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