The Reality of Ethics from the Perspective of Ayatollah Mesbah

In this article, we will try to present the views of Ayatollah Mesbah concerning the reality or actuality of ethics. Ayatollah Mesbah is one of the prominent representatives of transcendent philosophy and the author of an extensive body of work on ethics, including two works devoted to the philosophy of morality, entitled The Philosophy of Morality and Critique and Analysis of Ethical Schools. By the reality of ethics, we mean that ethical concepts can be defined and that ethical judgments are declarative propositions that describe facts and realities, and report on reality and actuality. In this paper, we will examine the classification of concepts in general, followed by an analysis of ethical subjects and predicates, the question of whether ethical sentences and judgments are declarative or prescriptive, and the question of whether ethical judgments and propositions can be demonstrated or justified. We will also briefly consider some of the consequences of rejecting the reality of ethics, such as ethical relativism and similar positions. Finally, we will demonstrate that ethical concepts have an objective foundation in objective reality from which they are abstracted. Ethical judgments describe external reality; therefore, ethics and morality are not a reflection of personal taste or social convention, but rather constitute principles governing the relations between human voluntary actions and their desirable end-the end toward which ethics is directed.