Abstract

The relation between value and reality, or the relation between obligation and existence, is one of the most controversial matters in the field of metaethics. It has become a concern for scholars of moral philosophy and has led to the formation of a set of different opinions in it to include pure morality on the one hand, that which does never admit any relation between ethics and reality, and pure realism on the other hand, which says that moral values are real and concrete. There is another theory lying between them, saying that ethical values are moral, and at the same time are based on reality. In this study, we have tried to discuss the Ash'arite morality, the theory of necessity by analogy, and the theory of al-Muhaqqiq al-Isfahani as examples on each of the three theories mentioned in the study. In addition to explaining each one of these theories, we have discussed them by focusing on the matter of moral justification. The result is that moral theory-whether being pure moral, or moral based on reality-faces the “challenge of justification”, unlike the theory of necessity by analogy, which gives a convincing solution to this problem.