Document Type : Biannual Journal

Author

• hossein ahmadi

Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Ethics, Faculty member of Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute, Qom, Iran

Abstract

INTRODUCTION
One of the main issues of moral philosophy is ethical ontology, and the main theme of ethical ontology is Moral Realism and moral anti-realism. The title Moral Realism is applied to a theory that considers an external reality for the moral concepts and propositions regardless of any order, recommendation, feeling, taste, agreement, or bases those concepts and propositions on an external reality; however, anti-realism does not consider any reality for the morality other than an order, recommendation, feeling, taste or agreement.
The influence of Farabi on the creation the Islamic civilization is obvious to the thinkers; he made an extensive attempt during his life to Islamize the sciences. Important works have been written about Farabi's moral views, But Unfortunately, none of these works has addressed the topics of Moral Ontology that is considered the main topic in Moral Philosophy.
Farabi has stated at least four arguments to prove realism. Sometimes Farabi gains help from the aesthetics, and he also proves reality sometimes through the semantics of moral concepts and felicity, through achievement of ultimate perfection on occasion, and also at times through determining the recognition path. The present research attempts to present the ontological subjects of Farabi's ethics in a new form so as to familiarize the researchers with the helpful method employed by Farabi in Moral Philosophy in order to prepare a ground to make a greater use of the method and content potential of Farabi's discussions of Moral Philosophy by Farabi. It seems Farabi does not address a number of ethical issues that need to be addressed to them because of the power of reasoning for realism, such as the rational explanation for human proportional perfection and how the way of happiness is the knowledge of the disability. Also, Farabi's attention to the separation of ethics from customs will eliminate the relativistic charge from him.
Material
Farabi, like the early thinkers before him, did not author an independent book in the field of Moral Philosophy because the Moral Philosophy had not branched out then as a separate knowledge, but there are some discussions of Moral Philosophy dispersed in some of his works. We can gain some of his novel attitudes on Moral Philosophy through the examination of his writings. So this article uses analytical philosophical method and It takes its materials from the library way.
Discussion
It is possible to propose numerous statements about the realist nature of Farabi proving that he is a moral realist. In the present research we only explain the following arguments indicating the Moral Realism that can be inferred from the sayings of Farabi.
Proving the Moral Realism through Aesthetics. One of Farabi's arguments used to prove the morally realist nature of Farabi is that he considers ethics as a beautiful subject (Farabi, 1992; P.243; Farabi,1992: P. 65) and he also considers beauty to be equal to existential perfection (Farabi, 199a: PP.42-43). Therefore, Farabi considers ethics as the existential perfection, and the existential perfection is the same as existential enjoyment, that is, it is real.
Proving realism through finalism. Farabi is a finalist scholar and he believes in the real ends and finalism is considered one of the realist schools, so Farbi is a realist. Farabi believes that the goal of ethics is to enable human to achieve the real felicity and he considers the real felicity and goal of ethics as an existential object (Farabi, 1995a, PP.101-103). Regarding the definition of Moral Realism, where the title Moral Realism is applied to a theory that considers an external reality for the moral concepts and propositions regardless of any order, recommendation, feeling, taste or agreement, or bases those concepts and propositions on an external reality (Ahmadi, 2017: P.118), many Muslim thinkers are moral realists.
Proving Moral Realism through semantics of moral concepts. Farabi defines the concepts indicating the moral predicate that can be interpreted as predicate concepts, as existential and real and when the moral concepts are real, the proposition formed by the moral concepts will be real and thereby the Moral Realism will be proved.
Proving realism through Epistemology. If Farabi did not believe in any reality for ethics, then it had been senseless to introduce wisdom as a method to recognize ethics, while Farabi has determined multiple ways like wisdom to recognize the moral reality (Farabi, 1995b: P.42).
Conclusion
Farabi explained his absolutism through dividing goodness into absolute goodness and non-absolute goodness. The absolute goodness explains human's ultimate perfection and real felicity and the non-absolute goodness explains the relationship between the action and ultimate perfection¹. Farabi also offers a particular innovation in defining and explaining wisdom because he believes that wisdom in a special sense means that the wisdom reason out the best things through the best knowledge. The best knowledge means the permanent knowledge and knowledge of essence that is imperishable and presential that is considered the best knowledge² and he explains about the wisdom of divine proximity and human's needs for God's blessings even in acquiring the ultimate perfection. Then he explained about the path to the ultimate perfection in Moral Philosophy by defining wisdom in a novel way.
Another innovation of Farabi was to determine the instance of the real felicity that none of his preceding scholars had completed and Islamicized the Greek moral theory so accurately that he did. He accepted the divine proximity theory as a supplement to the moral theories of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and enriched it through explaining the features of divine proximity degrees.
Despite all the innovations of Farabi, but it seems necessary that Be explained The following content, such as rational explanation for the appropriate perfection for humans, and for relation between knowledge of the caused to its need from Cause and the true perfection of the caused, as well as the separation of ethics from customs.

Keywords

• Ontology
• Ethics
• Moral Ontology
• Moral Realism
• Moral Anti- Realism
• Farabi