Divine Wisdom, Human Rationality, and Normativity

Since language, for al-Dabbusi, is established wisely, the meaning (ma^end) given to words is not random but connected to afdldcι. Fdlda, within the context of language invention, is notjust advantage (benefit) but semanti­cally closer to ‘purpose' or ‘objective'. Al-Dabbusi illustrates the relationship between meaning and purpose with reference to speech (kalam). Speech, he says, be it legislated by God or established by a wise person, inevitably has a praiseworthy purpose (fa ^,lda hamida), namely knowledge (^eilm) for those who need it. He differentiates between four different forms of speech, all of which result in knowledge: Reporting (ikhbar) provides knowledge to somebody other than the speaker; posing a question (istlkhbar) gains knowledge for the one asking; commanding (amr) elucidates something that ought to be made existent; and prohibiting (nahy) elucidates something that should not exist. Although al-Dabbusi does not explicitly mention ‘knowledge' for the speech acts of command and prohibition, they result in the addressee knowing how to act.

That meanings are connected to particular purposes extends for al-Dabbusi beyond speech, but includes all acts. The sought-after result (thamra matluba) or objective (falda) of sale transactions (mubayl^edt), for example, is profit (rlbh). Yet, as al-Dabbusi points out, the actualization of the sought purpose is independent from the occurrence of the act itself; a sale transaction may not result in profit just as speaking may not obtain knowledge (lamyufid al-'ilm). Similarly, al-Dabbusi maintains that it does not accord with wisdom to say to a blind person ‘look’ because seeing cannot be actualized by the blind.^[449] Such acts, one may say, are unwise because they do not attain the purpose of their established meaning. Sometimes the relationship between meaning and its purpose (fa^,idd) may be such that when both correspond, there is also a cor­respondence to reality, namely being true.2^[450] Al-Dahbusi emphasizes that for a speech act such as saying ‘so-and-so entered the house’ to be correct (haqq) and truthful (sidq) requires inevitably the actual occurrence of entering.^{[451] [452] [453] A truthful report that conforms with the factuality of what occurred is, thus, in line with the wise purpose of language to result in knowledge. By contrast, lying does not achieve the purpose of attaining knowledge.}

How does language and meaning relate to ethical and legal norms? Although al-Dabbusi does not articulate a general theory of ethics in his work on legal theory, ç¹ his remarks on divine wisdom, human rationality, and the establish­ment of language allow us to reconstruct the grounds on which ethical and legal norms are assigned to actions. As we saw from al-Dabbusi’s presentation of speech acts, words are not only designations for the meaning of objects (such as ‘tree’) but also for acts.

By looking at the meaning of acts, one can recognize their purpose and, thus, evaluate whether an act is in conformity or not with divine wisdom. As will become clear below, when the meaning of an act aligns with its divinely established purpose (fd¹idcι) - attaining benefit (naf^e) and averting harm (madarra) - it is good (hasan), and when not, it is bad (qablh.).^{[454] [455] While this suggests a Consequentialist assessment of acts, al-Dabbusi draws mainly on purpose to evaluate actions. Badness is not just assessed on account of con­siderations of resulting harm but primarily by being contrary to God's wisdom in creating. Hence, uttering nonsense words is bad, even if it is not harmful. The grounds of ethical norms are teleological, namely their attaining bene­fit and averting harm, yet, whether or not an act is beneficial is measured by its positionality in relation to where God, in His wisdom, deems it should be. Ethical assessment is, thus, solely dependent on God's wisdom in establishing meaning for the act under consideration - be this through divine establishing of language (wadf) or Revelation. In this regard, al-Dabbusi's ethical theory is close to Ashtari conceptions, though he expands it beyond the revealed word to people's god-given language.}

When looking at how one discerns that an act is good or bad, al-Dabbusi's rational tendencies come to the fore. Contrary to Ash^tari ethical theories, he maintains that ethical norms can be known independently from and prior to Revelation. Noteworthy in al-Dabbusi's discussion of ethical values is the almost complete lack of any mention of blame or praise as well as reward or punishment. Where ^tAbd al-Jabbar and al-Basri articulated good, bad, and the legal values associated with them in relation to blame, al-Dabbusi does not refer to either social or divine blame and praise that an agent deserves. Instead, he focuses on the linguistic dimension, saying that good and bad acts are knowable on account of their meaning (ma^rna), namely either on account of the meaning of the act itself or on account of a meaning in something other than the act.3⁴ Al-Dabbusi differentiates between four categories of good and bad acts, according to how one knows their meaning. One category of acts is assessed rationally according to the meaning of the act itself; the other three types of acts are evaluated in light of the meaning they receive from scriptural information. I will first present his understanding of rational assessment, and then detail how Revelation impacts ethical and legal normativity.

ι.ι RationalAssessmentofActs

For al-Dabbusi, reason is able to assess some acts as good or bad due to the meaning (ma^rna) of the act itself (^rayn al-fi^cl, fl dhdtihi).^[456] Their goodness or badness is known either on account of the conventional meaning (al-ma^rna fl wad^rihi) given to the act in this world (fl-l-shahid) or because its meaning is so closely linked to something conventionally understood to be good or bad that it joins that assessment?^[457] Goodness, as said above, is assessed in relation to the purpose (fd^,ida) of its meaning. When an act accomplishes the purpose of its meaning, then it is good. As examples of rationally good acts of this cat­egory, al-Dabbusi mentions exaltation (ta^rzlm) and prayer (salat). Exaltation is an act that by its conventional meaning is good?^[458] Closely related to it is prayer, because, al-Dabbusi maintains, it is connected to the performance of actions and words used for exaltation (ta^czlm), and, hence, the act of prayer is under­stood to be good in itself.3^{[459] [460] As examples of acts that are bad in themselves, al-Dabbusi lists maleficence (safah),39 senselessness (cabath), ignorance (jahl) and injustice (zulm). In contrast to good acts, al-Dabbusi immediately links bad acts to their legal status. They are prohibited rationally because they are inherently bad (fl caynihi) (more on that below).[461] Al-Dabbusi’s statements that some acts are known to be good or bad on account of their inherent mean­ing does not satisfactorily tell us what makes them so. A closer look at his dis­cussion of the legal status of acts sheds some light on this question.}

Al-Dabbusi argues that people rationally know that the world was created for their benefit (naf) and maslahas. Hence, he says that reason assesses acts to be fundamentally permissible (mubah) to engage in and benefit from them. Permissibility applies in particular to acts that are necessary for life in this world, namely those that support life, like drinking, eating, and breathing; that prevent from perdition and that perpetuate the species, such as intercourse; that support the flourishing of humans after birth, like nursing; and derivations of these acts as long as there is no countervailing factor.^[462] The assessment of an act to be permissible may, however, change - yet, only toward prohibition, since, as mentioned above, only Revelation establishes obligation.

When explaining how and why the assessment of an act changes from per­missibility to prohibition without revelatory information al-Dabbusi again draws on the wisdom of creation. He states that exaltation that is done outside of its appropriate time and circumstance Jighayrhinihiawhdlihi) ceases to be good but is mixed with bad and, thus, prohibited to perform^² Being contrary to wisdom is the criterion by which acts are assessed as bad and prohibited. The lack of wisdom explains why al-Dabbusi considers ignorance Jahl), injus­tice (zulm), senselessness (^cabath), and maleficence (safah) to be inherently bad and, thus, prohibited^³ Ignorance is a deliberate abandonment of the fac­ulty of reason, which forfeits its purpose (gharad), namely, as al-Dabbusi says, to arrive at knowledge of humans' unseen maslahas (masdlihghd^,iba), which sense perception is unable to obtain. 44 In light of what al-Dabbusi says of the obligation to know that there is a Creator who fashioned the world and all in it, ignorance Jahl) is deliberately ignoring the signs about the Creator and of humanity's place in His created world; it comes close to the meaning of kufr. Injustice, according to al-Dabbusi, is an act that puts something out of place (fighayr mawdi^cihi) after knowing its proper place.45 Putting something ‘out of its place' counteracts wisdom and, thus, is bad and prohibited (Aardm).4? Injustice, one may say, is an intentional violation of the divine order and, he says, even worse than ignorance. Senselessness is a term for an act that is devoid of advantage Ja^,ida), because - and here our author reveals his theory of human action - any action involves effort (mashaqqa), even if only slightly so. An act that does not aim at an advantage greater (awld) than the effort involved is, thus, rationally prohibited. Maleficence designates an act from which harm (madarra) follows; it is more evil than senselessness since it not only misses an advantage but adds harm. Al-Dabbusi states that “maleficence is to senselessness what injustice is to ignorance.”^{[463] [464] Ignorance and senseless­ness are devoid of advantage (hirman al-fa,ida) and injustice and maleficence result in bad consequence (qubh. al-cdqiba).48 In short, the grounds for the ethi­cal assessment of acts are the absence of attaining benefit and the presence of inflicting harm.}

Al-Dabbusfs understanding of rationally prohibited acts does not stop, how­ever, at matters pertaining to the mundane world. He also considers that the intellect can assess some religious acts to be prohibited, namely the following four: belief in a false god (taghut); the belief that creation is only for this world and for the pursuit of one's appetites; denial (inkdr) of the Creator (sdni^e); and denial of resurrection for compensation (al-inkar bi-l-ba’th li-l-jazd¹).4^[465] The grounds on which these acts are prohibited is that they are rationally implau­sible, such as belief that anything other than God is non-temporal (muhdith). Or they are contrary to wisdom by putting something out of its place, such as ingratitude towards one's benefactor (kuf'r bi-man an^,ama ^calayhi).^[466] The acts al-Dabbusi mentions in this category appear at first to be counterparts to the acts he deems rationally obligatory to know about religious matters mentioned above. However, al-Dabbusi stresses that these acts are prohibited not because they are the opposites of what is obligatory to rationally know about God and the world but due to their inherent badness, i.e., they are contrary to wisdom.^{[467] [468]} He thereby disconnects the category of prohibited from omitting an obligation but instead asserts that prohibition is the legal norm for acts deemed bad by themselves (i.e., non-wise), which are assessable independently of Revelation. Prior to Revelation, acts are only legally assessed as either permissible or prohibited.

Although al-Dabbusi calls these acts bad and prohibited on account of their inherent meaning, he considers such digression from their proper place to be an accident (’arid). Assessing an act as prohibited is not on account of the act itself, ontologically, but stems from an indication, which is accidental (dalll ’arid) to it,52 namely its consequence in relation to the place given to it by the divine creative wisdom. In his explanations of why acts, such as igno­rance and injustice, are bad, we see that, similar to our Muhazili scholars, al-Dabbusi constructs their badness configurational, in relation to the wise place deemed proper for actions, i.e., that they should result in benefit or avoid harm. Moreover, these consequences are tangible in this world.

We see that al-Dabbusi has a teleological perspective. Acts are assessed in relation to the purpose (fd^,idd) for which they were created. An act that devi­ates from a beneficial outcome toward a consequence that is outside of the place assigned by divine wisdom is determined to be bad and prohibited. It is the non-conformity with the wisdom of their advantage and benefit which makes these acts bad. An act is not bad independently of God's wisdom. Where ^tAbd al-Jabbar argued that acts are only good when done for their good conse­quence directed at another, al-Dabbusi considers an act to be good only when it conforms to the divine wisdom that aims at advantage. In this regard, both scholars take their normative standard from God.

Since the divine creative wisdom is rationally discernable, reason is able to assess the ethical and legal status of acts. Rationally good acts are per­missible and bad acts are prohibited. However, as already mentioned above, al-Dabbusi excludes from rational evaluation the category of obligation - in alignment with al-Maturidi.^{[469] [470] Nevertheless, he opens a backdoor to allow for rational contemplation to shift the evaluation of an act from permissible to obligatory - albeit outside the realm of certainty. He argues that the knowl­edge that people are created to worship God holds the possibility that it is religiously obligatory (al-wujub li-l-dln) on humans to act in ways that support their existence, namely through eating, drinking, breathing, protecting oneself from the evil of enemies as well as cold and heat. Not doing so to the point of perishing could be seen as sin (ithm). We see that, contrary to Abd al-Jabbar and al-Basri who hold eating and drinking to be permissible acts, al-Dabbusi deems them obligatory, even if only probabilistically, in order to uphold one's existence. Similarly, he argues that intercourse as a way to perpetuate the spe­cies can rationally be considered a duty (fard) that is fulfilled by some people having children. 54}

Al-Dabbusi's efforts to include eating, drinking, and procreation into the category of obligatory is, however, not driven by his endorsement of human rationality but rather by his position that there is no contradiction between reason and Revelation. He emphasizes that both reason and the Law are a proof (Juijjct) from God for His servants and, thus, they cannot contradict one another. It is impossible that reason evaluates something completely differ­ent from what the Law obliges or prohibits. Any discrepancy between rational and religious assessment is attributable to paucity of contemplation or lack of rational indication.^{[471] [472] [473] [474] His empirical bend leads al-Dabbusi to argue, for exam­ple, that even without Revelation it is possible to know that fornication (zina) should be prohibited because raising children is the responsibility of men, and one man cannot provide for the maintenance of too many children, which would lead to their perdition. Hence, even though fornication serves procre­ation, wisdom calls for prohibiting it outside of a committed relationship^6 Despite efforts to align rational with religious norms, al-Dabbusi empha­sizes that definite obligation is only established by the revealed Law. Without Revelation, acts only change their status from permissible to non-permissible.}

1.2 Assessment of Acts in Light of Divine Command and Prohibition

Although al-Dabbusi seemingly awards to the intellect a wide range in assess­ing the ethico-legal status of acts, he nevertheless gives primacy to Revelation. Revelation is the standard against which all acts should be measured. The Law, al-Dabbusi says, was revealed to complete what people can know rationally, in particular to let them know about the specific ways of worshipping God, the AwdwaLpunishments, and whatever the intellect cannot attain without sig­nificant contemplation (jadd ta^,ammul), which would be a hardship (haraj) on them.57 The main way in which the revealed Law informs about the ethical and legal status of acts is by God commanding or prohibiting certain actions.

Al-Dabbusi explains that command (amr) means that the commanded ought to be made to exist, i.e., should be acted upon. When the command is issued by God, it becomes obligatory (wajib) upon people to make the com­manded exist, i.e., to obey. Moreover, he holds that we know that an act commanded by God is good, because God's wisdom (hikma) makes it incon­ceivable that He commands something unless it is good (hasan) in the eyes of God (4nda Llah). Being wise and without maleficence (safah), God does not command anything bad, and what He commands cannot be but good.5⁸ Al-Dabbusi similarly frames divine prohibition (nahy) in relation to God's wis­dom. God issues a prohibition (nahy) regarding the performance of acts that in His eyes (^rinda Lldh) ought not to exist.^[475] Just as command indicates that the commanded is good, divine prohibition indicates the badness (qablh) of the proscribed. However, contrary to command, which requests action (i.e., obli­gation) on part of the servant, al-Dabbusi points out that prohibition requests that an act does not exist, i.e., is refrained from.^{[476] [477] [478] [479] [480]}

We see that divine wisdom is the starting point for al-Dabbusi’s explanation of the goodness of commands and the badness of prohibitions. Similar to ^tAbd al-Jabbar and al-Basri, he holds that we know that an act commanded by God is good, because God’s wisdom (hikma) makes it inconceivable that He com­mands something unless it is good (hasan) in the eyes of God (^cinda Llah).61 Although al-Dabbusi does not endorse the Muttazili view that God is obliged to command only what is good,6² he also differs from the Ashtari understanding that only through divine command an action is recognizable as good. A com­manded action is good, one may say, because God commands it in accordance with His wisdom that the act should be performed. God’s wisdom is prior to His command and He commands an act because, in His wisdom, God deems it good to exist.63 Al-Dabbusi thereby affirms, like Muttazilis, that God only does what is good, yet, like Ashtaris, preserves divine omnipotence to deter­mine what is good and bad; there is no goodness independent of His wisdom.

Good and bad as well as obligatory and prohibited, however, are not stable values in this world. Al-Dabbusi’s relativism regarding the normative status of acts was already at display in his discussion of the rational assessment of the act of exaltation, which may change from being good and permissible to bad and prohibited. When he categorizes the status of acts known from revealed information, we again encounter his emphasis on the context in which acts are performed. Some acts, he states, are not evaluated as good or bad on account of the meaning of the act itself, but because the meaning in which they are used is connected (Ittasala) to something else on which their meaning depends.6⁴ Their ethical status does not inhere in the act. For example, giving alms (zakat) or fasting (sawm) is good, al-Dabbusi says, because God commands it. Yet, as in the case of zakat, giving part of one's property to the poor is only completed as a fulfilled command by the existence of the destitute. Without paupers, giving alms would not be good because it cannot be actualized, or achieve its purpose. Likewise, fasting (sawm), al-Dabbusi explains, requires restraining the appetitive self (al-nafs al-shahwdniyya) from following the desire for food and sexual fulfill­ment. The act of fasting is predicated on the existence of the appetitive soul.^{[481] [482] [483] [484] [485] [486]} Bad acts in this category include, for example, prayer without ablution (wudu¹). Since the Law restricts competence for performing the prayer to being free from ritual impurity (hadath), praying in the state of impurity is senseless (Jtbath)Jⁱ' It is the fact that prayer (the meaning of which is inherently good) is linked by Revelation to being done in a state of purity that leads to evaluating a prayer performed without ritual ablution as bad.6⁷ Al-Dabbusi's examples show that whether an act is commanded or prohibited by God is not the sole criterion for assessment but depends on factors unrelated to the meaning of the act itself.

In addition to differentiating between the assessment of acts based on their inherent meaning and those that depend on the existence of something unre­lated to the act, al-Dabbusi sets apart acts that are good or bad due to a meaning in other than it. The meaning of good or bad, he says, obtains based on a divine command or prohibition that is not essential to the act itself but receives its ethical norm only from being an act of worship or, in the case of bad acts, by being attributive (wasfan) to the act Hselfd^is Jlhad against infidels, al-Dabbusi says, is good as an act of aggrandizing (L^rLuj Islam, though fighting, taken by itself, is an act of corruption (Jasad) and as such is bad. Likewise, executing the hudud punishments, which inflicts harm (Ldrdr), is good as a punishment that deters from disobedience, yet it is only a disobedience due to the divine word establishing the hudud acts as such.6⁹ As an example of a bad act of this category, al-Dabbusi mentions usurious sale transactions (riba). To the mean­ing of sale being ‘good', and, hence, permissible, the Law added the condition (shart) of equivalence (mumdthala), which when absent changes the status of sale to bad and prohibited/⁰ Only with Revelation does the evaluation of the meaning of these acts change. Their ethico-legal value is correctly assessable only from divinely revealed information.

Sometimes, the assessment of an act obtains not from the act itself but because the act is done in association with a subsequent act on account of which the first action is performed. Being assessed as good or bad derives from being associated with or being a means to another, separate act that the Law commanded or prohibited. For example, the act of performing ablu­tion (wuduj, al-Dabbusi says, is an act of washing (ghusl) that refreshes and cleanses.^{[487] [488] [489] [490] It is a good act because the believer intends with the act of wash­ing her ability to perform the commanded prayer. Likewise, hastening (say) to the congregational Friday prayer is good - and since enjoined by Revelation obligatory72 - because it is the occasion (sabab) for making it possible to per­form the commanded congregational prayer; in itself, hastening is simply per­missible (mubdh). The evaluation of hastening or performing ablution does not result from these acts themselves but follows from these acts being done with the intention of performing a good act, namely the commanded Friday prayer.73 In the same vein, it is considered bad and prohibited to engage in permissible sale transactions at the time of the call for congregational prayer because preoccupation with sale prevents from hastening to prayer. The same rationale, according to al-Dabbusi, also makes praying on usurped land pro­hibited. While prayer itself is good, performing it under conditions that are prohibited (usurpation), changes it into a prohibited act?4 We see that in mat­ters that pertain to religion, considerations of mundane benefit and harm does not determine their status. Their status is assessed in relation to God's imposi­tions. Their wise purpose (Jd1Ida) is to worship God as an act of obedience, which is only obligatory after Revelation has occurred. Acts imposed by God are, thus, evaluated deontologically, not in consequentialist terms.}

The relativity of norms is a notion that al-Dabbusi highlights. He points out that obligatory acts (i.e., those commanded) are only obligatory as long as the meaning that makes it obligatory remains obligatory. Hence, the obligation to pray over the deceased ceases when the dead is an infidel or a highway robber, and the obligation to wage jihad against infidels is lifted upon them accepting Islam.^[491] Bad acts follow the same pattern. They are prohibited (Aardm)^{[492] [493] [494] and not legally valid (ghayr mashrue) to perform, as long as that on account of which they are assessed as bad remains in its status.77 The relativity in assess­ing the legal status of acts seems to be preventing al-Dabbusi from defining the other legal norms.78 He focuses on obligatory (wajib), prohibited (haram), and permissible (mubdh), without discussing in any detail the other legal norms?[495] He only says that in order to determine the legal value of acts one first has to look at the principle (asl) ruling of the act, and then investigate whether an accident (carid) or attribute (sifa) was added or taken away from it that changes its legal assessment.[496] He no further explains the differences between the five legal norms, neither in terms of praise or blame nor in terms of punishment and reward, nor with regard to God's wisdom or benefit and harm.}

The above presentation showed that underlying al-Dabbusi's ethical and legal normativity is his commitment to God's wisdom. People rationally know that God's wisdom in creation is not senseless but that all action should lead to some form of mundane benefit for humans. The semantic meaning of acts conveys their wise purpose (fa^,ida). The ethico-legal value of these acts is rationally discernable. This is the domain in which people autonomously assess the value of acts based on their conventional wise meaning. People are motivated to act in pursuit of some form of advantage and benefit (fd^,ida, jalb al-naf), which they know to be permissible on account of their knowledge that the world was created for their benefit and maslaha. Obligation, however, is only imposed by Revelation.

In contrast to rationally discernable norms, where al-Dabbusi displays a con­sequentialist approach, in matters that are regulated by the Law deontology is dominant. Their ethical status is determined not by their inherent meaning but by being acts of worship. God's commands and prohibitions establish obligation to act and to refrain from action. Divine command is a request for worship in and of itself. Worship ('ihada), for al-Dabbusi, is not a logical entailment of command but is an attribute established for the commanded act linguisti­cally (Iughatan). The human intellect assents to perform such acts of worship based on the knowledge that worship is a good act - which is obligatory to know.^{[497] [498] [499] [500] [501] Al-Dabbusi expresses this clearly when he says that the attribute of good follows the attribute of worship (tahaca sifat al-hasan sifat al-’ihada)?2 In this sense, people obey divine command and prohibition because they know that, as acts of worship, they are good. The individual acts the Law imposes on humans are good because they are acts of worship. This goodness, how­ever, is predicated on the beneficial outcome (fa,ida) that worship entails. Although al-Dabbusi does not focus on divine reward or punishment in the evaluation of ethico-legal normativity, he mentions that the desire for paradise is the occasion (sabab) for human obedience and that fear of hellfire is the occasion (sabab) that deters from committing acts of disobedience (macasin).83 Obedience, thus, is a combination of deontological considerations - one obeys because of God's request - as well as the knowledge that obedience to God's commands and prohibitions as act of worship, by definition, is good and leads to beneficial consequences and averts harm in the Hereafter. The goodness of worship is prior to one's obligation to do what God intends people to do. Let's explore whether al-Dabbusi considers the divine legislative wisdom to be extendable in the procedure of analogy.}

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