Cicero posits, “There are many questions within philosophy to which no satisfactory answers have been given but the question of the nature of God is the most difficult.” Philosophy thus necessarily does not entail making ultimate inferences. It just obliges to initiate the profound exploration of the abstruse realms of the phenomenal world. I use the phrase phenomenal world in the Kantian sense because the noumenal world is unknowable for him and it can’t have contradictions as it transcends every contradiction. However, while a philosopher steps on the trajectory of exploration, he encounters contradictions within the world that boggle his mind. Thus, the philosophy of contradiction came into being. It differentiated philosophers on their philosophical underpinnings. One group recognized the laws of contradiction and another challenged its existence. Hegel and Shaheed Murtaza Mutahhari stood at opposite poles in regard to the laws of contradiction. Hegel as an idealist found the law of contradiction at work in both phenomenal and mistakenly in the noumenal world as well by placing non-being as a contradiction to absolute being but Shaheed Mutahhari did not concord and elaborated on how this law is invalidated and cannot be operational as it will destabilize the essential or noumenal world and leave us wandering having no beginning and end and nothing to hold on to.
Hegel said that all things are contradictory and contradiction is at the core of things. Things exist and do not exist simultaneously. Shaheed Mutahhari apprehended the implications of this law. He understood that it would make our own lives dubitable. If we say we exist and we don’t exist simultaneously, it will end up making our lives a complete mess. It will primarily disturb every sphere of human life. It would appear hilarious if a person said ‘I have a heart and I don’t have a heart’ at the same time. He recognized the concept of contradiction but not as a negative distinction of things as Hegel believes. He upholds that it is not contradiction but contrast that distinguishes things from each other. These contraries are positive and act as an identity of things. It is a difference and diversity among things and it is complementary to their existence. Contradiction negates the thing but the difference distinguishes it. Heat and coldness complement each other. They differ but do not contradict each other. This diversity leads to the growth of things.
Shaheed Mutahhari considered these differences as signs and indications that evidence towards a being that is without contraries. That has none as an opposite or similar simultaneously. The creation is a microcosm of the bigger world that is above the phenomenal world. The things of this phenomenal world guide us to understand the transcendental world. As William Blake says the world is seen in a grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower, infinity is held in the palm of one’s hand and eternity is experienced in an hour. These experiences are possible if things are taken as signs. Their finitude directs us to infinity.
Shaheed Mutahhari believes that it is the diversity of things that differentiate the creator and created and helps us to have the possible comprehension of the absolute being. But it needs intellectual effort in addition to observation and experiment. Without intellectual effort, one can know the creation but not the creator for which this creation is a sign. As Cicero puts it, “The comprehension of God is the hardest thing in philosophy.” Mutahhari refutes the complete knowledge of God because He precedes knowledge. He cannot be known by a finitude that is bound in time, space and existence because He precedes them. But Mutahhari introduces the concept of Fitrat which is a link between the phenomenal and noumenal world. Fitrat or Geist is a pure consciousness that possesses the complete recognition of a transcendental being. It is infinite as well. It strives to merge into the transcendental being by rising above the existence. It is a pure remembrance of the transcendental being that it witnessed in the world of particles. It is within the world for the transitory duration to assist in making the existence of finite beings possible in the phenomenal world. This Fitrat or Geist flies over to its origin after the death of a human being. By the best order and design of the world, one can appreciate the creation but can’t understand the designer of this universe unless an intellectual effort is utilized. Unless the knowledge of Fitrat is attained, no knowledge of transcendental being is possible. Shaheed Mutahhari says that even the understanding of matter requires intellect or one can understand the properties of matter but not matter itself.
Shaheed Mutahhari does not strike an agreement with Hegel and says that everything does not entail having antitheses particularly Being. Hegel puts Being and non-Being, Existence and non-Existence as parallels. Being is annihilated when it is contradicted by non-being and evolves into becoming. Hegel drew the map of reality historically and tried to totalize it incorporating everything and ultimately becoming everything. He intertwines the phenomenal and noumenal world together striving to bridge the gap that Kant clearly drew. Mutahhari says that putting death as an antithesis to life is a fallacy. The world is full of oppositions as a complementary distinction to things but not in a Hegelian way. He calls it a blunder to call one thing good and another evil. If they are two contradictory things, they should have two different-good and evil- sources but everything issues forth from one transcendental being which can never create anything evil because he is pure good. He says that these opposites are mandatory for the order of this world. The order of this world is maintained by the opposites like day and night, life and death, laughter and lamentation, light and darkness, etc.
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Contradiction in the views of Shaheed Mutahhari and Hegel
