durkheim holds, but the rational perceptions and factual conditions that compel some people to consider the divinity as they conceive it to be metaphysically real, and therefore demanding of some sort of behavioral submission and psychological faithfulness. Heresy and conversion away from one’s religious community escape Durkheim’s social definition and give merit to Dewey’s cognitive emphasis, and James’ psychological one. Yet Dewey neglects the social dimension of religion just as much as does James. One must admit then that each of these three definitions “possess[es] non-negligible merits,”27 which begs further integrations, synthesis, and systemization. 3.1  Toward a Systemic Conception of Religion: Mario Bunge’s View In keeping with his overall systemic perspective, Mario Bunge identifies a variety of main traits as being characteristic of religion. He does this with the aim of distinguishing religion from other systems of belief or knowledge—in particular science, technology, and “magic”—but all of this really with the goal of highlighting and emphasizing the natures of science and technology, which are his real interests, concerns, and indeed loves. Bunge sees religion first of all as a field of belief: a system of persons with specialized training (e.g., a religious upbringing), operating within a more or less supportive society, who initiate or continue a tradition of belief.28 In particular, religion is “the system of beliefs and practices concerning supernatural agencies and our relations to them.”29 He identifies the general outlook of religion as consisting of a supernaturalist ontology, any epistemology, and an ethics based on authorities; its aims as personal salvation and defense of the social status quo; its methods as consisting of 27  This phrase is a device frequently used by Nicholas Rescher in his Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophizing (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 2. 28  Mario Bunge, Exploring the World (vol. 5 of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1983), 90–91. 29  Mario Bunge, Understanding the World (vol. 6 of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1983), 231.

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“revelation, authority, exorcism, incantation, prayer”; and further lists several other features of lesser interest.30 In these identifications, and in the contrasting ones of science, technology, and magic, of course Bunge is better at describing science and technology than he is at describing either religion or magic. Thus, for example, Bunge leaves out contemplation, argument, numerological analysis, and ritual practices from his list of possible religious methods31; moral perfection, pleasing or thanking the Deity, social revolution, the achievement of an ideal society in this world, and community self-defense from his list of possible religious aims; and any worldly considerations from his understanding of religious ethics. Even his general characterization of religion, as a system of beliefs and practices, leaves out attitudes and emotions, such as reverence for the sacred. All this is to be expected: Bunge has devoted a lifetime to studying and loving science and its kin, and as little attention as possible to religion and its kin. Even that minimal attention has hardly been out of curiosity, but more out of alarm and indignation over actual and possible interference with the progress of science. This whether such interference comes from institutions or groups; or occurs within the minds of individual scientists—as Bunge argues, those who allow religious or magical thinking to influence their scientific endeavors. 3.2  Religion in Terms of Its Functional Role Diversity is clearly the theme arising from all of the above. More than a century ago, the American psychologist James H.  Leuba (1868–1946) provided readers with a rich appendix listing notable definitions of religion. In it he noted, “I trust that the perusal of these forty-eight definitions [of religion] will not bewilder the reader, but that he will see in them a splendid illustration both of the versatility and the one-sidedness of the human mind in the description of a very complex yet unitary manifestation of life.” Bearing all this diversity in mind, although the discussion in this book may well be more general, I shall stipulate several self-imposed limitations. First, it should be considered as focusing primarily on the three major  Bunge, Understanding the World, 232.  Indeed also ordinary scientific methods—considering that many religiously inclined scientists have looked upon their scientific endeavors as ways of exploring what they view as the wonders of God’s creation. 30 31

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monotheist religions rooted in the Fertile Crescent: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Second, instead of attempting to encompass all aspects of religion, even of only this limited subset of religions, the focus shall be on what religion does, or is hoped to do, for society and the individual. Rather than considering the panoply of traits of greater or lesser interest identified by Bunge, I focus primarily on the aims and the methods of religion: these in their psychological, cognitive, and social dimensions, or aspects, but touching too on the ontological one. Thus, with the idea of integrating within a modern conception the definitions of religion offered by James, Durkheim, and Dewey, I propose understanding religion, but in particular Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in terms of their functional roles: as cultural means, within particular literary traditions and involving sacred elements, to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals—whether effectively or not.32 “Literary traditions” is used in a general sense to include any genre, such as proverbial wisdom, poetry, narratives, speeches, and legal or polemic prose. The literary qualification, as the medium of religious expression, is taken as opposed to the visual, musical, or performing arts.33 Although these arts do have emotional and communicative content, historically their legitimacy is partially derived from the founding sacred text itself rather than otherwise. Undoubtedly, artistic forms of expression do contribute to a religious tradition in its psychological, social, and cognitive goals34; and images and non-verbal performances, though not tunes, can be allegorical or even communicate simple commands. However, metaphysical concepts, instruction for alms-giving, and theological arguments reside in words, not in tunes, performances, or images. To set aside some potential objections, it should be noted that the psychological, cognitive, and social dimensions of religion do not apply to every single religious experience, person, or movement at once. For example, some religious acts can be essentially psychological, rather than social or  Walter Kaufmann, in his Critique of Religion and Philosophy (NJ, Garden City: Princeton University Press, 1978, 101 and 103), proposes a somewhat different three-dimensional definition, addressing “practice, feeling, and belief.” These three dimensions are “voluntaristic,” “affectivistic,” and “intellectualistic.” 33  Some of the world’s most amazing religious performances are the circular dances performed by Muslim Sufi “whirling dervishes.” Here, “the movement of the soul in its approach to God is sometimes, though rarely, described as heavenly dance.” Such dance “symbolized the state of mystical union as ‘a dance with God.’” Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 183 and 182. 34  For one account of such contribution see Shems Friedlander, The Whirling Dervishes: Being an Account of the Sufi Order Known as the Mevlevis and Its Founder the Poet and Mystic Mevlana Jalalu’ddin Rumi (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992). 32

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cognitive, and similarly for other combinations. Thus, religious dreams or revelations are mostly psychological; religious political parties and laws are predominantly social; and theological debates, scriptural interpretations, and apologetic discourses are chiefly cognitive. Still, none of these examples, although preponderantly belonging to one dimension of religion, are completely isolated from and independent of the other two. In other words, these three dimensions of religion apply to the totality of religious phenomena, not to the particulars of various historical experiences. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), one of the founders of analytic philosophy and a key contributor to mathematical logic, held a similar conception of religion, saying “the great historical religions have three aspects: (1) a church, (2) a creed, (3) a code of personal morals.”35 My analysis partially parallels Russell’s: a church corresponds to the social goal, a creed represents the cognitive worldview, and personal morals embody the psychological dimension that partially overlaps the social one. The next items further explain the three goals of religion, before I move on to a critical assessment of how well and how effectively religion may or may not achieve them. (1) Psychological challenges—such as result from deprivation; or insecurity, sadness, pain, and the problem of death, to mention a few—are addressed by religion with the aid of, for example, prayer, worship, ritual, hope, and various adaptation techniques. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), who was dedicated to establishing a secular philosophy of religion, poetically captures this emotional aspect: “from the ­universal stream, Oceans, Homer derives the gods, but this stream abounding with gods is in reality only an efflux of human feelings”— in short, God lives in the stream of human feelings. Dewey rephrases this psychological dimension in the terse phrase, “fear created the gods,”36 while Comte-Sponville provides a more panoramic analysis: What does religion tell us—and the Christian religion in particular? That we shall not die, or not really; that we shall rise from the dead and thus be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; that justice and peace will prevail in the end; and, finally; that we are already the object of an infinite love. Who could ask for more? No one of course!37  Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8.  John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 24. 37  Andre Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, trans. Nancy Huston (New York, NY: Viking, 2007), 125. 35 36

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The psychological dimension is an essential, if not the most indispensable, ingredient of human individuality, and religion attempts to provide ways of avoiding emotional pitfalls such as insecurity, gluttony, lust, and continuous anxiety.38 In contrast, religious infidelity and blasphemy deprive believers of the psychological security and sense of righteousness that religion provides, and so can be extremely painful to some. (2) Religion addresses cognitive challenges with the help of a general and relatively coherent metaphysical picture of the world, in contrast to life’s confusing flux of randomness and riddles. The metaphysical picture provided by religion, whether rudimentary or grand, whether local or cosmological, helps the believer in facing the unknown— whether in his or her attempt to understand the behavior of people and nature; or the mystery of the universe, and the eternity of time. Lacking such a picture, lacking any alternative cosmological conception, a person may be left open to denying human life any admirable value or noble goal; perhaps to confusion and floundering, perhaps to wickedness. Dewey recognizes the cognitive dimension of religion, saying that “understanding and knowledge also enter into a perspective that is religious in quality.”39 Feuerbach too is well aware of the cognitive aspect and the role of imagination in interpreting nature: the gods, says Epicurus, exist in the intervals of the universe. Very well; they exist only in the void space, in the abyss which is between the world of imagination and the world of reality, between the law and its application, between the action and its result, between the present and the future.40

Gods, in Feuerbach’s view, fill the explanatory gap, the opaque black box of the cosmos the believer wants to find opened and illuminated. Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) understands God as a concept 38  Particular religions, or doctrines in one religion, that anticipate the imminent disastrous end of the world and the hopelessness of the human predicament do not have psychological benefit in the ordinary sense as a goal—for example, their psychological goal may be fear, but with this leading to some action of supposed benefit to an afterlife. Such doctrines are not considered further in this book. 39  Ibid., 26. 40  Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, 66.

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performing this cognitive or explanatory function: “[i]n the place of Aristotle’s God as the Prime Mover, we require God as the Principle of Concretion.”41 (3) Religion addresses social challenges through community and social cohesion. Thus, religion introduces laws and a common morality, generally encourages self-restraint of some form, and in the process helps create a collective symbolic and narrative identity. The social aspect of religion encourages smaller rural or nomadic communities to congregate—perhaps regularly at some site of worship, or within a house of worship, such as a church, mosque, or synagogue—that the members may help each other with the hardships of daily life. Archaeological evidence suggests that sites of worship gave premodern societies significant social networks.42 Often less favorably, religion has also offered an ideological basis for political regimes, whether royal (e.g., Saudi Arabia), revolutionary (e.g., Iran), theocratic (e.g., the Vatican), or democratic (e.g., Britain). Even the technologically advanced Nazis still proclaimed: “Gott mit uns”43 [God with us].44 Lack of social cohesion, according to this religious line of thinking, results in hubris and social disturbance. Societies which have not arrived at a functioning alternative to a religious basis for social cohesion may fall into a state of immorality and social disorder. Thus, from some religious perspectives, such evil is the inevitable outcome of heresy and apostasy, and the reason these acts deserve excommunication or purging. 41  Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 174. 42  In this regard, Bruce Trigger (1937–2006) says, “Temples were the dwelling places of deities or places where contact could take place on a regular basis between the supernatural and designated representatives of human communities rather than places for congregational worship” and “Public rituals involving large numbers of celebrants drawn from all classes were performed at various times of the year in plazas adjacent to the central temples of each city, as well as at temples and shrines elsewhere in the city and in the surrounding countryside.” In Bruce G. Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 565 and 509. 43  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 12. 44  “Enthusiastically pro-Nazi, the movement sought to demonstrate its support for Hitler by organizing itself after the model of the Nazi party, placing a swastika on the alter next to the cross, giving the Nazi salute at its rallies, and celebrating Hitler as sent by God.” In Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 3.

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In general, religion offers the prospect of combined harmony, fulfillment, and stability—psychologically, cognitively, and socially, through the involvement of sacred elements and literary traditions. The sacred, I am convinced, is not the basis for these three desired outcomes of religious observance; instead it serves as a mere attitude that facilitates the protection, illumination, and admiration of them: the sacred is “the existence of a value that is or seems absolute, that imposes itself unconditionally and can be violated only on pain of sacrilege or dishonor.”45 The character of the utmost sacred varies greatly among religions, from an anthropomorphic Son in Christianity, to the anti-anthropomorphic Deity in Islam, and the jealous46 God of ancient Judaism. Still, the psychological, cognitive, and social goals that these sacred religious symbols share make the stark differences between the symbols themselves negligible. They also beg for an evaluation of the effectiveness of religion in achieving them.

4   The Success and Failure of Religious Means The skeptical, critical, or empirically minded reader may ask, “does religion achieve its psychological, cognitive, and social goals?” There is indeed massive factual evidence and conceptual grounds to suggest that religions partially and sometimes completely fail to attain their goals. Yet, let us first consider support for the success of the monotheistic religions in particular, while temporarily disregarding evidence to the contrary. Psychologically, self-confidence and optimism, which are derivable from a belief in divine benevolence, are beneficial for individual success, and people who attend religious services regularly have been found to be happier than those who attend less regularly or not at all.47 Cognitively, the unifactorial underlying nature of monotheism provides a more coherent  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 18.  “Thou shalt have no other gods before me […] Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:7–10). 47  “People who attend religious services weekly or more are happier (43% very happy) than those who attend monthly or less (31%); or seldom or never (26%). This correlation between happiness and frequency of church attendance has been a consistent finding in the General Social Surveys taken over the years.” In “Are We Happy Yet?” (Pew Research Center: A Social Trends Report, February 13, 2006, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2006/02/13/ are-we-happy-yet/), 6. 45 46

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worldview than polytheistic struggles between conflicting deities. Socially, charitable behavior, respecting communal norms, and abiding by the Golden Rule in any of its various forms are (almost) universally appreciated,48 and a key ingredient for the success of any society.49 Religion, in this positive light, differs only in name and context from any comprehensive philosophical worldview, for religion and philosophy are cultural endeavors that function similarly in seeking to resolve questions about the self, society, and world. As the American idealist Josiah Royce (1855–1916) said: “Kant’s fundamental problems: What do I know? and What ought I to do? are of religious interest no less than of philosophic interest.”50 William James adds that “[r]eligion, whatever it is, is a man’s total reaction upon life.”51 Still, the critical, empirical, and logical mind recognizes that the psychological, cognitive, and social goals of religion are often far from achieved. Religious claims and means can correctly be viewed as merely superstitious psychologically, mythical cognitively, and ideological socially. Clearly superstitions often fail to achieve their psychological goals: for example, performing certain rituals for the benefit of someone who has stopped breathing, rather than giving them artificial respiration or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is empirically tragic, not uplifting. William James mocks such wishful thinking, saying “[i]f merely “feeling good” could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”52 48  For example, Bunge is opposed to charity. Although Bunge gives a nod to “the admirable large-scale work done by some foundations,” he believes that those who can work should work and should be paid a living wage for their efforts. Those who cannot work should receive social assistance, which he distinguishes from charity. The motto is “Neither alms nor rents nor spoils.” See Mario Bunge, Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2009), 95, 352. 49  When claims of benefit from various aspects of religion obtain empirical corroboration, they tend to get popularized—for example: “Religion can combat bad behavior as well as promote well-being. Twenty years ago Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, found that black youths who attend church were more likely to attend school and less likely to commit crimes or use drugs. Since then a host of further studies, including the bipartisan 1991 National Commission on Children, have concluded that religious participation is associated with lower rates of crime and drug use.” In John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2010), 147. 50  Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy: A Critique of the Bases of Conduct and of Faith (Boston: New Mifflin and co., 1897), 4. 51  James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 35. 52  James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 16.

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Feuerbach concurs: “nature does not respond to man’s lamentations and questions; she throws him inexorably back upon himself.”53 Interestingly, even the Koran offers a supporting verse, saying of the ignorant human “neither heaven nor earth shed a tear over them: nor were they given a respite.”54 Myths too fail to achieve their cognitive goals.55 Thus, the available archaeological, geological, and astrophysical evidence for an ancient and stable earth is so overwhelming that disregarding it and dating the origin of the universe to 6000 years ago, or predicting its imminent end based on one religious narrative or another, leads more easily to cognitive dissonance rather than harmony. As for ideology, identifying virtue or God’s satisfaction with a particular church, temple, race, dynasty, tribe, or gender is little more than self-serving and false. Mythology when combined with social ideology historically led to injustice, war, and subjugation of the excluded groups. Feuerbach does not fail to spot this counterproductive character: “whilst the slave of nature is blinded by the brilliancy of the sun […] the political slave on the other hand is so much blinded by the splendor of royal dignity, that he prostrates himself before it as before a divine power, because it commands over death and life.”56 Earlier, Spinoza (1632–1677) had made a broader

 Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, 42.  This verse is part of a larger Koranic chapter. In it, believers fight tyrants or oppressors who ignore justice and—the matter at hand here—the natural course of things. Eventually they face godly punishment for their sins: the heavens and earth, as godly agents, punish them with catastrophes, without any regrets (Qur’an 44:29). One of the best translations of the Qur’an is Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2015). 55  There are a variety of views on the status of myth in human culture, and therefore of its meaning. French structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung interpreted human mythology as a deep structure of cross-cultural narratives representing archetypes of the universal human psyche or mind. A detailed presentation is in Gilbert Durand, The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (Brisbane: Boombana Publications, 1999), 416–417. If myth is taken in its literal sense, then it is merely an allegorical story reformulating a grand cosmological or historical event, without factual exactness—see the myth entry in Mario Bunge’s Philosophical Dictionary (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003), 189. For a synthesis of these respectively speculative and critical lines of thinking, see Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (Holt Paperbacks; 2nd edition, 2003), 151. 56  Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, 45. 53 54

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cutting observation: “[t]hey will fight for their servitude as if [it were their] salvation and count it no shame but the highest honor.”57 To summarize. Religion can partially succeed in some respects—psychologically, in promoting optimistic beliefs; cognitively, in arriving at a harmonious worldview; socially, in helping to create community; while failing in others—such as by relying on superstitious rituals, mythical explanations, and self-serving ideologies of the social order. Yet on the other side of the debate, the construction of a modern or secular worldview is itself not necessarily immune from the superstitious, mythical, and ideological pitfalls that beset religion. Even essentially secular Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, at times incorporate superstitious ideas, mythical planetary deities, and an ideological devaluation of non-Greek “barbarians.” Karl Marx’s secular “dialectical materialism” cannot hide its ideological and political biases, nor can Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism; Feng Shui is secular, popular, mythical, and spiritual58; and superstitious practices without any religious connection, such as belief in jinxes, are endemic in the world of sports, and widespread elsewhere. If these similarities blur the border between religious and secular philosophies or worldviews, how then can one demarcate them?

5   Attempts at Conceptualizing the Secular As with the multidimensionality of religion, secularism is no less complex a cultural phenomenon, and not easy to define. Secularism has appeared in the West, and possibly in premodern times, in association with a diversity of movements and processes. Some examples: as part of progressive movements, in opposition to Christian political influence or rule; as part of a leftist ideology aimed at overthrowing conservative aristocratic rule; as the basis for a division of labor between natural philosophers and theologians; as the outcome of a lack of interest and involvement in religious life on the part of the lay public; and institutionally, in the form of separation between church and state—whether to protect the state from the church (France, USA), or the church from the state (USA), or to overcome a history of entrenched laws and traditions (Turkey following Mustafa Kemal). Social 57  Benedictus de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise. Trans: Samuel Shirley and Seymour Feldman (Hackett Publishing, 2001), 3. 58  Michael R.  Matthews, Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience. Springer, 2019.

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scientists tend to study secularism with regard to these socio-historical considerations, rather than situating it within a well-­rounded philosophical system. The relative absence of more general philosophical consideration has important conceptual consequences (also social consequences; see Chap. 11, Sect. 3). Consider three examples:59 Steve Bruce (b. 1954), a sociologist at the University of Aberdeen, asserts that he “treats the religious and the secular as comprehensive and complementary alternatives—like smoking and not smoking—rather than mirror images. By religion I mean beliefs and action predicated on the existence of some supernatural being […] with the power of moral judgment.”60 He also adds, “By secular I mean simply the absence of the religious and spiritual.”61 By this description, the secular has no positive qualities: it is simply an absence. Religion becomes the uniquely substantive phenomenon, while secularism has no features or dynamic of its own. Just as problematically, it has the natures of the religious and the secular as mutually exclusive—as if moving from a religious to a secular worldview were some matter of suddenly quitting smoking the hashish of the supernatural, to just as suddenly become abstinently and emptily secular. José Casanova (b. 1951) of Georgetown University, also a sociologist, holds that: Secularization as a concept refers to the actual historical process whereby this dualist system within “this world” and the sacramental structures of the mediation between this world and the other world progressively break down until the entire mediaeval system of classifications disappears, to be replaced by new system of spatial structuration of the spheres.”62

In essence then, Casanova has secularization as only a new way of categorizing “this world” and “the other world.” Secularism loses any ontological bite, and we are left with little more than the idea that the secular and the religious are somehow different ways of thinking about the same things. 59  I thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter and for bringing to my attention some of the recent literature on secularism. 60  Steve Bruce, Secular Beats Spiritual: The Westernization of the Easternization of the West (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 15. 61  Bruce, 16. 62  José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 15.

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British sociologist and Anglican priest David Martin (1929–2019) relates that “I did not regard secularism as a quasi-universal process leading to the privatisation of religion. I saw it as an ideology that prescribed privatisation and actively excluded religion from the public sphere, notably in France, Russia and Turkey.”63 Elsewhere, he contrasts his views with “secularization theory, as represented by Wilson, Martin, Berger, Dobbelaere etc., based on differentiation and rationalisation and worldliness with a variable periphery based on notions like autonomy, privatisation, pluralism and the collapse of coherent world views.”64 In these characterizations, secularism becomes mostly matters of changing interests or power relations, and one could imagine a new religion that would fit either characterization just as well. Indeed the idol worship of old— only with perhaps an updated idol, say the cell phone—might do quite nicely. Just like the plethora of historical accounts of modernity examined earlier (Chap. 2, Sect. 1), we are left with diverse descriptive accounts of the secular: as alternatively the absence of the religious, as a different way of thinking about the same old things, or as mostly matters of different inclinations and power relations. None of these really tell us what secularism is, or even how to distinguish the religious from the secular. Let us see a philosopher’s take on the issue. In his extensive history of ideas, A Secular Age, the Canadian philosopher of culture Charles Taylor (b. 1931) says that the “secular is defined by the (often terribly vague) historical sense that we have come to be that way through overcoming and rising out of earlier modes of belief.”65 In this way, Taylor is in line with Bruce. Taylor goes further though, to consider the secular from a variety of perspectives. Taylor reminds us that ‘secular’ as a word is derived from ‘saeculum,’ meaning a century or age.66 Taylor then considers three other aspects of the secular. The first is “the common institutions and practice—most

63  David Martin, Religion and Power: No Logos without Mythos (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 11. Emphasis in the original. 64  David Martin, Secularisation, Pentecostalism and Violence: Receptions, Rediscoveries and Rebuttals in the Sociology of Religion (New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2017), 38. Emphasis is mine. 65  Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 268. 66  Ibid., 54.

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obviously, but not only, the state.”67 The second refers to “the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to Church.”68 The third is “the change […] which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith […] is one human possibility among others.”69 To paraphrase then, “secular” describes a cultural and social condition not founded primarily on religion, where (1) the political institutions are less concerned with the church or any other religious institution, (2) the people are less interested in God or praying to any other divinity, and (3) religiosity and “irreligiosity” are equally possible orientations for the individual. Taylor later introduces a fourth aspect, where the secular “is thus used for ordinary as against higher time. A parallel distinction is temporal/spiritual. One is concerned with things in ordinary time, the other with the affairs of eternity.”70 This fourth aspect, like the lexical aspect in fact, is I think more relevant to our concerns, as it focuses on the conceptual dimension of the secular and not just its socio-historical evolution: secularism concerns time, movement, fluctuation, change, in contrast to timelessness, permanence, stability, and fixity. Even if secular philosophy may share the virtuous goals of religion, and even if, paradoxically, it may share the psychological, cognitive, and social pitfalls of religion, there is a major difference between the ways in which each constructs worldviews, as shall be explained below.

6   Distinguishing Between the Religious and the Secular In the context of secular thought, even ancient classics—such as Plato’s Republic, or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics—are not treated like the Bible or the Koran are in the contexts of their respective religions. That is to say, philosophers do not recite, preach, or worship these Greek philosophical canons; nor do they consider them as eternal wisdom, the word of God, divine revelation, prophecy, the finality of truth, or the highest summit of knowledge. They are considered instead as higher examples of early  Ibid., 2.  Ibid., 2. 69  Ibid., 3. 70  Ibid., 55. 67 68

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wisdom, works that can be used, modified, criticized, refuted, or replaced altogether. It is thus perfectly acceptable to have Francis Bacon (1561–1626) write the Novum Organum after Aristotle’s Organon, and then for it to be updated two centuries later by the British philosopher of science William Whewell (1794–1866) as the Novum Organon Renovatum. Such revising and replacement does not happen with religious canons: the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran have over the centuries all gotten a variety of new translations or stylistic modifications, but Judaism has not gotten a new Torah, Christianity has not gotten newly written Gospels, and Islam has not gotten a new Koran. True, there has been some debate over whether the New Testament as we know it may have left out some original Gospels that should have been left in, but not over whether newly written ones should replace any of the old. In turn new scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon, lead to schism. Discoveries of ancient artifacts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, might conceivably add to the Torah; the same cannot be said for the invention of anything modern. Religions and secular philosophies alike may be advantageous or harmful psychologically, cognitively, socially; they may equally succumb to pitfalls or be astute; but they differ substantially in their acceptance of foundational (canonical) change. By this I mean their acceptance of radically altering or replacing the foundational canons and their ideals, based on updated considerations or new71 works. Undoubtedly, religious canons and ideals are subject to incessant debate and inexhaustible interpretations. Sectarian polemics, mystic esotericism, religious legal diversity, and doctrinal hermeneutics are proof of flexibility and creativity in religious scriptural interpretations.72 Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000) of McGill University goes even further to claim that “[t]here is no ontology of scripture. The concept has no metaphysical, nor logical, reference; there is nothing that scripture finally ‘is.’”73 Karen Armstrong summarized the issue by saying “Scripture is an art form designed to achieve the moral and spiritual transformation of the  As opposed to newly discovered, such as the Dead Sea scrolls.  A philosophical treatment of Christian hermeneutics is found in the first chapter of Jean Grondin’s Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). For a scholarly work on Islamic interpretive schools, see David R.  Vishanoff, The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics: How Sunni Legal Theorists Imagined a Revealed Law (New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 2011). 73  Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 237. Emphasis in the original. 71 72

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individual”74 and that “unless scripture is made to reach out creatively to meet our current predicaments, it will fail the test of our time.”75 Nevertheless, for each of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, recognizable foundational scriptures do exist and are not, in their substance, subject to replacement. This is because these canonical scriptures, that is, these foundations, are held sacred—which, precisely, makes them beyond substantive change. An observant Jew may re-interpret but not re-write the Torah,76 a Christian cannot be one with the elimination of the Christian Bible, and a Muslim cannot both be a Muslim and forget about the Koran. Yet a look at the history of religions shows that overall, from ancient times through today, most if not all religions have evolved, been restructured, or been replaced. There has been speciation, modification within the species, and symbiotic novelty too. Moses, raised an Egyptian, rejected the religion of the Pharaohs; Jesus, himself a Jew, in rejecting a great deal of Jewish thought and practice, established what was, at least at first, a new Jewish sect77; Muhammad rejected some Jewish and Christian beliefs, while retaining from both, elements he deemed relevant to the Islamic synthesis. The great medieval Arab poet, Abu al-Ala al-Maarri (973–1057), critically observes this persistent religious evolution in his poetry: Moses proclaimed but died then Jesus rose up; And here Muhammad came with five prayers. It was said another religion would come; So people got preoccupied between yesterday and tomorrow.78

74  Karen Armstrong, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts (New York, NY: Knopf, 2019), 454. 75  Armstrong, 466. Emphasis is mine. 76  Some Jewish intellectuals accept even the most radical foundational divergence of all: they “don’t believe in God—thus, they are atheistic—but still consider themselves to be Jewish.” In Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, 33. 77  “Not only can the plain facts of his [Jesus’] life be supposed to make historical sense only when seen within first-century Jewish society. More importantly, we can hope to understand how his disciples came to see him as Son of God and Messiah only if, like them, we try to interpret his life and work in the framework of Jewish history and Jewish views of history.” In Peter J.  Tomson, “Jesus and His Judaism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 25. 78  The translation is mine, from al-Mawsu ̄‘ah al-‘A ̄ lamiyyah lil-Shi‘r al-‘Arabı ̄, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrı ̄, Poem: 4610. Available at http://www.adab.com/modules.php?name=Sh 3er&doWhat=shqas&qid=4610&r=&rc=0

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Later, Martin Luther’s reforms included a revolutionary element that rejected a millennium of Catholic tradition. The Muslim mystic philosopher, Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), has in his poetry beautifully articulated this capacity to accept foundational divergence and change: Before this day, I was dismissive of my friend if his religion was not similar to mine; My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith.79

Today, Protestantism has separated into multiple denominations, while Judaism, though still united overall, has evolved and organized into Sephardic and Ashkenazic main strands,80 Reform, Conservative, Orthodox main branches, and multiple further branches, each with their own versions of customs, practices, and scriptural interpretation. Something similar holds for Islam, with its Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, and other sects. The Catholic Church has seen the massive top-down reforms of Vatican II, the influence of socialism via Liberation Theology, the reactionary era of Pope Benedict, and now the era of Pope Francis, which combines bottom-up and top-down reforms. Or consider this significant incident involving the Dalai Lama, as recounted by Comte-Sponville: Question: Your Holiness, I want to convert to Buddhism. Dalai Lama: Why Buddhism? In France, you’ve got Christianity. There’s nothing wrong with Christianity!81

We would do religion a great injustice if we were to think that its sacred could not be reformed or replaced by different, improved, or contextually more relevant principles and scriptures. For Judaism, there was, for 79  The first line is my translation. The rest is from Muhyı ̄’ddin Ibn al-Arabı ̄, The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq: A Collection of Mystical Odes. tr. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1911), 68. 80  There are numerous smaller strands, such as Beta Israel (the group’s own name, formerly referred to by others as “Falasha,” a term now recognized to be an Amharic pejorative), Karaite, Malabari, and Yemenite. 81  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 40.

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example, the very influential Reform movement, while more recently the Orthodox have gained power and influence because of accidental political circumstances in Israel. Even some religious institutions purposefully choose to reform. For example, the Catholic Church has put forth the massive reforms of Vatican II, appointed Pope Francis, and proposed changes under debate now, such as the possibility of ending mandatory celibacy for the priesthood.82 The epistemic problem of rejecting foundational change in religious worldviews, and the resulting stagnation of religious creeds, moralities, discourses, and practices, lies neither with their prophetic founders nor with every follower or institution, but in some orthodox institutions, and traditionalist, conservative, or dogmatic followers. Unfortunately, to the scholarly eye that seeks historical patterns, the influence of orthodox institutions and dogmatic followers in particular, as major social actors shaping the phenomenon of religion, can often be more significant than even the revolutionary prophetic founders themselves. Regarding such intransigent keepers of the faith, William James said “[h]is religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.”83 In keeping with the innovativeness of their founders, religions have been more accepting of radical change in their formative years.84 Dewey captures this point in saying that “if so much flexibility has obtained in the past regarding an unseen power, the way it affects human destiny, and the attitudes we are to take toward it, why should it be assumed that changes in conception and action have now come to an end?”85 Indeed, why do dogmatic followers of religions close the door on foundational change, while Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and others were allowed to open it intelligently and courageously? Why, for example, are the virtuous philosophies  [Uncredited]. “Catholic bishops back limited relaxation of celibacy rule.” BBC News, October 27, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50197296. 83  James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 6. 84  In Islam, this can be seen in electing a political-religious leader for the nation, Abu Bakr (632–634 CE), after the death of the Prophet; inscribing of the oral Koran in one volume; and in the times of the second successor, ‘Umar (r. 634 CE–644 CE), the banning of the practice of mut‘ah, temporary marriage. In Abdelmadjid Charfi, Islam: Between Divine Message and History, trans. David Bond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 17, 50, and 75. 85  Dewey, A Common Faith, 6. 82

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of Kant, Marx, Russell, and Darwin not given the same opportunity? The secular Feuerbach ridiculed this inertia, complaining that “religious man has his eyes only in order not to see, to be stone blind, and his reason only in order not to reason, to be block-headed.”86 But long before, religious thinkers had already identified this problem. Abu al-Ala al-Maarri, the medieval Muslim Arab poet we met earlier, was aware of this closed-door policy when he wrote: Faith and unbelief, stories narrated, Koran recited, Torah and Evangel. In every generation there are legends that people believe in; Was there ever a generation known solely for the right guidance?87

The monotheistic canons themselves comment disparagingly on the inability, of disbelievers and believers alike, to perceive their own religious innovativeness. The Old Testament says, “hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear” (Jeremiah 5:21). In the New Testament, Jesus explains, “this is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matthew 13:13). The Koran (7:179) similarly says, “they [idolaters] have hearts wherewith they understand not, eyes wherewith they see not, and ears wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle—nay more misguided.” In short, while acceptance of foundational change cannot be attributed to all religious peoples in all times, it is the dogmatic religionists, not the small number of open-minded founders, who are the guardians of foundational immutability, and the fighters against innovation. At the other end of the spectrum, secular worldviews, being inherently “of an age,” inevitably admit fallibility and, consequently, an open-ended process of re-evaluation. They are sensitive to changes of contexts, new evidence, and foundational criticism. They are congenial to doubt, reflection, hypothesis, experiment, confirmation, refutation, and most importantly, to remodeling and replacement, because secular thinking, with its emphasis on changeability, upholds meliorism and perfectibility. A secular worldview, in other words, recognizes its remoteness from the immutable  Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion, 43.  Tarif Khalidi, An Anthology of Arabic Literature: From the Classical to the Modern (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 10. 86 87

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sacred—it does not claim perfection; rather it recognizes a perpetual need to work toward it. As Dewey argues, “faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then adds there is but one road to it.”88 The epistemic attitude of secularism toward truth is that “knowledge is knowledge only by virtue of the (relative, approximate, historical) truth that it imparts or by virtue of the error that it refutes—whence its ability to progress.”89 Acceptance of foundational change is both an adventurous epistemic attitude and a cautious one. It is inherently cautious in that it leaves room for the scientific change of tomorrow, but also the fallibility of human intellect, and its social heritage. The American rationalist philosopher Brand Blanshard (1892–1987) captured this contrast with religion in arguing that “[r]eligion is not loyalty to the ultimately true and good, but only to what we hold to be such.”90 On the other hand, the secular is inherently adventurous, in its embrace of change. Whitehead captured this other contrast with religion—this time with art as the representative of the secular, rather than as typical, science—when he imagined that “countless ages ago [in the course of evolution] respectable amoebae refused to migrate from ocean to dry land—refusing in defence of morals. One incidental service of art to society lies in its adventurousness.”91 Put differently, the great service of secular philosophy to humanity lies in its adventurous acceptance of change in response to circumstances and context, based on evidence. In fact, there may be nothing more monumental in secular philosophy than adventurousness or courageous change destroying a former philosophical edifice—for worship of idols of any kind is prohibited in philosophy, even more than in monotheistic religions.92  Dewey, A Common Faith, 26.  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 49. 90  Brand Blanshard, Reason and Belief: Based on Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews and Noble Lectures at Harvard (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), 555. Emphasis is mine. 91  Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (NY: Free Press, 1961), 268. 92  At this point, an anonymous reviewer objected that a secular philosopher is no neutral observer who just looks at the “evidence” but is instead deeply embedded in various contexts: political, social, religious, economic, and more. Clearly, over the ages and still today, secular philosophers have lived and worked in diverse contexts: capitalist and communist, liberal and fascist, democratic and authoritarian, monocultural and multicultural, religious and atheist, and more. Yet they are all secular philosophers. Out of all their divergences, there must then be some common quality or qualities that make them all identifiable as secular. The subsequent characterization of secularism is the proposed solution to this puzzle. 88 89

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In light of our understanding of religion (Sect. 3.2), in terms of its functional role, secularism, or a secular worldview, may be understood as a cultural means, within particular literary traditions but without sacred canons, thus allowing for foundational change, in order to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals—whether effectively or not. This should not paint a beautifully flawless picture of secularism as free of mistakes, injustices, or dogmatism. Marxism has shown in its historical evolution a large degree of dogmatism, including rejection of other philosophies and even of scientific evidence.93 Yet, Marxism is by now largely defunct, making this particular secular dogmatism rather short lived, thus strengthening the point that a secular worldview is much more amenable to criticism and change over time. A secular worldview is also not necessarily free of psychological (though not cognitive) aspects of the sacred, if we take the sacred as “[…] the existence of a value that is or seems absolute, that imposes itself unconditionally and can be violated only on pain of sacrilege or dishonor.”94 The fact that a major event in the history of philosophy ended with the martyrdom of Socrates (399 BCE) suffices to prove that secular philosophy may involve an element of the sacred—in the form of devotion to a great cause or reverence for particular cognitive ideals and social virtues.95 This sacred is accepted in secular philosophy, even though secular philosophy remains open to modifying, enhancing, or replacing its very foundations. It is hardly imaginable that John Stuart Mill would forsake liberalism, Karl Marx would abandon his battle for equality, Charles Darwin would shy away from a comprehensive phylogenetic tree of living species, or Bertrand Russell would accept the obfuscation and convolution 93  Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 892. 94  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 18. 95  Just like the Near Eastern prophets, Socrates is reported to have heard supernatural voices, and to not fear death, for believing the gods would protect him. Would such allegiances to the supernatural disqualify him from being secular? This is a good occasion to remind the reader that an identification of secularism with atheism or the like is never adopted here. It has already been argued that the innovative founders of the Abrahamic religions—Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad—should be included in the secular realm precisely for their creative practice of foundational change, in order to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals. By Plato’s account, Socrates’ journey along the philosophical path was one ever engaged in overturning prevailing certainties. By that measure, he counts as secular. For a fascinating account, see John Herman Randall, Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1970).

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of nonsensical discourses. One might say that Mill, Marx, Darwin, and Russell were saturated with the sublimity of their secular endeavors. Dewey recognizes such a sacred element in secular philosophy when he says, “[t]here is such a thing as faith in intelligence becoming religious in quality.”96 Dewey calls this element “natural piety.”97 This piety is evident when “the sense of the dignity of human nature is as religious as is the sense of awe and reverence when it rests upon a sense of human nature as a cooperating part of a larger whole.”98 The secular and the religious share the same functional role, to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals, but secular worldviews, given their openness to foundational change, are ready to rectify the inescapable fallibility of superstitions, myths, and false ideologies. While this analysis may succeed in distinguishing the secular from the religious, there remains the task of distinguishing the secular from the scientific.

7   The Secular and the Scientific The secular is not necessarily identical to the scientific, merely for lack of a sacred canonical literature. In fact, secular worldviews are diverse and include some that are in conflict with science. At the most basic level, a worldview that rejects self-contradiction and seeks logical consistency can be described as rational. A worldview that does not, even if secular, is irrational, which, for example, the secular philosophy of existentialism proudly claims to be.99 A worldview that reaches beyond the goal of theoretical consistency and seeks exploration, testing, prediction, and applicability in the material world can be deemed empirical.100 A secular worldview that does not, such as Husserl’s phenomenology, may be idealist or intuitionist.101 But what makes for science, or a scientific worldview?  Dewey, A Common Faith, 26.  Ibid., 26. 98  Ibid., 25. 99  For further information, see William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (NY: Anchor Books, 1990). 100  Mario Bunge, Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 286. 101  Mario Bunge, Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) 19, 31, 75, and 211. 96 97

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7.1  Toward a Systemic Conception of Science: Mario Bunge’s View As he does with religion, Bunge identifies a variety of main traits as being characteristic of science. He sees science first of all as a field of inquiry: a system of persons with specialized training, operating within a more or less supportive society, who initiate or continue a tradition of inquiry.102 That tradition of inquiry, or that system of persons, has a general outlook consisting of a materialist ontology, a realist epistemology, and an “ethos of free search for truth, depth, and system,” with, following Merton,103 a morality that includes among other desiderata intellectual honesty, integrity, organized skepticism, and communism of intellectual property. Science has too a large fund of background knowledge; its aims are to understand the world of its ontology, using and producing ever better theories and methods; and its methods are always and exclusively scrutable and justifiable, of course being in the first place the scientific method.104 Bunge further elaborates these features and his characterization of science in ways of greater or lesser interest, the most important of these being his emphasis on epistemic change as a result of inquiry. Science does have a minimal set of core ontological and epistemological principles—materialism and realism; a minimal set of principles of inquiry—rationalism and empiricism; and a minimal set of core values—truth, depth, and systemicity; but it lacks a canonical literature, and its knowledge base and problem set are constantly evolving, as the natural outcome of fruitful inquiry. 7.2  Science in Terms of Its Functional Role Core principles of ethical ratio-empirical inquiry, materialism, realism, and a fund of knowledge nevertheless in constant evolution are clear themes arising from all of the above. As with our considerations of religion and secularism, instead of attempting to encompass all aspects of science, our  Bunge, Exploring the World, 90–91; Understanding the World, 197–206.  Richard K.  Merton, The Sociology of Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 104  One might expect the scientific method to be, precisely, the only method used in science, but there are others, in particular statistical or epidemiological methods. An explanation of the difference is provided in a somewhat technical article by Paul W. Holland, “Statistics and Causal Inference,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, no. 81 (1986), 945–960. 102 103

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focus shall be on what science does, or is hoped to do, for society and the individual. Thus, rather than considering the panoply of traits of greater or lesser interest identified by Bunge, I focus primarily on the aims and the methods of science, these in their psychological, cognitive, and social dimensions, or aspects, but touching too on the ontological one. First, minimally and in general terms, a secular worldview that combines rationalism with empiricism, that is, a ratio-empirical one, can be described as scientific.105 More specifically, and again in terms of its functional role, we can understand science, or a scientific worldview, as a cultural means—based on certain fundamental principles of inquiry (ethical, rational, and empirical), having a certain fundamental outlook (materialism and realism), advancing from an improvable fund of background knowledge, having no sacred literature, so as to be eager for epistemic progress—in order to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals.106 The foundations of the Abrahamic religions are their sacred canonical texts; the foundations of secular worldviews in general may be anything, but they are not sacred canons; while the foundations of science and a scientific worldview are a minimal but crucial set of principles that allow for— better, encourage, advocate, and call for—incessant epistemic progress. The process of ratio-empirical inquiry that brings change to science, or to a scientific worldview, may be motivated by the full spectrum of the human condition, by human needs and wants of all kinds: for example, to satisfy curiosity, or hunger; to eliminate contradiction, or suffering; to explore an idea, or the world. A scientific worldview is in this way an implicit epistemic attitude of anyone interested in sustainable global human welfare, whatever the origin of their concern, whether religious or secular—all of which leads us back to our initial problems of modernity, and Western-Islamic strife. 105  Mario Bunge, Finding Philosophy in Social Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 322–23. 106  The goals of Science itself are generally taken to be purely cognitive, as distinct from Technology, whose goals are practical. Briefly, science uses the scientific method, typically combined with technological means, to achieve the cognitive goal of understanding the world; while technology uses scientific and technical knowledge to achieve practical goals. Along the way, scientists may develop new technologies while technologists may develop new science. The characterization proposed here can be seen as asserting that the worldview of Technology is scientific. See also Mario Bunge, Epistemology and Methodology III: Philosophy of Science and Technology, Part II: Life Science, Social Science and Technology (vol. 7, part II of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Dordrecht: Reidel), 198.

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8   Divergence and Convergence Movement away from foundational canons or ideals does seem heretical within religion. But in light of the previous considerations, one might ask: if a religious thinker or religious group nevertheless decides to accept foundational change, should this act be considered secular? Based on the criteria proposed above, there is no objection to having such open-minded religious thinking be classified under the domain of the secular. When foundations are justifiably destroyed or limits are constructively crossed, one does prove oneself to be secular. The emergence of new religions and sects tends to be something of this sort. In other words, the line between the secular and the religious is mainly found in dogmatic, close-minded thinking, not in a certain substantial belief. That is, I consider the difference between the two to be more importantly a matter of epistemology and methodology, rather than of ontology or metaphysics.107 Conversely, if a secular thinker or secular group adopts some religious values, tenets, or rituals, while still accepting the possibility of foundational change, should they still be considered secular? Again, based on our proposed criteria, there is no opposition to having secular thinking mix with religious values or topics. For example, humanity has created a rich heritage for dealing with suffering, so “[w]akes, funeral orations, chants, prayers, symbols, postures, rites, sacraments … All these things help us grow accustomed to the horror, humanize it, civilize it—and this is no doubt necessary.”108 A great deal of the secular thinking produced in the European Renaissance and Enlightenment is likely to have been of this hybrid type.109 The founders of thoroughly scientific fields such as coordinate geometry, calculus, and mechanics—Descartes, Leibniz and Newton, and Galileo and Newton—were deeply religious not only in their personal beliefs but also in the mindset that led them to initiate these fields.110 107  This is in contrast with the view of Mario Bunge, who sees the fundamental characteristic of religion as being “a system of unstable beliefs in the existence of one or more supernatural beings and the accompanying practices, mainly worship and sacrifice.” In Mario Bunge, Philosophical Dictionary (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus, 2003), 249. 108  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 9. 109  A strong case for this argument is made in Ian G. Barbour’s Religion and Science (New York: Harper One, 1997). 110  Newton, the iconic founder of modern physics, says, for example: “the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, that is, he endures from eternity to eternity, and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he

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Epistemic secularism does not claim to completely reinvent human culture from zero. Secularism, ideally, embraces the totality of the human heritage, but aims also to stand by its side and help it forward, by amending and reformulating it as needed. In this regard, Mario Bunge stresses that “humanists can, and in fact often do, work alongside some religious believers to promote humanitarian causes.”111 Bunge also emphasizes that “humanists should tolerate believers and defended their right to worship.”112 Correspondingly, if some secular or religious intuitions, language, hypotheses, or models are brought to science, can these items also be considered scientific? In principle, if they are (1) rationally consistent, (2) empirically verified, (3) without evidence to the contrary, and (4) not in unresolvable contradiction with background scientific knowledge—then there should be no objection to their introduction into science, regardless of their origin. Needless to say, what is acceptable now of Babylonian astronomy, Greek logic, Chinese technology, or Islamic mathematics did not originate in a cultural vacuum free of the religion and culture of their times.113 Yet the final success of these innovations was not due to their religious or secular roots, but mainly to the ratio-empirical properties that justify their status as scientific in the first place. William James’ description of the Emersonian god as “[n]ot a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe,”114 does not clash with science as such. Secular and religious cultures were and still are capable of generating scientific thinking and technologies, as long as they abide by ratio-empiricism, that is, scientific knowledge and the scientific method. In contrast with the above-mentioned possibilities for convergence between the three types of worldview, (1) absolutely immutable religious knows all things that happen or can happen.” In Sir Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, A New Translation, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 941. 111  Bunge, Philosophical Dictionary, 205. 112  Bunge, 205. 113  For example, the desire to find the direction of Mecca for prayer, and to calculate the timings of holy days, spurred key developments in trigonometry (‘ilm al-muthallathāt) and the science of the calendar. Although much trigonometry goes back to ancient times, Islamic mathematics substantially extended and modernized it. See, for example, George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011), 186. 114  James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 31–32.

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creeds can be neither secular nor scientific,115 (2) a secular acceptance of foundational change that abides by neither rational nor empirical demands can never be scientific,116 and (3) science can only consort with religious and secular ideas so long as they are in line with the rational and empirical requirements. Significantly, although in recognition of their divergence our characterizations attempt to create sharp boundaries between the three types of worldview, they also admit the possibility of convergence, which has in fact occurred in the past—and shall occur in the future. Finally, if the analysis above succeeds in distinguishing “religious” from “secular” and “scientific” worldviews, there remains the task of proving (at least to the religiously minded) the legitimacy and success of combining rationalism and empiricism in human affairs—as opposed to just in what essentially everyone already accepts by now, the mastery of nature and the creation of gadgets. Such an endeavor involves an investigation of modern epistemology and philosophy of science, social and natural, from Descartes and Bacon through Kant and Mill to Bunge and Rescher. What is most relevant here is that the enterprise of constructing a human cultural system that allows for ratio-empirical foundational change, in order to effectively and efficiently achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals, imposes itself upon responsible minds with a sense of the sacred. It is sacred in that humanity has urgent psychological, cognitive, and social problems of the highest priority, demanding rational and empirically valid solutions, and these requirements “impose unconditionally, and can be violated only on pain of sacrilege or dishonor.”117 Acceptance of—or rather, eagerness for—ratio-empirical epistemic change, in order to achieve psychological, cognitive, and social goals, is integral to Mario Bunge’s worldview, and I see it as the common ground that can remedy the Western-Islamic strife over modernity. Let us then turn to the philosophy of Mario Bunge and see what is meant by a modern, systemic, scientific, and humanistic worldview.

115  Martin Mahner and Mario Bunge, “Is Religious Education Compatible with Science Education?” In Science and Education, 101–123, 1996. 116  Mario Bunge, “In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academia,” In P. R. Gross, N.  Levitt, and M.  W. Lewis, eds., The Flight from Science and Reason (NY: New  York Academy of Science), 96. 117  Comte-Sponville, Atheist Spirituality, 18.

CHAPTER 4

An Introduction to Mario Bunge, and to the Philosophical Endeavor

Chapter 3 developed the concepts of religious, secular, and scientific worldviews. These were understood in terms of their functional roles, with the scientific worldview in particular understood as a cultural means— based on certain fundamental principles of inquiry, having a certain fundamental outlook, advancing from an improvable fund of background knowledge, and eager for epistemic progress—for achieving psychological, cognitive, and social goals. The present chapter considers the nature of the philosophical endeavor—in general, and as advanced by Mario Bunge, the modern philosopher whose vast and comprehensive philosophical system forms an ideal exemplification of a modern scientific worldview.

1   Mario Bunge: A First Introduction In the late 1950s, Mario Augusto Bunge (1919–2020) began to emerge as a widely read and important philosopher of science. By this time, he had already established a scientific career as a full professor of theoretical physics at two Argentinian universities, La Plata and the University of Buenos Aries. Earlier, his career had been marked—unusual for someone so young, but also for any scientist from Latin America—by publications in some of the most prestigious international science journals: the Physical Review

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_4

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(1944),1 Nature (1945),2 and Nuovo Cimento (1955).3 The renowned Harvard analytic philosopher, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), once observed while attending the 1956 South American Philosophical Congress in Santiago, Chile: The star of the philosophical congress was Mario Bunge, an energetic and articulate young Argentinian of broad background and broad, if headstrong, intellectual concerns. He seemed to feel that the burden of bringing South America up to a northern scientific and intellectual level rested on his shoulders. He intervened eloquently in the discussion of almost every paper.4

Bunge’s long subsequent career more than lived up to this early promise. The best overview of his long life and vast philosophical and scientific corpus is Michael R. Matthews’ Introduction5 to the 800+ page Festschrift marking Bunge’s 100th birthday—by this time the third English-language Festschrift honoring Bunge’s work.6 Bunge himself provides extensive personal recollections in two memoirs, one in English and the other in Spanish.7 What follows is only a far briefer sketch—first of his life and then of his work. This is to set the stage for our consideration in this chapter of the philosophical endeavor more generally, and for our eventual

1  Mario Bunge, “A New Representation of Types of Nuclear Forces,” Physical Review 65, no. 7–8 (April 1, 1944): 249–50, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.65.249.3. 2  Mario Bunge, “Neutron-Proton Scattering at 8⋅8 and 13 MeV,” Nature 156, no. 3958 (September 1945): 301–301, https://doi.org/10.1038/156301a0. 3  Mario Bunge, “A Picture of the Electron,” Nuovo Cimento, ser. X, 1, 977–985, 1955. 4  Willard Van Orman Quine, The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985), 266. 5   Michael R.  Matthews, “Mario Bunge: An Introduction to his Life, Work, and Achievements”. In: Michael R.  Matthews, ed., Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Springer, 2019, 1–28. 6  Earlier English-language Festschrifts were Agassi, J., & Cohen, R.  S. (Eds.). Scientific Philosophy Today: Essays in Honor of Mario Bunge (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982); and Weingartner, P., & Dorn, G. J. W. (Eds.), Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990). Two more in Spanish are Denegri, G.  M., Elogio de la Sabiduria. Ensayos en Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 95° Aniversario (EUDEBA, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2014); and Denegri, G. M., & Martinez, G., Tópicos actuales en filosofía de la ciencia. Homenaje a Mario Bunge en su 80 Aniversario (La Plata, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Editorial Martín, 2000). See Matthews, 2. 7  Mario Bunge, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist (Switzerland: Springer, 2016); and Entre Dos Mundos: Memorias (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2015).

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constructive dialogue between Bunge’s views and those of the Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman, concerning the philosophy of modernity. Mario Bunge was born in Argentina, of a German mother and an Argentinian father. His father, a medical doctor and socialist senator, envisioned the education of young Mario in a way that would make him a Renaissance man. German, English, and French were among the languages he learned, along with his native Spanish. Through reading and by accompanying his father to political and intellectual debates, he was introduced to a wide variety of ideologies, literatures, and philosophies.8 Eventually, Bunge was attracted to theoretical physics as his first academic specialization. In 1943, two years before the detonation of the first atomic bomb, he “started to work on problems of nuclear and atomic physics under the guidance of Guido Beck (1903–1988), an Austrian refugee and a student of Heisenberg.”9 In 1952, at the age of thirty-three, he earned his PhD in physico-mathematical sciences at La Plata and in 1955 spent six months in Brazil as a postdoctoral researcher under the renowned theoretical physicist David Bohm (1917–1992). Following the overthrow of the Péron regime in Argentina, university chairs were opened to public competition, and Bunge became a full professor of theoretical physics at La Plata, and of both physics (1956–1958) and philosophy (1957–1963) at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1963 Bunge left Argentina—by then once again under a repressive military regime—feeling too threatened and politically uncomfortable to remain. During the next years he held various posts as a visiting professor in the United States and in Germany (the latter while also a Humboldt Research Fellow), until in 1966 he was hired as a full professor of philosophy at McGill University in Montreal. In 1983 McGill named him the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. In 2009, at the age of ninety, he retired from his teaching duties to become McGill’s Frothingham Professor Emeritus. Bunge continued as an active scholar and published numerous books and articles until his demise on February 24, 2020.10 8  Mario Bunge, “Instant Autobiography,” in Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, ed. Paul Weingartner and Georg Dorn (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 677. 9  Michael R. Matthews, “Mario Bunge: Physicist and Philosopher,” Science & Education 12 (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 434. Available online at: http://www. springerlink.com/content/t465u58024062867/fulltext.pdf 10  See the bibliography of Mario Bunge’s publications in all languages by Marc Silberstein, in Michael R. Matthews, Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019), 775.

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Physics is only one chapter in Bunge’s encyclopedic scholarly life. Although as a teenager some of his first intellectual loves were Freud’s psychoanalysis and Hegel, Bunge recounts, “I fell in love with philosophy when I read Bertrand Russell’s Problems of Philosophy (1912). This book persuaded me that psychoanalysis was sheer fantasy.”11 Studying mathematical logic corrected his erstwhile inclination to Hegel and dialectics.12 This new philosophical orientation, Bunge says, “pushed me into physics […] and I continued to read philosophy on the side.”13 This nascent philosophical interest culminated in the monumental eight-volume, nine-­ book Treatise on Basic Philosophy (1974–1989). In addition to (and in many cases in conjunction with) this ambitious project, Bunge produced many other works of philosophical synthesis, only some of his English-­ language14 book titles being Causality (1959),15 Scientific Research (two volumes, 1967),16 Philosophy of Physics (1973),17 The Mind-Body Problem (1980),18 Philosophy of Psychology (with Ruben Ardila—1987),19 Finding Philosophy in Social Science (1996),20 Foundations of Biophilosophy (with Martin Mahner—1997),21 Philosophy in Crisis (2001),22 Philosophical

11  Mario Bunge, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of A Philosopher-Scientist (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 43. 12  Weingartner and Dorn, Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, 677. 13  Weingartner and Dorn, 677. 14  Bunge has also published numerous original books in Spanish, and many of his books are available in multiple languages in translation. 15  Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, Fourth Revised Edition (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2008). 16  Heidelberg- New York: Springer-Verlag, 1967, reissued in updated versions as Philosophy of Science (Vol. 1): From Problem to Theory and Philosophy of Science (Vol. 2): From Explanation to Justification (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998). 17  Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Physics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973). 18  Mario Bunge, The Mind–Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach (New York, NY: Picador, 1980). 19  Mario Bunge and Rubén Ardila, Philosophy of Psychology (New York, NY: Springer Verlag, 1987). 20  Mario Bunge, Finding Philosophy in Social Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996). 21  Martin Mahner and Mario Bunge, Foundations of Biophilosophy (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, 1997). 22  Mario Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001).

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Dictionary (2003),23 Political Philosophy (2009),24 Medical Philosophy (2013),25 and From a Scientific Point of View (2018).26 In over 150 books and 540 articles including translations, Bunge has published in fields ranging from physics to economics, linguistics to logic, biology to psychology, sociology to political science, philosophy to criminology, in English, Spanish, French, German, and various other languages. In Spanish he has also contributed a vast number of newspaper articles. These and many more contributions won Bunge the 1982 Prince of Asturias Prize in Communications and the Humanities,27 as well as twenty honorary doctorates28 and four honorary professorships.29 Joseph Agassi, renowned disciple of Karl Popper, author of among many other publications the entry on philosophy of science in the ten-volume Routledge History of Philosophy,30 made the following statement in a 1969 book review of Bunge’s Scientific Research: “Bunge, apart from being a physicist himself, shows he has read more, and more diversely, than almost anyone alive.”31 The unifying thread of Bunge’s scholarship, the Australian Michael R.  Matthews says, “is the constant and vigorous advancement of the Enlightenment Project, and criticism of cultural and academic movements that deny or devalue the core planks of the project.”32 Bunge bluntly criticizes major philosophical doctrines like empiricism, pragmatism,

 Mario Bunge, Philosophical Dictionary (Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus, 2003).  Mario Bunge, Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2008). 25  Mario Bunge, Medical Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Medicine (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2013). 26  Mario Bunge, From A Scientific Point of View: Reasoning and Evidence Beats Improvisation Across Fields (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). 27  Bunge, Memoirs of A Philosopher-Scientist, 347. The Prince of Asturias Prizes are sometimes known as “the Spanish Nobels”. 28  Bunge, 266. 29  See Matthews, “Mario Bunge: An Introduction to his Life, Work, and Achievements”, ibid.; Bunge’s university webpage: https://mcgill.ca/philosophy/people/emeritus-faculty/ bunge (accessed: November 27, 2019). 30  J.  Agassi, “The Philosophy of Science Today,” in Stuart G.  Shanker (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 9, Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century (NY: Routledge, 1996), 235–265. 31  J. Agassi, The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics: Selected Reviews and Comments (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publ. Co., 1988), 447. 32  M. R. Matthews, “Mario Bunge: Physicist and Philosopher,” Science & Education 12 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 431. 23 24

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intuitionism, phenomenology, Marxism, hermeneutics, and logical positivism, and has a reputation for being headstrong and opinionated.33 Bunge has described his epistemological and ontological commitments with various terms such as scientific realism,34 hylorealism,35 and scientific materialism,36 and his philosophical worldview as coming from a synthesis of viewpoints, including materialism, skepticism, realism, scientism, systemism, and humanism.37 He once described the major aspects of his epistemology in terms of a philosophical cooking recipe: We shall pick up the rich legacy of epistemological problems and hints bequeathed to us by the epistemological tradition. We shall enrich it with some of the problems and findings of contemporary scientific, technological and humanistic research, topping it with new hypotheses compatible with the science of the day… we shall elaborate and systemize the whole with the help of a few modest tools such as the concepts of set and function. [….] Finally, we shall try to put epistemological principles to the test: we shall check whether they account for the actual conduct of inquiry or whether they might help improve it.38

Such steps and considerations are characteristic of Bunge’s line of inquiry in all subjects. The briefest sketch of Bunge’s overall viewpoint can be found in his Social Science Under Debate (1998), where he calls for “objective and relevant fact-finding, rigorous theorizing, empirical testing, as well as morally sensitive and socially responsible [philosophy].”39 The first item, objective and relevant fact-finding, refers to his lifetime advocacy for a naturalistic ontology that strives to capture physical and human reality as objectively as possible. Bunge rejects the subjectivism and phenomenalism 33  See Heinz W. Droste, “Mario Bunge as a Public Intellectual”. In: Michael R. Matthews, ed., Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift (Cham: Springer, 2019), 63–80. See also Mario Bunge, “In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academia”, Annals of the New  York Academy of Sciences 775: 96–116, 1996. 34  Martin Mahner (ed.), Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge. Amherst: Prometheus Press, 2001. 35  Mario Bunge, From a Scientific Point of View: Reasoning and Evidence Beat Improvisation across Fields. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2018, 13. 36  Mario Bunge, Scientific Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel), 1981. 37  Mario Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001), 12. 38  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 5, Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), xv. Emphases are mine. 39  Mario Bunge, Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1999), xi.

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of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, who deny the ability to get to know reality apart from our perceptions of it.40 In particular, Bunge adopts the Aristotelian view that the “external world exists independently of our sense experience and ideation and that it can be known, if only in part.”41 The second item, rigorous theorizing, refers to the continuation of the heritage of analytic philosophy, in the form of linguistic clarity and mathematically precise reasoning. The third item, empirical testing, builds on the cumulative findings of natural science and technology, where passing sophisticated empirical tests is one of the criteria for accepting new hypotheses (the other being compatibility with background knowledge). The fourth item, moral sensitivity, reflects Bunge’s argument for the existence of cross-cultural basic values, and his universalistic stance on mutual human duties and rights (more on this in Chap. 8). Finally, Bunge’s commitment to socially responsible philosophy reveals his repugnance for conservative, neo-liberal, Communist,42 or anarchist politics. Bunge’s most ambitious achievement, the Treatise on Basic Philosophy, presents a unified, modern philosophical system, in harmony with contemporary science, and in service of the advancement of knowledge and the human condition. It encompasses what Bunge considers to be “the nucleus of contemporary philosophy”: semantics (theories of meaning and truth), ontology (general theories of the world), epistemology (general theories of knowledge, to include the philosophies of the natural and social sciences), and ethics (theories of value and right action).43 Our own study of this work focuses primarily on Bunge’s ontology, epistemology, and ethics, while leaving aside his extensive writings on semantics and the social sciences. The reason for the first exclusion is that Bunge’s writings on semantics are highly technical and do not substantially add to an understanding of his worldview. As to the second exclusion, his works on social

40  Mario Bunge, Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 43–51. 41  Andreas Pickel, “Systems and Mechanisms: A Symposium on Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Sciences,” In Philosophy of Social Sciences 34/2 (June 2004), 171. 42  At the age of sixteen Bunge joined the Communist Party. He remained a member until 1947, when the party expelled him for failure to conform. Bunge eventually came to reject Communism, Marxism, and dialectics, for intellectual rather than political reasons. See Bunge, Memoirs of A Philosopher-Scientist, 39–40. 43  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 8, Ethics: The Good and the Right (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1989), v.

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science are essentially applications of his ontology, epistemology, and ethics, and are thus more specialized than our focus. The difficulty in fathoming Bunge’s massive system lies in its grand sweep, its technical sophistication (perhaps sometimes, over-­sophistication), and the extensive scientific, mathematical, philosophical, humanistic, and historical background his erudite presentation stands upon. The work of German-American philosopher, polymath, scholar of Arabic logic, and Bunge’s only other contemporary of similar standing, Nicholas Rescher (b. 1928), aids in the analysis of Bunge’s systemic worldview.44 Although Rescher did not produce a comprehensive system like Bunge’s, the majority of his works are dedicated to the analysis and architecture of philosophical systems. This is particularly the case in two widely acclaimed works, The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity (1985), and Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophizing (2001). Rescher’s insights are also helpful in elucidating Bunge’s work because these scholars are familiar with one another’s contributions to philosophy. For example, Bunge comments on Rescher’s Complexity: A Philosophical Overview by saying that “Rescher is the most learned, productive, and clear of all contemporary philosophers. It is impossible not to learn something from every one of his nearly one hundred books.”45 Bunge repeats this admiration twelve years later, in the dedication to his Matter and Mind, writing, “I dedicate this book to Nicholas Rescher, the most learned, lucid and fair of us.”46 Rescher, in response, has commented on many of Bunge’s works. Regarding Bunge’s Emergence and Convergence, he wrote:

44  First of all, Rescher, as Editor-in-Chief of the American Philosophical Quarterly for forty years, has an amazing knowledge of the specialized literatures of a vast number of recent philosophical trends. Rescher has served as President of the American Philosophical Association, the American Catholic Philosophy Association, the American G.  W. Leibniz Society, the C.  S. Peirce Society, the American Metaphysical Society, and as of today has authored more than 160 books. More in Nicholas Rescher, Autobiography (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2007), 262. 45  On the back cover of the cited book (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998). Bunge is not the only one having this high appraisal of Rescher’s work. George R. Lucas, a specialist of Whitehead, considers Rescher as “one of the nation’s most literate, prolific, and respected philosophers” (on the back cover of N. Rescher, Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996). 46  Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2010), v.

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Mario Bunge has over the years established himself as the prime exponent of a scientifically informed philosophy of man, society, and nature. His characteristic mode of approach seeks to integrate science into a seamless whole with the traditional philosophical concerns. […] [Emergence and Convergence] forms part of this larger project and offers us some vintage Bunge.47

Rescher likewise commended Bunge’s Social Science Under Debate for “cover[ing] a vast domain with a firm grasp of the big issues. Its great advantage lies in treating all this material from a unified perspective.”48 Rescher correspondingly dedicates one of his books to Bunge, “For Mario Bunge / Scientist, Philosopher, and Friend.” This further demonstrates the mutual recognition, indeed admiration between these two giant minds.49 With the aid of Rescher, and before returning to Bunge’s systemic worldview (briefly at the end of this chapter, and in detail in Chaps. 6, 7, and 8), we make an excursion into the nature of the philosophical endeavor more generally—yet with an emphasis on Bunge’s main preoccupation, the task of philosophical system building.

2   Philosophy, Inquiry, and Action Prometheus’ fire was not stolen from the gods in one single act. Archaeology, anthropology, and comparative evolutionary biology tell us that in real terms, this monumental symbolic event was in fact a long and convoluted process that spanned perhaps more than a million years of human prehistory, the first small successes thought to have occurred some 1.5 million years ago.50 Being perhaps also concurrent with the origins of language,51 these steps may have been taken without anyone ever explicitly asking the corresponding question, “How can we master fire, that we may warm ourselves, scare beasts away, and light the darkness?”  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003; see the back cover of the hard cover edition.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996; see the back cover of the soft cover edition. 49  Nicholas Rescher, Is Philosophy Dispensable? And Other Philosophical Essays (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2007). 50  J. A. J. Gowlett, “The Discovery of Fire by Humans: A Long and Convoluted Process,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1696 (June 5, 2016): 20150164, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164. 51  Op. cit. 47 48

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Nevertheless, the process required—together with fortuitous circumstances—a synthesis of cognitive ability and practical endeavor.52 Trial and failure, luck and learning it surely was; but whether formulated explicitly or not, that means a process of inquiry, in effect one of asking questions and getting answers, in pursuit of solutions to a cluster of monumental problems, some of the Big Questions of the time: how to keep safe, warm, and fed without fur, fangs, claws, great strength, or night vision. The eventual fruits of our ancestors’ inquiries, great and novel solutions such as control of fire, stone tools, and the domestication of plants and animals, were all preconditions for the rise of sedentary human communities, and thus civilization.53 Many of the Big Questions of our prehistoric ancestors were answered long ago, but some have carried over into modern times, while others have more complex contemporary counterparts: How can we live together with cultural disagreement and value conflict? Are there commandments revealed by a divine being that must have priority over laws enacted by people? How many people are too many people, locally and globally, and what should be done to avoid getting to those numbers? How can we use energy and technology without depleting our nonrenewable sources, and destroying our habitat? Then too are the perennial Big Questions, concerning the nature of the universe, and of human existence. Big Questions haunt the contemporary mind just as they did the minds of our ancestors. Our survival and flourishing, as theirs, demand answers to the practical ones; likewise our peace of mind, but too our manner of conducting our lives, to the riddles of existence: What happens when we die? So, should we attempt to delay death, or hasten it? Is there a purpose to our lives? What is good and what is evil? Is there divine judgment and retribution, or is justice only of this world? The fact that inquiry, indeed successful inquiry, is so integral to the human journey means that philosophy is not a theoretical luxury. Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am”; but the person who seeks to continue to be must think, and those who wish to think well—especially, to  Op. cit.  Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 92. 52 53

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ask the right questions, and to find the right answers—must philosophize. Rescher affirms: “we must philosophize; it is a situational imperative for a rational creature”54; “[t]here is no alternative to philosophizing as long as we remain in the province of reason.”55 Rescher says that “philosophizing is cognitive engineering.”56 Thus, I seek to live, therefore I philosophize. Bunge has described philosophy as “the study of the most fundamental and cross-disciplinary concepts and principles.”57 Rescher describes philosophy as “the venture in rational inquiry whose mission is to provide tenable answers to our ‘big questions’ regarding man, the world, and our place within its scheme of things”58; similarly that the “mission of philosophy is to ask, and to answer in a rational and disciplined way, all those great questions about life in this world.”59 Philosophy becomes the very source of our success and fitness as living beings: it is “not by hard shells or sharp claws or keen teeth that we carved out our niche in evolution’s scheme of things,”60 but by our distinctive cognitive power—by our nature to identify problems, and our ability and drive to find solutions. Our cognitive instincts are as elemental as our instincts to drink and to breathe: “we have questions and we want (nay, need) answers.”61 In this way, philosophy is also the most practical of matters.62 Between question, answer, and the rise of new questions our identity takes shape as “Homo quaerens,” Rescher suggests.63 For him, philosophy is the greatest manifestation of human existence, while systemization, or the building of coherent systems of interrelated ideas—as opposed to a mere accumulation of stray and unconnected, or even conflicting, ideas—is the best method for philosophy. Philosophy is at the summit of human activities, and system building is the finest approach to this endeavor. Considered this way, philosophy is not untethered  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 6.  Rescher, 10. 56  Rescher, 160. 57  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 260. 58  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 3. 59  Rescher, 4. 60  Rescher, 7. 61  Rescher, 7. 62  Rescher, 8. 63  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 7. 54 55

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existential questioning,64 with doubt as the major product,65 nor does it provide closed certainties that cannot be disproved or improved.66 Philosophy can overcome the problems of untethered questions and closed answers by being rationally and empirically grounded in its manner of questioning, and truth-seeking in its manner of answering. Even if someone embraces an entirely skeptical epistemology, the needs for water, food, and elimination of waste remain. The ancients said primum vivere, deinde philosophari; but not only must we live if we want to philosophize, we must philosophize if we want to continue to live, and to flourish. Philosophizing well involves taking responsibility for what one says. When philosophy proposes that economic growth may come with social or environmental costs that override any economic benefits, or when it suggests that scientific inquiry is superior to any other, there should be an evaluation of the validity of these claims. Consequently, Rescher asserts, “philosophizing is thus a matter of truth estimation in the light of experience regarding these larger issues that define the domain.”67 Experience has falsified many dominant philosophical ideas of the past. For example, the doctrine of four elements was a background for many premodern philosophies. It was put forward by Empedocles of Acragas (c. 493–c. 433 BCE)68 and was completely superseded by Dalton’s atomic theory and Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of the Elements. The old four elements were replaced by more and more, now at least 94 naturally occurring elements, and 24 more produced artificially.69 Likewise, the theory put forward by Galen (129–c. 210 CE),70 of the “four humors” of the human body, became outdated with the inception of modern medicine, to be replaced 64  Leszek Kolakowski, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? 23 Questions from Great Philosophers (London: Basic Books, 2007), 3. 65  “You must understand that philosophy is an art not of questions but rather of answers,” Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2011), 16. 66  N.  Rescher, Interpreting Philosophy: The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics (Frankfurt-Main: Ontos Verlag, 2007), 165–166. 67  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 3. 68  Watson, Ideas, 131. 69  Elements 93 and 94, neptunium and plutonium, were formerly thought to not occur naturally on Earth. Improvements in analytical procedures showed they do, in trace amounts. See John W.  Poston Sr., “Do Transuranic Elements Such as Plutonium Ever Occur Naturally?,” Scientific American, March 23, 1998, https://www.scientificamerican.com/ article/do-transuranic-elements-s/. Further scrutiny may lead to upping the count again. 70  Watson, 214.

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by the complexities of biochemistry. All of these new ideas and findings are part of the given of today’s scientifically informed philosophies, but they remain subject to correction in the light of newer findings: “after all, the scientific knowledge of facts is always partial, indirect, uncertain and corrigible.”71 Based on these considerations, Rescher has attributed the following three features to philosophy: (1) philosophy is the task of questioning and answering; (2) questioning and answering that targets the biggest questions subsumes most if not all of the smaller questions; and (3) answering is a matter of truth-estimation in the light of experience. Philosophizing, in a variety of minds and through many generations, creates vast and complex ideas and literatures, a background of knowledge which becomes the repository of our routine answers; we rely on this knowledge for our old and new challenges. For example, we do not routinely question the need for living in a society, because our background knowledge has it that living outside a society does not satisfy our complex needs and wants. This knowledge, these literatures, make up the landscape of our worldview. The division between routine or known answers on the one hand and new or old but unanswered questions on the other forms the horizon between the known and the unknown. Philosophy “tries to do for our cognitive landscape what the Roman engineers did for the roads of their world.”72 Within the horizons of our philosophical landscape we find epistemic ease and psychological security; beyond them, the unknown. To some—such as perhaps, many a religious believer—the unknown is a frightening darkness; to others—such as the typical scientist—it is a wonderful adventure in waiting. A philosophical worldview, then, can be thought of as the sum total of all the answers to our biggest questions, in the light of experience. My home is not merely where my mailing address is; likewise, my intellectual home is “an edifice of thought able to provide us with … shelter in a complicated and challenging world. As a venture in providing rationally cogent answers to our questions about large-scale issues regarding belief, evaluation, and action, philosophy is a sector of the cognitive enterprise at large.”73 The act of philosophizing is powered by the human need to ask 71  Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science I: From Problem to Theory (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 26. Emphasis is mine. 72  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 104. 73  Rescher, 4.

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questions and find answers, and illuminated by the light of ever-expanding experience. The first is a response to our emotional, biological, cognitive, or social needs, while the second provides us with experiential guidance through the spectrum of the true and the false. If a philosophy or a worldview is continually under construction in the light of experience, what does this mean for the ability of our philosophical home to provide us with the desired shelter? Why “pursue such a venture in the face of the all too evident possibility of error?”, Rescher asks.74 His answer: “Philosophizing involves an act of faith: When we draw on our experience to answer our questions we have to proceed in the tentative hope that the best we can do is good enough, at any rate for our immediate purpose.”75 Otto Neurath (1882–1945), the Vienna Circle philosopher and economist, summarized the underlying situation this way: “We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry dock and to reconstruct it from the best components.”76 Given this predicament, we are not looking for “the uniquely correct answer but the least problematic, most defensible position.”77 Or from a scientific point of view, in Bunge’s words: “the quest for final certainty characteristic of non-science is replaced in science by the quest for approximate but perfectible objective truth.”78 Although questioning/answering and experience are philosophy’s greatest resources, they prevent philosophy from being stable or stagnant, an essence referred to by a noun. Philosophy becomes instead a process best expressed as philosophizing. From its origins on, philosophy has always been famously diverse, encompassing an ever-enlarging plethora of contrary views—to the delight of some, and the irritation of many. Seven centuries ago, the medieval Muslim jurist, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (1292–1350 CE), penned a criticism of his fellow Muslim philosophers, entitled “You Cannot Find  Rescher, 9.  Rescher, 9. 76  Quoted in Nancy Cartwright et al., Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 155. Quine’s relates Neurath’s view as: “Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it” (Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object [Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1960], 2). 77  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 143. 78  Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science II: From Explanation to Justification (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 350. Emphasis is mine. 74 75

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Two Philosophers in Agreement on One Opinion.”79 Indeed, questions do have many answers, and experiences do vary dramatically. Kant realized that “every answer given on principles of experience begets a fresh question, which likewise requires its answer and thereby clearly shows the insufficiency of all physical modes of explanation to satisfy reason.”80 Thus, the more answers we get, the more insufficient they become, by virtue of the questions that arise from these very answers, which threaten with incompleteness the whole endeavor of creating a philosophical worldview. Yes, we need answers; but once we get them, new questions arise. Bunge is well aware of this when he says, “[t]he more we know the more and harder problems are we able to pose and solve.”81 But he sees this as a cause for optimism, not pessimism: “the less helpful the existing body of knowledge proves to be to solve new problems, the more it invites its enrichment or replacement.”82 Enrichment and replacement rely on the power of abstract and hypothetical thinking: they can transcend the answers available from experience and imagine a variation, a similarity, a precursor, an offspring, an opposite, or perhaps even a totally different possibility. In Rescher’s view, “[t]he difficulty in philosophy is not finding answers to questions; it is making up our minds in the full and precise detail about just what it is that we want to ask.”83 There is another complication: [Philosophy] requires that we transact our question-resolving business in a way that is harmonious with and does no damage to our pre-philosophical connections in matters of everyday life affairs and of scientific inquiry. Philosophy’s mandate is to answer questions in a manner that achieves overall rational coherence so that the answer we give to some of our questions squares with those that we give to others. 84

79  Shams al-Dı ̄n Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Ighāthat al-Lahfa ̄n Min Mas ̣a ̄’id al-Shayṭa ̄n (Amman: Dār Ibn al-Jawzı ̄, 2000), 1016. Conversely, a medieval Muslim philosopher would easily respond to the jurist al-Jawziyyah, by saying: You (almost) cannot find two Muslim jurists in agreement on one opinion. 80  I. Kant, Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. Paul Carus (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1912), 122. Emphasis is mine. 81  Bunge, Understanding the World, 157. 82  Ibid., 157. 83  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 147. 84  Rescher, 6.

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Although we want our knowledge to be consistent, experience eventually confronts it with some inconsistency.85 More generally, new knowledge is the challenge of every philosophy. Newton’s Principia, Marx’s class analysis, and Darwin’s Origin, for example, were each in their own way philosophically earth-shattering. After Newton we came to know that the heavenly bodies moved according to the same laws as the earthly ones. Kant, in response to the Newtonian search for the laws of the universe, brought to philosophy the notion of fundamental organizing principles that govern the mind, these being in his view, our a priori conceptions of space, time, and causality. As for Marx, social, political, and cultural philosophy have been radically altered by considerations such as social class, appropriation of surplus value, worker alienation, and their problematic justification. Meanwhile, Darwin made it clear that we are an offspring of the animal kingdom, contrary to the unbridged separation previously believed to have been the case. Yes, we are special, different, and cleverer; but, as we are still learning, we are in some ways similar to all animals, and even to all living organisms; in more ways to all mammals, and in most of all to our ape cousins—starting from the lowest common denominator of the genetic code, through metabolic pathways, organ systems, emotional responses, and ultimately even social structure and cognition. In sum, no up-to-date philosophy could have afforded to ignore these new discoveries of physics, political economy, and evolutionary biology. In fact, they became part of the fabric of modern culture. Constructing a philosophical worldview, thus, “does not in general ignore or suspend the cognitive materials obtained on the other fronts (e.g., science or everyday life experience). Rather, it tries to accomplish its cognitive work with maximal overall utilization of, and minimal overall disruption to, the relevant information that our other more familiar cognitive resources provide.”86 Coping with the infinite process of questioning and answering, and the eventual inconsistency brought about by new experience, adds new qualifications to the process of philosophizing. Philosophizing then is a process seeking to (1) systematize (2) our endless big questioning and answering, in a way that (3) squares with actual experience. Systematization brings coherence to an endless process of addition and revision.

 Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 12.  Rescher, 143.

85 86

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Philosophy does not limit itself to the logical tasks of revealing fallacies or reaching inferences about particular propositions. It is also not about verification of hypotheses and statements that experiments handle. Philosophy is neither on a par nor in rivalry with science and art, as French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) mistakenly sees its main role to be.87 Ever since the rise of science, philosophy’s distinctive contributions have not been about single facts or procedures, but about the totality of the situation. “In chess, we cannot play rooks independently of what we do with bishops; in medicine, we cannot treat one organ independently of the implications for others; in political economy, we cannot design policies for one sector without concerning ourselves with their impact upon the rest.”88 Why should philosophy be any different? On the contrary, good philosophy is harmonious and can help other disciplines harmonize their domains—including science and art. Rescher draws attention to what he refers to as aporetic clusters (from the Greek aporia, meaning a state of perplexity or confusion), an aporetic cluster being “a group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.”89 He gives an example of an aporetic cluster drawn from ancient Greek philosophy, a group of four contentions about the nature of the world90: ( 1) Reality is one (real existence is homogeneous). (2) Matter is real (i.e., a part of reality). (3) Form is real (i.e., a part of reality). (4) Matter and form are distinct (heterogeneous). There is a clear tension in this group of propositions, as they are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. Propositions (2), (3), and (4) entail that reality is heterogeneous, which contradicts the homogeneity of proposition (1). Rationally, these propositions cannot be jointly held, and 87  Deleuze and Guattari present a Continental version of Rescher’s ‘philosophy of philosophy’: they highlight that “concept, precept, and affect” are respectively the focus of the three fields of “philosophy, science, and art” (G.  Deleuze & F.  Guattari, What Is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, 117–201). However, this view, unlike Bunge’s and Rescher’s, does not give philosophy, science, and art cooperative functions and intersecting domains. 88  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 160–61. 89  Rescher, 93. 90  Rescher, 94.

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one or more have to be eliminated (or modified) for the sake of harmony. In the history of Greek philosophy, the following possible eliminative solutions were in fact upheld91: –– To keep (2), (3), and (4), and reject (1), is Anaxagoras’ pluralism or Aristotle’s dualism of form/matter. –– To keep (1), (3), and (4), and reject (2), is Plato’s idealism. –– To keep (1), (2), and (4), and reject (3), is materialism, such as of the atomists. –– To keep (1), (2), and (3), and reject (4), is Pythagoras’ dual-­ aspect theory. Systemization, and so harmonization, of this aporetic cluster is a matter neither of pure speculation nor of logical deduction; rather, it is a creative combination of speculation, hypothesizing, and deduction. Unlike the skeptic, who might throw his hands up in the air and leave the aporetic scene altogether, the practitioner of systemization attempts to salvage from a difficult cluster of inconsistency, whatever is rationally and experientially valuable.92 Systematization helps with the identification and resolution of aporetic clusters, and such endeavors have been central to philosophy from pre-Socratic times to the present. Contention dominates the universe of ideas, filled as it is with diverse experiences and divergent points of view. Aporetic clusters structure the landscape of philosophy by showing that various positions are intertwined in mutual relationship, albeit sometimes distant, implicit, or not obvious. Aporetic clusters can always be constructed, because every “claim conflicts not only with its own denial but also with whatever complex or combinations of claims has this denial as an inferential.”93 This situation can be summarized by saying that all affirmations indirectly imply negations. Thus, the systemic mind is not satisfied with merely making claims, but searches also for extensions, parallels, contraries, and counterexamples, to test their validity and scope. For example, if faced with the claim that people living in third-world countries are miserable because of endemic poverty, corruption, and disease, the singling out of the third world in this complaint might leave the impression that migrating to the first world is  Rescher, 94.  Rescher, 96. 93  Rescher, 99. 91 92

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the solution that guarantees happiness. Yet, the systemic mind would recognize to the contrary that there are other factors that make for misery, and indeed people living in first-world countries suffer from it too—possibly still from poverty, corruption, or disease, but more characteristically from stress, loneliness, and alienation. Consider the aporetic cluster that results from the conjunction of natural disasters, the resulting human tragedies, and the common religious belief in a caring and benevolent God. How can the wisdom and mercy inferred from God’s benevolence and omniscience coexist with unwise design and the suffering of innocents? In this line, atheism, at least according to those who give the problem of evil a central position, is justified for the reason that an evil creation and a good creator are mutually exclusive concepts. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), distressed by this evil, says that “we learn this from the little care which nature takes of single individuals. Thousands of them are sacrificed without hesitation or repentance in the plenty of nature […]. Not one half of the human race reach the second year of their age, but die almost without having known that they ever lived.”94 Let us consider explicitly the aporetic cluster concerning the problem of ‘evil creation’ and ‘good creator’: ( 1) Every event has a cause. (2) The cause of all causes is an omniscient and benevolent mastermind. (3) The world is full of evil and suffering. Therefore: (4.1)  ⁠For the believer: God exists and his plan for creation is wise and just, but his ways are mysterious. (4.2) For the atheist: Only nature exists, and its ways are material but impersonal. The believer preserves (1) and (2) but has to deny or modify (3). Because denying (3) would be sheer blindness, the learned theist modifies it by positing a method behind the chaos, either a mysterious one or a 94  L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Religion: God the Image of Man: Man’s Dependence upon Nature the Last and Only Source of Religion. Trans. Alexander Loos, (London: Progressive Publishing Company, 1890), 64.

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convoluted one, involving untestable metaphysical assumptions. An example of the latter would be that suffering is not evil, but either a just punishment for the sinful or a test for the pious, for whom a reward is waiting in this life or the one to come. The scientific atheist, who takes a naturalistic stance, preserves (3) but denies (2). This leaves open the question of whether there is some sort of natural cause of all causes, or whether every cause is preceded by another, through to an infinite past.95 In fact modern physics has forced some modification of (1), in that it is now accepted that some events, though lawful, are spontaneous (uncaused).96 Modern physics is yet though to decide between two alternative histories: a Big Bang with a spontaneous origin97, or an infinite past, with what we know of as the Big Bang as just one more step along the way. For the scientific atheist, nature is lawful in a way that human beings can find bad or cruel; yet rational understanding of this very lawfulness can be found merciful or good, because by this understanding, by the power of reason and technology, humans can avoid or mitigate the tragic effects of earthquakes, hurricanes, famines, epidemics, and pandemics. Might humanity’s helpful, merciful intellectual power be called God? As such, any objection would be more stylistic than substantial. In any case, for both the believer and the atheist, systemization is this hardworking spider that weaves its web of contentions, perfecting its knots and hardening their connections, for the sake of an overall harmonious web of ideas, one that integrates formerly aporetic clusters. 95  Amazingly, the revolutionary medieval model for current ultra-conservative Islamic groups, Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328 CE), agrees with the Greek doctrine of the eternality of the world. He states: “what philosophers have of sound rational proofs is indicative of the doctrine of our ancestors also, where their main pillar of thought was the eternality of the world, while God is still in action. […] Their argument signifies the eternality of the type of action not the eternality of a particular thing in the world such as planets or others.” Aḥmad Ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥ alı ̄m Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmu ̄ʻ al-Fata ̄wa ̄ li Shaykh al-Islām Taqı ̄ al-Dı ̄n Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah al-Ḥ arrānı ̄, ed. ʻĀ mir al-Jazzār and Anwar al-Bāz, vol. 6 (Riyadh: Saudi Arabia: Maktabat al-ʻUbaykān, 1998), 181. Emphasis is mine. 96  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy, vol. 3, The Furniture of the World (Dordrecht: Riedel, 1977), 197. 97  Creation of the universe ex nihilo through a Big Bang with a spontaneous origin would violate the most fundamental law of physics, that is, the conservation of energy. This law is fundamental to essentially all of physics, including the reasoning process that leads to the idea that there was some sort of a Big Bang. See, e.g., Mario Bunge, Treatise vol. 3, 254; “A Skeptic’s Beliefs and Disbeliefs,” New Ideas in Psychology, 1991, 9(2), 131–149; Matter and Mind, 26–27.

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Philosophizing in a systemic manner builds “a solid and secure edifice out of the ill-assorted contents placed at our disposal by our initial restrictions.”98 In so doing, the philosopher provides a cognitive shelter, that is, a worldview, in the face of the storm of contentions that are individually plausible and collectively inconsistent. Rather than deny the facts or abandon rationality, the philosopher instead generally opts to modify these contentions through the creation of distinctions. Making distinctions is “the prime instrument for removing aporetic inconsistency in philosophy.”99 A distinction is not a mere elimination or negation, but a harmonious amendment.100 Divine reward and punishment explain for the believer the phenomenon of evil, while for the scientific atheist, spontaneity and/or eternity solve the problem of the cause of all causes. In both cases, the raw facts are the same, yet distinctions and explanations make the great doctrinal difference. The moment the philosophical mind spots the obstacle of aporetic inconsistency and recognizes the need to resolve it is the moment a new philosophical concept is waiting to be born. “Distinctions are the doors through which philosophy moves on to new questions and problems. They bring new concepts and new theses to the fore.”101 A distinction “represents a Hegelian ascent—rising above the level of antagonistic positions to that of a ‘higher’ conception.”102 Thus it is usual for Bunge to initiate a discussion by a statement of the following sort: “to motivate the definitions and hypotheses that will be proposed later on we shall start by drawing some distinctions.”103 A critical reader might object that neither the theistic modification of the problem of evil nor the atheistic modification of the problem of causality is based on a direct analysis of facts. Rather, they are interpretations of the given facts in the light of other facts, for the sake of coherence and harmony. This objection is a compliment rather than a criticism: it shows that the very nature of philosophical systemization is not a first-order  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 144.  Rescher, 116. Emphasis in the original. 100  Rescher, 117. 101  Rescher, 120. 102  Rescher, 120. 103  Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Psychology (New York: Springer Verlag, 1987), 234. Emphasis is mine. 98 99

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discourse but rather a second-order one, controlling the input of other discourses. Systemization through distinctions of “philosophical problems relates to matters of interpretation which the scientific facts pose rather than resolve.”104 The British logician Frank Ramsey (1903–1930) illuminates this point by saying, “In such cases it is a heuristic maxim that the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both the disputants.”105 Will the atheist-theist debate ever end? Inferring from Rescher’s stance, this might happen only when diverse people with diverse experiences cease trying to interpret facts; that is, when humanity becomes a race of drones and clones, or ceases trying to understand the world. The process of interpretive distinction is what explains the continuity of philosophical doctrinal rivalry throughout history, without a final triumph of one over the other. Second-order discourse, that is, philosophical systemization, has a larger maneuvering space. There is no one factual solution for aporetic clusters, such that a given fact is subject to only one interpretation. This is also why there is no single model for modernization. The astonishing fact about philosophical systemization is that “the continual introduction of the new ideas that arise in the wake of new distinctions means that the ground of philosophy is always shifting beneath our feet.”106 Remembering this perplexing situation is crucial to understanding the Arab-Western strife over modernity, because it is a grand case of an aporetic cluster of ideas about the historical pathways of wealth, power, and culture. The method of philosophizing as seen by Rescher suggests that a ‘philosophical worldview’ can be reached mainly by an overall systematization of our continuous questioning and answering that squares with actual experience through interpretive distinctions. These ideas will help guide us through our detailed consideration of Bunge’s system in subsequent chapters. First though we shall conclude this chapter by briefly situating Bunge’s system in the general history of contemporary philosophy, and in the current stage of modernity.

 Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 36.  Rescher, 121. 106  Rescher, 125. 104 105

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3   A Second Introduction to Mario Bunge: His Place in the Tradition of System Building Rescher’s brilliant analysis of the philosophical endeavor might give us the impression that systematization is progressing and flourishing in current modern philosophy as an all too obvious ideal. Regrettably, constructing philosophical systems is not the main occupation of current modern philosophers, neither in the Atlantic nor in the Continental camps, particularly after World War II.  For the Atlantic camp, prevailing analytic, pragmatic, and positivist philosophies took on the mission of analyzing statements, verifying concepts, and creating particular solutions rather than synthesizing them and constructing grand theories about the world. Analytic philosophy in particular believed in the “end of philosophical theorizing. Accordingly, no characteristics of a substantive mission remain for philosophy as such.”107 For analytic philosophers, unsurprisingly, philosophy’s mission is analysis, not synthesis. Similarly, in the case of Continental philosophy, the prevailing existential, phenomenological, hermeneutic, and postmodern trends are rather antithetical to the goal of constructing a system. This is why Jean François Lyotard (1924–1998) spoke of the collapse of the “grand narratives” in philosophy as the rationale for abandoning system construction altogether.108 Even the illuminating and rich heritage of Continental hermeneutics is preoccupied with the process of interpreting and re-interpreting concepts and narratives—such as in the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur—rather than being interested in building a system in the traditional sense.109 This joint antagonism to systems might paradoxically be one of the few things that unify current Atlantic and Continental philosophies. It bolsters the view of current Muslim intellectuals, or developing world intellectuals in general, who find no clear-cut worldview for current modernity. Yet, 107  Nicholas Rescher, “The Rise and Fall of Analytic Philosophy,” in Rescher’s Minding Matter: And Other Essays in Philosophical Inquiry (New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 27. 108  Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Brian Massumi and Geoff Bennington (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 38 and 51. 109  Jean Grondin says “Schleiermacher, Droysen, and Dilthey—did not manage to develop a unified conception of hermeneutics or publish it in systematic form.” In his Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, Tran. Joel Weinsheimer New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 91.

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this anti-systemism is not the norm in the history of modern philosophy. In fact, the founders of modern philosophy, whether empiricists, rationalists, idealists, pragmatists, or realists, were system builders, or proto-­ systemists at least. System building is evident in the works of a long chain of modern philosophers, from the seventeenth century to the early decades of the twentieth. The antipathy to system building or worldview construction characteristic of post-World War II analytic or postmodern philosophy seems a deviation from the historical tradition and from the very goals of philosophy. In fact, the distinctive feature of every philosophical era was the work of a system builder. A philosopher who does not build their own system is likely to be subsumed under the umbrella of some other philosopher who is a system builder. Thus, historians of philosophy speak of Platonists, Aristotelians, Thomists, Kantians, and Hegelians old and new, in recognition of the fact that a given system subsumes the work of a great number of other philosophers. Another reason, a justifiable one this time, for avoiding grand system building, or worldview construction, might be the massive expansion of current human knowledge and its increasing complexity, leaving few philosophers up to the task. This is manifest when we look at the curricula of the various undergraduate and graduate degree programs in philosophy: they do not provide the cosmopolitan, balanced training required for the system builder, delving as it must into the humanities and the natural, social, and formal sciences. This current problem, endemic within both the Atlantic and Continental camps, highlights the place of Mario Bunge as the philosopher who seeks to return modern philosophy to its task of grand system building, or worldview construction. It also highlights Bunge’s rare expertise in a spectrum of diverse subjects, spanning from logic and mathematics through physics and biology to sociology and philosophy. Yet Bunge, a keen user of mathematical logic and a prominent defender of science, does not suffer from the limited perspective of the positivists. In his systemism, Bunge is closer to the American idealist Brand Blanshard (1892–1987) and far away from his fellow formalizers Carnap and Quine, or his fellow philosophers of science, Popper and Putnam. The titles of Bunge’s eight-volume, nine-book Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Table 4.1), along with a short list of some of its fundamental theses (Table  4.2), together form a brief overview of his philosophical system.

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Table 4.1  Titles of Mario Bunge’s Treatise on Basic Philosophy Volume Title

Year

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1974 1974 1977 1979 1983 1983 1985

8

SEMANTICS I: Sense and Reference SEMANTICS II: Interpretation and Truth ONTOLOGY I: The Furniture of the World ONTOLOGY II: A World of Systems EPISTEMOLOGY & METHODOLOGY I: Exploring the World EPISTEMOLOGY & METHODOLOGY II: Understanding the World EPISTEMOLOGY & METHODOLOGY III: Philosophy of Science & Technology  Part I: Formal and Physical Sciences  Part II: Life Science, Social Science and Technology ETHICS: The Good and the Right

1989

Table 4.2  Some fundamental theses of Mario Bunge’s philosophical system Thesis type

Thesis

Ontological

Whatever exists is either natural or man-made. Put negatively: there are no supernatural or otherwise innately inaccessible phenomena in the real world.

Epistemological It is possible and desirable to find out partial but perfectible truths about the world and ourselves with the sole help of experience, reason, criticism, imagination, and creativity. Put negatively: radical skepticism is unproductive and lacks foundation, while epistemological relativism is false and noxious. Axiological

Although different human groups may care for different values, there are many basic universal values, such as well-being, honesty, loyalty, solidarity, fairness, security, peace, and knowledge that are worth working or even fighting for. Put negatively: radical axiological relativism and nihilism are false and harmful.

Moral

We should seek salvation in this world, through work and thought rather than prayer or war, and we should enjoy living, as well as trying to help others live, instead of condemning them.

Adapted from Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 14–15

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are dedicated to an extended discussion of Bunge’s novel contribution to systemic philosophy. But before going into the details of Bunge’s modern scientific worldview, it is time to introduce Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Islamic worldview and his indictment against Western modernity.

CHAPTER 5

Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Islamic Worldview and the Spirit of Modernity

Arab-Islamic thinkers voice much objection to Western thought. Yet, being in modern times faintly related to philosophy in general, they are in a weak position to systematize their criticisms.1 An important exception, indeed a shining example of a modern Arab-Islamic philosopher, is Taha Abd alRahman,2 a systemic philosopher with an explicitly ethico-religious worldview. The merit of introducing Taha’s thought lies not only in his philosophical ability, but also in that, indirectly, he articulates the objections to modernity of most other Islamic thinkers. Taha’s thought serves as a good summary of contemporary Islamic revival, without the demagogic religious tone. This is why some readers see Taha as reminiscent of the medieval scholar al-Ghazali, who attacked several aspects of classical Greek 1  In contrast with the situation in the Arab world, in Iran and the Persian world in general, Hellenistic and medieval Islamic philosophy remained part of the religious education curriculum until modern times. See Majid Fakhry, Dira ̄sa ̄t Jadı ̄dah fı ̄ Al-Fikr Al-ʻArabı ̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Nahār lil-Nashr, 2007), 193. Yet, Iran is outside the Arab world. Hence, the generalization holds. 2  In all his Arabic books and Arabic media appearances, Taha writes his name as Ṭāhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (‫)طه عبد الرمحن‬. Taha personally revised Wael Hallaq’s recent work, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019) and surprisingly declared that Ṭāhā is his family name, while ʻAbd al-Raḥmān is his given name. Here we have respected Taha’s unusual usage of family name first, given name second, as it appears in all his Arabic books.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_5

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philosophy in his influential The Incoherence of the Philosophers.3 Unfortunately, so far Taha’s philosophical attack on secular modern philosophy does not seem to have an Averrosian counter-attack, as was seen in the correspondingly influential The Incoherence of the Incoherence by Averroes.4 Before presenting the specifics of Taha’s Islamic response to the modern worldview, let us first contextualize his philosophy within contemporary Arab thought. Two basic questions arise: What is ‘Islamic Philosophy’? What has been the history of attempts to modernize Arabic-Islamic philosophy?

1   What Is ‘Islamic Philosophy?’ 1.1  Some Background It should come as no surprise that there is no consensus on what ‘Islamic philosophy’ is. Native medieval Islamic scholars considered philosophy (falsafah) to be scholarly engagement with the ancient Greek philosophical literature and the authors so engaged to be philosophers. This usage is clear in the great medieval comparative encyclopedia on doctrines, sects, and religions, al-Shahrastani’s al-Milal wal-Nihal (lit. religions and sects);5 and also in al-Ghazali’s aforementioned critique of Muslim philosophers, The Incoherence of Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifah). Of the Islamic authors whom medieval Islamic scholars saw as ‘philosophers,’ some of the most distinguished names are al-Kindi (801–873), al-Farabi (872–951), al-Tawhidi (923–1023), Miskawayh (932–1030), Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037), Ibn Tufayl (1105–1185), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198).6 Yet philosophy, as an intellectual endeavor that aims to face the Big Questions of human existence (Chap. 4), encompasses more than Hellenistic ways of thinking. One can be perfectly philosophical without necessarily following in the Hellenistic tradition. Examples in premodern Islamic culture of other philosophical traditions include those of mystical 3  Michael E.  Marmura translated al-Ghazālı ̄’s work as The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Provo: Brigham Young University, 2002). 4  Simon Van Den Bergh translated this work of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2008). 5  Muḥammad Ibn ʻAbd al-Karı ̄m Shahrastānı ̄ [d. 1153 CE], Kitāb al-Milal wal-Niḥal, ed. Muḥammad Ibn Fatḥ Allāh Badrān, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlū, 1956), 168. 6  For further information see: Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (NY: Columbia University Press, 2004).

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philosophy, linguistic philosophy (al-balagha), socio-historical philosophy (tarikh al-umran), and the distinctively systemic field of ethico-legal theory (usul al-fiqh). This means that the roster of distinguished Islamic philosophers includes many more names than commonly known and listed above. Unfortunately, the general attitude of modern Western scholarship toward Islamic philosophy emerged from ‘Orientalism’7 and did not differ significantly from the medieval Islamic attitude.8 As a result, Western scholars considered Islamic philosophy to be a genre of literature dealing with Hellenistic thinking, not a self-standing intellectual endeavor undertaken by way of a variety of Islamic traditions. This ethno-culturally narrow view removes from the list of Muslim philosophers a number of great philosophical minds. Examples include brilliant philosophers working within the mystical and theological traditions, such as Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) and al-Fakhar al-Razi (1150–1210) respectively. Others similarly ignored, despite working in fields more aligned with modern Western conceptions of philosophy, include al-Shatibi (1320–1388) in ethico-legal theory and al-Jurjani (1009–1078 or 1081) in rhetoric and the philosophy of language. Peter 7  Orientalism is a European field of research that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and which continues to this day, only under different banners. It is dedicated to the study of living literate civilizations of the Orient, that is, the East. These include the civilizations of the Muslim world, India, China, and some others. In contrast with Orientalism, anthropology emerged in the same period to study the non-literate peoples of the East and of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands (see Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 9–11). Many contributions of Orientalism came from British, French, Dutch, and Russian scholars who were associated with the colonial projects of their relevant empires. (German Orientalism is peculiar in this regard as Germany was not as major a colonial power). Some of Orientalism’s most important achievements have been introducing the languages, geographies, and peoples of these literate civilizations to the Western audience, as well as translating several major works of their literatures and religions. The compiling of reputable dictionaries allowing Western readers to access the languages of the East is generally credited to Orientalism. However, using a racially European, religiously Christian, culturally Greco-Roman, and politically imperial outlook to describe and analyze these civilizations led to several misconceptions and errors that persist to this day. Further, “Much of the information […] about Islam and the Orient that was used by the colonial powers to justify their colonialism derived from Orientalist scholarship.” Edward W.  Said, Orientalism (New York, NY: Vintage, 1994), 343. 8  Dimitri Gutas, “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 29 (May 2002), 7.

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Adamson, a comparative historian of philosophy, shares this objection and formulates it as a challenge: “if Aquinas is a philosopher then so are the Islamic theologians.”9 In other words, since most Western philosophers would not deny the status of “philosopher” to the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), they should likewise not deny such recognition to the likes of Aquinas among Islamic theologians. That to the contrary most Western philosophers have denied them this status is a mistake of Orientalism and a disservice to the global history of ideas. Beyond Averroes and the Persian-born Avicenna (Ibn Sina), perhaps the only widely well-regarded Muslim intellect is Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). Outside Western philosophy, this philosopher is renowned in Orientalist and world history circles for his comprehensive works, particularly in sociology, history, and the philosophy of history.10 1.2  A Modern Understanding In Chap. 4, we considered that philosophy is a matter of inquiry, of finding the right questions and assessing the truth of our answers, but with a view to the totality of the situation and thus to systematization. The content of philosophy is made by Big Questions, some perennial and some bound to time and place. With this in mind, we take our understanding of “Islamic philosophy” to be as the intellectual endeavor that deals philosophically with content relevant to Islamic culture. Correspondingly, using a simple chronocentric understanding of modernity,11 “modern Islamic philosophy” would be concerned with content relevant to Islamic cultures since the nineteenth century, the time of the “shock of modernity” (for which see the next section). These open and qualitative understandings do not involve adherence to the traditional formulation of the Islamic creeds. A Pantheist, a Marxist, or an existentialist, despite not conforming to the orthodox creeds, could nevertheless contribute to modern Islamic philosophy, by virtue of philosophizing about matters relevant to modern Islamic culture. This in the same way that an unorthodox author who calls for the demythologization 9  Peter Adamson, “If Aquinas Is a Philosopher Then So Are the Islamic Theologians,” Aeon, February 10, 2017, https://bit.ly/31addgQ. 10  See, for example, Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). 11  See Chap. 2 for various understandings.

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of Jesus of Nazareth, such as Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976),12 is commonly considered a philosopher of Christianity, even if not in line with church doctrine.13 Be that as it may, we move on to our second question: How did modernity come to Islamic philosophy?

2   The Modernization Journey of Arab-Islamic Philosophy Beginning little more than two centuries ago, following a classical period that had lasted more than a millennium, Arab-Islamic philosophy began to modernize. This process can be seen as having occurred in four stages, the last still ongoing. The first involved a variety of non-theoretical reforms (1800–1945). The second focused on the translation and absorption of Western philosophy (1946–1970s),14 while the third was marked by the application of Western philosophical doctrines to Arab-Islamic concerns (1970s–1990s). The fourth and present stage, since the 1990s, is characterized by the emergence of philosophical creativity. The impetus for this four-stage journey did not arise spontaneously within the Arab world. Instead, the modernization of Arab-Islamic philosophy was provoked mainly by the so-called shock of modernity.15 This shock was brought about by European invasions of parts of the Arab world, which was under decaying Ottoman rule at that time. These successive invasions began with Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt (1798–1801).16 Abdurrahman al-Jabarti (1754–1822), an Egyptian historian who recorded his observations of that military campaign, suggested that the shock was due not only to the military defeat of a Muslim nation on 12  Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 92. 13  Maurice Boutin, Relationalität als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann (München: Kaiser, 1974). 14  For a detailed study documenting the reprinting of iconic medieval Islamic philosophy works between 1876 and 1970, see “al-Dirāsāt al-Falsafiyyah fı ̄ Mi’at ‘Ā m,” (lit. philosophical studies in a hundred year), in Majid Fakhry, Dirāsa ̄t fı ̄ Al-Fikr al-ʻArabı ̄, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1982), 223–43. 15  The “shock of modernity” is an expression popularized through the fourth volume of Adunis’ work with this title: al-Thab̄ it wal-Muṭa ̄ḥ a ̄wwil fı ̄ al-Tura ̄th: Bahth fı ̄ al-Ibda ̄‘ wal-­ Ittibā‘ ‘Ind al-‘Arab (Beirut: Dār al-Sāqı ̄, 1993). 16  See Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples. New York: Warner Books, 1992.

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Muslim land, supposedly protected by its embrace of the True Religion, but also to experiencing the culture of the French invaders. In this regard, al-Jabarti writes: If any of the Muslims came to them in order to look around they did not prevent him from entering their most cherished places […] and if they found in him any appetite or desire for knowledge they showed their friendship and love for him, and they would bring out all kinds of pictures and maps, and animals and birds and plants, and histories of the ancients and of nations and tales of the prophets. […] I went to them often, and they showed me all of that.17

Observing the French in their native land during the years 1826–1831, in an extensive account of the condition of modernity in France, the insightful Muslim Egyptian cleric Tahtawi (1801–1873) noted, “most of the people of this city [Paris] are Christians in name only and do not adhere to the precepts of their religion, nor do they display any zeal for it. Here, religion is [left aside by] groups who use reason to distinguish between what is good and bad [and by libertines18] who state that all actions allowed by reason are right.”19 Tahtawi, in addition to translating the French constitution, described the scientific, technological, urban, and institutional modernity he witnessed in Paris. He advised his Arab readers that “the perfection of this [modern civilization] is to be found in the lands of the Franks [France], and it behooves one to follow the truth. By, God, during my stay in this country, I was grieved by the fact that it had enjoyed all those things that are lacking in the Islamic kingdoms.”20 In the footsteps of Tahtawi some three decades later, Khayr al-Din al-­ Tunisi (1820–1890), the prime minister of Tunisia, aided in drafting its modern constitution and its abolition of slavery before the American attempt in 1863. Khayr al-Din, working in an intellectual style similar to that of Tahtawi, in 1867 wrote a detailed treatise comparing the political and legal systems of European countries.21 Still, fully fledged philosophy is not to be found in this first stage, consumed instead with the cultural  Quoted in Hourani 1992, 266.  Tahtawi uses the word ibāḥiyyūn, which means promiscuous people liberated from traditional morality. 19  Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi, An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France 1826–1831 ̄ ̄n Bar̄ ı ̄s], trans. Daniel [Takhlı ̄ṣ al-Ibrı ̄z fı ̄ Talkhı ̄s ̣ Ba ̄rı ̄z Aw al-Dı ̄wa ̄n al-Nafı ̄s Bi-I wa L. Newman (London: Saqi Books, 2002), 126. Emphasis is mine. 20  al-Tahtawi, 99. 21  Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim Statesman—A Translation of the Introduction [to Aqwam al-Masālik fı ̄ Ma‘rifat 17 18

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shock that accompanied Western military and political intrusions. The French went on to invade the Western part of the Arab world (Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1881), and in 1882 the British invaded the central part of the Arab world, Egypt.22 Cultural shock reached its peak with the invasion of most of the Arab world after World War I, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919. The Arab world, which includes an area larger than that of Europe and today comprises over 350  million people, did not have even 20  million people in the early nineteenth century,23 whereas in the same period, in the times of Napoleon, France alone had a population of 27 million people.24 Suffering from drought, deforestation, the resulting massive desertification, and deterioration of agriculture; having a decaying government, and poorly connected urban and rural areas; all on top of a largely illiterate and disenfranchised population, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Arab world was far from a cultural peak, or even a promising cultural trend. The Arab elite allied to the Ottoman Empire did not care to establish even a single modern university, and the existing universities were for the most part teaching literary or religious disciplines. Beset with all these problems, the Arab world certainly lacked, at that time, conditions even minimally favorable for the pursuit of philosophy. Rather than philosophical modernization, political, legal, religious, and educational reform were the dominant concerns of a number of learned figures in the nineteenth century.25 Religious scholars led this reform movement, a good example being the Syrian religious scholar Abdurrahman al-Kawakibi (1854–1902), “perhaps the first Arab intellectual in modern times to theorize about democratic, secular, and socialist Arabism.”26 He sought “to promote the notion of a secular Arab nationalism, claiming that Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, and Jews were ‘Arab’ before Aḥwāl al-Mamālik], trans. Leon C.  Brown (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). 22  In addition to today’s Egypt, this territory included today’s Sudan. Together these were the most populous, and commercially and culturally most vital areas of the Arab world. 23  Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 294. 24   David I.  Kertzer & Marzio Barbagli, “Family Life in the Nineteenth Century, 1789–1913”: The History of the European Family, 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), xi. 25  See Fahmı ̄ Jad‘ān, Usus al-Taqaddum ‘inda Mufakkirı ̄ al-Isla ̄m (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1988), 580, 588, and 596. 26  Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 248.

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being members of their respective religious communities.”27 This intellectual era extended throughout the entire nineteenth century into the twentieth up until World War II.28 In this long first stage, escaping the feudalism, disfranchisement, and illiteracy of the Ottoman era, opening new roles for females in education and work, establishing modern scienceand technology-based institutes, and enhancing urban infrastructures were common goals of development unquestionable for nationalist, liberal, and Islamic reformers alike.29 The emergence of deeper and broader philosophical activity had to wait until the return from abroad of a generation of Arab students, who around the middle of the twentieth century came back from Anglophone, German, and French universities. This second stage includes Yusuf Karam (1886–1959), Tawfiq al-Tawil (1909–1991), and Uthman Amin (1905–1978). The common feature of this post-World War II period, up until the 1960s, was the analysis, description, comparison, and translation of the canons and doctrines of Western philosophy.30 There is no such thing as native Arab-Islamic philosophizing in the systemic sense during this era, and none of these Arab scholars claimed to be a philosopher in the professional sense. The preoccupations of Arab intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly independence from colonial powers and the creation of institutions and educational curricula for the newly born states. A philosophical spirit, however, needs more than keeping oneself busy with translations and the creation of undergraduate philosophy curricula. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, a new spirit characterized a third stage in the modernization journey of Arab-Islamic philosophy. It corresponds to the maturation of Arab states and their educational institutions.  Ibid., 35.  Two of the very few English-language works that tackle parts of this era are the anthology with translated original texts edited by John Donohue and John Esposito, Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (NY: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Albert Hourani’s Arabic Thought in The Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 29  Arab nationalism, liberalism, and Islamic reformation were the philosophical concerns at the end of this stage, albeit concerns really more political and ideological than philosophical. The major figures in these three movements of some philosophical interest are as follows. (1) Nationalism: Sātị ‘ al-Ḥ uṣarı ̄, Michael ‘Aflaq, Qust ̣ant ̣ı ̄n Zurayq, Zakı ̄ al-Arsūzı ̄, Anṭwān Sa‘ādah; (2) Islamic reformation: Jamāl al-Dı ̄n al-Afghānı ̄, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Muḥammad Ḥ usayn al-Nā’ı ̄nı ̄, Muṣtạ fā ‘Abd al-Rāziq, Muṣt ̣afā Ṣabrı ̄; (3) Liberalism: Qāsim Amı ̄n, Faraḥ Anṭwān, Luṭfı ̄ al-Sayyid, and Ṭ aha Ḥ usayn. 30  Fakhry, Dirāsāt fı ̄ al-Fikr al-ʻArabı ̄, 262–66. 27 28

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Philosophical activity during this period—when attractive scholarships were offered to Arab students by both Cold War blocks—was correspondingly ideological and doctrinaire. It was characterized by the application of, for example, Marxist, logical positivist, Freudian, or existentialist concepts, methods, and forms to Islamic history and culture.31 Although this third period exhibited more creativity than the previous two, neither philosophical activity nor its products achieved the popularity witnessed in the previous two stages. Philosophy remained restricted to small circles of intellectuals, enthusiastic modernists, and graduate students in the humanities and social science. At the same time, there was an important resurgence of distinctively Islamic thought, driven by movements advocating a return to traditional legal, theological, and mystic literatures, accompanied by a retreat from scientific and modern forms of thought. At this stage, modernization became highly questionable, for a mix of artificial and genuine reasons. They include (1) the reaction of conservative Arab monarchies to the threatening secular, republican revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s; (2) humiliation by way of the Israeli defeat of the secular nationalist Arab countries in 1948, 1956, and 1967, and identification of Israel with modernity and the West; (3) a desire to emulate the eventual triumph of the Islamist faction over the secular factions of the 1979 Iranian revolution; (4) reaction to the oppressive application of monarchic, nationalist, or socialist secularism by Arab dictators; and (5) American support of orthodox Saudi-based Islamist movements against Communism in Afghanistan. This explains the relative lack of popularity of philosophy in this stage, concerned as it was with the application of Western philosophical doctrines to Arab-Islamic culture. It is similar neither to the first stage that sought practical and non-philosophical reform, nor to the second stage, occupied mainly with analysis and translation of modern Western philosophy. Starting in the 1990s, rather than an expansion of modern Islamic literatures and scholarship, in a fourth and ongoing stage, the number of 31  Major representatives of various doctrines or disciplines are as follows. Existentialism: ‘Abdurraḥmān Badawı ̄ (1917–2002); logical positivism and scientism: Zakı ̄ Najı ̄b Maḥmūd (1905–1993); Nietzscheism: ‘Abd Allāh al-Qṣı ̄mı ̄ (1907–1996); Marxism: al-Ṭ ayyib Tı ̄zinı ̄ (1934–2019); historical religious hermeneutics: Ḥ asan Ḥ anafı ̄ (b. 1935); feminism: Nawāl al-Sa‘dāwı ̄ (b. 1930); structuralism: Muḥammad ‘Ā bid al-Jābirı ̄ (1936–2010); Freudianism: George Ṭ arābı ̄shı ̄ (1939–2016); postcolonial literary criticism: ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Misı ̄rı ̄ (1938–2009).

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philosophical publications in the Arab world has been shrinking, while more generally, philosophical modernization in the Arab world is in popular retreat.32 Two main reasons for this retreat are commonly accepted by scholars of contemporary Arab thought.33 The first is the failure of both the modernizing religious monarchies, and the secular nationalist, liberal, and socialist regimes, to defeat Israel, surpass it, or end its military interventions and overall out-sized influence in the region. Considered as part of the same problem, likewise their overall failure to counter foreign meddling, influence, and military intervention in the region; all of it, including Israeli colonization, seen together as the continuation of a Western imperialist project that did not end with mere formal decolonization. The second reason is the failure of the Arab monarchies and republics to fulfill the promises of economic development, political democracy, and social justice that had empowered them internally.34 This double failure, on internal and external fronts, led Arabs to lose 32  The Head of the Arab Union of Publishers, Fatḥı ̄ al-Biss, recounts the complaints of Arab publishers that they were printing about 3000 copies of the first edition of every title in the early 1970s, while they print only 1000 copies of every title in the 2000s, without hoping for a second edition for the whole Arab world market. And this, even though in the same period the population of the Arab world grew from around 150 million to more than 350 million people, with greater purchasing power and a much higher literacy rate. “Al-Nāshir wal-Kātib, Fatḥı ̄ al-Biss Amām al-Qḍā’,” Dunya ̄ Al-Waṭan, May 18, 2009, https://bit. ly/3i205Ai. 33  See George Ṭ arabishı ̄, Harṭaqa ̄t ‘an al-Ḥ ada ̄tha wal-Dı ̄muqrat̄ ̣iyyah wal-Mumāna‘ah (Beirut: Dār al-Sāqı ̄, 2006), 93–99. 34  The failure of the modernizers and secularists to achieve Arab unity is another reason. To Western observers, Arab unity may seem a far-fetched goal, but there is a modern historical precedent, in the form of the Egyptian-Syrian unity of the United Arab Republic, 1958–1961. The notable historian Arnold J. Toynbee predicted the eventual expansion of this unity to most of the twenty-two Arab countries. Toynbee drew attention to many similarities between the prospects for Arab unity and the historical circumstances of the Italian and German cases:

The eventual unification of Germany and unification of Italy turned out to be the outstanding events of nineteenth-century European history. Dating from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the process took fifty-six years, and it is no wonder that it was so long-drawn-out, considering the formidableness of the obstacles. […] That gives the Arabs till 1974 to achieve their unification at the German and Italian pace. […] The union of Italy and union of Germany were partly achieved by military force. [However,] the Arabs are unwilling to coerce each other. The very sense of brotherhood

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hope in what were consequently seen as the pseudo-liberations of modernity and to seek refuge in the Islamic heritage—as presumably the best protector of Muslim lands and as the unbiased ethical countervailing force against unjust, corrupt internal dictatorships and international aggression. This “apostasy away from modernity,” as George Tarabishi calls it,35 is thus a partial result of Israel’s defeat of the combined five armies of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt in 1967 and the resulting obstacle to creating an Arab union from the Indian to the Atlantic ocean, min al-­ muhit ila al-muhit. Arab laymen went on to interpret this disastrous event as divine punishment for adopting the ideals of modernity—such as the rule of people rather than God, this-worldly rather than other-worldly orientation, and attention to women’s liberation rather than women’s modesty, and rather than overall piety. Al-Jabiri asserts, “There is no doubt that the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War in June 1967 is the contemporary Arab consciousness’ demarcation line, and the discourse representing it, from the age of revolution and hope to the age of defeat and depression.”36 This led to minimization of the already fragile popularity of modern philosophy in the Arab world. All this built on a problem that had already been inherent in the earlier third stage of the modernization journey. It had consisted in taking ready-­ made ideas and methods from the West, and moreover ones that were already problematic even in the West, such as existentialism, Marxism, Freudianism, and deconstructionism, without realizing that they were the products of a particular culture and mindset. Not only were they circumstantial products that could not grow naturally in a different cultural environment; they were adopted uncritically and led to questionable results. More importantly, modernity, as a project of proxy Arab governments created by imperialism, was no longer carried by organic social movements seeking self-rule and local progress. Philosophers of the fourth stage have that background in mind. Their work is still in progress, as they try to avoid the flaws and unpopularity of the third stage. The goal is to surpass the linguistic confines of concepts which makes them seek political unity also makes them hold back from trying to achieve it by force. In retrospect, [the peaceful dissolution of the United Arab Republic] may prove to have done much to bring eventual Arab union nearer. In Arnold J. Toynbee, Between Niger and Nile (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1965), 120. 35  George Ṭ arabı ̄shı ̄, Min al-Nahdah Ilā al-Riddah (Beirut: Dār al-Sāqı ̄, 2001). 36  Muḥammad ʻĀ bid al-Jābirı ̄, Al-Mashrūʻ al-Nahḍawı ̄ al-ʻArabı ̄ (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥdah al-ʻArabiyyah, 1996), 169.

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rooted more in European languages than in Arabic, metaphors and examples not familiar to Arabic speakers, and foreign styles in general. Opposed too are the philosophical confines of means and goals produced from the specific and regional Western historical experience. The third stage, beset by these pitfalls, led the typical educated Arab reader to seemingly justifiable conclusions: Arab readers associated nonsensicality with Western texts and strengthened their belief in the superiority of traditional Islamic writing. Indeed, the overall effect of the third stage was to reinforce the naivety of a convoluted image of Western modernity.37 Along with the conceptual limitations of translated language, and the inorganic transfer of foreign philosophy without a social movement, a third problem that, to be blunt, contributed to the fiasco that was the third stage of modernization is the wider horizon of global history. Muslim and Arab experience and understanding of the modernization project is a story of misfortune. As the Arabs experienced it during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modernization came with the following four problems. (1) Political disloyalty: in several cases, a political-administrative elite was formed on the basis of allegiance to Western colonial powers, rather than domestic loyalty and representation of indigenous interests.38 (2) Economic exploitation: economic programs were implemented based on Western extractive industries and commercial interests rather than the welfare of the native population.39 (3) Cultural eradication: legal and ­ideological reforms were launched on the basis of a challenge to original 37  For further examination of the Arab reception of analytic and Continental philosophies since World War II, see: A.  Z. Obiedat, “Bayna Al-Falāsifah al-Qārriyyı ̄n Wal-Anglūfūn: Al-Istitḷ ā‘ al-Falsafı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄ Bayna ‘Ubūdiyyat al-Taqlı ̄d Wal-‘Amal al-Istikhbārı ̄ [Lit. Between the Continentals and the Anglophones: Arab Philosophical Exploration Between the Enslavement of Imitation and Intelligence],” Al-Mukhatabat Journal for Logic, Epistemology and Scientific Thought, no. 34 (April 2020). 38  Winston Churchill (1874–1965) outlined one such case before the House of Commons, on June 21, 1921, after the British had conquered the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire: “We are leaning strongly to what I may call the Sherifian Solution both in Mesopotamia to which the Emir Feisal is now proceeding, and in Trans-Jordania, where the Emir Abdullah is now in charge.” The “Sherifian solution” was to appoint the two collaborating sons of Hashemite Sharif Hussein bin Ali (1853–1931, Emir of Mecca)—that is, the Emirs Feisal and Abdullah—to rule over Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Trans-Jordan (now Jordan). See Timothy J. Paris, Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule: The Sherifian Solution (London, UK: Routledge, 2004), 1. The Saudi kingship in Arabia, the Marionet presidency in Lebanon, and the Bourguiba presidency in Tunisia, to name a few, were also aided or appointed by British or French colonial powers. 39   See, for example, Jim Loney, “Iraq Hunting $17 Billion Missing after U.S.  Invasion,” Reuters, June 19, 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-iraq-usa-money-idUSTRE75I20S20110619.

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customs and religion, rather than with internal and gradual education and social conversation.40 (4) Psychological alienation: the most visible elements of imported culture came from Western entertainment and the fashion industry, alienating the poor and conservative majority. This four-pronged assault, of political disloyalty, economic exploitation, cultural eradication, and psychological alienation, exacerbated by the 1967 defeat, led the majority of Muslim Arabs to identify the whole project of modernity with a programmed Western plot for the destruction of the Muslim-Arab world. Rejecting the entire cause of modernity, many Arabs failed to understand that modernity did have real benefits, such as constitutional-democratic governance, economic-industrial development, advancement of critical thought, and humanist development of the self. Antagonism to a problematic implementation of modernity led them to over-emphasize the alleged universal and exceptional status of the imagined Islamic traditions. So, the conservative Islamic ideologue would ask, why seek philosophical truth and virtue from untruthful and non-virtuous Westerners? Or alternatively, can we allow ourselves to accept any remedy from those Westerners who provided the poison?—an objection often made by current Islamist movements. In particular, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi (b. 1926), the former head of the influential Muslim Scholars Council, wrote many works in this regard, such as Imported Solutions and How They Harmed Our Nation; Us and the West: Thorny Questions and Decisive Answers; and Secular Extremism in the Face of Islam: The Cases of Tunisia and Turkey.41 The popular retreat of modern philosophy that marked the third stage was though not the end of the story. The current fourth stage that began in the 1990s is in part a reaction to the third-stage popular rejection of philosophical modernization and may rightly be described as a native philosophical re-appropriation. The primary representatives of this emerging

40  For example, in “the interwar period they [the French colonial government] re-­ interpreted the 1881 freedom of the press law in order to be able to ban Arabic publications [in Algeria] based on language.” In Arthur Asseraf, Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 57. Emphasis is mine. 41  Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwı ̄, al-Ḥ ulu ̄l al-Mustawradah wa Kayf Janat ‘ala ̄ Ummatina ̄ (Damascus: Mu’assasat al-Risālah lil-Ṭ ibā‘ah wal-Nashr, 2001), Naḥn wal-Gharb: As’ilah Shā’ikah wa Ajwibah Ḥ a ̄simah (Cairo: Dār al-Tawzı ̄‘ wal-Nashr al-Islāmiyyah, 2006), and al-Taṭarruf al-‘Alman̄ ı ̄ fı ̄ Muwa ̄jahat al-Islām: Namudhaj Tun̄ us wa Turkiyya (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2001).

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movement are the Tunisian philosopher Abu Yarub al-Marzuqi (b. 1947)42 and the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b. 1944). Both write in an eloquent Arabic style, paying attention to the formation of their Arabic terminology. They make sure to carefully build their arguments within the traditions of the fifteen centuries of Arabic literature and declare allegiance to their native people, against imperialism and proxy Arab dictators alike. For them, philosophy is a matter of cultural challenge combined with universal epistemological, ontological, and ethical concerns. The 2010 Arab spring and its aftermath have helped to advance the fourth stage. They provoked much philosophical doubt in the minds of Arab youth, in particular with regard to the alliance of Sufi and Salafi religious movements with Arab political dictatorships. This was associated with massive digitization of translated philosophy books and making them available online, whether in legitimate or pirated versions. As a result, the 42  Muḥammad al-Ḥabı̄ b al-Marzūqı̄ , known in Arabic as “Abū Ya‘rub al-Marzūqı̄ ” and in French as “Abu Yaarub Marzouki,” was born in Binzirt in Tunis. He completed his schooling and undergraduate university education in Tunis and then moved to France for his higher degrees. In France, he completed the following postgraduate works in French: Causality According to al-Ghazali in 1972; and in 1979, his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne, The Status of Mathematics in Aristotelian Scientific Discourse. He also obtained a postdoctoral degree in Tunis, duktūrāh al-dawlah, on the basis of two Arabic works: The Status of the Universal in Arabic Philosophy (1994); and the Reformation of Reason in Arabic Philosophy: From the Realism of Plato and Aristotle to the Nominalism of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Khaldūn (1994). This broad education allowed Abū Ya‘rub to hold a university position at the University of Tunis I from 1980 to 2006, teaching Greek philosophy, and to head the Tunisian Center for Translation, Bayt al-Ḥikmah, for several years. He eloquently translates from French, German, and English. Among his translations into Arabic are Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, Husserl’s Die Idee der Phänomenologie, a volume of Pierre Duhem’s Le Système du Monde, Quine’s Elementary Logic, Holton’s Unruly Americans, Wulf’s Anthropologie, and the massive work edited by Hans Jörg Sandkühler, the Handbuch Deutscher Idealismus. After the Tunisian revolution in 2011 he was elected a member of parliament and was appointed as special advisor to the president of Tunisia, a post from which he has since resigned. He is a weekly blogger on the current affairs of Tunisia and the Arab world, a persuasive public speaker, and promoter of Ibn Khaldūn’s view on the interconnectedness of culture, power, wealth, and the environment. He is a prolific writer in Arabic. Translated titles of some of his Arabic publications are The Conditions of Awakening for Arabs and Muslims (2001), the Legitimacy of Government in the Age of Globalization (2008), and Arabs Resuming Their Historical Destiny (2011). Al-Marzūqı̄ is completing a philosophical exegesis of the Qur’an, al-Jaliy fı̄ al-Tafsı̄r, of which five volumes have appeared so far. More at https://abouyaarebmarzouki.wordpress.com/ and “‫�أبو يعرب املرزويق‬,” Aljazeera. net, accessed March 29, 2020, https://bit.ly/33SKEUu.

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readership of modern thought increased greatly, despite the decline of print publication.43 Regrettably though, despite the developments of the Arab spring and contrary to any idea of a fourth-stage modernization project, the dominant components of today’s Islamic discourse are these: (1) religious proselytizing that promotes rituals securing Paradise and escaping Hell, (2) sectarian polemics defending this or that correct legal school or theological doctrine of historical Islam, (3) creative but fragmentary legal and ethical pieces of advice responding to the challenges of the modern world, (4) apologetic arguments defending Islamic traditions against Western aggression and arrogance, and (5) critique of oppressive Arab regimes and their Westernized elites. During the current fourth stage, as was the case in the third stage, Islamic movements sometimes defend arguments that reject the universal applicability of rationality, and the objectivity of scientific findings, on account of their Western origin and Eurocentrism.44 Nevertheless, there remains a small and emerging fourth stage of the modernization endeavor of Arab-Islamic philosophy. To represent this fourth stage, this stage of native philosophical re-appropriation, we consider the work of Taha Abd al-Rahman, who along with al-Marzuqi45 is one of the two towering contributors to it. 43  Translations of Western literature into Arabic have been accumulating only slowly. In terms of the philosophical or proto-philosophical literature, there exist now Arabic translations of the complete or major works of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin, Mill, Weber, Durkheim, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Freud, Einstein, William James, Dewey, Robin Collingwood, Russell, Reichenbach, Wittgenstein, Popper, J.  D. Bernal, Gaston Bachelard, Robert Blanché, Lévi-Strauss, Merleau-Ponty, Jean Piaget, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer, Mircea Eliade, Paul Ricoeur, Rawls, Foucault, Deleuze, Todorov, Habermas, Chomsky, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Edgar Morin, Joseph Schumpeter, Arnold Toynbee, Fernand Braudel, Eric Hobsbawm, Amartya Sen, and Zygmunt Bauman. 44  An example of this trend is the famous conference held in Egypt by the International Institute of Islamic Thought of Virginia, on ‘The Problem of Bias in Western Centrism’ edited and published in ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Misı ̄rı ̄, Ishka ̄liyyat al-Ṭ a ̄ḥaȳ yuz: Ru’yah Ma‘rifiyyah wa Da‘wah lil-Ijtihad̄ (Cairo: The International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995). 45  Al-Marzūqı ̄ is generally more informed about the social sciences and more engaged in political affairs than Taha. Yet, his early works until the late 1990s were hard to read for non-­ specialists in philosophy. Also, he does not follow the simplified style of analytic philosophy that Taha masters, which has given Taha a wider readership. For these reasons, in this work Taha was favored for the comparison with Bunge. A recent notable achievement for

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3   An Introduction to Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Contribution to the Fourth Stage of the Modernization Journey of Arab-Islamic Philosophy 3.1  A Biographical Sketch Taha Abd al-Rahman was born in 1944, in El Jadida, a small town with a temperate climate on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. He completed his elementary education there and obtained a BA in philosophy from Muhammad V University in the capital, Rabat.46 Taha continued his education at the Sorbonne in Paris, with a 1972 PhD dissertation entitled Langage et philosophie: Essai sur les structures linguistiques de l’ontologie, published in Morocco in 1979.47 He completed another PhD from the same university in 1985, with dissertation entitled Essai sur les logiques des raisonnements argumentatifs et naturels, in 1985.48 These two works and six additional essays49 make for the only eight of Taha’s works available in Al-Marzūqı ̄ is his Dawr al-Falsafah al-Naqdiyyah al-ʻArabiyyah wa Munjazātuha ̄: Muwa ̄zanah Tārı ̄khiyyah Bayna Dhirwatay al-Fikr al-Falsafiyatayn al-ʻArabiyyah wal-­ Alma ̄niyyah [lit. The Role of Critical Arab Philosophy and Its Achievements: A Historical Comparison Between the Arab and German Philosophical Summits] (Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Abḥāth wal-Nashr, 2012). 46  Taha Abderrahman, “A Global Ethic: Its Scope and Limits,” Tabah Foundation: Tabah Papers Series, June 2008, vii, https://bit.ly/2PaPlUa. 47  Abderrahmane Taha, Langage et philosophie: essai sur les structures linguistiques de l’ontologie (Mohammedia, Maroc: Publications de la Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, Université Mohamed V., 1979). 48  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Essai sur les logiques des raisonnements argumentatifs et naturels (Paris, Université Paris-Sorbonne IV, 1985). 49  Taha Abderrahmane, “Discussion entre Abū Saʿı ̄d al-Sı ̄rāfı ̄, le grammairien et Mattā b. Yūnus, le philosophe,” Arabica 25, no. 3 (1978): 310–23; Taha Abderrahman, “Arab Dialecticians on Rational Discussion,” in Argumentation Across the Lines of Disciplines: Proceedings of the Conference on Argumentation 1986, ed. Frans H.  Van Eemeren et  al. (Dordrecht-Holland: Foris Publications, 1987), 73–77; Taha Abderrahman, “A Global Ethic: Its Scope and Limits,” Tabah Foundation: Tabah Papers Series, June 2008, https:// bit.ly/2PaPlUa; Taha Abderrahmane, “Renewing Religious Thought in Islam: Prerequisites and Impediments,” Islam Today: Journal of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—ISESCO, no. 25 (2008): 87–100; Taha Abderrahmane, “On the Trusteeship Critique of Modernism,” Islam Today: Journal of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—ISESCO, no. 32 (2016): 57–70; Taha Abderrahmane, “L’esprit de Modernité et Le Droit à La Créativité,” Eikasía Revista de Filosofía, no. 38 (2011): 84–124.

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European languages (English and French), with some twenty books in Arabic yet to be translated. Unlike most Arab scholars of his generation or younger, Taha’s knowledge of French, German, English, Latin, and classical Greek enables him to tackle several philosophical issues in an in-depth, intellectually grounded way. He is able to link mathematical logic to linguistic analysis, ontological consciousness to ethical commitment, and universal humanist commitment to the concerns of the Arab world. However, his acquaintance with natural science, philosophy of science, and the social sciences is not as strong as his knowledge of ethics and logic. Taha made a career as Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Language at Muhammad V University in Rabat, from 1970 until his retirement in 2005.50 Within the Arab world, I count more than twenty published books that deal entirely, or in part, with aspects of Taha Abd al-Rahman’s philosophy.51 These books present international comparisons of his  Taha Abderrahman, “A Global Ethic: Its Scope and Limits,” vii.  Ḥ ammū Naqārı ̄, Mant ̣iq Tadbı ̄r al-Ikhtilāf min Khila ̄li Aʻmāl Ṭ ah̄ a ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Abḥāth wal-Nashr, 2014); Ibrāhı ̄m Mashrūḥ, Ṭ a h̄ a ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān: Qira ̄ʼah Fı ̄ Mashru ̄ʻih al-Fikrı ̄ (Beirut: Markaz al-Ḥ aḍārah li-Tanmiyat al-Fikr al-Islāmı ̄, 2009); ʻAbbās Arḥı ̄lah, Faylasu ̄f fı ̄ al-Muwājahah: Qirāʼah fı ̄ Fikr Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Casablanca, Morocco: al-Markaz al- Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2013); ʻAbbās Arḥı ̄lah, Bayna al-Iʼtimāniyyah wal-Dahrāniyyah: bayna Ṭ a h̄ a ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥman̄ wa ʻAbd Alla h̄ al-ʻUrawı ̄ (Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Ibdāʻ al-Fikrı ̄, 2016); ʻAbbās Arḥı ̄lah, Naẓarāt fı ̄ Mashru ̄ʻ al-Duktūr Ṭ a h̄ a ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (N.  A.: Manshūrāt al-Muqārabāt, 2008); Muḥammad Shabbah, ʻAwāʼiq al-Ibdāʻ al-Falsafı ̄ al-ʻArabı ̄: Ḥ asaba Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: Manshūrāt Ḍ ifāf, 2016); Jallūl Maqūrah, Falsafat al-Tawās u ̣ l fı ̄ al-fikr al-ʻArabı ̄ al-Muʻās ị r: Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān wa Nās ı̣ ̄f Nas ṣ ạ ̄r bayna al-Qawmiyyah wal-­ Kawniyyah (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥdah al-ʻArabiyyah, 2015); Mashrūḥ, Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān: Qirāʼah Fı ̄ Mashru ̄ʻih al-Fikrı ̄; Yūsuf Ibn ʻAdı ̄, Mashru ̄ʻ al-Ibda ̄ʻ al-Falsafı ̄ al-ʻArabı ̄: Qira ̄ʼah fı ̄ Aʻmāl D. Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Abḥāth wal-Nashr, 2012); ʻAbd al-Malik Būmanjal, Al-Ibdāʻ fı ̄ Muwa ̄jahat al-Ittibāʻ: Qira ̄ʼāt fı ̄ Fikr Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-­ Ibdāʻ, 2017); Aḥmad Kāfı ̄ and Ḥ amzah Nuhayrı ̄, Suʼa ̄l al-Dı ̄n wal-Akhla ̄q fı ̄ al-Gharb al-Isla ̄mı ̄: Bayna Mashrūʻay Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān wa Muḥammad ʻA ̄ bid al-Ja ̄birı ̄ (Cairo, Egypt: Dār al-Kalimah lil-Nashr wal-Tawzı ̄ʻ, 2018); ʻAbd al-Nabı ̄ ʻAbd al-Ḥ arrı ̄, Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥma ̄n wa Muḥammad ʻA ̄ bid al-Ja ̄birı ̄: Ṣirāʻ al-Mashru ̄’ayn ʻala ̄ Arḍ al-Ḥ ikmah al-­ Rushdiyyah (Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Abḥāth wal-Nashr, 2014); Munaẓẓamat al-Tajdı ̄d al-Ṭ ullābı ̄, Dirāsa ̄t fı ̄ Aʻmāl al-Faylasu ̄f Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥma ̄n: Aʻma ̄l al-Muntada ̄ al-Fikrı ̄ al-Sa ̄dis (Fes, Morocco: Jāmiʻat Sayyidı ̄ Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd Allāh, 2012); ʻAbd al-Qādir Mulūk, Min Taʻaddudiyyat al-Akhlāq ilā Akhla ̄q al-Taʻaddudiyyah: Hila ̄rı ̄ Būtnām, Yu ̄rghan Hibrimās, Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: al-Markaz al-ʻArabı ̄ lil-Abḥāth wa Dirāsat al-Sı ̄yāsāt, 2018); Asyā ʻAqūnı ̄, al-Naqd al-Iʼtimānı ̄ lil-Unmūdhaj 50 51

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philosophy—with those of the German Jürgen Habermas and the American Hilary Putnam52—as well as comparisons with his Arab counterparts like Muhammad ʻAbid al-Jabiri,53 ʻAbd Allah al-ʻArawi,54 and Nasif Nassar.55 These publications are in addition to many newspaper articles and journal papers. Hence, we can speak of a growing wave of Tahaian studies in the past decade. Internationally, there is now an increasing interest in Taha Abd al-Rahman in Western scholarship. Wael Hallaq of Columbia University published the first work in English dedicated entirely to engaging with Taha Abd al-Rahman’s thoughts on modernity.56 Mohammed Hashas of LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome provided English speakers with a detailed account of recent development in Taha’s philosophy.57 In 2018, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar held a al-Dahrānı ̄ fı ̄ Falsafat Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān (Amman, Jordan: Dār al-Ayyām lil-Nashr wal-Tawzı ̄ʻ, 2017); ʻAbd al-Jalı ̄l al-Kūr, Mafhu ̄m al-Fit ̣rah fı ̄ Falsafat Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥma ̄n (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-Ibdāʻ, 2017); ʻAbd al-Salām Bū Zubrah, Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd Al-Raḥma ̄n Wa Naqd al-Ḥ ada ̄thah (Beirut: Jadāwil lil-Nashr wal-Tawzı ̄ʻ, 2011); Muḥammad Humām, “Naẓariyyāt Takāmul Al-Maʻārif Fı ̄ al-Fikr al-ʻArabı ̄: Dirāsah Fı ̄ Ā liyyāt al-Ishtighāl al-Lughawı ̄ Wal-Balaghı ̄ Fı ̄ Mashrūʻ Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān” (Rabat, Morocco, Jāmiʻat Muḥammad al-Khāmis, Kulliyyat al-Ā dāb wal-ʻUlūm al-Insāniyyah, 2004); Muḥammad Ahmad al-Ṣaghı ̄r, ʻAqlāniyyat al-Ḥ ada ̄thah al-Mu’ayyadah: Istiqrā’a ̄t fı ̄ Tafkı ̄k Aʻmāl Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān (Amman, Jordan: ʻĀ lam al-Kitāb al-Ḥ adı ̄th, 2015); Rabı ̄ʻ Ḥ ammu, Madkhal Ilā Fikr Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-­ Fikr wal-Ibdāʻ, 2019); Saʻı ̄dah Malkawı ̄, Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah ʻInda Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān: Min al-Naqd al-Maʻrifı ̄ al-Muzdawaj Ilā Bina ̄’ al-Mafhu ̄m (Amman, Jordan: ʻĀ lam al-Kitāb al-Ḥ adı ̄th, 2018); Aḥmad Karrūm, Al-Turāth ʻInda Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān: (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-Ibdāʻ, 2018); Aḥmad Mūnah, Madākhil Tajdı ̄d ʻilm al-Uṣu ̄l ʻInda Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān: Dirāsah fı ̄ al-Dalāla ̄t al-Uṣu ̄liyyah wal-Maqās ị d Sharʻiyyah (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-Ibdāʻ, 2017); ʻAbd al-Razzāq Balʻaqrūz, Jawānib Min Ijtihāda ̄t Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd Al-Raḥmān: Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah Wal-ʻAwlamah Wal-ʻAqlāniyyah Wal-Tajdı ̄d al-Thaqa ̄fı ̄ (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-­ Ibdāʻ, 2018). 52  Mulūk, Min Taʻaddudiyyat al-Akhla ̄q ilā Akhlāq al-Taʻaddudiyyah: Hila ̄rı ̄ Bu ̄tna ̄m, Yu ̄rghan Hibrimās, Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān. 53  al-Ḥ arrı ̄, Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd al-Raḥma ̄n wa Muḥammad ʻA ̄ bid al-Jābirı ̄: Ṣira ̄ʻ al-Mashru ̄’ayn ʻalā Arḍ al-Ḥ ikmah al-Rushdiyyah; Kāfı ̄ and Nuhayrı ̄, Suʼa ̄l al-Dı ̄n wal-Akhlāq fı ̄ al-Gharb al-Isla ̄mı ̄: Bayna Mashru ̄ʻay Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥmān wa Muḥammad ʻA ̄ bid al-Ja ̄birı ̄. 54  Arḥı ̄lah, Bayna al-Iʼtimāniyyah wal-Dahra ̄niyyah: bayna Ṭ a ̄ha ̄ ʻAbd al-Raḥma ̄n wa ʻAbd Alla ̄h al-ʻUrawı ̄. 55  Maqūrah, Falsafat al-Tawa ̄s u ̣ l fı ̄ al-fikr al-ʻArabı ̄ al-Muʻa ̄s ị r. 56  Wael B. Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019). 57  Mohammed Hashas, “Taha Abderrahmane’s Trusteeship Paradigm: Spiritual Modernity and the Islamic Contribution to the Formation of a Renewed Universal Civilization of

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conference on Taha’s ethical philosophy, which appeared in a full volume in English.58 Harald J. Viersen, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, is completing his PhD dissertation (at the University of Marburg in Germany), with subject the Arab world’s discourse of authenticity, as seen by Taha Abd al-Rahman and two other Arab intellectuals.59 Taha’s ethics has also captured the scholarly attention of Michael L. Bevers.60 3.2  On Taha’s Style This chapter is concerned with the content of Taha’s philosophy. But a well-rounded treatment—that is to say in our context, a systemic one— would have to acknowledge that the content of Taha’s philosophy is inseparable from its form. As Mario Bunge often says of other pairings, the two may be distinguished, but not separated. Taha writes in the classical Arabic logico-argumentative tradition that nearly disappeared with the eclipse of the medieval Islamic golden age of humanistic creativity, sometime around the fifteenth century. The quality of his Arabic style astounded many Arab intellectuals, who were not anticipating any revival of the classical writing, with its beautiful and refined techniques. This style is strongly influenced by the Aristotelian-Arabic traditions of consistency, clarity, and originality that characterized the rich medieval Islamic scholasticism. We shall attempt to convey some idea of his style with a few translations of extended passages from Taha and a few brief considerations of what can get lost in translation. We begin with an extract of Taha’s own views about translation, moreover about translation in relation to philosophical modernization.

Ethos,” Oriente Moderno 95, no. 1–2 (August 7, 2015): 67–105, https://doi. org/10.1163/22138617-12340077. 58  Mohammed Hashas and Mutaz Al-Khatib, eds., Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2020). 59  Harald J. Viersen, “Taha Abd Al-Rahman,” in Grundriss Der Geschichte Der Philosophie: Bd. IV :Geschichte Der Philosophie in Der Islamischen Welt Des 19. Und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Anke von Kügelgen and Ulrich Rudolph (Schwabe: Basel, 2021). 60  Michael L. Bevers, “Taha Abderrahmane’s Ethics for a Secular Age,” Journal of Islamic Ethics 1, no. 1–2 (2017), 195–202.

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Taha on Translation and the Path to Modernization

Translation has to take another path in order to reach [ideal] modernization, which is what I call the explorative path. This path can guide the Muslim Arab speaker along the journey of inventing equivalents to the original [Western] text. This in turn would open the door to modernizing Arab-­ Islamic thought from the inside. This path requires proposing three translations [for the same text], with different types of manipulation taking responsibility for being independent from the original. These [three] in order are: logical translation, to expose the structure of the argument; semantic translation, to reveal the meaning; and grammatical translation, to uncover its linguistic structure.61 This “explorative” perspective for translation flips the transmitting perspective [of translation] upside down, for transmission makes the [language of the] original text the first priority, meaning the second priority, and the argument, the third. In this way, syntax influences meaning, and that, the argument. Conversely, explorative translation gives priority to consideration of the argument over meaning, and priority to consideration of meaning over syntax. In this way, the argument is influencing meaning, and that, affecting syntax. True [and intellectually creative modernization] would not begin except with obtaining the [structure of the] arguments from the translated texts. There is no modernization for Islamic-Arab thought except by that [first step of] creativity and its continuity.62

3.2.2

Taha on Existence

The origin of everything is mercy, where it is the first of all things, for if thinkers took note of this amazing fact, that in the beginning there was mercy, they would have obtained satisfying answers to their questions about existence and existent things. This is like their question Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer [is because] mercy is a precursor, for were it not for mercy there would have been nothing. I received mercy, therefore I am. So, the knowledge of mercy is prior to the knowledge of existence.63 Give mercy to others the way you are merciful with yourself; [that is,] in protection to the value of the human.64

61  ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah: Al-Madkhal Li-Ta’sı ̄s al-Ḥ ada ̄thah al-Isla ̄miyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2006), 173. 62  Ṭ āhā, 173–74. 63  Ṭ āhā, 250. 64  Ṭ āhā, 252.

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Give mercy to the non-human the way you are merciful to the human; [that is,] in protection to the value of being.65 Give the universality derived from mercy priority over any other universality.66

Taha derives the centrality of mercy from contemplating God’s name, The Merciful [rahman]. He sees this as a way to resolve many of the modern maladies brought about by those who insist, to the contrary, on contemplating the centrality of the human [inasan]. Taha further argues: For those who practice solidarity [mutaḍāmin], by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things [takhlı ̄q], the anxiousness to destroy the [traditional Islamic] heritage vanishes, through the consideration that one of the goals of heritage is to provide the human with the power of the past, manifested in preserving his memory. Preservation of memory is the value that brings to the human, permanence free of instability. For those who practice solidarity, by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things, the anxiousness to destroy nature disappears, through the consideration that one of the objectives of nature is to provide the human with the power of the future, manifested in preserving his offspring. Preservation of offspring is the value that brings to the human security, free of fear. For those who practice solidarity, by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things, finally, the anxiousness to destroy space [i.e., the physical domain] disappears, through the consideration that one of the aims of space is to provide the human with power of the present, manifested in persevering his identity. Preservation of identity is the value that brings to the human residence, free of homelessness. Said briefly, the practitioner of solidarity with all beings –or the mercy practitioner [mutarāḥim]– is a stable, secure, and resident human.67

In Taha’s conception, the stable, secure, and resident human is in contrast to the unstable, afraid, and homeless modern man, whose tendencies are toward financial anxiety, social alienation, and ephemeral sexual relationships.

 Ṭ āhā, 253.  Ṭ āhā, 254. 67  Ṭ āhā, 260. 65 66

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Notably, Taha relies extensively on creating new concepts and coining new terms in Arabic that have equivalents neither in Arabic traditions nor in modern Western philosophy, whether written in, for example, French, English, or German. One example will suffice. Ethics in Arabic is akhlaq, which is the plural of khuluq. This singular word refers to the quality of action or good behavior, so ethics becomes the science studying the totality of good behaviors. A sister word for khuluq, derived from the same root, is khalq, which means the world or creation. Interestingly, in Islamic traditions, good behavior (khuluq) is rather the behavior that meets the original nature of the human and the proper order of things, which comes from creation (khalq). For example, a mother breastfeeding her infant is a good behavior (khuluq), because it is the natural order of things, following from their creation (khalq). The Islamic conception of the good is therefore identical with that of ethical naturalism, in the specific form found in, for example, its Catholic version.68 But Taha takes these nouns further and derives a gerund or verbal noun, takhliq, to mean acting properly, in the sense of making one’s behavior meet its original nature—that is to say, the good and proper order of things. Thus Taha proposes that takhliq is making khuluq meet khalq.69 Thus Taha’s idea that takhliq, or acting properly, is making the quality of one’s actions harmonize with creation would be written as: “hadd al-khaliqati an takun […] khalqan wa khuluqan.”70 This sentence and a great number of similar ones in his work, with key rhymes such as mutaḍamin [practitioner of solidarity] with mutaraḥim [practitioner of mercy], have in Arabic a musical melody that elevates Taha’s philosophical writing to the level of poetry.

68  Jacob Kohlhaas, “What Is Natural Law?,” U.S.  Catholic Magazine, July 2018, 49. https://bit.ly/37H8CEi 69  In the footsteps of Taha, see this etymological philosophical attempt: A.  Z. Obiedat, “The Semantic Field of Love in Classical Arabic: Understanding the Subconscious Meaning Preserved in the Ḥ ubb Synonyms and Antonyms through Their Etymologies,” in The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures: The Culture of Love and Languishing, ed. Alireza Korangy, Michael C. Beard, and Hanadi Al-Samman (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 300–323; and A. Z. Obiedat, “Friendship in Arabic: Its Synonyms, Etymologies, and Transformations,” in Friendship in Islamic Ethics and World Politics, ed. Mohammad Jafar Amir Mahallati (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2019), 49–68. 70  In full IJMES form: “ḥadd al-khalı ̄qati an taku ̄n […] khalqan wa khuluqan,” which means the definition of the human creature is to be created and be in a moral manner. In Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Suʼāl al-Akhlāq: Musa ̄hamah fı ̄ al-Naqd al-Akhla ̄qı ̄ lil-Ḥ ada ̄thah al-Gharbiyyah (Beirut, Lebanon: al-Markaz al- Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2000), 54.

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This is quite revealing from a communicative point of view, as well as immediately understandable for any educated Arabic ear. Yet, since Taha takes an etymological route to inventing new concepts, translating the connotations and the denotations while maintaining the aesthetics, that is to say, translating the full meaning, would be difficult without lengthy explanation—which would itself sour the aesthetic and connotative flavor. In English, the usual route to coining new terms is to use some combination of Greek, Latin, French, German, or any other roots, or else some metaphorical allusion. These would all be contingent upon different rhythms, rhymes, and coincidental associations.71 Although highly creative and original, Taha remains within the confines of Arabic grammar and logic. He can be accused neither of obfuscatory vocabulary by Arab linguists, nor of convoluted prose by logicians. Yet the communicative significance, aesthetics, and melody of Taha’s writing style that the Arabic reader feels, would be totally lost to every non-Arabic reader via literal translation: instead, they would have to be created anew and differently, within the melodies, rhythms, metaphors, and aesthetics of the receiving language and culture. This is one of the difficulties of cross-­ cultural transfer. One might say that the situation is similar to that of a Japanese sushi or an Indian curry, which can never be eaten in the form of an American burger and fries. Rather, for the full experience, sushi, curry, and burgers and fries alike all have to be tasted as they are. The topic of cross-cultural transfer, specifically in the context of modernization, is one of Taha’s central concerns, and this takes us back from our excursion into the form of his philosophy, more specifically to its content. 3.3  Taha on the Spirit of Modernity Max Weber (1864–1920), one of the founders of modern sociology, ascribed to modernity the notion of Entzauberung der Welt (disenchantment of the world). Weber used this expression to refer to the modern 71  This is similar to the great difficulty found in translating the German text of Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927)—although some, especially Mario Bunge, argue that Heidegger’s work presents the additional difficulty of being nonsensical to begin with. Bunge notes, “Not content with writing nonsense and torturing the German language, Heidegger […] heaped scorn on “mere science” for being allegedly incapable of “awakening the spirit.”” In Mario Bunge, “In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academia,” in The Flight from Science and Reason, ed. Paul R.  Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W.  Lewis (Baltimore, Md: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997), 97.

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view that the world is natural in its origin and workings, rather than magical or spiritual. As such, it can be investigated and explained scientifically and, at least to some extent, controlled technologically. In his seminal Spirit of Modernity: Introduction to the Establishing of Islamic Modernity,72 Taha argues that there is also disenchantment with modernity itself: modernity is no longer seen as in effect a magical cure-all. He sees this disenchantment, which in the context of the third world and modernity becomes rather distrust and disdain, as understandable, for epitomizing (1) a widespread skepticism about the validity of the modernism project, as generated by actors such as the Frankfurt School and the postmodernists; (2) opposition in the third world to the new postcolonial age, in which globalization imposes once again a Western order on the rest of the world; and (3) a lack of faith in the naturalist, realist, humanist, and secular worldview of the Western—or Westernized—modernizers. Accordingly, Taha calls for a rethinking of modernity. Taha explains that modernity is not simply a recent phenomenon in Western history; moreover that there is no reason to believe that its ideals have been understood or already achieved in any society. This echoes Habermas’ view that “modernity [is] an ‘unfinished project.’”73 On the other hand, there is no reason to deny that modernity did find some, albeit imperfect, expression in various earlier and non-Western societies. Taha distinguishes between ‘actually existing’ modernity and ‘ought-to-be’ modernity, the latter being an abstract, conceptual, but potential modernity. It is this ideal version that Taha sees as the ‘spirit of modernity.’ Taha analyzes different ways that might be used to grasp the spirit of modernity. First, historical understandings of modernity have it as a process that occurred in Western Europe, involving the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French revolution, and the industrial revolution, and that continues today with globalization and the information revolution.74 Second, conceptual understandings emphasize certain orientations, such as toward the control of nature, society, and the self.75 Taha is satisfied with neither purely historical nor purely conceptual understandings. He asserts instead that the spirit of modernity is better grasped with a synthesis of the two, as seen in his own tripartite characterization based on maturity,  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah.  Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), xix. 74  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 23. 75  Ṭ āhā, 23. 72 73

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criticism, and universality.76 For Taha, to be modern is first of all to evolve from being in the situation of a minor or a juvenile, to being a mature person: a person suited to the rights and responsibilities that come with the “age of majority.” To attain this characteristic of modernity—being in a state of majority—is to rid oneself of custodial dependence and blind imitation of others.77 The principle of maturity is thus a matter of two foundational notions, independence and creativity. Independence balances relations with the other, while creativity enables one to capitalize on one’s potential and produce what has never been produced before. The justification for the principle of maturity is historical, in that European independence from authoritative royal and clerical power, and the creation of novel ideas and artifacts, is integral to the history of modernity, as demonstrated by its unfolding in the West. Second, to be modern is to evolve from being a believer, to being a critical thinker.78 A believer submits with no need for evidence, while a critical thinker submits only after evaluating evidence.79 Critical thinking subjects all phenomena to rational scrutiny (rather than obscuring or contradicting them) and identifies particularities and differences (rather than confusing or wiping them out). Therefore, the principle of critical thinking is based on two foundations: rationality and analysis.80 The justification for the principle of critical thinking is the fact that subjecting natural and human phenomena to rational study is highly characteristic of modern natural science. Subjecting convoluted and vague notions and complex phenomena to analysis also historically led to freedom from traditions, religion, and superstition. Third, to be modern is to transcend narrowness, locality, and boundaries, and so to achieve universality.81 In the context of the spirit of modernity, to be universal is to extend the modern domain to all fields and to generalize its results to all individuals and societies. Hence, the principle of universality, like the principles of maturity and criticism, is also based on two foundations, in this case those of extensibility and generalizability. The justification for the principle of universality comes from observing how modernity extends from thoughts to actions, from laws to morality,  Ṭ āhā, 29.  Ṭ āhā, 25. 78  “min ḥa ̄l al-i‘tiqa ̄d ilā ḥa ̄l al-intiqa ̄d,” Ṭ āhā, 26. 79  Ṭ āhā, 26. 80  This is an appropriate English equivalent to tafs ı̣ ̄l, which literally means separation or differentiation. See also Sect. 4.3. 81  Ṭ āhā, 28. 76 77

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from nature to man, and so on;82 while it spreads, or generalizes, the political economy and cultural reality of the West to all parts of the world. In other words, for Taha, the universality aspect of modernity reflects how the modern spirit spreads through individuals, their spiritual culture, and indeed all parts of the world, extending modern technology and ways of thinking to economic activities and the trajectory of historical development, thereby empowering those who are modern; such is the past and present of modernity. On the basis of its hexagonal foundations—namely, independence and creativity, rationality and analysis, extensibility and generalizability—the spirit of modernity is a mature, critical, and universal one (see Fig. 5.1). Taha argues that other famous conceptions such as secularism, individualism, and capitalism are instead only possible derivatives from the hexagonal foundations.

Fig. 5.1  Hexagonal representation of Taha’s tripartite principles and six foundations of the spirit of modernity. (Note: Dr. Michael Kary brought to my attention that the hexagonal structure now also suggests possibly naming the empty corners, for example, the combination of Generalizability with Rationality might be Systemicity, Extensibility with Creativity might be Optimism, and Analysis with Independence might be Impartiality or Judiciousness.)  Ṭ āhā, 27.

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3.4  Consequences of the Spirit of Modernity The previous considerations concerned what it means for Taha to be modern. But being modern also has consequences; that is to say, for Taha, there are consequences of the spirit of modernity. Taha reminds us that implementations (exemplifications, realizations, actualizations, or applications) of the spirit of modernity may vary and proliferate ad infinitum, since no single implementation will ever exhaust the ideal. The gist of his thoughts on the consequences of the spirit of modernity is that those consequences are diverse and numerous and can diverge from the current Western-based ones. For Taha, it is not difficult to recognize several independent actualizations of the spirit of modernity, in several civilizations in premodern times. This is indeed a big stretch for the concept of modernity, for Taha takes it to be in effect identical with human cultural novelty or creativity, as long as it is in step with the spirit of modernity. Out of the many consequences of the spirit of modernity, Taha distinguishes four main ones: plurality, inexhaustibility (or diversity), historical authenticity (or revitalization), and equality.83 1. Plurality refers to applicability to all that is human. Modernity should not have any limitations, such as any particular racial, territorial, or historical restrictions. 2. Inexhaustibility follows from no actualization of modernity ever being the fullest realization of its ideal. Actual modernity diverges not only from its ideal, but also within itself, as in the German and the French, the American and the Russian, the British and the Scandinavian versions of modernity. This diversity indicates that the spirit of modernity is not just a mood of ‘being,’ but is rather a mood of ‘becoming’; indeed, for Taha it includes the evolutionary process of humankind as a whole. The assumption that the spirit of modernity emerged only today and only in the West is flawed, since it is not specifically Western or “present” in nature. Although its current actualization is Western in form, it might have been actualized in the past differently.84 One might add, in support of Taha’s view, that Western modernity would not have emerged, certainly not when and how it did, without prior Chinese technologies (gunpowder and paper), Arabic and Indian sciences  Ṭ āhā, 30.  Ṭ āhā, 31.

83 84

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(mathematics and medicine), Greek philosophy and mathematics, and the Amerindian wealth and novelties of the New World (gold, silver, potatoes, corn, tobacco, and chocolate).85 3. Historical authenticity follows from the independence and creativity of the spirit of modernity: true modernity is not a transplant or an imitation, but a genuine article. This implies that modernity’s spirit can be realized in diverse ways. So, the ancient Mesopotamian or medieval Andalusian modernity may be akin to the spirit of modernity as much as a future African or Indian one. 4. The combination of the previous three consequences calls for equality of all civilizations within the spirit of modernity.86 Taha acknowledges the privileges of science, economic development, and welfare that characterize Western modernity, without feeling ashamed of the Islamic culture whose worth he upholds and seeks to defend. Instead, he seeks to create a genuine realization of the spirit of modernity from within Islamic culture.

4   Conditions for a Genuine Realization of the Spirit of Modernity The subtitle of Taha’s Spirit of Modernity speaks of the Establishing of Islamic Modernity, which is the fundamental concern of the book. Within a context that we have outlined in Sects. 3.3 and 3.4, Taha poses two questions: How might Islamic modernity be established? How should Islamic modernity differ from Western modernity? According to Taha, the answer to these questions is to be found in the ironic fact that the Western implementation of the spirit of modernity brought about the opposite of its own proper goals.87 The goal of “mastering nature,” or dominating it, led to a population explosion, global warming, global pandemics, and weapons of mass destruction; the “will to be liberated from authority” led to unprecedented, complex, and severe authoritarian governmental surveillance and individual tracking; while the attempt to “control society” led to a form of globalization that produced uncontrollable economic, cultural,

 Wright, A Short History of Progress, 114.  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 31. 87  Ṭ āhā, 32. 85 86

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and political trends.88 Therefore, what was meant to be mastery of nature resulted in crowding, depletion, upheaval, and fear; what was meant to be individual liberty led to being at the mercy of uncontrollable influences; what was meant to be national independence was transformed into dependence on other, greater countries. These critical evaluations are similar to ones already expressed by Weber, and by the Critical Theorists,89 such as Adorno,90 but Taha attributes these inversions of the goals of modernity to the replacement of goals by means, and blind adherence to mottos such as “change for change’s sake,” “art for art’s sake,” “science for science’s sake.”91 For him, Islamic modernity should avoid repeating such Western mistakes. The spirit of modernity is marked by maturity, and maturity is based on independence and creativity; thus, modernization is a creative enterprise. Attempting to modernize the developing world through a Western application of modernity is nothing but mere imitation and reproduction.92 These qualities are uncreative, hence counter-modern by nature. Each nation therefore has the choice of either achieving its own native, creative modernity, or having no modernity at all. Thus, to be modern means to be creative in one’s own creativity (see Sect. 4.5). Taha says that the counter-­ modern ignorance of creativity in today’s Arab philosophy is common to both Arab imitators of modernity, that is, agents of Westernization, and Arab imitators of traditions, that is, Islamic traditionalists.93 Establishing a genuine Islamic modernity requires both avoiding

88  Ṭ āhā refers to Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), Christian Coméliau, Les impasses de la modernité (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000), and Alain Gérard, Le cadre d’une nouvelle éthique (Ramonville Saint-Agne: Editions Erès, 1998). 89  “[S]ome critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Zygmunt Bauman have argued that there is a hidden logic of domination and oppression embedded in Enlightenment rationality, which dialectically pushes it towards nefarious processes of alienation, such as commodity fetishism, slavery, and the Holocaust.” In Paul Camy Mocombe, Carol Tomlin, and Cecile Wright, Race and Class Distinctions Within Black Communities: A Racial-Caste-in-Class (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 45. 90  “[T]he Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.” In Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York, NY: Verso, 1979), 3. 91  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 33. 92  Ṭ āhā, 34. 93  Ṭ āhā, 39.

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the defects of the Western version and overcoming the lack of creativity common to Westernizers and Islamic traditionalists alike. 4.1   The Falsification, or Rejection, of the Foundations of Actual Modernity To avoid the defects of modernization as Westernization, Taha proposes unearthing the philosophical foundations of actual modernity as advocated by Westernizers, that is, Arab scholars of ready-made philosophies such as liberalism, Marxism, positivism, and the like, who dominated the second and third stages of Arab philosophical modernization. Taha sees modernization in general as involving implicit “application premises,” concerning how to actualize the spirit of modernity. Revealing the premises underlying the Western implementation of modernity shows how they are in no way similar to the premises that underlie Islamic society, now or in the past. Therefore, according to Taha, imitating Western modernities in the Muslim-Arab world will undoubtedly yield a dull and even harmful reality.94 By revealing these tacit assumptions of the Western case and attempting to falsify them, Taha aims to highlight what the internal and creative application premises would be—and so to suggest a substantial and genuine Islamic alternative to actual Western modernity. Taha tackles this falsification task through a detailed examination of the way the spirit of modernity’s tripartite principles of critical thinking, universality, and maturity unfolded over the course of Western history. 4.2  Taha on Critical Thinking Critical thinking is one of the basic principles of the spirit of modernity (Sect. 3.3). Critical thinking subjects all phenomena to rationality and analysis, rather than obscuring, confusing, or contradicting them. In order to falsify the Western application premises, Taha suggests moving from imitative to creative rationality,95 and from imitative to creative analysis.96 With regard to the first move, he draws attention to the following three 94  Ṭ āhā has made a detailed analysis of what he calls “cultural interaction pragmatics” (al-majāl al-tada ̄wlı ̄) in his book Renewing the Method of Evaluating the Heritage (Tajdı ̄d al-Manhaj fı ̄ Taqwı ̄m al-Turāth), published in 1994. 95  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 42. 96  Ṭ āhā, 47.

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tacit principles or premises he finds underlying Western modernity: (1) “reason reasons everything,” (2) “all nature can be mastered by Man,” and (3) “everything is criticizable.”97 4.2.1 Taha on Reason and Rationality “Reason reasons everything”—or less literally, but perhaps being more faithful to Taha’s intended meaning, “reason is the basis for everything, and everything should be done on the basis of reason.” Taha sees blind adherence to this maxim as most responsible for the particular nature of actual modernity.98 Taha sees the maxim as epistemologically problematic, because it makes reason both a means and an end: one cannot give a reason for upholding reason, such effort being circular.99 Another of Taha’s observations is that reason is part of the whole, and as such,100 it cannot encompass the whole.101 For Taha—in line with Weber’s views on “rationalization”102—in Western modernity, reason as an end has meant a slavish devotion to the goal of utility (or profit) maximization, while reason as a means has meant an all-consuming technological overload. In Taha’s view, correction of these flaws lies in realizing that the supposedly rational ends have led to irrational means, while the supposedly rational  Ṭ āhā, 43.  Ṭ āhā, 43. 99  Nicholas Rescher has a pragmatic response. We have only reason to judge anything, including reason itself. Otherwise, people would resort to other criteria not subject to agreement and comprehensibility and, in this way, subvert objectivity. Consequently, in order to maintain rational, universally recognizable, and objective criteria, we have to resort to reason. So, Rescher notes, “it seems to say: ‘If you are going to be rational in your beliefs, then you must also act rationally, because it is rational to believe that rational action is optimal in point of goal attainment.’ But this sort of question begging is simply unavoidable in the circumstances. It is exactly what we want and need. Where else should we look for a rational validation of rationality but to reason itself? The only reasons for being rational that it makes sense to ask for are rational reasons.” Nicholas Rescher, Rationality: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 43. Ṭ āhā does not seem to realize that there is such a pragmatic justification. 100  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 43. 101  This is not tenable since one of the functions of reason is to reflect on the grand scheme of things, despite the process of reasoning occurring in someone’s individual mind. If reason could address only particulars and individuals, it would hardly be of much interest. 102  Weber “identifies bureaucracy with rationality, and the process of rationalization with mechanism, depersonalization, and oppressive routine. Rationality, in this context, is seen as adverse to personal freedom.” In Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1958), 50. 97 98

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means have led to irrational results. This realization suggests instead a dual process, aiming rather than for the most purely rational ends, for only the best ends that are achievable; and discovering, rather than the most purely rational means for achieving them, only the most suitable ones.103 In other words, for Taha, the essence of reason is not rational.104 He does not tell us what is that essence. The second principle, “all nature can be mastered by Man,” was characteristic of the early stages of Western modernity, as exemplified in the works of Francis Bacon (1561–1626). How can such mastery be possible?, Taha asks. As a matter of fact, Taha argues, man is forced to obey the laws of nature, while nature still does not obey human wants. We are rather the offspring of nature, and nature should be considered a mother. This entails a universal pledge of faithfulness and mercy toward ‘mother nature,’ so that “Man repays mother nature with mercy.”105 Yet, needless to say, particular aspects of nature have in certain cases been successfully controlled, such as with medical treatments or the damming of rivers—proving that there is rather a partial control of nature. Taha’s merciful alternative is an expression of a rhetorical solution. Taha does not offer a practical solution for the countless instances where nature is instead a non-caring mother to Man. The third principle is that “everything is criticizable.” But criticism itself, Taha reminds us, does not form the gamut of our practically utilizable knowledge.106 Acceptance of common background knowledge and personal accounts, for example, shapes most of our knowledge from ­childhood to death, without our having the capacity to criticize and verify 103  This is similar to the ideas of Herbert Simon (1916–2001) about satisficing rather than maximizing. “Herbert Simon, seeing cognitive limits to human attention, proposed the idea of bounded rationality with the notion of “satisfying” rather than “maximizing” the decision outcomes.” In Susan Maret, William R. Freudenberg: A Life in Social Research (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2013), 115. 104  Mario Bunge holds in effect a similar view, except that, like Rescher (see footnote 99), he suggests that the basis for upholding logic and rationality is practical. In particular the first justification is communicative, for if one is not rational then linguistic communication would not take place. “Scientism includes rationality, that is, the requirements of clarity and logical consistency. The least we can expect from a philosopher is clear expression and reasons for or against the theses she discusses. A hermetic doctrine, one so meaningless that it is not even false, so that is cannot be rationally debated, does not deserve to be called a philosophy.” Mario Bunge, Evaluating Philosophies (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2012), 24. 105  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 45. 106  Ṭ āhā, 45.

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all of this information flow. As babies, we eat what our parents offer us; as children, we learn what our teachers teach us; as adults, we generally behave based on how the economic and political elite have structured the domains of law, market, and media. Only small portions of these are truly subject to criticism, and in any case, criticism often does not change the situation. In fact, in some cases, acceptance leads to more practical or even more certain knowledge than criticism, especially when criticism is viewed as a continuous and infinite process. Thus, accepting the principles of mathematics aids in the study of the sciences, while endless criticism leaves no room for any beginning. For another example, in the case of friendship or love, good faith and trust enable a relationship to flourish, while doubting and criticizing will lead eventually to the collapse of the relationship. The alternative to absolute criticism would be, Taha suggests, adaptive, contextual, or multi-level criticism, in which the evidence sought at each particular level is suited to that particular level. Hence, the potential objects of criticism will vary from the “regularly criticizable,” to the “practically uncriticizable” higher values.107 In these conceptions, Taha does not seem to have distinguished between “everything can be criticized” and “everything ought to be criticized”; much less “everything ought to be criticized all at once.” Through his considerations though, in effect he does end up with a principle of negation of the latter. The gist of Taha’s falsification of Western rationality is then the following: Islamic rationality should think of goals as much as means, consider nature as a mother and repay her with mercy, while engaging in contextual criticism rather than absolute criticism. Taha assures us that this way, Islamic rationality would lead us to acknowledge and respect the supremacy of nature, and to accept an internally derived but expanded rationality, rather than a narrow one externally imposed by Western cultures. 4.3  Taha on Analysis Rather than “analysis” being a literal translation, the English equivalent to the Arabic term (tafṣı ̄l) used by Taha is “differentiation.” However, what Taha refers to is “seeking further details” and also “separating various elements.”108 In English this is referred to as analysis. In any case, it is a  Ṭ āhā, 45–46.  The meaning of fas ạ l (the root of tafs ı̣ ̄l) can be found in the authoritative and extensive medieval dictionaries of Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-‘Arab, and of Muḥammad Murtaḍa ̄ al-Zabı ̄dı ̄, 107 108

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process that includes identifying particularities and differences, rather than blurring or confusing them. Taha notes that this aspect of analysis is found in many imitative Arab pseudo-modern circles, in which members seek to modernize Islamic philosophy through differentiating or separating between, for example, ethics and politics, gender and identity, or the good and God. The correction proposed by Taha is to move from imitative to creative analysis,109 with regard to the following three tacit application premises of Western modernity: (1) “the difference between modernity and traditions is total,” (1) “the difference between reason and religion is absolute,” and (3) “analysis necessitates the elimination of the holy.”110 Taha provides two counterexamples to falsify the claim that modernity and traditions are totally different. In many religious cultures, the religious heritage is not identical with any religious hierarchy or institutions, such as a church. Hence, the differentiation between modernity and the religious authority of a church does not necessarily impinge upon religion itself; indeed, the absence of a church-like institution in Islamic history would make that differentiation inconceivable. Moreover, total differentiation between past heritage and present modernity assumes an instant and miraculous emergence of actual modernity. However, Taha reminds us, modernity has historical roots in religious reformations, and in religious conceptions such as “perfection” and “brotherhood.”111 In addition, many giant figures directly involved in constructing modernity were also religious persons, such as Erasmus, Martin Luther, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Newton, Pascal, Kant, and Hegel. All this confirms the close relation between present modernity and its past heritage. However, a creative relation to heritage does not prevent one from taking a new and radical direction, something that is not recommended by Taha. Western modernity, Taha suggests, not only rejected the solid bond between modernity and traditions; it also sought to differentiate between religion and reason and viewed religion as irrational. Thus, the premise “differentiation between reason and religion is absolute.” Here, ‘irrational’ may at least have any of the following three meanings: (1) “impossible occurrence,” such as the conjunction of opposites; (2) “inaccessible to Tāj al-ʻArūs Min Jawāhir al-Qāmu ̄s. The fas ạ l entry is available online at https://www. almaany.com/ar/dict/ar-ar/%D9%81%D8%B5%D9%84/ 109  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 47. 110  Ṭ āhā, 48. 111  Ṭ āhā, 49.

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reason,” either because it surpasses it, differs from it, or violates it, such as in the case of the various logical paradoxes; and (3) “what cannot be judged by reason as either true or false,”112 such as with both the paradoxes and the undecidable propositions of logic. For Taha, religion cannot be irrational with respect to the first meaning, since dialectical reasoning may accommodate the conjunction of opposites.113 However, dialectical reasoning is itself philosophically rather problematic.114 Even if one accepts it to some extent, it cannot provide a universal solution to the problems of impossible occurrences and conjunctions of opposites. As to the second meaning of ‘irrational,’ in terms of ‘inaccessible to reason,’ Taha holds that this does not exclude the possibility that there is some “ultra-reason” (or perhaps, “as yet undiscovered reason”) capable of rationally (or ultra-rationally) explaining what may seem for the moment an irrational claim. Just as many puzzles of nature remain unsolved, waiting unremarkably for eventual explanation, Taha believes that a seemingly irrational religious matter—such as the existence of the intangible, invisible religious entity sometimes referred to as ‘spirit’—might have its own eventual rational, or else ultra-rational, explanation. In a similar vein, according to Taha, the third way to understand the ‘irrational,’ in terms of that which cannot be judged as true or as false, neglects the fact that nothing can be classified as rational or irrational per se, there being hardly a conclusive argument for such a distinction.115 What the nature of ultra-reason might be and how it is actualized are questions to which Taha does not provide answers. Entertaining the ultra-­ possible might be interesting, yet it does not offer any real basis for knowledge. Indeed, in the past, biologists did not know how conception and pregnancy worked, now they do; astronomers could not understand why  Ṭ āhā, 51.  Ṭ āhā, 51. 114  Mario Bunge, Scientific Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 41–63. 115  Contrary to Ṭ āhā’s somewhat defeatist view, in the introduction to vol. 5 of his Treatise (Exploring the World, Dordrecht: Reidel, 5), with characteristic optimism Mario Bunge notes that the question What is rationality? is an active subject of modern epistemological and sociological research. He has provided his own contributions in various works over the years, including a multi-faceted analysis in “Seven Desiderata of Rationality,” in J.  Agassi and I. C. Jarvie, Eds., Rationality: The Critical View (The Hague: Nijhoff). See also vol. 7, part I, of his Treatise (Epistemology and Methodology III: Philosophy of Science and Technology, Dordrecht: Reidel, Chapter 1; especially p. 73). 112 113

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the planets orbited the sun, and now they can. In both cases, what transformed the rationally unexplained into the rationally explained was not some spiritual ultra-reason, but logically meticulous and materially based reasoning. Taha’s ultra-rationality does not help in these cases; mundane rationality, innovative theorizing, and discovery of new evidence are sufficient for the time being. Moreover, religious people can give equal opportunity to Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, and Karma, which are not similar entities and which do not lead to entirely compatible conclusions. Finally, Taha holds that the modernistic claim, “analysis necessitates the elimination of the holy,” unduly identifies magic with the holy.116 According to Taha, magic “glorifies what is embodied in the world, while the holy glorifies what transcends the world.”117 In this view, although natural laws may unveil the magic of the world, they do not reveal the holy. The world is not only a phenomenon waiting for natural science to unveil; it is also an opportunity for reflection and the increase of scientific understanding, both of which may also increase a sense of the holy. In Islam, the holy is based on the notion that the human is a “connected being,” related to different worlds. Such connectedness enables the human being to “travel by his imagination through times, spaces, and even through non-spatiotemporal realms.”118 The elimination of the holy leads to loss of meaning, distrust of the world in times of disaster, and continuous fear of death, all of which have led the Western man to deny himself a meaningful and secure life, and a peaceful death.119 Islamic analysis does not create substantive differences, since everything is viewed as intrinsically connected. Therefore, any correct differentiation should rather be “functional and consequential rather than ontological.”120 Taha’s position with regard to the holy might result in nothing but openness to imagination and hope. One may admit that those are no small nothings: let us not forget that imagination and hope can help us persevere in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulty and increase the chance of success. Nevertheless, these traits are not exclusively Islamic and do exist in both other religions and non-religious worldviews, without being necessarily related to a mythical and supernatural holy. Thus,  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 52.  Ṭ āhā, 52. 118  Ṭ āhā, 53. 119  Ṭ āhā, 53–54. 120  Ṭ āhā, 54. 116 117

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scientists readily distinguish between conceptual analysis—which is epistemological, not ontological—and, for example, chemical analysis, which does actually involve separating a compound into its constituents. According to Taha, Islamic analysis should emerge from within a given heritage rather than ignore it; understand the (seemingly) irrational rather than discard it; and abide by the holy, in order to avoid enslaving nature, or being fascinated by its magic. 4.4  Taha on Universality Universality, another of the principles of the spirit of modernity, has the two foundations of extensibility and generalizability. As described in Sect. 3.3, ideal modernity extends from thoughts to actions, from law to morality, from nature to humanity, while actual modernity generalizes the political economy and cultural reality of the West to all parts of the world. With regard to Westernization, Taha suggests a procedure that moves from imitative to creative extensibility,121 and from imitative to creative generalizability.122 For Taha, the way in which the Arab-Islamic world imitates Western modernity in the age of globalization is disappointing:123 there is a massive expansion of the modernity of machines, accompanied by a prevailing backwardness in the modernization of education, along with ethical degradation. In such circumstances, there is neither efficient management nor fruitful invention. Without “internal self-struggle” (mujāhada), there is no freedom of thought; and without freedom of thought, the scientific spirit and technological innovation would not exist. 4.4.1

 aha on the General Imitativeness of Today’s T Arab-Islamic Modernity Taha mourns this disappointing general situation of today’s imitative Arab-Islamic modernity, which he sees as based on three false premises: (1) “modernity is destiny,” (2) “modernity yields absolute power,” and (3) “the essence of modernity is economic.”124 The first premise promotes the idea that modernity is the natural outcome of historical progress and that humankind has no power to  Ṭ āhā, 55.  Ṭ āhā, 61. 123  Ṭ āhā, 54. 124  Ṭ āhā, 55. 121 122

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circumvent either its advantages or its disadvantages—as if modernity were predetermined, either by divine will or by natural law.125 Moreover, modernity is presented as a complex and interconnected phenomenon in which any correction of its disadvantages would wreck its advantages. For example, if there were no pollution, there would be no industrialization; and if there were no urbanization, with its associated alienation and crime, there would be no focused and specialized workforce. Therefore, modernity and its maladies must be maintained as is without alteration.126 In response to such a fatalist understanding, Taha posits that the Western version of modernity is rather a contingent and extrinsic phenomenon, whose essential cause is nothing but the human will. Hence, if humankind had the power to establish Western modernity, it also has the power to reform it. “The human being is more powerful than modernity” and can change any alleged destiny.127 As to the second premise, if we assume that “modernity yields absolute power,”128 we have to acknowledge that this power is material, not spiritual. No wonder then, Taha asserts, that such one-dimensional power seeks to prevent the majority of the world’s population—the so-called third-world nations—from moving forward to prosperity, by plotting against their economic interests and national sovereignty. Taha accuses Western modernity of producing the dangerous combination of material power with severe spiritual and ethical degradation.129 Islamic modernity should establish the materiality of human life on the basis of its spirituality, not the other way around. Only then will it be possible to preserve the ideals of early modernity, such as liberty, fraternity, equality, dignity,130 and tolerance. I have to pause here. In his proposals for Islamic modernity, Taha calls for an Islamic spirituality as if it were an obviously clear set of ideas and  Ṭ āhā, 56.  Ṭ āhā, 56. 127  Ṭ āhā, 56. 128  Ṭ āhā, 57. 129  Ṭ āhā, 59. 130  Dignity is understood in Arabic (al-karāmah) as the combination of respect for the human body, keeping it from injury; and respect for the human self, keeping it from humiliation and denigration. Dignity is not often spoken of as an ideal of the Enlightenment or modernity (but see, e.g., the Preamble, and Articles 1 and 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; United Nations, 1948, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-­ human-rights/); nevertheless its intersection with the ideals of freedom and human rights makes it highly relevant. 125 126

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practices subject to traditional consensus. He does so without alluding to the massive, fifteen-century-long controversies and contradictions between the three scholastic domains of law, theology, and mysticism. These scholastic domains involve in particular the coherence of text-based practices (as in the laws of fiqh), the consistency of theory-based metaphysics (as in the theology of kalam), and the harmony of intention-based ethics (as in the psychotherapy of mysticism or tasawwuf ).131 Not only are these Islamic fields of law, theology, and mysticism competitors,132 but each one has extremely divergent doctrines within itself, with deep disagreements over how to set the agenda for an Islamic spirituality.133 In later works, Taha provides a more substantial response to this acknowledged shortcoming (see Chap. 10). Enough though of chiding Taha on this point,134 and back to his critique. With regard to the third premise, if the essence of modernity is economic, then according to Taha, consumption and pleasure become the most important goals,135 rather than higher and more integral human goals such as intellectual and aesthetic rights, and well-being. He emphasizes that the ethical essence of the human being requires “elevating values” and “extending imagination into the future,” which Taha calls al-istiqbal (lit. seeking the future, or ‘futuration’).136 The perfectibility of al-istiqbal provides the ability to better one’s condition and succeed economically, while still seeking more integral purposes and better prospects for the future, the latter being the core of ‘futuration.’ Contrary to the widely held claim of an absolute contradiction between the modern economy and religion, progress is in fact rooted in the religious notions of  Obiedat, “Identity Contradictions in Islamic Awakening,” 338–39.  Muḥamad ‘Ā bid Jābirı ̄ provides a detailed account in his Bunyat al-‘Aql al-‘Arabı ̄ (Beirut: Markaz Dirāsāt al-Wahdah al-‘Arabiyyah, 1986). 133  Abdelmadjid Charfi, Islam: Between Divine Message and History, trans. David Bond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 101–10. 134  Ṭ āhā does further elaborate the moral details of such Islamic spirituality in his three-­ volume project, Dı ̄n al-Ḥ aya ̄’ (lit. the religion of decency), along with the political framework in his other work, Rūḥ al-Dı ̄n: Min Ḍ ı ̄q al-‘Almāniyya ilā Sa‘at al-I’timāniyya (lit. The Spirit of Religion: From the Narrowness of Secularism to the Spaciousness of Fidelity). The details of such Islamic spirituality were overlooked in his modernization proposals. 135  In fact, the economic activities are production, consumption, trade, and finance, while pleasure is not one of them. The idea that the purpose of all these activities is pleasure is ill-­ conceived, for attributing a single motivation to the billions of diverse individuals and uncounted processes that contributed to the evolution of economic activity. 136  “Al-istiqbāl”, Ṭ āhā, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 60. 131 132

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perfectibility and ‘futuration,’137 which unfortunately “tend to disappear in the face of the stealthy and exclusive economic claims to future progress and advancement of life.”138 Taha’s objections to economic modernity have already been raised in Western circles. Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (1989), Benjamin Friedman’s The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (2005), or Erich Fromm’s Life Between Having and Being (1998), to name but a few, point to the same problems as those raised by Taha, for whom Islamic modernity should not be limited to material progress but also provide an extension into spirituality and morals. Thus, while Taha is correct in his criticism of Western modernity, he fails to adequately acknowledge either the objections or the remedies which have been proposed by critics from within Western modernity itself, throughout its long history. 4.4.2

 aha on the Spread of the Political Economy and Culture T of the West The second feature of actual modern universality is the generalization, or spread, of the political economy and cultural reality of the West to all parts of the world. In response, again Taha proposes moving from the imitative to the creative,139 focusing on the following three tacit false principles of the Western experience: (1) “modernity is the sole protector of individuality,” (2) “secularism is the only way to preserve all religions,” and (3) “the values of actual modernity are universal.”140 With regard to the first principle, Taha notes that there is “a strong consensus that one of the peculiar outcomes of modernity is individualism,” to mean that the individual alone “chooses his destiny, shapes his life, and takes responsibility for his actions.”141 Additionally, the individual, in actual modernity, makes society into a means for happiness and the utmost flourishing of the individual self. Yet for Taha, there is no necessary link between the values of individual destiny and flourishing, and individualism as such—to mean selfishness or self-centeredness. Although in its early stages modernity enabled humans to gain dignity and basic rights, and thus to facilitate individual participation in the formation of integral  Ṭ āhā, 60.  Ṭ āhā, 60. 139  Ṭ āhā, 61. 140  Ṭ āhā, 62. 141  Ṭ āhā, 62. 137 138

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social welfare,142 this did not mean that the individual’s concern should be only for their own self. The individual, Taha suggests, is a view of the ‘actual,’ whereas the human is a view of the ‘ought to be.’143 Therefore, an ideal Islamic modernity would call for “a global human society,” which cannot be realized on the basis of irresponsible and selfish individualism. A global human society cannot be based on Descartes’ individualistic cogito, but rather on what Taha calls “transitive reason,” for which to think is to know that your thinking always has consequences for others.144 A cooperative global society is a much-needed project in today’s highly interrelated world. The narrowness of individualism is neither derived from the ideals of modernity, nor capable of serving as the basis of global society. According to Taha, rather than in Western individualism, the universal attitude toward humanity, regardless of race, color, territory, religion, or language, finds itself at home in the history of Islam across the African, European, and Asian continents. This is evident in the narrative attributed to the founder of Islam: O people, your Lord is one and your father Adam is one. There is no virtue of an Arab over a foreigner [non-Arab], nor a foreigner over an Arab, and neither white over black nor black over white, except by righteousness. Have I not delivered the message?” They said, “Of course.145

Taha notes that Islam accepts equally not only all these human pluralities. It is also welcoming to animals, and even to unknown creatures beyond humans and animals, likewise inanimate objects known and unknown, since Islam is the submission of creation to the creator. Taha regrets that traditionalist Muslim thinkers presently minimize the generalizability of the Islamic spirit by adopting an ideologically and politically defensive attitude.146 Instead, he strives for an existential openness that reverses imitative and artificial restrictions on generalizability.  Ṭ āhā, 62.  Ṭ āhā, 62. 144  Ṭ āhā, 63. 145  The original prophetic narrative in Arabic has the number 23536 at Musnad al-Imām Aḥmad Ibn Ḥ anbal (Cairo: Mu’ssast Qurṭubah, 2011) Vol. 5, 411. The English translation above is quoted from: “Farewell Sermon: No One Is Superior to Another Except by Good Deeds,” Daily Hadith Online, January 4, 2016, https://bit.ly/2PfyvDu. 146  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 61. 142 143

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4.4.3 Taha on the Relationship Between Modernity and Secularism Taha observes that some thinkers not only identify modernity with secularism, but are also convinced that secularism is the only way to preserve all religions. The spread of modernity to most nations seems to have eased the task of religions by “taking away from them the management of the economic and political order,”147 thus preserving their sacred status. Taha sees this shift as contempt for religion rather than appreciation of it. Besides, equating all religions is just like equating all philosophies, ideologies, and lifestyles: it leads to oversimplification and great injustice. Moreover, some see secularism as the end of the authority of the church, while others see it as the end of Christianity, the end of religion itself, and even the disappearance of God.148 Taha’s suggestion is to find out how applying the Islamic understanding and experience of the holy is more rational than the irrationality that has overwhelmed the history of other religions in the West.149 Preserving the holy at work in Islam provides what he calls “valuational rationality,”150 which is an essential complement to the “instrumental rationality of secularism.” Instrumental rationality refers to things rather than to living creatures, let alone humans, whereas preserving the holy of religion calls for humanized or valuational rationality: a rational evaluation, appreciation, and ordering of values, and so a rational understanding of what is and is not truly valuable. Valuational rationality takes into account what is rational at the highest level of all possible rationalities; thus, it alone is capable of liberating humans from the influence of mechanical mentality, and enabling peaceful communication with others.151 Valuational rationality is the ideal that preserves the sacredness of religion. Taha’s proposal claims to be more rational and to go beyond the irrational reaction against science and philosophy that has overwhelmed the history of other religions in the West. And yet, valuational rationality cannot be a way of ignoring the irrationality that has overwhelmed the history of Muslims themselves: what Taha accepts for other religions has to apply to Islam as well. If he seeks allegiance to his internal cultural idea in favor  Ṭ āhā, 64.  Ṭ āhā, 63–64. 149  Ṭ āhā, 64. 150  The expression ‘aqlāniyyat al-āya ̄t used by Ṭ āhā refers to the godly signs of the world from which values can be derived. A ̄ ya ̄t, that is, signs, is a frequently used notion in the Koran. 151  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 65. 147 148

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of Muslim peoples, then constructive criticism should not destroy this allegiance. Taha’s proposal of valuational rationality should not lead to a blind preservation of the presumed holiness of all religious traditions.152 Truth has to be preserved over the wishes of cultural peculiarities, even when it clashes with one’s religious traditions. 4.4.4 Taha on the Presumed Universality of Western Values As to the notion that the values of actual Western modernity are universal, Taha again points to the difference between the spirit of modernity and its actualizations. Most people would agree, for example, that justice, liberty, and dignity153 are universal values of central concern to the advocates of modernity;154 yet, their implementations are not always adequate. Economic exploitation, environmental degradation, colonialism, racial segregation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, corporate supremacy, and multinational wars all characterize the history of actual modernity. Too often, what passes for universal modernity is rather “a Western locality that has been raised up to universality by mere authority and nationalist arrogance,”155 a result of imposing the singularity of a Western model of modernity on the plurality of its spirit. Taha takes as an example the variation in human rights legislation across the Unites States, Germany, and Japan: the first stresses economic rights, the second focuses on political rights, and the third emphasizes cultural rights.156 A truly contextual universality would apply modern ideals to their proper context, especially when the context is not a Western one. Taha concludes that an Islamic universal modernity has to seek “transitive reason” that believes in global cooperation rather than individualism, “valuational rationality” rather than secularism, and “contextual universality” rather than Western locality. Taha’s conceptual theorizing is certainly beautiful on the basis of ideals. However, taking all together the overwhelming pattern of non-­ constitutional Muslim autocrats, the contemporary Islamic sectarian strife,

152  In a more recent work, Taha overcame this shortcoming by critiquing the current Saudi and Iranian models of Islamic governance, as well as the Sunni and Shi‘i strife of the past. Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Thughu ̄r al-Mura ̄bat ̣ah: Muqa ̄rabah Iʼtimānı ̄yah li-Ṣira ̄ʻāt al-­ Ummah al-Ḥ āliyyah (Rabat, Morocco: Maghārib lil-Dirāsāt fı ̄ al-Ijtimāʻ al-Insānı ̄, 2018). 153  See footnote 130. 154  Ṭ āhā, 65. 155  Ṭ āhā, 65. 156  Ṭ āhā, 66.

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and the religious fanaticism of various Islamic movements, would show such theorizing dimly relevant to social problem solving. 4.5  Taha on Maturity The maturity or autonomy characteristic of the spirit of modernity is based on independence and creativity. Independence pertains to relations with others, while creativity enables one to invest in and cultivate one’s own powers. Taha urges his fellow Arab intellectuals interested in philosophy to not let others think and philosophize on their behalf. On the contrary, “thinking is one’s own responsibility.”157 Accordingly, he unveils three tacit assumptions related to the Western implementation of the ideal of independence. All of these revolve around the concept of wisayah,158 which can be translated as guardianship (or supervision, oversight, patronage, paternalism). Thus the problematic Western implementation of independence results from the following three claims, as unveiled by Taha: (1) “the guardianship of powerful nations over small and weak nations is the civilized man’s responsibility,” (2) “the internal guardianship of religious clergy is a harmful one,” and (3) “liberation from the internal forms of guardianship paves the way to modernity.”159 During the colonial era, Britain, France, Italy, and other colonial powers introduced themselves—after bloody invasions—as protectors of the less powerful nations they had conquered. Taha finds an analogous situation today, with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as supreme guardians of the world’s unjust order.160 In fact, the motive for colonialism was political domination and economic exploitation, rather than genuine care and disinterested philanthropic responsibility for the rest of the world. Hence the first claim, that “the external guardianship of powerful nations over weak and small nations is the civilized man’s responsibility,” is rather destructive of the autonomous management of a nation’s wealth, power, and culture. The same holds for the second claim, that the internal guardianship of religious clergy is a harmful one, since Islamic history does not show an overall domination of the religious class over political and economic life, with the theocracy of Iran being only a recent  Ṭ āhā, 36.  Wis ạ ̄yah. 159  Ṭ āhā, 36. 160  Ṭ āhā, 36. 157 158

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exception. Interestingly, micro-tribal and macro-oligarchic powers were regularly in charge throughout most of Islamic history, which made religious ideology a beneficial force, in favor of civil society resistance and political opposition to the oppressive governing elite.161 Liberation in this case should be from tribal, oligarchic, and state constraints on civil society. This liberation should be supported by Islamic legal-ethical scholastic training,162 not from overcoming an imagined religious class. Hence, in the case of Islamic societies attempting to modernize, liberation from traditional Islamic guardianship only defeats the attempt. Modernity in the Islamic context should be liberation, not from internal religious movements, but from state and external guardianship. Although in many ways valid, what Taha proposes concerning independence cannot be allowed to stand without qualification. It is not always true that all elements of the internal culture promote independence from tribal and oligarchic economic-political domination. In the Middle Ages, mystic orders163 in Egypt and greater Syria were accused of being protectors of the feudal elite. Another example is the religious-legal verdict (fatwa) prohibiting demonstrations, issued by the Committee of Highest Scholars164 in today’s Saudi Arabia. Such prohibition is puzzling for anyone with a minimum knowledge of Islamic law, who wonders about the justification for that in the Koran or in the prophetic traditions. The point here is that not every element in the internal religious tradition is compatible with the current interests of contemporary Muslim peoples. Even Taha’s own theorizing would not be accepted by a great number of the traditionalists he defends uncritically, who would deem his understanding of the spirit of modernity too philosophical and Westernized. Taha does criticize current Islamic movements in a small book—originally a conference paper—with the title Modernity and Resistance,165 published in 2007,

161  Wael B. Hallaq, Sharı ̄ʻa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012), 539. 162  For a historical account of this civil society scholastic movement, see Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 163  Such as Al-tụ ruq al-ṣu ̄fiyyah. 164  In Arabic: Hay’at kiba ̄r al-‘ulamā’. 165  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah wal-Muqa ̄wamah (Beirut: Ma‘had al-M‘ārif al-Ḥ ikmiyyah, 2007), 80.

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one year after his Spirit of Modernity.166 Yet, this criticism is neither detailed nor comprehensive. The final move suggested by Taha is from imitation to “the creative creativity.”167 While acknowledging the redundancy in the expression, he justifies it as opposition to the attitude some Arab modernists adopt when they claim that their mere copying and imitation of the West is an act of creativity.168 He highlights the following three objectionable notions: (1) “the most creative of creativity is absolute disconnection from the heritage,” (2) “creativity creates needs as well as satisfies them,” and (3) “the most genuine creativity is where the self flourishes the most.”169 To be sure, disconnection with a past that “exhausted its potentials of creativity”170 in the present and the future is quite in order. And yet, Taha asks, can creativity ever take place with no reference to a historical background, chain of causalities, and precedents from the heritage on which to build? Taha holds that modernization is not a time-related process that increases with the increase of disconnection with the past; rather, it is an ideal-related endeavor that increases with the increasing fulfillment of those ideals.171 Therefore, sometimes the most creative can be, ironically, the most connected with past cultures. This might explain why the Platonist and Aristotelian literatures are still under contemplation, given their relevance to many of humanity’s challenges. Hardly any philosophy could be proud of claiming total disconnection with ancient Greek wisdom. The claim that creativity creates needs as well as satisfies them makes reference to an increase in material needs and desires, without a concomitant increase in spiritual needs. For Taha, this situation is clearly unbalanced: it results from a marketing endeavor that does not fulfill any particular virtue, whose only aim is to attract more customers. An increase in spiritual needs, in the need to fulfill virtues, that is to say in the need for 166  After the completion of the first draft of this work in 2010, Taha published in his later book Rūḥ al-Dı ̄n, 2012 (lit. the spirit of religion), a lengthy, detailed criticism of contemporary Islamic movements within the sunnı ̄ or shı ̄‘ı ̄ sects, and in the traditional or reformist moods of thinking. Also, in his Thughu ̄r al-Mura ̄baṬ ah in 2018, Taha extends his criticism to the problematic forms of governmental Islam promoted by the Iranian and Saudi states since the 1980s. His crossing of the red lines of political criticism seems motivated by the Iranian and Saudi attempts to abort the Arab Spring. More on this in Chap. 10. 167  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 39. 168  Ṭ āhā, 38. 169  Ṭ āhā, 39. 170  Ṭ āhā, 39. 171  Ṭ āhā, 39–40.

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the valuable, would invert the situation. Instead of having the individual fall prey to massive waves of advertising, the need for the valuable would intensify personal responsibility and independence. Thus, creativity should work out a balance between material and valuational needs as much as satisfy them.172 As to the claim that the most genuine creativity exists where the self flourishes the most, one should not forget that the self, being a social being, can never flourish without the flourishing of a partner, family, or community. Selfishness and excessive individualism undermine the basis of the self. As a result, the most genuine creativity should be where the self flourishes proportionally and harmoniously with others, because self and others are the two components of society. The conclusion of Taha’s stance on creativity is that ideal Islamic creativity should enhance connection with the vital past rather than sever it, create a need for the valuable, and enhance consideration of the social other as much as the individual self. For Taha, the imitative-creative distinction applies to all aspects of the foundations of the spirit of modernity.

5   Conclusion Taha’s contribution to the modernization of Arab-Islamic philosophy can be summed up as a matter of on the one hand unearthing the hidden premises underlying the problematic implementation of Western modernity, and on the other of his proposed alternative premises, based on the ideal spirit of modernity. This with the fundamental contrast between the two versions of the modernization project being one of an imported, external, imitative modernity, versus a creative modernity that emerges internally. We close the chapter with a table summarizing the particulars of this contrast (Table 5.1).

 Ṭ āhā, 40.

172

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Table 5.1  Summary of the contrasting premises underlying Western-imitative and Islamic-creative implementations of the spirit of modernity, according to Taha Foundation of the Spirit of modernity

Tacit principles of the Western-imitative implementation

Taha’s proposed principles of a creative-Islamic implementation

Rationality

Reason reasons everything

Rationality is a compromise between means and ends Man repays Mother Nature with mercy Mature criticism is judicious

All nature can be mastered by Man Everything ought to be criticized Analysis

The difference between modernity and heritage is absolute The difference between reason and religion is absolute Analysis leads to elimination of the sacred

Modernity and heritage are inseparable

Modernity is destiny Modernity yields absolute power The essence of modernity is economic

Human will is more powerful than modernity Absolute power is the connection of the material with the spiritual The essence of any modernity should be ethical

Generalizability

Modernity is the sole protector of the individual Secularism is the only way to preserve all religions The values of local, Western modernity are universal

Cooperative global society gives better protection Valuational rationality is more balanced Admitting contextuality is a more modest path to universality

Independence

Guardianship of the third world is the developed world’s responsibility Religious clergy provide nothing but malignant guardianship Modernity is liberation from the native culture

Ideal modernity seeks liberation from all foreign paternalism

Extensibility

The religious (seemingly) irrational needs to be understood rather than discarded The sacred, through imagination and hope, can prevail, so as to tame nature rather than to enslave it

Islamic religious resistance is nothing but a liberation movement in the Arab world Ideal modernity seeks allegiance to native culture (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) Foundation of the Spirit of modernity

Tacit principles of the Western-imitative implementation

Taha’s proposed principles of a creative-Islamic implementation

Creativity

Modernity is absolute disconnection from all past Modernity is the creation of material needs Modernity is the flourishing of the individual

Ideal modernity seeks connection with the vital past Ideal modernity creates a need for values as much as for material things Ideal modernity considers the social other as much as the self

CHAPTER 6

A Modern View of the Nature of Reality and a Premodern Counterpoint: The Scientific Ontology of Mario Bunge and Five Religious Counter-arguments for the Existence of a Deity

This chapter presents a detailed exposition, and defense, of the scientific view of the nature of reality. That is to say, it presents one portion of the scientific worldview, its ontology or metaphysics. In line with the leitmotifs of this book, the philosophical systems of Taha Abd al-Rahman and Mario Bunge, this is done with the help of Bunge’s contribution to scientific ontology. The scientific view of reality contrasts with monotheistic religious ones holding that our world—to mean the physical universe—is only a partial or temporary phase, to be transcended in the afterlife. To elaborate this contrast, this chapter also presents a religious counterpoint to Bunge’s ontology, in the form of five traditional religious arguments for the existence of a deity. The scientific worldview contrasts just as starkly with the postmodern worldview that “reality”—the need for quote marks being a postmodern touch—is merely a human projection of conflicting discourses and “grand narratives,” never to be revealed but merely talked about, some matter of desire, play, and power.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_6

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These contrasts, of the scientific with the pre- and the postmodern, have a crucial role in our Arab-Islamic and Western philosophical conversation, for as we have seen in the previous chapter, Taha’s philosophizing, as with Islamic thinking in general, relies considerably on spiritualism, while the third and failed but consequential stage of the modernization journey of Islamic philosophy was considerably influenced by postmodern ideas.

1   Metaphysics, or Ontology The term “metaphysics” grew up in some confusion. Originally it referred to “the things after the Physics,” the Physics being a chapter in Aristotle’s works, and the things after the Physics being those matters discussed in the chapter that followed. With that later chapter being concerned with being as such, it was only a short step for some to have the meaning transform into “the things that transcend physics.” For our purposes we can consider, along with Nicholas Rescher, that metaphysics is the investigation of the world, existence, or being “at the highest level of generality.”1 Mario Bunge’s view is at most only subtly different: “Metaphysics, or ontology, is the study of the most basic and general problems about the universe and the mind.”2 In fuller form: Metaphysics is general cosmology or general science: it is the science concerned with the whole of reality—which is not the same as reality as a whole. […] In other words, metaphysics studies the generic (nonspecific) traits of every mode of being and becoming, as well as the peculiar features of the major genera of existents.3 ontology is general science and the factual sciences are special metaphysics. In other words, both science and ontology inquire into the nature of things but, whereas science does it in detail and thus produces theories that are open to empirical scrutiny, metaphysics is extremely general and can be checked solely by its coherence with science.4 1  N. Rescher, Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realistic Perspective (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006), 13. 2  Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2010), 8. 3  Mario Bunge, Ontology I: The Furniture of the World. Vol. 3, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977), 5. 4  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 16. Emphasis in the original.

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Early on in the modern history of the term, in the introduction to J.  Clauberg’s (1622–1665) metaphysics, the Prolegomena to his Opera omnia philosophica published in 1656, Clauberg treated metaphysics as a science that deals in a general and abstract way with Aristotle’s physical objects.5 Thus, in continuity from Clauberg’s early view to Rescher’s and Bunge’s contemporary versions, contrary to any idea of transcendence, metaphysics is not about things beyond or independent of physics; rather, it builds upon physics and the other special sciences as a second-order reflection. Nevertheless, Bunge emphasizes that some extremely general questions in science are also special problems in metaphysics, and more generally that there is no clear-cut border between the two.6 Rather than metaphysics, Bunge more often uses the term ontology.7 For Bunge, doing ontology is a matter of studying the nature or structure of reality.8 While some distinguish ontology as being only a part of metaphysics, Bunge identifies the two—or at least considers any difference to involve disreputable possible meanings of the broader term.9 We shall adopt Bunge’s usage and use the two terms interchangeably. Ontology—the study, or theories, of the nature of reality—is not only interesting and important for its own sake. It is further important because it underlies both epistemology and ethics, that is, theories of knowing and acting. As the German philosopher of culture Peter Sloterdijk (b. 1947)

 Johann Clauberg, Opera omnia philosophica (Hildesheim, Germany: Olms, 1968).  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 19–22. 7  The first occurrence of the word in German goes back to the reformed Marburg philosopher Rudolph Goclenius (1547–1628), in his Lexicon Philosophicum (1613; new edition: Hildesheim 1964, article abstractio, 16). Maurice Boutin (1938–2019), my professor at McGill University, kindly brought to my attention that the term is reiterated in the work of one of Goclenius’ disciples, the Reformed theologian Johann Heinrich Altstedt (1588–1638) in his Encyclopaedia (1630; new edition 1990, article “Ontologia”). The Oxford English Dictionary defines ontology as “The science or study of being” and determines the first occurrence in English of ‘ontology’ to be 1663, in G. Harvey’s Archelogia Philosophica Nova (I. 18): “Metaphysics […] is called also the first Philosophy, from its nearest approximation to Philosophy, its most proper Denomination is Ontology, or a Discourse of Being” (entry on ontology at http://www.oed.com/). See also K.  Kramer, article “Ontologie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984), 1189–1198. 8  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, xii. 9  Bunge, 1–12. 5 6

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said, “There is no ethics possible as long as logic remains ignored and ontology unclear.”10 Or as Bunge says in fuller form: I expect philosophers to tell us something interesting about the world, as well as about our knowledge of it or our place in it. That is, a philosophy proper is organized around an ontology or metaphysics: a theory of change and invariance, space and time, cause and chance, body and mind, person and society, and so on. I submit that a philosophy without ontology is spineless, just as it is confused without logic and semantics, headless without epistemology, and limbless without a practical philosophy.11

Bunge distinguishes between the questions “what does the world consist in?” and “what does the world consist of?”. The former asks about the kinds of things that make up the world, while the latter asks for an inventory of particulars.12 Bunge abstains from offering the latter, for being a job for the special sciences. The fundamental questions of ontology concern then what kinds of things exist (perhaps matter or perhaps spirit or perhaps some neutral substance; likewise things or forms or ideas, atoms or wholes or systems, mind or body or soul, fields or particles or strings; space, time, whatever else), and what is the nature of that existence (perhaps static or in flux, impermanent or eternal, lawful or capricious, isolated or connected, independent or relational, passive or active, sacred or profane). Answers to such questions concerning the nature of existence have fundamental practical implications. If there is an afterlife better than the present life should we chase it rather than postpone it; if the latter, to cure illness should we pray or meditate or heal the body; do we exist for the benefit of society or it for ours, and if the latter, to improve it should we work from top down (holistic perspective) or bottom up (atomistic perspective) or both or neither; to win at life can we take matters into our own hands, or are we forced to gamble. In such ways, inquiry into the nature of being helps with inquiry into knowing and acting. The triad of being, knowing, and acting—or the domains of ontology, epistemology, and ethics—is fundamentally and in sum, a worldview. Thus, we may say 10  Quoted in Maurice Boutin, “The Current State of the Individual: A Meditation on ‘The Falling Man,’ a Photo Taken by Richard Drew,” Toronto Journal of Theology 23/2 (2007), 173–182; p. 179. 11  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 3. 12  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 152.

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that the question of the nature of existence is the fundamental question of any worldview construction. A classic controversy over how we may proceed with our ontological inquiry into the nature of the world is that between the epistemological doctrines of rationalism and empiricism. Rationalists assert that reason is the foundation of knowledge, while empiricists assert that the foundation is instead sense experience. The most extreme varieties of these views are naive rationalism and naive empiricism: reason or experience respectively give us full and direct truths about the world. We are told by some authoritative historians of philosophy that Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) succeeded in resolving the controversy between rationalism and empiricism, through his ‘critical rationalist’ synthesis.13 The gist of the Kantian resolution is that it splits the credit between reason and the senses, whereby the senses provide qualia, that is, subjective experiences of phenomena, which reason interprets in terms of space, time, and causality, in turn understood through the Kantian twelve categories.14 In this way, neither the senses nor reason would dominate knowledge; both would have their limits and role. Crucially though, in the Kantian view, we can never get beyond our understanding of the thing for us to achieve knowledge of the thing in itself. The problem with this resolution is its inability to respond to the fundamental question: what is the nature of existence? The Kantian response was rather to switch to a different question: how is knowledge formulated? Kant was aware of this shortcoming when he formulated his view that we cannot know things in themselves (noumena), but only as they appear to us (phenomena). This doctrine is known as (epistemological) phenomenalism. At one time Bunge held Kant to be only an epistemological 13  Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy from the French Enlightenment to Kant (NY: Image Book, 1993), 428. 14  These twelve categories are (1) Quantity of Judgment: universal, particular, and singular; (2) Quality of Judgment: affirmative, negative, and infinite; (3) Relation of Judgment: categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive; and (4) Modality of Judgment: problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic. These categories are Kant’s modification of the standard Aristotelian ones, which are (1) Categories of Quantity: unity, plurality, and totality; (2) Categories of Quality: reality, negation, and limitation; (3) Categories of Relation: substance and accident, cause and effect, and reciprocity between agent and patient; and (4) Categories of Modality: possibility—impossibility, existence—nonexistence, and necessity—contingency. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. J.  M. D.  Meiklejohn (London: Henry G.  Bohn, 1855), 58.

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phenomenalist,15 but later he came to see Kant as adhering to its more extreme form, ontological phenomenalism: “This is the view that, because we rely on perception for factual knowledge, ‘the world itself is a sum of appearances.’”16 Bunge considers Kant’s subjective resolution of the rationalism-­empiricism controversy, and its later continuation in the form of positivism, barren and false: if that were true, physics and chemistry would only employ psychological concepts, and scientists would be inspecting their own minds when claiming to study stars, fruit flies, or business firms. Meanwhile physicists and chemists ignored psychology when crafting or using the concepts of mass, momentum, spin, energy, conductivity, valence, and the like, or when designing and operating experimental devices. And psychologists investigated other people’s brains, behavior, and mental processes instead of indulging in introspection. Navel contemplation may be suitable for mystics and drug addicts, but it does not advance the knowledge of reality. Luckily, scientists did not follow in the steps of Berkeley, Kant, Mill, Comte, Mach, Russell, Whitehead, or Carnap. Instead, they kept investigating matter by the most objective means, namely the scientific method.17

A postmodern version of the subjectivist denial of the reality of the external world was provided by the French critic Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007). On March 29, 1991, shortly after the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf War, Baudrillard published a work entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. In it Baudrillard argued that “the true belligerents are those who thrive on the ideology of the truth of this war.”18 The highly regarded British literary critic, Christopher Norris of Cardiff University, wrote an entire book refuting Baudrillard’s allegation, and its philosophical presumption that television screens—in this example, a window on the world analogous to sense perception—have no external referents.19

15  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 5, Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), 151. 16  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 15. 17  Bunge, 24. 18  Quoted in Christopher Norris, Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals & The Gulf War (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 193 (referring to Jean Baudrillard, La guerre du Golfe n’a pas eu lieu [Paros: Galilee, 1991]). 19  Norris, 192.

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Bunge’s own contribution to ontology is found in his works The Furniture of the World (1977) and A World of Systems (1979), the third and fourth volumes of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Bunge offered that their joint title could be The Structure of Reality. Some three decades later, Bunge revisited his ontology in Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism (2006) and again in Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (2010). Many of his other works also discuss various aspects of ontology, such as his Scientific Materialism (1981). A series of topics loosely selected from the chapter headings and subheadings of Bunge’s Furniture and World of Systems provide the major outlines of our subsequent overview of his ontology: Thing, Property, State, Event, Law, Causality, System, Level, Life, Mind, Society. But first, with the modernization endeavor of Islamic philosophy in mind, we must take a detour: before undertaking to study the nature of the external world, we consider the question of whether there is any such thing at all.

2   Realism Versus Phenomenalism The scientifically inclined philosopher, just as the working scientist, does not wonder whether or not the world exists: both take its existence for granted and proceed to study it. They distinguish between the external world, and information about it. We get basic, albeit imperfect, information about the facts of the external world through sense perception and use this information, together with reason and imagination, to understand and explain those facts. We are not though merely passive receptacles of information. We also act upon the world—and in science, in a controlled and imaginative way—to test our understandings and explanations, by finding or generating new facts. That is to say, we investigate and experiment. Thus, scientific ontology considers a complex interaction between facts, appearances, and the products of reason and the imagination—the last otherwise known as fictions.20 Certain fictions, when organized and disciplined by reason, are the products of the mind known as theory. When further disciplined by experience, and in particular by experiment, they are known as scientific theories. One might say then that a scientific ontology understands reality through phenomena and theory—the latter scientific.

20  Mario Bunge, Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), xxi.

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Or, that ontology attempts, through appearances and fictions, to reach facts; and through facts, to understand things. Nevertheless, a great number of philosophers object to relying on sense perception as an entryway to things in themselves. Bunge holds that versions of this objection, and their adherents include: observation is unnecessary (Plato, Leibniz, Hegel); that there is nothing behind phenomena (Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Renouvier); that no hypothesis should ever be formed (Bacon, Comte, Mach); that guesses need not be checked (Bergson, Husserl, Goodman).21

Bunge counts all of these philosophers as phenomenalists,22 for relying exclusively on the phenomenal side of the Kantian ontological division between phenomenon and noumenon. In his Chasing Reality, Bunge argues against the idea of an unbridgeable divide between the two, with the aid of a parable.23 Once upon a time in the African savanna, the arguments of ontological phenomenalists convinced a young gazelle to deny the reality of lions. The lions had another view: they argued that gazelles were real and discoverable through sense perception, grounded imagination, and verification. Thus, a lion can imagine the existence of a gazelle if it sees a faraway movement of some bushes or smells a certain odor in the darkness of the night. As with the lion, the rest of the gazelle herd denied not reality, but phenomenalism. So, sadly thereafter, the phenomenalist gazelle was first among them to cease to exist, while a lion had a good meal. Bunge has the moral of this story as “appearances are real, but skin deep.”24 The idea is that, contrary to both naive realism and naive empiricism, phenomena are neither pure inventions of the mind nor equated with immediate, complete, and accurate perception. Phenomena do exist, but only as a part of the noumena of the human sensory-nervous system. The world itself “is free of qualia, i.e., colorless, soundless, insipid, and inodorous.”25 Qualia are our tools to access part of the world, but the world is not composed of qualia.

 Bunge, 4.  Bunge, 38. 23  Bunge, 34. 24  Bunge, 81. 25  Bunge, xi. 21 22

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Like phenomenalism (in this one way), philosophical realism is a doctrine with two branches. Ontological realism upholds the independent existence of reality, while epistemological realism upholds our ability to get to know it. The naive variety of ontological realism is that the nature of the world is simple or evident in some way,26 while the naive variety of epistemological realism is the reflection theory of knowledge, that we understand the world just the way it is—rather the opposite of phenomenalism. Bunge is both an ontological and an epistemological realist, but not a naive one: on the contrary, he holds that although we are immersed in reality, our knowledge of it is neither immediate nor direct.27 2.1  Bunge’s Four-Fold Evidence for the Real Existence of the External World Although taken for granted by both the scientifically inclined and by common sense, the existence of an external world, independent of perception or of the mental more generally, has been doubted by prominent philosophers—their prominence often secured by that doubt. George Berkeley (1685–1753), an Irish philosopher and bishop, held that “to be is to be perceived” (esse est percipi). For Berkeley, existential continuity was assured by God’s eternal and universal perception. Philosophical idealists in general hold that the existence of the external world depends in some way upon the mental. Descartes found it more reasonable to take for granted the existence of his thoughts in order to prove the existence of himself, that is, an object of the world, rather than the other way around: “I think, therefore I am.” This, Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, is one of the founding moments of modern Western philosophy, but it has an Islamic precursor in Avicenna (980–1037 CE): we are asked to imagine a man who has come into being all at once, but is prevented from seeing and is floating in space so that he is not able to perceive anything. Avicenna argues that a man in this condition would not be able to affirm the existence of his own body, but would still be certain of his own existence as an individual through self-reflection. Avicenna’s thought

 Bunge, Matter and Mind, 52.  Bunge, Chasing Reality, xiii.

26 27

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experiment has attracted much scholarly attention, in particular because it shows interesting similarities with Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’ argument.28

Contrary to Avicenna or Descartes, many find it impossible to solve the dilemma posed by the Chinese sage, Chuang Chou (Zhuang Zhou): I do not know whether it was Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it was Chou.29 As discussed in Chap. 5, Arab-Islamic philosophy of the third stage was influenced by postmodernism, which delights in such doubts. We may reformulate Chou’s dilemma in a more postmodern style as follows: I thought I was a part of reality, imagining the unreal; what if I am unreal, and only imagining reality? Or does my imagination create all of reality, including myself? Such dilemmas, within a scientific worldview somewhere between nearly incomprehensible and fully nonsensical (what exactly would it mean to be unreal, rather than just to attempt to imagine it?), are nevertheless an ontological challenge to that worldview: there would seem to be no criteria for judging whether reality creates imagination or imagination creates reality—thus leaving an opening for phenomenalism or spiritualism. But according to Bunge, there is at least four-fold evidence for the independent existence of the external world, evidence that dispenses with Chou’s dilemma and its kin, and phenomenalism more generally: error, prediction, control, and discovery.30 2.1.1 Error The experience of error is the most important evidence for the existence of an external reality, against the claim of the absolute constructive power of the imagination. Error confronts the imagination with limits set by an external reality. The seemingly limitless range of imaginative possibilities has as a subset the rational possibilities, those that are consistent with logic or, in other 28  Lorenzo Casini, “‘Quid Sit Anima’: Juan Luis Vives on The Soul and Its Relation to the Body,” Renaissance Studies 24, no. 4 (2010): 500. 29  John M. Koller, Oriental Philosophies (New York: Scribner, 1985), 296. 30  An earlier and highly interesting account of the evidence for reality is found in Bunge’s response to Berkeley’s Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in his “New Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15/2 [Dec. 1954], 192–199); reprinted in M. Bunge, Scientific Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 195–206. The older version is available online at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2103573.pdf.

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words, that do not contradict themselves. The demarcation between the imaginatively possible and the rationally possible is not always completely clear: for example, we are all familiar with lies that may tell truth (artistic fiction), but the concept of a square circle is harder to pin down; while for quite some while in antiquity, the idea of an irrational number31 seemed indeed, irrational. On the other hand, the discovery that the existence of “a barber who shaves all and “only barbers who do not shave themselves” (a version of Russell’s paradox) is rationally impossible was only a relatively recent and shocking development. On the other hand, the actually or factually possible is more restricted. For example, trees do grow rooted in soil, but not in the vacuum of outer space, or floating in the air—or at least, not without further ado. It is imaginatively and rationally possible for me to carry the sun; but me doing that is actually impossible—given my current powers. In turn, it is actually impossible for me to acquire the necessary powers. Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) developed his philosophy of science on the primacy of falsification, falsification only being possible if there is something to falsify, that is, if errors may occur. In Bunge’s view error is not just destructive, but “a major stimulus for engaging in scientific research.”32 Bunge reminds us that before Popper,33 indeed twelve centuries before Descartes’ cogito, Augustine (354–430 CE) proposed this proof of his own existence: “If I err, I am. For he that has no being cannot err, and therefore mine error proves my being. Which being so, how can I err in believing in my being?”34 In short, to err is human, but to err is also existential in that it helps us to separate the real from the unreal. We might merge Descartes’ and Augustine’s statements and say: I err; therefore, I discover existence. 2.1.2 Prediction While error is negative evidence for external reality, there is also positive or affirmative evidence of reality. Figuring out the causes and mechanisms that produce various events consistently and repeatably enables prediction 31  Irrational numbers are those that cannot be expressed as simple fractions, or in other words as ratios of two whole numbers (integers). For example, it was proved in antiquity that the square root of 2 is irrational, and so cannot be expressed in the form of a/b, where a and b are integers (integers being numbers such as ±1, 2, 3). 32  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 45. 33  Bunge, Understanding the World, 121. 34  Saint Augustine (Bishop of Hippo), City of God, ed. R.V.G. Tasker, trans. John Healey (New York, NY: Dutton, 1973), 335.

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of future occurrences of those events. Scientific prediction “may be defined as the deduction of propositions concerning as yet unknown or unexperienced facts, on the basis of general laws and of items of specific information.”35 For example, knowing something of the mechanisms of biological reproduction, we can predict that every pregnant woman will deliver within a range of actual possibilities healthy or unhealthy human offspring, and not a baby octopus or whale. We now know this as more than a mere empirical generalization from experience: the human genome does not include an octopus or whale genome, nor can actually possible mutation produce one within a human pregnancy. Though the contrary eventualities of a woman giving birth to a whale or an octopus are easily imaginable, imagination cannot change the laws of nature. This would not be the case if the world were instead a product of our imagination. Hume, as with the medieval Arabic philosopher al-Ghazali36 introduced earlier (Introduction; see also Chap. 5), opposes the power of causal prediction. Both see causality as merely a habit of the mind. If causality is such then so too is causal prediction. Yet neither Hume nor al-Ghazali would dare jump from a high mountain, even if they imaginatively challenged the habitual convention that humans obey gravity the same as any other object having mass. They know that such a jump would cause their injury or death. The moral, à la Bunge: do not listen to what phenomenalist philosophers say, but look at what they do.37

35  Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, third revised edition (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1979), 307. 36  “Most writers agree that Al-Ghazālı ̄ rejected causality,1 although they differ in their emphases. Fakhri claims that while Al-Ghazālı ̄ rejected ontological causal necessity, he accepted the logical one;2 in Wensinck’s interpretation Al-Ghazālı ̄’s theory regarded Allah as the only agent in the world and thus Al-Ghazālı ̄ attacks causality, although he does not refrain from using the term itself,3 similarly, H. A. Wolfson maintains that Al-Ghazālı ̄ did not accept causality, despite some modes of expression he used.4 The only writer known to me who tries to reevaluate Al-Ghazālı ̄’s views is W. J. Courteney,5 who argued that Al-Ghazālı ̄, like Occam, was misinterpreted on the topic of causality.” In Ilai Alon, “Al-Ghazālı ̄ on Causality,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100, no. 4 (1980): 397, https://doi. org/10.2307/602085. Emphasis and footnote symbols are in the original. 37  Bunge repeats this methodological maxim in various forms and contexts in many books. See, for example, Mario Bunge, From A Scientific Point of View: Reasoning and Evidence Beats Improvisation Across Fields (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 67.

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2.1.3 Control What holds for error and prediction in relation to the external world holds also for control. Through often difficult and lengthy processes involving inquiry and struggle, we are able to achieve control of some things— including ourselves. These processes involve altering external reality based on its own patterns,38 rather than on the constructive powers of our imagination. For if imagination sufficed, why should the processes be so difficult? By studying the breeding characteristics of grapes, we may figure out how to grow seedless grapes. Chou the dreamer may imagine seedless grapes, and even imagine a flavor for them, but by dreaming, he will never be able to grow them. Only by understanding and cultivating actual, not imaginary grapes, can anyone harvest and taste them. 2.1.4 Discovery For millennia, the known planets apart from Earth were five. Was the discovery of other planets due to someone’s imagination, or to the ‘episteme’ of the era, as Michel Foucault (1926–1984) might suggest?39 How do we know that these planets existed prior to being perceived by a human mind? Bunge’s answer would be that such de novo creation violates the fundamental principle of conservation of energy. It further violates a related fundamental principle of science and of Bunge’s ontology, namely Lucretius’ ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing comes nothing).40 And in any case, science also tells us that planetary formation was the result of an ancient process that long predates any discovery by humans. One might say that this evidence is inferential, based on theories. This is true, but surface samples from the moon or from Mars, for example, confirm the premise that planetary formation requires an astronomical number of years. New planets in the solar system did not come into existence because we discovered them; they came into existence via lengthy astrophysical processes, billions of years before their discovery. Likewise, newly discovered cultures and civilizations did not come into existence when explorers or colonizers discovered them; they came into existence via lengthy evolutionary processes, from hunter-gatherer to agricultural to  Bunge, Chasing Reality, xii and 135.  M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (NY: Vintage, 1994), 60 and 83. 40  Nicholas Rescher, “Principia Philosophiae: On the Nature of Philosophical Principles,” The Review of Metaphysics 56, no. 1 (2002), 7. 38 39

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urban societies. Discovery does not create reality; rather, discovery helps to correct and widen imagination of the external world. The rise of quantum mechanics added a new twist to the opposition between the experience of surprising discovery and the phenomenalist stance. The probabilistic nature of the quantum world, as newly discovered, was so surprising and so odd that it led many eminent physicists to come to uphold their own ad hoc versions of phenomenalism.41 They did not seem to realize that the selfsame surprising novelty of their discoveries was in itself a refutation of the subjectivist and phenomenalist conclusions they drew from it. 2.1.5 Reality Upheld In sum, by sorting out our imaginations of nature correct and incorrect, error shows us discrepancies between the two; the long and difficult paths to successful prediction and control show that understanding and changing the world, though not beyond our powers, are not inherently within them; and finally, discovery surprises our imaginations with what no one ever imagined before, confirming that our knowledge of the external world is always incomplete, and demanding of further exploration. These four types of evidence demonstrate our ability to know a portion of the noumenon, which Kant’s phenomenalism denies. Noumena are predictable once we figure out how, alterable once we find the means to do so— and pre-existing reality before we do anything. So much then for our brief refutation of the phenomenalist, and by extension postmodern, views of reality. Although third-stage Islamic philosophy (Chap. 5, Sect. 2) was heavily influenced by postmodernism, traditional Islamic philosophy, as well as its contemporary elaboration by Taha Abd al-Rahman, relies instead on spiritualism. Spiritualism lies fundamentally in opposition to materialism, and contingently to realism. Mario Bunge’s ontology is realist and also materialist, a merger he refers to as hylorealism.42 With that, it is time now to continue our overall Arab-­ Islamic and Western philosophical conversation by returning to a consideration of Mario Bunge’s contrasting scientific ontology.

41  Bunge has analyzed and criticized these views in detail in numerous publications, most comprehensively in his Philosophy of Physics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973). 42  Bunge, Chasing Reality, xiii.

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3   Some Basics of Bunge’s Scientific Ontology The first two chapters of Bunge’s Furniture of the World, on substance and form, are highly technical and abstract considerations concerning mostly the association and combination of individuals, and properties and laws. They include notions as abstract as that of the “null individual,” an item Bunge emphasizes has no real counterpart, but which he proposes to help enable ontological discourse, and for reasons of mathematical systematization. For our purposes, there is no need to examine the material of these chapters, it being enough to just take whatever we need from them as the need arises. Here we start instead with the matters of Furniture’s third chapter. 3.1  Thing Along with the ancient Greek and Indian atomists, medieval nominalists, and Enlightenment materialists, in the most general terms, Bunge considers that the world is composed of things.43 According to this line of thinking, being, existence, or reality is the totality of all things. Facts are either states of things, or events occurring in things, while a process is a succession of events.44 To characterize things, states, and events, Bunge elaborates the Aristotelian thing-property model: “The usual way of characterizing a particular thing is to list its salient properties.”45 The state of a thing then becomes the values of all its properties; an event, a change in any those values. So, for example, one aspect of the state of a person is their temperature, and a particular change in that temperature is an event occurring in that person. Still, Bunge reminds us, “no word is vaguer than thing,”46 as it is used equivocally in various ways. For example, informally, one might note that in Bunge’s ontology, not everything is a thing—some things being instead  Bunge, 9.  The view that reality (or the world) is the totality of things, not facts, is in direct contradiction with that of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), who states in his Tractatus Logico-­ Philosophicus (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1922, 31): “The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” But Wittgenstein later defines facts as “a combination of objects (entities, things)” and adds: “It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact” (p. 31). Bunge notes some circularity here: “So, a fact is a combination of things, but in turn a thing is a part of fact” (Bunge, Chasing Reality, 20). 45  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 15. 46  Bunge, 10. 43 44

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constructs, or in other words ideas thought of abstractly, as if they had an autonomous existence (which in Bunge’s ontology they do not; see below, this section). Then there is the famous question of whether nothing counts as something. Bunge avoids such confusions by starting implicitly with the notion of an object, this being for him the broadest term whose meaning includes, but is not the same as, that of “thing.” Object for Bunge is a primitive term, that is to say a basic one, used without definition, needed to enable ontological discourse to get off the ground. The only eventual characterization of objects offered by Bunge is that “Every object is either a thing or a construct, no object is neither and none is both,”47 and further that there is nothing to be said about objects in general beyond that.48 For Bunge, “things” (or “entities”) are the concrete and material objects, whether simple, complex, or exotic: an atom, an electromagnetic or gravitational field, a car, a human society, a galaxy, the universe as a whole. “Constructs” are immaterial and abstract, such as concepts, propositions, mathematical objects, or theories. They do not really exist independently, rather only as thought processes in brains.49 Instead we pretend that they have an independent existence, to facilitate discourse. The properties that characterize a material object are referred to as substantive, and those that characterize immaterial objects as formal.50 But what is the underlying nature of this dichotomy, between thing and construct, substantial and formal? The classical view proposed by Descartes relies on the distinction between res extensa (extended substance), and its counterpart res cogitans (thinking substance). Thus, for Descartes as with the ancient atomists, the special characteristic of material objects was that they had a definite position and extent in space. Bunge takes a different  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 1977, 117.  In his later Matter and Mind (2010, pp. 267–268), Bunge generalized these ideas somewhat, holding that an object is whatever can be thought about and that every object is either an individual or a property, both of these being undefined. Individuals in this case would be either things or constructs. 49  Whether non-humans are able to think of constructs, such as mathematical objects, is a subject long considered, usually negatively. In more recent times, experiments have shown that, for example, monkeys can do basic arithmetic and chimpanzees can do arithmetic symbolically, with Arabic numerals. See Cantlon J. F. and Brannon E. M., “Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students”, PLoS Biology, no. 5 (2007), e328; Boysen S.T. and Berntson G. G., “Numerical Competence in a Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)”, Journal of Comparative Psychology, no. 103 (1989), 23–31. 50  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 10. 47 48

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view that the Cartesian res extensa applies only to things of one type, that is, solid bodies, and not to things subtle or more complex but still no less real and no less material: electrons, electromagnetic fields, corporations, populations, and more. None of these has a precise shape, position, or volume, and yet they are all still material.51 Solidity is, despite what common sense may tell us, an exception in the universe rather than the norm. Thus, in Bunge’s view, Descartes’ res extensa is not a universal ontological characterization of real things. Bunge finds a better alternative to the Cartesian version of the substantive-formal dichotomy in a sort of inversion of Plato’s idealism. For Plato, whereas ideas are immutable (unchangeable) when considered in themselves, material objects are corruptible (changeable).52 For Plato, forms (or properties) take precedence as ideal objects in themselves, with material objects being just imperfect shadows of these ideals. Bunge’s agreement with Plato, that there is a divide between the ideal and the material, diverges right there, because evidence shows that the immutability of ideas is rather assigned to them by our imaginations, our imaginations in turn being processes in that particular thing known as the human brain. For example, although we may talk about motion in the abstract, there is no motion in itself, but rather only moving objects. Bunge invokes Aristotle to argue “there are no properties without substrata: Every property is a feature, trait, or aspect of some object or other.”53 A conception or idea of motion is immutable in the abstract for being just that particular idea. In reality though, as conceived of really in any one person’s brain, as only an image or memory of some moving objects, or some generalization from experiences of them, or the recollection of a definition, the idea may fade or change.  Bunge, 10.  Bunge, 10. 53  Bunge, 14. Bunge might be referring to this part of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “if all things are accidental, there can be no original substratum in which the accidents may inhere.” See Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. John Warrington (New York, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1956), 50. Yet, a newer translation gives Aristotle’s argument as “if all statements are accidental, there will be nothing primary about which they are made, if the accidental always implies predication about a subject. The predication, then, must go on ad infinitum. But this is impossible; for not even more than two terms can be combined. For an accident is not an accident of an accident, unless it be because both are accidents of the same subject.” See the Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 6th with corrections (Princeton University Press, 2014), 49. 51 52

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In this way, Plato’s view of the changeable-unchangeable dichotomy has been inverted: change is the universal feature of reality, while the immutability of ideas in the abstract, coming only from the way our brains think of them, is exceptional—or better, artificial. Physically speaking, changeability is the universal property par excellence shared by all things, whether physical or chemical, biological or social, natural or artificial, since science tells us that all things have energy, and having energy allows for change. Bunge clarifies that every particular science considers energies of various particular kinds: kinetic energy, chemical energy, gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, nuclear energy, and so on, each allowing for change in various processes; but no particular science, not even physics, defines the concept of energy itself. For being used by all sciences but defined by none, that job falls to philosophy, and precisely, Bunge defines energy in terms of the capacity for change. On the other hand, the immutability of constructs is imagined, them being in reality as ephemeral as the brains that think of them. To be sure, a citizen of ancient Athens was, for example, capable of understanding the idea of democracy in the abstract. Yet, any later Athenians, living centuries after the collapse of Athens and before the modern democratic revival, who did not practice or study democracy, either had no idea of it, or a different one. The idea of democracy as it was in ancient Athens ceased to exist in them. ‘Democracy’ was described in Aristotle’s Politics and other books; when those books were reexamined centuries later in the Renaissance, they needed not just translation, but also interpretive reconstruction.54 Scholars of Greek classics are still struggling to understand many Greek concepts of the past, just as Egyptologists still struggle to understand the ideas of the Pharaonic Egyptians, and archeologists are still not certain about the meaning of the Incas’ knotted calendar.55 This proves that the ideas conveyed by them did not live across time as self-existing and incorruptible.

54  Peter Watson, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 55. 55  Watson, Ideas, 452.

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3.2  Property Energy is the universal property of all things, but it is far from the only property of things. The diversity of properties, and the fundamental importance of this aspect of reality, has led to diverse ways of classifying them, developed over the course of the long histories of philosophy and science. So, properties may be considered as, for example, essential or accidental, basic or derived, intrinsic or relational, primary (objective) or secondary (subjective, phenomenal), absolute or relativistic. Although each of these pairs is a dichotomy, the various dichotomies are not mutually exclusive, such that the members of each pair typically overlap with various others. With this in mind, let us consider each of these traditional dichotomies in turn. The division between the accidental and essential goes back at least to Aristotle and, as with all the divisions, is meant to clarify what makes for the nature of things.56 Take, for example, a chair: moving it from one side of a room to the other does not change its nature as a chair. In this way, location is an accidental property of chairs. Location is though not necessarily accidental to other things: for example, a ceiling must be overhead and a floor underfoot. In this way, and in contrast to all the other listed dichotomies, divisions between accidental and essential are contextual rather than universal. The basic-derived dichotomy reflects that some properties result from combinations of other, simpler properties. Consider again a chair: its overall shape results from the shapes and positioning of its various pieces, from their rigidity, and the rigidity of their interconnections: its shape is derived. The mass of the chair is basic, though, in that mass does not result from any combination or fusion of any other properties. A property is relational if it involves more than one thing. Classic examples are the properties of being above or below (something else), or between (two or more other things). Properties are intrinsic if they involve

56  In his Furniture of the World (1977, p. 96), Bunge criticized the division of properties between accidental and essential as being artificial. His view then was that all properties are essential because they are all lawful and that the fundamental divide is instead between basic and derived. These views were tempered by earlier remarks in the same volume (p. 94). In his later Matter and Mind (2010, p. 155) he accepted the essential/accidental division as fundamental, but this time because he used “essential” in a way that overlaps his previous use of “basic” (pp. 150–151 of his Furniture).

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only the item in question itself. For example, the charge of the electron is intrinsic, because nothing else is involved. The difference between primary and secondary properties is simply that of being objective or subjective. So, for example, whether a chair is uncomfortable or not is subjective (secondary), a matter of opinion, while whether it is rigid or not is objective (primary), measurable by mechanical instruments rather than opinion polls. Subjective perceptions, such as those of smell, color, and sound, are sometimes referred to philosophically as qualia. Qualia exist only as our perceptions, that is to say, as activities of our sensory-nervous system. Our senses are not perfect and not comprehensive enough to fully capture every aspect of reality; we perceive no more than what our sense organs allow, when in particular states of health, consciousness, sensation, and attention. The distinction between primary and secondary properties reminds us that there is more to the reality that underlies perception than our senses tell us. The distinction between absolute and relativistic properties is a new and technical one, in fully modern form the result of Einstein’s theories of relativity. Surprisingly, it has turned out that some properties of physical objects formerly thought to be utterly intrinsic—in particular mass, length, and duration—are instead related in a special way to the motion of that object with respect to other physical objects, known as reference frames. The frame-dependence of relativistic properties should be contrasted with the subject-dependence of secondary properties: Bunge emphasizes that relativistic properties are relative to the reference frame (any physical object), not to the observer. In this way, and contrary to popular understanding, ‘relativity’ does not involve subjectivity57; relativistic properties remain objective. Einstein’s relativity does not elevate subjectivity at the expense of objectivity: objectivity is maintained, but in a more complex form. Bunge puts it this way: “my walking around the block is a single fact with as many projections as reference frames—by analogy with the shadows projected by a body on different surfaces by different light beams.”58 3.3  State and Event In Bunge’s scientific ontology, the state of a thing is simply the values of all its properties, and events are changes of state. Although, in both  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 35.  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 13.

57 58

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science and philosophy, normally we are not concerned with all the properties of a thing all at once: we limit our considerations to a certain context. A classic example from science is that of a gas in an enclosed container: its (thermodynamic) state is specified by its temperature, pressure, and volume. This context ignores not just secondary properties, like the smell of the gas, but also other objective properties, such as any light that might be emitted by the gas. Another classic example is a pendulum: its state is normally specified by the position of the bob, and its velocity—this time ignoring its temperature. 3.4  Law Bunge emphasizes that properties are not isolated, but come in clusters: “[e]very property conjoins with some other properties.”59 For example, “democracy works best with equity and liberty, and not at all with extreme inequality and tyranny.”60 From conjunctions of properties come laws: “laws of nature […] are invariant relations among properties and their changes.”61 For example, the gravitational attraction between two things is proportional to the product of their two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Invariant means in this context that the general relationship between masses, separation, and attractive force is constant in time, regardless of whether or not particular values of the masses or the distance between them change: it is a law of nature. A question may arise as to why properties should conjoin or be related in an invariant way, or in other words, why there should be laws of nature. Why shouldn’t the world be at least somewhat more capricious? Openness to the possibility of genuine miracles,62 or to divine or spiritual intervention more generally, means openness to such relationships being changeable rather than invariant, at least on occasion. A practical answer would be that lawfulness is a basic assumption of science, and any violation of any presumed scientific law has always been found to be, and will always be investigated as, merely an instance of a more profound scientific law. A philosophical answer might be in the form of another question: what  Bunge, 12.  Bunge, 12. 61  Bunge, 14. 62  As opposed to mere realizations of narrowly but lawfully possible events. 59 60

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would make any connection between properties change? It is change or happening that requires explanation, not constancy (invariance)—whether that explanation be in the form of an intervention, or some principle of inertia. But even a principle of inertia is in the end one that asserts that a certain (superficial) change occurs without intervention only because it turns out to be the constancy of something more fundamental, whose changes do require some intervention.63 In this way, questions concerning lawfulness lead directly to questions concerning causality—and concerning causality’s dual, spontaneity. 3.5  Causality Aristotle famously distinguished between causes of four types: formal, material, efficient, and final. Bunge restricts the concept to only that of efficient causation, leaving the others for different considerations if needed. Efficient causes are those that bring about some change; that is to say, they produce events. Bunge notes though that there are some uncaused, or spontaneous, events such as spontaneous radioactive decay.64 For Bunge spontaneity is not restricted to the quantum world: there is, for example, spontaneous activity in the human brain, in the form of the spontaneous firing of neurons. Importantly though, for Bunge spontaneity does not mean lawlessness or capriciousness. He emphasizes that there are laws of spontaneity, that is to say, laws of chance. Even amid the irregularity and seeming capriciousness of, say, the outcomes of a sequence of rolls of dice, there are underlying regularities concerning, for example, the long-run frequencies of each outcome, and the resulting average value. Bunge’s first major philosophical work, and perhaps still his most widely read and influential, is his book Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science.65 Contrary to the prevailing philosophical trend (“the law of causality… is a relic of a bygone age”66), Bunge forcefully argued that causality, though not universal in scope, was nonetheless of wide and 63  I owe this clarification to Dr. Michael Kary. He also adds, Newton’s First Law, or the Principle of Inertia, explains why things can change their position (move) without external intervention: it asserts that without external intervention, it is rather the velocity of the thing that remains constant. 64  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 92. 65  Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959. 66  Bertrand Russell, “On the Notion of Cause,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 13 (1912–1913), 1–26.

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fundamental importance. He made a key modern contribution by emphasizing that causation is a matter of not just conjunction (Hume), but of production, of making something happen; and further, that such production involves energy. 3.6   Systems, Emergence, and Submergence From the atoms of the ancient Greeks to the elementary particles of the physics of today, scientists have typically assumed that some things are basic or elementary, in the sense of being indivisible into further things. Bunge goes further and notes that everything, except the universe itself, is a part of some other thing: for example, we are parts of the biota of our planet, in turn a part of our planet, in turn a part of our solar system, and so on up to the universe as a whole. Things joined together in some coordinated or bound way, that is, involved in some lawful relationship(s) rather than just aggregated as heaps, are systems. Consideration of systems leads to consideration of two more fundamental types of properties: resultant and emergent. The emergent properties of systems have been typically described as those that cannot be explained in terms of the system’s parts. Bunge made a crucial advance by noting that explainability is a matter of epistemology, not ontology: the ontological feature is instead that an emergent property of a system is one possessed by none of its component parts. This exactified and clarified the holistic thesis that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” For example, in simple terms the weight of a car is the sum of the weights of all its parts: its weight is resultant (and relational, e.g., not being the same on the Moon as it is on Earth). But the crashworthiness of the car is emergent, for arising from the way the various parts and their mechanical properties coordinate together in the car as a whole. Or consider the chemical combination of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen into a water molecule, and the juxtaposition of many water molecules into a volume of bulk water. The water molecules and the bulk water, liquid at room temperature, emerged with qualities that exist in neither hydrogen nor oxygen alone: bulk water at room temperature is drinkable, bulk hydrogen and oxygen are not. The fluidity of liquid water is emergent even with respect to single water molecules, no single water molecule being fluid, fluidity being instead a matter of how large numbers of molecules move over each other. Both of these are

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examples of emergence, yet in both cases, this emergence is explainable in terms of the properties and relations of the parts. Just as systems have emergent properties possessed by none of their component parts, some properties of the component parts may submerge in the system as a whole. For example, the vast majority of the citizens of any country have a sense of smell, but the country as a whole cannot smell anything. Bunge also insists that the relationship between systems and their components is not hierarchical or ranked; it is simply one of parts and wholes. In these ways, Bunge’s systemism opposes the shortcomings of not only atomism, which gives the upper hand to the components of things, but also of holism, which ignores the agency of components in favor of the whole.67 3.7  The Level Structure of Reality Since systems are composed of parts, and parts and systems each have properties not possessed by the other, there are also laws unique to each level of organization. Bunge classifies things according to the laws they share, to form what he calls natural kinds.68 In this vein, Bunge distinguishes five basic system genera: physical, chemical, biological, social, and technical, the last consisting of artifacts of all sorts.69 As above, he emphasizes that these do not form a hierarchy, in the sense of the higher levels being superior to or dominating the lower. They only sometimes exemplify the relation of precedence, that is to say of consisting entirely of things belonging to the same or lower levels. Thus physical systems are either elementary—namely the elementary particles—or like atoms, made out of other physical systems; chemical systems are made out of physical systems (atoms and molecules) or other chemical systems; the elementary biological system, the cell, is made out of a variety of chemicals, structural molecules, and intermediary-scale systems, including DNA, RNA, proteins, and various organelles; larger-scale biological systems, such as organs and tissues, are made out of cells and their products; some organisms, such 67  M. Bunge, A World of Systems. Vol. 4, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), 44. 68  This concept is greatly elaborated in Martin Mahner and Mario Bunge, Foundations of Biophilosophy (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer Verlag), Chapter 7. 69  An artifact is literally something made by a human being, but one could, and surely should, adapt Bunge’s characterization of the technical level to include such things as, for example, bird’s nests.

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as honeybees, form societies, in this case beehive colonies; while humans form complex societies that include not just members of their own species, individually and as social subsystems, but also those of various other species (among them dogs, farm animals and crops, and honeybees), as well as various artifacts of all sorts. In his World of Systems, Bunge had technical systems as being offshoots of biological systems, rather than following in the same line of precedence as the others; while further sub-levels could be distinguished, such as the psychological or cognitive as part of the biological, or the semiotic (symbolic artifacts, such as works of literature or the visual or performing arts)70 as part of the technical. Figure 6.1 depicts one interpretation of the level structure of the world, as divided into six basic genera.71 3.8  Life The biological genus of reality is composed of living organisms, and thus their living parts, such as cells, tissues, and organs. But what is it that makes an organism or an organ, a cell or a tissue, alive rather than not? Bunge’s deepest and most thorough considerations of this problem were done in collaboration with the German biologist and philosopher Martin Mahner (b. 1958), in their Foundations of Biophilosophy.72 They see the problem of life as being both philosophical and scientific, for being a matter not just of the highest level of generality (Rescher; see Chap. 4) but also of specific scientific details. The philosophical part is that being alive is an emergent property of certain systems, while the scientific part is the details of what those systems must be made of and have to do in order to have that property. Mahner and Bunge emphasize that they do not define what it means to be alive; rather they propose a list of characteristics that describe what living things, and only living things, are like. In this list, one finds familiar ingredients such as nucleic acids, proteins, and water; and familiar properties such as metabolism, and some degree of homeostasis.73

70  Mario Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001), 75. 71  Mario Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 87. 72  Mahner and Bunge, Foundations of Biophilosophy, Chapter 4. 73  Mahner and Bunge note that not all the characteristics they list must be present at all times. Thus, for example, “Metabolism may be temporarily reduced or perhaps entirely suspended, as is the case with spores or dormant seeds, or during anabiosis. Thus, some of the

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Fig. 6.1  One possible schematic diagram of the level structure of the world. The technical and semiotic levels are offshoots of the organismal and social levels, that is, they are produced by individuals and social systems. Note that the levels do not necessarily increase in complexity, because there is submergence in addition to emergence. Bunge notes in particular that the laws of microsystems are typically more complex than those of macrosystems—as evident by, for example, a comparison between quantum mechanics and the law of the pendulum. (Mario Bunge, Understanding the World, 37)

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Mahner and Bunge further emphasize that their list is tentative. Thus, for the moment, we do not know how living systems on other planets, if any, might be composed. True, but the biosystems on our planet are the only living things we know, and thus the only ones that require scientific investigation and understanding. Everything else is so far pure speculation. For example, what is called ‘exobiology’ has no subject matter (yet), hence it is no scientific discipline proper. […] our characterization of living systems is not dogma but postulate (i.e., hypothesis), which can be either discarded or else corrected and improved in the light of future research.74

3.9  Mind Bunge is a materialist, so for him what exists is the impermanent brain, not mind, soul, spirit, or anything else immaterial, transcendent, or everlasting. The idea of mind, rather than referring to any immaterial entity, is for Bunge just a way of summarizing a vast number of special things that the brain does. One might say, as with Bunge, that just as digestion is something the digestive tract does, minding is something that the brain does.75 Bunge was an early critic of the idea that computers could think.76 As with living, Bunge considers “minding” to be an emergent property of the specific things that do the minding (brains), rather than a property that can be conjured up out of radically different materials having radically different natural laws. However, as with the problem of life, Bunge does not view the mind-body problem as one to be solved by philosophy. On the contrary: Our espousing emergentist (or systemist) materialism does not entail claiming that it has already solved the mind-body problem. It has[n’t] and it won’t, for emergentist materialism is a philosophy providing only a scaffolding or general framework for the detailed scientific investigation of the many problems one lumps under the rubric ‘the mind-body problem’. It behoves properties of biosystems are dispositions that may actualize under favorable circumstances.” Mahner and Bunge, 143. 74  Mahner and Bunge, 143. 75  For example, Mario Bunge, Ontology II: A World of Systems. Vol. 4, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), 126, 128, 183–184. 76  Mario Bunge, “Do computers think?” British Journal of the Philosophy of Science 7 (1956), 139–148. 212–219.

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neuroscientists and psychologists to attack these problems—as scientists not as amateur philosophers let alone theologians. (Likewise emergentist materialism provides only a general framework for the detailed investigation of the problems of inanimate matter and of life, both of which are just as bottomless as the problem of mind.)77

3.10   Society, and the Composition, Structure, Environment, and Mechanism of a System The examples that have been offered here to elucidate Bunge’s ontological views were deliberately mostly kept simple. Even life and mind, though complex, are clearly “attached” to perceptible objects, namely living organisms or some of their parts, and thinking beings respectively. One might ask, can Bunge’s ontological vision go further, and help to analyze something as diffuse and imperceptible as an economy, or society? Beyond what we have described so far, Bunge’s consideration of systems includes some crucial additional concepts, first of all those of the system’s composition, structure, and environment. The composition of a system is simply all of its parts. So, for example, a society is composed of its member persons, but also of various subsystems of various sizes and scopes, such as an economy, a polity, schools, businesses, professional organizations, linguistic groups, cultural communities, and families. Thus, composition can be considered at various levels of analysis.78 For Bunge, the main subsystems of any society are the economic, political, cultural, and kinship systems.79 The environment of a system is all those things with which it is somehow connected: those which either act upon it, or which it acts upon. Our own environment is physical, to include the terrain, and precipitation; chemical, to include reactive atmospheric pollutants, such as smog; and biological, to include vegetation, some wild animals, and many insect pests and disease organisms. As for structure, while many use “structure” as another word for “system,” Bunge reserves the term for the relationships between the system’s various components, or between these and the environment, to include the laws of the system. Thus, the basic structure of the solar system is that of a massive star at the center, elliptically orbited by  Mario Bunge, A World of Systems, 184.  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 47–48. 79  Bunge, The Furniture of the World, 182. 77 78

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a number of planets and asteroids, all held together by gravitational attraction, according to the law of gravity. The basic structure of a polity may be that of parliamentary democracy, oligopoly, or whatever else; the basic structure of the kinship system may be matrilineal or patrilineal. As with composition, structure may be considered at various or multiple levels of analysis. In later work Bunge added to the list a system’s mechanism,80 or the processes that make it work. In a society these would be in particular economic, such as exploitation of natural resources, production of artifacts, and the exchange of goods and services; political, such as competition and cooperation over power, and the “manufacturing” of popular consent or dissent; and cultural, such as mass communication, educating, and entertaining. 3.11  Recap With a view to further reflection, let us recapitulate, revisit, and elaborate Bunge’s key ontological concepts: 1. All things are material, in that they have energy (the universal property of things) and are thus capable of changing. In other words, matter is the only substance. 2. The properties of things can be classified in diverse ways. Some of the most important dichotomies are primary (objective) versus secondary (phenomenal), intrinsic (inherent to the thing) versus relational (inherent to some combination of things), and resultant (possessed by both the system as a whole and at least one of its components individually) versus emergent (possessed by the ­system 80  Bunge has long insisted on the ontological and epistemological importance of mechanism, and in particular that true explanation involves unveiling mechanisms. See, for example, Chapter 9 of his Scientific Research II: The Search for Truth, Studies in the Foundations Methodology and Philosophy of Science Volume 3/II (ed. Mario Bunge, coeditors Peter G.  Bergmann, Siegfried Flugge, Henry Margenau, Sir Peter Medawar, Sir Karl Popper, Patrick Suppes, Clifford A.  Truesdel; Berlin Heidelberg New  York: Springer-Verlag). Originally though his general framework for a basic model of a system listed only the system’s composition, environment, and structure. It was in later work that he explicitly added the system’s mechanism as a fourth item on the list. See, for example, his Matter and Mind, 84–85; or his Evaluating Philosophies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 295 (Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London: Springer, 2012), 39.

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but by none of its components, originating along with the system and disappearing should it break down). 3. Facts are either states of things, or events occurring in things. 4. An event is a change in the state of a thing. Events can be spontaneous (uncaused, random) or caused, and the causes of events are other events. 5. A system is a complex thing whose parts or components are coupled, linked, connected, or bonded together somehow. The various interrelationships between the components of a system are its structure. 6. Every system has a composition, a structure, and a mechanism. The mechanism is the processes that make the system work. Every system except the universe as a whole has an environment. The quadruple of composition, environment, structure, and mechanism is Bunge’s CESM model. 7. Every thing is either a system or a component of a system; this is why there is no independent thing and no existence outside of systems. 8. A succession of changes in the state of a thing is a process. 9. The laws of the system are time-invariant relationships between its properties. As such, they restrict its possible behavior. 10. Reality is the totality of all things.

4   Scientific Worldview and Religious Counterpoint: Five Arguments for the Existence of a Deity In Bunge’s modern worldview, all of reality, all that really exists, is material. Because Bunge characterizes the material in terms of energy and changeability, anything allegedly immaterial, being bereft of energy and changeability, would be inscrutable. It would be inaccessible to our explorations not just today, but also tomorrow, because there would be no way for us to act on it—for it being unchangeable—nor for it to act on us (or our instruments)—for the same reason of its being bereft of energy. We may say then that the immaterial is a nickname for nothing. Bunge’s ontological materialism obviously has direct implications concerning the deities, angels, and unseen worlds of the religious worldview. If these entities are immaterial, then they do not exist; but if they are

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material, then they are constrained by natural laws, the most important of these being the conservation of energy, which renders impossibly impractical the most important feats attributed to these hypothesized beings. In religious worldviews, the existence of the deity in particular has been supported by a massive theological literature, briefly summarized as follows in the form of five arguments—the psychological, ontological, cosmological, teleological, and ethical.81 4.1  The Psychological Argument Common among Muslim mystics, this argument takes the believer’s sense of awareness of a Supreme Being, and the resulting inner speech, as sufficient proof of the existence of that Supreme Being.82 A problem with this attitude is that such inner speech is more present in times of human vulnerability and weakness, and less so in times of strength; thus, it is rather circumstantial. It is also a learned behavior, particular to certain monotheistic cultures, absent in those not primed to hear the voice of God. Thus, even in the mythology of ancient Greece, while its mortal protagonists may have from time to time encountered an Olympian in the flesh, they did not generally carry on internal conversations with them. This holds true not just in Greek mythology but also in polytheistic, pagan, or atheistic societies, whose members are not conscious of a Supreme Being, and who never hear it in their inner speech, even in desperate times. They rather sense other beings, and exhibit other emotional reactions, influenced by their own upbringing and culture. The claims of the psychological argument are therefore insufficiently universal to even suggest a universal and immaterial deity.

81  Mel Thompson, Understand the Philosophy of Religion (Blacklick, OH: McGraw-Hill, 2010), 88. 82  “Then Mawrūrı ̄ said […] did you see your Lord?’ He said: ‘Only whoever knows Him, sees Him.’ As a result of this dream, Ibn al-‘Arabı ̄ relates, Al-Mawrūrı ̄ came to me, told me about his dream, […] he accompanied Ibn al-‘Arabi until he knew God to the degree that an interlocuter (muḥaddith) is able to make one know God through revelation, not through rational argument.” In Binyamin Abrahamov, Ibn Al-‘Arabi and the Sufis (Oxford, UK: Anqa Publishing, 2014), 30–31.

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4.2  The Ontological Argument In this argument, also known as Anselm’s argument, we are told that we can imagine a greatest being, one whose qualities are such that “no greater can be conceived.”83 But if this being’s qualities did not include that of existing, then one could indeed conceive of a greater being: one who had the same qualities, but also the quality of existing. This would contradict the premise that the greatest being did not exist. Consequently, this Supreme Being must really exist after all.84 The ontological argument has received much discussion in the philosophical and logical literatures over the nearly 1000 years since Anselm formulated it. Rather than recapitulate any of these famous arguments, some of them quite technical,85 in this brief summary we shall give our own.86 Consider the premise that we can indeed imagine a greatest being. Such a conception would at first seem to indeed be possible, but is it? In any case, the question is why such a conception should be attempted in the first place. We could prefer to imagine instead an infinite succession of 83  Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 9. 84  Interestingly, a Lebanese scholar attempted to trace an Islamic origin to this Christian theological argument, with al-Farabi (872–950), some fifteen decades before Anselm. So he notes:

That al-Farabi was as pre-occupied with the ontological argument as St. Anselm, may further be gauged from the fact that he has repeatedly dealt in his works with the concept of the all-perfect or First Being, whom he describes in the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City, as free from any mode of imperfection. Accordingly this “being is the best being and the most ancient; no better or more ancient being than Him can possibly exist.” See Majid Fakhry, “The Ontological Argument in the Arabic Tradition: The Case of al-Fārābi,” Studia Islamica, no. 64 (1986): 13, https://doi.org/10.2307/1596043. 85  Paul Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta, “On the Logic of the Ontological Argument”, in Philosophical Perspectives 5: The Philosophy of Religion, ed. James Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1991), 509–529. 86  Mario Bunge considers Anselm’s argument, and the traditional rejection of its conclusion for logical reasons, in his Evaluating Philosophies, 174–175. Bunge rejects Anselm’s argument but also any a priori logical rejection or affirmation of it: “the atheist will have to propose serious arguments against it instead of the sophistry of the logical imperialist.” For various other views of the ontological argument, see, for example, Oppy’s Ontological Arguments and Belief in God.

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successively greater beings, with no upper limit. Science abides by postulation and logical deduction; however, it seeks actual reasons for this or that postulate from among the infinity of conceivable postulates. The ontological argument’s conception might be imaginatively possible, but it does not go beyond this. Certainly, theists want their God to be more actual than an imaginary figure like Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The ontological argument can be dismissed if only because it fails to dominate other equally plausible imaginary conceptions. Nor does it provide any justification for the idea that this possible conception is indeed actual; nor for that matter, whether it is even truly conceivable, rather than merely capable of being stated in words. After all, the idea of a barber who shaves all and only barbers who do not shave themselves (Russell’s paradox, introduced in Sect. 2.1.1) is easily stated in words, but it turned out to be inconceivable.87 4.3  The Cosmological Argument Unlike the subjectivity and cultural locality of the psychological argument, and the limited imagination of the ontological argument, the cosmological argument might garner wider acceptance among philosophers. Starting from the overall importance of causality, this argument attempts to explain the emergence of the contingent cosmos by a necessary first cause, called God. One problem with this argument is that there is no need to imagine any beginning for the world, if we have no empirical evidence for such a first moment. Having a beginning or lacking one is equally acceptable from a logical point of view, so logic does not help the cosmological argument as long as its proponents lack empirical evidence. Although the 87  Suppose there is such a barber. Does he shave himself? If he does, he is not a barber who does not shave himself, and so not one of the barbers that he shaves—in other words, in fact he does not shave himself. So start off with the other possibility, that he does not shave himself. Then his is one of those barbers that he shaves—in other words, in fact he does shave himself, again a contradiction. Thus, the idea of such a barber, though it is statable in words, turns out to be inconceivable. This shows that Anselm’s basic proposition, that anyone can conceive of a greatest being, cannot simply be taken at face value: the logical consequences of such a conception have to be thoroughly explored first. Some such exploration has been done, and indeed long known to lead to paradox, such as with the famously paradoxical nature of omnipotence: can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that said omnipotent being cannot lift it? Alternatively, in the style of Saint Anselm himself: suppose one could conceive of a greatest being. But then one could conceive of a greater being, namely a being with all the characteristics of that being, plus the additional one of being able to defeat that other supposedly greatest being.

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occurrence of a Big Bang is now accepted, there is no evidence that it was an absolute beginning rather than a relative one, in other words just a major event along the way. Indeed the occurrence of an absolute beginning would violate the conservation of energy—a principle fundamental to all the inferences that lead to the conclusions of physics that there was a Big Bang.88 But even if the fact of a first cause were empirically established, this would be no proof that it would make for an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and merciful being. There is no necessary relation between a first cause and the other characteristics attributed to God. In short, the cosmological argument resorts to science in a manner that science itself does not support. 4.4  The Teleological Argument Unlike the cosmological argument that hinges on the past, the teleological one does not start from a first cause. Rather it proceeds the other way around, since the complexity and seeming order, beauty, harmony, and purposefulness of much of the world may make it seem to be an end result of a wise and intelligent designer. Modern creationists, for example, take the particular conditions of the world as having been purposefully made by God in order to enable the evolution of human beings; this is the religious version of the “anthropic principle.”89 A similar or overlapping variation proposes simply that the universe is “‘designed’ with the goal of generating and sustaining ‘observers,’”90 that is, us. This may seem a stronger argument than the others, but it overlooks many problems. There is an abundance of absurdity, lack of design, and meaninglessness in much of the world. Absurdity and meaninglessness, such as the mass extinction of many species, do not point back to a wise designer. Nor do the mass killings of innocents by natural disasters, epidemics, and wars throughout known and unknown history prove any divine mercy, grace,  See footnote 97 in Chap. 4.  Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, ed. Ann Druyan (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2007), 158. 90  The weak form of the “Anthropic Cosmological Principle” is that the nature of the physical universe as we observe it must be compatible with our capacity to observe it. The strong form is that the universe is the way we observe it as a consequence or in respect of our ability to observe it, rather than as a favorable circumstance. See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 22. 88 89

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or benevolence toward the good. What virtuous purpose is there for disability, hunger, and misery? Evil is antithetical to wise purposefulness. On the other hand, the behaviors of certain chemical systems, and biological evolution, provide strong reasons to think of the emergence of life and human consciousness with reference only to a combination of probabilistic natural causes, with no designer. Many millions of individuals all over the world enroll in elementary schooling, while a portion of them complete high school. A portion of these enter university and successfully graduate, while an even smaller portion of bachelor’s degree holders obtain a PhD.  Out of that very small number of PhD holders, fewer still succeed in securing university positions, and still fewer make a contribution important enough to win them a Nobel prize. The vast probabilistic distance between a first grader and a Nobel laureate gives but an inkling of the vastly greater multi-million-year evolutionary distance between the aquatic ancestors of humanity, and the Homo sapiens sapiens of today. The emergence of a Nobel laureate out of hundreds of millions of individuals is a combination of physical, biological, psychological, linguistic, economic, political, and culturally favorable circumstances. Such luck does not so easily bless the sick, the ignorant, the poor, those born and raised in war zones and refugee camps, or having a marginal language and culture. The lucky Nobel laureates, even deservingly assiduous and bright, needed favorable circumstances to reach their potential and cannot attribute their success completely to their own design, their own intelligence, their own hard work. The intelligent human of today in an analogous manner made it out of billions and billions of earlier organisms’ failed attempts at survival. There is no wisdom, care, or intelligence out of this astronomical wastefulness. In the biological world even more than in the Nobel Prize world of lucky accidents, “design” appears after the fact of evolution, not ahead of time—and design a posteriori is not at all either intentional or intelligent design. 4.5  The Ethical Argument Within a theistic religious worldview, the psychological, ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments together do provide a strong case for the existence of the divine. For a rationalist, however, an amalgamation of baseless arguments does not add up to a sound one. There remains though an ethical argument for the existence of God, and it might be the strongest.

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If there were no God who provides punishment and reward in this world and the next, and who brings about social consensus through scripture, then society would long ago have fallen into chaos, corruption, and debauchery, just like in the stories of fallen cities and empires of antiquity. Indeed, one may argue, why carry the burden of doing good without reward in this life, if there is no reward in an afterlife? Why abstain from the seemingly immanent rewards of evil, if there is no transcendent punishment? From there, the ethical argument, somehow, leads to the existence of the Supreme Legislator, reward giver, or God. Yet people can still do good without belief in God, scripture, or reward and punishment in an afterlife. This fact is unmistakable from the good deeds performed in atheistic, polytheistic, non-theistic, or pagan societies.91 Moreover, belief in God is no guarantee for doing good, since many evil acts are committed in the name of God by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Thus, there is no causal link between God and doing good.92 By that fault, the ethical argument is not a compelling one. The Supreme Legislator proposal becomes even more suspect when we ask which religion, which sect, which religious school of thought, and which hermeneutical interpretation would lead to the good. The answers certainly do not lead to a unique legal or moral code demanded for us by God. 4.6  Evaluation of the Five Arguments The thinking that produced the aforementioned five arguments for the existence of God is psychologically wishful, ontologically tenuous, empirically contradicted, teleologically negligent, and ethically inconclusive. They are false arguments that do not add up to a strong unified argument, and materialism retains a valid case against the ontological claims of religious worldviews. Yet, rather than another argument, there is another way

91   Non-theistic advocacy for the good, in Hindu, Jain, Epicurean, Muslim, and Enlightenment examples is traced in Greg Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe (New York, NY: William Morrow, 2009), Chapter Three. 92  For a vindication of this position from within the Islamic traditions, see A. Z. Obiedat, “Tahāfut Markaziyyat Al-‘Aqı ̄dah fı ̄ al-Khit ̣āb al-Islāmı ̄ wa Awlawiyyat al-Mufāḍalh Bayn al-­ Bashar bil-‘Amal al-Sāliḥ [lit. Deconstruction of Creed Centrality in Islamic Discourse and the Primacy of Good Deeds in Differentiating between Humans],” in Al-Tasāmuḥ Fı ̄ al-Thaqāfah al-‘Arabiyyah: Dirāsah Naqdiyyah, ed. Néjia Ouriemmi, 2018th ed. (Beirut: Mu’minūn bilā Ḥ udūd, n.d.), 177–218, https://bit.ly/2ZAKjUO.

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to discuss the existence of a deity. This will be developed in the next section; first though, we prepare the ground with some further reflection. If the existence of the laws of nature is not directly sensed, but inferred by their influence in the world, can God be perceived inferentially, in similar ways? Would this give the deity and the laws of nature equal ontological status? The materialist rejects any such equivalence, for reasons illustrated in the following examples. When rain occurs, it is, according to the materialist, due to natural causes and laws, while theologically speaking it is ultimately the will of the Deity. When the sun rises, according to the materialist, it is due to different natural causes and laws, while in the religious worldview,93 it is still due to the will of the same deity. The materialist assigns a cause when there is evidence for it and does not confuse different and highly distant causes into one entity, but rather unifies the interrelationships of things and causes within a grand system of natural laws. Ontological materialism does not presume a first cause, since whatever stands temporarily as first cause may be continuously pushed back by new discoveries of preceding causes. In a religious worldview, all causes are instead oversimplified into a Deity. There is even more confusion when this Deity is said to be conscious and endowed with several anthropomorphic attributes such as mercy, love, and a will toward justice. The common element between natural and religious ontologies is that they both agree on the importance of causality and attempt to systemize its variety. However, religious ontology makes an ungrounded generalization by unifying all the causes of the world into the will of one anthropomorphic being.94 Is there a middle ground between the two camps? 4.7  A Doxastic Argument Would the failure of the five traditional arguments mean that materialist atheism should take over from spiritual theism? Must an Islamic philosopher, even one as invested in philosophy and modernity as Taha Abd al-­ Rahman, conclude that there is no common ground between the religious and scientific-secular worldviews? A doxastic argument may provide a 93  A reminder: as elsewhere in this book, as explained in Chap. 3, Sect. 3.1, here “religious worldview” refers to that of the monotheistic, Abrahamic religions. 94  Michael Martin, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 36.

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solution, by moving the debate from belief in the existence of God to the construction of a more ideal and up-to-date god, or from a “straightforwardly factual light” to “an evaluative light.”95 Rescher considers “the large and absorbing issue of what sort of God one would have if one could get one’s way.”96 This is a “fundamentally evaluative position […] rather than one that bears on [belief in] existence as such.”97 Refuting “the existence of God does not free one from coming to grips with the conception of [what] God” ought to be.98 So one can ask, is “it the God who dwells on the pinnacle of the Homeric Mount Olympus, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Plato’s Timaeus, the God of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the God of a neo-Aristotelianizing St. Thomas Aquinas, and so on.”99 These options for the idea of God address not “does God exist?” but rather “do I have a conception of God that is worthy of this name?”100 The atheist might object that this is psychologically wishful thinking, which is partially true. Yet, in response, the doxastic theist responds, “the very idea of God is threatening to you because you fear the condemnation of a [constructed] intelligent observer who knows what you think and do.”101 Desiring or fearing god are equally problematic, but the interesting common ground is that even an ontological “atheist can be an axiological theist,”102 at the same time.103 In fact, Bunge’s system does relate materialist ontology to good values and virtuous ethics, as we shall see in Chap. 8. The doxastic will toward ethical perfection and harmony in the world is at home in Bunge’s system. “[W]hether one’s life is meaningful” and “whether one’s way of conducting one’s life realizes the values to which such standard calls us” are matters of importance to atheists and theists alike.104

 Rescher, Issues in the Philosophy of Religion, 3.  Rescher, 2. Emphasis in the original. 97  Rescher, 2. 98  Rescher, 3. 99  Rescher, 3. 100  Rescher, 3. 101  Rescher, 6. 102  Axiology is the philosophical discipline that studies values; “axiological” means relating to values or value theory. More in Chap. 8. 103  Rescher, 5. 104  Rescher, 4. 95 96

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5   Summary of the Ontological Component of Bunge’s Worldview In his Social Science Under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective, Bunge asks the reader to not be discouraged by the vast range of topics the volume covers, for their being unified by only a dozen theses105 that comprise, in effect, Bunge’s modern scientific worldview—that is to say, the basic principles of his ontology, epistemology, and ethics. As a summary, the ontological part, with some explanatory remarks, is given as follows, with the matters of epistemology and ethics reserved for subsequent chapters. 1. “The real world consists only of concrete (material) things.”106 Bunge defines materiality as changeability and, thus, a material object as “one that can be in at least two different states.”107 Bunge further defines energy as the capacity for change; thus, material objects can be alternatively defined as those possessing energy. This is why Bunge thinks that “Plato got it right” in thinking that ideas or forms are changeless objects.108 Although ideas, conceived as such, are changeless, thus immaterial, their “existence” is fictional: they are abstractions from what goes on in brains, which are the really existing objects. 2. “Every thing is in flux in some respect or other.”109 Things are not only changeable but also changing: there seems to be nothing in any permanent state. 3. “All things and their changes fit patterns—natural or made.”110 By natural patterns, Bunge simply means the laws of nature. By “made” patterns, Bunge means the laws of artifacts as designed into them. (An example of a “made” pattern would be the relationship between the angle

 Bunge, Social Science under Debate, xiii.  Bunge, xiii. 107  Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 67. 108  Bunge, Chasing Reality, 10. 109  Bunge, Social Science under Debate, xiii. 110  Bunge, xiii. 105 106

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of rotation of a car’s steering wheel and the angle of inclination of the front wheels.) 4. “Concrete things come in [six] basic kinds: physical, chemical, biological, [psychological], social… and technical.”111 The reality of natural laws gives rise to a natural classification of things, namely one that groups together all things having the same natural laws. In this way, Bunge attributes a level structure to reality, with the members of each succeeding level being composed of some combination of the members of the same or preceding levels. This level structure is a conceptual affair: the levels themselves are not independently existing things, whereas only the members of the various classes (levels) exist really. Bunge has somewhat refined this classification over the years, for example, by grouping the social and technical levels horizontally as different subsets of a level of artificial matter. Within the genera of artificial matter, he has also distinguished artistic systems (e.g., paintings, sculptures, performances) and semiotic systems (e.g., works of literature, diagrams, computer programs).112 5. “Every thing is either a system [a complex object whose parts, or components, are held together by bonds of some kind] or a component of a system.”113 By this thesis, Bunge takes systemism further than Rescher (see Chap. 4). Systemism is not only a coherent epistemic approach to understanding the diversity of experience; according to Bunge, it is also ontological, systemicity being in effect an essential property of things. This is a substantive claim: it could be phrased alternatively as “the idea of a [completely] free elementary particle or field is fictional.” While substantive, it is a claim that would seem hard to controvert: we can only test the nature of things by interacting with them, thus destroying any purported complete freedom.

 Bunge, xiii.  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 85, 235. 113  Bunge, Social Science under Debate, xiii. 111 112

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6. “Some of the properties of a system are emergent: they originate along with the system and disappear if and when it breaks down.”114 Equivalently: every system has properties that its individual components lack. The emergence of a complex system is not a matter of the mere aggregation of its components, but of the emergence of qualitatively novel properties that are not present in the original components. To illustrate with a sequence of systems from within the chain that culminates in humanity: from particular conjunctions of chemicals and structural molecules, a living cell, the basic biological unit, emerges—a system with the qualitatively new property of being alive. Chemicals and structural molecules do not live or die as such, but when functioning in harmony as part of a cell, in a favorable environment, they participate in the processes of life, such as digestion, metabolism, and reproduction. In further complex combination and integration, biological cells form basic multicellular organisms; these in turn differentiate or combine into tissues and organs, the components of differentiated multicellular organisms, including ourselves. We as persons in turn associate with others in some degree of harmony, forming social systems small and large. One of the novel properties of one of our organs—the brain—is ingenuity; as harnessed socially, it allows us to create novel socio-technical systems, artificial things like industries and armies, that expand our reach and allow us to alter our world, for better or worse, on a vast scale. The preceding illustration considers reality from a bottom-up perspective, one of wholes being built up from parts. There is also a top-down perspective, that of analyzing wholes in terms of their parts (a conceptual matter), or of their breakdown or separation into parts (material processes). This leads to the matter of reduction: 7. Although some emergent properties of systems can be explained in terms of properties of the component parts, they are no less emergent and novel for that. Other emergent properties need to be explained in different ways, for example, with reference to larger wholes rather than smaller parts, or to the boundaries between systems rather than to their contents. In particular, although human societies and cognitive systems

114

 Bunge, xiii.

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are composed of physical, chemical, and biological subsystems, they have irreducibly social and psychological properties respectively. Bunge is careful to distinguish between the ontological and epistemological aspects of emergence, and so between ontological and epistemological reduction.115 Emergent properties are qualitatively novel, yet (sometimes) they may be explained in terms of the properties and organization of the component parts. Sometimes though, explanation in terms of component parts is insufficient: the wider context also needs to be examined. Thus, Bunge gives the example of the meaning of a word, which cannot be deduced from analyzing the component letters that spell it, nor from the component sounds that pronounce it. Instead, one has to look to its relations with other words116, and, one might add, to its history and patterns of usage. Likewise, the actions of an individual require more than just their psychology to explain them: the social circumstances, among others, are also a factor.

6   Interrelations, Explanations, Classifications, and Directions of Influences Chemistry did not have a solid theoretical basis until the later progress of atomic theory, within the physics of the early twentieth century. Something similar might also be said of genetics until the discovery of the chemical structure and basic mechanism of replication of DNA, in 1956. We are still awaiting further fundamental development of the connection of physics, chemistry, and biology to psychology, to help understand the cognitive mechanisms of the brain. Had Bunge’s classification of reality into six genera been formulated during the time of Laplace (1749–1827), before the emergence of field and quantum theory, it would not have met with much scientific approval. At that time, all the known scientific laws—these being at the time 115  Bunge conceives of ontological reduction in the context of theory reduction, where the items referred to in the reduced theory turn out to be items already covered by the reducing theory. Ontological reduction could alternatively be conceived of as the breakdown, dissection, or dismemberment of a system into its component parts. Bunge also distinguishes logical, semantical, methodological, pragmatical, and historical forms of reduction. See his Understanding the World, Table 10.2, 38. 116  Mario Bunge, Understanding the World. Vol. 6, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel), 41–42.

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essentially only chemical and physical—were regarded as reducible to the laws of mechanics. Life, mind, society, though nowhere near being actually reduced to mechanical considerations, were also imagined to be eventually reducible to physics. It seems evident then that Bunge’s current classification will eventually have to be expanded by future discoveries, concerning yet to be discovered laws, or things that do not fall under any of the known patterns. For example, we are only beginning to learn about the dark matter and dark energy of the cosmos. On a more mundane scale, if robots or other computer-controlled artifacts were to have their own special laws (not rules) of operation, not shared by other artifacts, then they would be identifiable as a seventh distinct kind of system.117 As for directions of influences, consider, for example, the problem of an inadequate food supply, with famine as the extreme. Though occurring at the social level, it is physical with regard to climate, chemical with regard to soil quality, biological with regard to disease organisms and pests, and irreducibly and consequentially social with regard to ownership, labor, and exchange. Problems with any of these could result in inadequate production or distribution. As it turned out, in the eighteenth century, French agriculture stagnated because of landlord absenteeism: rich landlords preferred the occupations of a charge royale.118 The resulting food shortages were one of the causes of the French revolution, according to Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) in his The Old Regime and the French Revolution. The direction of influence within a system can be either bottom up or top down. That is to say, the dynamics of a component may influence the dynamics of the system as a whole, or the dynamics of the system may exert influence on the components, or both. With regard to bottom-up influences, consider that a microbe or a virus can contribute to a great social-level defeat: for example, the diseases that Spaniards brought to the Incan Empire weakened it to such an extent that—in conjunction with other factors—a small force of Spanish conquistadors was able to conquer and supplant that rich and sophisticated culture.119 In this case, a tiny microbiological component ravaged a mighty society and left it ripe for conquest. In the reverse direction of influence, social mismanagement can 117  See, for example, Luciano Floridi, The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). 118  See Raymond Boudon’s foreword to Mario Bunge, The Sociology-Philosophy Connection (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999), xiv. 119  Pamela Kyle Crossley, What Is Global History? (Malden, MA: Polity, 2008), 70.

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lead to deforestation, in turn to desertification and the disappearance, if not the extinction, of a variety of biological species. This was the causal chain marked by the salination of the soils of ancient Sumeria (today’s southern Iraq), whose consequences are still evident after four millennia.120 In this example, a large socio-agricultural system acted upon its component biota and upon the chemistry of its soil.

7   Concluding Remarks Kant held it a scandal that no one had successfully proven the existence of the external world.121 For Bunge, error, prediction, control, and discovery all provide evidence for the existence of the external world—provided that we properly explore and imagine the natures of things and test our explanations of them. Bunge’s scientific metaphysics would be to the liking of neither logical positivists—who disapprove of metaphysics in the first place—nor phenomenalists, who in the tradition of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant deny either the independent existence of the external world or else the possibility of getting to know it. Although Bunge’s conceptualizations are fashioned in terms of a scientific materialism, they include highly abstract metaphysical notions, for example, flux, pattern, process, mechanism, system, emergence, and submergence, which cannot be accessed by the senses. This aspect of Bunge’s ontology would be to the liking of neither nominalists— who believe only in individuals, not properties, much less emergent ones122—nor empiricists, who affirm only sense perceptions (esse est percipi). Indeed, although Bunge’s ontology is scientific and materialist, in opposition to what Bunge calls vulgar materialism (nominalism),123 it recognizes properties (features of the real world) and fictions (figments of our imaginations) as respectively ontologically and epistemologically  Wright, A Short History of Progress, 78.  See Bryan Magee, The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 261. Kant worded it as “It always remains a scandal of philosophy and to universal human reason that the existence of things outside us […] should have to be assumed merely on faith.” In Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W.  Wood (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 121. Emphasis in the original. 122  J. H. Woodger, “Science without Properties,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2, no. 7 (1951): 193–216. 123  Mario Bunge, Scientific Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), 25–26. 120 121

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indispensable. Against empiricism, it resorts to ontological abstractions, such as the null individual, and recognizes entities and relations which cannot be accessed by the senses, including objects as diverse as e­ conomies, natural laws, and the fields of field physics. Instead, Bunge’s approach remains faithful to the Epicurean and Lucretian materialist tradition, updating it with the help of modern logic and the scientific findings of the day. This is in line with Bertrand Russell’s view: A philosophy which is to have any value should be built upon a wide and firm foundation of knowledge that is not specifically philosophical. Such knowledge is the soil from which the tree of philosophy derives its vigor. Philosophy which does not draw nourishment from this soil will soon wither and cease to grow.124

Although Bunge himself would unequivocally reject the term, his approach might be described as a supernatural one—or better and perhaps more congenially, an ultranatural125 one—not in the derogatory sense of seeing magic or the divine in the world, but rather in a sense of abstracting from the raw facts of nature, and hypothesizing imperceptible causes, lawful relationships, and unifying theories. The more we try to understand the world, the more creative hypothesizing and rational theorizing we need. Bunge saw traditional, physical materialism as fruitful and promising, but ultimately incapable of accommodating the diversity of the real world and the valid concerns of idealism. His emergent materialism, an extension of a long and diverse tradition,126 overcomes these deficiencies. Nevertheless, Bunge’s ontology is no unassailable truth, and Bunge never expected it to be. Because Bunge’s ontology makes substantive, albeit very general, claims about the nature of the world, it is vulnerable to falsification. It is possible that counterexamples to, or discrepancies in, his ontology may be found. We certainly have not surveyed and tested the infinity of all things to support an absolute assertion that everything is in flux. Even the most basic principles of his ontology could be questioned: 124  B. Russell, My Philosophical Development (London: Routledge, 1995), 170. Emphasis is mine. 125  In that “ultra-” can mean both to an extreme degree and beyond (thus going beyond the facts at hand to hypothesis and theory). ‘Super-” means both of those but also above, over, greater, or higher, while “supernatural” itself has an unsuitable but entrenched traditional meaning. 126  Mario Bunge, Scientific Materialism (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981), ix–xiv.

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we might find some new conception that surpasses the old Aristotelian thing-property model or be skeptical of the validity of energy as the universal, characteristic property of matter. Bunge upholds that scientific truths are partial; but if a truth is only partial, it hides, in some respect, a partial falsity. There is no shame in the weakness of partial truth, as it is the full price paid for honesty. The merit of Bunge’s ontology does not consist in laying down a scientific dogma—itself a contradiction in terms. For our purposes, its merit lies rather in its ability to engage philosophers, religionists, and scientists in a fruitful debate about metaphysics, analogous to that which existed in the times of Descartes and Hume. Likewise, in setting the stage for a fruitful linkage between ontological matters and those of epistemology and ethics.

CHAPTER 7

Modern Knowing via Realistic Epistemology: Mario Bunge on the Perfectibility and Unity of Modern Human Knowledge

Just as Chap. 6 defended the scientific view of the nature of reality, this chapter defends the scientific view of the nature of human knowledge. That is to say, as Chap. 6 presented the ontological component of the scientific worldview, this chapter presents its epistemological counterpart, again with the help of Mario Bunge’s contribution. And similarly, in keeping with our overall Arab-Islamic and Western philosophical conversation, this is done on the one hand in contrast to religious views of knowledge, where at least the deepest knowledge is taken to be ultimately a matter of divine revelation; and on the other hand, in contrast with postmodern views, where knowledge is taken to be a matter of imaginative social construction through language games, semiotic dominance, and debate strategies. Consider these epistemological news items: the massive explosion of printed matter that began with automation of the printing press in the nineteenth century1—books, newspapers, and specialized journals; the proliferation of compulsory elementary and secondary education that 1  “A key moment in the development of mass circulation newspapers was the development of the steam-powered rotary press, adopted by the Times [of London] in 1814. The new presses were capable of printing 1000 sheets per hour—around five times the number produced by the machines they replaced.” In Matthew Taunton, “Print Culture,” The British Library (website, May 2014), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/ print-culture.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_7

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began in the West in the same century, and in many other parts of the world after World War II; the increasing demand for higher education as a requirement for professional employment; the growing fusion between business and advanced scientific research, particularly in medicine and electronics; the reliance of militaries on intelligence gathering and specialized research; widespread government surveillance and spying; the worldwide network of reporters both professional and amateur; the vast enterprise of scientific and technological research, and its amateur counterparts in, for example, fossil hunting and astronomy; and—last but not least—the most recent flood of information and communication, in the internet age.2 All these indicate that modern Homo sapiens lives on knowledge, more than ever before. Bees collect pollen to make honey, ants gather grains for the winter, and Homo sapiens is increasingly becoming Homo quaerens.3 The global quest for modern knowledge is the social context of Bunge’s work on epistemology. Just as Bunge offered that the joint title of the two ontology volumes of his Treatise could be The Structure of Reality, he offered that the first two volumes on epistemology could jointly be called Principles of Inquiry—or An Inquiry into Inquiry.4 Indeed, much as metaphysics is the “science of being qua being,”5 “inquiry into inquiry” does describe the fundamental nature of epistemology itself. Modernity is one of the outcomes of the knowledge explosion, and vice versa. Investigating this interplay will be key to our eventual overall appreciation and suggested reformations, of modernity.

1   Approaching the Epistemological Problem Epistemology, for Bunge, is about exploring and understanding the world—these forming the individual titles of the first two volumes on epistemology of his Treatise. Thus, one of the tasks of contemporary epistemology is to help us comprehend, or put into context, an ocean of 2  See Anne Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 3  Nicholas Rescher, Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012), xvii. 4  Mario Bunge, Epistemology and Methodology II: Understanding the World. Vol. 6, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), xiv. 5  N.  Rescher, Metaphysics: The Key Issues from A Realistic Perspective (NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), 13.

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knowledge and knowledge claims—whether contradictory or nitpicking, harmful or useful, illusory or established. Yet, while the knowledge industry is thriving, “the science and philosophy of knowledge are still in the bud,” according to Bunge.6 Bunge does not see epistemology as an autonomous discipline, instead as at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and social science.7 He sees ten major problems as being typical, though not exhaustive, of classical epistemology. In condensed form, they are as follows8: How and what can we know? What is the subject’s contribution to knowledge? What is truth, how can we recognize it, and what is the difference between probable and certain knowledge? Is there a priori knowledge, and of what? How are knowledge and language related, and what is the status of concepts and universals? What is the relation between knowledge and action? Though Bunge sees all these problems as still with us in one way or another, he finds many new problems for contemporary epistemologists to work on. Another list of ten, similarly condensed: What is rationality, and what about description, classification, explanation, and prediction? What is the role of mathematics in factual knowledge? Can beliefs and plausible reasoning be formalized? What are problems, methods, approaches, hypotheses, theories, rules; basic science, applied science, technology? What is the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge? How do the social and cultural domains influence cognitive activities? What are the characteristics of learning communities, and what is the influence of the social matrix? What is the role of morality in inquiry?9 A comparison of these two lists of problems suggests that classical epistemology wondered more about the nature of knowledge and the knowing subject in the abstract, and sought to establish general theories or viewpoints, such as rationalism or empiricism, which would usher in all the branches of knowledge. On the other hand, contemporary epistemology, as Bunge sees it, focuses less on knowledge in the abstract and more on knowledge as a feature of persons and their brains, embedded in a social matrix. Thus, an emphasis on the learning community rather than just the isolated knowing self, and on the idea that epistemology is but one of the 6  Mario Bunge, Semantics II: Interpretation and Truth. Vol 2, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974), xiii. 7  Mario Bunge, Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World. Vol. 5, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), 3. 8  Bunge, 1. 9  Bunge, 3.

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cognitive sciences, others including psychology and sociology, all of which overlap substantially.10 Thus, considering some of epistemology’s primary questions, Who can know? (in the sense of capacity rather than authorization), is a concern too of psychology; What can be known? is considered also by the history of ideas; while How is knowledge possible? is likewise the concern of methodology, the philosophy of science, and the sociology of knowledge, all of which contribute to epistemology and vice versa. In other words, the “immaterial and isolated (and male and adult) knowing subject of traditional epistemology must be replaced with the inquiring brain, or team of brains, embedded in society.”11 In short, for Bunge, there is more to epistemology than what has been traditionally ascribed to it. Epistemology should tackle all aspects of knowledge, whether in ordinary life, science, or the humanities. Moreover, epistemology has not only a descriptive aspect, but also a prescriptive or normative one, that is, methodology.12 Normative epistemology should help guide the researcher and facilitate discovery, whether in the realm of facts or ideas. “[T]he better we know how we can get to know, the better we can improve (or block) the learning process, particularly in science, technology, and the humanities.”13 As the study of grammar improves writing and the study of logic refines thinking, the study of epistemology, Bunge posits, enhances inquiry.14 With regard to methodology, Bunge has ancient and medieval philosophy contributing little to it. This is unsurprising, given the late date of the scientific revolution. Thus, Bunge sees philosophy before that date as offering little advice of value other than logic, “Plato’s injunction to shun opinion (doxa) and seek only certain knowledge (episteme), Aristotle’s practice of defining everything, [and] Hippocrates’ recommendation to abstain from supernaturalistic explanation.”15 Epistemology had to await the rationalist-empiricist debate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to emerge as a full-fledged discipline.

 Bunge, 3.  Bunge, 16. 12  Methodology should mean the study of methods (of successful inquiry), just as biology is the study of living things. Today more often it is employed simply as a glorified form of “method,” a usage Bunge deplores. 13  Bunge, Exploring the World, 14. 14  Bunge, 14. 15  Bunge, 4. 10 11

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Yet the early dominance of Kantian thought led epistemology to suffer a fate similar to that of ontology (Chap. 6, Sections 1, 2). “Kant attempted to join Leibniz’s rationalism with Hume’s empiricism. But I submit that he chose the wrong halves of each: Leibniz’s apriorism and Hume’s phenomenalism. Worse yet, he glued them with intuitionism.”16 For Bunge, “Kant had managed to put together the negative aspects of empiricism and rationalism by holding that we can have no experience without certain a priori intuitions, that things conform to human thought rather than the other way around.”17 It should come as no surprise that many of the most novel achievements in knowledge, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, Marx’s analysis of surplus value, Russell and Whitehead’s mathematical logic, and Einstein’s physics, developed without any guidance from Kantian epistemology. The success of science without formal epistemology, or even contrary to the contemporaneous versions of it, has not gone unnoticed. Bunge laments that most scientists are indifferent to or contemptuous of methodology, while philosophers have their own contempt for what they see as this, shall we say, philistinism18: Actually the situation is much worse than either party thinks, for both are right. Indeed there seem to be few if any persons capable of giving a truthful and balanced account of the actual conduct of inquiry—even of their own. Author A believes only in logic, B only in intuition; C swears by induction and D by deduction; E by experiment and F by theory; author G is a 16  Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science II: From Explanation to Justification (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 408. Emphasis is mine. 17  Bunge, Exploring the World, 197. 18  The word is used to give the opportunity for a cultural digression. Philistine is a linguistic ancestor of Palestine. However, in current understanding the Philistines were originally southern European non-Arabs who rapidly blended into local Levantine populations, and whose civilization was ultimately destroyed by the Babylonian conquest of 604 BCE (see Nicholas St. Fleur, “DNA Begins to Unlock Secrets of the Ancient Philistines,” The New York Times, July 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/science/philistines-dna-­ origins.html). They are thus not identifiable as the ancestors of any current population, including current Palestinians. The latter recondite fact is of little help to Western perceptions of modern Palestinians—or for that matter, to Arab perceptions of Western perceptions of Palestinians. In our larger context of Western-Islamic conversation, it is therefore a good occasion to use the word, not to mock Palestinians as a human group eternally lacking knowledge and artistic taste, but as a reminder of the biases encoded in culture. Naiveté is by this late date a less loaded term; yet historical linguistics might find a similar cultural loading, since the word’s origin traces back to the Latin nativus, meaning native.

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­gradualist and H a catastrophist with regard to the evolution of knowledge; thinker J ignores society altogether and K places knowledge in society—and so on and so forth. Everyone of them can cite examples in his favor, so neither of them is totally wrong. But none of them has built a system accommodating the many and apparently conflicting features of inquiry: each of them offers a one-sided view, and each is anxious to have it accepted as his own original ism.19

Bunge’s calls his own proposal for a truthful and balanced account of inquiry, his own synthesis of the many and apparently conflicting features of inquiry, critical realism (alternatively scientific realism), a form of ratio-­ empiricism. Before though proceeding to examine its features, let us consider first a seemingly very simple question: what is knowledge?

2   The Underlying Nature of Knowledge The Kantian separation between knowledge and the world does a great disservice to epistemology. It is akin to separating a sculpture from its stone. True, sculptures are made using the ideas and skills of the sculptor. Yet, these are not the sole factors. The stone, and the tools to sculpt them, exist outside the sculptor’s mind. A sculptor uniting stone, tools, skills, and ideas to form a sculpture is akin to an inquirer uniting facts, perceptions, reason, and imagination to form knowledge of the world. The first two volumes of Bunge’s Treatise concern meaning and truth. These are intended to help philosophical discourse get off the ground. The second two concern ontology; these are intended to give philosophy its fundamental subject matter, namely the world. The third pair concerns epistemology, and in the introduction to the first of the pair, Bunge holds in effect that epistemology is in some ways a branch of ontology: In our perspective cognition is only a special kind of biological process, and therefore it is an object of study of the ontology of organisms; and organisms capable of sharing knowledge are members of some society or other, and therefore the object of study of the ontology of society. Thus any reasonably true generalizations about cognition may be placed in the intersection of the science and the philosophy of cognition.20

 Bunge, Exploring the World, 15.  Bunge, 12.

19 20

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Thus, rather than conceiving of knowledge as existing in itself, we should consider that “every cognitive act is a process in some nervous system, whether human or not. To put it negatively: There is no knowledge in itself, i.e. separate from the cognitive processes occurring in some nervous system or other.”21 Nevertheless we do want to abstract from these particulars to obtain universality, to dispense with the unnecessary details of who in particular is doing the thinking, or in other words to understand how we can have conceptions shared or sharable. For Bunge concepts should be conceived of as equivalence classes of all the different individual brain processes that do or might think of one and the same idea. (An equivalence class is a group of items collected together in thought according to some criterion of equivalence; alas in this case, a yet to be understood criterion.) That the criteria for what makes various brain processes equivalent as ideas are as yet unknown is why he considers these ideas concerning the nature of ideas to be programmatic or heuristic hypotheses, meant to help guide further psychological research into the neural nature of the mental, rather than as the last word. Bunge does not leave the matter of the underlying nature of knowledge at that, but goes further to note that some neural subsystems of the brain have fixed or committed connections between individual neurons, while others have variable connections. This special characteristic, neural plasticity, was first theorized by Donald Hebb (1904–1985) to be the basis of learning.22 Psychon is the term Bunge has coined for a plastic neural system, and he uses these ideas to form his definitions of learning and knowledge: an animal learns something if it forms at least one new psychon (plastic neural system) or combines in a novel fashion two or more psychons that had been established previously. And we call knowledge of an animal at a given time the set of all the items it has learned up until that time—i.e. the collection of changes in its plastic neural supersystem.23

 Bunge, 23. Emphasis in the original.  Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2010), 164–65. 23  Bunge, Exploring the World, 42. 21 22

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3   Truth Bunge follows Leibniz in distinguishing between truths of reason and truths of fact. For truths of reason, such as “1 + 1 = 2,” Bunge adopts the coherence theory of truth, wherein truth is merely a matter of non-­ contradiction. For truths of fact, Bunge adopts the correspondence theory, namely that a proposition about the world is true to the extent that what it proposes is in fact the case. Thus, whereas propositions of reason are either fully true or fully false,24 Bunge repeatedly emphasizes that truths of fact come in degrees.25 In several works over many years though, Bunge admits that: after two and a half millennia, the correspondence theory is still a research project. Yet, the intuitive idea is clear if fuzzy: A proposition is factually true if it fits (or matches, or corresponds to, or is adequate to) the facts it refers to. But what do the metaphorical terms “fit” (or “match”, or “correspond to”) mean? This is the outstanding question.26

Bunge’s approach to knowledge is part of his general attack on detached idealism. In trying to solve this “outstanding question,” Bunge considers that, just as there is no knowledge in itself, there is no truth in itself: “propositions are not born with truth values but are assigned truth values on the strength of tests.”27 Meanwhile, based on his neural characterization of knowledge, he proposes that the fit between proposition and fact is actually a matter of the match between neural facts and other facts. For Bunge this seems a more straightforwardly solvable matter than that of the match between proposition and fact: at least in principle, it is clear enough whether two material items resemble each other; but how the abstract idea

24  Some statements are either paradoxical or undecidable, but propositions are generally taken to be those which are either true or false. 25  Bunge’s ideas on partial truth involve many technicalities which cannot be analyzed here. He has proposed several different mathematical theories of partial truth, and though he insists on the necessity of the concept, he has found all of his specific theories to be more or less unsatisfactory. His various attempts have also been criticized by others, the attempt in volume 2 of the Treatise, for example, by David Miller, “Bunge’s Theory of Partial Truth Is No Such Thing,” Philosophical Studies 31/2 (1977), 147–150. 26  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 277. 27  Bunge, Understanding the World, 116.

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expressed by a proposition resembles the fact it refers to has always been awaiting clarification. Bunge’s criticisms of ‘knowledge in itself’ and ‘truth in itself’ are directed not only at Continental traditions of epistemology, but also at analytic Anglophone epistemologies, which commonly describe knowledge in terms of belief, namely as ‘justified true belief.’28 Although problematic, the idea would seem to still have some merit because human knowledge is rarely certain, instead constantly changing and conflicting. So why should knowledge not be a matter of belief? Consider this factual certainty: we will all eventually die. We all get to know this in youth, but most people don’t really believe it until at least some time in late middle age. Or consider this formal certainty: 1 + 1 = 2. We first get to know this as children, but how much do children really believe it? As adults, the proposition remains far more justified and truer than, say, Marxism, but have not the true believers in Marxism believed in that far more fervently than most people believe 1 + 1 = 2? Do we know anything more for believing in it more? The idea of knowledge as belief does not accommodate the common fact of disinterest, where we know something but neither believe nor doubt nor care about it. Regarding the formula “justified true belief,” belief seems to contribute nothing to knowledge that is not already taken care of by the matters of justification, truth, and awareness, the latter being merely, to use an expression, presence in the mind. Rather than defining knowledge as justified true belief, Bunge insists that a rational person will define justified belief in terms of true knowledge—for as Bunge repeatedly emphasizes, some, in some cases much, of our knowledge is false. So, the question: How do we find out whether and to what degree our knowledge is true? 3.1  Truth Criteria and the Critical Realist Synthesis the realization of the value of checking ideas seems to have dawned only recently. The first proof of a mathematical statement seems to be only 2,500 years old, and the first scientific experiments were not performed until the 17th century. For thousands of years physicians have prescribed cures, judges passed sentences, and religionists pronounced dogmas, without sufficient evidence and sometimes with no evidence at all. Most of mankind has 28  Edmund L.  Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?,” Analysis 23, no. 6 (June 1963): 121–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/23.6.121.

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lived and continues to live affirming or denying, at best debating, ideas supposed to be so important that they were deemed to be above checking.29

Let us remember that for Bunge, truth is fundamentally a semantic concept that reflects how the knowing brain’s conception of a fact succeeds in relevant tests. That ideas should be checked is one thing; there is also the matter of how they should be checked. The same holds for knowledge as a matter of belief. In his critique of this line of thinking, Rescher remarks that “knowledge cannot simply be a matter of having a true belief that is somehow justified, but rather would require having true belief that is appropriately justified.”30 Bunge discusses seven major epistemological views (“philosophical camps”) of what constitutes such appropriate justification, mapping out his agreements and disagreements with each one: unanimism, pragmatism, rationalism, empiricism, intuitionism, critical rationalism, and critical realism. What Bunge calls unanimism is the view that the stamp of truth is consensus (at least, of experts). It can be seen as another version of the postmodern claim that truth is a social construction. It does hold a grain of truth in that most knowledge requires some consensus at some point, if it is to be transmitted to subsequent generations, or implemented on any medium or larger scale, such as in the form of social policy. Thus, the disciplines concerned with advancing knowledge, such as the various sciences, require some degree of consensus to inquire coherently and productively, and to train the next generation of inquirers. Yet, history shows that scientific discoveries are in many instances an overturning of the reigning consensus. Therefore, consensus is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth. In a different context, discussing the importance of problems, Bunge evocatively captures some of the reach and limitations of expert consensus: “The specialist may be trusted to spot wrong solutions, but spotting wrong problems takes more than professional competence, particularly when an entire army of knights has been tilting at windmills for some time.”31 Pragmatism puts truth as a matter of success and usefulness. American Pragmatists like William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, or John Dewey  Bunge, Understanding the World, 69.  Nicholas Rescher, Concept Audits: A Philosophical Method (London: Lexington Books, 2016), 39. 31  Bunge, Exploring the World, 284. 29 30

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were right in recognizing that factual truth is a matter beyond only contemplation and conjecture. Yet not all important contemplation and conjecture about the real world is even subject to being judged useful or successful in the first place. The favorable circumstances, supporting ideas, or techniques that would make their deployment feasible are lacking. Thus, the heliocentric view of the solar system was formulated in antiquity, but the geocentric one was more successful and useful until relatively recently in human history (the geocentric conception remains more useful in everyday life). Did heliocentrism have to wait that long to become true? In any case, if usefulness were the criterion for truth, then how could we even formulate, let alone understand, the hypothesis that falsehoods may be at least as useful for life as truths?32 Besides, if truths are determined by what lives the longest, then superstitions would be truest of all.33 Despite their failings, pragmatism and unanimism remain popular, if only for being at least the last resorts of politicians: after megalomania and oracles, they have little choice but to rely on expert consensus and practical results. So, let us consider these two views further, by examining the reactions of the unanimist and the pragmatist to the simple question, is there a new café nearby? The existence of the café, being new, would not be affirmed by consensus. The unanimist would then either not find an answer, or outright deny the café’s existence. The pragmatist wanting to answer truthfully would have to evaluate the usefulness of the two contradictory answers, yes there is and no there isn’t. If the café is real but bad, if there is already too much noise and traffic in the neighborhood—or if the pragmatist owns his own competing old café—the pragmatist might “truthfully” deny the existence of a real café. Rationalism has truth as coherence with fundamental principles. Writing before the time of political correctness, Bunge objected that “coherence is insufficient: think of any consistent ideology and of that of some madmen.”34 As for consistent ideologies, consider the theologies of the three monotheisms. They have been developed to a high degree of internal consistency; yet, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies contradict each other on important matters, and we cannot know who is right and who is wrong without external criteria. Hence, coherence,  Bunge, Exploring the World, 131.  Bunge, 8. 34  Bunge, Understanding the World, 69. 32 33

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though desirable, is not enough: ideas should be consistent not only among themselves, but also with the facts of the world. Empiricism holds truth to be a matter of positive evidence. Bunge affirms that, like rationalism, it does hold an important grain of truth—so perhaps rather more than a grain. Like rationalism though it is inadequate, in this case at least for its relative discounting of the value of negative evidence and reason, not to say imagination. For the role of the imagination, Bunge as with Popper has always disputed the empiricist thesis that theories are mere inductive data summaries. On the contrary, the most profound theories involve postulated, trans-empirical concepts and entities, such as those of causality, mass, entropy, the atom, and the interiors of stars (one of Bunge’s favorite examples). We need theories to tell us which data, out of the infinity of possibilities, we should bother to collect in the first place: not to mention, for how to design the measurement instruments needed to collect them.35 In this vein, Bunge asks: “How is it possible to predict the existence of unheard-of properties, events, and even things? If every scientific statement were nothing but a datum or an empirical generalization, such predictions would be miraculous.”36 For Bunge, “Empiricism is only suitable for [data] hunters and gatherers.”37 In reaction to empiricism’s philosophical enslavement to sense-data, intuitionism justifiably highlights the insightful contributions of the mind, over and above raw information. Yet, intuitionists concentrate on and elevate this aspect at the expense of reason and experience, in particular experiment. Unsurprisingly, they cannot account for error, “because they claim to have instant access to full truths.”38 That is to say, intuitionists provide no criteria for distinguishing correct from incorrect intuitions. Bunge’s own view is that intuition (or “insight” or “flair”) is indispensable, but that intuitionism—the view that intuition suffices—is false.39 Critical rationalism or falsificationism is the epistemology of Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994), whom the founder of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), described as the “official opposition” to his group

 Bunge, Interpretation and Truth, 104.  Bunge, Understanding the World, 55. 37  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 59. 38  Mario Bunge, Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 31. 39  Bunge, Understanding the World, 55. 248–250. 35 36

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(the logical positivists).40 The basic idea behind it is this: although there is no way to provide empirical proof that the sun always rises from the east, it is empirically provable that it does not always rise from the west. According to Popper, for universal claims, negative evidence is the only valid evidence: any number of finite positive confirmations, no matter how many, never add up to a universal claim. Bunge agrees with Popper to the extent that unsuccessful attempts to refute a theory—in other words, negative evidence for its opposite—count for more than empirical confirmations, the latter being somewhat cheap truths. But he disagrees first of all in that general theories and existence hypotheses are not refutable, but only confirmable.41 Second: As for the methodological need for confirmation, it is just as clear: there is no other empirical indicator of factual truth. This is why physicists are still withholding judgment concerning the hypothesis of the existence of gravitational waves, black holes, and magnetic monopoles until someone detects them. No theoretical argument and no criticism can substitute for clear-­cut—even if revisable—empirical confirmation.42

Bunge published that in 1983. The first claimed detection of a gravitational wave came 32 years later, and a full century after their existence was predicted by Einstein. Fittingly, it was indeed a clear-cut, but revisable, empirical confirmation.43 This event in particular also proved beyond a doubt that confirmations are not all that cheap—this one coming at a cost of more than a billion dollars, and decades of labor by over a thousand scientists.44 40  Donald Gillies, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century: Four Central Themes (Boston, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 21. 41  Bunge, Understanding the World, 55. 42  Bunge, 139. 43  There remain doubts as to whether gravitational waves were unambiguously detected, or whether the putative signal was really an artifact of noise. For an early popular summary of the situation, see Michael Brooks, “Wave Goodbye? Grave Doubts over LIGO’s Discovery of Gravitational Waves,” New Scientist, October 31, 2018, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032022-600-exclusive-grave-doubts-over-ligos-discovery-of-gravitational-waves/. For follow-up, see Michael Brooks, “Some Physicists Still Doubt Whether LIGO Has Seen Gravitational Waves,” New Scientist, September 10, 2019, https://www.newscientist.com/ article/2216072-some-physicists-still-doubt-whether-ligo-has-seen-gravitational-waves/. 44  Dennis Overbye, “Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory”, The New York Times, February 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html.

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Each of the six epistemological doctrines discussed so far, though to some extent individually plausible, is inadequate. Collectively, they are inconsistent. Let us recall Rescher’s idea of an aporetic cluster (Chap. 4, Section 2) as “a group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent”45: thus unanimism, pragmatism, rationalism, empiricism, intuitionism, and critical rationalism form an aporetic cluster. What we need then is some sort of synthesis of the best features of its six individual components. As mentioned, Bunge’s terms for his own synthesis are critical realism or scientific realism: “a sort of synthesis of rationalism (the coherence requirement), empiricism (positive evidence), and critical rationalism (negative evidence), plus the realist thesis that the theories in science and technology represent (poorly or accurately) parts or aspects of the real world.”46 Although Bunge does not include the three other views in his discussions of critical realism per se, it is clear that they also play some role in his epistemology overall. Unanimism, as with the others, becomes ancillary: we need experts to evaluate, adjudicate, and teach; but on the basis of rational, empirical, and realist criteria—and in recognition of their fallibility. Pragmatic concerns become matters not of truth, but of effectiveness and efficiency; thus, central matters for technology and policy, and the philosophical disciplines of action theory (praxiology) and methodology—while just practical constraints for science and epistemology. As for intuition, it becomes a contributor to reason, not its master. 3.2  Evidence and Its Interpretation The empiricist and critical rationalist components of critical realism refer to evidence, of the positive and negative kinds respectively. But what counts as evidence? Besides the division into positive and negative, Bunge counts evidence as being either conceptual or empirical. In science, conceptual evidence for a new idea amounts to consistency with the bulk of background knowledge. Bunge insists it must be with the bulk of it rather than the whole, for the very fact that the idea is new. Bunge calls consistency with background knowledge external consistency, in contrast to the rationalist and rather 45  Nicholas Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophizing (Malden [MA]; Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 93. 46  Bunge, Understanding the World, 70.

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minimalist criterion of coherence, internal consistency, or avoidance of self-contradiction. Insisting on the need for external consistency, as Bunge does, is equivalent to insisting that not everything can be questioned at the same time47—contrary to epistemological anarchism, whose slogan is “anything goes.”48 Bunge gives five basic reasons for this insistence, the most important of them being the following49: (1) No problem can be posed in a vacuum and no problem can be evaluated in a vacuum. Every problem has presuppositions, and indeed every presupposition can be questioned—but only within a context, that is to say by (at least temporarily) taking some other presuppositions for granted. Thus “even if we wanted to revolutionize the entire body of antecedent knowledge we could not do it.” (2) Using background knowledge gives us heuristic guidance and avoids waste. (3) Even if it were possible, there is no need to question the entire body of background knowledge all at once: it suffices to question only those items that are found faulty. (4) It is true that insistence on external consistency may sometimes thwart progress—“but then error is the unavoidable hazard of inquiry.”50 To fix this problem it is enough to insist on the standard requirement that research produce new results and to occasionally scrutinize and systematize the background knowledge. All of this is of particular importance to Bunge’s epistemology, for helping form his view that total scientific revolutions are no longer possible, because a substantial amount (though not the whole) of modern scientific knowledge is valid: even though science and technology are characteristically changeable, there can be no total revolutions in them: every transformation, however deep, is local. Nearly total revolutions were possible before the emergence of ­modern  Bunge, Understanding the World, 144.  Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method, 3rd edition (London: Verso, 1993), 14, 159, 230. Fittingly for “anything goes,” in these pages of the 3rd edition, Feyerabend both upheld and rejected the slogan. 49  Bunge, Understanding the World, 144–146. 50  Bunge, 146. 47 48

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science and technology: from then on every epistemic revolution has been and will be partial because it is a new growth in the midst of a vast system of knowledge.51

As for philosophical knowledge, in this case Bunge is far less appreciative: in his view almost the opposite situation is the case—or at least was the case, before he formulated his own contribution. Bunge held most of philosophy to be either at variance with or at best remote from science and technology, and so ripe for a “deep and sweeping” revolution.52 After the matters of conceptual evidence come those of empirical evidence. For Bunge—always on guard against pseudoscience, pseudo-­ philosophy, and epistemological silliness and frauds of all sorts—it is important to note the basic particularities that an empirical datum must satisfy in order to constitute empirical evidence for or against a proposition.53 Bunge lists four, and briefly (in an order different from the original), these are54: (1) Being acquired with the help of operations “accessible to public scrutiny (rather than made up, conjectured, taken from authority, or obtained by allegedly paranormal means).” (2) Being relevant, in other words referring to at least some aspect of the proposition. (3) Being connected by some law or rule to something in the proposition—such as is the case when the reading from a radar gun is used to check the truth of the proposition that the driver of a car is speeding. (4) Being “interpreted in the light of some body of knowledge.” That last item in particular is worthy of some further discussion. Although we rely on empirical data to test the fit between claim and fact, we are pushed back to theory by this very test: one might say that the further the demands of empiricism go, the more rationalism gets involved. Let us illustrate these ideas with the empirical test of a very simple claim: water boils at 100° C. (We leave aside for the moment, to return later to, the fact  Bunge, 147.  Bunge, 147. 53  Or for or against a proposal, such as we should do [whatever]. 54  Bunge, Understanding the World, 67. 51 52

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that the 100° mark on the scale denoted by “C” is specified by the boiling point of water in the first place.) How should we go about testing this claim? Obviously first we must get hold of some water in a container, a thermometer, and a heat source. What about the water: will just any sample of water do? Most of us would say yes, or at least that any sample of pure water will do. But why? How do we know, for example, that water does not have a memory, so that, for example, how we transport or pour our water into the container does not affect the outcome? Such questions may sound absurd, but the idea that water has a memory of some sort is central to homeopathy, and a research paper claiming to demonstrate this faculty was published not all that long ago, in the world’s most prestigious scientific journal.55 (It was also debunked in a later volume of that same journal).56 The explanation proffered by the authors for the inability of other laboratories to replicate the findings was that special shaking was needed to preserve the memories. That such ideas are absurd is not the result of empirical observations. Nearly all of us boil water all the time, but hardly any of us have precisely checked the temperatures and conditions along the way. Even if we were to, we would only be doing the empirical checking on the tiniest, empirically most unrepresentative sample of the vast quantity of all water in the universe, essentially all of it forever inaccessible to us. Worse, some water is yet to come into existence, but will only at arbitrary times in the future be synthesized from hydrogen and oxygen gas; while other samples of water have disappeared forever, having already been separated into their oxygen and hydrogen components. To the contrary, the absurdity comes not from the empirical but from the theoretical: from our understanding of the nature of water. To be sure, the leap to this reliable theoretical understanding was based on some (extraordinarily limited) experiences with water, but it is no less theoretical for that—indeed rather more so, for these experiences being so limited, and the ideas so far a leap beyond them. The same holds for the idea that while we can ignore the water’s history, we cannot ignore its purity. Most of the water we have readily 55  Davenas E, Beauvais F, Amara J, et al. “Human Basophil Degranulation Triggered by Very Dilute Antiserum Against IgE,” Nature, no. 333 (1988), 816–818. 56  John Maddox, James Randi, Walter W. Stewart. “‘High-dilution’ Experiments A Delusion,” Nature, no. 334 (1988), 287–290.

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available is far from pure: usually it contains either dissolved chlorine or ozone, or else a variety of living micro-organisms, and usually, a variety of dissolved minerals, metals, and other gases. We know all this only through a vast complex of antecedent knowledge, both practical and theoretical. Similarly, we also know that most of the impurities are usually in low enough concentrations that the boiling point will be affected only slightly. Similar considerations apply for the container, its composition, and its shape, and to the heat source. What about the thermometer: what makes for a thermometer, and moreover a good one? As with the design and fabrication of any measuring instrument, we need a variety of theories and models to explain how and why any thermometer should work, and with what error we might expect. The operation of a digital electronic thermometer relies on theories as advanced and abstract as those of solid state physics. Even all that is not enough. We need theory to tell us that the proposition water boils at 100° C is incomplete: we have to specify that this holds at standard atmospheric pressure. Pressure itself is a wonderfully theoretical, trans-empirical concept, because we can only perceive force, not pressure, which is instead the ratio of force to surface area. Now to the idea that the Centigrade (or Celsius) temperature scale is created in part by specifying the 100° mark to be the boiling point of pure water at standard pressure in the first place. With that in mind, a better way to have phrased our original proposition, (pure) water (at standard pressure) boils at 100° C, would have been this: all bulk pure water at standard atmospheric pressure boils at a universally constant temperature, identifiable by the values of certain universal physical properties of various substances when incorporated into calibrated measuring instruments—such as the lengths of columns of mercury or alcohol, or the electrical resistances of certain semi-conductors, or whatever. In this full form, not only does the extensive theoretical content become obvious, but so too that the underlying truth of the proposition is contingent, and not a mere matter of definition. For example, would it still be true for water in an intense gravitational field, such as in the vicinity of a black hole? In short, the truth and even meaning of even the simple claim, water boils at 100° C, is anchored in many theories, which involve numerous abstract concepts. This holds true not just for matters of physics and chemistry, but in general: think of how much theory is involved in supporting the proposition “humans and apes had a common ancestor.”

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The four requirements Bunge placed on empirical data for them to count as evidence dealt with individual propositions, not theories as wholes. Theories are hypothetico-deductive systems, which start small but grow big: “an entire theory is unthinkable for it contains infinitely many propositions. We can think only of a few statements (postulates, definitions or theorems) of any given theory.”57 This is because the basic statements of a theory, its axioms, are general, but when they are conjoined with the infinity of possible specific circumstances, they yield an infinity of particular propositions, and only particular propositions can be contrasted with data. Thus, any empirical test of a theory involves checking only a minute number of its infinitely many specific claims. To evaluate both singular propositions and theories as a whole, and too, plans and proposals for action, Bunge holds that philosophers should do as scientists and engineers do and apply a variety of criteria of value. Some of the criteria Bunge chooses are mundane, such as being phrased intelligibly rather than in gibberish—again a reflection of his hostility to epistemological silliness and frauds of all kinds. For present purposes, apart from those already discussed (internal and external consistency, and more or less striking confirmations or refutations by empirical data), the most interesting indicators of value (truth or usefulness) that Bunge lists are summarized as follows58: (1) Systemicity: stray propositions, not part of a larger context, “are hardly intelligible and cannot be evaluated for truth or efficiency.”59 (2) Consilience: when a theory explains or predicts events different in kind from those originally envisioned in its construction. (3) Unifying power: when a theory brings together formerly separate items, such as when the formerly distinct electricity, magnetism, and light were brought together in the electromagnetic theory of light. (4) Depth: unveiling hidden mechanisms, as opposed to simple associations and correlations. (5) Stability, up to a point: being able to cope, via minor repairs, with originally unfavorable evidence. If all sorts of repairs are allowed though, the theory becomes unfalsifiable and unilluminating.  Bunge, Understanding the World, 121.  Bunge, 148–51. 59  Bunge, 148. 57 58

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(6) Heuristic power: suggesting and guiding new research rather than just summarizing old research. (7) Originality: since the goal of scientific research is to gain new knowledge, new discoveries are particularly valued. (8) Adequate simplicity: enough so that the theory is not impractical to use or evaluate. (9) Feasibility: plans and proposals for action should be “capable of being implemented by real people in real time rather than being suited to ideal people and situations.”60 (10) Compatibility with a science-oriented ontology: by this Bunge means a materialist one, and moreover one at least similar to his own, for emphasizing the changeability of things. Again reflecting his hostility to pseudoscience, he expands on this as automatically disqualifying “ghostly” entities and “the hypothesis of telekinesis and the proposal of solving the energy crisis by powering machines by psychic power.”61 (11) Compatibility with a science-oriented epistemology: by this Bunge means one (like his own) that learns from science and combines rationalism with empiricism. (12) Compatibility with an ethics: in fact here Bunge does not just mean “an” ethics, rather specifically one (like his own) that enshrines “human rights, in particular the right to know, and human duties, in particular the duty to teach and enlighten.” Bunge holds that all of but two of these conditions are obligatory, thus good indicators of either truth or usefulness. Curiously, his two exceptions do not include the ethical desideratum, but are instead those of originality and simplicity, which he holds as desirable but dispensable. Surely though morality is not an indicator of truth; is it a good indicator of usefulness? This begs the question, useful for what? This is a general topic to which we shall return when discussing Bunge’s ethical system in the next chapter.

60  This sounds mundane, but likely Bunge had in mind in particular the strict and unrealistic moral codes of various religions. In the final volume of his Treatise, Bunge held that any good moral code should have (among others) the desideratum of “viability: possibility of living up to—i.e. designed for normal people not for either saints or psychopaths.” Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right. Vol. 8, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel), 5. More in Chap. 8. 61  Bunge, Understanding the World, 149.

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Bunge also lists a variety of what he calls unreliable indicators of value (truth or usefulness), some of which he regards instead as reliable indicators of disvalue62: • Coherence: coherence, though necessary and sufficient for truth in logic and mathematics, is insufficient for factual truth. • Consensus: rather than being either necessary or sufficient, Bunge finds consensus ambiguous. Although it complies with the requirement of external consistency, it conflicts with the value of originality. His verdict: “Fortunately consensus is not universal in basic science or technology, where controversy flourishes… Surely the dissenters are always in a minority: so are the innovators who are eventually proved right.”63 • Simplicity: a minimal level of simplicity is one of Bunge’s reliable indicators of value. Here he means first that simplicity is no seal of truth or usefulness, second that it is detrimental to over-value simplicity when faced with the real complexity of the world.64 • Beauty: here Bunge asks, what is beauty, and why should it be related to truth or usefulness? His verdict: “As with simplicity, beauty is welcome but uninvited.”65 • Longevity: Bunge admits that some good theories, such as classical mechanics, have been around a long time—“but only because they have been refined and assigned more modest roles.” His verdict: If survival were a genuine truth or efficiency indicator, then we should accept as true or efficient all the ancient superstitions that are still with us. No, longevity is not necessarily a mark of truth or of usefulness: it can also be an indicator of ignorance.66

These various indicators, reliable and unreliable, were all formulated mainly with scientific theories and proposals in mind. They are a combination of descriptive and proscriptive: proposals for what should be the case, based largely on descriptions of what has sometimes been the case—with of  Bunge, Understanding the World, 150–151.  Bunge, Understanding the World, 151. 64  One of Bunge’s early books was The Myth of Simplicity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-­ Hall, 1963). 65  Bunge, Understanding the World, 151. 66  Bunge, Understanding the World, 151. 62 63

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course at least a few touches of Bunge’s own. His assessment of what typically is the case in science is rather negative: The actual process of evaluating propositions and proposals in science and technology is far more complicated than suggested by […] simplistic philosophies, but it seldom takes advantage of the full battery of tests, to concentrate only on such properties as accuracy, originality, and usefulness. No wonder, for the scientists and technologists who evaluate the work of their peers have seldom given any thought to the principles of evaluation—principles that they may dismiss contemptuously as being “merely” philosophical.67

As for evaluating philosophies—later the title of one of Bunge’s more recent books68—his specific criteria are, briefly, originality; systemicity; heuristic power; internal consistency; external consistency with mathematics, science, technology, and the best of the philosophical tradition; and finally, solving some important or at least interesting problem. Eventually Bunge compressed these ideas into a basic credo, which can be stated as follows: A philosophy is worthwhile to the extent it helps us to learn, act, conserve our common heritage, and get along with fellow humans.69 In compressed or expanded form, these too are Bunge’s assessments of what should be the case. His assessment of what actually was the case for philosophy at the time of his Understanding the World (1983) was even more negative than for science: the current standards of excellence in philosophy seem to boil down to smart argumentation (even if it involves ignorance of basic facts), triviality of the problem, possibility of compression into a simple slogan, and prestige of the philosopher’s institution.70

Three decades later (2012), his assessment was similarly bleak: there do not seem to be any objective and generally accepted criteria for assessing the merits and flaw[s] of philosophical doctrines. Usually, the  Bunge, Understanding the World, 154.  Mario Bunge, Evaluating Philosophies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 295 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012). 69  Bunge, xiv. 70  Bunge, Understanding the World, 154. 67 68

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adoption of a philosophy does not result from a long and anguished ­deliberation but, rather, from a combination of predisposition with necessity and opportunity—just as in the case of petty theft. […] philosophies, whether genuine or spurious, are not usually adopted because of their conceptual, empirical, or moral merits, but because of tradition, political interests, or even temperament—none of which is a good reason.71

4   Summary of the Critical Realist Synthesis Certainly, in the modern era there is no justification for worshiping one particular method of truth seeking. Inquiry done well is a complex process, having many aspects. In Bunge’s view, “[o]ne way of gaining knowledge is by making observations or measurements, another is by forming and checking conjectures, and a third is by ferreting it out of available knowledge, i.e., by inference”72; but research itself is sparked off by problems, not by [empirical] observation or by [intuitionist] hypothesis. Observation poses problems or checks hypotheses, but it is neither the only source of problems nor the only way of testing hypotheses. All inquiry except the most trivial involves deduction mingled with plausible inference, and the latter includes induction but is not restricted to it.”73

Critical realism relies on reason and intuition for consistency, systemicity, and insight; on observation and experiment for verification and falsification; implicitly, it admits practical constraints and motivations; likewise, the need for experts to juggle it all, and teach and train the next generations. In short, critical realism is the basis of active comprehensive inquiry that synthesizes the aporetic cluster of rationalism, intuitionism, empiricism, critical rationalism, pragmatism, and unanimism. It is an epistemology that advances modernity, far beyond any premodern epistemology, and in contrast with postmodernity. The synthesis of critical realism can be depicted hexagonally, as in Fig. 7.1.

 Bunge, Evaluating Philosophies, xii–xiv.  Bunge, Exploring the World, 228. 73  Bunge, 229. 71 72

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Fig. 7.1  The epistemological components and main ancillary factors that together form critical (or scientific) realism

5   Understanding 5.1  Aspects and Gradations Bunge’s critical realist synthesis advocates internal and external consistency, the search for confirmation and refutation, and evaluation according to multiple desiderata. Its goal is to support the unification of knowledge and the most comprehensive, consistent, and verified explanations of the world. As previously noted (Section 1), for Bunge epistemology is about exploring and understanding the world. The previous sections were concerned mostly with the explorative side. How should we understand understanding? Understanding has both a psychological and an epistemological aspect. The psychological aspect concerns whether or not we “get it,” and how we integrate new ideas into the rest of our mentality. Understandings

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come in degrees, and in its epistemological aspect, Bunge distinguishes three basic gradations: description, subsumption, and explanation.74 A description is a mere list of facts, sequential if what is being described is a process in time. It is simply an account of what happened or is the case, without explaining how or why. A subsumption organizes (deduces) a description under a pattern—the how—but without explaining why the pattern is the case. An explanation proper gives the why, which is for Bunge the mechanism. Description, subsumption, and explanation correspond more or less to what Bunge calls black-box, gray-box, and “translucid”75 (really transparent)-box accounts. For Bunge, the goal of science has always been to explain the world: metaphorically, to provide transparent-box accounts. The following example might clarify why only transparent-box accounts are explanations proper. Young children mostly have the idea that babies somehow come from women together with men. They might know that their older sisters, aunts, or female neighbors never had children until they got married or got together somehow with a man; or infer that they never could. Yet, the coming together of a man and a woman, even in the same room, is hardly a sufficient explanation. It is rather a black-box account: an event happens; after, in some unknown way, an outcome is produced (Fig. 7.2). Unlike children, adults know that sexual intercourse is required for natural reproduction, not marriage as such or just living together. However, this deeper understanding still does not account for the fact that some couples do not succeed in having children, despite intercourse. An account in terms of sexual intercourse could be seen as a gray (translucent,

Fig. 7.2  Black-box explanation of natural human reproduction.

 Bunge, Understanding the World, 7–10.  “Black box” is a standard term, gray box perhaps less so, but by translucid—not an English word, but a mistranslation of the traslúcido of Bunge’s native Spanish—Bunge really means transparent. Rather than black, gray, and “translucid,” a consistent series of metaphors in English would be opaque box, translucent box, transparent box. 74 75

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i.e., only semi-transparent)-box explanation, because it gives some understanding of what really goes on, yet without making the situation clear (Fig. 7.3). Even physicians and scientists were in this very gray-box situation until a series of discoveries, starting with that of spermatozoa by Leeuwenhoek in 1677, going on through that of the human egg in 1827, many more discoveries in embryology,76 and continuing on through the solving by Watson and Crick in 1956 of the structure of DNA and its basic mechanism of replication. With the aid of these more and more transparent explanations, these more and more detailed and better understood mechanisms, we came to know how the male and female characters mingle together, sometimes with mutation, within the process first of gametic fusion, and later embryogenesis. Rather than seeing “through a glass darkly,” now we see more clearly. The box has become more transparent, more and more of the mechanisms have been unveiled; our explanation has become more and more ‘mechanismic’ (Fig. 7.4).77 The term “more transparent” is used in preference to “transparent” because what may seem to be a transparent box might turn out to be more obscure than at first thought. In fact, such developments are the natural

Fig. 7.3  Gray (translucent)-box explanation of natural human reproduction

Fig. 7.4  More transparent box: a more mechanismic explanation of natural human reproduction 76  See Alex Lopata, “History of the Egg in Embryology,” Journal of Mammalian Ova Research, Vol. 26, 2009, 2–9. 77  Bunge, Understanding the World, 21.

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outcome of the progress of research. Our view is never perfectly clear: the more we know, the more there is to explain, the more mechanisms to unveil. For just a start, we still have much to learn about the precise mechanisms of gametic fusion, chromosomal assortment, genetic expression, and embryogenesis. No matter our scientific achievements, Bunge insists that “every explanation, if properly analyzed, will prove to be incomplete in failing to explain, with total accuracy, every feature of the object of explanation.”78 Of course, improving our explanations is not simply a matter of continuous improvement. Often there are different, competing explanations for the same facts. In these cases Bunge has it that the “best of two roughly equally accurate and equally general accounts is the deeper, and the best of two equally deep accounts is the more accurate and general one.”79 This gives three criteria for ranking various explanations: range (generality, coverage, comprehensiveness), accuracy, and depth. Of these, depth has always been the trickiest. Bunge regularly castigates a variety of popular philosophies and philosophers for producing “nonsense parading as deep philosophy.”80 His own characterization of depth concerns the levels of organization of matter. The deeper explanation is the one that involves more of them; that is to say, the one that refers to more subsystems or supersystems of the thing whose behavior is to be explained. Thus, neuropsychology and social psychology are deeper than behaviorist psychology, for inquiring into respectively the neuro-endocrinal subsystems, and social supersystems, of the individual, rather than considering the individual as a black box. Likewise Freudian psychoanalysis is superficial rather than deep, because it too does not consider processes spanning any of these other levels, whose roles were unknown in Freud’s time. Instead it posits mythical entities, such as the id, the ego, and the superego, which in a scientific metaphysics are not part of any level of reality.81  Bunge, 14.  Bunge, 24. 80  Bunge, Matter and Mind, 260. 81  One might extend Bunge’s criterion of depth to conceptual matters, by considering levels of conceptual analysis. Thus, for example, with regard to linguistics, meaning (semantics) is deeper than syntax (grammatical structure). The sentence ‘this Euclidean triangle is rectangular’ does not violate any syntactic rule. Yet, it is incorrect by way of its meaning: meaning goes beyond the level of syntax, to include the logical level (relationships between concepts and propositions, not just words) and the contextual level, the context or content being in this case mathematical. 78 79

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5.2  Systemicity One of the keys to understanding, in both its psychological and epistemological aspects, is systemicity, or the embedding of ideas within a context. Two ways of doing this are integration and reduction, the latter of which Bunge further divides into microreduction and macroreduction.82 Microreduction, which is usually referred to simply as reduction, refers to explaining the whole in terms of its parts, while Bunge’s “macroreduction” refers to explaining the parts in terms of the whole. Integration refers to explaining a whole by considering it as either a part of a bigger whole or else an instance of a more general type; by comparing it to other systems; or by any other operation involving a different, larger, or overlapping context. Essentially then, although Bunge discusses them separately, macroreduction is one form of integration. Traditionally, holists uphold integration over reduction, atomists the reverse. Bunge is a systemist, which can be seen as a compromise between or synthesis of the two, so naturally he favors both integration and reduction. The combination of the two could be illustrated by explaining social facts with the aid of psychological facts, and psychological facts with the aid of social ones. For example, a government may be overthrown because of widespread discontent, while individuals may be discontent because of the failure of the economy to provide for their needs. In turn psychological facts can be explained with the aid of physiological facts, while physiological facts can be explained with the aid of psychological facts. Thus, a person may be listless and unmotivated because they have the flu, while their digestion may be upset because they are nervous. Alternatively, the two-way connection may be between psychology and anatomy rather than physiology: a person may be depressed because they are overweight, or underweight because they have anorexia. In turn physiological facts or anatomical facts may be explained with the aid of chemical facts, and chemical facts with the aid of physiological or anatomical facts. Thus, a person may be dying because they have consumed poison, or their blood acidity may be high because their respiratory function is anatomically or physiologically impaired. Such sequences, moving up and down or laterally, can typically be continued indefinitely—or at least, far beyond any current knowledge. Bunge admits that microreduction has been spectacularly successful. Nevertheless he maintains that properly analyzed, the most important  Bunge, Understanding the World, 36.

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cases of reduction have really been only instances of partial reduction, and that properly considered, “integration is at least as frequent as reduction and just as important a factor of the unity of knowledge.”83 The strategy he favors, rather than anti-reductionism (holism) or radical reductionism, is moderate reductionism: reduce what can be reduced, do not discount emergence but attempt to explain it, and study the whole as well as the parts, in the hope of better accounting for both. Outside of Bunge’s scientifically enlightened philosophy, in some philosophical circles reductionism of any sort is considered derogatorily. Sometimes, accusing a particular philosophical project of being ‘reductionist’ is enough to belittle its achievements.84 One reason for this might be the failure of, or at least a hostility to, some particular reductionist projects. One such project that Bunge has criticized since its beginnings85 is the “computationalist” one: based on the slight analogy between computers and the brain, it proposes that the brain is a computer, and thoughts are computations. Bunge expounds many arguments against computationalism, with perhaps the most compelling being related to the contrast between the creative power of human thought and the subservience of the programmed machine. Thus, rather than challenging computationalists by demanding that computers solve some hard problem—such as winning at chess—Bunge would challenge them by asking, “can a computer pose novel and interesting problems that are worth solving—and argue that case?” In any case, the alleged algorithms in the human brain are yet to be discovered. Regarding the failure and implausibility of computationalism and other quixotic reductionist endeavors, the fanaticism of some reductionists and the failure of some reductionist projects do not imply that some form of moderate reductionism cannot succeed.86 Bunge emphasizes that no one needs to fear reduction as being a threat to cherished qualities, such as human consciousness or emotion, since reduction is epistemological, not ontological: explained emergence is still emergence. Nor is reduction a  Bunge, Understanding the World, 45.  “That, in the end, this so-called ethical or humanist axiomatic actually shares with the axiomatic it claims to oppose a certain geneticism or biologism, indeed a deep zoologism, a fundamental but unacknowledged reductionism.” In Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford University Press, 2005), 147. Emphasis is mine. 85  See, for example, Mario Bunge, “Do Computers Think?,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1956, 7:139–148; 7:212–219; Mind and Matter, 2010, 227–237. 86  Mario Bunge, Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 151–52. 83 84

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threat to our cognitive or emotional appreciation of such cherished items: “Explanation dissolves mystery but need not remove marvel,” beauty, or wonder.87 Rather than being destructive, reduction as Bunge sees it is an indispensable tool for unification. It is “far from impoverishing,” since the unification it achieves between the upper and lower levels of complexity serves to “enrich both the reducing and the reduced field of inquiry”88: just as physics and chemistry cannot eliminate the need for biology, biology cannot dispense with physics and chemistry; on the contrary, physics and chemistry have vastly improved biological knowledge, while biology, in particular biophysics and biochemistry, has given vast new fields for ­physicists and chemists to explore and try to understand. In Bunge’s words: “Just as the variety of reality requires a multitude of disciplines, so the integration of the latter is necessitated by the unity of reality.”89 5.3  Two Knowledge Mappings: The Tree of Knowledge and the System of Knowledge These ideas lead Bunge to two sorts of mapping of current human knowledge, both of which should assist us in our philosophical dialogue between modern secular-scientific and modern Islamic philosophy. Both are answers to a major epistemic question, one which has confused a number of secular philosophers90: what are the relationships between the various types of knowledge? These various types are often called branches of knowledge, and so Bunge’s first conception might fittingly be called the tree of knowledge (Fig.  7.5), a purely epistemological mapping according to subject matter and nature.91 The primary branches of the scientific part of the tree of knowledge are those of formal and factual knowledge. Formal knowledge concerns ideas, while factual knowledge concerns things and events occurring in the real  Bunge, Understanding the World, 15.  Bunge, 31. 89  Bunge, 42. 90  For example, some physicists have upheld the view that theoretical physics is a part of pure mathematics; some economists have upheld the same for economics; some think that chemistry has been reduced to physics, or biology to genetics, and genetics to molecular biology; economic imperialism is the view that all the social sciences are reducible to economics; Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead attempted to reduce mathematics to logic. 91  See, for example, Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science I: From Problem to Theory (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 27; Bunge, Understanding the World, 195. 87 88

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Fig. 7.5  Some of the branches of the tree of knowledge (modified from Bunge, Understanding the World, 195). Enumeration of the various fields is not exhaustive. “Culturology” is a term Bunge uses to encompass study of any aspect of culture

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world. Facts in turn can be considered as natural or social, although with some overlap or connection between the two. The most basic overlap concerns psychological facts, which have both a natural aspect (in terms of the physical, chemical, and biological processes of the brain—broadly, neuropsychology) and a social aspect (in terms of affects on or by other actors—broadly, social psychology). It is though not the only overlap. For example, climatology has always been a natural science, but with the influence of human activity, now it also has a social aspect. Another way to consider the relationships between the various fields of knowledge is to realize that together they all form a system of knowledge, with conceptions and methods from each one potentially or actually influencing or being a part of those of any of the others. This system is depicted schematically in Fig. 7.6. Bunge’s consideration of human knowledge as an interrelated system is in line with the ideals of the Enlightenment project, which sought to deal with knowledge in a unified manner. He cites approvingly Condorcet (1743–1794), “the founder of modern political science,” for declaring in a 1782 speech at the Académie Française that social science “must follow the same methods, acquire an equally exact and precise language, attain the same degree of certainty”92 as the natural sciences. This is not a mere matter of imitation, but instead based on their mutual goals—to understand the world—and their strong interconnections. Thus to understand human society we have to understand something of human biology, for the biological needs, such as to eat, breathe, and sleep, are universal and cross-cultural; while securing the rights to them against threat, whether from weather, microbe, beast, or fellow man, is one of the functions of society. Likewise, to understand the economy we must understand something of agriculture, and so something more of biology, and now too the physics of the atmosphere (meteorology). On the other hand, biology and physics are obviously insufficient to understand society. To give just one reason, many wants—the drivers of human action—though fundamentally psychological, are culturally relative. So it is that the desire to eat raw seafood—to take just one example—which drives a now substantial part of the economically important seafood industry, is to a large extent culturally based, the practice making some people happy and others unhappy. The strong interconnections between natural and social facts help bridge the alleged chasm between the universal natural sciences, and what are seen by some as the contextual and subjective human sciences (as Bunge often regrets, the German term for the social sciences being  Bunge, Social Science under Debate, 10.

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Fig. 7.6  The knowledge system (modified from Bunge, Understanding the World, 218). In Bunge’s original version, logic and mathematics were not highlighted in the figure although mathematics was included as part of science in the text. The cognitive parts of ethics were instead the cognitive parts of sociopolitical ideologies, and procedural knowledge was referred to as technics, which Bunge variously described as either specialized artisanal knowledge, or alternatively, technical prescientific knowledge. Sci = science, Log = logic, Tech = technology, Art = the cognitive parts of the arts, Hum = humanities, Eth = the cognitive parts of ethics, Proc = procedural or specialized artisanal knowledge. All contribute to and grow from ordinary knowledge (OK), whether true or false. The parts of philosophy that count as knowledge (rather than, e.g., prescriptions or proposals) are included in the other fields. Overlaps between several of the fields exaggerated for clarity

Geisteswissenschaften, or “sciences of the spirit”).93 Biological needs, such as for food, health, sex, shelter, and a suitable environment, are universal and therefore cross the divide between Western and 93  By contrast, Taha Abd al-Rahman still embraces the chasm between the natural and human sciences. In a rare cosmological discussion, Taha embraced something similar to the neo-Platonic hierarchy, where beings lie along a scale that goes from full materiality at the bottom to full spirituality in the top. Yet, a person can escape their materiality if they contemplate spiritually: “it is possible to escape the visible world […] to one where the human life is not restricted.” Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Ru ̄ḥ al-Dı ̄n: Min Ḍ ı ̄q al-ʻAlma ̄niyyah ila ̄ Siʻat al-Iʻtimāniyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thāqāfı ̄ al-ʻArabı ̄, 2012), 32.

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non-Western cultures. On the other hand tastes in fashion, cuisine, etiquette, literary style, spirituality, dance, and music are to a large extent culturally relative wants—yet the common nature of the locus of all these psychological inclinations, the human brain, is fundamentally universal, leaving open the possibility for mutual understanding or accommodation on these fronts too. Bunge’s sophisticated epistemology is a contribution not just to enlightened philosophy, but also to enlightened modernity. If we want to improve food production, healthcare, communication, transportation, and culture, if we are to ensure an environmentally sustainable urbanization, if we want to achieve overall human flourishing—in short, if we want to create a proper modernity—then we need a proper critical realist epistemology. There is no successful modernity without successful inquiry and understanding, and a scientifically informed epistemology is key to that. Bunge’s critical realist epistemology, along with his emergent materialist ontology, are steps along a long path leading to common grounds for modernity, sharable between Western and Arab-Muslim societies alike. Ultimately modernity and human flourishing overall are matters of responding to human wants and needs; these raise the matter of ethics, the last step along our path to this common ground.

CHAPTER 8

Modern Virtuous Ethics: Knowing the Good and Doing the Right in Scientific Humanism

1   Ethics Ancient and Modern From the times of our distant ancestors to today, human ethical standards, expectations, and sensibilities have evolved. On that much social scientists are in accord. The question though of from what, to what, remains controversial. So too does the question of what in our modern sensibilities remains of those of our distant ancestors, human and non-human primate alike. The “Bellicose School,” traceable to Hobbes (1588–1679), has it that modern humans are “the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression.”1 Another view, linked if not developmentally then at least conceptually to Rousseau (1712–1778), has been ridiculed by members of the Bellicose School as the product of a “Peace and Harmony Mafia.” In a recent synthesis this other view has it that the powerful selection pressures leading to increased brain size were achieved at a steep evolutionary cost. Gaining rapid evolution in brain size and capacity could be achieved only by a… long dependence of infants, children, and 1  For this and a review of the roles of violence and cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies ancient and modern, see Richard B. Lee, “Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution: New Light on Old Debates,” Annual Review of Anthropology 47, no. 1 (2018): 513–531, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041448.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_8

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adolescents [that] created a new psychology of social communication between adults and children and between adults. This quantum leap… necessitated a complex process of socialization that sharply curtailed aggression... the growth of human intelligence demands a radical departure from the impulsiveness of our chimp-like ancestors in favor of a level of cooperation unparalleled in the primate world... the investments in cooperative child-rearing and provisioning that gave rise to human intelligence are ultimately the foundations upon which humanity’s subsequent social and cultural evolution has depended, including the rise of cities, states, complex organizations, and advanced technologies.2

The question of whether our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived more by the ethics of aggression or more by those of cooperation is ultimately a factual matter. In keeping with the ontological and epistemological considerations of the previous chapters, if we could uncover a sufficient evidentiary trail, it would ultimately be resolvable—albeit revisable in the light of new evidence. As it turns out, in terms of the available evidence, the conclusions of the Bellicose School appear to have been based largely on ethnographic misclassification and unrepresentative sampling of the archeological record.3 With regard to the archeological record: Comparing the total number of known individuals [skeletal remains] before 8000 B.C. to the small sample of remains showing signs of violence demonstrates the infrequency of warfare or conflict in the ancient past. The archaeological record is not silent on the presence of warfare in early human history. [...] Indeed, this record shows that warfare was the rare exception prior to the Neolithic pressures of population densities and insufficient resources for growing populations.”4

That last sentence leads to another item of general accord: the Neolithic revolution and the concomitant rise of agriculture led to eras that were marked by conflict, aggression, and warfare. The change was not coincidental: for example, group fission as a fundamental method of conflict resolution was readily available to hunter-gatherers, who must be mobile, who live at low population densities, and who cannot accumulate much  Lee, 525.  Lee, 518. 4  J. Haas and M. Piscitelli, “The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography,” in War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views, ed. Douglas P. Fry (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), 183. Emphasis in the original. 2 3

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material property.5 It is not an option so readily available to agriculturalists, or in the context of permanent settlements and dense populations. The matters of the Neolithic revolution illustrate how changes in material circumstances and lifestyle may lead to new ethical challenges and responses. Our own era is marked by a variety of unprecedented novelties, including super-dense settlements, a swollen and resource-hungry global human population, super-wealth and opportunity alongside abject economic and political poverty, extreme migration pressures and multiple refugee crises, technological dominance and dependence, global ideological conflicts, global environmental degradation and looming ruinous climate change, a crippling global pandemic and the potential for worse to come; were that not enough, then finally the capacity for species-terminating or even biosphere-­terminating warfare. Mario Bunge’s scientifically informed ethical system seeks to be an answer to these and more ethical challenges of the modern era, while still responding to the perennial problems of human existence.

2   Prologue: A Very Brief and Naturalistic Interpretation of the Early Journey of the Religious Imagination Ideas fossilize only metaphorically. What we know of what our prehistoric ancestors believed about the natures of the world and themselves, about life and death and good and bad and right and wrong—and too, how and why over time they came to those beliefs—can only be conjectured from the scarce material traces they left behind and that have endured. Among archeologists and historians of ideas there is no shortage of such speculations, and in his monumental Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, Peter Watson6 collects and synthesizes an enormous variety of them, as he does concerning later times and a vast array of other subjects, along with relevant evidence, such as it may be.7 This section’s  Lee, “Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution,” 522.  Peter Watson, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (New York: Harper Collins, 2005). 7  Bunge himself holds that “we know very little about the remote past of the mind, or even about its present.” See Mario Bunge, “Blushing and the Philosophy of Mind,” Journal of Physiology-Paris, 101, 4 (July 1, 2007), 256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis. 2007.11.008. 5 6

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very brief look at the religious imaginations of ancient humanity draws liberally from his collection. Whatever though the steps of the journey, it was an enormously long one, whose very duration must first at least be acknowledged, before even guessing at what happened along the way. When did the specifically human journey begin? Based on molecular genetics, the last common ancestor of humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, seems to have lived some 5.5 to 6.5 million years ago.8 Archeology is ever a work in progress, but the earliest known fossil remains of hominid ancestors from after the split from the chimpanzee lineage seem to be those classed in the genus Ardipithecus. Beginning in 1992, various fragmentary specimens of this genus were uncovered in Ethiopia,9 dating back some 4.4 to 5.8 million years.10 Homo habilis, the first member of our own genus, lived some 1.9 million years ago,11 while the first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, appeared only perhaps some 300,000 years ago.12 Over the course of this evolutionary journey, major increases in brain size occurred in relative spurts, associated with other major changes such as increasing bipedalism, the invention of stone tools, and meat eating.13 The peak of brain size was reached with the Neanderthals, from whom our line diverged approximately half a million years ago. They had the largest brains of the hominid fossil record, larger on average than our own. Neanderthal brains were not of the same shape as ours though, our shape likely having stabilized somewhere between about 100,000 and 35,000 years ago.14 Starting perhaps with the invention of stone tools some 2.5 million years ago, humans and our hominid ancestors were hunter-gatherers. The 8  Yohannes Haile-Selassie, “Late Miocene Hominids from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia,” Nature 412, no. 6843 (July 2001): 178, https://doi.org/10.1038/35084063. 9  Haile-Selassie, 178. 10  Tim D.  White et  al., “Ardipithecus Ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids,” Science 326, no. 5949 (October 2, 2009): 64–86, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1175802. 11  John Hawks, “How Has the Human Brain Evolved Over the Years?,” Scientific American Mind 24, no. 3 (July 2013): 76, https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind 0713-76b. 12  Simon Neubauer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Philipp Gunz, “The Evolution of Modern Human Brain Shape,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): eaao5961, https://doi. org/10.1126/sciadv.aao5961. 13  Watson, Ideas, 22–23. 14  Neubauer, Hublin, and Gunz, “The Evolution of Modern Human Brain Shape.”

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first transitions of some human groups to permanent settlements and agriculture came with the end of the last ice age and the Neolithic revolution, some ten millennia ago. Compared then to the long history of humanity, civilization is an astonishingly recent development, and some hunter-­ gatherer societies have persisted, even to the present day. Early agriculture, based on the domestication of only a few wild plant and animal species, and taking place in only a few regions, offered a caloric surplus adequate to sustain large and dense populations,15 which in turn allowed for the division of labor, leading to the stratification of society.16 Although it provided a societal caloric surplus, this change in lifestyle seems to have provided a relative nutritional deficit—and, in its association with dense populations and changes in prevailing ethics, a disease surplus—such that human brain size decreased over the ten-millennial span of the agricultural era. It has rebounded only over the last century, with the improved nutrition and reduced disease incidence of modern industrial society.17 Social stratification, in the form of the agricultural labor of a large percentage of the population sustaining a smaller percentage of non-food-­ producing individuals, led to the emergence of classes of people engaged primarily in cultural activities, such as teaching, the leading of religious rites, entertaining, or philosophizing. Others could be occupied in economic activities beyond agriculture, such as pottery making, metalworking, and construction. The emergence of complex societies and culture, including the invention of writing and the use of basic, pre-scientific technologies,18 were thus all enabled by the domestication of plants and animals, and the resulting food surpluses and social stratification.19 What about the religious aspects of ancient humanity? According to Peter Watson, long before the axial age described by Jaspers (see Chap. 3), from scattered origins in Paleolithic times: 15  “A fourth factor was the two-way link between the rise in human population density and the rise in food production. In all parts of the world where adequate evidence is available, archaeologists find evidence of rising densities associated with the appearance of food production.” In Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 111. 16  Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 269. 17  Hawks, “How Has the Human Brain Evolved Over the Years?”. 18  Bunge uses the term “technics” for pre-scientific technologies and reserves the term “technology” for science-based artifacts and methods. 19  Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 86.

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around 4000 bc, there is a small constellation of ideas underlying primitive religion, all woven together. We have the Great Goddess and the Bull. The Great Goddess, emerging via the Venus figurines, symbolises the mystery of birth, the female principle, and the regeneration of nature each year, with the return of the sun. This marked a time when the biological rhythms of humans and the astronomical rhythms of the world had been observed but not yet understood. The Bull and stones represent the male principle but also suggest, via the decorated caves of the Palaeolithic age, the idea of a sacred landscape, special locations in man’s environment where significant occurrences take place (having mainly to do, first, with hunting, then with agriculture). These are early humans’ most basic religious ideas.20

Watson adds that after the Great Goddess, the Bull, and sacred stones as the earliest core ideas of many religions, there came a set of four more beliefs fundamental to the religious imagination. For Watson, the most striking of them is that of sacrifice: the link between man and the spiritual world. It is an attempt either to coerce the gods, so they will behave as we wish them to behave, or to propitiate them, to defuse their anger, to get, get rid of, to atone… sacrifice dates from an era when the rhythms of the world were observed but not understood. It was these rhythms, the very notion of periodicity, that were the basis of religion: such patterns were the expression of mysterious forces.21

Next are the twin ideas of the “sky god” and the afterlife. For Watson, belief in a sky god, and its connection to belief in an afterlife, is not hard to understand: By day, the apparent movement of the sun, its constant ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’, and its role in helping shape the seasons and make things grow, would have been as self-evident as it was mysterious to everyone. By night, the sheer multitude of stars, and the even more curious behaviour of the moon, waxing and waning, disappearing and reappearing, its link with the tides and the female cycle, would have been possibly more mysterious. […] The sky gods also played a role in another core idea: the afterlife. We know that from Palaeolithic times early man had a rudimentary notion of the ‘afterlife’, because even then some people were buried with grave goods which, it was imagined, would be needed in the next world. Looking about  Watson, Ideas, 66–67.  Watson, Ideas, 100.

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them, early humans would have found plenty of evidence for an afterlife, or death and rebirth. The sun and the moon both routinely disappeared and reappeared. Many trees lost their leaves each year but grew new ones when spring came.22

Early humans would have been familiar with terrestrial examples of rebirth far more compelling than the celestial cycles of sun and moon, and far more mysterious than the regrowth of leaves from the buds of spring: at least in northern climes, insects and amphibians disappear in winter, only to emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, in the spring. Death, in such sequences of observations and ideas, might not necessarily end the existence of other denizens of the world; it might be just a stage in their life. So, humans too might go through a similar process. The last and most recent member of Watson’s list of ancient core religious beliefs is that of the soul.23 The immortal soul, as we know the idea, was along with those of heaven and hell, apparently a latecomer to the ancient world.24 It can be seen as a specialization of much earlier beliefs about post-mortem existence, or else about an alternate version of the self: Anthropologists such as Tylor25 put this down to primitive man’s experience of dreams, ‘that in sleep they seemed to be able to leave their bodies and go on journeys and sometimes see those who were dead.’ Reflecting on such things, primitive peoples would naturally have concluded that a kind of inner self or soul dwelt in the body during life, departing from it temporarily during sleep and permanently at death.26

Drug-induced hallucinations may also have helped convince early humans that there is a spirit world elsewhere.27  Watson, Ideas, 101–102.  Watson, Ideas, 105. 24  Even in current religions, the soul need not be immaterial. Robert Hueckstedt, Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Virginia, brought to my attention that in Jainism, the soul is a mode of matter. 25  British evolutionary anthropologist E.B. Tylor. The work cited was his Primitive Culture (London: John Murray, 1871 and several later editions). For a concise introduction to Tyler’s views see Daniel L.  Pals, Eight Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 20. 26  Watson, Ideas, 102. 27  Watson, Ideas, 37. Watson attributed the idea of altered states of consciousness via drugs (in addition to dreams, and more speculatively, trances) leading to a belief in a spirit world 22 23

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In some religions the soul, or some counterpart of it, may be in harmony with an all-pervasive force or Deity. In ancient Judaism, rather than the soul of later theologies, there is instead the idea of wind or breath: the breath of God, the wind which at creation moved upon the face of the waters. It was the breath of God that animated Man: God formed Man from the dust of the earth, but “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” to make Man a living being.28 At death the dust returned to the earth from whence it came, but the breath of life returned to God.29 In Islam, there is a belief that the human soul, which likewise originates in Allah and will return to him after death, can have an inner conversation with Allah and be inspired through rituals and contemplation. Amid all the speculations about the ancient and prehistoric religious mindset, Watson does add a major note of caution: Analysis of early religions can seem at times like numerology. There are so many of them, and they are so varied, that they can be made to fit any theory. Nevertheless, insofar as the world’s religions can be reduced to core elements, then those elements are: a belief in the Great Goddess, in the Bull, in the main sky gods (the sun and the moon), in sacred stones, in the efficacy of sacrifice, in an afterlife, and in a soul of some sort which survives death and inhabits a blessed spot. These elements describe many religions in some of the less developed parts of the world even today. Among the great civilisa-

elsewhere to David Lewis-Williams (The Mind in the Cave, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002). Tylor held the same. 28  No wonder then that one of the Arabic words for the soul is nafs, which is derived from breath, nafas. 29  Watson (Ideas, 106) holds that “For the Israelites, the soul was never developed as a sophisticated idea.” In the footnotes he elaborates: “The Israelites had a word, ruach, usually translated as ‘spirit’, but it could as easily mean ‘charisma’. It denoted the physical and psychical energy of remarkable people, like Elijah.” This is extravagant: ruach ( ַ‫ )רּוח‬means wind, or breath. For ancient peoples these physical processes (as with perhaps most others) undoubtedly had what we would describe as mystical or spiritual connotations, but the modern word “spirit,” unlike its Latin root spirare (breathe)—from which we also derive words such as respiration—no longer has any connotations of the physical processes of breath or wind. This makes translations of ruach simply as “spirit,” impoverished, and makes the preferred Christian rendering of “the breath of God” as “the Holy Spirit,” adventitious. In contrast, Arabic, as a cousin of Hebrew, preserves the same Semitic root r-w-ḥ and its massive semantic field. So, rū ḥ, for spirit; rı̄ ḥ, for wind; and rawḥ, for movement or going away. This is the same rū ḥ translated as “spirit” in the title of Taha’s project, Spirit of Modernity (Rū ḥ Al-Ḥadā thah; see Chap. 5).

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tions, however, this picture is no longer true and the reason for that state of affairs is without question one of the greatest mysteries in the history of ideas.

Indeed, as Watson says, most of these aspects are gone and unfamiliar to us in modern cultures. But some—those of a soul of some sort and of an afterlife—remain in current theologies. So too does a key idea that Watson discussed as being at the root of some of those other aspects now gone: the rhythms of the world. These three ancient conceptions then—of the rhythms of the world, the soul, and the afterlife—may help us understand how the ethical imagination evolved over time, in the face of new experiences, ideas, and circumstances. For example, in Islam, the rhythms of the world are under the control of an omniscient, wise, and infinitely powerful Deity. The Deity is the supreme mover, and the human being, as one of his creations, is under his dominion: the supreme mover makes the laws that we must obey and dictates values and norms. Cohering with past perspectives, the soul is that dimension in the human being capable of sensing right and wrong, because of its connection to the Deity. Finally, the life of the soul after the physical death of the body, that is, afterlife, is the end stage for reward or punishment and gives meaning to this world, in contrast with the specter of a purposeless and purely vanishing life. To the contemporary scientific mind, all this seems lacking evidence, metaphorical, and myth based. Yet, the imaginative journey of some religious views can be seen, in some sense, as naturalistic. The naturalistic aspect was the attempt to understand human life in relation to the surrounding world, and to live and flourish as residents of the world as those residents found it. The preoccupations with fertility, harvests, and overall the various rhythms of earth and sky emphasize this naturalistic aspect. The non-naturalistic aspect was the unfettered flight of the ensuing speculations: the failure to distinguish between imagination and reality—the failure to understand that the imagination and dreams, though products of the natural world, are in their contents not restrained to it. This failure leads to the ultimate non-naturalistic aspect of some religions, the forsaking of worldly concerns in favor of anticipation of, and preparation for, afterlife. What then of modern ethics, in relation to ideas of old? Must a now thoroughly naturalistic worldview, updated through modern science and rational philosophy, abandon the long-lived human ethical traditions that co-evolved with humanity’s religious imagination? Must ancient religious conceptions remain fixed, unyielding to science? As emphasized in

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Chap. 3, John Dewey argues that “If so much flexibility has obtained in the past regarding an unseen power, the way it affects human destiny, and the attitudes we are to take toward it, why should it be assumed that changes in conception and action have now come to an end?”30 Could ancient ideas concerning the rhythms of the world, the soul, and the afterlife have at least in some way a modern scientific update?

3   The Ethical Imagination of Humanism Like the rest of his philosophical oeuvre, Ethics: The Good and the Right, the eighth and final volume of Mario Bunge’s Treatise, advances the Enlightenment project. It is completely science oriented, having nothing to do with any mythical worldview. Its knowledge base is that of science; its method of inquiry, that of science-based philosophy. It is also humanist, emphasizing human life as worthy of defending, the human lineage as worthy of perpetuation, human interaction (i.e., society) as the origin and destination of human ethics, and the human organism and the human self-­ in-­society, its needs and wants, as the source of human values. The Humanist movement of the Renaissance is known as a reaction to medieval scholasticism and included a revival of classical learning. Modern humanist ethics developed in response to the theistic worldview.31 It can be seen as a fulfillment of a comprehensive humanist project, extending debate with the religious worldview from the realms of epistemology and ontology to the domain of ethics. In this way, humanism would be not only an epistemological call for the human faculties of reason and experience (in contrast to dogmatic submission and convoluted thinking), and an ontological call to nature (in opposition to super-nature); humanism would also be a call for rationalist, naturalist, human-centric ethics, in contrast to various irrational and transcendental aspects of religious ethics32 or, for that matter, to immorality or the absence of ethics.

 John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 6.  Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: Ethics of Humanism (New York: Prometheus Books, 1988), 46. 32  Transcendental theistic morality “is the belief that morality must originate in a divine source. This is rooted in a belief in divine revelation, and it is supported by a tradition of faith grounded in authority.” In Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988), 46. 30 31

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Bunge’s take on humanism and humanist ethics began with this same view33 but later evolved to a somewhat wider conception. While remaining contrary to those religious believers who see virtuous ethics as necessarily derived from a certain religious tradition, he became contrary also to those atheists who see humanism as necessarily secular. Bunge’s own view is that truly virtuous ethics are necessarily derived from humanist considerations, but he has come to see humanism itself as capable of being either secular or religious. In his Philosophy in Crisis, Bunge relates a personal story that well illustrates many aspects of his own ethical imagination: Some years ago, I shared a summer course in Spain with the Jesuit philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría. He taught the spiritualist and unscientific philosophy of his fellow Basque, Xavier Zubiri, whereas I taught my own materialist and science-based philosophy. Knowing each other’s views, we hardly spoke to each other, until I learned that he was the rector of the Universidad de El Salvador, a well-known center of resistance against the savage military dictatorship that at the time ruled the Republic of El Salvador. He spoke to me with amazing and moving passion of the sufferings of the campesinos and the unselfishness and heroism of the guerrilleros. A couple of years later, Ellacuría and five of his colleagues were murdered by a death squad in the service of the dozen families that own the best land of the country and control its government. He and his fellow martyrs were religious humanists. Who is more entitled to a place in the humanist pantheon: the priest and idealist philosopher who died for the poor and oppressed, or the materialist and scientistic professor who leads a sheltered life in a peaceful country? I hope to be at the height of the Reverend Ellacuría, so that I may be forgiven for not having risked my life fighting for human rights, and he for having taught an obscurantist philosophy.34

Thus, Bunge acknowledges that honorable religious believers may, in service to their faith, also serve the cause of humanism—improving the lot of humanity. By the same token he acknowledges the heroism of those who unselfishly and bravely resist oppression. Might Bunge have found a worthy place in the humanist pantheon for a number of leaders of Islamic

 Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, 218, 300, 303, 398.  Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis: The need for reconstruction (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2001), 15–16. 33 34

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Table 8.1  Some leaders of Islamic resistance to oppression (jihad),a whom Bunge might regard as worthy of a place in the humanist pantheon, and reasons for and against their candidacyb Candidate member of the humanist pantheon

Reason Bunge might Reason Bunge might oppose candidacy uphold candidacy

Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi (1808–1883)

Leader of Algerian resistance to French imperialism (exiled)

Al-Mirza Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi (1840–1920)

Fought British invasion of Iraq (poisoned, 1920)

Umar al-Muktar (1858–1931)

Fought Italian fascism (executed)

Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi (1882–1963)

Fought Spanish fascism and imperialism (exiled)

No matter how necessary, no matter how great the provocation, no matter how heroic, warring is inhumane: “violence is wasteful and ends up by eroding everyone’s morals” (see Sect. 4.6)

Overall: War is hell always, but there is an important ethical difference between defensive and aggressive warring Names in the IJMES system: ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irı̄, Al-Mı̄rzā Muḥammad Taqı̄ al-Shı̄rāzı̄, ‘Umar al-Mukhtār, and ‘Abd al-Karı̄m al-Khaṭṭābı̄ b A concise account of these resistance figures is offered in Eugene Rogan’s The Arabs: A History, Revised edition (London: Basic Books, 2017), Chap. 7, “The British Empire in the Middle East,” and Chap. 8, “The French Empire in the Middle East” a

resistance to oppression (jihad) (Table 8.1)?35 It is not clear at all whether the humanist heroism of defending the lives and legitimate rights of other humans would be sufficient in Bunge’s mind to overcome the 35  Unfortunately, many Western media outlets render jihad as “holy war against infidels.” In Arabic, the core meaning of jihād is struggle. So, the human physical struggle to overcome obstacles, such as when a farmer plows the land, is jihād, while mental struggle to overcome intellectual challenges is known as ijtiha ̄d or creative thinking. Daily speech utilizes both meanings as fit the context. So a student might say, I obtained this medical degree by lots of jihād and ijtihād. One of the greatest challenges people can face, more than plowing the land or obtaining a degree, is overcoming oppression. In this context, jiha ̄d would be used to mean resisting oppression, even by force of arms. An overlapping modern equivalent would be liberation, as in liberation from slavery, tyranny, military invasion, or class subjugation. Importantly, the first Qur’anic usage of jiha ̄d was not in the sense of armed resistance, but in the sense of overcoming an intellectual challenge: when the Prophet was asked to proclaim the signs of monotheism to the disputing Arab polytheists. This mere proclamation, in then hostile, polytheistic Makkah (Mecca), was cause for fear of physical harm. So, proclaiming the Qur’anic verse of monotheism was called jihād:

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inhumanism of warring, one of the things Bunge despised most of all. It is hard to know: Bunge described himself as a pacifist and despised anything military, but he also often talked of the need to fight oppression. The dilemma raises the matter of moral problems, Bunge’s view of which is outlined in Sect. 5.2. ​Positive recognition for the Islamic counterparts of the guerrilleros whose heroism and unselfishness so moved Bunge—whether ultimately in terms of humanism (in effect, the highest value on Bunge’s scale; see Sects. 4.6 and 6), or else simply heroism (for Bunge admirable, but secondary to its goal)—is nearly a taboo in Western culture. There has been at least one Western exception though: the French novelist Victor Hugo (1802–1885) eulogized Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri in verse as le beau soldat, le beau prêtre—literally, “the admirable soldier, the admirable priest.””36 Although humanism is at the center of Bunge’s ethics, it is not the only ism at that core. Bunge identifies his ethical doctrine as being at the intersection of no less than eight isms (albeit several of them of his own creation). His list, in somewhat abbreviated form37:

Have you not seen how thy Lord has extended the shade—And if He willed He could have made it still—then We have made the sun its pilot; Then We withdraw it unto Us, a gradual withdrawal? And He it is Who makes night a covering for you, and sleep repose, and makes day a resurrection. And He it is Who sends the winds, glad tidings heralding His mercy, and We send down purifying water from the sky, That We may give life thereby to a dead land, and We give many beasts and men that We have created to drink thereof. And verily We have repeated it among them that they may remember, but most of mankind begrudge aught save ingratitude. If We willed, We could raise up a warner [i.e., a prophet, not a fighter] in every village. So obey not the disbelievers, but strive [i.e., engage in jihād] against them with the utmost strenuousness, with the (Qur’an) [i.e., with words, not arms]. (Qur’ān, 25:45-052, emphasis added) For a scholarly Islamic account see, Muhammad Sa‘id Ramadan Al-Buti, Jihad in Islam: How to Understand and Practice It, trans. Munzer Adel Absi (Damascus: Dar Al Fikr Publishing House, 1995). 36  Rogan, 116. 37  Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, 218.

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1. Humanism. 2. Moderate monism (or moderate pluralism): there is more than one moral principle, but all are subordinate to a single supreme one (see Sects. 4.5 and 4.6). 3. Moderate relativism: some values (e.g., well-being) and some norms (e.g., mutual help) are or ought to be binding and universal, while others are or ought to be optional or relative (e.g., clothing styles, dietary habits, and religious rituals).38 4. Moderate objectivism (or moderate realism): morals concern the real world, and in particular right and wrong actions, while at the same time only some values, hence only certain rights and duties, are objective. 5. Cognitivism: moral feelings and intuitions are not self-justifying.39 6. Moderate consequentialism: actions and norms are to be judged by all their consequences, anticipated and unanticipated, desired and undesired, but also by their means and goals.40 7. Systemism: focusing on the individual-in-society rather than on either the individual or society. 8. Reformism: much of what goes on in the world is morally wrong, and we should attempt to reform certain mores in the light of morals more advanced than what got us into the present quagmire.

3.1  Humanism and the Scientific Worldview In addition to Bunge’s characterization of his ethical doctrine as being at the intersection of eight doctrines or isms, he has the philosophical basis of the system as consisting of seven theses of a scientific and humanist worldview: 38  Bunge says instead “optional and group-bound” and gives religious faith and worship as the only example. Considering his system overall it would seem he meant instead optional or relative. Religious faith and worship would be examples of optional norms, while something else unmentioned, such as some of the particular ethical norms of science or journalism, would be contextual. For example, in a scientific article sources must always be named, not so in a newspaper article. 39  Nevertheless, Bunge also says that “a moral norm that were to ignore moral sentiments … could be discarded out of hand.” Ethics, 312. 40  Bunge has only consequences and means. The addition of goals and the elaboration of consequences makes for a better fit with the rest of the volume and the rest of the Treatise.

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1. Cosmological (or ontological): Whatever exists is either natural or manmade. Put negatively: there is nothing supernatural in the real world. 2. Anthropological: Individual differences among people pale by comparison with the common features that make us all members of the same species. Put negatively: there are neither supermen nor master races. 3. Axiological: Although different human groups may care for different values, there are many basic universal values, such as well-being, honesty, loyalty, solidarity, fairness, security, peace, and knowledge, that are worth working or even fighting for. Put negatively: Radical axiological relativism is false and harmful.41 4. Epistemological: It is possible and desirable to find out the truth about the world and ourselves with the sole help of experience, reason, imagination, criticism, and action. Put negatively: radical skepticism and epistemological relativism are false and noxious. 5. Moral: We should seek salvation in this world, the only real one, through work and thought rather than prayer or war, and we should enjoy living, as well as trying to help others live, instead of damning them. 6. Social: Liberty, equality, solidarity, and expertise in the management of the commonwealth [are fundamental social values worth working or even fighting for]. 7. Political: While defending the freedom from and to religious worship and political allegiance, we should work for the attainment or maintenance of a secular state, as well as for a fully democratic social order free from unjustified inequalities and avoidable technical bunglings.42

Bunge considers these seven theses to be an elaboration of his own simple characterization of scientific humanism: concern for the lot of humankind. As formulated, the axiological, moral, social, and political theses among the seven include specific calls to action. They give scientific humanism its public program as a proposal for a social movement, rather than just for an academic philosophy. Bunge contrasts his scientific humanism not just with the religious humanism of his too-shortly lived acquaintance, the Catholic philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría (1930–1989), but far more sharply  In context: even if secular.  Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 14–15.

41 42

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with the misogynist, pessimist, irrationalist, compassionless, contemptuous, scientifically false, egoist, savage capitalist, and amateurish secularism of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and Ayn Rand, in roughly that order of correspondence.43 3.2  ​The Urgency of Ethics in a Humanist Worldview Bunge views ethics, or the triad of value theory (axiology), morality (norm theory, or normative axiology44), and action theory (praxeology) as “a matter of life or death rather than just subjects of academic interest.”45 He bases this view on a grim assessment of our current predicament: “We live in dangerous times. For the first time this may be the last time… we have been marching blindly to the brink lured by wrong values and guided by wrong morals.”46 For Bunge then, expounding and establishing in practice an ethics worthy of the human condition is an existential matter of the utmost urgency. Bunge rebukes “ivory tower” philosophers who make no moral commitments, ignore real-life problems, and limit themselves to pointless analysis and hair-splitting—his diagnosis of the state of philosophical ethics from about the 1930s up until the 1960s: Moral philosophy became transparent—just as transparent as the void. Philosophers became very careful about words—so cautious that they said very little, if anything at all, about real-life moral issues. The negative effect of the linguistic turn was precisely this, that it gutted moral philosophy. The model moral philosopher was the gutless academic who avoided moral problems like the plague and remained always au dessus de la mêlée. He posed as a technician servicing a machine (language) rather than its user (the moral agent). He lived in a comfortable verbal cocoon that protected him from moral conflicts: his job was to analyze, not to moralize. Worse, his technique proved to be not that sophisticated after all.47

 Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 16.  Bunge, Ethics, 66. 45  Particularly because of environmental degradation and the potential for nuclear warfare. Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, xiii. 46  Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, xiii. 47  Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, 285. 43 44

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Bunge noted only Bertrand Russell’s efforts as an exception.48 He sees his own endeavor as continuing the legacy of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Bentham, Mill, and Marx, who “conceived of value theory and ethics as having an intimate relation with social and political philosophy, hence with collective action, in particular social reform.”49 Accordingly, he is fully aware of current ethical issues, ranging from nuclear disarmament and environmental degradation to assisted suicide and abortion; only he classifies them as being of the first, second, or more remote orders of magnitude, for how much they affect what fraction of humanity, and whether or not they threaten its survival or flourishing (see Sect. 5.2). Overall, he seeks to provide a rigorous ethical foundation for social goals. As a system builder, Bunge seeks to ground ethics by embedding it in his naturalist, materialist, realist, and scientific overall philosophical system.

4   Value Theory In his 1989 Ethics: The Good and the Right, the eighth volume of his Treatise, Bunge held that Axiology is centrally concerned with the good, ethics with the right, and action theory with actions that are both efficient and right. Now, a right action is one that promotes the good, whereas a wrong one promotes evil. Hence the good is in every regard—conceptually, biologically and technically—prior to the right.50

By 2009 though, writing in his Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision, Bunge had come to the idea that whether the good is prior to the right or vice versa is a pseudo-problem, “because a right is a permission to pursue some good, and goods are unattainable without the corresponding

48  Bunge, xiii. In the context of our Western-Islamic philosophical conversation, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), a pillar of scientific humanism, noted in his “Last Message” that “The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State.” Bertrand Russell, “Bertrand Russell’s Last Message” (International Conference of Parliamentarians Meeting, Cairo, Egypt: Connexions Information Sharing Services, Toronto, Canada, 1970), https://bit.ly/2WpFw7P. 49  Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, 2. 50  Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right, 5–6. Emphases are mine.

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rights.”51 Be that as it may, the central matter for Bunge is that actions must be evaluated according to all three of their means, goals, and outcomes. Meanwhile, evaluating leads to the concept of value. 4.1  The Contextual Nature of Value What is the nature of value? In keeping with his materialist ontology, for Bunge values do not exist by themselves. Instead there are only objects,52 valuable or disvaluable for some organism in some context: values are mutual or relational properties, belonging jointly to triads of objects, organisms, and contexts. Before the emergence of living organisms, there were no values; after the extinction of all living organisms there will be none again. To be precise, Bunge states that “values emerged on our planet about four billion years ago together with the first organisms capable of discriminating what was good for them, i.e. what was favorable to their survival, from what was not […]. Values are relational (or mutual) properties attributed to objects of certain kinds by organisms.”53 Although a biological foundation of value is reasonable, ascribing the process of valuation to all or nearly all living organisms, as Bunge does, may be an overreach. In any case it is not fully consistent with his own epistemology, wherein “attribution” is a psychological process, so possible only in those organisms that have some psychology.54 So, we may improve Bunge’s contention by saying values emerged on our planet at most some millions (rather than billions) of years ago, together with the first organism capable of conceiving of what is good for itself (or others). Recognizing this conceptual aspect of values, thus distinguishing values from value (or items valuable) in context, has the further merit of squaring better with the classical dilemma of Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE):

51  Bunge, Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction), 2009, 109–110. See also M. Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics II: On Socialism through Integral Democracy,” Mario Bunge Centenary Festschrift (Cham: Springer, 2019), 513–534. 52  “Object” should be understood in the wide sense Bunge employs in his ontology. See Chap. 6, Sect. 3.1. 53  Bunge, 13. Emphasis in the original. 54  See M.  Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism,” Mario Bunge Centenary Festschrift, (Cham: Springer, 2019), 474.

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Do we desire what is good, or do we call ‘good’ that which we happen to desire? Spinoza (1677, Part III, Comment on Prop. IX) held that we judge good whatever we desire, not the other way round. This is in fact the case with very young children: they judge all desirable things to be good—until they learn that some of them, though still desirable, are bad for their health or their social standing. Growing up and, in particular, the maturation of moral conscience, involves learning what is objectively good for ourselves and others, and putting up with burdens and pains for the sake of goodness. The upshot is that sometimes we desire what we believe to be good, and at other times we judge good what we desire.55

Bunge elaborates on the contextual aspects of values by specifying that objects may first of all be valuable only in certain respects. Thus, for example, sugar may be valuable for the calories it offers, but disvaluable for the tooth decay it promotes. Second, value depends on circumstance: sugar may be valuable for its calories in the case of an energy deficit, but for the same reason disvaluable in the case of an energy, that is to say fat, surplus. Thus, a third contextual aspect, namely a goal: if the goal is to avoid starvation, a cache of sugar in the arctic will be valuable; if the goal is to lose weight or improve nutrition, a cupboard of sugar will be disvaluable. Finally, Bunge adds a fourth contextual aspect: all valuations are done in the light of some body of knowledge. Thus, a person who does not know that sugar is edible may find it valuable only as an abrasive or a bactericide. Bunge’s relational view has it that “the terms ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ are adjectives not nouns, for they denote properties—and in a naturalistic ontology properties do not exist by themselves but are possessed by concrete individuals.”56 This understanding of the nature of goodness and value as properties of things is the reverse of the Platonist or idealist position that conceives of goodness or value in themselves as the freestanding (ideal) objects and valuable items as only the embodiments of such ideals.57 For Bunge that conception is just as untenable as the possibility of motion without anything doing the moving. Likewise, Bunge has it that there is no morality in and of itself; rather only animals, which when

 Bunge, Ethics, 27–28.  Bunge, Ethics, 64. 57  Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis, 193. 55 56

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behaving in accordance with patterns we consequently identify as moral norms, contribute to the welfare of other animals.58 Although his view of values is relationist, Bunge emphasizes that this does not mean subjectivist.59 Nor does he uphold moral relativism, the doctrine that there are no absolute moral standards (although for Bunge the number of such absolute standards is rather fewer than in most moralities; see Sects. 4.5 and 5.1). This point is misunderstood by many, including postmodernists who take Einstein’s relativity theory as a vindication of subjectivism. Relativity theory is just the opposite. It is objective, but in a complex form rather than a simple one (see Chap. 6, Sect. 3.2). Similarly, changes in the context of valuation, even in the knowledge base, may still leave values perfectly objective: the calorific and decay producing properties of sugar, and their benefit or harm to the organism, depend on the general physiological, not specifically psychological, state of the organism. As Bunge has it: “All values are subject-rooted even though not all of them are subjective. Likewise, motility and vision occur only in animals, yet they are perfectly objective.”60 Bunge notes that his relationist view of values goes back at least to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in which “Aristotle demolished ontological value absolutism, arguing that man does not know any goods in themselves, let alone the ultimate good which Plato rambled on about: he can only know good actions and good things.”61 This holds even for seemingly abstract values, such as well-being and honesty: When saying that well-being is a biological and psychological value, we mean that, being a survival condition, we evaluate positively some states of physical health and psychological contentment: i.e. we say that well-being is good for us. Likewise, when saying that honesty is a moral and social value we mean that we assign honest behavior, nay, honest people, a positive role in social life as well as in keeping our own peace of mind. No organisms, no needs, hence no values. No society, no social behavior, hence no social values, whence no need for moral norms.62

 Bunge, Ethics, 11.  For the subjectivist tradition of value theory, see, for example, Brand Blanshard, Reason and Goodness (New York: G. Allen & Unwin, 1962), 104. 60  Bunge, Ethics, 67. 61  Bunge, Ethics, 64. 62  Bunge, Ethics, 11. 58 59

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The integral relationship between ethics and the matters of well-being, health, life and death, the psyche, society and the individual, and so on, makes it clear that a deep consideration of ontology, such as that of Bunge (see Chap. 6), is badly needed to get to the core of even the simple ethical questions of daily life—let alone of modernity in general. Dealing with such question without a clear understanding of ontology and its philosophical complexities is like walking blindfolded through the jungle of value contradictions. 4.2  Biological Value Although the above extract focuses on needs as the source of values, in fact Bunge has the sources of value, and concomitantly the good, as being both needs and wants. Only, he classifies them as to their importance. Needs are more important than wants, and needs are either primary— items necessary for staying alive in any context—or secondary—for health (and thus indirectly, survival). In this way, primary needs are objective, cross-cultural universals; secondary needs are objective, but possibly contextual63; while wants allow some subjective variation. Primary and secondary needs together form the basic needs.64 With some complications,65 Bunge takes the basic needs to be the sources of what he calls biological value, or biovalue for short. In Bunge’s formulation, all organisms, plant or animal or other, have items that are valuable or disvaluable for them in this sense: by virtue of being alive, some items are needed for their survival and health, and these items are therefore objectively valuable for them. Despite the biological label, Bunge has it that for humans, numerous physical, psychological, and social items are necessary for survival and health. He holds that items within each category can be ranked according to their importance, but that there is no possible ranking across categories, items in different categories being in various combinations each mutually necessary for achieving others. Bunge provides a table highlighting a variety of these (Table 8.2). The philosophical takeaway is that bio-psycho-­ social needs mostly come together. 63  For an example, wearing warm clothes would be a secondary need in the arctic in the open, but unneeded or even dangerous in the warmth of the tropics. 64  Bunge, Ethics, 35. 65  For analysis (and some criticism and revision) of Bunge’s formulations of these and other ethical concepts, see Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism.”

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Table 8.2  Some items Bunge highlights as necessary for survival and health, ranked by him according to their importancea Items needed for survival and health Rank

Physical

Psychological

Social

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Clean air, water Adequate food Shelter, clothing Safety Physical activity Health care Leisure

Being loved Loving Feeling needed Meeting legitimate wants Learning Stimulation Recreation

Peace Company Mutual help Work Social participation Social mobility Social security

Items are ranked within categories, but items across categories are said to be incommensurable. For example, a healthy body is not ranked more important than a sound mind, nor more important than a functioning society, for Bunge holds each to be in some way necessary for the others. The top value is not just biological survival but rather the full physical and mental flourishing of all humankind, as participating members of a good society (see Sect. 4.6) From Bunge, Ethics, Table 1.2, Some basic human needs, 35 (with some clarifications)

a

4.3  Psychological Values Human life is more than a matter of staying alive and healthy. In addition to needs, we have internally driven, culturally influenced wants. Though they come as fruits of our personal psychological development, as it occurs within a social and natural environment, wants go beyond instinct. The imaginative scope of our wants is unrestricted, whether by our personal circumstances or societal limitations or, for that matter, by reality. This is in complete contrast to the constraints on our biological needs, fixed by our physiologies, the products of long evolution. One may want to be a swimmer or a gangster; to love and marry or embrace celibacy; to journey to the center of the earth or the outer reaches of the galaxy; to be rationally consistent or obscurely inconsistent. Still, wants need not be arbitrary, nor even entirely subjective: for example, we may want certain things only because they have been proven beneficial for life or health, or want to avoid them otherwise. Thus, after needs and the corresponding biological values, with wants come the corresponding psychological values (psychovalues). Only animals have wants and psychological values, because, as per Bunge’s ontology, only animals have brains, and therefore only (some) animals have psychologies and, in particular, wants. Bunge postulates that “All animals have the ability to evaluate some of their own internal states and some

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environmental inputs, as well as the ability to act so as either to preserve or alter their own internal states, their environment, or both.”66 As a consequence, Bunge hold that all animals have a system of preferences or, in other words, a value system. This analysis allows Bunge to note that biological and psychological values may conflict: A discrepancy between a psychovalue and a biovalue may become so large as to constitute an internal conflict, even a tragedy. The existence of such internal conflicts was traditionally understood as the perpetual struggle between spirit (or soul or mind) and matter—except that in the cases of drug addiction, masochism, sadism, power addiction, and other vices, the allegedly immaterial spirit is manifestly far weaker than the material body. The scientific explanation proposed by biopsychology is quite different: Every conflict between a psychovalue and a biovalue is an instance of the dominance of one part of the brain (the one that learned the maladaptive behavior pattern) over the rest of the body.67

Bunge divides wants (or aspirations) into psychologically legitimate, psychologically illegitimate, and (fully) legitimate. With several further complications,68 these are essentially those that are consistent or not with an organism’s long-term health, to be met for the sake of “reasonable” happiness, and those that, in addition to being psychologically legitimate, do not significantly harm either anyone else or society. The corresponding psychological values along with the biological values, along too with an overall ranking, together form Bunge’s hierarchy of values: objects that meet primary or secondary needs are the primary and secondary values, those that meet legitimate wants are tertiary values, while objects meeting wants that lack legitimacy (what Bunge calls “whims” or “fancies”69) are quaternary values. These concepts are brought together in two of Bunge’s most important moral norms: NORM 2.1 Long-term well-being and, a fortiori, reasonable happiness, calls for the following ranking: Meeting primary needs (survival) ought to  Bunge, Ethics, 24.  Bunge, Ethics, 26–27. 68  See Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 69  This is an identification many readers would find objectionable. Bunge himself is inconsistent about it: elsewhere he says that the quaternary values are beyond the ken of rights and duties (Ethics, 97). See Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 66 67

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precede meeting secondary needs (health), which in turn should precede meeting legitimate wants, which ought to dominate the satisfaction of fancies.70 NORM 11.1 The one and only morally legitimate function of the economy is to help people meet their basic needs and fulfil their legitimate aspirations.71

4.4  Social Values In Bunge’s analysis of the level structure of reality (Chap. 6, Sects. 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10), after life and mind comes society. Correspondingly, in addition to biological and psychological values, there are social values. Social values have to be considered from three angles: what is valuable for the social group, and whether the social group is valuable for any individuals, and if so which. Bunge holds that, unlike largely solitary animals such as most bears, social animals, such as ourselves, can hardly survive without society, even when adult. Thus, society is valuable to us and indeed is the origin of morality: an animal that has no interaction with other animals has no need for moral norms, for fact of never having any occasion to apply them. Because society is valuable to people, Bunge distinguishes among individual behaviors those that are prosocial, antisocial,72 and neutral. He also  Bunge, Ethics, 48.  Bunge, Ethics, 367. 72  Bunge held (Ethics, 29) that “antisocial behavior, in particular selfishness, cheating, betraying, hoarding, and systematic violence against members of the same group, is disvaluable and consequently discouraged. Any society that tolerates frequent antisocial behavior is in for extinction.” Thus, he held that “male wolfs compete for females but cooperate in the hunt—and they do not kill conspecifics. […] Man is an exception, for in many societies he can occasionally engage in murderous competition.” Yet, wolves do kill other wolves, and chimpanzees too engage in lethal warfare, murder, and cruelty. More recently Bunge held that chimpanzees, though not cruel, are Machiavellian political animals and basically selfish (Matter and Mind, 2010, 114, 195). See Paul Marhenke, III, “An Observation of Four Wolves Killing Another Wolf,” Journal of Mammalogy, no. 52 (1971), 630–631. Victor Van Ballenberghe and Albert W. Erickson, “A Wolf Pack Kills Another Wolf,” The American Midland Naturalist, no. 90 (1973), 490–493; Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1986); Simon W. Townsend et al., “Female-­ led Infanticide in Wild Chimpanzees,” Current Biology, no. 17 (2007), R356; Stefano S.  K. Kaburu, Sana Inuoe, Nicholas E.  Newton-Fisher, “Death of the Alpha: Within-­ community Lethal Violence Among Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains National Park,” American Journal of Primatology, no. 75 (2013), 789–797 (M.  Kary, personal communication). 70 71

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distinguishes between a behavior being prosocial or antisocial, and it being socially valuable or disvaluable. He gives the examples of complicity with criminals being prosocial and socially disvaluable, and rebellion against oppression being antisocial but socially valuable. He identifies social systems as having needs of their own, such as a public transit system needing vehicles, energy, a workforce, and managers. For having needs, social systems would have certain items valuable or disvaluable to them: those things that contribute to, not health or survival as for living organisms, but what Bunge posits as their social analogue, namely their integrity (in the existential sense not the moral one). The most important distinction is between what is valuable for a social system, and whether or not a social system is valuable to “its members and to mankind as a whole.”73 Bunge evaluates the latter situation according to the following criteria: POSTULATE 1.8 (i) A social group is socially valuable only if it helps its members attain or retain their good health and meet their psychologically legitimate wants. (ii) The most valuable of two social systems of the same type (e.g. firms or governments) is the one which is the more socially valuable to the more inclusive social group—i.e. the one that serves best the greatest number of people.74

The last clause has the usual ethical problem of combining two potentially competing desiderata, namely best and most. Revealing some of his political philosophy,75 Bunge leaves aside that problem76 to arrive at a favored conclusion:  Bunge, Ethics, 31.  Bunge, Ethics, 32. 75  Bunge, Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2009). 76  Further, “best” in this sense, the extent to which an individual’s wants and needs are satisfied is an “intensive” quantity, like temperature or a density, one that cannot be aggregated across individuals into a total (see Bunge, Ethics, 87). Bunge disparages utilitarians for essentially the same problems, those of attempting to aggregate into one criterion the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but he treats the matter eclectically: 73 74

it makes no sense to try to add up the degrees of well-being, or of happiness, of the various members of a social group, in order to obtain the total amount of well-being or of happiness in the group. (The tacit assumption of the classical utilitarians, that such an aggregation is possible, is just as mistaken as the idea that population densities or temperatures are additive.). (Ethics, 46)

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COROLLARY 1.2 The most valuable of all the (actual or possible) social systems in any given society is the one that serves best all of the members of the society. COROLLARY 1.3 The most valuable of all the human social systems is the world system, i.e. the one that encompasses the whole of humankind.77

4.5  Well-Being and Happiness Well-being is a key concept in Bunge’s ethical system. He introduces it somewhat contradictorily—or in other words, with some rhetorical flair: All animals pursue their own well-being, either automatically or deliberately. Those who do not perish. Human beings, particularly since the rise of civilization, seem to be the exception.78

Bunge situates the concept of well-being—Aristotle’s eudaimonia—as at the center of a cluster of related and otherwise vague concepts, those of happiness, pleasure, good, and utility. In keeping with his overall value theory, Bunge defines it in terms of needs:

The impossibility of adding the utilities of different individuals has been used by such sharp thinkers as Schlick (1930) and Sen (1985) to refute utilitarianism. However, Bentham’s formula about the greatest happiness of the greatest number does not call for such summation: it says nothing about the total happiness of a social group. All it states is that we should procure that nearly every individual be given the chance of maximizing her well-being in her own way. (Ethics, 87)

It has also been claimed that the classical utilitarian principle allows conflicts between the greater good and the greater number: that whereas some might wish to maximize the total amount of goods, others prefer an equal distribution of a lesser bounty. But this is an imaginary conflict, for it is technically possible to increase production and enhance fairness at the same time. (Ethics, 241) Dr. Michael Kary points out that the second quote is based on Bunge’s own creative (and problematic) exegesis rather than on Bentham’s own view, while the third sidesteps the actual problem, that the cases where we need the help of some clarifying moral principle are precisely the challenging, typical, non-utopian ones, where there is not one clear winner on all counts. 77  Bunge, Ethics, 32. 78  Bunge, Ethics, 41.

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DEFINITION 2.1 An animal (in particular a human being) is in a state of well-being (or welfare) if and only if it has met all of its basic needs.79

Since the basic needs are those required for survival and health, and since health presupposes life, for Bunge, well-being is simply the state of being healthy.80 Of course for Bunge, as a systemist, health is a wide-ranging concept, encompassing not just physiological factors, but also psychological and social ones. Though multidimensional, well-being has several simpler indicators, with Bunge identifying longevity as perhaps the most telling of them. In an alternate formulation, Bunge also characterizes unwell-being as discomfort.81 Bunge is critical of hedonistic or utilitarian ethics that, in his objection, over-emphasize pleasure or happiness, while being unconcerned with needs and wants (other than happiness or pleasure). Thus, his objection to the Helvétius-Priestley-Bentham formulation of the Utilitarian Principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, with happiness equated by Bentham with enjoyment of pleasure and security from pain. For Bunge happiness is instead something strikingly different: DEFINITION 2.2 An animal feels completely happy if and only if it believes to have the ability and opportunity of meeting all of its needs and wants.82

Thus, happiness would seem to be attainable either by optimism, Stoicism (in the form of paring down needs and wants), or naivety and self-­ convincing—although not by any drug that impairs the ability to evaluate one’s circumstances.83 Despite these seeming possibilities, in view of the practical constraint that the full realization of any given value seems to be incompatible with the full realization of some other value, Bunge comes to the conclusion  Bunge, Ethics, 44.  Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 81  Bunge, Ethics, 46. 82  Bunge, Ethics, 46. 83  Here Bunge, a life-long non-drinker of alcohol, is in harmony with the Islamic prohibition of alcohol consumption. Bunge says explicitly that “wine […] is a powerful toxic; it harms all of the organs [...] Besides, alcohol is addictive. [...] Therefore, it is irresponsible to keep repeating the wine industry mantra: that wine is good for you when drunk in moderation.” Mario Bunge, Medical Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Medicine (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2013), 120. 79 80

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that no one can be completely happy.84 Instead of complete happiness, Bunge recommends striving for something again strikingly different, what he calls reasonable happiness85: DEFINITION 2.3 An individual is reasonably happy if and only if she is (i) in a state of well-being, and (ii) free to pursue her legitimate wants.86

Because of the relationship between needs, wants, values and the good, and his systemic bio-psycho-social conception of all of these, in Bunge’s system the pursuit of reasonable happiness amounts to striving for the good. Thus, Bunge calls his ethical doctrine agathonism, from the Greek άγαθόν (agathon, “good”).87 In tandem with these considerations, Bunge’s supreme moral norm, his absolute moral standard (see Sect. 4.6), is Enjoy life and help [others] live.88 Bunge sees it89 as equivalent to Seek the survival of humankind.90 Bunge’s Supreme Norm is a masterpiece of logico-ethical engineering. By the injunction to enjoy life (i.e., to pursue reasonable happiness), it balances the satisfaction of personal wants with the satisfaction of personal needs, in effect putting wants in the service of needs. By this and by the injunction to help others, it balances personal interests with social. As Bunge puts it, it synthesizes egoism and altruism, self-interest and 84  Perhaps as an indication of Bunge’s personal value system, he does not derive the corresponding conclusion that no one can attain complete well-being, that is to say, be completely healthy. 85  For some conundrums arising from Bunge’s views on reasonable happiness, see Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 86  Bunge, Ethics, 48. 87  Bunge, Ethics, 241. 88  Bunge, Ethics, 104. 89  Bunge, Ethics, 105. For the question of whether the two formulations really are equivalent, see Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”; G.  Zecha, “Which Values are Conducive to Human Survival? A Bunge-test of Bunge Ethics” (in P. Weingartner & G. Dorn, Eds., Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990, 511–528); Bunge, “Zecha’s Acid Test of Agathonism” (in P. Weingartner & G. Dorn (Eds.), Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990, 660–663). 90  The combination of the two versions of Bunge’s Supreme Norm—Enjoy life and help others live, together with Seek the survival of humankind—is strikingly similar to the first commandment of the God of Genesis, Be fruitful and multiply. Only, in Bunge’s version, the multiplication is explicitly by the succession of generations, without reference to increasing their successive sizes, while the biblical commandment is unspecific as to which or both.

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other-­interest, egocentrism and socio-centrism, autonomy and heteronomy; as such Bunge calls it selftuist, a synthesis of selfishness and altruism.91 Still it may leave some room for improvement, to be developed in the next section. 4.6  ​The Good Society As so conceived, the good is the realization of well-being and the freedom to pursue legitimate wants, the two together forming reasonable happiness. Because we are social animals, in need of the help of others, for Bunge striving for the good is a social enterprise: it can be done only in society, and moreover in fullest form it requires a good society. What then is Bunge’s conception of a good society? In keeping with Bunge’s systemic conception of society (Chap. 6, Sect. 3.10), a good one has economic, cultural, and political aspects. It must be capable of providing the valuable items that make for well-being and reasonable happiness—“economic and cultural riches”—and combine that with social (distributive) justice,92 to ensure everyone can attain them.93 For being multifactorial, societal goodness has gradations and variations along the way to the highest good, and Bunge identifies three gradations and two variations before arriving at his definition of a (fully) good society. In his three gradations, societies are miserable, poor, or rich. Bunge defines a miserable society as one lacking the economic, political, and cultural resources to meet the basic needs of all its members: in short, lacking the resources to secure the well-being of all. One step above, a poor society can secure the well-being of all but lacks sufficient resources to meet the legitimate wants of all: it is unable to offer reasonable happiness. Finally, a rich (or prosperous or affluent) society is one that has resources sufficient  Bunge, 104.  Bunge, 49. 93  Bunge barely discusses justice other than social justice. He essentially limits his judicial considerations first to murder—but mostly for the purpose of condemning war and state-­ sponsored violence (Ethics, 177–178)—and second to theft, but half to justify it in some circumstances (Ethics, 172–173). Further, he holds that morality overrides the law of the land (Ethics, 100). In so doing he neglects that there will always be competing or incompatible moralities. In liberal democracies, the function of the law is neither to bow down to any of them, nor to arbitrate between them, but insofar as possible, to allow the competition to proceed—or the incompatibility to endure—without serious harm to either individuals or society (M. Kary, personal communication). 91 92

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to offer well-being and reasonable happiness to all.94 Bunge holds that no society could ever be rich enough to satisfy the “fancies” or whims (quaternary values) of all of its members; instead, “nearly every contemporary society contains a handful of privileged people who do realize a good many of them—at the expense of the greatest number.”95 The gradations of miserable, poor, and rich refer to what society can provide or is able to offer. They refer to possibilities, not actualities, because they do not refer to the distribution of the required resources: there may be resources sufficient for all, but available to only a few. Bunge’s two societal variations cover the actualization of these possibilities. Thus, a just society is one where everyone can attain, without harm to anyone else, whatever degree of well-being and reasonable happiness the resources of that society have to offer. Bunge distinguishes between internally and externally just societies. For internally just societies, “anyone else” means the other members of the society. Externally just societies are defined as those that do not hinder the development of other societies,96 while fully just societies are those that are both internally and externally just.97  Bunge, Ethics, 49–50.  Bunge, Ethics, 50. 96  Bunge, very conscious of having come from a postcolonial and at least borderline, if not fully third-world country himself—moreover, one situated in a hemisphere dominated by the American superpower—has a heightened sensitivity to international injustices, especially in the form of any domination of the developing world, including the Muslim world. In 2009 he noted: 94 95

Iraq in 2000, and Iran in 2006, threatened to… charge the oil they sell abroad in euros. It has therefore been suggested that the real cause of the [2003] attack on Iraq, and the saber rattling against Iran in 2007, is the wish to defend the dollar hegemony and prevent the hyperinflation that would be caused by excess liquidity. The United States would be compelled to resort to war because the American economy has been greatly weakened as a result of the massive outsourcing of manufacturing jobs and the huge national and trade debts. In Mario Bunge, Political Philosophy: Fact, Fiction, and Vision (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 213–214. Iraq did stop selling its oil in US dollars in 2000 (sales were reverted to US dollars after the American invasion in 2003), and Iran did the same in 2008. Russia set the Euro as the default currency for all exports in 2019. See, for example, https://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-ends-oil-transactions-in-us-dollars/, https://www. reuters.com/article/russia-oil-rosneft-euro-idUSL5N26O30S. 97  Bunge, Ethics, 373.

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In unjust societies, some attain what others cannot, “at the expense of the discomfort or suffering of the greatest number.”98 For Bunge, an unjust society has to be distinguished from one where the just desserts of some are greater than those of others, on the basis of the rewards of merit and the punishment of sin. This even when the just desserts are so minimal as to provide only for mere survival, not health: in Bunge’s ideal society, “if an able-bodied adult were to refuse to work for a living, he would get barely enough to survive (Norm 11.2).” For having two independent aspects—wealth and justice—the overall merits of societies have as yet no morally intrinsic ordering. Such an ordering requires an additional moral postulate. Effectively acknowledging the personal valuations that any such judgment implies, Bunge “stick[s his] neck out” to provide the one illustrated in Fig. 8.1. Thus, Bunge has wealth dominating justice at the transition between misery and poverty, but justice dominating wealth at the transition between poverty and prosperity. What makes any such ordering most arguable though is that it makes no allowance for any degree of injustice: it is an all or nothing affair. This leads Bunge to describing societies that are poor but just as not only better than almost any other version but indeed as especially desirable—this as found in his ultimate definitions of first a welfare society and, ultimately, of a good society: The states PJ [poor and just] and RJ [rich and just] are so desirable, and so within reach of most societies, that they deserve names of their own: DEFINITION 2.6 A society is said to be (i) a welfare society if and only if it is poor but just, so that everyone is assured a state of well-being; (ii) a good society if and only if it is just as well as rich, so that everyone has the opportunity of becoming reasonably happy.99

Bunge adds that “prosperity together with social (distributive) justice guarantees well-being for all but not happiness for all, since happiness is an emotional state that a few people are constitutionally incapable of enjoying.”100

 Bunge, Ethics, 51.  Bunge, Ethics, 51. 100  Bunge, Ethics, 51. This is in conflict with his definitions of both complete (Definition 2.2) and reasonable happiness (Definition 2.3), where neither is defined as an emotional 98 99

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Fig. 8.1  Representation of Bunge’s hierarchy of societal goodness, according to the economic and cultural riches it can offer its members, and whether it does offer its fruits fully to all, without hindering the development of other societies. See text. The ordering of goodness is mostly opposite to the ordering of historical and current extent

Bunge adamantly distinguishes between his conception of a welfare society and that of the (current Western) welfare state, preferring to describe the latter derisively as the relief state, the stop-gap state, or the makeshift state. His explanation of the contrast is that in a welfare society, and a fortiori in a good one, there are no needy people except as a result of natural catastrophes, so that there is no need for the state to take care of them on a regular basis. On the other hand, the so-­ called welfare state attempts to correct some of the most glaring social inequalities by ministering to the basic needs of the destitute, though not to their legitimate wants.101

Although in the preceding considerations Bunge made no room for any degree of social injustice, and provided only a coarse gradation of wealth, elsewhere and throughout his Treatise Bunge emphasized a fundamental state, rather as conditions that are deemed necessary and sufficient for them. See Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism. 101  Bunge, Ethics, 51.

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methodological principle: every property can be quantitated—except for existence, the only one that is all or none.102 This is fortunate, because if social justice really were all or none, it could only be achieved revolutionarily (although not necessarily by force). The view that justice and injustice come in degrees instead allows for the possibility that social reform, though typically requiring struggle, can productively be gradual. In keeping with these ideas, although Bunge says “we certainly need a revolution in our value systems,”103 he also says that: We favor nonconformism because no society can be perfect, and no individual can remain morally clean if he does not rebel against social imperfections. And we favor social reform rather than social revolution because violence is wasteful and ends up by eroding everyone’s morals.104

In these ways and in much further elaboration, Bunge’s analysis goes beyond the domain of value theory and ethics to social policy and action theory, thus to the heart of the modernization project. An ever-widening spread of education and technology, economic development, political participation, artistic enjoyment, equity—all advance both prosperity and social justice by degrees; so too, hand in hand with such enlightened modernization, do they advance the ethical maturity of society. There are then many ways to advance the good, incrementally and progressively. One may infer that the highest good would consist in the greatest prosperity combined with the most equity (social justice), or in other words the greatest overall welfare or equitable prosperity.105 This highest good would provide everyone with well-being and offer everyone Bunge’s reasonable happiness. Yet, according to Bunge the survival of humankind ought to be the supreme good, the summum bonum, for everyone in every society: “Everything else, even social justice and liberty, come thereafter.”106 Bunge’s rationale is simple: no other value can be achieved without it. Granted this conditionality, this does not make it the highest good. I 102  Bunge, Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World (Treatise on Basic Philosophy, vol. 5, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1983), 188. 103  Bunge, Ethics, 60. 104  Bunge, Ethics, 355. 105  Thus, a usage different from Bunge’s in his Definition 2.1. So, the highest good would be equitable prosperity (or integral social welfare), and the Supreme Norm, Enjoy equitable prosperity, and help others prosper equitably. 106  Bunge, Ethics, 59.

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submit that ensuring the survival of humankind is a necessary step for reaching a higher good, but it is not the supreme good itself. Survival is indeed for Bunge the primary value, but it is not the only value. That is to say, it is not the only component of the good, as Bunge defines it: Bunge also upholds the full legitimacy of at least secondary and tertiary values. Primary in this context means necessary; it does not mean sufficient, and therefore it is not the same as supreme. An integral stance that encompasses all primary, secondary, tertiary, and indeed all harmless quaternary values would be more consistent with Bunge’s own philosophical systemism.107 Therefore, I submit that equitable prosperity, or in other words integral social welfare, ought to be the supreme good for all human beings.108

5   Morality in Bunge’s Scientific Humanism The modern Islamic awakening upholds morality to be one of its greatest justifications, as it accuses postmodernity of lacking any such guidance. Here, Bunge’s system fills in the gap, to bolster the modern worldview. Morality comes from both within and without. Internally, we have moral sensibilities, or appreciations of right and wrong, concomitant with our appreciations of the good, the bad, the fair and the ugly. Externally, morality takes the form of moral codes, which are systems of rules or injunctions specifying rights and duties. Overlapping with the moral codes are the legal codes, which leave out good and bad to focus on right and wrong, sometimes as justified by reference to fundamental rights.109 Our internal moral sensibilities are the products of human evolution and individual psycho-social development, while moral and legal codes are the products of philosophical, political, and legal contention, leadership, and reform.

107  There is an inconsistency in Bunge’s treatment of quaternary values in contrast with tertiary values. See Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 108  I suggested this modification (as integral social welfare) to Bunge in 2006, and he accepted it. 109  That various constitutions and declarations are framed in terms of fundamental rights, typically with little or no reference to duties, is objectionable to Bunge, as it is to socialists generally, and also to Taha. In his Ethics, Bunge offers a formal proof for the idea that every right implies a corresponding duty. For some analysis of this attempt, and of the logical and practical relations between rights and duties more generally, see Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”.

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As a materialist and systemist, for Bunge the source of morality is a straightforwardly biological, psychological, and social triad: Human groups exist solely because every human being has needs and wants that can only be met with the help of others. If every individual were self-­ reliant from birth there would be no point in sociality, let alone in reciprocity or mutual help, and in the associated system of rights and duties made explicit in the moral and legal codes. But in fact no individual is self-reliant because nobody is complete, let alone perfect. We overcome our individual limitations only by joining others.110

The function of morality then is essentially to regulate the system of mutual help: to ensure help is available when needed but not extracted onerously. One might ask then: why is any external morality, in the form of a moral or legal code, needed to tell us how to live properly in society? Why does internal morality, our own sense of right and wrong, not suffice? In fact, we do not always need external, codified morals and laws to live properly in society. Consider the legal codes: hardly anyone, or more likely no one, knows the entirety of any of them. Even judges and lawyers have to carefully look them up and interpret them to be sure, and most of us only know even the most important parts of them only sketchily. As for moral codes apart from legal ones, mostly only the members of religious or else specific professional communities even have them explicitly. Most of us live most of our lives by our internal moral sensibilities, rough knowledge of basic laws, and more or less cognizance of an assortment of more or less tacit and independent moral codes, ranging from those of religions to the various rules of sportsmanship or business practice. So why the effort to construct a grand ethical system? The answer goes back to Sect. 3.2. Bunge’s contention is that our various legal frameworks and more or less tacit moral principles have too much been the products of wrong or anachronistic values and blunted moral sensibilities. The results have been nothing less than a long history of massive injustice and cultural bias, and a short future heading toward extinction. We have already explored what are for Bunge the right values, the ones to steer us away from these dual tragedies. What then is Bunge’s system of the corresponding rights and duties needed to save humanity— Westerners and non-Westerners alike?  Bunge, Ethics, 95.

110

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5.1  Rights and Duties Bunge views norms as the social actualization of values, specifications of the rights granted and duties required so that self and others may realize them. He goes to considerable lengths to prove that every right implies a corresponding duty,111 so that moral codes should enumerate both rights and duties. Primary and secondary values guide concomitant primary and secondary rights, and corresponding primary and secondary duties. The hierarchy of values induces corresponding hierarchies of rights and duties, in simplified form as follows.112 Bunge’s hierarchy of rights (his Norm 4.1): 1. A person has a basic [i.e., primary or secondary] moral right to something if and only if it contributes to their well-being, without hindering anyone else in their pursuit or achievement of it. 2. A person has a secondary113 moral right to something if and only if it contributes to their reasonable happiness, without interfering with the exercise of the primary rights of anyone else. Bunge’s hierarchy of duties (his Norm 4.2): 1. If someone has a primary right to something, and someone else alone can help them exercise that right, then that someone else has a primary moral duty to do so. 2. If someone has a secondary right to something, and someone else alone can help them exercise that right, then that someone else has a secondary moral duty to do so.114

 Bunge, Ethics, 101–103. See also footnote 109.  Bunge, Ethics, 97–98. 113  Since well-being is a matter of survival and health, that is, primary and secondary values, and reasonable happiness is a matter of legitimate wants, that is, tertiary values, it would have been more consistent to describe these as tertiary moral rights rather than secondary. 114  That if many people are able to help a person exercise a right, then no one has the duty to actually do so is a mere technical glitch of Bunge’s specific formulation. Rather, the duty should be shared, or delegated to one or more of them. This is often done spontaneously: for example, the duty of transporting critically injured people to hospital normally belongs to ambulance attendants, but if circumstances make them obviously unavailable, bystanders and passers-by will often, and may be widely expected to, do the job themselves. 111 112

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Bunge gives as a first example the parent-child relation and, in so doing, broadens his norms somewhat: “Parents are normally the only people, or at least the best placed ones, to take good care of their children; hence they have the duty to do so.”115 Similarly, one might broaden his norms from direct individual action to actions mediated by institutions. For example, since people have basic rights to shelter, recreation, and social security (Table 8.1), if the state through taxation alone were capable of enabling these rights, then people would have some combination of primary and secondary duties to pay their taxes. Or, if persons have secondary rights to exercise and to participate in sports—as it would seem they do in even modest societies, for such participation being beneficial to health, while not seriously harming anyone or interfering with their survival—and if the state or local municipality alone were capable of ­facilitating those rights, then by extension it would be the secondary duty of the state or local municipality to do so. In Bunge’s system but not all others, every right a person has generates a corresponding duty to help others exercise the same right. Citing Hobbes, Bunge says: “Your right is my duty, and your duty is my right.”116 The problem with having both rights and duties is that they may interfere with each other and thus produce moral problems. 5.2  ​Moral Problems Considering morality as a system of norms, all moral problems are conflicts between norms. Since for Bunge norms encapsulate values, then consequently all moral problems stem from conflicts between values. He cautions though that the converse is false: we may have internal conflicts between our own values, leading to indecision, but such conflicts are not necessarily moral problems. As long as they do not involve other people, in particular some conflict between the attainment of our values and theirs, they are simply personal cognitive and psychological problems. In this way, all moral problems are social problems.117 Bunge proposes that the solution to moral problems involves ranking values and opting to favor those of higher priority.

 Bunge, Ethics, 97–98.  Bunge, Ethics, 103. 117  Bunge, Ethics, 111–112. 115 116

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But can these principles of scientific and humanist ethics resolve moral conflicts in the real world, rather than merely in abstract schemes? Bunge’s answer: Being of a practical nature, moral problems are not solved by consulting moral codes (particularly if obsolete) or works in moral philosophy. Codes serve to identify problems and books to analyze them; at most, codes and books may offer broad guidelines. Moral problems can only be solved correctly by adding some practical knowledge to our moral sensibility and reasoning. For example, once we have decided to help the victim of an accident, our problem is how to do it in the most efficient way. When the time for action comes, the moral problem has turned into a technical one.118

Bunge’s most urgent concerns are what he identifies as the biggest problems of modern life, ones that require far more practical knowledge than in the preceding example. His rankings of the importance of problems will conflict with those of most people, because the most directly emotive ones are further down the list, while the ones that are for him the most important are also the most diffuse and most difficult to recognize. Thus, for Bunge, the problems of the first order of magnitude are the global concerns, the ones that affect the whole of humanity: the arms race, overpopulation, depletion of non-renewable resources, and environmental degradation. Problems of the second order of magnitude are the social problems affecting large social groups, which he identifies as poverty, bad health, unemployment, state violence, lack of political rights, illiteracy, and “the neglect of basic duties out of inability to fulfill them.”119 Last on his list are problems of the third order of magnitude, namely individual problems, such as whether to obey an army draft order, to perform an abortion, to steal in order to feed one’s family, or to help a neighbor in distress despite some risk. Obviously the more complex the problem and the more people it involves, the more rudimentary the guidance offered by moral norms will be. Ranking values and opting for those of higher priority only help in simple cases where the value conflicts happen to be only between values of unequal priority. Bunge holds in particular that an individual faced with a conflict between right and a duty is morally free to choose either, with  Bunge, Ethics, 114–115.  Bunge, Ethics, 114.

118 119

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only the caveat that primary duties take precedence over secondary rights.120 So, for example, first of all the primary right to shelter is more important than the secondary right to a means of transportation—unless, for example, the means of transportation is to escape a natural disaster or a hot war zone. But the primary duty to pilot the escape helicopter into and out of a battle zone, through heavy enemy fire, does not override the primary right to one’s own life: it is a mission for volunteers.121 The only additional guidance that morality can provide is through further general principles or analyses. Thus, Bunge postulates that all value conflicts can be solved through compromise, but cautions that any solution to a moral problem, however beneficial it may be to the parties involved, carries some cost or loss to at least one of them. In this regard moral agents should behave much like managers though with different intentions: they should perform some cost-benefit analysis, however crude, before plunging into action regardless of its consequences. Only fools and prigs can afford to ignore costs to selves and others. In this regard utilitarianism is right: If we wish the good and the right to prevail on balance in the end, we must be somewhat calculating (though not selfish), and we must be prepared to pay the price, which includes the stress caused by the action and by the uncertainty of its outcome.122

Bunge’s moral theory is permissive of behaviors that do not harm self or others, under a comprehensive consideration of harm that includes the undermining of any legitimate social system. To the extent it is repressive, it is that only to uphold the rights of each individual and, through them, the integrity of society. It is distinct from liberalism, the most dominant other form of modern humanistic ethics: rights are balanced by duties, with the most important of each dominating the lesser important of the other. While upholding the rights of the individual, it is not individualistic, because its norms are derived jointly from the social, as well as the biological and psychological, roots of values. It is consequentialist, but denies facile economic calculations purporting to show that greed is good and  Bunge, Ethics, 101.  Bunge, Ethics, 101–102. Depending on assessments of the degree of risk involved, this is essentially consistent with Western military codes of conduct, wherein suicidal or effectively suicidal missions call for volunteers, with the corresponding heroism meriting highest honors. On the other hand, some religious moralities categorically reject suicide. It takes creative or mischievous interpretations to find ways around the prohibition. 122  Bunge, Ethics, 112. 120 121

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Table 8.3  Some of Bunge’s fundamental moral dos and don’ts, to realize fundamental rights and dutiesa Type of injunction

To exercise fundamental rights

To fulfill fundamental duties

Do

Seek to realize your full potential

Support yourself and your dependents Participate in social activities Care for and share with others

Participate in social activities Take whatever pleasures do not harm self or others Don’t

Miss opportunities Accept exploitation or oppression Feel bound to do anything beyond the call of duty

Exploit people Resort to violence Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you

Adapted from Bunge, Ethics, 105

a

selfishness best for all, instead insisting on an evaluation of the consequences of not just the desired outcome, but also the means and the actual outcome, including all side effects.123 Just as it demolishes any purported derivative nobility of greed, it eradicates the purported nobility of mortal sacrifice for any cause other than someone else’s life, since preserving life is the most basic value. Although everyone has the right to sacrifice themselves, such sacrifice can only be voluntary, and no one has the right to demand it, or remonstrate against anyone who refuses it.124 This section closes with a brief list of some of Bunge’s fundamental moral dos and don’ts, his injunctions for exercising fundamental rights and performing fundamental duties (Table 8.3). In Islamic legal terminology, this is the haram (i.e., prohibited) and wajib (i.e., obligatory) of scientific humanism.125

123  For a mature medieval Islamic view on ethico-legal consequentialism, see “Legality of Causes Does Not Necessarily Imply the Legal Validity of the Consequences”, In Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhı ̄m Ibn Mūsā al-Shātị bı ̄, The Reconciliation of the Fundamentals of Islamic Law, ed. Raji M Rammuny, trans. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee (Reading, UK: Garnet Pub and Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilization, 2011), Vol. I, 142–145. 124  Bunge, Ethics, 102. 125  For a detailed comparison between Bunge’s ethical system and the Islamic legal system, see: A. Z. Obiedat, “How Can Bunge’s Scientific-Humanistic Ethics Engage Islamic Moral-­ Law?,” in Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift, ed. Michael R.  Matthews (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Verlag, 2019), 490.

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6   ​An Evaluation of Some Potential Criticisms ​ unge’s ethics is about good values and right morals, with a view to B human flourishing through social justice and prosperity; or put another way, about striving for an equitable good by doing the right, all in a balance between rights and duties. Recognizing the good and striving for it is neither a magical endeavor nor the outcome of supernatural revelation; rather, it relies on understanding actual needs and wants, and it depends on reason and knowledge to devise strategies and tools to achieve these ends. Formulating the same thing differently, knowledge of the good and striving for it calls for exploring nature via the constructive intelligence of reason, thus building within the worldly dimension what John Dewey calls “natural piety.”126 Doing the right is in turn neither a matter of bowing to authority nor following blind instinct; rather, it is a rational balance between the rights to satisfy basic needs and legitimate wants on the one hand, and the duties flowing from these rights on the other. It is, in short, the realization of a project of social harmonization, whereby everyone exercises their rights with the help of others as needed, but only to the extent that neither the rights of others nor as a consequence their valuable social systems are jeopardized. For Bunge, the way to know the good and do the right is to explore the nature of things—including ourselves—in a scientific way; to construct and systematize our concepts, goals, strategies, and tools, in a rational way; and ultimately, to evaluate the results in an empirical way. Striving for the universal good of humanity is what underlies Bunge’s ethics. His highest value (summum bonum) is the survival of humankind or, considered more fully, integral human welfare. His maxim, enjoy life and help live, can be improved, either to Bunge’s own later and fuller form, enjoy life and help others live an enjoyable life; or more explicitly, to enjoy equitable prosperity and help others prosper equitably (in alternative formulation: enjoy welfare and help others fare well). Although well rounded from both individual and social perspectives, Bunge’s value theory still does not answer satisfactorily an important question: what is the value of human life, and in particular, the value of one’s own life? For Bunge, the fundamental source of all values is need, and he  John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 25.

126

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himself poses the rhetorical question: “Why should we cherish life, let alone regard it as inviolable or even sacred, if living satisfies no obvious need but, on the contrary, is the source of all needs and wants?”127 His answer, though apparently eminently satisfactory to himself, would be deeply unsatisfactory to many others: “although life in the abstract does not derive from any need, we value every living person for contributing (actually or potentially) to other human lives.”128 One might say in other words that Bunge tells us little more than that we all live because we are all alive.129 To this a critic like Taha Abd al-Rahman might object: the value of life should be judged by something outside of life. Life should be a means for a higher goal; otherwise it is the means to nothing more than itself, a closed loop or an infinite regress. Intuitionists, idealists, and religionists may fault Bunge’s exclusion of the spiritual or transcendental from his ontology and epistemology. Bunge’s theory of value defines the good through what is seemingly lesser than a highest good, namely through the satisfaction of mundane needs and nearly arbitrary subjective wants. This philosophical bravery may be contrasted with ideas of an indefinable nature of the good, to which needs and wants are subservient. Bunge reverses the priorities and declares that the highest branches of the tree of goodness are nourished from biological, psychological, and social roots; more prosaically, simply that needs and wants define the good. Those used to more transcendent considerations might accuse Bunge’s value theory of being hollow, of being an engineering design most suitable for soulless machines, rather than for human beings in need of sublime ethical goals. Even for such accusers though, a reasonable solution might be to find that the value of one’s own life is in the near miracle of cosmological and biological existence itself. Thus, one might value one’s own life for being the fruit of that outside it which one loves and admires: one’s parents, one’s society, one’s culture; and the grand evolutionary marvel that brought life out of the lifeless, thoughts and feelings out of the insensate, and humanistic cosmopolitanism out of archaic prejudice and hostility.

 Bunge, Ethics, 37.  Bunge, Ethics, 38. 129  For other criticisms see Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics I: Agathonism”. 127 128

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In this way, objections of the sort that Bunge defines the good through something less than the sublime good, that he uses untraditional strategies for emphasizing the relevance of values, and justifies life through life, amount to mere empty rhetoric. True, Bunge’s system cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps, but neither can anything else. Bunge is no fan of Nietzsche, but he might approve of at least one of his remarks: “Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity; those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for absurdity.”130 Bunge’s striving for clarity and consistency—even if inevitably, he sometimes does not attain it—is something rare in modern philosophy.

130   Quoted in Aloysius Martinich, Philosophical Writing: An Introduction (London: Blackwell, 1997), 1.

CHAPTER 9

Taha Abd al-Rahman on Modern and Postmodern Family Ethics

A word of warning to the reader: Taha advocates for a vision of the family that he sees as a full realization of the modern ideal—one that is at once also native, creative, and Islamic. In the West though, key parts (though by no means all) of this conception will find favor mostly only with traditionalists and religious conservatives. Those in the West who consider themselves in any way modern, and even many others, may find certain parts of Taha’s conception to be shockingly obsolete or offensive. Indeed the same may be said for a portion of the Islamic world (with equal shock regarding postmodern values). Taha’s response, one might expect, would be that such a reaction stems not from the offended party having achieved higher ideals of modernity, but from having descended into postmodernity. There is no way to engage in cross-­cultural and cross-civilizational conversation without strong opposition in values. Mostly but not entirely, this chapter presents rather than criticizes Taha’s ideas. Three critical interludes initiate a critical analysis, but a fuller evaluation of Taha’s worldview, in the light of comparison with that of Mario Bunge, is reserved for Chap. 11. Chapter 5 presented Taha Abd al-Rahman’s view of modernity. The essence of Taha’s view is that modernization is not a time-related matter, where advances are made by the present becoming more and more disconnected from the past; instead, it is an ideal-related endeavor, one that advances with the fulfillment of those ideals. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_9

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The ideal nature of modernity is what Taha refers to as “the spirit of modernity.” One of Taha’s original contributions is his particular characterization of the spirit of modernity. For Taha, there is a fundamental distinction between actually existing modernity—in particular Western “implementations” of the spirit of modernity—and modernity as it ought to be. The difference between modernity as it ought to be, and modernity as it actually is, is a matter of how the spirit of modernity gets applied in practice. Modernization in its particular forms in various societies involves differing “application premises.” These are ideas, often tacit, about how best to actualize within a given society the modern ideal. In Taha’s view, the premises underlying the Western implementation of modernity are in no way similar to those underlying Islamic society and its history. As detailed in Chap. 5, Sect. 4, Taha further argues that the Western premises are false; and that, for being based on false premises, the Western implementation of the spirit of modernity brought about the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve. Ultimately, Taha’s goal is to advance a native, creative, Islamic version of modernity as it ought to be. Consequently, he sets for himself the task of highlighting the native and creative application premises that would make for a substantive and genuine Islamic alternative to actual Western modernity. Taha further elaborates this project in a series of six detailed examinations, or case studies, of topics where modern influences are of particular concern in the Islamic world, some more to specialized scholars and others more generally. These are Koranic hermeneutics, the translation of philosophical works into Arabic, global society, citizenship, the environment, and the family. Out of all these case studies, Taha’s examination of the family, and his criticism of the Western version of the modern family, enable a sort of summation of our own worldview analysis. It is then to Taha’s view of the modern family and its transformations that we turn our attention in this chapter.

1   Taha on the Modern Family For Taha, ideal modernity, or the spirit of modernity, has three basic features: maturity, critical thinking, and universality (Chap. 5, Sect. 3.3). Each of these basic features rests in turn on two foundational notions. Maturity comes from independence and creativity; critical thinking relies on rationality and analysis (or differentiation—see Chap. 5, Sect. 4.3);

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while universality is contingent upon extensibility and generalizability. With regard to the modern family, Taha gives extensive consideration to the matter of differentiation. 1.1  Taha’s Characterization of the Family Taha describes the family as “the place where people relate to each other through lineage and where the ethical role is determined by this relationship.”1 In less literal translation but in more concrete terms, the family is a group of people who are related by lineage and whose ethical roles derive from their place in this lineage. In this conception, the lineage relationship is produced from the marital relationship (al-‘alāqah al-zawājiyyah),2 while the ethical roles derive from a model of familial ethics. In turn familial ethics specializes into parental, maternal, filial, fraternal, sororal, and cousinhood ethics. By extension and analogy, familial ethics are seen as applicable to other social relationships, and to society as a whole. For example, the teacher-­ student relation can follow the model of parental ethics,3 and student-­ colleague relations can be inspired by fraternal ethics. Taha generalizes further to claim that all human relationships are versions of familial relationships. If there were no family, there would be no human relationships, and so no need for ethics of any sort. However, the family does exist, ethics is necessary, and proper ethical roles derive naturally from familial relationships. Or at least, for Taha, this is how things should be. In the Western implementation of modernity, Taha observes to the contrary something very different. 1.2  The Western Implementation of the Modern Family: Pro Western modernity, Taha explains,4 attempted to circumvent the allegedly inhuman, irrational, and unworldly aspects of some medieval Christian religious ethics. In an effort to disconnect ethics from religion, following from the Enlightenment came three ethical creeds. These were an “ethics 1  For Ṭ āhā, there is a clear literal relationship between the Arabic noun akhlāq (ethics) and its derived verb takhalluq (to behave oneself according to a system of ethics) (Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 99; see also Chap. 5, Section 3.2.2). 2  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 100. 3  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 100. 4  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 101–2.

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of selfhood,” in a version where one is free to choose one’s own destiny and make one’s own determination of the good, separately and independently from God; an “ethics of commitment,” in a version where commitment is generated by reason only, away from divine revelation; and an “ethics of happiness,” in a version derived from exclusive devotion to worldly concerns, the world being each person’s only residence and final destiny, with good and bad deeds having no consequence in any non-­ existent hereafter. Taha sees these three ethical creeds in their Western versions as the foundations of the ethics of the Western implementation of the modern family—in his view a model that does not achieve the spirit of modernity. Before explaining his proposed alternative, Taha first offers his best arguments in favor of the aforementioned Western creeds, and then argues against, not the ideals of selfhood, commitment, and happiness behind those creeds, but what has become of their flawed application. 1.3  The Centrality of the Individual, and the “ethics of selfhood” The Enlightenment sought to overcome blind dependence on authority and tradition, and a philosophical turn toward the individual was a fundamental part of that movement.5 In other words, the Enlightenment involved a move from respecting God to respecting the human.6 Taha conceives of a resulting “ethics of selfhood” (akhlāq al-murū’ah), an attempt to affirm the fundamental importance of a person’s own consciousness, being, or identity, by way of the following three imperatives: the individual is the highest end, rather than a mundane means to transcendent goals; the community’s existence is justified by its service to the individual, rather than the other way around; and each individual should strive to realize their own authentic identity.7 Taha observes that over the course of history, adherence to these three imperatives has lifted the  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 100.  Unlike the English “man,” the Arabic al-Rajul means “man” exclusively in the sense of a male person and is never used in a universal sense to cover both males and females. Again unlike “man,” the Arabic al-Insān (literally, “the human”) has no other sense that indicates a male person only. Here and similarly elsewhere, the most literarily felicitous translation would be “a move from respecting God to respecting Man,” in the secondary sense of “Man” (or “man”) as a human being or person. 7  Ṭ āhā reminds the reader that the notion of “highest end” is one of Kant’s ethical contributions and that the notion of “authentic identity” has been worked out by the Canadian Charles Taylor (Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 103–104). 5 6

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Western human from his status as an indistinguishable member of a mob to being a distinguished individual; from being a means to society’s ends, to being society’s end; and from being an imitator, to being an authentic self.8 1.3.1 The “Ethics of Commitment” The ethics of commitment would seem at first to be contradictory to the ethics of selfhood. It gives priority to the preservation of the family over the individual and has the family as the basis of society. As with the ethics of selfhood, Taha identifies three imperatives within the ethics of commitment; only they would seem, at least in some ways, to be countervailing. Mature freedom compels the individual to respect obligations and avoid wrong actions, rather than follow whims and live in ignorance. Pure duty puts aside vested interests and fears for the good of the community up to humankind as a whole. Proven rights preserve the life and essence of the individual, through respect for the private domain, in exchange for readiness to fulfill public duties.9 The novelty of this conception is that the balance between rights and duties is achieved in an ideal scenario that has duties being in accord with individual free will and arising naturally from within the human self. Obligations or duties are as much to oneself as to others, both directly—as in the imperative not to live in ignorance—and indirectly, for commitment to the community, but community being the place where the individual flowers to his full potential. Thus it is that the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)10—a typically modern document in the tradition of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—brings the ethics of commitment right back to the ethics of selfhood: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”11

 Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 104.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 105–6. 10  United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). http://www.un.org/ en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. 11  United Nations General Assembly, Key Resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly 1946–1996, ed. Katja Wiesbrock, Dietrich Rauschning, and Martin Lailach (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 322. 8 9

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1.3.2 Worldliness and the “Ethics of Happiness” The foundation of the “ethics of happiness” in its Western version is first an exclusive attachment to worldly concerns, rather than preoccupation with preparations for the unseen spiritual world or the world of the afterlife. Second, the thesis that private happiness is consistent and on a par with the natural rights to life, freedom, and justice. Third, that private happiness is a rational obligation to oneself as much as it is to others; thus, it is in compliance with duty, rather than selfish and sinful. Fourth, private happiness coincides with public happiness, since the conditions for happiness in both the private and public realms are similar, such as security, freedom, and prosperity. In this way, the ethics of happiness bridges the gap between personal fulfillment and public good, between the individual and the social. In the language of the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793: “Le but de la société est le bonheur commun” (the goal of society is happiness shared by all).12 These ideas lead to a new consideration of the role of the family, in harmony with the ethics of commitment.13 Instead of being determined by custom, or seemingly a mere vehicle for practical life, enhancing social status, and procreation, the family becomes a place for worldly exultation, guided by compassionate love.

2   Taha on the Postmodern Family, and the Inversion of Modern Values The above are in outline Taha’s justifications for the ethical system of the Western implementation of the modern family. Taha offers his criticisms in light of his conception of the spirit of modernity and in relation to what he describes as “the inversion” of modern values that began in the 1960s.14 Before offering his own criticisms, Taha first criticizes some other possible perspectives, in particular those of orthodox Marxism and “Anglo-­ Saxon feminism” as he sees them.15 Taha explicitly and emphatically rejects outright the primacy of social science explanations. So, he declines to offer a historical, sociological,  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 108.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 107. 14  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 110. 15  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 110–11. 12 13

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or anthropological explanation of the ethical “inversion” of the postmodern family. He considers such approaches to be more characteristic of the Western over-emphasis on “differentiation” (Chap. 5, Sect. 4.3), seeking to separate ideals from their applications, at the expense of a normative understanding. Taha explains that Marxism would see the change in family ethics as a manifestation of class struggle in the form of generation struggle,16 while feminism would view the change as part of the struggle between the sexes for power.17 In both cases, Taha finds the reasoning to be not compelling: the Marxist view compares the economic exploitation of workers by capitalists to the necessary upbringing of children by parents, while the feminist view18 does not properly respect the natural differences between males and females.19 Taha considers the orthodox Marxist stance to be an over-exaggeration and what he regards as the Anglo-Saxon feminist view to be an oversimplification.20 In contrast to these alternative explanations, Taha offers an articulation of the ideal values that would situate the family within the spirit of modernity. He then goes on to suggest a prototype that achieves each ideal value. Finally, he argues that deviations from these prototypes are the reason for the ethical “inversion” he decries, where the ethics of selfhood, commitment, and happiness are upended to become the ethics of non-self, privilege, and playfulness. 16  For this Taha cites Friedrich Engels’ L’ Origine de la famille: de la propriété privée et de l’État. 17  For this Taha cites Denis Lensel and Jacques Lafond’s La famille à venir: une réalité menacée mais necessaire (Paris: Economica, 2000), 5–8, 79–87. 18  There is more than one feminist view: for example, some say the differences should play no role, while others say they should, but because the male influence as framed by certain traditions has harmful aspects. Yet, despite the “Anglo-Saxon” appellation, Taha sees all feminism as one. Taha seems unaware of a resurging wave of a native, creative, and scholarly Islamic feminism. See Zahiyyah Juwı ̄rū, Al-Wa’d al-Jadı ̄d: Maqa ̄lat̄ fı ̄ al-Fatwā wa Fiqh al-Nisā’ (Tunis: Miskilyānı ̄ lil-Nashr wal-Tawzı ̄’, 2019); Naṣr Ḥ āmid Abū Zayd, Dawāʼir al-Khawf: Qirāʼah fı ̄ Khit ̣a ̄b al-Marʼah (Beirut: al-Markaz al- Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2004); Amina Wadud, Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 19  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 111. 20  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 111.

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2.1  The Western Implementation of the Modern Family: Con 2.1.1 The Ethics of Selfhood Upended: The Ethics of Non-self Selfhood connotes authenticity and ethical particularity. In Taha’s ideal conception of the modern family, it also connotes clear and particular roles for family members. This is in contrast to the situation of the postmodern family, where “non-self” is the rule.21 For Taha, the postmodern orientation is illusory and leads to treating the other not as an end, but as a means. Thus, in Taha’s terminology, ‘non-self’ does not have anything to do with unselfishness; it refers not to the positive quality of altruism, nor to the asceticism of self-denial or abnegation, but rather to a simple lack of selfhood—a passive imitation of others, a bending to the winds. The Arabic term imma‘iyyah, which refers to a person who cannot maintain himself, or figure out their direction, has the same connotations.22 Non-­ self is associated with accepting that a trend or innovation in “custom occurs and legislation concurs”; put another way, that customs, rather than being a solid and enduring foundation, become ephemeral, yet each passing fashion becoming successively enshrined in law, making even the laws of the land in effect arbitrary.23 For Taha, non-self applies best to the postmodern man. This is a man bereft of his fatherhood authority, his authority over birth control,24 and his role as an inspiration for his children.25 In the postmodern family, authority is taken from the father to be given to the mother and children; or at least, to be shared with them. In France, for example, where Taha completed his higher education, upon divorce the responsibility for the child’s upbringing is given to the mother, even if she lives with another man, whether within a marriage or not—a delegation of authority Taha finds reprehensible.26 As far as birth control is concerned, Taha complains  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 114.  In opposition to selfhood (al-murū’ah), non-self translates the Arabic imma‘iyyah. In Arabic this word is a very rare morphological combination, made of the first personal pronoun anā (I) and the prepositional combination ma‘ak (with you), leading to the meaning anā ma‘ak, that is, ‘I am with you’ or ‘I am following you.’ Thus the Arabic non-self, imma‘iyyah, as abstraction would resemble the possible combination: I-follow-you-ism (in English vocabulary: toadyism; subordination or subservience). 23  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 115. 24  For Taha, it is the father who should have final authority over family planning and be the one to decide the spacing of births. See Taha, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 116. 25  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 116–17. 26  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 116 (referring to a French law of January 8, 1993). 21 22

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that “the French laws of 196727 and January 17th, 197528 not only give exclusively to the mother the right of deciding to maintain a pregnancy or seek an abortion, but also the right to disguise the reality of pregnancy’s occurrence.”29 Finally, the father’s educational, ethical, and spiritual responsibilities as the best model for his children are taken from him, to be passed off to school teachers, psychologists, and counselors. In cases of overlapping marriages or of the mother’s multiple relationships, it seems the child may choose to be parented in any of the combinations. In all this, Taha objects that the Western, postmodern man is continually surrendering his ethical role and authority—as if in the Western view of things it were Man, not Woman, who committed the “first sin” (of the Western conception),30 as if in Western eyes it were Man, not Woman, who is eternally obliged to seek redemption.31 Taha frames his response to this situation by means of the following questions: What inverted the ethics of selfhood into the ethics of non-self? What is the desired ideal in the ethics of selfhood? What prototype of this ideal has been disregarded? According to Taha, a father deserves to be called a self if, and only if, he fulfills the rights and duties that go with his decision to establish a family. What holds for the father holds, mutatis mutandis, for the mother and the child. In order to find out the reason for the ethical inversion of selfhood into non-self, Taha turns his attention to the collective and social nature of selfhood. The coexistence of self and other is what in Arabic is called al-ma‘iyyah, companionship. Taha’s diagnosis is that the inversion of self to non-self is caused by “degrading companionship,”32 a state  Neuwirth Law, legalizing birth control.  Veil Law, legalizing abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. 29  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 115. 30  Here Taha is using Western conceptions for sarcastic effect. In Islam, there is no original sin for humankind since people are born innocent and become prone to sinning (e.g., lying, stealing, more generally, harming) after puberty. Nor is there any original sin for Eve, since the mistake was made along with Adam due to the mischief of Satan. The Koran narrates the biblical account differently (2:35–36): “And We said: O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden, and eat ye freely (of the fruits) thereof where ye will; but come not nigh this tree lest ye become wrong-doers. But Satan caused both of them to deflect therefrom and expelled them from the (happy) state in which they were; and We said: Fall down, one of you a foe unto the other! There shall be for you on earth a habitation and provision for a time.” Emphasis is made on the dual Arabic pronoun, huma ̄, that is, both Adam and Eve. 31  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 117. 32  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 118. 27 28

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that—­contrary to “elevating companionship”—does not generate virtue in others. A husband only attracted to his wife’s beauty, and a wife only interested in her husband’s money, would be an example of a degrading companionship.33 Both husband and wife would be degrading each other, because of their lack of selfhood. Selfhood to the contrary uplifts and generates virtue in the other, through elevating companionship where the roles in the family of both husband and wife are fulfilled: elevating companionship is the ideal of the ethics of selfhood.34 But why, Taha asks, is the postmodern family such a stranger to this ideal? Taha’s response is that elevating companionship cannot be achieved without the highest possible virtue.35 He considers various candidate prototypes for elevating companionship and asks whether they are capable of achieving this ideal. The first such candidate is what he refers to as “vertical companionship.” This is a psychological attitude that spurs the self to seek successively higher ideals, such as moving from idleness to action, from that to thoughtful generous action, and so on and so forth. Can vertical companionship be the prototype of elevating companionship? Taha responds in the negative: verticality is a limited notion, since it is “imprisoned by its spatial property.”36 So no, vertical companionship does not help achieve the highest possible virtue. Taha’s second candidate for the prototype of elevating companionship is “progressive companionship.” This is a psychological attitude that spurs the self to seek progressive transformations, such as moving from being a student to being a teacher, and from that to being a trainer of teachers, and so on and so forth. Can progressive companionship be the prototype of elevating companionship? Taha’s answer is again negative, because the very idea of progress implies that there was something that was progressed from; that is to say, progress retains traces of the lower origin that the highest possible virtue seeks to exceed. So no again, progressive companionship does not help achieve the highest possible virtue. The prototype needed for elevating companionship should neither have material limitations, as in the vertical attitude, nor retain traces of imperfection, as in the progressive attitude. Instead it should express solely the quality of uplifting.37 Taha argues that nothing uplifts the self  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 118.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 118. 35  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 119. 36  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 119. 37  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 119. 33 34

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qualitatively, without material limitations and traces of imperfection, except “transcendental companionship.”38 For being transcendent, it overcomes the innate limitations of space, matter, and imperfection. In line with Islamic traditions, transcendental companionship is not centered on the human; it comes from observing God’s face as He watches the deeds of his creatures. Of course, in Islamic traditions God’s face is transcendental in nature and cannot be materially seen in this world. Yet, observing, being aware of His presence strengthens human attention to good deeds, over and above either law enforcement or shame: the self acknowledges the omnisciently observant. In Taha’s view, it is this that is what is needed to achieve the highest possible elevating virtue, and it is the ignorance of God’s transcendental companionship that prevents the postmodern family from achieving the ideal of the ethics of selfhood. Observing God’s presence in human affairs generates virtue, and it is of great significance in Islamic theology and mysticism. For Taha, the inversion of modern selfhood into degrading companionship, and thus into non-self, is ultimately the result of being oriented to the human alone. The human alone is by nature limited, whereas the transcendental is limitless. The process Taha has in mind is depicted schematically in Fig. 9.1. 2.1.2 A First Critical Interlude While more general evaluations of Taha’s ideas are reserved for Chap. 11, and also to some extent Sect. 3 of this chapter, there is occasion here for some very brief comment. Even within a theological or Islamic framework, one might respond to Taha that, following his own line of

Fig. 9.1⁠  Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of selfhood got upended into the postmodern ethics of non-self  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 119.

38

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reasoning, the idea of observing God’s face watching the deeds of His creatures could also be inverted into non-self. This could come about as a direct consequence of an excessive orientation to God, for orientation to the Deity alone is equally pregnant with the possibility of unethical consequences. Indeed, jurists of divine laws have given great attention to the Deity and to transcendental concerns, to the extent of forgetting viability, justice, and the need for historical adjustment. In this way, the proposed transcendental companionship could have a fate similar to degrading companionship. Being consumed by the observation of God’s face, I suggest, might then be called ‘blinding companionship.’ This might very well explain why slavery, feudalism, oppressive aristocracy, and monarchy continued to thrive under both Christian and Muslim jurisprudence in premodern times.39 Taha unjustifiably assigns immunity to a transcendental orientation, and so his argument loses ground. Elevating human behavior to ethical ideals is generally problematic: human history tells us that any such endeavor is in need of social mechanisms of checks and balances for it to lead it to a better end. Without such social mechanisms, ideals of any sort are bound to fail.40 2.1.3 The Ethics of Commitment Upended: The Ethics of Privilege In its ideal form, the ethics of commitment in the modern family calls for the duty to uphold and actualize every valid right. This harmony between rights and duties brings harmony to the relation between the individual and the community. By contrast, in the postmodern family, the necessary connection between rights and duties is severed.41 Even the very term

39  It is important to note that Islam, in the times of the Prophet and his companions before the Umayyad coups d’état in 661 CE, was against feudalism and monarchy. As for slavery, Islamic law considered humans originally free and therefore prohibited enslaving humans. For already enslaved persons, Islam orders the liberation of children born of free fathers, and the liberation of slaves as redemption of certain sins, such as breaking an oath. Still, the success of Muslims in banning wine, for example, is not matched by those of banning the larger sins of slavery, feudalism, or oppressive monarchy. Indeed all three remained a pattern in later Islamic history. 40  Just like ethical inversion, political “decay is […] in many ways a condition of political development.” For this and a survey of the fallibility of political systems including liberal democracy, see Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 462. 41  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 121.

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‘duty’ and its synonyms seem to be losing favor, as though they spoke only of obedience to an authoritarian power, typical of a dark age. Taha decries this as leading to a situation where some individuals elevate “every fancy of theirs to be a right from the rights.”42 The rights of the child have “increased,” from merely the right to receive care, to a panoply of rights concerning the form and substance of that care. Rights have also been “expanded,” “multiplied,” and “exaggerated” (a literal translation of ghulu),43 such as the right of homosexual couples to adopt children or the right for married couples to not have children.44 Even worse are situations where, for example, “exaggerated” rights contradict fundamental rights and duties, such as that occur when some feminist groups call for abolishing the institution of the family.45 Taha distinguishes between rights that are concomitant with duties and rights that bear no such association: “the right that is not associated with duty is a privilege.”46 Rights concomitant with duties are self-balanced and therefore harm-free, whereas privilege may generate harm. Taha sees that nefarious situation as attaching in particular to “the most privileged individual in the postmodern family, i.e., the woman.”47 Rather than rights, Taha claims women have gained in the postmodern era several privileges, coming in the form of various separations: 1. A separation between sex and procreation, from an alleged ‘right’ to contraception and abortion. 2. A separation between the ‘body’ and ‘pregnancy,’48 from the possibilities of test-tube babies, or surrogacy without medical necessity.49  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 121.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 121–22. 44  In the absence of illness, war, or similar urgencies, Islamic law holds that there is no right to not have children. See al-‘Azl wa Man‘al-Injāb, No. 2815 (Dār al-Iftā’ al-Miṣriyyah November 5, 2014). https://bit.ly/3hhOo7z 45  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 122. 46  In Arabic, both ḥaqq (lit. right) and ḥaẓẓ (lit. privilege) refer to someone’s acquisition of a particular property or performance of a certain activity. The way of receiving this property can be a result of law (ḥaqq), as in familial inheritance, or of fortune (ḥaẓẓ), as in finding a treasure. The same distinction is found in English, such as when one says, ‘I have the right to keep my retirement pension, even though I was lucky enough to find this treasure on my land.’ Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 123. 47  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 123. 48  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 124. 49  Taha rather means the separation between pregnancy and ancestry (or lineage), as in the case of a woman impregnated using the semen from a man who is not her husband. As for 42 43

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3. A separation between ‘socially constructed parenthood’ and ‘biological parenthood,’ from the possibilities for a single woman to adopt a child or be artificially inseminated by an anonymous donor. 4. A separation between biological father and child, as in either (3), or the case of multiple sexual partners leading to anonymous or unclaimed paternity. 5. A separation between sexual pleasure and marital faithfulness, from the widespread acceptance of sex without marriage. 6. A separation between ‘gender’ and ‘sexual orientation,’ from the widespread acceptance of homosexual relationships.50 Taha sees each of these prevailing or legal separations as occurring between facts or values that are fundamentally inseparable. The result is, according to Taha, an upending of modernity’s ethics of commitment: marriage rates are declining and divorce rates are rising, the birth rate is decreasing and the population is aging,51 while teenage pregnancy and sexual “deviations” are common.52 In short, unbalanced alleged rights, that is, privileges, have shaken the basis of the modern family. This leads Taha to ask the following questions53: What inverted the ethics of commitment into the ethics of privilege? What is the desired ideal in the ethics of commitment? What is the prototype of the ideal that was disregarded? Taha attributes the inversion of the ethics of commitment into the ethics of privilege to what he calls “effortless commitment.”54 Such commitment is not derived from an external power or legitimate authority, but from one’s own volition, in accordance with freely chosen likes and dislikes,55 done without the necessary self-struggle (known in Arabic as mujhādah). Effortless commitment pertains to material goals only (such as financial support of the family). Taha distinguishes it from another form test-tube babies for infertile married couples, in contemporary Islamic law there is near consensus on permitting this. See ‘Alı ̄ Jum‘ah Muḥammad, al-Injāb ‘An Ṭ ariq Atf̣ āl al-Anābı ̄b, No. 328 (Dār al-Iftā’ al-Miṣriyyah March 30, 2005). https://bit.ly/3hsP8XH 50  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 125. 51  Western countries have had declining birth rates and as a result an aging native population, both trends in some cases reversed by immigration. 52  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 125. In fact, teenage pregnancy rates are low in many Western countries and more recently have fallen substantially in the United States. Yet, the mere occurrence of teenage pregnancy without marriage is unimaginable in most Arab countries. 53  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 125. 54  “Ilza ̄m hayyin”, Ṭ āhā, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 126. 55  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 126.

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of commitment, aiming at ideals and spiritual values; he gives as example, offering love and guidance to family members. Taha calls this “valuable commitment,” which is spiritual in character even when it includes material necessities.56 Formerly intermingled spiritual and material concerns can become separated in divorce, where the father’s financial support (or effortless commitment) may continue, while love and guidance do not, ending valuable commitment. For being concerned with ideals, naturally it is valuable commitment that is Taha’s ideal of the ethics of commitment, not effortless commitment. So why, Taha asks, does the postmodern family ignore this higher commitment? Taha’s response is that the ideal of valuable commitment “must fulfill the criterion of the widest and firmest structure of values in guiding human action.”57 As with the ethics of selfhood, Taha considers various candidate prototypes for valuable commitment and asks whether they are capable of achieving this ideal. The first such candidate is the “original state” that prevailed prior to the formation of civil society, as hypothesized by social contract theorists, such as Hobbes or Rousseau. Taha reasons that the existence and character of the “original state” is a mere assumption. As such, it is not the firmest of values. Moreover, the hypothesized original state, when in the form of the “state of nature,” leads to the concept of natural rights, potentially not balanced by any duties.58 This turns rights into privileges and duties into hardships, with privileges and hardships being incompatible opposites. In this way, Taha finds that the state of nature cannot serve as the prototype for valuable commitment. Taha’s second candidate for the prototype of valuable commitment is not the state of nature, but human nature. He recalls Descartes’ characterization of human nature as a system of objective features that make up the reality of the human being.59 This time, Taha reasons that objective features cannot make up the needed prototype mainly because a system of objective features is descriptive, while “human nature” should be normative, prescriptive, and dedicated to explaining what ought to be.60 So, human nature cannot serve as the prototype of valuable commitment either.  “Iltizam ̄ qayyim”, Ṭ āhā, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 126.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 127. 58  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 127. 59  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 128. 60  Ṭ āhā is unaware of Bunge’s naturalistic consideration of the gap between facts and values, that is, between ‘is’ and ‘ought.’ Bunge argues that the descriptive-prescriptive gap, 56 57

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As with the ethics of selfhood, Taha finds the prototype for valuable commitment with the help of transcendent, Islamic concepts. He considers the Koranic concept of “primordial creation” (fiṭrah): this concept brings to mind the inborn ideals a person receives in his or her soul, to guide righteous action.61 The prototype needed for valuable commitment should be neither theoretical nor indirect, as manifested in ethics derived from the utilization of reason alone. Instead it should express solely the quality of primordial instincts that guide action. Because valuable commitment should be direct, balanced, and normative, and because the fitrah, or primordial nature, is direct, balanced, and normative, the fitrah should be the prototype of valuable commitment. In Taha’s reasoning, it is the unawareness of primordial creation in the modernist notion of differentiation that prevents the postmodern family from achieving proper balance between right and duty, and therefore from fulfilling the ideal of the ethics of commitment. Overlooking this ideal results in effortless commitment and leads the members of the postmodern family to become commodity and pleasure maximizers. This takes them on a degrading descent into endless privileges, and an unwillingness to perform duties. The process Taha has in mind is illustrated schematically in Fig. 9.2. 2.1.4 A Second Critical Interlude While still reserving a more general evaluation for Sect. 3 and Chap. 11, there is again occasion for some brief comment. Taha refers to the notion of primordial creation, fitrah, in order to explain the upending of the

Fig. 9.2  Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of commitment got upended into the postmodern ethics of privilege though real, is not a chasm: in certain ways or to a certain extent it can be bridged. See Mario Bunge, Ethics: The Good and the Right (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1989), 304–306. 61  Ṭ āhā, Ru ̄ḥ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 128.

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modern ethics of commitment into an irresponsible demand for privileges. But he does not clarify sufficiently the meaning and function of this fitrah. This is probably because he also does not clarify what he means by the “ultra-rational” character of divine Islamic revelations (Chap. 5, Sect. 4.3). Should “primordial creation” of the human self be understood as it would have been at the time of the Koranic revelation—that is, seventh-­ century Arabia—or as we understand it now, referring perhaps to the long evolutionary journey that came to the origin of the human species? Besides, had Islam emerged in a different community in another part of the world, the Islamic understanding of family might have been matriarchal rather than patriarchal. Similarly, that community’s idea of the “state of nature” might have included a balance between rights and duties, and been conceived not as a hypothesis, but as a memory, passed on from generation to generation. As with his “transcendental companionship,” Taha’s “valuable commitment” derived from Islamic ideas may also fall prey to its own inversion. As the history of religions repeatedly shows, the ideals of a religion may be upended by dogmatic followers, social pressures, and religious institutions emphasizing forms and rituals instead of the goals of the prophetic founder. An example from Islam is the case of polygamy. In the Koran, men were advised to marry strictly those orphan women who have no male supporter, in the context of those who lost their parents in the pagan attack on the early Muslims of Medina, after the battle of Uḥud. The relevant passage from the Koran is: And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans,62 then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice [between them], then [marry] only one.63

Despite this, for most of Islamic history, jurists and Koranic exegetes understood polygamy as an unrestricted license for men.64 They turned a 62  In the context, acting equitably toward them refers to conserving their property until returning it to them when they reach the age of majority. 63  (The Qur’an 4:3): Hafiz Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, and Muhammad Habib Shakir, trans., Three Translations of The Koran (Al-Qur’an) Side-by-Side (Bennington, NH: Flying Chipmunk Publishing, 2009), http://www.gutenberg.org/ ebooks/16955. 64  The Koranic legislation came to limit the pre-Islamic Arabian practice of unlimited polygamy. The generally accepted meaning by the authoritative classical exegete, Muhammad

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blind eye to the idea that polygamy could have been a temporary provision, after the battle of Uḥud in 624 CE and the resulting loss of some 70 heads of household.65 The problem gets even worse when polygamy is concealed under the vague notion of primordial creation, and criticism avoided on the basis of respect for divine revelation. If the idea of primordial creation were suitably clarified, then historically contingent ethics disguised as universals would become subject to scrutiny. Interestingly, based on scientific-humanistic grounds, Bunge sees the matter in a line similar to that of the Koran. So, he provides an ethico-legal opinion—in other words, a fatwa—to provide a temporary license for polygamy as well as polyandry66 in a certain context: Polygamy and polyandry are unfair, hence immoral, in societies with normal sex ratios because they leave some people unmated.67 But where the sex ratio deviates considerably from the normal it might be prudent to allow for a temporary deviation from monogamy. (Historical examples: Germany after the Thirty Years’ War and Paraguay after the war against the Triple Alliance.)68

Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838–923 CE), states: “The best interpretation […] if you fear not to be just with orphans [under your custody] then also fear [injustice] with women. So, do not marry any of them that you think you will do injustices to them from one up to four. If you fear injustice with even one woman, then do not marry her.” Even in this interpretation, Muslim polygamist practice was not in line with the verse. See, al-Ṭ abarı ̄, Tafsı ̄r al-Ṭ abarı ̄: Jāmiʻ al-Bayān ʻan Taʼwı ̄l al-Qurʼān, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad Shākir (Cairo, Egypt: Dār al-Maʻārif, 1961), 540. 65  Naṣr Ḥ āmid Abū Zayd, Dawa ̄’ir al-Khawf: Qirā’a fı ̄ Khitāb al-Mar’ah (Beirut: al-­ Markaz al-Thāqafı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2004), 217, and 219–221. 66  Polyandry, that is, having multiples husbands for one wife, is known in pre-Islamic Arabian traditions. Yet, it is prohibited in Islamic legal opinions, even in cases of utmost necessity. The rationale provided is that paternal lineage, ḥifz al-nasab, will not be preserved, hence the destruction of the family financial duties, inheritance, and lineage laws (in addition to expected violent rivalry between husbands). Does this rationale have to be modified, now that contemporary technology can identify the precise paternal lineage, by DNA tests? I do not know of a clear response to this development. 67  This is not necessarily the case. For example, if the members of one sex only marry when older, and those of the other sex marry over a wider age range, then all the older partners will be able to marry multiple partners of the same and younger ages. In general, this is how polygamy is supported, to greater or lesser degrees (M. Kary, personal communication). 68  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 8, Ethics: The Good and the Right (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1989), 174.

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In short, with Islam just as with modernity, values are subject to inversion. Other than perhaps in certain parts of mathematics, there is no infallible system of rules and norms. However, modern values are open to criticism and change, while those derived from revelation are only rarely. 2.1.5 The Ethics of Happiness Upended: The Ethics of Playfulness For the modern family as Taha conceives it, happiness is the fruit of performing and preserving duties, to include the duty to actualize every valid right. In the postmodern family, both performing and preserving duties have fallen from favor.69 Desire replaces duty as the center of inspiration, and desires become rights, motivating family members to act according to the “individualistic,” “materialistic,” and “ephemeral.”70 The more one feels enjoyment and pleasure, the more one desires material and sensual pleasures; Taha finds this in, for example, compulsive shopping and sexual “hysteria.”71 Postmodernly, sexual pleasure, not love, is what brings partners together, and the relationship between partners is conditioned by agreeing on each other’s desires. Partnership becomes a continuous process of negotiations over endlessly renewed concerns for pleasure, instead of a stable cooperative life.72 Accordingly, the ephemeral desires of each partner reconfigure the initial substance of the marriage agreement, and nothing is regarded as permanent, essential, or holy.73 The search for individualistic, material, and ephemeral rewards has nothing to do with the ethical virtue that grounds the search for happiness. Taha rightly refers to it in Arabic as la‘ib: “a physical or mental activity that has no purpose but enjoyment”—that is, play.74 Here, the ethics of happiness has been transformed into a childish amusement, leading to “creative madness.”75 By “creative madness,” Taha means a steady effort to escape boredom and search for variety, regardless of whether one is deviating from what is good. In short, the modern ethics of happiness has been upended to become an ethics of playfulness. Playful ethics finds its fullest realization with regard to the child. The child is not just a player but also an object of the parents’ playing. Taha  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 129.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 129–31. 71  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 130. 72  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 131. 73  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 131. 74  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 131. 75  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 132. 69 70

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ventures to describe the child’s postmodern condition as akin to that of a much-desired doll, such desire starting even before pregnancy.76 Rather than performing the duties associated with having been given the blessing of a child, the playful practice dominates. Playfulness pervades the relationship, first even before pregnancy, since pregnancy takes place with or without marriage and with or without a known father; second during pregnancy, as in the possibility of changing one’s mind and seeking to abort the child; and third after delivery, as in the option of hiding the fact of birth from the father, or relinquishing the motherhood or fatherhood relationship by sending the child out for adoption.77 In all these cases, the child is treated like a desired object of play, to become eventually an object of boredom and dismissal. All this makes Taha ask the following questions78: What inverted the ethics of happiness into the ethics of playfulness? What is the desired ideal in the ethics of happiness? What is the prototype of the ideal that was disregarded? According to Taha, happiness in the spirit of modernity does not refer to moments of pleasure—with sexual pleasure as the greatest—but to a state of satisfaction and perfection felt on a daily basis.79 Thus, for the modern family, the desired ideal in the ethics of happiness is a good life, in the sense of a life where humans enjoy virtues, or “goods” (khayrāt).80 A good life can be connected, to mean offering the continuous enjoyment of spiritual goods—as in the case of truthfulness between husband and wife, which continues its good effects even when death sets them apart.81 Alternatively, a good life can be disconnected, to mean it is confined to material joy as sexual or fun moments between the couple. Taha attributes the reason for the inversion of the ethics of happiness into the ethics of playfulness to the “disconnected good life.”82 The question for Taha is that if the ideal of the ethics of happiness is the connected good life, why does the postmodern family ignore this higher happiness?  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 132.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 133–134. 78  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 135. 79  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 135. 80  The Arabic al-khayr is a translation of the English ‘good.’ The plural of the Arabic khayr is khayrāt, which can have an ethical as well as material sense. This is in contrast to ‘goods,’ as plural, which in English does not normally have the ethical sense, but only the material one. Taha uses it here in both meanings as a suggestive rendering of the Arabic khayrāt. 81  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 135. 82  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 135. 76 77

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The ideal of the connected good life is reaching the highest level of connection.83 As with the ethics of selfhood and the ethics of commitment, Taha considers various candidate prototypes for the connected good life and asks whether they are capable of achieving this ideal. The first such candidate is the “continuous good life.” In Taha’s reasoning, continuity entails the idea of connection but limits it in terms of space and time. He sees continuity as necessarily having a beginning and an end84; therefore, it cannot be the desired prototype. Taha’s second candidate for the prototype of the connected good life is the “lasting good life.” Here he reasons that, although lasting is continuous and without end, it has a beginning. Therefore, the lasting good life cannot achieve the highest level of connection. What is needed is limitless connection, without beginning or end. Once again Taha finds the needed prototype in the transcendent: the prototype required for the connected good life is “immortality.”85 Immortality cannot be derived from worldliness, since life in this world has a beginning and an end; immortality derives instead from religion and the afterlife.86 The postmodern conception of the good life is derived from disconnection with religion, in favor of exclusive attachment to the material world. In neglecting the immortal good life, the postmodern family upends the ethics of happiness into the ethics of playfulness or, perversely, even sadness, as the members of the postmodern family become incapable of realizing their proper roles. The process Taha has in mind is illustrated schematically in Fig. 9.3. 2.1.6 A Third Critical Interlude Interjecting before the criticisms of the next section and the final chapter, there is once again occasion for some comment. Taha argues that happiness has been upended into playfulness because of exclusive attachment to the witnessed world. The Islamic scenario assumed by Taha, of reward and punishment in an afterlife, is based on an absolute connection between the human soul and the whole world, throughout space and time, eternally without a beginning, and perpetually without an end. And yet, not only worldliness, but also “afterworldliness” (al-ukhrawiyyah) is vulnerable to  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 136.  This surprising claim is at odds with the mathematical understanding of continuity. For example, a circle is a certain continuous line having neither a beginning nor an end. 85  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 136–37. 86  “Afterlife” is being used as a translation of al-ḥayāh al-ṭayyibah al-bāqiyah, literally the good lasting life. In Ṭ āhā, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 136. 83 84

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Fig. 9.3⁠  Taha’s schema of the process by which the modern ethics of happiness got upended into the postmodern ethics of playfulness

being upended and capable of leading to dangerous consequences. The asceticism of many Muslim mystics is a good example of how ‘afterworldliness’ can lead to total renunciation of even beneficial worldly pursuits, such as learning or productive enterprise, and so indeed any struggle for a good life—for the sake of a perfect afterlife. There is no way to live a good life without worldly struggle, nor is there a shortcut to one. A faithful Muslim might not sleep at night if there were no immortality, for there would be no reward for his obedience and no punishment for sinners or his oppressors. On the other hand, a systemic philosopher cannot sleep at night if his ontology, epistemology, and ethics are not speaking to each other with consistency. A systemic philosopher constructs a worldview that holds true for Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions and the religious and irreligious alike. The religionist gives priority to psychological serenity derived from certain traditional narratives, while the systemic philosopher gives priority to his cognitive sanity, and to the practical effectiveness of his ideas, based on ratio-empirical warrant. There is a price for arguing in favor of immortality over mortality. Accepting immortality of the soul entails that the human being is assigned a distinctive ontological status, one that escapes the whole animal kingdom, and the entire biological realm of life and death. This opens a gap in the scientific worldview, such that some items—humans—are exempted from its domain. Immortality is fascinating or rather invaluable, but Taha does not attempt to prove its existence for us; thus, this exemption from the scientific worldview is made without any justification. Some, including Taha, are willing to accept this price. Others find more sanity and viability in a stable harmony of modern ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Bunge’s agathonist ethics (Chap. 8) balances rights and duties without the need for transcendence, primordial creation, or immortality.

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The ratio-empirical study of biological, psychological, and social needs and wants proves sufficient for the same goal. It has the further merit of repudiating any divine justification for the mere historical contingencies of feudalism, oppressive monarchy, polygamy, or the ascetic renunciation of progress in the world.

3   Reprise: Considering Again Taha’s Views on Ethical Inversions and the Postmodern Family Taha sees the predicament of the postmodern family as originating in the separation from religious principles that started with the modern family. This separation takes shape in the form of orientation to the human alone; in concentration on reason alone, while neglecting divine revelation (as encapsulated in the soul’s relationship with primordial creation); and in an exclusive attachment to worldliness. Paradoxically, the postmodern family is both an offshoot of the modern family and its antithesis: it adopts the separation from religious principles, yet it upends the ideals of the modern family, to arrive at the regrettable ethics of non-self, privilege, and playfulness. The reasons for these inversions, Taha suggests, are that the postmodern family sought to implement the spirit of “elevating companionship” without the secret of “transcendental companionship,” to implement the spirit of “valuable commitment” without the secret of “primordial creation,” and to implement the spirit of the “connected good life” without awareness of the “immortal good life.” These contradictory pursuits are particularly manifest in “degrading companionship,” “effortless commitment,” and the “disconnected good life.”87 For Taha, a native, creative, Islamic modernity is capable of fulfilling the modern ethical ideal. First, it would bring about the companionship of the transcendental, that is, God, by showing the family how to acknowledge the other while preserving ethical particularity. Second, it would guide the family in their commitments to the innate values of primordial creation, increasing the virtues of both the individual and the community, up to all of humankind. Finally, it would enable every life to resemble immortal life, with due awareness of and responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, even when those consequences extend to distant generations or, for that matter, eternity.88 By contrast, ignoring the  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 139.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 139.

87 88

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collective influence of God’s face watching the deeds of his creations, God’s plan arising from primordial creation, and God’s reward and punishment in the afterlife is to blame for the postmodern family crisis. In these arguments, Taha acts like a classical theologian addressing only Muslim believers, such that he does not even bother to justify his principles to the world at large.89 Within his own framework, his discourse is logical, eloquent, and coherent, but it does not deal with counter-­evidence. A universal philosophical attitude, encompassing both evidence and counter-­evidence, is integral to modernity. In this particular way, Taha’s discourse is not adequately philosophical. Arguing from the perspective of Bunge’s agathonist ethics, Taha’s alternative Islamic prescriptions for modernity—namely, blinding orientation to God without man, primacy of revelation over reason, attachment to the afterworld more than to this world—have already been historically inverted in ways that Taha did not anticipate: orientation to the supernatural, primacy of the irrational, and attachment to the illusory. Slavery under divine law, licentious polygamy beyond restriction to females left without a supporter, and ascetic renunciation of worldly affairs prove beyond a doubt that Taha’s proposals are as fallible as the postmodern ones. Chap. 11 will consider whether the agathonist orientation, toward universal needs and relative wants, can provide the common ground for an Islamic modernity that truly fulfills the spirit of modernity, without the limitations of Taha’s proposals.

4   Taha’s Justification of the Spirit of Modernity In the conclusion to his Spirit of Modernity, Taha formulates a challenge to his own proposals: “Why bother with arguing for the spirit of modernity while humanity has moved to postmodernity?”90 Taha responds with four justifications, under the following headings: (1) integration in the global conceptual space, (2) controversy in the meaning of postmodernity, (3) promoting the spirit of modernity, and (4) distinctiveness of the Islamic application. 89  This remark should be tempered by virtue of the fact that in a newer and larger work, Ṭ āhā further articulates his attack on the atheistic psychology of Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, the Marquis de Sade, Freud, and Lacan. See: Ṭ a ̄hā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Shuru ̄d Ma ̄ Baʻd al-Dahrāniyyah: al-Naqd al-Iʼtimānı ̄ lil-Kurūj Min al-Akhlāq [lit. The Misguidedness of PostSecularism: A Covenant-Based Critique of Existing Ethics] (Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Ibdāʻ al-Fikrı ̄, 2016). 90  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 265.

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4.1  Integration in the Global Conceptual Space Together with the globalization of products, inventions, lifestyles, entertainment, and arts, there is also a globalization of vocabulary and concepts, which tends to set aside and even replace historically local concepts. Accordingly, Muslim nations are left with two choices: either coercive or voluntary integration into the “global conceptual space.”91 Coercive integration destroys one’s critical and creative capacities and deprives oneself of authenticity. However, Muslim nations will not overcome coercive integration by simply ignoring globalized concepts or by a superficial replacement of foreign concepts by traditional and local slogans. Ignoring new concepts prevents benefiting from them and hinders participation in international affairs. Also, ignoring them lets them sneak in regardless and influence thought in potentially undesirable ways. On the other hand, a superficial replacement of foreign concepts by traditional and local slogans is inauthentic, unsuitable, and outdated, and will eventually be rejected. The proper choice then should be voluntary integration into the conceptual global space. Voluntary integration,92 Taha argues, will allow Muslims to get involved in the conceptual global space and should take the form of using, modifying, criticizing, and ultimately altering globalized conceptions. All of these activities are signs of gaining philosophical experience and of having a lively, maturing culture.93 These four activities make for new and creative applications of global concepts, contrary to mere imitation—either of the modernity of others, or of one’s own traditions, both of which are “blind reproductions.”94 In this way, the ideological chasm between native tradition and foreign modernity can be overcome.95 Traditional Muslims, who are hostile to many aspects of modernity, cannot but welcome the creativity called for by the spirit of modernity, since such creativity can be viewed as an authentic exercise of the highly revered concept of ijtihad.96 This is a term that refers to the cognitive struggle of problem solving, particularly in Islamic legal

 Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 266.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 267. 93  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 266–67. 94  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 267. 95  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 267–68. 96  See footnote 35. 91 92

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thinking.97 It is also in line with the proper impetus of modernity, according to which any internally creative thinking should work out its own categories and concepts, rather than viewing the world according to concepts invented by others. 4.2   Controversy over the Meaning of Postmodernity Taha considers a variety of conceptions of postmodernity. He informs us that some view postmodernity as a disconnection from certain concepts such as absolute truth, pure self, directive progress, monolithic knowledge, and linear history. More radically, some see postmodernity as the ending of the great ambitions of modernity, such as rationalism, humanism, objectivism, positivism, or historicism.98 Others, like Habermas, do not find postmodernity to be a disconnection from modernity, but rather a rectification of some of its problems and an expansion of some of its limits.99 Another group sees postmodernity as a counter-Enlightenment and thus as an apostasy of the Enlightenment project itself. Finally, still others see postmodernity as an extension of modernity, and thus as a ‘second modernity.’ Taha asserts that if we survey the literature that defines postmodernity, we would find no common element other than viewing it as a response to modernity.100 As a response, postmodernity would then be either “the end of modernity” or “a second modernity.” For Taha, neither stance is conceptually appropriate. If it is a second modernity, how could it still be called a modernity, since it promotes concepts and principles opposed to modernity? A counter-modernity cannot be called a ‘second modernity,’ Taha argues.101 On the other hand, to think of postmodernity as “the end of modernity” would be an exaggeration, since today’s realms of science, technology, industry, economy, and law are still preserving the ideals and applications of modernity as by now long known. Besides, postmodernity 97  Regarding the traditionalists’ hostility to modern concepts, see A. Z. Obiedat, “Identity Contradictions in Islamic Awakening: Harmonizing Intellectual Spheres of Identity,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (AJMEIS) 13, no. 3 (July 2019): 331–50, https://urlzs.com/Kj3vc 98  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 268. 99  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 271. 100  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 268. 101  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 268.

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pertains mostly to some literary, artistic, cultural, and philosophical issues.102 In consideration of all these matters, Taha finds that his own way, promoting the spirit of modernity, holds the key. 4.3  Promoting the Spirit of Modernity Taha offers that the alleged opposition between ‘second modernity’ and ‘end of modernity’ is based on a confusion between ‘ideal modernity’ and ‘actual modernity.’ The so-called second modernity is in fact a move from one problematic actual modernity to yet another problematic actual modernity.103 However different, both forms of modernity are promoting the same spirit, only within different contexts and with new applications. In conceiving of postmodernity as the end of modernity, the assumption is made that postmodernity possesses what modernity lacks. Taha asserts to the contrary that it is only a new, supplementary application of the same common spirit, following the occurrence of problems in its previous applications. In this regard, it is worth noting that many of the postmodern philosophical and literary ideals of the 1960s, such as the distrust of reason and the rejection of traditional literary styles, are very similar to the ideals promoted by modernist artistic movements between the two world wars. The difference between modernity, postmodernity, and any other past or future modernity situates itself in relation to the wide and universal space of the spirit of modernity and its applications.104 The link between modernity and postmodernity is established, in Taha’s thinking, by a more appropriate conception: the spirit of modernity. 4.4  Distinctiveness of the Proposed Islamic Application The relation between the Islamic application of the spirit of modernity proposed by Taha and the Western applications of both modernity and postmodernity needs further clarification. With regard to the three basic principles of the spirit of modernity—criticism, universality, and maturity (see Chap. 5, Sect. 3.3)—Taha finds that criticism is more characteristic of the postmodern application while universality is more characteristic of the Western modern application, whereas maturity is close neither to the  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 269.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 270. 104  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 272. 102 103

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Fig. 9.4  Taha’s geography of the actual Western and desired Islamic applications of the spirit of modernity

Western modern nor to the postmodern applications.105 This idea is illustrated schematically in Fig. 9.4. Taha further specifies that the Islamic application of criticism—including its two foundations, rationalization and analysis (differentiation)—is closer to the postmodern application than to the Western modern one. This is because rationalization in both Islamic and postmodern applications seeks to expand reason and go beyond its traditional limits.106 However, Taha adds, in the Islamic application, the expansion is toward religious spirituality and morality, while in the postmodern one, it tends toward myths, new-age trends, and individualistic spirituality. As to differentiation, in both the Islamic and postmodern applications it aims at “softening the barriers”107 of traditional stagnant dualisms, strict differences, and stifling borders.108 However, the Islamic application softens the barriers for the sake of functional and teleological fusion, while the postmodern one does so for the sake of blending identities, which destroys ideal behavior and its structure.109 On the other hand the Islamic application of universality—including its two foundations, extensibility and generalizability—is closer to the

 Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 273.  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 272–73. 107  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 272. 108  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 272. 109  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adāthah, 272. 105 106

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Western modern rather than the postmodern application.110 The reason for this is that both the Islamic and the Western modern applications of extensibility seek to avoid limits, by practicing “comprehensive extension,” to mean perhaps fully and faithfully incorporating modernity into every domain.111 Yet, the Western modern application extends horizontally, for example, legally, commercially, and industrially, while the Islamic application extends vertically, to higher virtues and infinite transcendental meanings.112 The Islamic application of generalizability is also similar to the Western modern application in seeking universal generalizations that handle all the dimensions of being. The difference here is that the Western modern application of generalizability pertains to human beings and nations, while in the Islamic proposal it is widened to encompass all creatures known or unknown, whether living or not.113 Finally, the Islamic application of maturity—including its two foundations, independence and creativity—is close to neither the Western modern nor postmodern applications.114 Independence, in Taha’s proposed Islamic application, takes the form of liberation from external powers that invade and loot. However, independence in the Western modern application takes the form of liberation from the internal authority of religion and traditions, while in the postmodern application it takes the form of liberation from dominant philosophical systems or “grands récits.”115 As for creativity, in reaction to historical experience, its Islamic application connects to traditions by contemplating and expanding the virtues of Islamic particularity.116 However, creativity in the Western modern application is disconnected from its own traditions, while in the postmodern application, it is connected with any traditions, whether pre-agricultural, Buddhist, pagan, or whatever else, through subjective and fragmentary collage.

 Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 274.   Imtidad̄ shāmil”; Ṭ āhā, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 274–75. 112  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 274. 113  Taha further elaborates on these ideas in the context of environmental protection. See Chap. 10. 114  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 273. 115  See, for example, Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 1984). For Lyotard, modern principles such as progress, rationality, and development give rise to the grand narratives or mythological stories of the modern era, on par with the religious or superstitious narratives of the premodern eras. 116  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 273–74. 110

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Taha maintains that his systemization, based on the distinction between Western modern, postmodern, and Islamic applications of the spirit of modernity, achieves a voluntary and creative integration into the global conceptual space.117 In contrast to the views of both Arab secularists—whom he accuses of being mere imitators of the West—and Muslim traditionalists—who, by refusing to engage with philosophical modernity, are unconsciously and involuntarily forced to adopt its artifacts and ideas—Taha’s Islamic application of the spirit of modernity is a significant advance. It calls for the acknowledgment and the achievement of the highest ideals of the spirit of modernity, beyond all known actualizations of modernity.

 Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 275.

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CHAPTER 10

Taha’s Attempt at Surpassing Current Islamic Movements: A Mystical Perspective on Ethics and Politics

In anticipation of Chap. 11’s overall evaluation of the philosophical systems of Taha and Bunge, the reader may wonder whether the considerations of the previous chapters have already presaged the verdict. Does Taha lose completely to Bunge’s system of scientific humanism? Would this indicate that there is no chance for Islamic modernity, in competition with Western modernity? Taha anticipates that his proposals will place him in competition with other outstanding worldview builders, such as Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx, or in our case, Mario Bunge. To set the stage, Taha boldly distances his views from all historical actualizations of Islamic civilization, past or present, other than the Koranic and Prophetic examples. He identifies himself as neither a follower of the monarchic Sunni tradition nor a follower of the Shia path.1 He sides neither with Islamist reform movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, nor with orthodox ones, such as the Salafi movement.2 He opposes both theocratic models of the current rival regimes of Iran and Saudi Arabia,3 each of 1  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Thughu ̄r al-Mura ̄bat ̣ah: Muqa ̄rabah Iʼtimānı ̄yah li-Ṣirāʻāt al-­ Ummah al-Ḥ al̄ ı ̄yah (Rabat, Morocco: Maghārib lil-Dirāsāt fı ̄ al-Ijtimāʻ al-Insānı ̄, 2018), 79. 2  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Ru ̄ḥ al-Dı ̄n: Min Ḍ ı ̄q al-ʻAlmāniyyah ilā Siʻat al-Iʻtimāniyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thāqāfı ̄ al-ʻArabı ̄, 2012), 357. 3  It is important to note that Taha, as far as I can tell, is silent about the Moroccan monarchic system of the ʿAlawı ̄ dynasty (assumed power in 1669 CE). The king of this dynasty claims not only to be heading a religious state, but also that he is the “commander of the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_10

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which claims to implement and promote the Islamic way of life, as conceived since the Islamic awakening of the 1980s.4 Instead, Taha envisions a non-sectarian, non-partisan, and non-state sponsored version of Islam. In all of these positions, he is consistent with his philosophical principles, pursuing spiritual ideals that have never been fully actualized—despite various pretensions to the contrary over the fourteen-century-long history of Islam. Whatever anyone may cite as a historical counterexample to Taha’s claims, his answer is ready: he philosophizes universal ideals for the future and for lofty ambitions. Hence, Taha’s Islamic modernity would still hold a chance for success—as long as it avoids the mistakes of failed and failing Muslim and Western actualizations alike. The aftermath of the Arab spring provoked Taha to sharpen his responses to the challenges of modernity, to further establish himself as a leading philosopher for the current Arab world. Following his Spirit of Modernity, over an extended period he published eight additional books in ten volumes, with strong socio-political engagement. Some outcomes of the Arab spring were relatively positive, particularly in Tunisia and Morocco. Many political prisoners were liberated, free speech was expanded, and governance democratized. Other outcomes were disastrously negative, particularly in Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Egypt. These countries suffered variously from military coups, proxy war, mass killings and mass imprisonment of protesters, the fleeing of millions (Syria), and destruction of urban infrastructure in addition to famine (Yemen). Amid this turmoil in the Arab world, Taha continued to propose philosophical solutions inspired by the ethical orientation of Islamic mysticism. In the Islamic experience, mysticism, or al-taṣawwuf, emerged as a critical response to two earlier and dominant scholarly influences5: Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh),6 in particular the controversies between rigid formalist schools, and the polemical identity politics of Islamic theological

believers,” amı ̄r al-mu’minı ̄n. This is in effect a declaration of a caliphate, yet one allied to the West. 4  Ṭ āhā, Thughūr Al-Mura ̄batạ h, 92. 5  Abdelmadjid Charfi, Islam: Between Divine Message and History, trans. David Bond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 6  For an authoritative, comprehensive, and comprehensible survey of this discipline see: Wael B.  Hallaq, Sharı ̄ʻa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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doctrines, kalam.7 Historically speaking, in order to have an articulate response to both the jurisprudential and theological literatures, minds as weighty as those of al-Ghazali (twelfth century) and Ibn Arabi (thirteenth century) were needed. Both mighty authors were encyclopedic philosophers as much as they were mystics. To follow in the footsteps of al-­ Ghazali, a critical, twenty-first-century response to contemporary Islamic jurisprudence and theology has to be in effect a ‘new mysticism,’ responding to the doctrinal and sectarian disagreements of Muslims. This is what we find in Taha’s eloquent works, The Poverty of Secularism (Bu’s al-Dahrāniyyah),8 and The Spirit of Religion: From the Narrowness of Secularism to the Spaciousness of Fidelity (Rūḥ al-Dı ̄n: Min Ḍ ı ̄q al-ʻAlma ̄niyyah ilā Siʻat al-Iʻtimāniyyah).9 The rest of this chapter articulates this aspect of Taha’s vision by explaining the cognitive basis of ethical mysticism, how it reforms both Islamic and secular political movements, and finally how to situate it all within cosmic environmentalism.

1   Human Cognition and the Limitations of Political Secularism Taha’s neo-mystic10 vision is novel and politically timely. He warns us that common and traditional claims should never be taken for granted—especially the famous claim that modernity requires a separation between religion and politics.11 For Taha, separation between religion and politics, or between religion and the state, is synonymous with secularism. Thus, unlike the epistemic secularism articulated in Chap. 3, for Taha secularism is political secularism. Taha’s Spirit of Religion is dedicated to refuting the claims that religion and politics should be completely disconnected, as traditional Arab secularists propose; or absolutely connected, as the mainstream Islamic position maintains. Let us present Taha’s rebuttals to both camps, starting with his criticism of the political secularists. 7  For a comprehensive and comprehensible survey of this discipline see: Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology from Muhammad to the Present, trans. Thomas Thornton (Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2000). 8  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Bu’s al-Dahrāniyyah: al-Naqd al-Iʻtimānı ̄ li-Faṣl al-Ḍ ı ̄n ʻAn al-Akhla ̄q (Beirut: al-Shabakah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Abḥāth wal-Nashr, 2014). 9  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ al-Dı ̄n. 10  Taha does not describe his view as neo-mystic. His own term is instead the spirit or soul of religion. 11  Ṭ āhā, 23.

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1.1  Taha’s Criticism of Political Secularists In the Arab-Islamic context, the justification for a secular separation between religion and politics is that politics is related to the realm of the seen world, where justice is a matter of human affairs, while religion is related to the unseen world (al-ghayb), the spirit world or the afterlife, where justice is not a matter of human political endeavor.12 Taha argues that the secular rejection of the influence and importance of the unseen world is completely wrong, for three reasons.13 First, the window of human sensation, our only access to the seen world of the present, is extremely narrow. It is not open to past memories, future hopes, and future fears in equal measure. In other words, the cognitive contribution of the seen world in the present time (‘ālam al-shahādah) is overwhelmed by the cognitive contributions of the unseen worlds of past knowledge and anticipated future. Second, what one senses in one’s own space and time is mostly not the same as for everyone else, since others have different perceptions, tied to their own space and time. Third, even if perceptions across individuals are identical, or even speaking of those of a single person, the contribution of the senses to a particular cognitive consideration in a particular context—such as, when in the midst of appreciating the writing of an elementary school student—will not be the same in a different context—such as when in the midst of disdaining the writing of a well-­ known obscurantist ideologue. In sum, the justification of the political secularists for a separation between religion and politics is negated by the conjunction of localization of the individual in space and time, plurality of human perception, and multiplicity of cognitive considerations, all of which make the immediately present seen world but a very tiny aspect of the whole, an aspect whose cognitive contribution is completely overwhelmed by the contributions of the unseen world.14 In Taha’s view, whatever their walks of life or their ideological choices, humans are inhabiting two worlds: the material seen one; and the unseen one full of past memories, future hopes, and abstract ideals. In opposition to the political secularists, Taha argues that the basic cognitive faculties of the human are in fact designed (by God) to be intimately focused upon the unseen, not the seen. So, our memory remembers what has ceased to  Ṭ āhā, 24.  Ṭ āhā, 24. 14  Ṭ āhā, 24. 12 13

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exist, our reason abstracts from present material entities to what does not exist in matter, and our imagination creates what never existed. All of this amounts to the fact that we are mostly not satisfied with what exists.15 Humans continuously agitate to exit from the sensed existence; they aspire for better worlds and devise technologies never seen before.16 The point Taha makes out of this is that human primordial creation, fitrah (see Chap. 9, Sects. 2.1.3, 2.1.4), reminds the human of his original spirit (rūḥ), which is always hungry for the progress inspired by the unseen. In this way, Taha indirectly acknowledges the universality of flux and change in the world, coming closer to the epistemic secularism defended in Chap. 3, openness to foundational change. Yet, he does so without the important ratio-empirical qualification. Traditional political secularists uphold the human as the origin of laws and ideals, in place of the divine. By denying the supremacy of the unseen, secular politics in the West transforms what was once divine majesty into mere nationalistic majesty.17 In this process, political secularism creates secular idols, as seen in flags, insignias, and new secular rituals, such as those involving national anthems and patriotic celebrations. These elements evidence a determined will to forget the unseen (taghyı ̄b). But denying the deeper dimensions of existence does not make the unseen go away. In trying to replace the unseen that they are trying to escape, political secularists eventually fall into glorifying ethnic nationalities, and worshipping the leaders, the party, the ideology, or the so-called our way of life.18 1.2  Political Secularist Wine in Modern Islamic Movement Bottles Taha insists that the secularists’ whimsical “will to replace the unseen by another” has to be countered by the “will to remember religious spirit.” Yet, Taha tells us that despite taking allegiance to religion, modern Islamic movements also got it wrong, insofar as they adopted the same rigid material techniques and strategies of the secularists: concentrating on formal  Ṭ āhā, 35.  Ṭ āhā, 33. 17  Ṭ āhā, 25. 18  Ṭ āhā, 25. 15 16

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laws, outward appearances, and governmental powers, all of which are antithetical to spirit. Overall, Taha critically evaluates the contemporary ideological debate in the Islamic world, as distributed through the following six positions. 1. Westernized, secular Arab academics, media figures, and intellectuals call for a separation between religion and politics. 2. Corrupt secular Arab governments nevertheless seek to connect religion and politics, by making religion serve the politics of the government; thus they politicize religion (they are tasyı ̄siyyı ̄n).19 3. Pragmatic Islamic movements, such as the Moroccan or Egyptian versions of the Muslim brotherhood, conversely want politics to serve religion; thus they religionize politics (they are tadyı ̄niyyı ̄n).20 4. The militant traditionalists of Salafism, and followers of other radicals such as Sayyid Qutb and Mawdudi,21 do not see a connection between religion and politics since for them both spheres are already identical spheres; thus they fuse the two (they are taḥkı ̄miyyı ̄n) and seek to dominate social life by way of particular legal rulings of the canons (aḥkām).22 5. Current Iranian theology and Arab followers of the Shia “guardianship of the jurist” (wilāyat al-faqı ̄h) also do not see a connection between religion and politics since both spheres are already identical in nature; they seek the domination of the jurists over the people (they are tafqı ̄hiyyı ̄n).23 6. The final position is the proposed cosmological ethics of the new mysticism that Taha invents. It sees an original unity that prevents religion and politics from being maturely separate entities; Taha calls this additional group ahl al-tazkiyah, those who seek the domination of self-purifying ethics. Thus within this six-fold classification, there are four ideological variations concerning religion and politics: position (1) upholds complete  Ṭ āhā, 328.  Ṭ āhā, 335. 21  For a comprehensive recent survey, see: François Burgat, Understanding Political Islam: Environmental Justice and Citizen Science in a Post-Truth Age, trans. Thomas Hill (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020). 22  Ṭ āhā, 367. 23  Ṭ āhā, 400. 19 20

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separation, positions (2) and (3) uphold a strong connection, positions (4) and (5) a total identification, while position (6) expresses a desire to reexamine the relationship between power and worship, by establishing a dialogue between the seen and the unseen. Taha’s view challenges both of the common views, that politics and religion are either completely different domains or completely identical ones. He argues that they rather share the same domain, since both of them have the goal of managing the world (tadbı ̄r) and seek the means to do so. Amazingly then, Taha maintains that political and religious practices are parallel paths within the same world. However, virtuous travel along the political path elevates management of the seen world to the status of the holy (tadbı ̄r tası ̄yydı ̄),24 while in the opposite direction, virtuous travel along the religious path showers the higher values and meanings of the holy down upon the seen world (tadbı ̄r ta‘abbudı ̄).25 Taha argues that current Islamic movements do not exemplify virtuous travel along either path and so are in need of reform.

2   Ethical Mysticism and the Reformation of Islamic Movements Since Taha considers himself a Muslim philosopher, he does not use the word ‘Islamist’ (islāmı ̄) to refer to any particular Islamic religious perspective or movement. Instead he uses it to mean ‘religionist,’ that is, someone who unjustifiably religionizes their political affairs (tadyı ̄nı ̄). Between the secular path to power or to a political outcome, with its clear rejection of the unseen on the one hand, and the spiritual application of higher values, on the other hand, lies the problem of modern Muslim religionists who admit the unseen while still seeking political elevation. In particular, seeking the virtues of the spiritual realm is the opposite of seeking the pleasures of this world, and there is nothing more material than seeking the pleasure of power.26 Taha concludes that the religionist path, taken by Islamic movements, is rather a form of masked secularism (tadbı ̄r mushtabih).27 As a result, religionists will eventually have their ‘will to win politically’ (ira ̄dat al-taghallub) overcomes their ‘will to be spiritually

 Ṭ āhā, 328.  Ṭ āhā, 323. 26  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ al-Dı ̄n, 342. 27  Ṭ āhā, 328. 24 25

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straight’ (irādat al-istiqāmah).28 This analysis shocks both traditional Arab secularists and Islamists, because seeking power for itself becomes an ethical sin regardless of the ideological flag of choice. Anyone can convert to Islam by stating the shahadah, which is Ashhadu an la Ilaha Illa Allah wa anna Muhammadan Rasul Allah.29 This means I recognize that there is no god other than the God, and that Muhammed is the messenger of God. Taha, with his linguistic inclinations, takes the first half that statement to its maximum semantic capacity. So, he attacks the religionist’s obsession with particular Islamic rulings for fault of recognizing religious commands (shuhūd al-awāmir) without recognizing the noble goals or intentions behind those commands—that is, without recognizing God, the commander (shuhūd al-āmir).30 Justice can be achieved only if one observes the ideal intentions and plans of the law Giver— God—not by being only a passive law receiver of certain legal particulars.31 By and large, with regard to divine command (āmiriyyah), Muslim religionists give recognition to its instrument—a commander (āmir, as in Emir)—without evaluating the goals or the wisdom behind the worldly acts of command (āmiriyyah), which can have multiple applications.32 To exemplify, some Muslims recognize that alms should be given in a certain percentage, yet without evaluating (recognizing) whether or not the alms they give actually relieve poverty—the actual objective of the law Giver. Taha notes that in Arabic the vision of the eyes is called ‘opinion’ (ra’y), while the spirit’s vision is called testimony (shuhu ̄d, translated as recognizing earlier). In turn, the vision of the spirit cannot be realized until the spirit (rūḥ) is resurrected from the grave of the psyche (nafs), by acts of purification (tazkiyah).33 These involve the abandonment of any desire, fear, or goal other than accepting the natural course of the Creator. Religionists, in their quest for power and political outcomes, of necessity lack this necessary purification. Thus, they are prevented from spiritually recognizing the legislative wisdom or objectives of Koranic rulings. At this point, Taha’s philosophy is moving not only beyond traditional political secularism and contemporary religious movements, but also  Ṭ āhā, 334.  Ashhadu an lā Ilah̄ a Illā Allāh wa Anna Muḥammadan Rasūl Alla ̄h. 30  Ṭ āhā, 320. 31  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ al-Dı ̄n, 390. 32  Ṭ āhā, 322. 33  Ṭ āhā, 321.

28 29

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beyond the literalist traditions of Islamic law (ḥa ̄kimiyyah)—both of Sunnism, and of the contemporary Shia “guardianship of the jurist” (wilāyat al-faqı ̄h), at the very same time. Thus, in Taha’s view, Sunnis of the Arab world, in particular the Muslim brotherhood and Salafi movements, sought the domination of Islamic laws upon the political sphere, but without recognizing (evaluating) the historicity, applicability, and justice of those rulings (‘adilyyah). The Sunnis had in mind the ideological goal of a utopian government that had not yet seen the light, whereas the Shia attempt came to fruition with its takeover of the 1979 Iranian revolution, to favor the primacy of laws at the hands of an exclusive clergy. Taha recognizes a commonality between current Shia and Sunni political-­religionist paths. Both groups rely on certain historical developments of jurisprudence, concentrating on narratives (riwāyat) rather than on exemplary behavior, appearances rather than sincerity, and group defense rather than the individual self.34 In response, Taha calls for establishing a theory of “the living jurist” (al-faqı ̄h al-ḥayy). This living jurist should be any lay Muslim, regardless of his or her walk of life. The central premise is that the concept of jurisprudence in the Koran (fiqh) refers in many instances to “the understanding of the heart,”35 in relation to actions or thoughts, appearance or intentions.36 Taha’s argument seeks to individualize the ethical considerations of Islamic law, which eventually would lead to pluralism, and diversity of ethical judgment. As for his particular criticism of the Shia “guardianship of the jurist,” Taha notes that originally there was no such thing as guardianship, simply because one’s worshipping cannot substitute someone else’s. In Islam, everyone is responsible for their duties to God individually, based on the verse “Everyone of them will come to Him singly on the Day of Judgment.”37 This means that first, every Muslim is required to be a deep thinker of their own heart (faqı ̄h), and there is no need for an exclusive clergy.38 Second, every Muslim is a faqih of their own faith, and there is no supremacy of the law aspect of religion over the rest of the aspects of religion. Third, every Muslim is a deep thinker, faqih, of their own soul, since the soul is the source of one’s religiosity.  Ṭ āhā, 434.  Ṭ āhā, 421. 36  The Qur’an 7:179, “They have hearts wherewith they understand not”; and 63:3, “a seal was set on their hearts: therefore, they understand not”. 37  The Qur’an 19:95. 38  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ al-Dı ̄n, 420. 34 35

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Taha’s individualistic and relativistic ‘living jurist’ conception hinges on the idea that ethical behavior according to good intentions is effective, while behavior according to mere legalistic appearance leads to sinful hypocrisy and a regime of punitive enforcement. By contrast Taha’s ‘living jurist’ conception leads to guardianship of the knowledgeable society over itself (wilāyat al-mujtama‘ al-mutafaqqih ‘ala ̄ nafsih), to replace the clerical and governmental path of the Iranian-Shia “guardianship of the jurist.” Taha seeks to make the ethical considerations of Islamic law relevant to civil society rather than to government, which eventually would lead to the end of punitive enforcement, state centralization, and the top-down decrees of guardian jurists. By his etymological analysis of relevant Koranic concepts, and by coordinating those findings with the realm of political action, Taha provides to contemporary Muslims valuable and revolutionary results contrary to the Sunni and Shia mainstreams. By setting Islamic ethics on the foundation of individual sincerity, away from collective state enforcement; on the foundation of local civil society, away from the governmental clerical class, Taha has made a major contribution to the advancement of Islamic political philosophy.

3   Ethical Mysticism and the Reformation of Political Secularism Arab political secularism has as one of its inspirations modern rationalism. In context this is the view that reason rather than religion is the basis of knowledge, and that reason and knowledge should be the basis for action. Being generally advocates of rationalism, Arab political secularists must respect the three fundamental laws of logic: the law of identity, namely that something is equal to itself; the law of non-contradiction, that the conjunction of an assertion and its denial is always false; and the law of the excluded middle, that propositions are either true or false with no option in between. Taha takes off from there and proposes new rationalist principles that are not confined to the realm of ideas, but that also apply to virtuous action. In this expansion of logic, one can see an analogy between the culture of the ancient Greeks and their logic, with its emphasis on contradiction or conflict, and Taha’s new logic of action, with its emphasis on Koranic practical morality. Logic is centrally concerned with the problems posed

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by contradiction or, metaphorically, conflict. The mythology of the ancient Greeks saw an original struggle between the Titans—the children of Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia)—and their father. Cronos, the youngest son of Uranus, led the rebellion, and overthrew and castrated his father. In turn Zeus, the son of Cronus, overthrew his father and defeated the Titans. Then man tricked Zeus into accepting an inferior sacrifice, and in retaliation Zeus withdrew the secret of fire from him; but the Titan Prometheus stole fire and gave it back to man, earning him from Zeus a never-ending punishment of torture, until his rescue by Hercules. In stark contrast to this epic of primeval conflict, the Koran recounts an original harmony between God and humankind. An ensuing philosophy of trust is articulated in Taha’s newer work, The Poverty of Secularism (Bu’s al-Dahrāniyyah),39 which is mainly a reflection on these Koranic verses: 2:30 “And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going to place in the earth a successor [khalifah; that is, humankind], they said: What! will you place in it such as shall make mischief in it and shed blood, and we celebrate your praise and extol your holiness? He said: Surely I know what you do not know.” 33:72 “We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but human undertook it; He was indeed unjust and foolish.”

Working out from these verses, Taha’s ethical rationalism contemplates how the human, as the Creator’s successor, is entrusted with managing the world. This contemplation leads Taha to naming his philosophy trusteeship (al-iʻtimāniyyah)40 and to augment the laws of logical rationality with the principles of “trusteeship rationality.” Taha derives these new principles by way of variations on the fundamental laws of logic. First, the law of identity becomes a principle of witnessing or recognizing (shahādah), where the identity or nature of anything is not established  Ṭ āhā, Bu’s al-Dahra ̄niyyah.  See Hashas, “Taha Abderrahmane’s Trusteeship Paradigm: Spiritual Modernity and the Islamic Contribution to the Formation of a Renewed Universal Civilization of Ethos”; and Hashas, “The Trusteeship Paradigm: the Formation and Reception of a Philosophy,” in Hashas and Al-Khatib, eds., Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, 37–61, https://doi.org/10.1163/978900 4438354_004. 39 40

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solely by individual sensation and examination, but also by the reports of the Koran, Muslims, and all creatures.41 So, one’s own status as a witness, as a self-standing observer, as a self-standing entity, is coupled with that of others, which expands the narrowness of self-identification that otherwise leads to self-worshipping. Second, the law of contradiction is extended to faithful responsibility (amānah). Rather than only avoiding contradictory statements, actions are also required to be consistent, by assuring that responsible and irresponsible acts are not intermingled. Fixation on possessions is replaced by a focus on responsibility regarding those possessions, along with responsibility to other humans and to the rest of creation, as the cited verses envision. “Faithful responsibility” is in other words the principle that ethical contradiction should be avoided.42 In faithful responsibility, reversing environmental degradation becomes a priority, because humankind does not possess this or that part of creation, but is supposed to be the wise guardian of it (khalı ̄fah). Third, the law of the excluded middle is applied to the requirement of self-reformation and purification (tazkiyah).43 Islam is concerned with moral progress and the perfectibility of the self. In the Islamic concept of self-reformation, the individual flourishes with the group and vice versa. Rather than forcing a choice between the individual and the group, or between moral and material progress, Taha’s Islamic version of the law of the excluded middle imposes a different binary choice on the self-reformer by asking, is this action permitted (ḥala ̄l) or forbidden (ḥarām)? The individual is left with no choice but to reject what is forbidden and to progress along the path of moral perfection.44 In sum then, beyond the abstract rationality of the ancient Greeks, or of the medieval Hellenistic Muslim philosophers,45 Taha’s new principles of ethical Islamic rationality are the expansion of identity, consistent fulfillment of responsibilities, and self-reformation that excludes the forbidden.46 Taha, a university professor of logic himself, does not even come close to rejecting the laws of logic. Rather, he extends their scope from the realm of ideas to the realms of action and ethics.  Ṭ āhā, Bu’s al-Dahran̄ iyyah, 15.  Ṭ āhā, 15–16. 43  Ṭ āhā, 17. 44  Ṭ āhā, 18. 45  Ṭ āhā, 20. 46  Ṭ āhā, 14. 41 42

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From a philosophical point of view, Taha’s modifications are in harmony with systemic philosophical traditions. On this Rescher states: (1) Rationality consists in the intelligent pursuit of appropriate ends. It pivots on the use of intelligence or reason, the crucial survival instrument of the human race, in the management of our affairs. (2) The three main contexts of rationality are the cognitive, the practical, and the evaluative. All are united in the common task of implementing ‘the best reasons’—reasons for belief, action, and evaluation, respectively.47

Epistemic secularism’s openness to foundational change (Chap. 3) leaves an opening for Taha’s attention to the unseen world. Foundational change usually comes from discovering new aspects of reality, grasping new connections, and the plurality of human points of view. Many of the fundamental conceptions of science are trans-empirical: heredity, the interiors of stars, and causation, to name only three (see also Chap. 7, Sect. 3.1). They are unseen and untouched, mental constructions concerning the past, present, and future of reality. In this way, in an Emersonian sense, scientific theories are spiritual (see Chap. 3, Sect. 8)—although not in Taha’s sense, because he overlooks the ratio-empirical requirements of epistemic secularism. These requirements differentiate between what of the unseen is accepted as belonging to the realm of truth and reality, and what is not. Though scientific theories are in a sense spiritual, they make for a rationally organized spirituality and an empirically supported spirituality. Without these qualifications, the hunter-gatherer’s spirituality, the spirituality of medieval magicians, or new-age spirituality are all on equal footing: they all deal with the unseen—and they do lift up the spirits of their believers. The matter of ratio-empirical warrant makes for a crucial divergence between the philosophies of Taha and Bunge. Still their ethics converge, for Taha’s ethical rationality is in harmony with Bunge’s supreme value of sustainable global welfare. Sustainable global welfare, or equitable prosperity, as the satisfaction of needs and legitimate wants and the mutual but cooperative sovereignty of the peoples of the world in pursuit of it, remains the worldwide common ground of modernity.

47  Nicholas Rescher, Rationality: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 1. Emphases are mine.

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4   Ethical Mysticism and Coexistence with the Cultural and Natural Environment Sections 1.2 and 2 described how Taha has in effect seen the bids of current and past Islamic traditions and raised them: calling their religiosity out as only superficially Islamic, he has surpassed their proposals and outbid them, offering a more ethically just understanding of Islam, designed to avoid their pitfalls. Taha uses a parallel strategy to deal with the ideal of solidarity in the Western application of modernity. Solidarity belongs to a constellation of related ideals and concepts such as cooperation, participation, social network, acknowledgment of the other, respect, and coexistence.48 Thinking within Taha’s conception of the spirit of modernity, solidarity is an aspect of the principle of universality, and in particular of its foundation of generalizability (Chap. 5, Sects. 3.3 and 4.4). Taha enjoins us to rethink the false tacit principles of the Western experience of modernity; thus, we are to rethink the Western ideal of solidarity. Taha sees the central problem with the Western version being its attachment to the material and sensual aspects of human interaction, without coupling that with attention to sentimental and ethical considerations.49 In his analysis, this leads to forgetfulness of the organic nature of the cosmos. So, Taha asks, how did the Western application of solidarity fail? Taha answers that, rather than seeing multidimensional connections in the world, and a consequent universal solidarity, sensual and material Western solidarity was based on three separation projects: separation from traditions, from nature, and from place. Separation from traditions—religious, political, or social—was aimed at expunging sacredness from the cultural inheritance of the West. The purpose of this move was to liberate the human will, that it might rule over itself.50 Second, separation from nature was aimed at expunging sacredness from the material, natural, environmental inheritance of the West. The purpose of this move was to liberate human action upon nature, that humanity might fully exploit it. Finally, separation from place, whether large and geographic, such as with regard to national boundaries, or local and corporeal, such as with regard to 48  Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Rūḥ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah: Al-Madkhal Li-Ta’sı ̄s al-Ḥ ada ̄thah al-Isla ̄miyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2006), 254. 49  Ṭ āhā, 237. 50  Ṭ āhā, 238.

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human bodies and their abodes, was aimed at attaining freedom of movement, ideation, and more recently, cyber-communication.51 Thus these three separation projects linked the degree of solidarity in Western society to the degree of its opposition to traditions, nature, and place.52 Certainly, there are benefits to liberation from traditions, as seen in the modern explosion of new ideas. The downside, according to Taha, was that modern Westerners fell into perpetual and pervasive doubt, as if living in a permanent earthquake state.53 Correspondingly, the upside of separation from the sacred status of nature was diverse technological benefit; the downside was chemical, biological, and ultimately nuclear threat, plus the depletion of natural resources. Thus modern Westerners live in incessant fear and total insecurity.54 The upside of separation from place was greater reach; the downside was that modern Westerners were left with no central anchor. They have become lost in the vast informatic sphere like a homeless person.55 No wonder then, modern Westerners find themselves in the era of ends; “end of nature,” “end of geography,” “end of body,”56 or, as Freud puts it, the Killing of the Father. The modern Westerner’s fall into unsteadiness, fearfulness, and homelessness was the predictable result of breaching a central principle in ethics: the principle of mutual right and duty.57 Taha formulates this principle as: The ideal in ethical relationships between two parties is that every party has to preserve the rights of the other when they are humans; and when the other is not human [e.g., animals or the environment], then the human has to preserve their rights, with the consideration that the mutual rights of the two parties have to be balanced.58

This basic principle implies a set of three further principles: duty is a condition in all ethical relationships, duty is upon the human when the other party is not a human,59 and duties are not always equal or identical but are  Ṭ āhā, 239.  Ṭ āhā, 239. 53  Ṭ āhā, 239. 54  Ṭ āhā, 240. 55  Ṭ āhā, 240. 56  Taha attributes these claims in order to Giddens, Virilio, and D. Le Breton, Ṭ āhā, 241. 57  Ṭ āhā, 240. 58  Ṭ āhā, 240. 59  Ṭ āhā, 240. 51 52

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always balanced.60 Taha’s Islamic principles cast a novel light on the postmodern era of ends, in a way that can negate, undo, or shall we say deconstruct Freud’s ‘Killing of the Father.’ In Islamic metaphor, duty is owed first to the mother: the duty to repay the motherly deeds that provide natural sustenance, traditional education, and upbringing. Respect for geographic and corporeal place is seen as multidimensional aspects of respect for the universal allegoric mother.61 In proper time, the mother weans the child—for the sake of maturity and independence, not separation. In framing these ideas under the idea of motherhood, the three Western separation projects are seen as counterproductive. Without matriculation in the teachings of the traditions, it would be impossible to know how to augment or surpass them; without guarding the abundance of natural resources, it would be impossible to use them; and without residence in place, it would be impossible to escape from it.62 The takeaway is that human culture, technology, and social movements are offspring of the cosmic mother, and the human has to respect her rights. The goal is not separation from that mother, but respectful weaning that preserves the motherly connections. In Arabic, all of this cluster of ideas is already embodied in the concept of mercy, raḥmah, because it is literally derived from the term for the mother’s womb, raḥim. So, mutually merciful behavior between humans, as in rescue, aid, and disaster relief, is known as tara ̄ḥum. This is understood in the Arabic ear as motherly mercy, maternal mercy, or, natural to the Arabic ear and to coin a phrase, mutual wombmercy. In Taha’s philosophy, this far-reaching Arabic conception of mercy not only serves as a basis for challenging the Western culture of ends and separation, but also has religious connotations. The derivational field of mercy includes “the merciful” (raḥı ̄m) and “the most merciful” (al-Raḥma ̄n), that is, God (see Chap. 5, Sect. 3.2.2). This is based not only on the Koranic verse “Say: Call upon God or call upon the Merciful; whichever you call upon, He has the best names,”63 but also on many other Koranic verses that stress the notion “My mercy embraces all things.”64 Taha concludes from this that “The ideal is that creatures, whatever they are, give  Ṭ āhā, 241.  Ṭ āhā, 241. 62  Ṭ āhā, 242. 63  The Qur’an 17:110. 64  The Qur’an 7:156. 60 61

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mercy to each other, acting properly in the name of The Most Merciful.”65 As already cited in Chap. 5, Sect. 3.2.2, in the context of a discussion of Taha’s style, understanding this principle has far-reaching metaphysical meaning: The origin of everything is mercy, where it is the first of all things, for if thinkers took note of this amazing fact, that in the beginning there was mercy, they would have obtained satisfying answers to their questions about existence and existent things. This is like their question Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer [is because] mercy is a precursor, for were it not for mercy there would have been nothing [created]. I received mercy, therefore I am. So, the knowledge of mercy is prior to the knowledge of existence.66

Rather than the problematic Western implementation of solidarity, and its project of separation, acknowledging the universal mercy should allow humanity to reconnect and practice solidarity with nature, traditions, and place. In order though to achieve this, there are cognitive preparations, behavioral duties, and certain self-therapies that must be followed. For cognitive preparations, Taha suggests the following. First, “remember in your soul always that the relation of the Most Merciful with you is close; although its way is unknown, it is acknowledged with certainty.”67 Second, “act according to the valuable relation between the name of the Most Merciful and the womb.”68 Taha brings to the attention of his Arabic readership the universality of the merciful nature of God in traditions other than that of the Koran. Hence, the third cognitive preparation is, “acknowledge the cross-religious agreement on Mercy as an attribute of God.”69 Taha reminds the reader that the Arabian Jewish companion of the Prophet, Abd Allah Ibn Salam, was surprised to hear the name al-­ Rahman in the Koran, for it being identical in meaning and root to the Biblical Hebrew El Rachum (‫)אֵ ל ַרחּום‬.70 I should add to Taha’s cross-­ religious awareness, Paleolithic and African examples, where Karen Armstrong notes that “The earth seemed to sustain all creatures—plants,  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 244.  Ṭ āhā, 250. 67  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 247. 68  Ṭ āhā, 247. 69  Ṭ āhā, 248. 70  Ṭ āhā, 248. 65 66

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animals and humans—as in a living womb,”71 and that “The initiates [of tribal rituals] crawl back into the womb of the earth.”72 In these cognitive preparations, God is understood as the motherly source of living creatures; of the environment and of human traditions, the latter existing within the former; and of human bodies, sustained by both. In Taha’s conception this motherly practice of mercy has to be repaid by mercy, simply because of its linguist conception. In effect, Taha’s prescriptions are in line with Rescher doxastic conception of God (Chap. 6, Sect. 4.7). For behavioral duties, Taha articulates a variety of “wombmercy” (tarāḥum) duties that cover the spectrum of humans, other living creatures, things, and unknown entities. The first duty is to “Give mercy to others the way you are merciful with yourself; [that is,] in protection to the value of the human.”73 The second is to “Give mercy to the non-­ human the way you are merciful to the human; [that is,] in protection to the value of being.”74 The third is to “Give the universality derived from mercy priority over any other universality.”75 Clearly, war (whether direct or by proxy) and exploitation in all forms are banned by the first; animal cruelty and environmental degradation are prohibited by the second; and even imagining space aliens and wishing to kill them is unacceptable by the third. Clearly, Western modernity has offered a proliferation of the contrary maladies. As for self-therapies, Taha notes that those who fulfill the cognitive preparations and abide by the three wombmercy duties have to sustain their being, by emulating a certain ideal. This ideal is of course that of The 71  Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (New York, NY: Canongate U.S., 2005), 42. Emphasis is mine. 72  Armstrong, 143. Emphasis is mine. 73  Ṭ āhā, 252. 74  Ṭ āhā, 253. A reviewer raised the following problem with Taha’s argument, rephrased here as follows. According to Taha, that I received mercy is a necessary precondition for my existence (indeed, mercy is a necessary precondition for any existence). But then, from the fact of my existence, which I know immediately, I can deduce that I received mercy. In this way, contrary to Taha, it would seem that the knowledge of existence is prior to the knowledge of mercy. The difference between the two is ultimately that Taha takes as primary both the existence of mercy and knowledge of it, while considering that people are puzzled about existence; on the other hand the reviewer takes as primary both his own existence and knowledge of it, while perhaps implicitly considering that people find the existence of mercy more puzzling than that of themselves. 75  Ṭ āhā, 254.

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Most Merciful, so Taha offers first: “witness in the commands of The Most Merciful, manifestations of his mercy, not tyranny.”76 Second, “in order to understand the manifestations of his mercy, follow the path of contemplation, not [abstract] thinking only.”77 (This alludes to Taha’s conception of ultra-rationality; see Chap. 5, Sect. 4.3.) And finally, “in your path of acting properly, take the path of resembling the ethics of The Most Merciful, not the path of making The Most Merciful similar to the human.”78 As described in Chap. 5, Sect. 3.2.2, Taha derives the centrality of mercy from contemplating God’s name, The Merciful (raḥma ̄n). He sees this as a way to resolve many of the modern maladies brought about by those who insist, to the contrary, on contemplating the centrality of the human (inasān). Here again it is worth recalling something that was cited in Chap. 5, Sect. 3.2.2, in the context of Taha’s style. Taha’s argument is that an Islamic practice of solidarity, contrary to the Western version, is a practice of mercy: For those who practice solidarity [mutadāmin], by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things [takhlı ̄q], the anxiousness to destroy the [traditional Islamic] heritage vanishes, through the consideration that one of the goals of heritage is to provide the human with the power of the past, manifested in preserving his memory. Preservation of memory is the value that brings to the human, permanence free of instability. For those who practice solidarity, by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things, the anxiousness to destroy nature disappears, through the consideration that one of the objectives of nature is to provide the human with the power of the future, manifested in preserving his offspring. Preservation of offspring is the value that brings to the human security, free of fear. For those who practice solidarity, by virtue of harmonizing their behavior with the good and natural order of things, finally, the anxiousness to destroy space disappears, through the consideration that one of the aims of space is to provide the human with power of the present, manifested in persevering his identity. Preservation of identity is the value that brings to the human residence, free of homelessness. Said briefly, the practitioner of solidarity with all beings—or the mercy practitioner [mutarah̄ ̣im]—is a stable, secure, and resident human.79  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ ada ̄thah, 257.  Ṭ āhā, 258. 78  Ṭ āhā, 259. 79  Ṭ āhā, 260. 76 77

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5   Conclusion Philosophizing is a highly imaginative enterprise. Its cognitive aspects call for conceptualizing actual reality by way of novel, trans-empirical ideas and relationships never seen (recognized) before their invention. Its practical branches, ethics and political philosophy, call for reforming and reformulating human society. Reformation and innovation, attempts to surpass current models, can bring great benefit, or great harm—and sometimes do both, in different ways in the same society. In 1917 Russia leaped to giving women the right to vote, even prior to the liberal United States, where women’s suffrage was only granted in 1920. Soon after though, the votes of both Russian women and men were rendered meaningless, as the same underlying revolutionary ideology also enabled authoritarian rule, bloody purges, and the Gulag. In 1978, China’s then-‘paramount leader,’ Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), announced a new “Open Door Policy”80 that abandoned the Party’s previous economic ideology, to combine political communism with massive foreign direct investment and market capitalism. Against Western economic advice at the time, this combination resulted in multiplying the Chinese GDP 95 times81 within four decades. Yet, while lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, it also moved high-paying manufacturing jobs from the West to low-paying jobs in the East—and enabled a vast increase in consumerism, depletion of non-renewable resources, plastic garbage accumulation, pollution, and authoritarian state power. A third example is the unheralded and unconventional manufacturer of expensive electric cars, Tesla, whose stock valuation surpassed that of the Japanese giant, Toyota,82 historically a producer of reliable,  There had been a previous “Open Door Policy” instituted by Western powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 81  Data show a GDP rise from nearly $150 billion in 1987 to $14,300 billion in 2019. In World Bank, “GDP (Current US$)—China | Data,” accessed August 7, 2020, https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CN. 82  Shares of Tesla climbed in value to “$207.2 billion, surpassing Toyota’s $201.9 billion,” even though “Tesla produced 103,000 vehicles in the [same period], or about 4% of the almost 2.4 million made by Toyota.” In Reed Stevenson, “Tesla Just Dethroned Toyota as The World’s Most Valuable Automaker,” Fortune, July 1, 2020, https://fortune. com/2020/07/01/tesla-stock-price-tsla-shares-market-cap-toyota-worlds-mostvaluable-automaker-elon-musk/. 80

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affordable, and highly popular cars. Yet, in many parts of the United States, as well as other countries, electric power is generated by burning coal. In these contexts, the supposedly green electric car is really the last thing the world needs, the coal-fired car. In short, surpassing limitations with creativity will always have, shall we say, enormous potential, both positive and negative. Humanity will always need to surpass limitations with creativity: in a sense, to modernize. Can the potentially negative aspect of modernity be surpassed, to leave only its beneficial aspect? Taha excels at innovatively going beyond the conceptions of both current Western and Muslim applications of modernity. He criticizes the limited perspectives of traditional political secularism and current and past Islamic movements alike, and proposes ethical mysticism as the solution. Within that framework, he offers reformist prescriptions for both political secularism and current Islamic movements—as well as prescriptions for how to live one’s life in awareness of, and as a resident in, the larger cosmos. In Taha’s philosophy, the factors of time, the plurality of human perceptions, and the multiplicity of cognitive considerations make the immediately present seen world but a very tiny portion of reality, one that is completely overwhelmed by the influences of the unseen world; yet one that can be harmonized with the rest, through a virtuous ethical worldview. Contrary to the current Sunni and Shia mainstreams, Taha bases his Islamic ethics on individual sincerity, away from totalitarian state enforcement; on local civil society, away from the clerical class. These innovations make for a new form of Islamic political thinking. Finally, the duty to repay motherly mercy, rooted in cognitive contemplation of the cosmic natural mother and the concomitant behavioral duties to others, humans and non-humans alike, can truly enhance environmental sustainability. Bunge would not agree with Taha’s route through divine motherly mercy, but he would approve of the final destination: environmental sustainability and some form of popular self-governance, common grounds for modernity.

CHAPTER 11

Comparative Evaluation: The Paths to Philosophical Modernity of Taha and Bunge

The overall context of this book is the problems and promises of modernity, and the challenges of modernization in the face of differing worldviews. Our endeavor is to in effect bring Western and Arab-Islamic worldviews into philosophical conversation regarding these problems, promises, and challenges. The preceding chapters presented key aspects of the philosophies of stellar representatives of the two camps, Mario Bunge and Taha Abd al-Rahman. Each of their systems was presented essentially on its own terms, with little comparative evaluation. This chapter turns to such evaluation. In preparation, the next sections briefly recall the first four chapters that follow the introductory chapter. The first three introduced the context of modernity, while the fourth presented Taha’s view of it.

1   A Brief Summary of Chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 5 1.1  Chapter 2—Modernity The challenges of modernity were the starting point for this work. Modernization spreads due to an appreciation or desire for improved living standards, social progress, increased civil rights, or other public benefits of modernity; the possibilities for private gain for those in power, or the otherwise well-positioned; international economic and military © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_11

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ambitions; envy of the wealth, status, power, and achievements of the more modern nations; and the need for even premodern societies to interact with the modern world. The last four of these are tantamount to making modernization a global condition that forces its ideas, artifacts, and institutions on the non-modern, even if not sought. Although these were the relatively straightforward motivations for or drivers of modernization, its outcome is highly complex and multi-­faceted. The most recognizable fruits of modernity are its scientific, technological, philosophical, political, and artistic achievements. Modernity is expansive, capable of affecting any field; it is open-ended, so ever a work in progress; it is typically asymmetrical, in any given society holding in some respects but not others; it is pan-human, rather than belonging exclusively to any race, gender, or nationality, even though historically it has been most present in the Western and Northern Hemispheres; it is reconciliatory, for not needing to be in complete disjunction with premodern ways; it is highly interrelated, with developments in one field capable of informing or changing distant ones; it is sometimes no more than suitable in context, rather than superior in every way to what came before; indeed, modernity is sometimes regressive, thus calling for vigilant checks and balances. In conjunction with the historical experience of Western aggression, an overall uneasy relationship with the Global South, and between on the one hand a false Western perception of Arab-Islamic philosophy as being stagnant if not long dead, and an Arab-Islamic pseudo-characterization of modernity as a convoluted postmodern trend on the other, both Western and Arab parties fell into dual misconceptions of modernity. The overall aspiration of this book is to correct these dual misconceptions and, more, to find common ground between the secular Western and Arab-Islamic worldviews. The systems of Argentinian-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge and Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman serve as representatives of the corresponding two philosophical worldviews. The fundamental basis for the common ground between them is the pursuit of sustainable global human welfare or, equivalently, of equitable prosperity— which is nothing else but modernity’s best-case scenario. Betterment of the human condition cannot be achieved without acknowledging that the right to criticize falsity is coupled with the duty to abide by truthfulness, and that the right to object to harm is coupled with the duty to acknowledge benefit. Thus, the right to criticize misguided modernity would lead equally to the duty to accept its best-case scenario.

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1.2  Chapter 3—Religious, Secular, Scientific Modernity can be considered not only as a condition of a society, but also as a philosophical worldview—an attempt to picture reality in the large, to understand it in a way that puts into perspective the life of the individual within society and nature, and in so doing to facilitate that life. Chapter 3 considered the natures of religion, secularism, and science, and explored their competing relationships to modernity and the modern worldview. In terms of their functional roles, both monotheistic religions and secular philosophies are cultural means, within particular literary or oral traditions, for fulfilling psychological, cognitive, and social goals. Although religious and secular worldviews each achieve a certain measure of success in fulfilling these goals, they are both subject to the pitfalls of psychological superstitions, cognitive myths, and false social ideologies. While the prophetic founders of the major monotheisms intelligently and courageously opened the doors to foundational changes in worldview, their subsequent followers and institutions have by and large dogmatically closed them. Thus today, the religious and secular differ particularly in their willingness to accept foundational (canonical) change. Still, a secular worldview, while being inherently “of an age” and lacking any sacred canonical literature, is not necessarily scientific, in that there are irrational secular worldviews and non-empirical secular worldviews. A rational and empirical worldview that is eager for epistemic progress is a scientific worldview. Although there are important divergences between religious and secular and scientific worldviews, there are also important convergences. Innovative, open-minded religious thinking has proposed or accepted much foundational change, while secular and scientific thinking can be imbued with a sense of the sacred, or what Dewey called “natural piety.” Reasonable secularism does not claim to completely reinvent human culture from zero. Ideally, it stands by its side and helps it forward, by amending and reformulating it as needed. 1.3  Chapter 4—An Introduction to Mario Bunge, and to the Philosophical Endeavor The chapter begins with an autobiographical and philosophical sketch of Mario Bunge, the philosopher-scientist whose vast philosophical project

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stands out as a comprehensive, systemic, sophisticated, thoroughly scientific worldview. It then moves on to consider the task of worldview construction, and the philosophical endeavor more generally. It does this particularly in the light of the work of Nicholas Rescher, Bunge’s only contemporary of comparable philosophical stature and accomplishment. Rescher sees philosophy as a matter of questioning and answering that targets our biggest questions. The biggest questions subsume most if not all of the smaller questions, and answering is a matter of truth-estimation in the light of experience. A philosophical worldview can be thought of as the sum total, or rather a systemic union, of all the answers to our biggest questions, formulated in the light of experience. For Rescher, philosophy is at the summit of human activities, and system building is the finest approach to this endeavor. Beginning most notably after World War II, influential Atlantic and Continental philosophies contested the validity of comprehensive philosophical systemization. Mario Bunge has defiantly swum against this current,1 and his work brings modern philosophy back to its ambitious task of worldview construction. His remarkable Treatise on Basic Philosophy, consisting of eight volumes in nine books, is the first, and so far the only, comprehensive philosophical system to have been proposed since the Age of Analysis. 1.4  Chapter 5—Taha Abd al-Rahman’s Islamic Worldview and the Spirit of Modernity Arab-Islamic thinkers voice much objection to Western thought, yet they are in modern times only faintly related to philosophy in general. Taha Abd al-Rahman, a systemic thinker with an explicitly ethico-religious worldview, is an important exception. Taha’s Arab-Islamic thought is of interest not only for his philosophical ability, but also because indirectly, he articulates the objections to modernity of most other Arab-Islamic thinkers, without the demagogic religious tone. The chapter first addresses the question of what “Islamic philosophy” is. Moving away from traditional views that see it as either a genre of Muslim literature dealing with Hellenistic ways of thinking, or as 1  In a recent work in German, Heinz Droste stresses this aspect of Bunge’s distinctiveness. Heinz W.  Droste, Turn of the Tide  – Gezeitenwechsel: Einführung in Mario Bunges exakte Philosophie (Aschaffenburg: Alibri Verlag, 2016).

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philosophy written by Muslims, it rather characterizes Islamic philosophy as the intellectual endeavor that deals philosophically with content relevant to Islamic culture. The chapter then discusses the modernization journey of Islamic philosophy or its evolution since the shock of modernity that arrived along with the nineteenth-century European invasions of the Arab world. This modernization journey can be parsed into four stages. In the first, extending throughout the entire nineteenth century into the twentieth up until World War II, rather than philosophical modernization, political, legal, religious, and educational reform were dominant. The second stage, around the middle of the twentieth century, saw the return from Anglophone, German, and French universities of a generation of Arab students. This post-World War II period, up until the 1960s, was marked by the analysis, description, comparison, and translation of the canons and doctrines of Western philosophy. In the third stage, from the 1970s up until the 1990s, attractive scholarships were offered to Arab students by both Cold War blocks. Philosophical activity was restricted to small circles of intellectuals, enthusiastic modernists, and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences; and characterized by the application of Marxist, logical positivist, Freudian, or existentialist ideas to Islamic history and culture. At the same time, there was an important resurgence of distinctively Islamic thought, driven by movements advocating a return to traditional legal, theological, and mystic literatures—accompanied by a retreat from modern forms of thought, driven by the oppression and near failure of secular Arab governments. In the fourth stage, ongoing since the 1990s, philosophical modernization in the Arab world is in popular retreat. A newly emergent movement seeks a native response to this intellectual decline. Its primary representatives are the Tunisian philosopher Abu Yarub al-Marzuqi and the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman. With a background in mind of widespread failure of the Arab world to meet the challenges of modernity on most fronts, Arab-Islamic philosophers of the fourth stage seek to surpass the linguistic confines of concepts rooted more in European languages than in Arabic, metaphors and examples not familiar to Arabic speakers, and foreign styles in general. Opposed too are the philosophical confines of means and goals produced from the specific and regional Western historical experience. They build their arguments within the traditions of Arabic literature, and declare allegiance to their native people, against imperialism and collaborating Arab dictators alike. For these creative figures, philosophy is a matter of cultural challenge combined with universal

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logical, ontological, and ethical concerns. Yet, without proper epistemological scrutiny, as I will explain below. Selecting Taha Abd al-Rahman as the representative for this stage, the chapter goes on to provide a brief biographical sketch, and a hint of the rhetorical style of his philosophy, it being inseparable from its content. The chapter then presents the central concept of Taha’s philosophy, which forms also the title of his most relevant work: the Spirit of Modernity. In Taha’s view, there is a crucial distinction between actually existing modernity and modernity in its abstract, ideal form, the spirit of modernity being his name for the latter. For Taha, the fundamental characteristics of ideal modernity are maturity, critical thinking, and universality. In turn maturity consists of independence and creativity, critical thinking of rationality and analysis, and universality of extensibility and generalizability. Taha argues that other famous conceptions of modernity, such as secularism, individualism, and capitalism, are only particular possible derivatives from modernity’s ideal principles and foundations. Taha rejects most Western implementation of modernity as being unsuited to the Arab-Islamic world and for being based on false interpretations of the spirit of modernity. With the goal of achieving native philosophical sovereignty in the Arab-Islamic world, and in contrast to what he sees as the false principles of Western-imitative implementations of the spirit of modernity, Taha proposes his own creative-­Islamic alternatives, and these are summarized in a table that closes the chapter.

2   Comparative Evaluation 2.1  Taha’s Islamic Philosophy and the Spirit of Modernity In his Spirit of Modernity, Taha focuses on the goal of achieving native philosophical sovereignty in the Arab world, while meeting the logical requirements of internal consistency and overall coherence. Taha successfully departs from the narrative, descriptive, imprecise, theoretically shallow, and sometimes self-contradictory discourse of many current Muslim Arab thinkers.2 Equally interesting is the fact that his philosophy is articulated in a clear, attractive, eloquent Arabic, with rich and implicit literary 2  An illustration of this is provided by Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwı ̄, the former head of the Muslim Scholars Council, when he goes beyond his Islamic law specialty and tackles cultural

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meanings taken from the Koran, prophetic traditions, Arabic literature, and Islamic scholasticism, all of which constitute the commonly revered background of his Arab readership.3 In this way, Taha’s logico-linguistic mastery helps familiarize the Arab reader with modern philosophy. More, it revolutionizes the process of writing Arabic philosophy in line with modern analytic philosophy, clearly, logically, and beautifully. Most of Taha’s Spirit of Modernity focuses on the philosophy of culture and the cultural differences between the Western and Arab-Islamic worlds. Yet the fact that we are all of a single species means that we have more similarities than what our cultural differences sometimes seem to suggest. Humanity shares the same genetics, ancestral origin, and global ecology. We operate according to the same physical, chemical, biological, and neuropsychological laws. In this age of globalization, we share also a common global economy, growing international political relationships, a dose of science and technology, an increasingly interrelated entertainment culture, and a constant flow of information and opinion spread by a pervasive international communications network. It is more in only certain aspects of our cultures, mainly ideology, language, aesthetics, parts of ethics, and daily lifestyles, where the greatest differences between us lie. By focusing on the philosophy of culture, Taha over-emphasizes the differences between Western and Arab-Islamic thought. This is one of the central differences between the worldviews of Taha and Bunge. As meticulous and impressive as Taha’s efforts are, to a large extent they remain confined to conceptual and linguistic problem solving, rather than natural and social problem solving rooted in humanity’s universal epistemological heritage, the system of scientific knowledge (Chap. 7, Fig. 7.5 and Fig. 7.6). Such emphasis on language, classical or modern, in Arabic thought in general is what Abd Allah al-Qasimi (1907–1996)

and philosophical issues. See, for example, his “Islam and Secularism Face to Face” (Al-Isla ̄m wal ‘Alman̄ iyyah wajhan liwajh. Cairo: Dar al-Sahwah, 1998). 3  Taha also appreciates the corresponding semantic richness of European philosophy within the traditions of European language and culture. In the second book of his yet-to-be completed multi-volume project, Philosophology 2: Philosophical Discourse I: The Book of Concept and Etymology, Taha shows the influence of German language and literature on Heidegger’s etymological construction of concepts, and he suggests that his Philosophology 2 takes the Arab student of philosophy on a practical tour in “the conceptual factory of the philosopher.” (Ṭ āhā ‘Abd al-Rahman, Fiqh al-Falsafah 2: Al-Qawl al-Falsafı ̄ I: Kitāb al-Mafhūm wal-Ta’thı ̄l. Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thāqafı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 1999, 429.)

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criticizes in al-Arab Zahirah Ṣawtiyyah (lit. Arabs: A Mere Vocal Phenomenon),4 a work famous in the Arab world. Al-Qasimi does not focus simply on aspects in Arabic culture of separation between talking and acting, but also on the over-emphasis on language, an over-emphasis that makes linguistic mastery and poetic ornamentation a goal in itself, rather than a means to natural and social goals. Certainly, Taha cannot be more correct when he asks Arab philosophers “not to let others think and philosophize on their behalf, because thinking is one’s own responsibility.”5 Yet what service does Taha render to the modernization of Arab philosophy by building a discursive nest, if not a cocoon, in the outer branches of the much larger overall tree of knowledge already built and articulated by others? The narrow scope of his cultural philosophy that claims to modernize Arabic philosophy raises three problems related to the historical, practical, and foundational soundness of his system. While Taha identifies three basic features of modernity—namely, maturity, criticism, and universality—Taha emphasizes maturity and criticism. Maturity is viewed either as independence from, or as connection to, a particular people’s tradition, and criticism is viewed either as total rejection, or as reasonable acceptance of, a particular religious tradition. As for universality, Taha’s treatment of it is less universal than what the term means. We do not know how he conceives of factual truth, existence, matter, and social science from a philosophical point of view. Also, we do not know how he explains the emergence of the cosmos, life, mind, technology, and human civilization. Providing these missing understandings would be a good first step toward a more comprehensive philosophy. Although Taha claims that the spirit of modernity is best grasped with a synthesis of idealized conceptual understandings (Chap. 5, Section 3.3), he departs from any historical understandings. This leads to the second major problem with Taha’s system: its weak consideration of effectiveness, the capacity of the proposed means to achieve the desired goals. It might be argued that Taha’s avoidance of satisfactory naturalistic and historical warrant could be justified for tactical purposes, given the overwhelming religiosity of his audience. Yet, tactical purposes can be at cross-purposes with the promotion of philosophical thinking, for being strategically short-sighted when they do not consider deep and pervasive features of 4 5

 Al-‘Arab Ẓ ah̄ irah Ṣawtiyyah (Paris: Muntmartar, 1977).  Ṭ āhā, Ruh̄ ̣ Al-Ḥ adat̄ hah, 36.

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nature and society. Such tactics, if lacking coherent, empirically sound philosophical foundations, will clash with reality sooner or later. Thus with Taha’s objective of philosophical sovereignty: the sovereign philosopher no less than the philosopher king must address, at least in an overall way, issues of politics, economics, and technological change.6 Taha’s conceptual analysis is sometimes detached from Arab-world social concerns, with actual problems of poverty, desertification, improper schooling, overpopulation, and problematic urbanization being overshadowed and targeted ineffectively by mere cultural slogans. Taha has presented a considerably stronger critique of the postmodern family, based on his ideas of ethical “inversion” to non-self, privilege, and playfulness (Chap. 9, Sections 2 and 3). One might be impressed by the depth of his critical observations. However, Chap. 9 showed that his religious proposals are also subject to inversions and corresponding unethical traps. He needs to justify what he suggests regarding transcendental companionship, primordial commitment, and the immortal good life. The broad religious background that Taha takes as an unquestionable given gives his philosophy a “non-justifiable” character: contrary to Bunge, who bases his understanding of human nature on the scientific investigation of it, Taha bases his on unquestionable, unprovable, sacred doctrines. Taha concentrates on what his local Islamic culture proposes as solutions, and Western implementations of modernity as the problems, but there is more to philosophy than what Eastern or Western cultures have to propose. The burden is still on the modernizers of Islamic philosophy to find up-to-­ date, harmonious, feasible, effective responses to the philosophical predicaments all humans face, in all cultures, Islamic or otherwise. On the positive side, with respect to the tree of knowledge (Chap. 7, Fig. 7.5), within the field of ethics there is a great opportunity for Arab-­ Islamic philosophy to achieve sovereignty over and progress within its own domain, while still being based on modern ethical foundations, that is, universal needs and relative wants. A philosophically sovereign response to the challenges of modernization can provide the philosophical framework for pan-Arab solidarity, the solidarity of some 400 million Arabs united in land, language, culture, and the challenges of colonialism, poverty, desertification, and tyranny. Such modern pan-Arab solidarity can extend to 6  In a more recent work, Ru ̄ḥ al-Dı ̄n, Ṭ āhā dealt with political management in more detail, as presented here in Chap. 10. However, his line of thinking still does not overcome the criticism presented above.

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many aspects of modern life in need of ethical guidance: with regard to environmental concerns, through an ethic of cooperation over resources— especially water, the immediately local essential whose flow is regional and whose cycle is global; with regard to science, via a more integral educational ethic that emphasizes humanistic, social, and natural science, not just applied science and engineering7; with regard to the arts, through an overall more humanistic ethic and critical thinking; with regard to economics, through an ethic of pan-Arab cooperation, interdependence, social justice, and the full realization of human potential; with regard to international and national politics, through an ethic of mutual defense, and shared standards of justice, human rights, and democracy. The need for philosophical sovereignty is based on cultural peculiarity. Arabic, one of the oldest continuously living languages, whose lineage traces back to the oldest human civilizations in the Fertile Crescent, has an aesthetics linked to deep poetic and rhetorical techniques that expand meaning in refined and rarified manners. Islamic moral law is a combination of law and morality that, historically, was promoted by the civil society not the state.8 Likewise, historically Islamic theology has been highly dependent on linguistic hermeneutics and public debates, mostly without state involvement. Nevertheless, cultural peculiarity and the need for philosophical sovereignty should not dominate all philosophical concerns. Taha is a specialist in elements of cultural peculiarity, but he makes no effort to harmonize such distinctiveness with the universal system of knowledge (Chap. 7, Fig.  7.6). The modernization journey of Arab-­ Islamic philosophy (Chap. 5 Section 2) will remain stranded in a philosophical backwater without such a harmonization project as the next, fifth stage.

7  See Taner Edis and Saouma BouJaoude, “Rejecting Materialism: Responses to Modern Science in the Muslim Middle East”. In: M.R. Matthews (ed.), International Handbook of Research in History, 1663 Philosophy and Science Teaching (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 1663–1690. 8  Ironically, this is in contrast with the contemporary experience of enforcing a single interpretation of Islamic laws by the government, as in the cases of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. For a detailed examination see Chapter 16 of “Modernizing Law in the Age of Nation-States”, in Wael B.  Hallaq, Sharı ̄ʻa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012).

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2.2  Bunge’s Scientific, Humanistic Philosophical System Taha’s philosophical scope is certainly narrow. Bunge’s scope, in contrast, is much broader and coheres with a larger body of modern knowledge. The comparison seems unfair, since Taha represents only the first Arab generation of proper contemporary systemic philosophizing, while Bunge is an offspring of the some 400 years of modern Western philosophizing since Francis Bacon (1561–1626). Still, this very comparative injustice is the situation the Arab world finds itself in, and it must stand up to the challenge. Bunge’s purview is the system of all systems—the universe—in the first place; his knowledge base is all of science, and the rational parts of much of human culture, Western and Eastern, in the second; and finally his philosophy is in the manner of science and leaves open the possibility of foundational change via reason and experience. By his ontology and epistemology, Bunge seeks to aid humanity’s endeavor to explore and understand the world; by his ethics and political philosophy, he seeks to help improve the lot of humanity. All of this is rather more than what Taha seeks to achieve, in the modernization of Islamic culture. The Islamic awakening in the Arab world, paradoxically, hastened to respond to the challenges of modernity without deep historical awareness and without investigation of the chain of causality that led to the rise and decline of Islamic civilization and the subsequent emergence of modernity. Taha unconsciously imitated such ahistorical tendencies, which led him to fall into the last three of the following five cultural contradictions.9 In particular, Islamic awakening sought to: (1) Defy literary and fashionable trends brought by Western cultures, by calling for the organic and authentic return to Arab-Islamic heritage—without acknowledging that the very genealogy of the Islamic synthesis10 necessitates the elimination of partisan bigotry and sectarian exclusion, if heritage revival is the goal. (2) Counter weak sovereignty and Western domination by striving for Arab unity—without extending equality in citizenship to all religions, sects, and races of the Arab nation, and between men and women. 9  For a detailed examination, see A.  Z. Obiedat, “Identity Contradictions in Islamic Awakening: Harmonizing Intellectual Spheres of Identity,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (AJMEIS) 13, no. 3 (July 2019): 331–50, https://urlzs.com/Kj3vc. 10  Chap. 2, Section 4; Chap. 3, Section 6.

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(3) Confront the narrative of Eurocentrism by cultivating pride in the classical-medieval Islamic achievements in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine—without realizing the dependency of medieval Islamic science on Greek, Aramaic, and Indian translation, and how peaceful competition with non-Muslim compatriots was essential for surpassing the achievements of Hellenistic science. (4) ⁠Challenge Stalinism and militant atheistic trends by embracing the Abrahamic path, calling for unity with Jewish and Christian monotheism in addition to world spiritualism11—without tracing the pre-Islamic and Biblical influences on the Koran in the context of unifying the Semitic reaction to Byzantine-Sassanian12 hegemony and without accommodating non-monotheistic spirituality. (5) Grapple with the modern worldview and modern epistemology by admitting the importance of modern technology—without realizing that emergentist materialism is the core of the modern scientific approach.

11  In a book authored jointly by the renowned Catholic theologian Hans Küng (b. 1928) and the Syrian Muḥammad Sa‘ı ̄d Ramaḍān al-Būt ̣ı ̄ (1929–2013), al-Būt ̣ı ̄ reminds readers of how unity between Jews, Christians, and Muslims has been and can still be the case in personal celebrations, administrative functions of the state, and productive and scientific activī ties. See their Dawr al-Adyān fı ̄ al-Salām al-‘Alamı ̄ (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 2013), 31–33. This is in light of an explicit Qur’anic statement:

God does not forbid you respecting those who have not made war against you on account of (your) religion, and have not driven you forth from your homes, that you show them kindness and deal with them justly; surely God loves the doers of justice. God only forbids you respecting those who made war upon you on account of (your) religion, and drove you forth from your homes and backed up (others) in your expulsion, that you make friends with them, and whoever makes friends with them, these are the unjust. (Qur’an, 60:8–9)

12  The Sassanian (Sasanian, Sasanid) dynasty overthrew the Persian Parthians [247 BC–AD 224] and created a Persian empire that lasted from 224 CE to 651 CE. Their empire, with eventually Zoroastrianism as the state religion, fluctuated in size over the course of long conflicts with Rome, Byzantium, and Arabs to the west, and Kushans and Hephthalites to the east. The end came through Arab conquest, 637–651 CE. See “Sasanian Dynasty” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, April 3, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ Sasanian-dynasty.

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The Islamic awakening movements of the Arab world are yet to acknowledge that these five fundamental contradictions betray their ignorance of global history. Clearly their adherents are not familiar with the contributions of several enlightened Arabists and Islamologists, such as Marshall G.  S. Hodgson (1922–1968)13 and Richard W. Bulliet (b. 1940).14 To overcome these contradictions would require in effect another, more authentic Islamic awakening: understanding the genealogy of Arab-Islamic legal, theological, and mystic disciplines; acknowledging the religious, sectarian, and racial pluralism of the Arab nation; grasping that Arab-Islamic civilization began as a creative Arab synthesis of Hellenistic and Persian-­ Sassanian cultures; admitting that the Koran has Biblical, ancient Arabian, and near-eastern roots; and realizing that science is fundamentally based on a materialist worldview. Contrary to the Islamic awakening movements, Taha does acknowledge most of these historical processes. Yet he does not explain why his parsing of the basic characteristics of modernity into maturity, criticism, and universality should supersede other characteristics of modernity such as humanism, naturalism, rationalism, or social democracy. Taha is certainly creative in his cultural analysis, but he did not care to justify the triad of ontological immaterialism, revelational epistemology, and theological ethics that are implicit in his philosophical systemization. In effect then, without further elaboration on his part, his efforts will remain reliant on outdated medieval thinking, or perhaps suffer the fate of being grafted onto non-scholarly popular versions of Islamic culture.15 13  Marshall G.  S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, New edition (Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press, 1977); Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 3: The Gunpower Empires and Modern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 14  Richard W.  Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Richard Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011); Richard Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990); Richard Bulliet et al., The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Volume I – To 1550, 7th edition (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2018); Richard Bulliet et al., The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Volume II  – Since 1550, 7th edition (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2018). 15  In the 1980s and 1990s, before Taha’s major contributions, there was a so-called Islamization of knowledge movement. Authors in this early movement had no exposure to the vast fields of epistemology and philosophy of science, and so exhibited no philosophical

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The non-scholarly weakness of popular and literalist Islamic movements, that is, their lack of foundation, is absent from Bunge’s worldview. To the contrary, Bunge’s system is grounded in nature and in acknowledging the general course of history. It sees nature evolving through levels of organization, from physical atoms, to chemical compounds, to biological cells and organisms, to psychological nervous systems, to social systems, with human society in particular over the course of its evolution engaged cooperatively or competitively over wealth, power, culture, and technology. The naturalistic, scientific, and historical foundation of Bunge’s worldview is evident in his stance on values, that is, the basis of ethics. His primary values are preserving life and avoiding death, concerns which usher in effectively all the sciences and much of technology. His secondary values are attaining health and avoiding sickness, concerns which emphasize all the medical and allied sciences. Finally, his tertiary values are achieving (reasonable) happiness and avoiding misery, concerns which direct attention to all the psychological and social sciences, as well as to the arts and humanities. In short, all of Bunge’s value system concerns human flourishing, and so it provides a common ground for every nation and civilization that seeks to benefit from modernization without buckling under it. All of these positive aspects of Bunge’s worldview derive from its thoroughly naturalistic, scientific, historical foundation. Considering Bunge’s oeuvre in the light of Rescher’s insights (Chap. 4, Section 2), Bunge’s philosophy certainly qualifies as a harmonious and systemic worldview. It blends ontological materialism, epistemological realism, and ethical agathonism together into a grand synthesis. Bunge’s ontological materialism is not naively physicalist, but emergentist and systemist. His epistemological realism does not presume a fully accurate mirroring of nature, but rather partial modeling or correspondence—thus corrigibility and perfectibility. His virtuous, agathonist ethics aims at human flourishing: the fulfillment of individual biological and psychological needs and wants within a good society. Bunge further provides an understanding of a good society that is as well-suited to Arab-Islamic construction skills, even in the Islamic medieval sense. Their attempts are nearly forgotten even by Arab readers. It is important not to contrast Bunge’s scholarly worldview with unsophisticated religious worldviews such as these that Taha neither built nor justified. See ʻImād al-Dı ̄n Khalı ̄l, Islamization of Knowledge: A Methodology (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995); Ṭ āhā Jābir Fayyāḍ ʻAlwānı ̄, The Islamization of Knowledge: Yesterday and Today, trans. Yusuf Talal Delorenzo (Herndon, Va: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995).

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aspirations as to Western: a good society is one that is both prosperous and just.

3   Conclusion Bunge’s worldview poses a powerful challenge to all premodern religious thought, including Taha’s: ontologically, epistemologically, ethically, and practically. Although religious systems may differ in their views of modernity, and its potential for either solving or adding to human problems, they claim to be able to provide answers to the perennial questions of human life, and they typically pass judgment on other views. But any religious system that promotes ontological immaterialism, revelation-based epistemology, and theological ethics has to establish its own claims first. The ontological immaterialism typical of religion attributes causal efficacy to inscrutable and undetectable entities such as deities, demons, and angels on the one hand, and refers to publicly inaccessible phenomena, such as an afterlife, on the other. In this way of thinking, if, for example, one and the same person in alternate scenarios either flourished or declined, it would be as easily and irrefutably explainable as either divine rescue for virtuous merit, or just punishment for sinful fault. Stable and unified explanations become impossible, due to potential interference from various inscrutable entities and inaccessible phenomena—precisely because they are inaccessible and inscrutable. Such epistemological instability and division are well illustrated by the particularly religious understanding of martyrdom. Those who die for the religious cause are guaranteed admission to paradise, irrespective of all past sins, but the person killed is only a martyr from the perspective of his own side while damned by the other—and this even if the battle were between two Islamic sects.16 Ontological immaterialism leads to such

16  Modern nationalistic wars exhibit the same dilemma: a fighter on one’s own side is an honorable patriot, while the enemy is the aggressor and vice versa. Yet, with the openness of secular thought to foundational change (Chap. 3), there is a secular path that enemies can follow to redemption. This was the case with Germany after it—that is to say, its people and its government—acknowledged the aggression of the Third Reich. In religious wars, such acknowledgment is harder to come by, as it needs a theological elaboration not generally easy to articulate by either laymen or clergy. Thus still to this day, the Vatican does not properly acknowledge the magnitude of the Crusades, the military campaigns against the Islamic world of the eastern Mediterranean, 1096 to 1271 CE. See William R. Polk, Crusade and

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epistemologically paradoxical situations and their damaging consequences for human coexistence. As for revelation-based epistemology, it is rooted in the idea of divine knowledge as revealed to the founding prophet and perhaps his disciples, with occasional later divine communications after intensive worship, self-­ purification, and persistent good deeds. Visions, dreams, and emotional reactions can also be interpreted as divine revelations. A major problem with all this is the consequent rejection of any possibility for falsification and public debate. Within a revelation-based epistemology, how can the revelation-based claim that “God created Man directly” be falsified by any chain of evidence for a lengthy, evolutionary origin of Homo sapiens? The religious but broadly educated individual may propose that the revelation-­ based claim is really rather metaphorical, and not to be taken literally, as is the case with many educated Islamic scholars who acknowledge evolution.17 But if with the progress of human knowledge most or even all of the factual claims of a religious canon are found to be metaphorical, what is the whole point of religious knowledge, what scientific guidance can it offer, and what is its significant contribution? As John Dewey put it: “whenever a particular [religious] outpost is surrendered, it is usually met by the remark from a liberal theologian that the particular doctrine or supposed historic or literary tenet surrendered was never, after all, an intrinsic part of religious belief.”18 And if stubborn adherence to a doctrine of infallibility precludes surrender? The same claimed detachment from worldly origin that makes infallible claims irrefutable equally makes them indefensible and incapable of improvement. Theological ethics relies on ontological immaterialism and revelation-­ based epistemology. Ethical values and moral norms are ultimately justified by reference to a deity whose existence and nature are publicly inaccessible, whose plan instead comes to light by revelation. This might be a straightforward way to resolve ethical problems. Yet, what should be done when, for example, divorce is considered immoral according to one revelation but moral in another? Those who raise this objection are sometimes accused of the mistake of making cross-religion comparisons, such Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 17 ̄  ʻAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhı ̄n, Abı ̄ Adam: Qiṣṣat al-Khalı ̄qah bayna al-Usṭu ̄rah wal-Ḥ aqı ̄qah (Cairo, Egypt: Dār Akhbār al-Yawm, 1999). 18  John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 32.

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as between Catholicism and Islam, but what about the permission of extra-marital relationships in the Shia Islamic sect (mut‘ah marriage), and the prohibition of the same according to the majority of the Sunni Islamic sect? Modern humanity, with its constant and wide-ranging cross-cultural social intercourse, needs help to agree on cross-cultural ethics and to adjust to historical change and local peculiarities; theological ethics is most often less than helpful in these endeavors. In fact, a great deal of theological ethics is mutually exclusive, where one religion’s (or sect’s) good is another’s evil—such as with polygamy; women’s fashions (alternatively, dress codes); hierarchies of social classes, such as from commoners to aristocrats, Dalits to Brahmins; the infallibility of certain religious leaders, such as the Pope or Ayat Allah19—or if not a matter of good versus evil, then at least good versus regrettable, such as the dietary laws of Judaism proscribing many seafood items widely considered healthy and delicious, not to mention the joint Judaic and Islamic dietary laws concerning a certain land animal. In sum, the triad of ontological immaterialism, revelational epistemology, and theological ethics has foundational problems with regard to its mapping of reality, production of knowledge, and moral universality. These problems center on the means for validating religious claims, and on the diversity of sectarian and religious worldviews, where no criteria for arbitration—other than isolation or conflict—are available. 3.1  An Islamic Path to Modernization Bunge’s science-based epistemology can be seen as an outgrowth of his materialist ontology. We have considered the foundations of the Abrahamic religions to be their canonical revelation-based scriptures, and indeed the popular understanding of “revelation” makes such religions resistant to foundational change, and to epistemic progress more generally. But the scholarly Islamic tradition has a different understanding of revelation, one that may help the Islamic world in particular along its path to modernization. Non-scholarly literalist and traditionalist Muslims may be stunned to learn that the Koran is quite philosophically cautious, as it does not claim to be the literal word of God, but rather his revelation. Medieval scholarly  Ā yat Allāh (lit. “a sign of God”) is high ranking scholar in the Shi‘ah sect of Islam.

19

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theologians and mystics have carefully studied the matter of revelation and produced discussions in line with the following.20 The general principle of the matter is stated in verse 42:51 of the Koran: “It is not fitting for a man that God should speak to him except by revelation.” This is situated in the historical context provided by verse 4:163: “Surely We have revealed to you as We revealed to Noah, and the prophets after him.” But what does “revelation” mean in Koranic terms? In order to understand that, we have to gather how the Koran uses the term over multiple instances. All of them are united by an underlying meaning of indirect signification between two parties. For example, revelation can be the signs that insects can read, as in verse 16:68: “And your Lord revealed to the bee saying: Make hives in the mountains and in the trees and in what they build.” Likewise, revelation can be the indirect signification that a mother perceives, as in verse 28:7, regarding the story of Moses: “So We sent this revelation to the mother of Moses: Suckle (your child).” Other verses have revelation occurring between non-divine beings. Moreover, the Koran is very explicit that all its revelation is rather made in the language of Muhammad, or the word choice of Muhammad, as in verse 19:97: “And We make [this Scripture] easy in your tongue [language], [O Muhammad].” Thus revelation, according to the Koran, is never the direct speech or literal instruction of the divine. That this is a natural Koranic understanding is emphasized by considering that the word koran itself means “reading,” while the Koran calls its own verses or sentences ayat, that is, signs. In other words, Koran is the process of reading the signs of nature and self.21 The Koran again describes itself this way in verse 41:53: “We will soon show them Our signs [ayat] in the Universe and in their selves, until it will become quite clear to them that it is the truth.” If revelation is true communication to humans that can be found in nature and self, then it is quite an open-ended process that can be further perfected by science and philosophy. Here, Taha’s rival in the fourth stage of the modernization journey of Islamic philosophy, Abu Yarub al-Marzuqi, gets it right. He takes this verse within the Koranic framework to mean: there are two dimensions; negative, indicating that truth is not to be sought from the text of the Koran; and positive, indicating that it is to be sought by  Fakhr al-Dı ̄n Muḥammad Ibn ʻUmar al-Rāzı ̄, Mafa ̄tı ̄ḥ al-Ghayb: al-Tafsı ̄r al-Kabı ̄r, vol. 11 (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth al-ʻArabı ̄, 1999), 265–66. 21  For a detailed examination on how medieval Arab-Islamic scholarship dealt with this issue, see: A. Z. Obiedat, “What Did God Intend to Say? Arabic Semantics as a Legal and Cognitive Enterprise,” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies of Indiana University Press 6, no. 2 (November 2021). 20

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directing the search for truth to where truth can be found, i.e., the signs of the horizons (natural and mathematical laws) and the selves (the historical laws of morality).22

This scholarly shift in the understanding of revelational epistemology applies similarly and to the same extent to theological ethics, as seen in this legal principle: “what is generally utilitarian, granted it is derived from the nature of things, is good; therefore, authoritatively demanding submission.”23 3.2  Contrast Versus Conflict Our discussion of Western-Islamic perceptions and Arab reaction to Western hegemony (Chap. 2, Section 3; Chap. 5, Section 2) revealed that Western-Islamic worldview contention is not just a matter of scholarly consideration of contrasting positions, such as done here with those of Bunge and Taha, but also a matter of non-scholarly confrontation between conflicting sides, that is to say, between Western imperialism and Arab-­ Islamic popular movements. Western imperialism, in either its early or modern forms, has a dangerous implicit worldview of its own. This underlying worldview, though by no means universal among Westerners, remains far too influential. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick summarize it acidly this way:

22  Abū Yaʻrub Al-Marzūqı ̄,Al-Mashrū‘ al-Ḥ adarı ̄ al-Islamı ̄: Shuru ̄ṭuh al-Rūḥiyyah wal-­ Siyāsiyyah wa Istrātı ̄jiyyat Taḥqı ̄qih [lit. The Islamic Civilizational Project: Its Spiritual and Political Conditions and the Achievement Strategy] (Tunis: Al-Asmā’ wal-Bayān, 2016), Chapter Three, 3. Emphasis is mine. 23  Ahmad Z. Obiedat, “Defining the Good in the Qur’an: A Conceptual Systemisation,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 14, no. 2 (October 2012): 116, https://doi.org/10.3366/ jqs.2012.0058.

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[Our military might24] has allowed us to win by any means necessary, which makes us, because we win, right. And because we are right, we are therefore good. Under these conditions there is no morality but our own.25

The ontological foundation of this implicit, non-scholarly worldview is that Western material interest has a privileged status, such that all the natural and human resources of the rest of the humanity must be offered to it, or else be taken from them. The popular epistemological foundation is old and familiar in Western culture: if people knew how sausage was made, no one would eat sausage—so better not to find out. Popular Western ethics has been rather insensitive to the grim realities of resource extraction and exploitation in the third world; likewise to the exploitation of third-world agricultural laborers, and the subjugation of third-world factory workers—certainly insensitive enough for Westerners to keep buying their cheap produce in great quantity. Yet, popular Western ethics is rather more sensitive to women wearing head coverings, even voluntarily. Laws have been passed to prohibit immigrant third-world women from wearing headscarves in the first world—but not to prohibit third-world sweatshop factories from selling headscarves in the first world. This even though the flood of imports from third-world sweatshops devastated the first-world domestic garment trade. Unfoundational Arab-Islamic religious ontology, epistemology, and ethics are problematic, but the implicit, non-scholarly, all too-popular ontology, epistemology, and ethics of Western imperialism laid the cognitive and emotional foundations for military aggression, human exploitation, and massive environmental degradation. 3.3  A Scientific-Humanist Path to Modernization The scholarly worldview of scientific humanism operates in an entirely different manner. Ontological materialism rejects the existence of supernatural or innately inaccessible phenomena. Bunge’s particular version, incorporating as it does ontological realism, also overcomes the 24  In the original, Stone and Kuznick referred to nuclear bombs rather than general military might. The nuclear aspect, though real, is somewhat anachronistic, for two reasons: all the many catastrophic Western military interventions in the third world were prosecuted in the traditional, non-nuclear way, and there is already a nuclear-armed third-world majority Muslim country, locked in confrontation with a similarly nuclear-armed, similarly third-­ world, majority Hindu country. 25  Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Concise Untold History of the United States (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 305.

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shortcomings of secular but non-scientific ontologies having a phenomenalist or absolutely skeptical stance on the nature of existence. As such, it makes a far stronger case against premodern religious worldviews, those reliant on the supernatural, on miracles, and on the existence of immaterial worlds. In turn, Bunge’s epistemological realism emphasizes the pointlessness of postmodern radical skepticism and subjective relativism. It argues for the possibility and desirability of discovering partial truths, with the help of reason and experience. Bunge’s epistemology also overcomes the flaws of secular epistemologies that have non-systemic views of truth validation. As with his ontological realism and materialism, his epistemological realism makes a more powerful case against premodern worldviews that rely uncritically on revelation, tradition, and institutional authority as the sole methods for gaining knowledge. With regard to ethics, Bunge’s agathonism pulls the rug out from under many secular claims of ethical relativism and nihilism and defends the universality of the mutual restriction of rights by duties, and of duties by rights. Agathonist ethics, based on the primacy of human flourishing, also overcomes the problems of secular ethical theories based on the primacy of emotion, intuition, individualism, or social convention. In this way, Bunge’s prosperity and justice-oriented agathonism makes a stronger case against premodern, religious worldviews having no universal basis, but that simply reflect, at best, moral standpoints belonging to a particular historical era of a particular society. Bunge’s philosophical endeavors operate on two fronts simultaneously. On one he weeds out contradictory, unsystemic, and absurd elements current in competing popular secular philosophies. When truth is reduced to consensus, profit maximization, or a priori knowledge, it descends into contradiction and superficiality. Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) claimed that “the time has come for a moratorium on Ontology and a moratorium on Epistemology.”26 Bunge shows this to be essentially a call for facile ignorance: a call for a moratorium on exploring and understanding the world. On another front, no less decisively, Bunge’s worldview challenges religious ones. When validity is equated with infallibility and immutability of revelation-derived foundations, as is often the case with religious worldviews (Chap. 3), critical evaluation of the historical character of religious experience and institutions is blocked, and the supposed universality of religious claims is reduced to mere rhetoric. 26  Hilary Putnam, Realism with A Human Face, ed. James Conant (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 118.

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3.4  Widening the Paths Given the many benefits of Bunge’s worldview, does it provide what is needed for the next, fifth stage of the modernization journey of Islamic philosophy? To some extent, yes. There can be a valid, foundational, Islamic philosophical system, but only once its ontology, epistemology, and ethics are updated by science and systematized, as Ibn Khaldun accomplished in medieval times. The affirmation is partial chiefly because of a certain orientation, or incompleteness, in Bunge’s philosophy—an orientation that is characteristic of analytic and scientific philosophies in general. Bunge describes Nicholas Rescher as “the most learned, lucid and fair of us [i.e., modern analytic philosophers],”27 so it is Rescher who can best indicate the weakness in Bunge’s system. In his revealing essay, “Who Has Won the Big Battles of Twentieth Century Philosophy?”28 Rescher tabulates that there are three scholarly citations of Continental philosophers for each citation of an analytic philosopher—a clear popular victory marking the spread of the unscientific, illogical, and sometimes morally problematic inclinations of Continental philosophies. If there were no thirst for answers to our biggest questions, worldviews would never be constructed. As Rescher said, “we have questions and we want (nay, need) answers”29 (Chap. 4, Section 2). We need answers and we need them now. When thirsting for answers in the midst of a philosophical desert, suffering ontological, epistemological, and ethical agony, the parched traveler will imbibe whatever worldview is available, even if it might lead to death. Yet, what is made readily available, to the wider public, or for that matter to the community of philosophers? Even the educated and specialized American philosophical community, not the public one, voted with its pens to give Russell, “possibly the most learned man of his time,”30 only one-seventh of the attention given to Nietzsche.31 An explanation of these specialist votes is that to become widely known and accepted, to make it to the public square, let alone to help with social problems actually, not just potentially, a worldview needs to be more than  Bunge, Matter and Mind, v.  This essay is republished and revised in N. Rescher, Minding Matter and Other Essays in Philosophical Inquiry (New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 61–68. 29  Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning, 7. 30  Bunge, Matter and Mind, ix. 31  Rescher counted the number of citations in The Philosopher’s Index of 1988 for each of several major philosophers. Russell had 32, Nietzsche 224. In Nicholas Rescher, Minding Matter: And Other Essays in Philosophical Inquiry (New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 68. 27 28

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systemic, well-grounded, illuminating, beneficial, and largely true: it also has to be culturally relevant and, in some large and perhaps aesthetic sense, appealing. Most people in their childhood are taught languages, moral and religious notions, and parts of social ideologies, all of this much earlier than even hearing the word ‘philosophy.’ Often people come to philosophy not because it was introduced to them or because it called upon them from the start, but because their upbringing and social conditions created so many contradictory conceptions and personal hardships that they were motivated to pursue it, in an attempt to remedy the confusion of ideas and failure of values. Thus, local, personal, emotive questions, although many times pseudo-questions, open an avenue that leads to philosophy. The typical high school student rarely loses sleep over failing to resolve Russell’s Paradox in mathematical logic. Yet the same student may lose sleep over the choice between the ‘will to power’ or the ‘will to knowledge.’ In this way, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is more attractive than Russell’s Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. The orientation of our hypothetical high school student can also apply to a mind as sophisticated as Taha’s. We might call this choice between foundational and emotive philosophy the “Russell versus Nietzsche dilemma.” The dilemma can be stated in the following way: a philosophical worldview should be founded on the deepest roots possible; yet, most often the philosophical spirit is not aroused but by local, personal, emotive, let us say, cultural concerns that are by nature less foundational. Put differently, cultural concerns are within the purview of any philosophically foundational worldview, yet the foundational aspect, the essential feature of a philosophical worldview, tends to be always initiated from cultural concerns. Bunge mostly addresses cultural questions only as asides, his philosophy being much occupied with more abstruse problems from the academic and philosophical worlds. For this reason, Bunge’s philosophy might not be applied to cultural studies for decades to come. The ideas of other, less sophisticated thinkers will be found more amenable to current fashions in media studies, postcolonial studies, literary studies, gender studies, cyber culture, and pop culture studies. Even the renascent democratic socialist movement will have difficulties with Bunge’s ethics and political philosophy: not just because of their sophisticated presentation but for some of their peculiarities. For example, he holds universal nuclear disarmament and environmental protection to be humanity’s most urgent concerns:

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Everything else, even social justice and liberty, come thereafter… Once the survival of the species is assured through universal nuclear disarmament and global environmental protection we should have the will and resources to pursue other ideals, such as universal well-being and even reasonable happiness, as well as equity and freedom.32

This prioritization is no mere offhand opinion: it comes from Bunge’s highest ethical imperative, the survival of humanity. Nuclear war and environmental degradation (with particular emphasis in Bunge’s writings, as due to overpopulation) have the potential to wipe out the global human population, while systemic racism, sexism, social injustice, oppression, slavery, and the like do not. Therefore, by Bunge’s no-nonsense reasoning, universal nuclear disarmament and global environmental protection have priority over any and indeed all other concerns. Taha does emphatically agree with Bunge on the primacy of environmental protection in order to preserve human life, and he extends this to a need for native political-economic sovereignty (Chap. 10). However, Taha’s argumentative reliance on the transcendental makes the environmental primacy, and the common ground for modernity in general, less obvious to the Arab intellectual seeking modernization. As for Bunge’s modern worldview, it is overall relatively detached from what Rescher calls “philosophical anthropology.”33 Rescher defines this as “the philosophical study of the conditions of human existence and the issues that confront people in the conduct of their everyday lives.”34 Bunge’s thought attempts to systematize the rational, natural, and social sciences, while leaving out much of the humanities. Bunge consistently upholds the value of the humanities, but as he holds they should be practiced—of course, with science as a tool and a model for them35—and indeed expresses much contempt for their current state.36 Bunge greatly appreciates what he views as great literature, great art, and great music,

 Bunge, Ethics, 59–60.  Nicholas Rescher, Humanistic Philosophizing: Sensibility and Speculation in Philosophical Inquiry (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 185. 34  Nicholas Rescher, Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 1. 35  Bunge, Understanding the World, 218. 36  For example, “Only in the humanities are endless repetitions of ideas and scholastic commentaries on them, instead of the exploration of new ideas, still tolerated” (Bunge, Understanding the World, 160). 32 33

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but disdains most of their popular forms and passing fads.37 Bunge’s humanistic philosophy is focused on improving the lot of humankind, but a balance between scientific rationality, and humanistic richness and empathy, is missing. Compared to the complexity of Bunge’s scientific system, the seemingly unsophisticated concerns of everyday life contribute a relative advantage to Taha’s Islamic system: unlike Bunge, Taha deals with family virtues, women’s fashions (dress codes),38 sexual desires,39 and the ethics of cyber culture40—despite the ahistorical, ineffective, and non-foundational aspects of his thinking. If Taha would do better to work out the philosophical basis of his overall orientation, Bunge would do better to care more about the cultural concerns of his audience. In other words, the modernization project of Islamic philosophy should be better informed about naturalist ontology, realist epistemology, and agathonist ethics, while scientific humanism has to be still more humanistic.

37  See Kary, “Ethical Politics and Political Ethics,” in Mario Bunge Centenary Festschrift (M. Matthews, ed., Cham: Springer), 468. 38  Taha surprised Arab intellectuals with a recent philosophical volume dedicated to explaining “the spirit of the hijab,” that is to say, the spirit of decency behind the wearing of the veil. In Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Dı ̄n al-Ḥ aya ̄ʼ, Min al-Fiqh al-Iʼtimārı ̄ Ila ̄ al-Fiqh al-Iʼtimānı ̄: Rūḥ al-Ḥ ijāb, vol. III (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-­ Ibdāʻ, 2017). 39  ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭ āhā, Shurūd Ma ̄ Baʻd al-Dahrāniyyah: al-Naqd al-Iʼtimānı ̄ lil-­Kurūj Min al-Akhlāq [lit. the misguidedness of post-secularism: a covenant-based critique of existing ethics] (Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Ibdāʻ al-Fikrı ̄, 2016). 40  Taha dedicates a recent volume to the ethics of communication and cyber culture. In Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Dı ̄n al-Ḥ ayaʼ̄ , Min al-Fiqh al-Iʼtima ̄rı ̄ Ilā al-Fiqh al-Iʼtimānı ̄: Al-Tḥddiyāt al-Akhlaq̄ iyyah li Thawrat al-I‘lām wal-Ittiṣa ̄la ̄t, vol. II (Beirut: al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabiyyah lil-Fikr wal-Ibdāʻ, 2017).

CHAPTER 12

Epilogue: Of Surprises and Gaps, or the Future of Philosophical System Building and the Philosophy of Religion

The future will keep surprising us endlessly. Surprises—whether from technological innovation, scientific discovery, artistic novelty, social and political change, events in the natural world, accident, or simply the foreseeable but unforeseen—may be beneficial, harmful, or benign. More realistically, they are or at least become some ramifying tangle of all three. From surprises, and changes and tangles more generally, conundrums often ensue. How successfully we deal with surprises and conundrums, individually or societally, depends partly on the adaptability of our psychologies and our institutions, but also on the adaptability of our philosophies. We might imagine that the more up-to-date, systemic, and comprehensive our philosophy, the better it will be able to accommodate the inevitable novelties the future holds for us, by suitably contextualizing them. The better too, we might imagine, that it will help us deal with life’s complex conundrums—whether they come at us from the surprising future, or still linger from an unresolved past. Yet systemicity and comprehensiveness may also bring the whole house down, if a crucial support is removed. This was the case for Pythagorean philosophy, and concomitantly Pythagorean society, otherwise known as the Pythagorean cult. By various attributions, Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE–495 BCE) would have been the leading scientist, mathematician, philosopher, feminist, and musician of his day, but his comprehensive, systemic philosophy could not survive the discovery of a single novel truth, the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6_12

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incommensurability of the sides and the diagonal of a square1—or in modern terms, the discovery that the square root of 2 is irrational. On the other hand, philosophies that are piecemeal and fragmentary, or scientifically, socially, and axiologically outdated, ought to be at most dimly relevant to contemporary life. No wonder that today, few Western readers are preoccupied with Plotinus’ third-century Enneads, and probably even fewer Arab readers are attracted to the esoteric and occult philosophical system of al-Buni (d. 1225), whatever their influences in their days.2 Should we expect the philosophies of Bunge and Taha to be equally subject to decay, change, and eventual outdating, in the coming decades or centuries? Are they sure to be eventually surprised by some novelty, so as to be shaken to their foundations, or overturned? Or do there remain gaps in the system, important chapters or volumes yet to be written?

1   Surprise Recently Bunge himself provided a surprising answer to one of these questions. One of the fundamental contributions of his Treatise, indeed one of its crowning achievements, was a scientifically up-to-date, materialist, relational theory of space and time. This was articulated in its volume 3, Bunge’s 1977 Furniture of the World. Although too technical and off-­ topic for our explorations, briefly, it can be said that Bunge conceived of space as things together with the relationship of separation—in turn conceived of as things interposing between other things—and time as the succession of events. That is to say, in Bunge’s materialist, relational view, were there no separated things, there would be no space; were there no changes in things, there would be no time. Even more briefly then: were there no separate, changing things—such as in a universe consisting of one undifferentiated, unchanging thing—there would be no spacetime, the physicists’ term for the Einsteinian synthesis of the formerly two separate concepts. Nearly 40 years later, via a famous set of measurements by the LIGO group, gravitational waves—whose existence was first predicted by Einstein

 Dr. Michael Kary brought my attention to this point.  For the life and corpus of al-Būnı ̄, and the possible influence of his works, see Noah Gardiner, “Forbidden knowledge? Notes on the production, transmission, and reception of the major works of Aḥmad al-Būnı ̄.” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2012, 12, 81–143. 1 2

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a century earlier—were finally detected.3 A scant two years afterward, at the age of 97, Bunge asserted that this detection established the materiality of spacetime,4 with the effect of overturning his own relational view.5 The full implications of all this, in terms of both physics and philosophy, are still controversial and in need of further exploration.6 It is not yet clear whether Bunge’s original relational edifice requires total demolition, and replacement with new construction; or whether renovation alone may suffice. The important points here though are, first, that Bunge himself boldly challenged his own seemingly definitive earlier view. Second, despite the fundamental importance of the concepts of space and time, contrary to Pythagorean philosophy’s fatal encounter with irrational numbers, the change in Bunge’s view leaves his overall system intact. Indeed, it would seem that Bunge anticipated at least something like it from the start: In sum, we may declare our ontological geometry true because contemporary physics says so. But at the same time we should be prepared to see it revised or even revolutionized by new developments in physics.7

The difference in outcome lies with the natures of the comprehensiveness of each philosophy: the Pythagorean system was committed to a single, speculative conception, while the commitments of Bunge’s system are to the materiality of the world, rationality, the scientific method, and a wide network of well-established scientific facts and theories. Even if eventually recast within novel frameworks, the facts will remain the facts, while the theories that were (approximately) true before will remain just as (approximately) true after, only revealed to have been not the whole story.8 As for Taha’s system, it is rather isolated from philosophical revolution for a different reason, namely its fundamental commitments being only to speculative, revelational, untestable (see Chap. 7, Sect. 3) metaphysical 3  Abbott, B. P., et al, “Observation of Gravitational Waves From a Binary Black Hole Merger,” Physical Review Letters, no. 116 (2016), 061102, https://doi.org/10.1103/ PhysRevLett.116.061102. 4  Dr. Michael Kary brought my attention to this point. 5  Mario Bunge, “Gravitational waves and spacetime,” Foundations of Science, 23, 399–403, 2018 (published online first 4 March 2017). 6  Gustavo Romero, “Mario Bunge on Gravitational Waves and the Reality of Spacetime,” Foundations of Science, no. 23 (2018), 405–409 (published online first 20 June 2017). See also Chap. 7, footnote 43. 7  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 3, Ontology I: The Furniture of the Word (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977), 292. 8  Scientists refer to this as the correspondence principle.

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and epistemological theses.9 These may certainly go in and out of fashion, but they cannot be disproved by human endeavor, for lack of testable consequences.10 Indeed Taha’s system, or Islam itself, can be radically modified psychologically within the individual, or socially within society, but it cannot be either philosophically overturned in the manner of Pythagoreanism or scientifically overturned in the manner of Bunge’s theory of space and time.

2   Gaps What then of gaps? Here again Bunge has already offered one answer: twenty years after the publication of the final volume of the Treatise, in 2009 (at the age of ninety) Bunge published his Political Philosophy, which in his memoirs (written at the age of ninety-five) he said should be regarded as the tenth volume of the Treatise.11 This development was hardly a surprise though, surely having more to do with the constraints of the publication process and human endeavor, rather than anything philosophical. Bunge published the earlier volumes of his Treatise during the 1970s and 1980s. In those years, the modern information revolution was just beginning: unremarkably for the time, Bunge composed almost all of the volumes of the Treatise on an electric typewriter. So much about the production, extraction, control, and spread of information true and false has changed since then, and so much have the capabilities of computers and algorithms increased since then, that one might expect huge epistemological gaps to have opened up in Bunge’s philosophy, especially with respect to what has been called the “epistemic coup” and “epistemic chaos” of

9  As discussed in Chap. 10 and unlike his early works before the Arab Spring, Taha now boldly distances his views from all historical actualizations of Islamic civilization, past or present, other than the Koranic and Prophetic examples. He identifies himself as neither a follower of the monarchic Sunni tradition, nor a follower of the Shia path. 10  Of course the Divinity, were it so inclined, could disprove any of them (save presumably for the claim of its own existence) by suitable statements and acts—for example, by appearing universally to all humanity as a monumental figure in the skies, performing awesome miracles, and clearly informing us of the errors in our philosophies or religions. The claim that comparable revelations, albeit on a less grandiose scale, did in fact happen in the past is part of the origin story of all three Abrahamic religions. 11  Mario Bunge, Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist (Switzerland: Springer, 2016), 226. Volume 7 of the Treatise came in two parts (two books), so by that count Bunge’s Political Philosophy would be its ninth volume and tenth book.

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“surveillance capitalism.”12 This all the more so because Bunge remained profoundly skeptical of artificial intelligence technology right from its early days.13 Contrary to widespread belief that computers can think, and do it better than us, Bunge held that “Computers do not [even] compute.”14 Yet, although obviously Bunge could not consider the new problems of epistemic chaos in specifics, the prescience of his system is evident in that he did sound an early warning—in a typically systemic combination of epistemology, ontology, and ethics: “In sum, artificial intelligence is admirable to the extent that it supplements natural intelligence, ridiculous if proposed as a realistic model of it, dangerous if proposed as a substitute for it.”15 Just such substitution—along with the denuded business ethics Bunge decries in his Ethics and Political Philosophy—is the essential new driver of the epistemic chaos of recent times.16 With regard to Taha’s system, as described in Chaps. 5 and 10, it makes no attempt to be comprehensive in the manner of Bunge’s, so gaps and unexplored territory are to be expected. Taha’s system makes no attempt at anything one would call, for example, a philosophy of science. But what of Bunge’s, in mirror image? Should we expect a comprehensive, systemic, up-to-date, scientific philosophy to offer us a philosophy of religion? 2.1  Basic Philosophy Versus Derived Philosophy In the general preface to his Treatise, Bunge explains that: Social philosophy, political philosophy, legal philosophy, the philosophy of education, aesthetics, the philosophy of religion and other branches of philosophy have been excluded from the [Treatise] either because they have been absorbed by the sciences of man or because they may be regarded as applications of both fundamental philosophy and logic.17 12  See, for example, Shoshana Zuboff, “The coup we are not talking about,” The New York Times, January 29, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/ facebook-­surveillance-society-technology.html. 13  Mario Bunge, “Do computers think?,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1956, 7, 139–148, 212–219. 14  Mario Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem (Oxford and New  York: Pergamon Press), 1980, 162. 15  Bunge, op. cit. 16  Zuboff, ibid. 17  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974–1989), v (of every volume).

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By this Bunge means that the various listed fields have no (valid) concepts and concerns of their own that would require philosophical investigation, clarification, and systematization. Instead they would just borrow their fundamental ideas from more basic philosophy, or from the sciences; make claims that should be investigated by science, not philosophy; or else propose invalid ideas. For example, fundamental concepts of social philosophy, such as those of society and the individual, are already explored in Bunge’s ontology; of educational philosophy, such as learning and knowledge, in his epistemology; of legal philosophy, such as justice and crime, in his ethics. Meanwhile, as Bunge would have it, the merits of social and political philosophies would be investigated conceptually with the aid of basic ethical philosophy, and practically by social science; the effectiveness of systems of justice would be evaluated by criminology, and its kindred sciences; the perception of beauty would be explored by psychology; and the perception of the divine, presumably by psychiatry. With regard to political philosophy, obviously Bunge came to change his mind somewhat, since, as mentioned earlier, some 42 years after first publishing that general preface, he wrote that his later Political Philosophy should be regarded as the tenth volume of the Treatise. And surely, to take one example, the concepts of beauty and its kin are proper to aesthetics, such that their scientific investigation would be helped by the conceptual clarification and systematization that a science-oriented, science-informed philosophy might provide. This would be much the same as Bunge finding that the concept of energy, even though well worked out in its particulars and in its relations by physicists, was still in need of philosophical investigation.18 But what then of the philosophy of religion? 2.2  The Philosophy of Religion Bunge says of metaphysics the following: If metaphysics is a part of philosophy then it must be related to the other branches of this field: otherwise it would not constitute such a part. It can certainly be distinguished from the other branches of philosophy—mainly logic, semantics, epistemology, value theory, and ethics—but not separated from them. 18  Mario Bunge, “Energy: Between physics and metaphysics,” Science and Education, 2000, 9, 457–461.

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Following this line of thought, if the philosophy of religion is to return to the fold as a valid part of a scientifically informed, science-oriented philosophy, then like metaphysics, it too must be both related to other branches of philosophy and yet different from them. In former times, in philosophies neither scientifically informed nor science-oriented, the philosophy of religion could dominate, so as to supply the ontology, epistemology, value theory, and ethics, to leave aside perhaps only logic and semantics. In a modern scientific outlook, no such dominance can hold, and a valid philosophy of religion must make some other contributions and connections. Returning to the analogy with metaphysics, Bunge conceived of it as in effect general science, with the sciences themselves, such as chemistry, physics, and biology, being special metaphysics. In this view, if a concept appears in multiple special sciences, it is by that fact the property of none of them alone, and in that way, properly philosophical. This was the case par excellence with energy, a concept used and needed in every science, yet defined in none: that task was then characteristically philosophical and, in particular, ontological. This brings us to the question: is the philosophy of religion centrally concerned with any concepts or facts that extend far beyond its own proprietary interests, but that nevertheless are neglected by every other field? Some of the central concepts of the philosophy of religion are reverence, ritual, worship, revelation, the sacred, faith, and belief. Save for the last two, Bunge’s philosophy explores none of them, except at most negatively and cursorily. 2.2.1 Belief and Faith Of faith and belief, Bunge says in particular we live and die by our instincts and beliefs. In particular all our inquiries, valuations and conscious actions are guided or misguided by beliefs. Thus, we believe in the value of scientific research to know the world. Only, knowledge is not a special kind of belief, and therefore epistemology is not included in the study of belief; moreover, the latter belongs in psychology.19

19  Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vol. 5, Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), 88.

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Accordingly, despite Bunge’s assertion that belief has a universal, foundational role in human thought and action, as with other concepts fundamental to the philosophy of religion, he gives it only cursory philosophical consideration. And as with faith, he treats it mostly negatively—except for faith in science, and belief in its truths. His concerns are mostly to criticize faiths and beliefs that neither root nor are rooted in science, and—rather than to investigate the nature and role of belief, a task he left to psychology—to emphasize what beliefs are not (contrary to major philosophical trends, Bunge holds that neither knowledge nor probabilities are in any way forms of belief—see Chap. 7, Sect. 3). In his minimal philosophical investigation of belief, Bunge proposed that what it means to believe in something is to entertain only the corresponding thought about the something. Beliefs or thoughts would be more or less strong by being in some sense more active or enduring neurophysiologically. Alternatively, he defined belief in purely philosophical terms, without reference to neurophysiology: to believe in something means to both know it and “give assent” to it.20 As in other philosophies, neither of these conceptions allows for the possibility of simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible beliefs21: And yet the founders of modern science in the 17th century, almost to a man, from Galilei and Kepler to Boyle and Newton, were sincere albeit somewhat heterodox Christians. [This is] on the same footing as a commercial exhibiting an athlete endorsing a brand of beer or tobacco. All it shows is that consistency of one’s total system of belief is hard to come by […] The question of the compatibility of religion and science is a matter for methodology, not for history or biography. We wish to know whether the two are compatible de jure regardless of the compromises that individuals may work out.22

 Bunge, Exploring the World, 87.  In agreement with Bunge, Taha holds that the use of natural or ordinary (informal) language, metaphors, proverbs, and so on is an obstacle to making proper universal claims and tends to lead to inadvertent self-contradiction. Ṭ āhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, Fiqh al-Falsafah II: al-Qawl al-Falsafı ̄, Kitāb al-Mafhūm wal-Taʼthı ̄l (Beirut: al-Markaz al- Thaqāfı ̄ al-‘Arabı ̄, 2005), 133. 22  Bunge, Understanding the World, 233. 20 21

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The philosopher curious about the nature of belief, its role in the life of the individual, and the hold particular beliefs so typically have on whole societies might say in reply: especially if religion and science are not compatible de jure, we wish to understand the compromises individuals may work out! Clearly there are many open problems concerning the psychological facts of belief and faith, and their natures cry out for joint philosophical and scientific investigation. Whether the philosophical part is done by scientists, philosophers, or anyone else, it remains philosophical—and unavoidable. Scientists cannot investigate belief without first having some idea of its conceptual nature. For example, contrary to common thought, “I believe x” and “I believe not-x” are not contradictory statements: one or both may be untruthful, their truthful assertion by a single person may (or may not) be empirically impossible, in professional contexts their conjunction may be ethically unacceptable, but a priori they are not logically contradictory, in the manner that “x is true” and “not-x is true” are. A scientist who does not understand even just this one philosophical subtlety is sure to miss the mark experimentally. Correspondingly, a philosopher who pontificates about belief without checking what scientific explorations of the matter find is sure to miss the mark conceptually. 2.2.2 A Wider View of the Philosophy of Religion Yet not just faith and belief, but all of the remaining concepts listed previously—reverence, ritual, worship, revelation, the sacred; and the corresponding practices—occur not only in religious contexts: as hinted at in Chap. 3, all of them also hold sway in secular contexts. Consider the well-known psychological events of the “aha moment” or the flash of inspiration—each so psychologically akin to what the religious describe as revelation. Indeed, whether one would describe a flash of inspiration as merely that, or as a spiritual revelation, seems to depend solely on one’s ontological outlook. Or consider the rituals of the modern Olympic Games—as found in the torch relay, and the opening, closing, and medal ceremonies. It would seem that for their participants, for those who believe in the values of the Olympic movement, for those who have dedicated much of their lives to it, these rituals are as moving and as reverential as any religious ones. Ironically, one of the most revered rituals, the torch relay, was introduced under the Nazis, at the Berlin Olympics of 1936. If only for tactical reasons, Nazism itself was not overtly marketed as a replacement for Germany’s till-then dominant Christianity; nevertheless

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Hitler managed to create what was in essence a religious fervor, most evident in mass rallies heavily imbued with ritual, ceremony, and symbolism. With all that, he brought a nation of tens of millions to a fever pitch and ultimately to war, and made himself into a messianic figure. These considerations support the viewpoint of Chap. 3 that what is key to religion is some sense of the sacred. They go against Bunge’s view that what is key is instead the supernatural. It would seem that the supernatural is instead a familiar human recourse, or even just a convenience, a bonus, a selling point. Supernatural considerations provide easy explanations, conveniently protect against falsification, and in some religions promise a beneficent afterlife (though not in others, such as that of ancient Greece). Yet, as too many cults and mass movements of the modern era have shown, even a nominally secular leader, even one who promises only earthly rewards, can inspire his followers to fanatically kill and be killed for a sacred cause—however harmful, ill-defined, or nonsensical it may be. On the other hand, once a debacle ensues, such that the movement no longer has anything worldly to offer, perhaps the whole ideology may crumble, for lack of a supernatural support. This was the case with communism, and with Nazism before that, both of which survive now only in the form of crumbs. A common reaction to explosions of fanaticism is shock. Are such failures of anticipation due to a failure of surveillance; or perhaps, to a lack of a suitable philosophical lens, one that could bring into focus all the facts obtained by surveillance? The processes of belief, faith, perception of the sacred, revelatory experience, ritual, and reverence spread far beyond religion narrowly conceived, “the system of beliefs and practices concerning supernatural agencies and our relations to them.”23 Perhaps if the philosophy of religion were reconsidered and reconstituted—perhaps also renamed, such as to doxology,24 in parallel with epistemology—to be that field of philosophy dealing with those ubiquitous processes, the associated concepts, and their kin, it might become just the lens for seeing cultish mass catastrophes coming from afar. The social sciences and the rest of philosophy failed to provide that lens in the past and seem to be failing

23  Mario Bunge, Understanding the World (vol. 6 of his Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1983), 231. See Chap. 3. 24  In current, somewhat obscure, and rather infelicitous usage, a doxology is a hymn of praise to God.

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again now, in the context of contemporary economic, political, cultural, and ideological strife. 2.2.3 Philosophical Anthropology and the Philosophy of Religion Chapter 11 made mention of something mostly missing from Bunge’s system, what has been called philosophical anthropology. Rescher elaborates that it “is a fundamentally normative discipline whose mission is to study what is involved in ‘the good life,’” and whose concern is “intelligent living—of determining the nature of a life lived under the guidance of reason”: It examines the human condition with a view to identifying the modes of thought and action that enable people to take rational satisfaction in what they are doing with their lives. When Oliver Cromwell said that what matters for people is “not what they want, but what’s good for them,” he spoke like a philosophical anthropologist. The prime aim of the subject is to identify and clarify the things that people should give attention to because to neglect them impoverishes their lives. […] Accordingly, the task of philosophical anthropology is not to articulate a personal philosophy of life—a set of rules and practical precepts that a particular individual finds helpful in the pursuit of his or her personal goals. It does not deal with one’s idiosyncratic views, preferences, [b]eliefs, predilections. Rather it seeks to examine and clarify the general aspects of the human condition that hold good for everybody, addressing the issues that any sensible person should confront because they represent matters of importance and concern for people at large. The business of philosophical anthropology is thus with the universal principles that should lie at the basis of one’s own particular approach to life. (Think of the medical analogy: “Eat healthfully” applies to everyone, “Avoid sugar” only to some.) [...] Yet how can the conclusions of such a normative enterprise be validated? Is it not all just a matter of pontificating about one’s own evaluative sentiments? By no means! Such subjectivism can be transcended by testing one’s value judgments against the experience of others—and in particular the experience of those who manage to find real satisfaction in living a life based on basic principles that elicit a fair degree of general approval.25

25  Nicholas Rescher, Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 1–4.

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One of the fundamental goals of most if not all religions is precisely to supply the end result of an inquiry into philosophical anthropology as so described: for example, in the form of a conclusion that the fundamental human condition is one of a journey from this world to the next; that the conditions of the passage and the destination are contingent upon living one’s life as specified by the religion; and that the lives to emulate are the lives of the saints or the prophets. In his own philosophy of religion, Rescher reverses that logic: by his consideration of “what sort of God one would have if one could get one’s way”26 (see Chap. 6, Sect. 4.7), it is instead religion that gets derived from consideration of the way one should live one’s life. The latter is in turn to be based on reason—and a broader and possibly very different selection of exemplars. 2.2.4 A Classical Islamic Version of Philosophical Anthropology Taha is centrally concerned with what would otherwise be Rescher’s philosophical anthropology, save for developing it from religion, rather than the other way around. In those endeavors, Taha follows in the footsteps of al-Ghazali, whose widely read Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iyha ‘Ulum al-Din, intended to respond to Hellenistic influences on the Islamic philosophy of the time) gives extensive specification of what, in al-Ghazali’s view, Islam holds to be a proper and hence good life.27 A catalog of some 26  Rescher, Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Heusenstamm: Germany: Ontos, 2007), 2. Emphasis in the original. 27  Imam Abu Hamed al-Ghazali, Revival of Religion’s Sciences: Ihya’ Ulum Ad-din, trans. Muḥammad Mahdı ̄ Sharı ̄f (Beirut: Dar Al-Kotob Al-ilmiyah, 2011); Al-Ghazālı ̄, Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul & Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of The Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ʻUlūm al-Dı ̄n), trans. T. J Winter (Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2016). The first title is a complete but less eloquent translation of the fourvolume original Arabic. The second is but one volume of multi-volume scholarly translation project that is still in progress. The volumes that are completed to date are The Book of Knowledge (vol. 1), The Principles of the Creed (vol. 2), The Mysteries of Purification (vol. 3), The Mysteries of Charity and the Mysteries of Fasting (vol. 5 and vol. 6), Invocations & Supplications (vol. 9), On the Manners Relating to Eating (vol. 11), On the Lawful & the Unlawful (vol. 14), On Conduct in Travel (vol. 17), The Book of Prophetic Ethics and the Courtesies of Living (vol. 20), The Marvels of the Heart (vol. 21), On Disciplining the Soul & On Breaking the Two Desires (vol. 22 and vol. 23), On Condemnation of Pride and Self-­ Admiration (vol. 29), Of Fear and Hope (vol. 33), On Patience and Thankfulness (vol. 32), On Poverty and Abstinence (vol. 34), Faith in Divine Unity & Trust in Divine Providence (vol. 35), Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment (vol. 36), On Vigilance & Self-Examination (vol. 38), The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife (vol. 40), On Patience and Thankfulness

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of its details will help illustrate the difference between philosophical anthropology as conceived by Rescher and what would be an Islamic version of such a discipline. It will also be a step along the way to the question of how the philosophy of religion, reconceived and reconstituted as suggested here, might relate to philosophical anthropology as conceived by Rescher, that is, “to matters of importance and concern for people at large.” In his Revival of the Religious Sciences, al-Ghazali considers a panoply of human circumstances, and corresponding virtues and vices. To Western eyes, some of these remain fundamental, while others seem to delve into minutia. An eclectic catalog28: table manners; marriage and divorce; livelihood; lawful and unlawful things; associating with friends and companions; solitude; travel; listening (to music and poetry); ecstasy; commanding the good and forbidding the wrong in the public sphere; exemplary guiding figures;29 the inner dynamics of the psyche; self-discipline; gluttony and lust; sins of the tongue (misspeaking to others); the antisocial emotions of anger, malice, and envy; obsession with worldly gain; avarice; love of possessions; obsession with status; hypocrisy; haughtiness and pride; self-delusion; repentance; patience in the face of challenges; thankfulness for favorable conditions; fear of wrong and hope for betterment; minimalism; renunciation of trendiness; belief in the unity of knowledge; trust in rational problem solving; love of perfection; examination of one’s intentions; sincerity; truthfulness; self-awareness and self-control; examining one’s conscience; contemplation of existence; remembrance of death; the ritual obligations that structure the communication, remembrance, and glorification of virtues, such as the daily rituals of ablution and prayer, the annual rituals of almsgiving and fasting, and the lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca; and more.30 (vol. 32), On Intention, Sincerity and Truthfulness (vol. 37), and On Vigilance & Self-­ Examination (vol. 38). 28  These are from Eric Ormsby’s translation of al-Ghazali’s structure of human life, with some slight modifications to fit our modern context. Eric Ormsby, Ghazali: The Revival of Islam (Makers of the Muslim World Series, Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2008), 116–18. 29  For a scholarly account of the life of Islam’s Prophet see Tarif Khalidi, Images of Muhammad: The Evolution of Portrayals of the Prophet in Islam Across the Centuries (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2009). 30  In contrast, recently some scholars have ventured to resurrect “philosophical anthropology” as a secular alternative to the traditional religious outlook. Yet, they do not seek to integrate their findings within an up-to-date, systemic, scientific framework. See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy As a Way of Life (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995); John Kekes, The

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2.2.5 The Bungean Version of Philosophical Anthropology The idea of the good life is central to Bunge’s ethics, so central that he almost takes it for granted. Indeed “the good life” finds explicit mention on only three very late pages of his Ethics. On the first of them (p. 285), he only mentions that it and virtue were the major topic of ethical philosophy in antiquity. On the second (p. 361), it is to remark in passing on what the good life is not. Only on the third (p. 394, 5 pages before the end) does “the good life” get a resoundingly favorable, and explicitly fundamental, consideration: All human beings and, indeed, all animals strive for a good life. Moreover, human beings must be able at least to imagine what the good life is like, if they are to bother doing something to save humankind. We need then more than a salvific morality: we need a more comprehensive moral code encouraging us to seek the good for ourselves and others—i.e. an agathonist morality. (Aγαθόν  =  good.) And what is good? Anything capable of meeting a need or a want (Ch. 1, Sect. 3). Whence our supreme Norm 4.6: Enjoy life and help live.

Thus for Bunge, and contrary to Rescher, the good life is conceptually a completely straightforward matter: one merely has to enjoy life and help others live—or, what Bunge views as equivalent, to seek the survival of humankind. How does one enjoy life? By seeking the good, namely anything capable of meeting a need or a (legitimate) want. Rather than Rescher’s quest to identify “the modes of thought and action that enable people to take rational satisfaction in what they are doing with their lives,” for Bunge, reasonable happiness is defined by being healthy and free to pursue one’s legitimate wants (see Chap. 8, Sect. 4.5). The complexities of life instead come in the extended elaboration of the balance between one’s own needs and wants, and those of others. 2.2.6 “Doxology” and Philosophical Anthropology The contrasts between Rescher’s, al-Ghazali’s, and Bunge’s conceptions of what is involved in the good life are stark. Superficially, Bunge’s conception may seem close to Rescher’s, in that it prioritizes needs over wants, in line with “not what they want, but what’s good for them.” But Bunge’s Art of Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); John Kekes, Enjoyment: The Moral Significance of Styles of Life (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008); A. C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011).

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view of “what’s good for them” is based on the satisfaction of both needs and wants, of both self and others. His ethical philosophy can be seen as essentially about attaining “the Socratic ideal of the good individual in the good society.”31 In Bunge’s view, the good individuals are those who enjoy life and help others live, who seek the survival of humankind; the good societies, those democratically made so as to realize those ideals. He upholds that the enjoyment of life does involve meeting idiosyncratic wants, as long as they harm neither self nor others. Contrary to Rescher’s development of philosophical anthropology, within the individual, the nature of and inevitable internal conflicts between those desires that do not harm self or others are problems over which Bunge prefers to say little—and mainly to assert the individual’s right to handle them as they see fit. In turn, both Bunge’s and Rescher’s conceptions of the good life, based on reason and the facts of the human condition as uncovered by science, diverge sharply from al-Ghazali’s and Taha’s, which are based fundamentally on religious faith.32 Rescher’s conception, though like Bunge’s not based on religious faith, unlike Bunge’s does arrive at a version of it. This, and Rescher’s own personal descriptions of the reasons for his commitment to Catholicism, brings us to the question: what role do ideas, feelings, and practices such as the sense of the sacred, reverence, worship, ritual, faith, and belief—and so their study, by the sciences and philosophy—have to play in the good life? For Bunge their role is at best contingent: if they were to help humanity to survive, in enlightenment, equality, prosperity, and liberty, then they would have a legitimate place. Clearly though Bunge holds that they have a long history of instead keeping the bulk of humanity in ignorance, social injustice, poverty, and chains. This would be essentially because they were directed at the wrong objects: faith in religion instead of faith in science, belief in supernatural agency instead of in human agency, reverence for the Divinity instead of for humanity, subservience to onerous and empty rituals instead of cultivating productive habits of work and leisure, holding religious symbols sacred instead of holding human life sacred. But like the natures of faith and belief in general, these contrasts of specifics also call out for joint philosophical and scientific investigation.  Bunge, Ethics, 392.  A significant twist to the Qur’anic notion of revelation mentioned in Chap. 11, Sect. 3.1, is relevant here. 31 32

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Would the daily lives of most individuals improve, were the objects of religious faith, belief, and veneration simply replaced by some secular ones? Or, as many of the faithful hold, would something irreplaceable be lost, such that the change impoverishes their lives—whether they know it or not? Do the answers change with the stages of life? Clearly the philosophy of religion, however conceived, has a vast field of human problems to explore.

3   Coda Bunge ended the last volume of the Treatise with a short and simple paragraph: This concludes the Treatise. May its readers feel motivated to improve on it.

Evident in that paragraph, but also throughout the Treatise, is the idea that the building of a modern philosophical system will always remain an incomplete project. With the advances that modernity has bequeathed us, in science, technology, and now too philosophy, we are much more qualified than medieval philosophers to handle the human. Yet the circumstances of life that modernity has also bequeathed us have made philosophical anthropology vastly more complex. The fundamental thesis of this book is that sustainable global human welfare is the common ground upon which both Western and Islamic societies can build the future. To echo the conclusion of Chap. 11: to further that endeavor, just as a modern Islamic philosophy must reconcile with scientific philosophy’s understanding of knowing, being, and acting, scientific philosophy must reconcile with all that makes up the inner human cosmos, just as much as it does with the external natural one.

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̄ Shāhı ̄n, ʻAbd al-Ṣabūr. Abı ̄ Adam: Qiṣṣat al-Khalı ̄qah bayna al-Usṭūrah wal-­ Ḥ aqı ̄qah. Cairo, Egypt: Dār Akhbār al-Yawm, 1999. Shāt ̣ibı ̄, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhı ̄m Ibn Mūsā al-. The Reconciliation of the Fundamentals of Islamic Law. Edited by Raji M Rammuny. Translated by Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee. Reading, UK: Garnet Pub and Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilization, 2011. Shermer, Michael. How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. Holt Paperbacks; 2nd edition, 2003. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. What is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Theological-Political Treatise. Trans: Samuel Shirley and Seymour Feldman. Hackett Publishing, 2001. Stefano S. K. Kaburu, Sana Inuoe, Nicholas E. Newton-Fisher, “Death of the Alpha: Within- community Lethal Violence Among Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains National Park,” American Journal of Primatology, no. 75 (2013), 789–797. Stevenson, Reed. “Tesla Just Dethroned Toyota as The World’s Most Valuable Automaker.” Fortune, July 1, 2020. https://fortune.com/2020/07/01/ tesla-­s tock-­p rice-­t sla-­s hares-­m arket-­c ap-­t oyota-­w orlds-­m ost-­v aluable-­ automaker-­elon-­musk/. Stroumsa, Sarah. Maimonides in his World: A Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Thompson, Elizabeth F. How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020. Tomson, Peter J. “Jesus and His Judaism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, edited by Markus Bockmuehl, 25–40. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Touraine, Alain. New Paradigm for Understanding Today’s World. Translated by Gregory Elliott. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2007. Townsend, Simon W. et al., “Female-led Infanticide in Wild Chimpanzees,” Current Biology, no. 17 (2007), R356. Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes VII–X. Revised. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. Trigger, Bruce G. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [Uncredited]. “Are We Happy Yet?” Pew Research Center: A Social Trends Report, February 13, 2006. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2006/02/13/ are-­we-­happy-­yet/.

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Author Index1

A Abd al-Rahman, Taha, see Taha, Abd al-Rahman Abderrahman, Taha, see Taha, Abd al-Rahman Abū Zayd, Naṣr Ḥāmid, 291n18, 302n65 Adamson, Peter, 46n87, 113–114 Adorno, Theodor, 139, 139n89 Agassi, Joseph, 7, 89 Almond, Ian, 44 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 4, 5, 114, 125n43, 198, 257 Arḥīlah, ʻAbbās, 127n51 Aristotle, 63, 67, 70, 71, 102, 125n43, 162, 163, 177–179, 177n53, 182, 198, 210, 257, 260, 266 Armstrong, Karen, 71, 331 Asad, Ṭalāl, 56 Augustine (Bishop of Hippo), 171

1

B Bacon, Francis, 23, 71, 83, 142, 168, 347 Badawi, ‘Abdurrahman/Badawī, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, 119n31 Barakat, Halim, 117n26 Bergson, Henri, 125n43, 168 Blanshard, Brand, 76, 108 Brooks, Michael, 219n43 Braudel, Fernand, 16, 17, 125n43 Bruce, Steve, 68, 69 Buddha, see Gautama, Siddhartha (Buddha) Bulliet, Richard, 349 Bultmann, Rudolf, 115 Bunge, Mario, 6–10, 12, 13, 45–50, 47n90, 49n96, 58–60, 65n48, 79, 80, 81n107, 82, 83, 85–109, 125n45, 129, 133n71, 142n104, 145n115, 161–240, 243, 243n7, 245n18, 250–283, 254n38,

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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395

396 

AUTHOR INDEX

254n39, 254n40, 257n48, 258n51, 258n52, 261n65, 263n69, 264n72, 265–266n76, 267n83, 268n84, 268n85, 268n90, 269n93, 270n96, 271n100, 280n125, 285, 299n60, 302, 306, 308, 315, 327, 335, 337–361, 364–370, 366n11, 370n21, 372, 373, 376–378 Būṭī, Muḥammad Sa‘īd Ramaḍān al-, 348n11 C Carnap, Rudolf, 108, 166 Casanova, José, 68 Charfi, Abdelmadjid/al-Sharafī, ‘Abd al-Majīd, 74n84, 149n133, 316n5 Churchill, Winston, 122n38 Comte, Auguste, 54, 166, 168 Confucius/Kongfuze, 53n6 Crossley, Pamela Kyle, 203n119 D Dawkins, Richard, 5, 52n2 Deleuze, Gilles, 101, 101n87, 125n43 Derrida, Jacques, 235n84 Descartes, René, 23, 25, 81, 83, 94, 125n43, 144, 151, 169–171, 176, 177, 206, 299 Dewey, John, 57, 58, 60–62, 74, 76, 78, 125n43, 216, 250, 281, 339, 352 Diamond, Jared, 94n53, 245n15 F Fakhry, Majid, 43n79, 45n87, 111n1, 112n6, 115n14, 192n84 Farabi, Abu Nasr al-/al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr, 112, 192n84 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 61, 62, 66, 75, 103

Feyerabend, Paul, 221n48 Finkel, Caroline, 41n72 Fishman, Yonatan I., 3n4 Foucault, Michel, 125n43, 173 Freud, Sigmund, 5, 6, 88, 125n43, 233, 256, 308n89, 329, 330 Fukuyama, Francis, 296n40 G Gautama, Siddhartha (Buddha), 53n6 Gellner, Ernest, 12n42 Ghazali, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad al-, 4, 5, 9, 50, 111, 124n42, 172, 172n36, 317, 374, 374n27, 375n28, 376, 377 Grondin, Jean, 71n72, 107n109 Gutas, Dimitri, 113n8 H Hallaq, Wael, 9, 50, 111n2, 128 Hanafi, Hasan/Ḥanafī, Ḥasan, 45n87, 119n31 Harvey, David, 29 Hashas, Mohammed, 128 Hassan, Ihab, 29–31 Heck, Gene W., 44n81 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 44, 88, 124n42, 125n43, 144, 168 Heidegger, Martin, 125n43, 133n71, 343n3 Hobsbawm, Eric, 16, 125n43 Hodgson, Marshall G. S., 349 Holland, Paul W., 79n104 Horkheimer, Max, 139n89 Hume, David, 38n56, 91, 125n43, 168, 172, 183, 204, 206, 211, 257 Hussain, Amir, 53n10 Husserl, Edmund, 78, 124n42, 125n43, 168

  AUTHOR INDEX 

I Ibn Arabi, Muhyi al-Din/Ibn ʻArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn, 73, 113, 317 Ibn Khaldun, ‘Abd al-Rahman/Ibn Khaldūn, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, 8n26, 114, 124n42, 358 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Abu Walid Muhammad, 8n26, 45, 50, 112, 112n4 Ibn Sina, (Avicenna), Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn, 8n26, 112, 114 Ibn Taymiyyah, Aḥmad Ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥalīm, 104n95 Izutsu, Toshihiko, 39n59 J Jabarti, Abdurrahman al-, 115, 116 Jabiri, Muhammad ʻAbid al-/Jābirī, Muḥammad ʻĀbid al-, 45n87, 50, 119n31, 121, 128 James, William, 56–58, 60, 65, 74, 82, 125n43, 216 Jaspers, Karl, 53, 54, 245 Jesus of Nazareth, 115 K Kant, Immanuel, 38n56, 65, 75, 83, 91, 99, 100, 125n43, 144, 165, 165n14, 166, 168, 174, 204, 204n121, 211, 288n7 Kary, Michael, 29, 136, 182n63, 266n76, 269n93, 302n67, 364n1, 365n4 Kaufmann, Walter, 60n32 Kawakibi, Abdurrahman al-, 117 Kekes, John, 49 Khalidi, Tarif, 75n87, 375n29 Küng, Hans, 348n11 Kurtz, Paul, 53n4

397

L Landes, David S., 18n11, 41n70 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 81, 125n43, 144, 168, 211, 214 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 66n55, 125n43 Locke, John, 23, 144, 257 Lyotard, Jean-François, 107, 313n115 M Maddox, John, 223n56 Mahmud, Zaki Najib, 119n31 Mahner, Martin, 88, 185, 185n73, 187 Maimonides, Abū ʻImrān Musā Ibn Maymun, 4, 4n7, 5 Makdisi, George, 43n78 Marhenke III Paul, 264n72 Martin, David, 69 Marx, Karl, 5, 6, 67, 75, 77, 78, 100, 125n43, 211, 257, 315 Marzuqi, Abu Ya‘rub al- or Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb al-Marzūqī, 124, 124n42, 125, 125n45, 341, 354 Mashrūḥ, Ibrāhīm, 8n27, 127n51 Matthews, Michael R., 7, 86, 89 Misiri, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-, 46 Moses, Hebrew Prophet, 4n7, 40n67, 72, 74, 77n95, 354 Muḥammad, ‘Alī Jum‘ah, 298n49 Muhammad, Prophet, 72, 74, 77n95 Munaẓẓamat al-Tajdīd al-Ṭ ullābī, 127n51 N Nagel, Tilman, 317n7 Naqārī, Ḥammū, 127n51 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 45n87, 66n54 Newton, Sir Isaac, 22, 25, 81, 81n110, 100, 144, 182n63, 370

398 

AUTHOR INDEX

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 125n43, 256, 283, 308n89, 358, 359 Norris, Christopher, 166 O Obiedat, A. Z., 149n131, 196n92, 280n125, 310n97, 347n9, 354n21, 355n23 Overbye, Dennis, 219n44 P Peirce, Charles Sanders, 216 Pickel, Andreas, 7 Pinker, Steven, 55n14 Plato, 67, 77n95, 102, 125n43, 168, 177, 178, 198, 199, 210, 257, 260 Plotinus, 67, 258, 364 Polk, William, 35 Popper, Karl, 89, 108, 125n43, 171, 218, 219 Putnam, Hilary, 108, 128, 357 Pythagoras, 102, 363 Q Qaraḍāwī, Yūsuf al-, 123, 342n2 Qsı̣ m̄ ī, ‘Abd Allāh al-, 119n31 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 86, 98n76, 108, 124n42 R Razi, al-Fakhar al-, or Rāzī, al-Fakhr, 113 Rescher, Nicholas, 52, 83, 92, 92n44, 92n45, 93, 95–99, 101, 106, 107, 141n99, 142n104, 162, 163, 185, 198, 200, 216, 220,

327, 332, 340, 350, 358, 358n31, 360, 373–377 Robinson, Chase F., 36n44 Rogan, Eugene, 252 Romero, Gustavo, 365n6 Royce, Josiah, 65 Russell, Bertrand, 5–7, 61, 75, 77, 78, 88, 166, 171, 193, 205, 211, 236n90, 257, 315, 358, 359 S Sa‘dawi, Nawal al-, 119n31 Saliba, George, 43n77, 82n113 Schimmel, Annemarie, 60n33 Shatibi, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn Musa al-, 113 Shenhav, Yehouda, 38n57 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 71 Socrates, 77, 77n95 Spinoza, Baruch, 66, 144, 257 Spinoza, Benedictus, 259 Stroumsa, Sarah, 4n7 T Taha, Abd al-Rahman, or Ṭāhā ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, x, 6–9, 13, 45–50, 87, 109, 111–157, 111n2, 161, 174, 197, 239n93, 248n29, 282, 285–335, 337–361 Tahtawi, Rifa‘a al-, 116 Tarabishi, George, 49, 121 Taylor, Charles, 69, 70, 150, 288n7 Thompson, Elizabeth F., 12n43 Tız̄inı, al-Tayyib, 119n31 Townsend, Simon W., 264n72 Toynbee, Arnold J., 17, 120–121n34 Trigger, Bruce G., 63n42 Tunisi, Khayr al-Din al-, 116

  AUTHOR INDEX 

V Viersen, Harald J., 129 Van Ballenberghe, Victor, 264n72 W Watson, Peter, 22, 232, 243, 245–249 Watt, W. Montgomery, 39n63 Weber, Max, 133, 139, 141, 141n102

Weingartner, Paul, 7 Whitehead, Alfred North, 62, 76, 92n45, 166, 211, 236n90 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 175n44 Wright, Ronald, 28n23, 29n26 Z Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, 53n6

399

Subject Index1

A Aesthetics, 9, 133, 149, 343, 346, 359, 367, 368 America, 16, 47n90 American, 21, 23, 25, 26, 33, 35, 38, 47n90, 50, 56, 57, 59, 65, 76, 108, 116, 128, 133, 137, 270n96, 358 Amharic, 73n80 Analytic philosophy, 52, 61, 91, 107, 125n45, 343 Anthropology, 10n39, 93, 113n7, 373–378 anthropological, 255, 291 Arab Arabic, ix, ixn1, x, xn2, 4n7, 10, 11, 11n40, 36, 40n69, 44n81, 45n87, 49n96, 50n98, 56, 92, 111n2, 117, 122, 124, 124n42, 125n43, 127, 129, 132, 133, 137, 143, 148n130,

1

151n145, 172, 176n49, 248n28, 248n29, 252n35, 286, 287n1, 288n6, 292, 292n22, 293, 293n30, 297n46, 298, 303, 304n80, 322, 330, 331, 341–344, 346, 374n27 Arab world, 8, 8n25, 22, 33, 34, 43, 44n81, 45, 45n87, 111n1, 115, 117, 117n22, 120, 120n32, 121, 124n42, 127, 129, 316, 323, 341, 342, 344, 345, 347, 349 Atomism atom, 164, 176, 183, 184, 218, 350 atomist, 102, 175, 176, 234 B Being, 1, 53n7, 88, 111, 117, 161, 209, 248, 286, 320, 338, 365

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Z. Obiedat, Modernity and the Ideals of Arab-Islamic and Western-Scientific Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94265-6

401

402 

SUBJECT INDEX

Beta Israel, 73n80 Biology/bio-/biological, 22, 26, 54n12, 89, 93, 98, 100, 108, 172, 178, 184, 185, 188, 195, 200–204, 210n12, 212, 236, 236n90, 238, 239, 246, 258, 260–264, 275, 279, 282, 298, 306, 307, 329, 343, 350, 369 Brain, 166, 176–178, 182, 187, 199, 201, 202, 209, 210, 213, 216, 235, 238, 240, 241, 244, 245, 262, 263 Britain, 18, 19, 26, 34, 35, 63, 154 British, 17, 19, 24, 33, 34, 38n57, 69, 71, 106, 113n7, 117, 122n38, 137, 166 Buddhism, 53, 53n7, 73 C Canons, 70, 71, 75, 77, 80, 81, 118, 320, 341, 352 canonical, 51, 52, 71, 72, 78–80, 339, 353 Causality, 43, 100, 105, 156, 165, 167, 172, 172n36, 182–183, 193, 197, 218, 347 cause, 17, 25, 77, 82, 99, 103–105, 123, 148, 164, 165n14, 171, 172, 182, 190, 193–195, 197, 203, 205, 251, 252n35, 270n96, 280, 351, 372 Chemistry, 22, 54n12, 166, 202, 204, 224, 236, 236n90, 369 chemical, 147, 178, 183, 184, 188, 195, 200–203, 234, 238, 329, 343, 350 China, 15, 20, 21, 46, 53, 113n7, 334 Chinese, 24, 28, 44n81, 54n10, 82, 137, 170, 334 Christianity, 4, 6, 33n34, 39, 39n58, 42, 60, 64, 71–73, 115, 152, 371

Christian, 2, 6, 10, 11, 26, 33, 34, 36, 36n47, 39n58, 43n76, 53n7, 61, 67, 71n72, 72, 73, 113n7, 116, 117, 192n84, 196, 217, 248n29, 287, 296, 348, 348n11, 370 Clarity, 3n6, 49, 91, 129, 142n104, 239, 283 Colonial colonialism, 9, 16, 27, 32, 33n35, 34, 38n57, 48, 50, 54, 113n7, 153, 154, 345 colony/colonies, 24, 185 Commitment, 9, 19, 34n38, 90, 91, 127, 256, 288–291, 296–301, 305, 307, 345, 365, 377 Communism, 20, 24, 47n90, 79, 91n42, 119, 334, 372 communist, 15, 18, 23, 25, 46, 47n90, 48, 76n92, 91 Confucius, 53n5 Confucianism, 53, 53n7 Consistency, 49, 78, 129, 142n104, 149, 217, 220, 221, 225, 227–230, 283, 306, 342, 370 consistent, 21, 64n47, 82, 100, 170, 217, 218, 230, 231n75, 258, 262, 263, 274, 276n113, 279n121, 290, 316, 326 Continental philosophy, 107, 122n37, 340, 358 Convergence, 52, 81–83, 339 Cosmology, 162 cosmological argument, 193–194 Critical realism, 212, 216, 220, 229 Criticism criticize, 2, 48, 89, 142, 155, 290, 335, 338, 344, 370 critique, 11, 28, 112, 125, 149, 216, 345 Culture cultural philosophy, 100, 344 culturology, 237

  SUBJECT INDEX 

D Deity/deities, 13, 59, 63n42, 64, 65, 67, 82, 161–206, 248, 249, 296, 351, 352 Democracy/democratic, 5, 21–24, 32, 35, 47, 63, 76n92, 117, 120, 123, 178, 181, 189, 255, 269n93, 296n40, 346, 349, 359 Dictator/dictatorship, 32, 35, 119, 121, 124, 251, 341 Doxastic argument, 197–198 Duty/duties, 47, 48, 87, 91, 226, 254, 263n69, 274–281, 274n109, 289, 290, 293, 296, 297, 299–301, 302n66, 303, 304, 306, 323, 329–332, 335, 338, 357 E Economics/economic, 2, 5, 16, 18–20, 26, 32, 37, 45, 47n90, 55, 76n92, 89, 96, 120, 122, 123, 136, 138, 143, 147–155, 149n135, 188, 189, 195, 236n90, 238, 243, 245, 269, 272, 273, 279, 291, 334, 337, 345, 346, 360, 373 economy, 54, 100, 101, 136, 147, 149, 150, 188, 238, 264, 270, 310, 343 Emergence, 11, 16, 33n34, 40, 44, 53–56, 81, 115, 118, 144, 183–184, 186, 193, 195, 201, 202, 204, 221, 235, 245, 258, 344, 347 See also Submergence Empire, 23, 28, 39–42, 39n60, 43n76, 45, 55, 113n7, 196, 203 Empirical, 51, 52, 54, 64, 65, 65n4, 78–80, 82, 83, 90, 91, 96, 162, 172, 193, 194, 196, 218–220, 222–225, 229, 281, 306, 307, 319, 327, 334, 339, 345, 371

403

empiricism, 22, 79, 80, 82, 83, 89, 165, 166, 168, 205, 209, 211, 212, 216, 218, 220, 222, 226, 229 Epistemology, 1, 12, 13, 22, 25, 48, 58, 79, 81, 83, 90–92, 96, 163, 164, 183, 199, 206–240, 250, 259, 282, 306, 347, 348, 349n15, 351–353, 355–358, 361, 367–369, 372 epistemological, 2, 3, 11, 79, 90, 124, 141, 145n115, 147, 165, 169, 189n80, 202, 204, 207–212, 216, 220–222, 225, 230, 231, 233, 235, 236, 242, 250, 255, 342, 343, 350–352, 356–358, 366 Ethics ethical, 2, 3, 9–11, 25, 79, 80, 121, 124, 125, 127, 129, 132, 147–149, 155, 191, 198, 226, 235n84, 241, 243, 253, 254, 257, 261, 265, 266, 268, 273, 275, 282, 287, 288, 290–293, 296, 303, 316, 317, 321–335, 342, 345, 346, 350–352, 357, 358, 360, 368, 371, 376, 377 ethical argument, 195–196 ethical imagination, 249–257 ethical inversion, 293, 296n40, 307–308 Evidence, 40n69, 63, 64, 66, 75–77, 76n92, 82, 135, 143, 146, 169–174, 177, 193, 194, 197, 204, 215, 218–229, 242, 243, 245n15, 247, 249, 308, 319, 352 Evolution, 2, 27, 43, 70, 72, 76, 77, 79, 149n135, 194, 195, 211, 212, 241, 242, 262, 274, 341, 350, 352 evolutionary, 2, 29, 54, 93, 100, 137, 173, 195, 241, 244, 282, 301, 352

404 

SUBJECT INDEX

Existence existentialism, 78, 121 existentialist, 114, 119, 341 Explanation, 6, 67, 79n104, 99, 105, 133, 145, 167, 182, 189n80, 202–204, 209–211, 223, 230–233, 263, 272, 290, 291, 351, 358, 372 explanatory, 62, 63, 199 External world, 1, 91, 166, 167, 169–175, 204 F Falasha, see Beta Israel False falsehood, 3, 217 falsification, 140, 143, 171, 205, 218, 229, 352, 372 Family, 4n7, 13, 39, 55, 111n2, 157, 278, 285–314, 345, 361 familial, 48n92, 52, 287, 297n46 Fascism, 24 fascist, 18, 47n90, 76n92 Fiqh, 149, 316, 323 Fiṭrah, 300, 301, 319 France, 18, 21, 33n34, 34, 34n38, 35, 67, 69, 73, 116, 117, 124n42, 154, 292 French, 16, 17, 21, 23, 34, 34n38, 38n357, 44n81, 50, 54, 66n55, 87, 89, 101, 113n7, 116–118, 122n38, 124n42, 127, 132–134, 137, 166, 203, 253, 289, 290, 341 Formal sciences, 108 G Globalization, 16, 23, 134, 138, 147, 309, 343 global, 16, 309–310, 343

God, 36–38, 42, 59n31, 60n33, 61–64, 63n44, 64n46, 66, 70, 72n76, 77n95, 81n110, 82, 93, 103, 104, 104n95, 116, 121, 131, 144, 152, 169, 191, 191n82, 193–198, 246, 248, 248n29, 268n90, 288, 288n6, 295, 296, 307, 308, 318, 322, 323, 325, 330–333, 348n11, 353, 353n19, 354, 372n24, 374 Good, 1, 8, 12, 32, 36, 38, 46, 47n90, 55, 76, 77n95, 94, 98, 101, 103, 104, 111, 116, 117, 131, 132, 143, 144, 168, 189, 195, 196, 196n91, 198, 211n18, 224, 226, 226n60, 227, 229, 241–283, 288–290, 295, 301, 303–307, 304n80, 305n86, 324, 333, 344, 345, 350–353, 355, 356, 373–377 goodness, 259, 269, 272, 282 Greek, 2, 9, 28, 37, 42, 43n76, 67, 70, 82, 101, 104n95, 111, 112, 124n42, 127, 133, 138, 156, 175, 178, 183, 191, 268, 324–326, 348 H Hadith, or Ḥadīth, 151n145 Happiness, 19, 64n47, 103, 150, 263, 265–266n76, 266–271, 271n100, 273, 276, 288, 290, 291, 303–306, 350, 360, 376 Hebrew, 4n7, 40n67, 40n69, 248n29 Hellenistic, 111n1, 112, 113, 340, 348, 349, 374 Hermeneutics, 52, 71, 90, 107, 107n109, 119n31, 286, 346 hermeneutical, 196 Holism, 184, 235 holistic, 164, 183

  SUBJECT INDEX 

Human humanism, 90, 241–283, 310, 315, 349, 356, 361 humanist, 48, 54, 82, 123, 127, 134, 235n84, 250–252, 254, 256–257, 278 humanity, 7, 10, 47n90, 53, 54, 76, 81, 83, 89, 104, 106, 108, 119, 147, 151, 156, 195, 201, 210, 239, 242, 244, 245, 249, 251, 257, 275, 278, 281, 308, 328, 331, 335, 341, 343, 347, 350, 353, 356, 359, 360, 360n36, 366n10, 377 humanize, 81 human sciences, 5, 55, 238, 239n93 I Imperialism, 33n35, 34, 35, 45, 47n90, 121, 124, 236n90, 341, 355, 356 imperialist, 18, 35, 47n90, 120, 192n86 India, 18, 21, 21n15, 21n16, 53, 113n7 Indian, 8n25, 24, 40, 42, 121, 133, 137, 138, 175, 348 Interpretation, 6, 13, 53, 61, 71, 73, 105, 106, 172n36, 185, 196, 220–229, 243–250, 279n121, 302n64, 342, 346n8 Intuition intuitionism, 90, 211, 216, 218, 220, 229 intuitionist, 78, 218, 229, 282 Invasion, 115, 117, 154, 252n35, 270n96, 341 invaded, 42, 117

405

Islam Islamic, 2, 4n7, 6, 8–11, 8n25, 13, 32, 33n33, 41, 42, 45, 46, 71n72, 72, 82, 82n113, 87, 104n95, 109, 111–157, 162, 169, 192n84, 196n92, 197, 251–253, 253n35, 267n83, 274, 280, 280n123, 285, 286, 291n18, 295, 296n39, 297n44, 298n49, 300, 301, 302n66, 305, 307–309, 311–335, 340–343, 342n2, 345–349, 346n8, 350n15, 351–355, 351n16, 358, 361, 366n9, 374–375, 378 Islamic law, 9, 50, 155, 322–324 Islamic movement, 125, 154, 155, 156n166, 315–335, 350 Islamic philosophy, 11, 13, 45n87, 111n1, 112–115, 115n14, 144, 162, 167, 174, 236, 340–346, 354, 358, 361, 374, 378 Islamic theology, 295, 346 Islamist, 45, 119, 123, 315, 321, 322 Israel, 4n7, 35n41, 38n57, 74, 119–121 Israelites, 40n67, 248n29 J Judaism Jewish, 2, 6, 38n57, 41n69, 42, 43, 53n7, 72, 72n76, 72n77, 217, 348 Jews, 36, 36n47, 40n69, 72, 117, 196, 348n11 K Kalam, or Kalām, 149, 317 Karaite, 73n80

406 

SUBJECT INDEX

Knowledge, 1, 5, 12, 25, 43, 47n90, 55, 58, 62, 70, 76, 79, 80, 80n106, 82, 85, 91, 92n44, 97, 99, 100, 108, 116, 127, 130, 142, 143, 145, 155, 164–166, 169, 174, 205, 207–240, 250, 255, 259, 260, 275, 278, 281, 310, 318, 324, 331, 332n74, 343–347, 349n15, 352, 353, 357, 359, 364n2, 368–370, 375 knowing, 207–240 Koran, or Qur’an, 36, 36n47, 66, 66n54, 70–73, 74n84, 75, 124n42, 152n150, 155, 253n35, 293n30, 301, 301n63, 302, 323, 323n36, 325, 326, 331, 343, 348, 348n11, 349, 353, 354 Koranic, or Qur’anic, 36, 66n54, 252n35, 286, 300, 301, 301n64, 315, 322, 324, 325, 330, 348n11, 354, 366n9, 377n32 L Language, ix, 9, 12, 49, 50n98, 82, 87, 87n10, 88n14, 89, 93, 113, 113n7, 122, 123n40, 130, 133, 151, 195, 207, 209, 238, 256, 289, 290, 341, 343–346, 343n3, 354, 359, 370n21 linguistic, 89, 121, 341, 343, 344, 346 Law, 9, 12, 50, 55, 61–63, 67, 94, 100, 104n97, 135, 142, 143, 146–149, 155, 167, 172, 175, 181–182, 184, 186–191, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 222, 249, 269n93, 275, 292, 293, 295, 296, 308, 310, 319, 320, 322–326, 343, 346, 353, 355, 356 legal, 275, 322

Legitimate, 10, 124, 262–265, 268, 269, 272, 272n113, 279, 281, 298, 327, 376, 377 Level of reality, 233 Liberalism liberal, 76n92, 118, 120, 269n93, 296n40, 334, 352 liberate, 33, 328 Life, 2, 4n7, 7, 12, 16, 17, 19, 23, 26, 31, 35, 48, 48n92, 56, 57n22, 59, 62, 63, 65–67, 72n77, 86, 88, 95, 99, 100, 104, 146, 148, 150, 154, 164, 185–188, 195, 196, 198, 201, 203, 210, 217, 239n93, 243, 247–251, 253n35, 256, 260–262, 264, 267, 268, 278–283, 289, 290, 303–307, 305n86, 316, 318, 320, 323, 335, 339, 344–346, 350, 351, 360, 361, 363, 364, 364n2, 371, 373, 374, 375n28, 375n29, 376–378 living beings, 95, 248 Logic logical, 5, 65, 71, 78, 101, 102, 130, 142n104, 145, 172n36, 192, 192n86, 193, 193n87, 202n115, 204, 219, 233n81, 274n109, 308, 325, 341, 342 logical positivism, 90, 119n31 M Malabari, 73n80 Marxism, 77, 90, 91n42, 121, 140, 215, 290, 291 marxist, 49, 114, 119, 291, 341 Mathematics, 5n8, 9n38, 22, 24, 26, 54n12, 82, 82n113, 108, 138, 143, 209, 227, 228, 236n90, 239, 303, 348

  SUBJECT INDEX 

mathematical, 10, 61, 88, 92, 108, 127, 175, 176, 176n49, 211, 214n25, 215, 233n81, 305n84, 355, 359 Matter materialism, 188 materialist, 240 Mechanism mechanical, 152, 180, 183, 203 mechanismic, 232 Metaphysics, 1, 81, 149, 161–167, 163n7, 204, 206, 208, 233, 368, 369 metaphysical, 60, 62, 71, 104, 204, 331, 365 Method, 3, 3n6, 43n79, 79, 79n104, 80n106, 82, 95, 103, 106, 166, 210n12, 229, 242, 250, 365 methodology, 81, 210, 210n12, 211, 220, 370 Middle East, 33, 35, 36, 38n57, 40 Middle Eastern, 40, 41n69 Modernity modern, 2–6, 9, 11–13, 12n43, 16–22, 24–34, 39, 40n69, 43n79, 44n81, 45, 45–46n87, 47, 48, 52–57, 56n17, 60, 67, 71, 81n110, 83, 85, 91, 94, 96, 100, 104, 107–109, 111–119, 111n1, 120n34, 121, 123, 125, 131–137, 139, 145n115, 149, 150, 153, 161–283, 285–314, 319–321, 324, 329, 333, 338–341, 343, 345–348, 351n16, 353, 355, 358, 360, 364, 366, 369–372, 375n28, 378 modernization, 4, 10, 12, 18–20, 25, 46, 47, 106, 115–140, 147, 149n134, 156, 157, 162, 167, 273, 285, 286, 337, 338, 341, 344–347, 350, 353–358, 360, 361

407

modernize, 19, 115, 139, 144, 155, 335, 344 Moral, 37, 57, 59, 68, 71, 91, 132n70, 149n134, 168, 172, 196, 226n60, 229, 253–256, 254n39, 259, 260, 263–265, 266n76, 268, 271, 274–281, 326, 346, 352, 353, 357, 359, 376 morality, 12, 63, 74, 79, 116n18, 135, 147, 209, 226, 250n32, 256, 259, 260, 264, 269n93, 274–281, 312, 324, 346, 355, 356, 376 Mysticism, or al-taṣawwuf, 149, 295, 316, 317, 320–333, 335 mystic, 71, 73, 119, 155, 166, 191, 306, 317, 341, 349, 354 N Nation national, 9, 26, 139, 148, 270n96, 319, 328, 346 nationalism, 15, 38–39n58, 117, 118n29 Nature natural, 5, 9, 10, 24, 32, 38n57, 55, 66n54, 67, 79, 83, 91, 103, 104, 108, 131, 132, 134, 135, 146–148, 178, 187, 189, 191, 194, 195, 197, 199, 200, 205, 231, 232, 238, 239n93, 249, 255, 262, 272, 279, 290, 291, 299, 322, 328–333, 335, 343, 344, 355, 356, 360, 363, 367, 370n21, 378 natural sciences, 5, 91, 127, 135, 146, 238, 346 Nazi, 48, 63n44 Nazism, 47n90, 371, 372 Near East, 53

408 

SUBJECT INDEX

O Occupation, 34, 107, 203 Ontology ontological, 2, 3, 11, 60, 68, 79, 80, 90, 124, 127, 146, 147, 165, 166, 168–170, 172n36, 175–177, 183, 188–191, 189n80, 195–202, 202n115, 205–207, 235, 242, 250, 255, 260, 306, 342, 349–353, 356–358, 365, 369, 371 Ontological argument, 192–193, 192n84, 192n86 Orient, 35 orientalism, 113, 113n7, 114 Ottoman, 33, 41, 43n76, 115, 118 P Palestine, 4n7, 35, 35n41, 38n57, 211n18, 257n48 Palestinian, 38n57, 211n18 Persia, 36n49, 40, 41 Persian, 8n25, 36, 37, 39, 39n60, 42, 43, 111n1, 348n12 Phenomena phenomenal, 168, 179, 189 phenomenalism, 91, 165–174, 211 Philistines, 211n18 philistinism, 211 Philosophy philosophical anthropology, 10, 10n39, 360, 373–378 philosophizing, 95–98, 100, 105, 106, 114, 118, 162, 245, 334, 347 Physics, 22, 25, 26, 54n12, 55, 81n110, 85, 87–89, 100, 104, 104n97, 108, 162, 163, 166, 178, 183, 194, 202, 203, 205, 211, 224, 236, 236n90, 238, 365, 369

physical, 90, 99, 131, 161, 163, 178, 180, 184, 188, 194n90, 195, 200, 202, 203, 205, 224, 238, 248n29, 249, 252n35, 260–262, 303, 343, 350 Play, 12, 101, 161, 220, 291n18, 303, 304, 377 playfulness, 291, 303–305, 307, 345 Politics, 24, 26, 91, 144, 178, 315–335, 345, 346 political, 2–4, 16, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 28, 34n38, 39, 41, 47n90, 52, 61, 63, 66, 67, 70, 74, 76n92, 87, 89, 91n42, 100, 101, 116, 117, 118n29, 120, 121n34, 123, 124, 125n45, 136, 139, 143, 147, 149n134, 150–155, 156n166, 188, 189, 195, 217, 229, 238, 243, 255, 257, 264n72, 265, 269, 273, 274, 278, 296n40, 316–328, 334, 335, 338, 341, 343, 345n6, 347, 359, 363, 367, 368, 373 Polytheistic, 2, 65, 191, 196 polytheist, 37, 42, 252n35 Positivism, 90, 140, 166, 310 positivist, 107, 108, 119, 204, 219, 341 Postmodern, 2, 11, 13, 18, 31, 46, 52, 107, 108, 161, 162, 166, 170, 174, 207, 216, 285–314, 330, 338, 345, 357 postmodernism, 11, 170, 174 Pragmatic, 107, 141n99, 220 pragmatism, 56, 57, 89, 216, 217, 220, 229 Privilege, 138, 291, 296–301, 307, 345

  SUBJECT INDEX 

Property, 38n57, 55, 79, 82, 167, 175–185, 176n48, 179n56, 187, 187n73, 189, 190, 200–202, 204, 206, 218, 224, 228, 243, 258–260, 273, 294, 297n46, 301n62, 369 Psyche psychological, 2, 19, 51, 57, 58, 60–62, 62n38, 64, 65, 70, 77, 77n95, 78, 80, 83, 85, 97, 123, 166, 185, 191, 195, 200, 202, 213, 230, 234, 238, 240, 258, 260–264, 267, 275, 277, 279, 282, 294, 306, 307, 339, 350, 371 psychological argument, 191, 193 Q Qualia, 165, 168, 180 R Real realism, 22, 79, 80, 90, 167–174 realist, 12, 13, 48, 79, 134, 169, 174, 215–220, 229–230, 240, 257, 361 reality, 1, 3, 11, 12, 61, 62, 90, 91, 101, 136, 140, 147, 150, 161–207, 233, 236, 249, 262, 264, 293, 299, 327, 334, 335, 339, 345, 353 Reason rationalism, 79, 80, 83, 165, 166, 209, 211, 216–218, 220, 222, 226, 229, 310, 324, 325, 349 rationalist, 52, 76, 108, 165, 195, 210, 220, 250, 324 rationality, 5, 9, 23, 46, 105, 125, 135, 136, 139n89, 140–143,

409

146, 152, 209, 286, 325–327, 342, 361, 365 rationalization, 141, 141n102, 312 Religion religionist, 75, 206, 215, 282, 306, 321–323 religious, 2–6, 8–13, 15, 16, 21, 25, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40n67, 42, 51–83, 85, 97, 103, 111, 117, 118, 120, 124, 125, 144–146, 149, 153–155, 161–207, 243–251, 254, 254n38, 255, 275, 279, 285, 287, 301, 306, 307, 312, 319, 321, 322, 328, 330, 331, 339–341, 344, 345, 349, 351–353, 351n16, 356, 357 Right, 21, 241–283 righteous, 62, 151, 300 Rome, 39n60, 42, 128, 348n12 Roman, 34, 35, 39–41, 97, 113n7 Russia, 19, 33n34, 34, 35, 40n69, 47n90, 69, 270, 334 Russian, 113n7, 137, 334 S Scriptures, 6, 71–73, 196, 353, 354 scriptural, 6, 61, 71, 73 Socialism, 19, 73 Society social, 5, 16, 51, 85, 120, 178, 207, 242, 287, 320, 337, 363 social sciences, 5, 9, 10, 91, 92, 119, 125n45, 127, 209, 236n90, 238, 290, 341, 344, 350, 360, 368, 372 sociology, 54n12, 55, 57, 89, 108, 114, 133, 210 Socratic, 53, 53n7, 377 Soviet, 19, 33

410 

SUBJECT INDEX

Spirit, 22, 38n57, 55, 118, 136, 138, 145, 147, 151, 153, 156n166, 164, 187, 247, 247n27, 248n29, 263, 307, 311, 317n10, 318–320, 322, 327, 361n38 spirit of modernity, 111–157, 248n29, 286, 288, 290, 291, 304, 308–314, 316, 328, 340–346 Submergence, 183–184, 186, 204 See also Emergence System systematic, 7, 49, 107n109, 264n72 system building, 8n26, 12, 13, 46, 93, 95, 107–109, 340 systemic, 2, 6, 10–12, 48, 58–59, 79, 83, 92, 93, 102, 103, 105, 109, 111, 113, 118, 129, 268, 269, 306, 327, 340, 347, 350, 359, 360, 363, 367, 375n30 systemicity, 79, 136, 200, 225, 228, 229, 234–236, 363 systemization, 58, 95, 102, 104–106, 314, 340, 349 T Teleological, 191, 194, 195, 312 Theology, 149, 217, 248, 249, 295, 317, 320, 346 Thing, 18, 29, 57, 66n54, 68–70, 76, 78, 81, 81–82n110, 82, 95, 104n95, 107, 116, 118, 130–132, 141n101, 152, 162–165, 167, 168, 173, 175–181, 182n63, 183–185, 184n69, 187–190, 197, 199–201, 203–205, 204n121, 211, 216, 218, 226, 233, 236, 246, 247, 253, 259, 260, 262, 265, 281, 287, 293, 323, 331–333, 335, 355, 364, 373, 375

Tradition, 2, 6, 10, 13, 22, 24, 36, 42, 49, 51, 54n10, 58, 60, 64, 67, 73, 74, 77, 79, 90, 107–109, 112, 113, 123–125, 129, 132, 135, 139, 144, 153, 155, 196n92, 204, 205, 215, 228, 229, 249, 250n32, 251, 260n59, 288, 289, 291n18, 295, 302n66, 309, 313, 315, 322, 327–332, 339, 341, 343, 343n3, 344, 353, 357, 366n9 traditional, 11–13, 20, 23, 25, 27, 33n35, 45n87, 53, 93, 107, 114, 116n18, 119, 122, 131, 149, 155, 156n166, 161, 174, 179, 192n86, 197, 205, 205n125, 210, 306, 309, 311, 312, 317, 319, 322, 330, 333, 335, 340, 341, 356n24, 375n30 Translation, ixn1, 7, 50n98, 66n54, 71, 72n78, 73n79, 88n14, 89, 115, 118, 119, 124n42, 125n43, 129, 130, 133, 143, 151n145, 177n53, 178, 248n29, 286, 287, 288n6, 297, 304n80, 305n86, 341, 348, 374n27, 375n28 Tree of knowledge, 236–240, 344, 345 Truth truthful, 211, 212, 371 truthfulness, 47, 304, 338, 375 U Universal/universality, 10, 21, 48n92, 54n12, 61, 66n55, 76, 123–125, 127, 131, 135, 136, 140, 142, 145, 147–154, 165n14, 169, 177–179, 182, 189, 191, 204n121, 206, 209, 213, 219, 224, 227, 238–240, 254, 255,

  SUBJECT INDEX 

261, 281, 286, 287, 288n6, 302, 308, 311–313, 316, 319, 328, 330–332, 341–346, 349, 353, 355, 357, 359, 360, 370, 370n21, 373 Uṣūl al-Fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, 113, 316, 317 V Value valuable, 47n90, 102, 152, 157, 258, 259, 261, 264–266, 269, 281, 299, 300, 324, 331 valuation, 258–260, 271, 334, 369 Virtue, 3, 5, 66, 76, 77, 99, 114, 123, 131, 151, 156, 261, 294, 295, 303, 304, 307, 308n89, 313, 321, 333, 361, 375, 376 virtuous, 70, 74, 195, 198, 241–283, 321, 324, 335, 350, 351 W Well-being, 65n49, 149, 254, 255, 260, 261, 263, 265–266n76, 266–271, 273, 276, 276n113, 360 West Western, ixn1, xn2, 4, 9–11, 17, 32, 33, 40–43, 45, 45–46n87, 46, 49, 52, 54, 109, 111, 113–115, 113n7, 117–120, 120n34, 122,

411

123, 125, 125n43, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137–144, 146–148, 150, 151, 153–154, 157, 162, 169, 174, 207, 211n18, 239, 240, 252n35, 253, 272, 279n121, 286–288, 290–307, 311–316, 328–335, 334n80, 337, 338, 340–343, 345, 347, 351, 355, 356, 356n24, 364, 375, 378 Westernization, 139, 140, 147 Worldview, 1–6, 9–12, 9n37, 46, 47, 49–56, 53n7, 58, 61, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 80n106, 82, 83, 85, 90–93, 97–100, 105, 107–109, 111–157, 161, 164, 165, 170, 190–202, 207, 249, 250, 254–257, 274, 285, 286, 306, 315, 335, 337–343, 348–351, 350n15, 353, 355–360 Wrong, 1, 3, 32, 37, 46, 73, 211, 212, 216, 217, 243, 249, 254, 256, 257, 274, 275, 289, 318, 319, 375, 377 Y Yemenite, 73n80 Z Zoroastrian, 36n47 Zoroastrianism, 39, 39n60, 53, 348n12