The True Life of Human in the Thought of ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī

Knowledge of the reality of the human being and consideration of the ultimate end of human life have been the focus of attention of scholars of reason and revelation. This important matter manifests when they know where the scope of reproduction and the outcome of human life and everyday striving leads. In this regard, there is a conflict of opinions; some, with a natural-material anthropological view, regard true life as the provision of worldly and sensory pleasures and the desires of animal faculties; some consider it felicity, and some consider it rational life. ‘Allāmah Tabātabā’ī has considered true life to be the combination of matter and meaning, and he regards its final instance as the pure life in the vicinity of divine mercy in the hereafter, and he considers the difference between true life and pure life to be in inclusiveness and expansion; he has also referred to true life as spiritual and higher life, and considers it to be of the category of existential perfection and based on the soul dimension of the human being. This paper, in a descriptive-analytical method, has reached the conclusion that life is derivative and posterior to the soul, and that true life is the ultimate end of the possible end of the human being, crystallized eternally in the abode of the hereafter, and its actualization requires certain elements such as: intellect, correct knowledge (theoretical knowledge), righteous action, faith, and free will, which are influential in the formation and mechanism of true life, and its domain includes all human beings, provided that they have reached the necessary threshold.