Avicenna's Ethical Thought

In both arguments about the faculties of soul and the premises of different kinds of deductions, Ibn Sina discusses briefly practical philosophy. While in the former he regards ethics as the result of practical reason, he recognizes it in the latter based on a specific kind of accepted premises (praiseworthy opinions, well-accepted opinions) that have been originated from habits, conventions, traditions from the past time and the like. Besides these two viewpoints combined together, by confirming that i) practical reason is called reason merely homonymously, ii) praiseworthy opinions have no other basis but reputation and iii) human reason considered by itself cannot judge about them, Ibn Sina makes his readers ready for his inferences: that a) moral descriptions like good and bad are not descriptions of realities and b) moral judgments are not propositions. Nonetheless, by his ambiguous statement that praiseworthy opinions can be either true or false and it is possible to provide a demonstration for them, he, on the other hand, makes his position, at least in appearance, dark, ambiguous and variously interpretable. This article has two sections. The first section is dedicated to practical reason and its function in moral judgments while the second one focuses on Ibn Sina’s theory about the premises and materials of moral judgment and their origin. These two considerations are going to illustrate that Ibn Sina’s theory about the function of practical reason and the origin of moral judgment leaves no place for truthfulness or falsity of those accepted premises that are considered praiseworthy opinions and their demonstration is not possible. However, even if some of them can be either true or false, they must be emplaced somewhere outside the boundaries of moral judgment.