Philosophy of Religion Research
Motahhari and the Place of Evil in the Evolutionary Movement of History
Document Type : Short Paper
Authors
1 M.A. Student of Islamic Philosophy and Kalam, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
In the modern era the concept of history, which had found prominence beyond a series of events, came as the subject of contemplation of Iranian thinkers like Morteza Motahhari. Influenced by Romantic thoughts, he believed that history has evolutionary movement and he tried to express that movement according to what he called the "Islamic worldview”. In this explanation, The Qur’anic concept of "khalifatollah" (i.e. divine caliphate of man) and also the two concepts of cosmic and legislative plans for man's adaptation to the movement of history are prominent. Man, as the divine caliph on earth, is responsible for making history. But in order not to go astray in this act of construction, two cosmic and legislative plans have been set for him as both his guide and his evaluator in this way. The study of Morteza Motahhari's statements on the above-mentioned concepts shows that in many of his discussions he introduces the concept of evils and tries to clarify their relation with his evolutionary plan. In this article, we investigate the relationship between evil and the movement of history based on the view of Morteza Motahhari. Initial study shows that Motahhari, by linking the philosophy of history to the evils, provides a kind of "historical practical theology" in which the divine will is linked to the human will to determine the movement of history.
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