Anthropology of 'Abd al-Jabbar

Abstract

It is the foundation of the ethics in Islam that man is to be judged hereafter according to what he has done in this world. On the resurrection God will create man anew as same as created first time in this world. 'Abe al-Jabbar established his theory on the self-identity which continues from this world to the hereafter from the viewpoint of the Mu'tazilite atomic ontology, in which the things in this world are conceived to be composed of atoms and their inhering accidents.On the contrary to most of the earlier Mu'tazila who insist that the reality of man be the spirit, 'Abd al-Jabbar maintains that his reality is in his total living body with the life and the physical structure in addition to the spirit. The spirit is distinct from the physical body and it cannot be realized without life in the body. Man is not only an exterior unity composed of several atoms and accidents with its special structure distinct from other beings, but also an interior unity composed of spirit, life and other accidents. In this meaning he calls man “Living Totality (jumla al-hayy)”.On the resurrection, this living totality is to be created anew as the same man as in this world. 'Abd al-Jabbar conceives the minimal unit of the atoms (aqall al- ajza') which survives the resurrection and continues to be in the hereafter. While the spirit perishes together with life and physical body at the death of man, the minimal unit of the atoms remains and is transferred to the next life. The core of his identity is this minimal unit of the atoms. This will be the kernel, the centre of self-identity in the hereafter; a substrate in which the new spirit, the new life and the new physical body, completely distinct from those of this world, will inhere.