1
00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:05,440
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Evening everyone, and welcome to the second seminar of the Expert Islam and Justice Program.

2
00:00:05,440 --> 00:00:09,410
This session as all Islam and Natural Law. My name is Jacob Williams.

3
00:00:09,420 --> 00:00:14,730
I'm a DPhil student in political theory researching religious critiques of liberalism,

4
00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:19,559
and I'll shortly be introducing our speaker today, Doctor Brandon Harvey of the Cambridge Muslim College.

5
00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:21,360
He will address us on the topic of natural law.

6
00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:28,170
Before that, I'll just say a few words about the importance of this topic and the purpose of this seminar series as a whole.

7
00:00:28,850 --> 00:00:35,129
Uh, before doing so, I want to mention that this event is hosted by the Contemporary Islamic Studies program here,

8
00:00:35,130 --> 00:00:37,350
which identity is about the fact that the right hand is male,

9
00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:42,810
and the staff here at Bentley Centre for helping make this event possible with, uh, generous support.

10
00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:49,950
The Oxford Islam and Justice Program was conceived as a means of exploring questions about the Islamic

11
00:00:49,950 --> 00:00:54,780
intellectual tradition and political justice in an open minded and academically rigorous fashion.

12
00:00:55,200 --> 00:01:02,320
We've been delighted to have some of the finest minds in the fields involved in the series, as well as, of course, Doctor Harvey.

13
00:01:02,340 --> 00:01:06,810
We were privileged last week to be addressed by Doctor Mohammed Fadl on this love of liberalism,

14
00:01:07,530 --> 00:01:12,309
and on Friday, the 20th of June will be addressed to Andrew March on Islam and the Modern State.

15
00:01:12,310 --> 00:01:14,400
And also for the seminar was yet to be confirmed.

16
00:01:15,330 --> 00:01:20,909
The wider context of all this is the seemingly increasing levels of anti-Muslim prejudice in the West,

17
00:01:20,910 --> 00:01:25,049
and the various forms of persecution and discrimination face by many Muslim

18
00:01:25,050 --> 00:01:29,460
communities around the world make the question of political justice a vital one.

19
00:01:29,670 --> 00:01:33,620
And the basic conviction of the program is that we don't have the ability to simply take, um,

20
00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:39,209
off the page blueprint for a just society and apply it crudely to the modern world on the grounds that

21
00:01:39,210 --> 00:01:44,220
it might be superficially concerned with certain conceptions or images of pre-modern jurisprudence.

22
00:01:44,610 --> 00:01:48,659
Rather, the Islamic intellectual tradition needs to think deeply through problems,

23
00:01:48,660 --> 00:01:52,920
challenges, and circumstances that were often inconceivable to earlier generations.

24
00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:56,879
So we have deliberately invited speakers with a range of perspectives on what

25
00:01:56,880 --> 00:02:01,530
last time I calls following me a Strauss the theological political problem,

26
00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:09,090
the question of how our theological commitments, or indeed lack thereof, should inform our views about the character of the best political regime.

27
00:02:09,960 --> 00:02:14,760
Our topic today is the relationship of Islamic commitments to the doctrine of natural law.

28
00:02:15,540 --> 00:02:21,330
This doctrine, which is very prominent in certain strands of the Western, classical, and Christian traditions,

29
00:02:21,630 --> 00:02:27,930
holds that there are a set of moral principles that humans can access and attain knowledge of independently of revelation.

30
00:02:28,110 --> 00:02:35,400
Because these principles consist of appropriate ways of responding to the intrinsic moral properties of the world, that God has created,

31
00:02:36,060 --> 00:02:40,350
the world according to natural law is not to control certain popular interpretations

32
00:02:40,350 --> 00:02:44,310
of the Ashari theological school morally enough prior to revelation,

33
00:02:44,490 --> 00:02:48,960
but already imbued with intrinsic normativity that reflects the divine wisdom or hegemon.

34
00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:51,450
So if natural law exists,

35
00:02:51,450 --> 00:02:59,400
it's easy to see how it can yield an accessible set of moral principles that both Muslims and non-Muslims are equally warranted in affirming.

36
00:02:59,940 --> 00:03:05,640
And it could therefore provide common ground for resolving complex and contentious debates about justice.

37
00:03:06,060 --> 00:03:13,940
Of course, natural law thinkers do not claim that natural law provides all the knowledge that the needs of morality justice,

38
00:03:13,950 --> 00:03:20,969
uh, revelation specifies, confirms, and applies its principles in more particular ways, as well as providing knowledge of particular forms of worship,

39
00:03:20,970 --> 00:03:23,820
like ritual prayer, that are not knowable through natural reason.

40
00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:30,389
If, on the other hand, we reject the doctrine of natural law in favour of a voluntary position,

41
00:03:30,390 --> 00:03:38,550
but all morality is simply the consequence of a divine act of willing that does not reflect or respond to any intrinsic moral features of the world,

42
00:03:38,940 --> 00:03:43,410
then it may be easy to see how moral discourse between Muslims and non-Muslims is somewhat challenging.

43
00:03:44,040 --> 00:03:47,850
If we wish to defend the principle, for example, that killing civilians is wrong.

44
00:03:48,210 --> 00:03:52,590
But we hold this principle to be knowable only through revelation.

45
00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:57,780
Then, on what basis can we expect someone who does not accept the Koranic revelation to know that it is true?

46
00:03:58,440 --> 00:04:03,140
Now, perhaps other ways through that problem, perhaps the non-Muslim knows that principle for earlier revelations,

47
00:04:03,420 --> 00:04:06,090
or as the Islamic tradition would say, what has survived them?

48
00:04:06,750 --> 00:04:11,070
Perhaps they do not have access to conscious reason for affirming this principle exactly,

49
00:04:11,430 --> 00:04:15,839
but they affirm it because parts of the moral knowledge provided by earlier revelation have

50
00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:21,090
become sediments in a largely post religious culture in which the person is still saturated,

51
00:04:21,810 --> 00:04:26,670
perhaps healthy human nature, the human feature simply leads them to affirm it without knowing why.

52
00:04:27,240 --> 00:04:34,020
But practical reasoning about moral problems is likely to be challenging without some kind of access to moral knowledge outside revelation.

53
00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:38,129
Doctor Harvey will address us today on a proposal for how the mental,

54
00:04:38,130 --> 00:04:45,300
ethical and metaphysical commitments of the majority school of Islamic theology can grounded accounts of natural law,

55
00:04:45,300 --> 00:04:51,900
and how this shared standpoints complement fruitful dialogue between the Islamic and liberal intellectual traditions,

56
00:04:52,590 --> 00:04:59,760
and indeed, the former, uh, the former tradition, the Islamic traditions well-grounded critique of the latter might.

57
00:04:59,850 --> 00:05:01,890
Also be something that will follow from this approach.

58
00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:11,250
Daughter Holly is a senior lecturer in Islamic theology at the Cambridge Muslim College, where he teaches traditional creedal and theological texts.

59
00:05:11,280 --> 00:05:15,360
His research specialises in the natural media theological tradition.

60
00:05:15,660 --> 00:05:22,440
Um. He's deeply involved in translating traditional texts from the school, as well as in reviewing books on Koranic studies and Islamic theology.

61
00:05:23,130 --> 00:05:27,270
He brings a particular intellectual virtuosity to the debate and will be exploring,

62
00:05:27,270 --> 00:05:34,379
as he's also deeply versed in contemporary analytic philosophy, having that program, supported by the John Templeton Foundation,

63
00:05:34,380 --> 00:05:40,560
to explore the intersection of Mr. biology and Islamic thoughts with both analytic philosophy and Christian theology,

64
00:05:41,670 --> 00:05:45,990
as well as publishing numerous articles on Koranic exegesis, theology, and philosophy.

65
00:05:46,260 --> 00:05:49,950
Doctor Harvin was the obviously author of The Koran and the Jar Society,

66
00:05:49,950 --> 00:05:54,450
which outlines a theological basis for natural law and for interpreting the Koran,

67
00:05:54,720 --> 00:06:02,040
and applies to topics including distributive justice, the ethics of war and peace and criminal punishments, and also of transcendent God.

68
00:06:02,040 --> 00:06:07,919
Rational worlds, a majority theology which offers a systematic defence of theological positions on topics

69
00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:13,480
such as the nature of creation and divine speech using the tools of analytic philosophy.

70
00:06:13,500 --> 00:06:15,960
So we're really honoured to have Doctor Harvey with us today.

71
00:06:15,990 --> 00:06:20,459
[INAUDIBLE] speak for around 40 minutes and will open the floor to questions and discussion.

72
00:06:20,460 --> 00:06:25,170
And we encourage you to share any questions or thoughts that you have so we can learn from each other.

73
00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:29,490
I will hand him. No. Let me. Thank you so much, Jacob.

74
00:06:29,500 --> 00:06:32,819
Um, it's great to be here. Thank you for coming to see this.

75
00:06:32,820 --> 00:06:39,810
And those who might see online. Um, I'm honoured to be invited to present some ideas at this forum.

76
00:06:40,380 --> 00:06:45,750
Uh, the paper I'm going to present today, uh, was published, um, as, uh,

77
00:06:46,050 --> 00:06:50,730
as a chapter in this book, which I actually edited with my colleague Daniel Tutt from the USA.

78
00:06:51,060 --> 00:06:54,970
Um, and hold this up is called Justice in Islam New Ethical Perspectives.

79
00:06:54,990 --> 00:07:03,060
It was published by triple, its well-known publisher, uh, in The Muslim Conversation, particularly publishing in English.

80
00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:09,690
Um, and the chapter was called uh was called Who's Justice when Matuidi meets McIntyre.

81
00:07:10,050 --> 00:07:16,860
So there's going to be a heavy, um, McIntyre change to the, uh, discussion, uh, which I think is useful for these questions,

82
00:07:16,860 --> 00:07:21,570
um, traditions in engagement and conversation, which has been highlighted, is important.

83
00:07:22,140 --> 00:07:30,540
Uh, so I intend to more I slimmed this down to make it manageable in the time I've been given, but I intend to more or less present this paper.

84
00:07:30,750 --> 00:07:35,100
Uh, read this paper, and then I'll be looking forward to engaging with your questions and,

85
00:07:35,100 --> 00:07:41,160
um, uh, discussion in a bit more, in a bit more of a, uh, fluid way.

86
00:07:42,450 --> 00:07:45,840
Um, so who's justice when Matuidi meets MacIntyre? Introduction.

87
00:07:47,010 --> 00:07:53,550
When Muslim intellectuals seek to engage in the great debates of the contemporary world, and the theory and practice of justice is a central one.

88
00:07:53,940 --> 00:07:55,560
They are caught in the horns of a dilemma,

89
00:07:56,070 --> 00:08:01,290
the wanting to declare that there is a distinct Islamic notion of justice, reflecting the guidance of revelation.

90
00:08:01,620 --> 00:08:06,240
They also want to insist that their vision of justice is in some sense universal,

91
00:08:06,510 --> 00:08:09,990
and able to bring Muslims into common cause with other members of society.

92
00:08:10,290 --> 00:08:15,299
What is needed is a kind of meta theory that can account for the way the adherents of religious

93
00:08:15,300 --> 00:08:20,370
traditions can engage in reasoned public debate without compromising core commitments,

94
00:08:20,610 --> 00:08:25,260
such as to the revealed nature of their Scripture or the binding nature of its divine law.

95
00:08:25,860 --> 00:08:28,740
And to Alister MacIntyre in several celebrated works,

96
00:08:28,980 --> 00:08:34,680
he makes a powerful argument that whereas any given tradition of inquiry can advance universal claims about justice,

97
00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:39,660
their justification necessarily occurs within the historically conditioned framework of thought.

98
00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:46,409
His work is so significant, in part because of its role within intellectual attempts to avoid being forced into a false

99
00:08:46,410 --> 00:08:51,420
choice between a contested claim for a universal moral rationality or moral relativism.

100
00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:55,470
While MacIntyre has made transformative interventions in the field of moral philosophy,

101
00:08:55,860 --> 00:09:03,330
I argue that his meta theory of tradition constitutes inquiry is a moment for the contemporary articulation of a comprehensive Muslim theology.

102
00:09:03,690 --> 00:09:07,769
This is because it gives a coherent theoretical framework for balancing the following

103
00:09:07,770 --> 00:09:12,150
three ingredients in a religious tradition the sanctity of scriptural sources,

104
00:09:12,660 --> 00:09:16,020
the relevance of a given intellectual tradition for reading and interpreting them,

105
00:09:16,620 --> 00:09:20,940
and the continuous possibility of rereading and reinterpreting them in the light of new thought experience.

106
00:09:21,600 --> 00:09:28,470
Although I will focus on the question of ethics, this cannot be divorced within Islamic tradition from the theology in which it is embedded.

107
00:09:28,950 --> 00:09:31,860
In my previous work on the ethical worldview of the Quran.

108
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:38,219
I propose that constructively building on the system of the eponymous fourth century Muslim theologian,

109
00:09:38,220 --> 00:09:42,390
Abu Mansoor materially can contribute to a contemporary theology of justice.

110
00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:49,350
It has become almost a cliche in Islamic studies that the material tradition, despite its historic importance for Muslim civilisation,

111
00:09:49,680 --> 00:09:53,340
has received far less scholarly attention than the Ashari or Tesla school of thought.

112
00:09:54,060 --> 00:09:59,490
There are some signs that are starting to change, including the new publication of primary sources by significant figures in.

113
00:09:59,510 --> 00:10:02,620
A tradition, an increase in secondary literature. Um.

114
00:10:03,380 --> 00:10:07,580
Uh, and I been, um, uh, blessed to be part of that, um, revival.

115
00:10:07,730 --> 00:10:09,820
My first task in this chapter and this, uh,

116
00:10:09,830 --> 00:10:15,410
paper will be to provide a critical synopsis of MacIntyre's framework for staging debates between diverse traditions.

117
00:10:15,830 --> 00:10:21,490
Thereafter, I will briefly discuss his significant critique of modern liberal conceptions of justice, uh,

118
00:10:21,500 --> 00:10:27,050
which remain a dominant force within, uh, Western thought, although I should say that it is no more than a sketch.

119
00:10:27,380 --> 00:10:31,610
Um, and then I will, um, discuss the key features of a really natural law theory,

120
00:10:31,850 --> 00:10:37,520
including the central place of God's wisdom in grounding justice on the wise purposes of the natural and divine law.

121
00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:44,570
And finally, I will suggest how this Islamic perspective could represent the ethical claims of its liberal counterparts,

122
00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:50,240
assess its own rational justification, and map out the potential route to a more coherent picture of justice.

123
00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:57,770
Um, I should note that in framing my discussion in terms of opposition and debates between liberal and Islamic conceptions of justice, I,

124
00:10:57,770 --> 00:11:05,360
um, I'm pitching my thought entirely at the level of philosophical and ethical inquiry into truth, not pragmatic political decision making.

125
00:11:05,750 --> 00:11:11,660
And this means the question of Muslim commitments and participation within concrete liberal political orders,

126
00:11:11,990 --> 00:11:15,080
especially in the West, will not be broached here. Uh.

127
00:11:15,080 --> 00:11:17,060
MacIntyre's tradition constitutes inquiry.

128
00:11:18,380 --> 00:11:24,020
The theme of tradition constitutive inquiry has been a central plank of Alister MacIntyre's contribution to moral philosophy.

129
00:11:24,500 --> 00:11:29,660
First fully introduced as one part of the argument in his 1981 After Virtue.

130
00:11:29,900 --> 00:11:36,350
He fleshed out considerably in its epistemological and historical dimensions in 1988 whose justice, which rationality,

131
00:11:36,470 --> 00:11:43,040
which provides the kind of inspiration for the chapter's um title before testing its theses yet further in 1990s,

132
00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:47,300
three rival versions of moral inquiry. If you haven't read these books, they're very, very interesting.

133
00:11:47,660 --> 00:11:47,899
Um.

134
00:11:47,900 --> 00:11:54,710
During the following three decades, he has continued to develop his position, including participation in collective volumes along with his critics,

135
00:11:54,890 --> 00:11:58,130
and writing a further related monograph, ethics in the Complex of Modernity.

136
00:11:59,330 --> 00:12:06,230
MacIntyre argues, um, that when a tradition reaches, uh, theoretical maturity, um,

137
00:12:06,500 --> 00:12:14,209
its conception of rationality and truth is distinguished both by its initial contingent origin in a set of established beliefs and,

138
00:12:14,210 --> 00:12:18,920
to a certain extent, the particularities of language alongside a given social and natural environment.

139
00:12:19,470 --> 00:12:25,970
Um. He believes that there will inevitably be a number of first principles, but yet these first principles are not self-justifying.

140
00:12:26,330 --> 00:12:33,800
They are vindicated by their emergence, um, in the stages of the traditions, development and their survival of dialectical questioning.

141
00:12:34,130 --> 00:12:40,490
And in that actual chapter, I go into more detail about the various stages which I had to, um, cut short, um, for our purposes.

142
00:12:40,490 --> 00:12:44,209
But he basically has this idea of developing traditions with first principles that

143
00:12:44,210 --> 00:12:48,470
then vindicate these principles through continued inquiry within the tradition,

144
00:12:48,470 --> 00:12:52,100
and also, as will become important, in dialogue with other traditions.

145
00:12:52,490 --> 00:12:57,200
Um, and one of the things that he does is to deploy tradition constituted rationality to

146
00:12:57,200 --> 00:13:02,090
explain the incommensurability of conceptions of justice proposed by rival traditions.

147
00:13:02,540 --> 00:13:09,260
In other words, he will explain how it is the different traditions of thought which could be theological or philosophical,

148
00:13:09,830 --> 00:13:15,440
how it is they differ in their conceptions of what justice consists of, whose justice,

149
00:13:15,830 --> 00:13:22,049
and how they and can try to debate and dialogue in order to come to um, uh,

150
00:13:22,050 --> 00:13:27,140
a vindicated position or one position can prove itself to have the superior notion of justice,

151
00:13:27,140 --> 00:13:31,219
or at least understand what's at stake in the difference. Um, so a crucial point follows.

152
00:13:31,220 --> 00:13:33,770
And there's been, of course, much misses understanding about MacIntyre.

153
00:13:33,980 --> 00:13:41,000
He says there is no standing point, no place for inquiry, no way to engage in the practices of advancing, evaluating,

154
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:47,090
accepting and rejecting reasoned arguments apart from that which is provided by some particular tradition or other.

155
00:13:47,240 --> 00:13:53,960
So it's tradition constituted because the inquiry, one's inquiry is always taking place within a tradition.

156
00:13:54,080 --> 00:14:00,020
And this reflects, um, broader philosophical movements from, um, from the sort of late 19th and 20th century at least,

157
00:14:00,320 --> 00:14:05,330
if not before, um, uh, at the show, this kind of, um, the nature of,

158
00:14:05,750 --> 00:14:09,960
of, uh, constituted reason and inquiry, uh, and the kind of, um,

159
00:14:09,980 --> 00:14:17,210
almost a collapse of the kind of sort of universal rational notions that may have held sway, uh, more prominently beforehand.

160
00:14:17,660 --> 00:14:22,819
And so if this is understood as meaning if his statement has meaning that every human being has a contingent history,

161
00:14:22,820 --> 00:14:24,830
language and so forth, all this is strictly true.

162
00:14:25,190 --> 00:14:30,650
But that's to miss the point of his argument, which is that there's no such thing as rationality qua rationality.

163
00:14:31,130 --> 00:14:36,260
Anyone who tries to reach a position of pure reason fails to acknowledge the contingency of their own existence and thinking,

164
00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:41,510
and the need for a rationality to always be embedded in history and socially grounded within a tradition.

165
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:46,940
Um, so I argue that MacIntyre's position combines both contingent and universal elements,

166
00:14:47,480 --> 00:14:54,020
while the term tradition constituted suggests that ethical inquiry and even rationality emerge from historically grounded phenomena.

167
00:14:54,380 --> 00:14:58,550
He believes that the truth claims of traditions may be asserted over the domains of others.

168
00:14:58,910 --> 00:15:02,240
Moreover. He includes within this his own analysis.

169
00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:12,560
Um, MacIntyre um, his claim to speak universally about tradition constitutive processes from within his own tradition is not contradictory,

170
00:15:12,830 --> 00:15:18,950
though he may find the impossible to vindicate it against a rival viewpoint that does not share his starting assumptions.

171
00:15:19,220 --> 00:15:24,770
So what he is trying to do here is to say that no, that is not just a mere relativism.

172
00:15:25,220 --> 00:15:31,120
His position. One of these traditions may indeed be correct, but it may actually struggle.

173
00:15:31,130 --> 00:15:36,710
Given this, the set up of the engagement between the traditions to vindicate itself, that remains to be determined.

174
00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:43,460
But he's not. He basically strongly resists a kind of relativism where everyone, um, he's just everyone's tradition is correct.

175
00:15:43,820 --> 00:15:49,129
Um, and all have the truth. So so truth maybe in a single tradition.

176
00:15:49,130 --> 00:15:53,740
But justification may vary based on the structures of rationality within efficiency.

177
00:15:53,750 --> 00:15:58,010
That's essentially what he's, um, on about. Um, so.

178
00:15:59,420 --> 00:16:10,489
I'd like to go on to say, um. Um, so what happens therefore, is, um, it may be that, um, uh, you end in a position of not relativity of truth,

179
00:16:10,490 --> 00:16:15,140
but undecidability and justification arising from incommensurability and standards of rationality.

180
00:16:15,740 --> 00:16:19,100
So this is why it is in this book, in the Who's justice, which rationality?

181
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:23,689
He ends up, um, exploring different standards of rationality in order to, uh,

182
00:16:23,690 --> 00:16:28,520
try to get to the bottom of which, uh, which position of justice is correct.

183
00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:35,540
So even should the dispute prove interminable, whether whereby neither side is able to win the other arbitrary standards.

184
00:16:35,810 --> 00:16:40,520
This has nothing decisive about the nature of truth and everything about the limits of rational justification.

185
00:16:40,940 --> 00:16:44,570
In MacIntyre's mature Archer view, which includes his readings of the Thomas tradition,

186
00:16:44,990 --> 00:16:49,819
a distinction must be drawn between truth as understood from one's own first principles and the

187
00:16:49,820 --> 00:16:54,140
justification that be found acceptable to another reasoning for shared rational principles.

188
00:16:54,620 --> 00:16:59,180
It is only within a post-enlightenment context that truth and reason to become so tightly bound together

189
00:16:59,450 --> 00:17:04,520
that what is not definitively provable in rational grounds can be so easily construed as truth relative,

190
00:17:04,850 --> 00:17:11,070
as many critics of MacIntyre unwittingly demonstrate. And so, if MacIntyre stopped at the points of elaborating this,

191
00:17:11,090 --> 00:17:15,980
this idea of radically incommensurable traditions of rationality, this perspective would still be worthy of interest.

192
00:17:16,250 --> 00:17:19,879
But he goes further to offer a method by which traditions can come into conversation

193
00:17:19,880 --> 00:17:24,470
and potentially decide points of incommensurable difference between them. This should not be too surprising,

194
00:17:24,680 --> 00:17:28,730
as the ability to represent their claims to each other and to entrance disagreement in the first place

195
00:17:28,970 --> 00:17:33,830
presupposes some commonality in the translation translate ability of language and shared logic.

196
00:17:34,220 --> 00:17:38,540
MacIntyre argues that through familiarity with a rival traditions, modes of thought,

197
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:42,560
and a kind of creative empathy, it is possible to fairly represent his claims.

198
00:17:42,980 --> 00:17:49,910
In fact, one of the obvious achievements of MacIntyre's own work is his skill in animating the various traditions that act as his protagonists.

199
00:17:50,510 --> 00:17:53,180
From this point, a number of dialectical engagements are possible.

200
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:58,640
1st May move over to a new tradition, as MacIntyre himself did in embracing Aristotelian ism,

201
00:17:58,640 --> 00:18:04,970
and then Thomson rationally defending defeating it, defeating the other tradition, or even synthesising a third tradition from the two.

202
00:18:05,300 --> 00:18:08,240
In this latter case, he gives the example of Aquinas,

203
00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:14,840
who was simultaneously fluent in the Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions of his time and thus able to combine them into ism.

204
00:18:15,050 --> 00:18:19,220
Or we could say, um, someone like, uh, Abu Hassanal Ashari,

205
00:18:19,220 --> 00:18:26,030
who was familiar with the traditionalism of the Adler and the more casual ism of which he was a student of a jubilee,

206
00:18:26,030 --> 00:18:29,840
and synthesising his school, which became known as Asher ism.

207
00:18:30,350 --> 00:18:35,270
Um, so it is in this distinctive idea of the direct interaction between rival traditions of reason,

208
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:39,600
that MacIntyre makes a strongest case against relativism and sets the stage for,

209
00:18:39,620 --> 00:18:45,080
uh, my preliminary engagement with a liberal perspective from an Islamic tradition of justice, which is the ultimate purposes of this chapter.

210
00:18:45,590 --> 00:18:50,480
Um, so, um, briefly, he argues that one tradition is able to vindicate itself,

211
00:18:50,900 --> 00:18:55,340
another with respect to rationality by demonstration of its superior rational resources.

212
00:18:55,880 --> 00:19:00,380
He does this by reformulating the predicament of its opponents in its own terms,

213
00:19:00,560 --> 00:19:04,340
to solve problems that were insoluble from the rival traditions perspective.

214
00:19:04,640 --> 00:19:07,760
In his words, for among those resources, though, it is claimed,

215
00:19:08,090 --> 00:19:12,740
is an ability not only to identify as limitations, defects and errors of the opposing view,

216
00:19:13,010 --> 00:19:18,440
what are ought to be taken to be limitations, defects, and errors in the light of the standards of the opposing view itself,

217
00:19:18,890 --> 00:19:25,640
but also to explain in precise and detailed terms what it is about the opposing view which engendered these particular limitations,

218
00:19:25,820 --> 00:19:26,840
defects and errors,

219
00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:33,590
and also what it is about that view which must deprive it of the resources required for understanding, overcoming, and correcting them.

220
00:19:34,100 --> 00:19:39,020
Within his works, MacIntyre gives examples meant to show that from the perspective of his domestic tradition,

221
00:19:39,260 --> 00:19:44,930
various other intellectual traditions may be rationally defeated in this way, but he also presents a scenario in which,

222
00:19:45,110 --> 00:19:50,270
despite having apparently demonstrated this superiority with respect to rationality from within this tradition,

223
00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:56,120
a rival when he uses utilitarianism would be unwilling to accept defeat due to its radically different first principles.

224
00:19:56,300 --> 00:20:03,200
And this is where there may be a failure to fully vindicate, um uh, the justification of the position, um,

225
00:20:03,380 --> 00:20:09,710
if MacIntyre's method is admitted as a possible frame for an engagement between conceptions of justice in the liberal and Islamic traditions,

226
00:20:10,100 --> 00:20:15,800
it is necessary to provide an outline of each one and to identify the major points of incommensurability between them,

227
00:20:16,250 --> 00:20:24,430
and this would be the subject of the next two sections of the paper. So now I turn to MacIntyre's analysis of justice.

228
00:20:24,450 --> 00:20:27,600
In the liberal tradition in Whose justice, Which rationality?

229
00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:30,810
McIntyre tackles the question of justice and liberalism directly,

230
00:20:31,110 --> 00:20:36,000
treating the liberal tradition as a distinct tradition of inquiry within its own standards of justification.

231
00:20:36,540 --> 00:20:42,060
He does not, however, give it as much tension as the other traditions he analyses, instead painting broad brushstrokes.

232
00:20:42,480 --> 00:20:46,980
More sustained critical treatment of the liberal tradition, especially the notion of the secular,

233
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:52,350
has been provided by figures who have engaged in MacIntyre's contributions to the field, such as Talal Asad and Charles Taylor.

234
00:20:52,830 --> 00:20:59,940
As my current paper is only a preliminary attempt to use MacIntyre's ideas to consider the case of liberal and mature theories of justice.

235
00:21:00,390 --> 00:21:04,230
It is useful to add to the previous section by sketching his assessment of liberalism.

236
00:21:04,950 --> 00:21:08,670
One of MacIntyre's main claims, substantiated by his discussion of liberalism,

237
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:14,070
is that tradition standards of justice are subordinated to the rational framework in which they are embedded.

238
00:21:14,610 --> 00:21:19,620
The liberal tradition of rationality, which arguably goes back through hobs to the ancient Greek sophists,

239
00:21:19,980 --> 00:21:23,490
explains social action to the present aims and interests of individuals.

240
00:21:23,670 --> 00:21:26,760
Rather than achieve a logical ordering as understood by Aristotle.

241
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:31,230
Aquinas in Albert 3D, in which the good is ontologically prior to individual desires.

242
00:21:31,620 --> 00:21:39,030
MacIntyre argues that liberalism transposes the individual's nature as a customer within the marketplace into rational inquiry, that is,

243
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:45,600
the good is privatised, and each individual seeks their own good in diverse aspects of their life, and in doing so ranks their preferences as follows.

244
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:50,639
And he says, I want it to be the case that such and such doing so and so will enable me to achieve it.

245
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:55,230
Being the case of such and such, there was no other way of so enabling me, which I prefer doing.

246
00:21:55,230 --> 00:21:59,190
So, uh, so in a sense I will not frustrate any equal or stronger preference.

247
00:21:59,790 --> 00:22:00,630
From this perspective,

248
00:22:00,900 --> 00:22:07,500
individuals may argue for a range of principles by which justice is to be achieved within society and by some form of aggregation,

249
00:22:07,530 --> 00:22:13,489
these shape the social moral landscape. The liberal order, however, being opposed to any single conception of the good,

250
00:22:13,490 --> 00:22:17,580
the supervisions upon all aspects of human life, allows no position to win against the others.

251
00:22:17,970 --> 00:22:21,960
All of the various philosophical debates of social contract, uh contract, Aryans,

252
00:22:22,290 --> 00:22:25,830
uh, utilitarians, Marxists and Canadians amount to, according to MacIntyre,

253
00:22:26,130 --> 00:22:32,220
is better clarification of the commitments engendered by the starting assumptions, not the method by which to choose one rather than another.

254
00:22:32,430 --> 00:22:34,530
So he lumps all of these within liberalism.

255
00:22:34,860 --> 00:22:39,870
Interestingly, it is perhaps for this reason that MacIntyre does not provide a detailed analysis of the variations between them.

256
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:45,480
Its purpose is to demonstrate that they are different aspects of one tradition, which relies upon a single form of rationality.

257
00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:49,830
McIntyre draws several conclusions from this, which he writes for levels.

258
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:57,000
First, there is no substantive agreement about what justice is to consist of within the liberal order, as there is no consensus on human good.

259
00:22:57,690 --> 00:22:59,100
Second, despite the differences,

260
00:22:59,550 --> 00:23:05,850
the diverse approaches to justice within liberalism are predicated on a shared conception of a liberal individual of a certain rational step,

261
00:23:06,150 --> 00:23:11,130
one who chooses which ethical theory is preferable, just as they engage in ranking preferences in other parts of their life.

262
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:16,050
Third, within the marketplace of ideas, justice which cannot be definitively settled,

263
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:20,729
becomes a matter of ensuring equality in terms of one's ability to take a place at the bargaining

264
00:23:20,730 --> 00:23:25,230
table and put forward preferences to be accounted in whatever form of aggregation is successful.

265
00:23:25,740 --> 00:23:30,090
For that, the ultimate appeal to justice within a legal system that may on occasion invoke

266
00:23:30,090 --> 00:23:33,540
any of the philosophical positions deemed acceptable within the liberal sphere,

267
00:23:33,690 --> 00:23:40,980
as there is no settled idea of human goods be used as a standard. MacIntyre comments, the lawyers, not the philosophers, are the clergy of liberalism.

268
00:23:41,430 --> 00:23:46,650
Finally, and perhaps ironically, the liberal order's public insistence that there is no good to human life,

269
00:23:46,830 --> 00:23:49,350
but rather just the preferences of individuals in its political,

270
00:23:49,350 --> 00:23:53,550
social and economic spheres, amounts to the hidden position that this good is, in effect,

271
00:23:53,700 --> 00:23:57,390
nothing other than the perpetuation of the very order that offers these choices.

272
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,830
Therefore, even though liberalism is unable to coherently articulate a single principle for justice,

273
00:24:02,210 --> 00:24:07,440
institutionalised is the ongoing debate over its constitution and ensures that it takes place on liberal terms.

274
00:24:07,830 --> 00:24:09,480
Although not mentioned by MacIntyre here.

275
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:16,229
These terms include a rejection of any appeal to phenomena that lie outside the post-enlightenment criteria for rationally admissible public evidence,

276
00:24:16,230 --> 00:24:19,350
such as reference to God, religious scripture, or spiritual inspiration.

277
00:24:19,830 --> 00:24:24,600
This is a key point in debating justice with the Islamic tradition from the liberal perspective.

278
00:24:25,140 --> 00:24:29,580
An avowed liberal would surely argue that the best opportunity to secure justice is on the basis of a

279
00:24:29,580 --> 00:24:34,440
universal reason that is assumed to be extended equally to all individuals without the peoples tradition.

280
00:24:34,830 --> 00:24:40,890
This reflects a tendency within liberalism to implicitly exclude what is distinctly religious from the question of public morality,

281
00:24:41,250 --> 00:24:42,990
as has long been the case in the Christian tradition.

282
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:47,400
Therefore, any Islamic understanding of justice faces an immediate credibility problem in the West.

283
00:24:47,790 --> 00:24:51,660
If Christian claims appealing to their religious and moral heritage are treated with scepticism.

284
00:24:51,810 --> 00:24:56,340
A fool to all right Muslim ones will be a potential solution to this problem has been proposed

285
00:24:56,340 --> 00:25:00,780
by John Rawls through his notion of a political liberalism that claims to allow multiple,

286
00:25:00,780 --> 00:25:05,280
incompatible, comprehensive theories of the good to co-exist based on a overlapping consensus.

287
00:25:05,730 --> 00:25:10,740
This would, in theory, allow the adherents of various traditions to come to the agreement on basic points of political order,

288
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:15,630
but for the scheme to work rules requires the adherence of various traditions to be reasonable,

289
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:20,340
meaning that they justify their views in a manner that other free and equal citizens could also accept.

290
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:25,910
Those rules. The scheme is based on finding a solution to the problem of how various traditions can reach political

291
00:25:25,910 --> 00:25:30,860
consensus within a pre-existing liberal order via a distinctly liberal form of rationality.

292
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:37,520
Notably within the limits of this practical proposal, Mohamed Fadl has mentioned earlier argues that the theological resources of

293
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:42,650
Islam do potentially allow Muslim to reconcile normative commitments to Islam.

294
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:47,120
As a comprehensive theory of the good and her political commitments to a liberal constitutional order.

295
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:52,970
The purpose of my chapter, however, is not to deal with commitments predicated on the dominance of the liberal political order,

296
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:58,130
but to explore the underlying philosophical debates about the nature of justice that make from a different theory of the good,

297
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,050
even put such an order into question.

298
00:26:00,530 --> 00:26:07,880
The power of MacIntyre's analysis is to undermine the assumed neutrality of liberal rationality, and to reveal its disguised societal will to power.

299
00:26:08,360 --> 00:26:13,820
You not only annuls its philosophical priority by exposing it to the cut and thrust of tradition constitutes the inquiry,

300
00:26:14,210 --> 00:26:21,620
but astutely particular uses this general conclusion to assert that no other perspective can take on the mantle of a neutral arbiter of value.

301
00:26:22,070 --> 00:26:24,470
So now I want to turn to justice in the matter of tradition.

302
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:33,700
As with liberalism, the broad category of Islamic tradition precedes the specific theories of justice that may be articulated from within it.

303
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:41,320
This means that mapping the main frameworks of rationality that provide resources for tradition constituted inquiry is a useful starting point.

304
00:26:41,890 --> 00:26:48,910
Here, Sherman Jackson explores the standard dichotomy within study of Islamic history between so-called rational rationalism and traditionalism.

305
00:26:49,330 --> 00:26:54,580
He proposes that rather than the use of reason, or the lack thereof being central to characterising the difference between them,

306
00:26:54,910 --> 00:26:58,480
both theological tendencies embody distinct regimes of reason.

307
00:26:59,020 --> 00:27:04,989
He argues that the approach taken by the rational theologians logically moon draw draws on the Aristotelian

308
00:27:04,990 --> 00:27:10,780
Neoplatonic tradition or these broader rational resources as a discursive way of thinking about revelation,

309
00:27:11,020 --> 00:27:16,419
whereas the traditionalists often termed the underneath represented foremost by collectors and compilers of

310
00:27:16,420 --> 00:27:21,670
prophetic traditions rather than the continuous informal selective endorsement of revealed institutional material.

311
00:27:21,910 --> 00:27:28,780
In the light of new ideas, the kind of rational justification required by American theory and engagement between traditions makes,

312
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:33,910
in my view, the former rationalist mode of Muslim theology, a more attractive prospect for the present task.

313
00:27:34,330 --> 00:27:37,900
Three major traditions within Islamic theological history are particularly significant here.

314
00:27:38,350 --> 00:27:43,210
Um um uh, the Mortaza lights on the ashes and the materialism.

315
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:47,020
And you can bring other groups of ashes and so on as well.

316
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:54,969
Um, though these theological schools differ on, uh, key meta ethical questions about social justice at the level of fundamental reason,

317
00:27:54,970 --> 00:28:01,450
their selective appropriation of aspects of this pre-existing rational framework, particularly, um, uh, uh,

318
00:28:01,450 --> 00:28:08,950
preceding Greek thought, um, uh, make them more similar to each other and to actually MacIntyre's own perspective from the,

319
00:28:08,950 --> 00:28:14,920
uh, atomistic, uh, school then to the varieties of liberal thought entertained in the modern philosophy department.

320
00:28:15,430 --> 00:28:21,430
In the remainder of my paper, I will build upon my own prior study of chronic social justice in the light of majority theology,

321
00:28:21,610 --> 00:28:23,650
especially its open eponymous figure.

322
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:29,410
Uh, I will mention in the material to outline the major aspects of what I would call a maturity theory of justice.

323
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:36,820
Again, this will be a sketch. I suggest that this perspective has the potential to emerge as a credible participant in debate with other traditions,

324
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:40,150
including the liberal perspectives discussed in the previous section.

325
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:48,340
Despite undergoing development in the course of its history, the maturity tradition has disguised in some respects the historicity of its own genesis.

326
00:28:48,610 --> 00:28:50,469
As such, traditions tend to do um,

327
00:28:50,470 --> 00:28:56,709
thereby typically attributing its entire theological repertoire to its happening to maturity himself or even beyond him,

328
00:28:56,710 --> 00:29:02,230
to the early Iraqi theologian Abu Hanifa, in the theoretical language of tradition, constitute inquiry,

329
00:29:02,620 --> 00:29:10,060
it seemingly has not hitherto become fully self conscious of its own reformulations refinements and methodological institutionalisation.

330
00:29:10,510 --> 00:29:15,940
Um, which correspond to what uh, I describe in the chapter as MacIntyre's sixth stage of inquiry.

331
00:29:16,390 --> 00:29:21,040
To speak of materialism in this way requires an acknowledgement that theology is a human construct.

332
00:29:21,430 --> 00:29:24,280
While the theory I put forward will draw from the earliest school tradition,

333
00:29:24,580 --> 00:29:29,590
it must necessarily be a contemporary approach to theology, uh, so-called calamity.

334
00:29:30,010 --> 00:29:36,400
Just as the rational position of maturity emerged from engagement with the day to a revelation in a philosophical milieu.

335
00:29:36,670 --> 00:29:42,670
My rereading of this tradition attempts to frame it within a theoretical account of its own processes of moral inquiry,

336
00:29:42,670 --> 00:29:47,139
as developed by figures such as MacIntyre. Um, this would recoil.

337
00:29:47,140 --> 00:29:53,770
Um, so I'll just carry on to say the concept of justice in maturity thought is inextricably linked to God's wisdom.

338
00:29:53,770 --> 00:29:59,350
Particularly, this identification is found in all materials able to read in unambiguous terms.

339
00:29:59,740 --> 00:30:04,060
He says the explanation of wisdom is hitting the mark, which is putting everything in its place.

340
00:30:04,390 --> 00:30:07,960
That is the meaning of justice, and his action does not divert from it.

341
00:30:08,530 --> 00:30:13,180
Considering this is planetary gloss which bases, uh, justice on God's wisdom.

342
00:30:13,540 --> 00:30:17,380
Uh, in the context of modern materialist theological system, um,

343
00:30:18,010 --> 00:30:24,160
there is no further attribute beyond God's wisdom which regulates what that place, uh, in everything in creation should be.

344
00:30:24,340 --> 00:30:31,240
So basically, to avoid circularity, um, you need to posit an eternal attribute of divine wisdom that cannot be fully,

345
00:30:31,660 --> 00:30:38,230
uh, more further explained in terms of other aspects of goodness or um, uh, sort of regularities in the creation.

346
00:30:38,740 --> 00:30:45,910
Um, God's eternal wisdom is given equal status to his omniscience, whereby you cannot be ignorant and also of his self-sufficiency,

347
00:30:46,330 --> 00:30:49,390
uh, and it precludes him from acting for a personal benefit of any kind.

348
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:54,639
The distinctive focus of Alma's video on the attribute of wisdom has been noticed in the literature,

349
00:30:54,640 --> 00:31:00,790
and its sources, and implications deserve further investigation. At the time of writing this, um, I hadn't yet published my second book.

350
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:04,030
Uh, and I did do some of that work and and continue to look at that.

351
00:31:04,510 --> 00:31:10,780
The majority approach to justice within human society is thus based on a number of metaphysical postulates flowing from God,

352
00:31:10,780 --> 00:31:14,710
who creates a contingent world, the natural moral properties within it.

353
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:18,520
I the natural law and the supernatural communication of revelation.

354
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:25,600
Divine law, God's eternal attribute of wisdom. Hickman is identified as the basic source for all three aspects of reality.

355
00:31:26,020 --> 00:31:33,160
Thus the world can. Signs that point to the wisdom its creator, including the existence of morality, which is naturally accessible to human beings,

356
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:38,470
and the distinctive messages sent with prophets that provide corroboration and a further extension of these truths.

357
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:43,450
If life in the world can furnish the human being with knowledge of the existence of God and a moral code,

358
00:31:43,690 --> 00:31:48,220
then the natural law is to be treated in principle as authoritative over all people.

359
00:31:48,730 --> 00:31:57,340
What are the limits of the natural law from a material perspective? My approach is to treat both the code of basic moral rules and the principles

360
00:31:57,340 --> 00:32:02,590
underlying them as potentially discoverable via experience and reflection,

361
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:07,780
but the application of these rules and principles to particular cases is not known with certainty,

362
00:32:07,930 --> 00:32:13,060
and requires a process of deliberation and a development of practical wisdom in the person of the moral agent,

363
00:32:13,270 --> 00:32:15,190
ideally supported by the guidance of revelation,

364
00:32:15,700 --> 00:32:22,420
the divine law as found in the Qur'an and soon of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, goes beyond the natural law in several respects.

365
00:32:22,900 --> 00:32:26,290
First, it deals with matters of worship that are not rationally determinable.

366
00:32:26,620 --> 00:32:28,930
For instance, the number of ritual prayers be performed per day.

367
00:32:29,950 --> 00:32:36,490
Secondly, the Divine Law provides rulings that make the wisdom of the law operative within a specific prophetic community.

368
00:32:36,970 --> 00:32:43,420
Such such dispensations of the Sharia, the divine law and moral code have a long history prior to the Prophet Muhammad,

369
00:32:43,780 --> 00:32:46,900
who brings the culminating revealed intervention in human history.

370
00:32:47,350 --> 00:32:52,210
As such, his Sharia is his divine law, and moral code can abrogate the laws,

371
00:32:52,420 --> 00:32:58,720
though not the underlying moral principles within the Torah of Moses and the evangel of Jesus according to the Islamic conception.

372
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:04,180
This is a really important point. So the specific legislative rules, these rulings come.

373
00:33:04,780 --> 00:33:09,130
The position is the matter of matter of IMO maturity is that these can be obligated,

374
00:33:09,550 --> 00:33:15,550
but the underlying wisdom student never get abrogated because they flow from God's own divine wisdom.

375
00:33:15,790 --> 00:33:22,270
And so it's really the case that the law has them. The wisdom has to be met within the law in the context of any time.

376
00:33:22,630 --> 00:33:27,280
And this happens within the various dispensations of, of human history.

377
00:33:27,430 --> 00:33:32,020
But even as I'm going to go on to say, within the history of this final community,

378
00:33:32,260 --> 00:33:37,239
there's a need to, um, make sure that the wisdoms of the law are being mapped to the time.

379
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:41,980
And so in my book, the Qur'an, just a slightly, I tried to, um,

380
00:33:42,250 --> 00:33:50,170
give it a termination of what these wisdoms are according to the time of revelation, these, uh, 23 years of the revelation of the Koran.

381
00:33:50,500 --> 00:33:54,399
And I didn't go further to try to apply. Well, how would these apply today?

382
00:33:54,400 --> 00:34:00,670
And I don't in general go into kind of, uh, applied jurisprudence anyway, but it provides a framework which,

383
00:34:00,670 --> 00:34:08,650
um, uh, there could be a, um, a shift in, in, uh, in ruling to reflect the wisdom at a different time.

384
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:15,940
So insofar as a Sharia is revealed to a prophet and applied situations he deals with, it is not subject to doubts or amendments by human agents.

385
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:22,570
But according to the present theory, the rightness of a prophet's sharia is predicated on its goodness read as an objective moral quality.

386
00:34:22,930 --> 00:34:28,420
It varies between revealed dispensations, precisely because the manner by which the good can be realised may shift with time in place.

387
00:34:28,870 --> 00:34:34,600
Another way to put this point is that the hickman's of the law are the causes the court assigns to bring their associated rules into existence.

388
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:36,969
Uh, thus it is a teleological system,

389
00:34:36,970 --> 00:34:42,070
so some moments of reaction can only be understood within a metaphysical context of beneficial and wise purposes.

390
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:48,970
The question of how the law is to be understood after the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, uh, is one for which the present maturity,

391
00:34:49,270 --> 00:34:53,440
uh reading, offers a challenge to prevailing classical approaches to legal legal theory, at least potentially.

392
00:34:53,980 --> 00:35:03,310
And a majority states that is possible for had exhaustive legal inquiry or consensus to determine when the cause of a Koranic rule is not present,

393
00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:07,330
and so its associated rule is abrogated even after the period of revelation.

394
00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:13,450
Once it is appreciated that application does not just refer to God's repeal of one law by another,

395
00:35:13,660 --> 00:35:18,490
but also the juristic tool used to determine the decreed expiration times of rulings.

396
00:35:18,850 --> 00:35:20,740
Such a position is not inherently implausible.

397
00:35:21,070 --> 00:35:27,070
Moreover, within such a framework, a rule abrogated when its wisdom is not met can be reinstated when it is once more,

398
00:35:27,340 --> 00:35:29,050
or can be replaced by a more suitable rule.

399
00:35:29,380 --> 00:35:35,290
One of the roles of the ulema, according to this conception, is to use their expert knowledge to not only clarify, at the level of rules,

400
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:40,150
how the multivariate text of the Koran should not be understood and apparent conflicts reconciled,

401
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,660
but to check the application of the underlying principles to the ever changing world.

402
00:35:44,140 --> 00:35:47,469
Where does justice come in? On the social level, it's the ideal,

403
00:35:47,470 --> 00:35:54,010
wise purpose of lawyer or telos to which the hickman's of the natural and divine law collectively lead theologically.

404
00:35:54,820 --> 00:35:58,600
Each of these principles can be read as the created effect of eternal divine wisdom,

405
00:35:58,900 --> 00:36:03,640
meaning that the just society is one that fully embodies the providential good order of its creator.

406
00:36:04,090 --> 00:36:08,020
As within the Koranic picture, life in the world is meant as a test of human excellence,

407
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,560
even if it may be very difficult or impossible to realise justice in the world.

408
00:36:11,830 --> 00:36:14,080
It is the duty of humanity to pursue it.

409
00:36:14,710 --> 00:36:20,830
Vital to this effort is the role of the personal moral agency of individual human beings, who act with justice in their daily interactions.

410
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:26,680
One of the most important qualities that each person should inculcate is he combines wisdom in the sense of.

411
00:36:26,740 --> 00:36:27,400
Practical wisdom.

412
00:36:27,730 --> 00:36:34,870
This allows one to attain the wise purposes of the national divine law, which are founded in God's attribute within a virtue ethics framework.

413
00:36:35,050 --> 00:36:41,950
It can be considered a principle good, as mentioned in the Quranic verse 2269 God gives wisdom to whomsoever he wills,

414
00:36:42,070 --> 00:36:47,800
and the one who is given wisdom has received abundant good. Moreover, just as was mentioned above in relation to the natural law,

415
00:36:48,010 --> 00:36:52,090
the divine law no less requires practical decision making by every responsible agent

416
00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:55,660
in the application of moral and legal rules to the diverse circumstances of life.

417
00:36:56,230 --> 00:37:03,850
Unlike an approach to Islamic law, in which jurists are expected to deduce a specific hokum for every conceivable situation in a person's life,

418
00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:10,540
the stereotype is an abdication of moral responsibility by continually turning to a mufti or jurist and consult for a fatwa.

419
00:37:10,870 --> 00:37:17,290
The just individual is meant to develop the ability to judge how the rules and principles of the Sharia relate to their diverse experiences.

420
00:37:17,620 --> 00:37:22,090
In fact, notwithstanding the importance of expert jurists, the specialised intellectual work,

421
00:37:22,300 --> 00:37:27,370
such an approach is much closer to the original meaning of the word fit as firm understanding than its

422
00:37:27,370 --> 00:37:32,170
later technical translation as jurisprudence for discipline accessible only to an elite class diplomat.

423
00:37:32,770 --> 00:37:36,520
What, then, would a maturity date or maturity theology make of the liberal traditions?

424
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:39,860
Conceptions of justice? Good question.

425
00:37:41,870 --> 00:37:49,429
According to MacIntyre's Metal Theory, if the rational standards of two traditions are incomparable incommensurable,

426
00:37:49,430 --> 00:37:54,080
then the first would have to be able to explain not only the limitations of the second view,

427
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:59,150
but why its rival is unable to overcome them within its own rational framework.

428
00:37:59,990 --> 00:38:05,480
But as discussed above, this only amounts to a rational defeat if the rival tradition would see it in these terms.

429
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:11,540
Could materialism or another Islamic theory push liberalism into a state of epistemic crisis?

430
00:38:12,650 --> 00:38:16,430
To do so, it would have to work from its own first principles to systematically,

431
00:38:16,430 --> 00:38:21,380
systematically unmask Liberalism's failure to provide a rationally satisfying accounts of the good.

432
00:38:21,980 --> 00:38:28,010
I will now draw on MacIntyre's critique of liberalism to suggest a line of argument that could be pursued, as discussed in the previous section.

433
00:38:28,310 --> 00:38:35,270
Liberalism adopts the stance of a consumer seeking personal preferences, and so it's always in the business of ranking various conflicting desires,

434
00:38:35,270 --> 00:38:38,930
duties, or contractual obligations relating to the different aspects of human life.

435
00:38:39,410 --> 00:38:45,770
Its rejection of its logical view means that it can never look at the individual, let alone society, as serving a greater moral purpose.

436
00:38:46,220 --> 00:38:52,400
The majority perspective could argue this lack of a single conception of the good in human life is a hollowness of the core of liberalism,

437
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:57,290
in stark contrast to its own vision of unified meaning through participation in the wisdom of the divine.

438
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:02,780
Thus, while the liberal paradigm is unable to provide a global theory to account for moral intuitions about justice,

439
00:39:03,050 --> 00:39:09,380
the majority view could perhaps argue these intuitions arise consistently from natural law based on a higher purpose for wisdom.

440
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,979
This argument will leave liberalism exposed to an epistemic crisis that could

441
00:39:12,980 --> 00:39:16,340
be diagnosed and treated with resources from within the Islamic tradition.

442
00:39:16,790 --> 00:39:23,070
And so, in conclusion. My main aim in this paper has been twofold.

443
00:39:23,490 --> 00:39:30,120
To demonstrate the possibility of using a map anterior in meta theory, to stage an engagement between Islamic and liberal conceptions of justice,

444
00:39:30,420 --> 00:39:34,380
and to outline the specific Islamic ethical theories I think can best undertake this task.

445
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:40,320
I've argued that despite a range of valuable critiques over the past decades, many of which have helped McIntyre refine his views,

446
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:44,520
the basic notion of tradition constitutes inquiry has emerged unscathed as a useful

447
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,940
tool for debate between radically different traditions of rationality and ethics,

448
00:39:48,420 --> 00:39:51,900
though it has been able to withstand the critique that it collapses into relativism, in my view.

449
00:39:52,260 --> 00:39:56,669
It is less clear that the engagement between those with different first principles will always result

450
00:39:56,670 --> 00:40:01,920
in a decisive victory for a single tradition in the arena of debate between conceptions of justice.

451
00:40:02,100 --> 00:40:08,340
MacIntyre's critique of the liberal tradition may be a way to move beyond the unresolved contestation between his vying theories.

452
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:10,950
In his entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

453
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:16,500
David Miller implicitly confirms MacIntyre's conclusion that none of the contemporary liberal philosophical options

454
00:40:16,650 --> 00:40:21,600
provide a comprehensive treatment of considered convictions about justice in all the various facets of human life.

455
00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:27,880
I have proposed, I'm not sure really. Perspective is able to stand in one of the great traditions of Muslim rational theology,

456
00:40:28,060 --> 00:40:31,600
while also benefiting from the diverse perspectives available within modern thought.

457
00:40:32,530 --> 00:40:38,170
Jackson again comments on the possibility possible utility of the material standpoint for Muslim theology in the West as follows.

458
00:40:38,620 --> 00:40:43,179
Um, it may constitute the untried theological panacea that is firmly grounded in an

459
00:40:43,180 --> 00:40:47,290
identified person tradition in terms of conceiving of justice from within this tradition.

460
00:40:47,500 --> 00:40:51,490
I have sketched the main principles upon which it can be constituted as an ethical theory,

461
00:40:51,610 --> 00:40:55,060
which involve the concept of God's wisdom and its relevance to natural and divine law.

462
00:40:55,390 --> 00:40:58,570
I then provided some initial reflections on the terms in which such a theory could

463
00:40:58,570 --> 00:41:02,080
attempt to engage the liberal tradition and to provoke an epistemic crisis.

464
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:09,280
It is not obvious that proponents of liberalism would, in practice, accept rational defeat from those debating within an Islamic ethical framework.

465
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:15,250
Notwithstanding that such a refusal would likely reflect factors transcending rational argumentation alone.

466
00:41:15,790 --> 00:41:22,089
It may be that MacIntyre's mistake, or as he now prefers neo Aristotelian tradition, would have more success by showing,

467
00:41:22,090 --> 00:41:28,570
as he is himself endeavoured to do in his career, that the liberal tradition is composed of dislocated fragments from its own moral framework.

468
00:41:28,930 --> 00:41:35,020
Perhaps the more productive engagement for Islamic thought would be with such a fellow theistic tradition, committed to the natural law.

469
00:41:35,290 --> 00:41:40,090
But in that case, does the conversation have to be framed only in competitive and antagonistic terms?

470
00:41:40,720 --> 00:41:44,590
I have now returned to the initial question of how Muslims can hold on to their particular tradition.

471
00:41:44,590 --> 00:41:47,680
Constitutive conception of justice. He acts in concert with others.

472
00:41:48,010 --> 00:41:53,440
According to the present argument, the practical moral rules and principles of natural law should be the standard that Muslims

473
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:57,460
require other traditions to uphold and the basis on which they build collaborative platforms.

474
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:03,010
The shared approach may manifest most easily with theists who ground their moral vision within the scriptural tradition,

475
00:42:03,220 --> 00:42:05,770
though it should here be emphasised that in general,

476
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:12,700
the rulings prescribed by the Islamic dispensation of divine law would only be treated as binding upon members of the Muslim community.

477
00:42:13,060 --> 00:42:18,430
Of course, philosophical interaction will necessarily also be broached with those, such as adherents of liberalism,

478
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:24,220
but do not accept the principle underlying theology of the natural law as formulated within an Islamic theory of justice.

479
00:42:24,490 --> 00:42:28,540
It is here that the American theory and framework remains an important method for empathetic

480
00:42:28,540 --> 00:42:33,330
engagement that may result in greater mutual appreciation of the alternative rationality,

481
00:42:33,340 --> 00:42:37,480
grounding diverse moral intuitions about justice. Thank you for your attention.