Fr Joseph Pallattil
‘What is the purpose of man? The purpose of man is the inclination of his soul to the higher world in order that everyone might return to his like.’ This is written by Solomon Ibn Gabirol, a Jewish scholastic genius, who possessed extraordinary intellectual gifts and excelled as a poet and as a philosopher. Jewish scholasticism was the result of the desire and necessity of reconciling two apparently independent sources of truth: Reason or Philosophy and the revealed truth in the Jewish Bible.
Ibn Gabirol is first and foremost interested in understanding the nature and purpose of human being: we must understand what we are (our nature) so that we know how to live (our purpose). His attempt to explore layers of cosmological and metaphysical realities is in order to understand how to live the best human life possible.
Gabirol’s main concern is that the goal of the entire inquiry is to understand why human beings were made. “Why was man–made?” which is to say, to understand the ends (or purpose) of human being. He teaches that a human being ought to pursue knowledge of his final cause or purpose according to which he was composed. In spelling out the true, divinely ordained goal of human life, he presents a twofold endeavour: the pursuit of knowledge and the doing of good deeds.
Why is it so important to understand the nature of human being? ‘So that, he might better understand and better inspire the pursuit of knowledge and the doing of good deeds.’ Knowledge indeed leads to deeds, and deeds separate the soul from the contraries which harm it. In every way, knowledge and deeds liberate the soul from the captivity of nature and purge it of its darkness and obscurity, and in this way the soul returns to its higher world.
In order to have a peaceful better society, human beings should have a life with good deeds. What motivates human to be morally good is the awareness of himself that he is created by God, having a divine essence, and he has to return to his creator. If anyone thinks that he is a qualitatively higher being, then he cannot act in such a way that reduce the higher quality of his life. This idea of awareness of one’s own self and the morally good behaviour resembles the Socratic idea of ‘know thyself.’ Realizing the value of life leads human being to be inclined to good deeds. All our educational system should aim at making a child with this self awareness that his or her life is qualitatively higher, it is created by God and it should return to God. This awareness helps him or her to mould their behaviours in a morally uplifted manner.
