A History of Ottoman Political Thought Up to the Early Nineteenth Century

“Political Philosophy” and the Moralist Tradition^75

2 Moral Philosophy as Political Theory

As has been noted, all these authors see political science as a part of moral
philosophy. Amasi, for instance, states (Y82–98) that wisdom (hikmet) has its
theoretical (ilm) and its practical (amel) aspects; he will explore the second, i.e.
practical wisdom, something also divided up, into that which is related to the
self alone and that which is related to common associations of men (cema ’ata
müşareket ile). The latter, in turn, may concern one’s household or the “town
and province and country” (şehir ve vilayet ve iklim). Thus, practical wisdom
may, in fact, be divided into three kinds: the improvement of morals, the man-
agement of the household, and the administration of cities (siyaset-i müdün)
or political wisdom (hikmet-i medeni). As this science discusses in essence the
human soul, its principles belong to natural science (ilm-i tabi’iyye). This cat-
egorization, coming from Avicenna’s work,32 may be clearer with the following
diagram:

Wisdom

Theoretical Practical

On self On associations

On household On society

Improvement of morals Management of the

household

Administration of

cities

Kınalızade further clarifies that the ethics of the first level, i.e. individual
morals, is a simple (müfred) science, as opposed to the other two which are
compound (mürekkeb) sciences since they concern groups rather than indi-
viduals (K97).
Bitlisi (A18) uses a different argument, one with a more religious basis. The
Quran and the Sunna have two objects, namely theory and practice (maksad-ı

32 Avicenna, however, seems to have added a fourth sub-discipline on “prophetic legislation”
to his later works. Although neither Tusi nor Davvani followed this categorization, a chain
of commentators and continuators did, dividing political science into the governance of
cities and the science of laws. See Kaya 2014, 272ff.