Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai

Works

• 1953The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism

  Fourteen essays in Persian, published from 1953 with a commentary by his student Morteza Motahhari: against the dialectical materialism spread in Iran by the Tudeh party, Tabatabai defends a realist theory of knowledge in the tradition of Mulla Sadra and explains moral and social concepts as “constructed” (iʿtibārī) by human beings for the sake of action.

• 1954The Balance in the Interpretation of the Qur’an

  Commentary in Arabic in twenty volumes, written between 1954 and 1972, which explains the Qur’an by the Qur’an – each verse by others – and adds separate philosophical, historical and social discussions.

Position

Tabatabai is on the map as the leading teacher of the philosophy of Mulla Sadra in twentieth-century Iran and as a philosopher who brought it into debate with modern thought. In “The Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism”, written in the late 1940s and published from 1953 with his student Motahhari’s commentary, he answered the dialectical materialism that the Tudeh party had made popular among Iranian students: knowledge, he argued, reaches a reality that exists independently of the mind, and the principles of thought cannot be reduced to reflections of matter or of class. Among its most discussed parts is the essay on “constructed” or conventional ideas (iʿtibāriyyāt): concepts such as ownership, obligation, leadership or goodness are not perceptions of things but are posited by human beings to guide action towards their needs, and they change with societies – a theory his students carried into ethics and political thought. His two textbooks, “The Beginning of Wisdom” and “The End of Wisdom”, became the standard introduction to Sadrian philosophy in the seminaries. His Qur’an commentary “al-Mizan” explains each verse by others and adds separate philosophical, social and historical discussions. Through his conversations with Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s translation of “Shiʿite Islam” (1975) he became, for many Western scholars, the representative of a living Shiʿite philosophy.

Life & context

Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai was born in Tabriz in 1904 – some sources give 1903, Wikidata also 1892 – into a family of scholars descended from the Prophet, and lost both parents in childhood. He studied in Tabriz and from 1925 in Najaf, where he learned jurisprudence, studied philosophy with Sayyid Husayn Badkubaʾi and mathematics, and was introduced to the mystical path by Mirza ʿAli Qadi. Financial need took him back to the Tabriz region in 1934, where he lived for ten years as a farmer and teacher. During the political crisis in Azerbaijan he moved to Qom in 1946 and there taught philosophy and Qur’anic exegesis – then unusual subjects in the seminary – to many later scholars, among them Morteza Motahhari, Abdollah Javadi Amoli and Hasan Hasanzadeh Amoli. From 1958 to 1977 he met regularly in Tehran with the French scholar Henry Corbin, with Seyyed Hossein Nasr as interpreter. He died in Qom on 15 November 1981.

Further main works

• The Beginning of Wisdom (Bidāyat al-ḥikma) and The End of Wisdom (Nihāyat al-ḥikma)
• Glosses on Mulla Sadra’s Four Journeys (al-Asfār al-arbaʿa)
• Shiʿite Islam (Shīʿa dar Islām; English translation by S. H. Nasr, 1975)