[In the following excerpt, Butterworth discusses Avicenna's moral and political philosophy.]

[Avicenna's] writing takes the form of essays about Aristotelian treatises and themes, essays which explore the subject of the treatise or the theme itself in such a manner that one learns far more about Avicenna's opinions than about what he thinks Aristotle was trying to explain. For example, in his multi-volume Shifā (or Healing)—a work divided into four major sections, somewhat along the lines of Aristotle's account of the sciences, and each section further divided into parts which frequently bear the names of Aristotelian treatises—Avicenna explains what he understands of these sciences or arts with nary a reference to Aristotle. Much of the rest of his writing presupposes the importance of the Shifā insofar as it summarizes or enumerates in abbreviated form the themes discussed there. And Avicenna indicates his differences from Aristotle in yet another way: whereas Aristotle presented his moral and political teaching as belonging to practical science and as independent of as well as distinct from theoretical science, Avicenna frequently blurs that distinction. Though he does admit that morals and politics belong to practical science, he elaborates upon them only in the course of his theoretical discussions, that is, either in his On the Soul of the Shifā (a treatise which takes up the theme and many of the discussions of Aristotle's De Anima) or in his Metaphysics, also a part of the Shifā.

It is in Book Ten of his Metaphysics that Avicenna provides his fullest account of moral virtue. He begins by explaining the superiority of the prophet to all other men, indicating thereby that both philosophy and politics are subordinate to religion. The prophet is the best of men because he has acquired the practical moral habits by which he can manage his own affairs as well as provide for those of the people for whom he sets down laws and establishes justice, and because he has developed his soul to the point that it has become a free intellect. Such an explanation tacitly suggests that the prophet completes the partial lives of the philosopher and the virtuous ruler—the philosopher having a fully developed intellect, but not the practical moral virtues whose mastery would allow him to rule people well, and the virtuous ruler having the latter but not the former.

Whereas the opinions and actions Farabi's virtuous first ruler set before the people were clearly such as to help them acquire the moral habits and dispositions which would allow them to live together harmoniously, and in such living to move towards ultimate happiness, Avicenna's prophet dwells more on beliefs which have no such immediate political relevance. Some even have an anti-political or ascetic bent, as though the highest goal towards which thoughtful humans should strive were to weaken the ties between their soul and their body in order to achieve separation from the body. In this sense, ultimate happiness is not acquired through political association, but through a turning away from political life and all other bodily concerns. Running throughout Avicenna's writings, this tension between the demands of political life and the demands of complete spiritual life derives from the subordination of philosophy and politics to religion, from the claim that the highest human achievement is the pure intellectual or spiritual perception proper to a disembodied soul which has gone beyond the concerns of the practical intellect. Unfortunately, Avicenna never explains what prompts the prophet to turn aside from this all-important goal of untrammeled spiritual perception in order to legislate for a political community. Nor, in spite of his repeated insistence on the need to do away with or go beyond the practical intellect in order to develop fully the theoretical or spiritual intellect, does he ever make clear why the prophet's mastery of the practical moral virtues should constitute his superiority over the philosopher.

This tension or unclarity notwithstanding, Avicenna's prophet does set down laws for a political community, laws which provide for its administration and survival as well as for the moral and physical well-being of its citizens. Avicenna pictures human beings as first coming together in order to survive. Initially no more than a basic response to nature's inattentiveness, it leads, under the best of circumstances, to their spiritual betterment as well. Their immediate need for someone who will set down laws and thereby establish justice so that they might live together harmoniously points beyond mere physical concerns because justice, properly conceived, provides for all human good. Avicenna's reasoning is that justice is a balance or mean acquired by means of moral habits and character traits and sought either to break the hold of the passions so that the soul may be purified and liberated from the body or to use the passions with respect to the concerns of this world.

One way men should make use of the passions for what pertains to this world is to take pleasure in their natural appetites for things like food, clothing, and sex in order to preserve their bodies and to have children. Avicenna also suggests another way, namely, giving vent to those passions like anger, hate, and pride in order to be courageous enough to preserve the city. With respect to this proper use of the appetitive passions (or temperance) and of the irascible passions (or courage), Avicenna speaks of the need to observe a mean between vices of excess and deficiency. Though he does no more than hint at the consequences, he must have in mind that men can harm one another by pursuing the bodily pleasures to excess or by being rash and foolhardy; on the other hand, if they are so insensitive to pleasure that they do not eat adequately and fail to engage in sexual intercourse or shy away from protecting what is their own as do those who are overly fearful, the city will be harmed.

Avicenna says little here, or in the treatise which discusses these same issues—On the Science of Moral Habits—about practical wisdom. We are told that it is to be used for administrative affairs and is opposed to the vices of discernment, nothing more.

These three moral habits and character traits (temperance, courage, and practical wisdom—also referred to by Avicenna as moral virtues), by means of which justice is acquired, are for the well-being of human beings in this world. They can be pursued adequately without theoretical wisdom, even though it is superior to them. At the end of his account, Avicenna presents theoretical wisdom as being so important that one can attain happiness only by acquiring it as well as these three virtues, all of which add up to justice. Clearly, one cannot be happy—however virtuous one is—without having theoretical wisdom, but Avicenna says nothing about the converse. Instead he indicates that the only thing to be desired more than justice plus theoretical wisdom is "to win, in addition, the prophetic qualities" [1960: X, 455: 14-16].

The communal basis of Avicenna's ethical teaching can now be stated as follows. Adherence to the laws set down by the prophet will permit the citizens to acquire the moral virtues, which together are tantamount to justice, and thus to live harmoniously in this world. If the citizens also embrace the beliefs about God and the life to come as set down by the prophet (the non-political beliefs alluded to above), they can aspire to happiness in the hereafter. Those able to acquire theoretical wisdom as well as justice may aspire to happiness in this life, but to a happiness inferior to that of the prophet—presumably because the prophet alone is able to purify his soul so that it becomes liberated from the body and thus achieves intellectual or spiritual perception.…