DOMESTIC SCIENCE
Acknowledging his debt to Ibn Sina,33 Tusi defines home (manzil) as a particular relationship existing between husband and wife, parents and children, master and servant, and wealth and its possessor. The aim of do¬mestic science (tadbir-i manzil) is to evolve an efficient system of discipline, conducive to the physical, social, and mental welfare of this primary group, with father as its controlling head. The father's function is to maintain and restore the equipoise of the family, having in view the particular dispositions of the constituents and the dictates of expediency in general.
Wealth is necessary for achieving the basic ends of self-preservation and race-preservation. For its acquisition, Tusi recommends the adoption of noble professions and the achievement of perfection in them, without ever giving way to inequity, infamy, and meanness. Hair-dressing and filth-clearing are, no doubt, mean and repulsive professions, but they are warranted on the ground of social expediency.
Tusi regards the saving of wealth as an act of prudence, provided it is not prompted by greed or miserliness, and does not cause hardship to the consti¬tuents of the home or involve the risk of one's integrity and prestige in society. In matters of expenditure, he stands for moderation in general. Nothing should be spent which may smack of extravagance, display, miscalculation or stinginess.
Not gratification of lust, but procreation and protection of property are the basic aims of marriage. Intelligence, integrity, chastity, modesty, shrewdness, tenderness of the heart, and, above all, obedience to husband are the qualities which ought to be sought in a wife. It is good if she is further graced with the qualities of noble birth, wealth, and beauty, but these are absolutely undesirable if not accompanied with intelligence, modesty and chastity.
Administrative expediency requires that the husband should be awe-inspiring. He may be benevolent and magnanimous to his wife, but in the wider interests of the home, he should avoid excessive affection, keep her in seclusion, and should not confide secrets or discuss important matters with her. Polygamy is undesirable because it invariably upsets the whole domestic organization. Women are feeble-minded by nature and psychologically jealous of another partner in the husband's love and fortune.
The concession of polygamy is reluctantly given by Tusi to kings because they are in a position to command unconditional obedience, but even for them it is desirable to avoid it as an act of prudence. Man is to the home as heart is to the body, and as one heart cannot give sustenance to two bodies, so one man cannot manage two homes So great is the sanctity of home in Tusi's eyes that he even advises people to remain unmarried if they are unfit to enforce family equilibrium.
On the discipline of children, Tusi, following Ibn Miskawaih,34 begins with the inculcation of good morals through praise, reward, and benevolent censure. He is not in favour of frequent reproof and open censure; the former increases the temptation, and the latter leads to audacity. After bringing home to them the rules regarding dining, dressing, conversation, behaviour, and the manner of moving in society, the children should be trained for a particular profession of their own liking. The daughters should be specifically trained to become good wives and mothers in the domestic set-up.
Tusi closes the discussion with the greatest emphasis on the observance of parental rights, as enjoined by Islam. Psychologically speaking, children realize the rights of the father only after attaining the age of discrimination, but those of the mother are evident from the very start of life. From this Tusi concludes that paternal rights are largely mental, while maternal ones are largely physical in character. Thus, to the father one owes unselfish devo¬tion, veneration, obedience, praise, etc., and to the mother, the provision of food, clothes, and other physical comforts.
Lastly, servants are to home as hands and legs are to man. Tusi recommends that they should be treated benevolently, so that they may be inspired to identify their interests with those of their master. The underlying idea is that they should serve out of love, regard, and hope, and not out of necessity compulsion, and fear, which affect adversely the interests of the home.
To sum up: Home for Tusi is the centre of domestic life. Income, saving, expenditure, and the discipline of wife, children, and servants, all revolve round the general welfare of the family group as a whole.
POLITICS
Farabi's Siyasat al-Madinah and Ara' Ahl al-Madinat al-Fadilah form the first attempt towards the philosophical formulation of a political theory in the Muslim world. He used `ilm al-madani both in the sense of the civic science and the science of government. Following him, Tusi has also used siyasat-i mudun in both of these senses. In fact, his treatment of the need for civic society (tamad¬dun) and the types of social groups and cities is largely derived from Farabi's views on the subject.35
Man is by nature a social being. To substantiate his position, Tusi refers to insan, the Arabic word for man, which literally means to be gregarious or associating. Since this natural sociability36 (uns-i taba'i) is characteristically human, it follows that the perfection of man consists in evincing this character¬istic fully towards his fellow-beings. Civilization is another name for this perfection. It is for this reason that Islam has emphasized the superiority of congregational prayers over those offered in isolation.
The word tamaddun is derived from madinah (city) which means living together of men belonging to different professions for the purpose of helping one another in their needs. Since no man is self-sufficient, everyone is in need of help and co-operation from others. Wants differ from man to man and the same is true of the motives which induce one to co-operation. Some seek co-operation for the sake of pleasure; others are prompted by the consideration of profit; and still others aim at goodness or virtue. This diversity in the causes of co-operation leads to conflict of interests resulting in aggression and in¬justice. Thus arises the need for government to keep everyone content with his rightful lot without infringing the legitimate rights of others.
Administra¬tion of justice, therefore, is the chief function of a government, which should be headed by a just king, who is the second arbitrator, the first being the divine Law. He can exercise royal discretion in minor details according to the exigencies of time and occasion, but this too should conform to the general principles of the divine Law. Such a king, Tusi concludes, is the vicegerent of God upon earth, and the physician of the world temper.
As to the qualities of this monarch, he should be graced with the nobility of birth, loftiness of purpose, sobriety of judgment, firmness of determination, endurance of hardship, large-heartedness, and righteous friends. His first and foremost duty is to consolidate the State by creating affection among its friends and disaffection among its enemies, and by promoting unity among the savants, warriors, agriculturists, and business men - the four constituents of the State.
Tusi then proceeds to lay down the principles of war ethics for the guidance of rulers. The enemy should never be taken lightly, however lowly he might be, but at the same time war should be avoided at all costs, even through diplo¬matic tricks, without resorting to perfidy.37 But if the eonfiict becomes inevitable, offensive should be taken only in the name of God and that too with the unanimous approval of the army. The army should be led by a man of dashing spirit, sound judgment, and experience in warfare.
Tusi particularly emphasizes the maintenance of an efficient secret service to have vigilance over the movements of the enemy. Again, diplomacy demands that the enemy should, as far as possible, be taken prisoner rather than killed, and there should be no killing after the final victory, for clemency is more befitting a king than vengeance. In the case of a defensive stand, the enemy should be overtaken by ambush or surprise attack, provided the position is strong enough; otherwise no time should be lost in digging trenches building fortresses, and even in negotiating for peace by offering wealth and using diplomatic devices.
Tusi, being the wazir of Hulagu, was well aware of the degeneration of monarchy into absolute despotism, and, therefore, advised the attendants upon kings to avoid seeking close contact with them, for being in their company is in no way better than associating with fire. No office is more perilous than that of a minister to a king, and the minister has no greater safeguard against the jealousies of the Court and the vagaries of the royal mood than his trust¬worthiness.
The minister should guard jealously the secrets confided to him, and should not be inquisitive about what is withheld from him. Tusi was held in great esteem by the Mongol chief, yet he agrees with Ibn Muqna`, that the closer one may be to the king, the greater should he show his respect to him, so much so that if the king calls him “brother,” he should address him as “lord.”
SOURCE OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
According to Tusi, the Qur'anic injunctions relate to man as an individual, as a member of a family, and as an inhabitant of a city or State.38 This three¬fold division is evidently suggestive of the classification of practical philosophy into ethics, domestics, and politics by Muslim thinkers. The same is true of the content of these sciences; but it is no less true that later on these disciplines were considerably broadened under the influence of Plato and Aristotle. Shushtery's remark that “ethics was the only subject in which the East did not imitate the West,” and that “the only influence which the West could bring to bear upon the East in connection with this subject, was the method of scientific treatment,”39 is more true of domestics and politics, where Greek influence is least traceable, than of ethics proper.
PSYCHOLOGY
Instead of proving the existence of the soul, Tusi starts with the assumption that it is a self-evident reality and as such it needs no proof. Nor is it capable of being proved. In a case like this, reasoning out of one's own existence is a logical impossibility and absurdity, for an argument presupposes an argu¬mentator and a subject for argument, but in this case both are the same, viz., the soul.
NATURE OF THE SOUL
The soul is a simple, immaterial substance which perceives by itself. It controls the body through the muscles and sense-organs, but is itself beyond the perception of the bodily instruments. After reproducing Ibn Miskawaih's arguments for the incorporeality of the soul from its indivisi¬bility, its power of assuming fresh forms without losing the previous ones, its conceiving opposite forms at one and the same time, and its correcting sense¬ illusions,40 Tusi adds two of his own arguments.
Judgments of logic, physics, mathematics, theology, etc., all exist in one soul without intermingling, and can be recalled with characteristic clarity, which is not possible in a material substance; therefore, soul is an immaterial substance. Again, physical accom-modation is limited and finite, so that a hundred persons cannot be accom¬modated at a place meant for fifty people, but this is not true of the soul. It has, so to say, sufficient capacity to accommodate all the ideas and concepts of the objects it knows, with plenty of room for fresh acquisition.41 This too proves that the soul is a simple, immaterial substance.
In the common expression “My head, my ear, my eye,” the word “my”42 indicates the individuality (huwiyyah) of the soul, which possesses these organs, and not its incorporeality. The soul does require a body as a means to its perfection, but it is not what it is because of its having a body.
FACULTIES OF THE SOUL
To the vegetative, animal, and human soul of his predecessors, Tusi adds an imaginative soul which occupies an intermediate position between the animal and the human soul. The human soul is charac¬terized with intellect (nutq) which receives knowledge from the first intellect. The intellect is of two kinds, theoretical and practical, as conceived by Aristotle.
Following Kindi, Tusi considers the theoretical intellect to be a potentiality, the realization of which involves four stages, viz., the material intellect (`aql-i hayulani), the angelic intellect ('aql-i malaki), the active intellect ('aql-i bi al-fi`l), and the acquired intellect ('aql-i mustafad). It is at the stage of the acquired intellect that every conceptual form potentially contained in the soul becomes apparent to it, like the face of a man reflected in a mirror held before him. The practical intellect, on the other hand, is concerned with voluntary and purposive action. Its potentialities are, therefore, realized through moral, domestic, and political action.
The imaginative soul is concerned with sensuous perceptions, on the one hand, and with rational abstractions, on the other, so that if it is united with the animal soul, it becomes dependent upon it, and decays with it. But if it is associated with the human soul, it becomes independent of the bodily organs, and shares the happiness or misery of the soul with its immortality. After the separation of the soul from the body, a trace of imagination remains in its form, and the punishment and reward of the human soul depend upon this trace (hai'at) of what the imaginative soul knew or did in this world.43
The sensitive and calculative imagination of Aristotle apparently constitutes the structure of Tusi's imaginative soul, but his bringing the imaginative soul into relation with an elaborate theory of punishment and reward in the hereafter is his own.
As a matter of tradition handed down from Ibn Sina and Ghazali,44 Tusi believes in the localization of functions in the brain. He has located common sense (hiss-i mushtarak) in the first ventricle of the brain, perception (musaw¬wirah) in the beginning of the first part of the second ventricle, imagination, in the fore part of the third ventricle, and memory in the rear part of the brain.
Senin, 05 Agustus 2024