Fakhr Al-Din Al-Raqzi on justice

Abstract

The goal of this research is to investigate the conception of justice according to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (543-606 A.H./1149-1209 A.D.), one of major Muslim philosophers. This research has achieved its objective by means of descriptive, interpretative, and comparative methods based on textual analysis of al-Razi’s intellectual works. The study investigates al-Razi’s conception of justice and the elements which revolve around it, preceded by a brief survey on the conception of justice by al-Razi’s predecessors. Since justice was among the major issues which drew the attention of Muslim Scholars, the discourse of justice had already been discussed by al-Razi’s predecessors. According to them, justice revolves around the conception of the psychology of the human soul, of ethics, and of virtue which ultimately leads to the attainment of happiness. The result of this research shows that al-Razi uses various terms to mean justice. All of these terms have been used and interpreted by al-Razi in the light of Islamic semantic vocabularies, more importantly as presented in the Qur’an. The nature of the human soul is the basis of al-Razi’s conception of justice. In his view, when all the powers of the soul are put in their proper places or existed in a state of moderation, far from either excess or deficiency, man then will achieve justice which ultimately leads to virtuous acts and happiness. The moderate and just condition of all powers of the soul show the perfection of man in the sense that the intellect has supremacy over the animal soul, which in turn, indicates the ability of man to govern and control his animal soul properly and proportionally. A perfect man is a just man who can govern and control his animalistic powers, from which he can achieve justice as well as true and real freedom from his animalistic control.