Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 23 Issue 5

Volume XXIII Issue V Version I 3 Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) A © 2023 Global Journals A Quranic Concept with Universal Appeal: The Innate Monotheistic Disposition ( Fitra ) that will take place when they leave the tomb for the Last Judgment at the end of time, the "Day of Riding" ( yawm al-qiyâma ) (Q 22, 69). This is to be followed by the Resurrection, second creation comparable to a second birth. 2) The "differentiation" that distinguishes them from all other creatures. This is the exceptional possibility offered to them, thanks to the particular type of consciousness with which they have been endowed, of participating in the fulfillment of their resurrection by conforming or not their earthly life to their true vocation, and consequently accessing or not, from the Day of Riding, to a happy eternal existence. In this sense, their fitra bears witness to the freedom conferred on them by God in all matters concerning their adherence to faith, and their access to the path leading to salvation. The coherence of the various aspects of this last meaning is completed in the Qur'an by the recall of the fundamental impact of the upright posture "raise your face ( aqim wajhaka )" (Q 30, 30), which is specific to the human being, a posture he will regain at the time of the Final Rising ( qiyâma ). The innate monotheism of the human being as related to his upright posture and the bashar’s transmutation into insân. The relationship between man's upright posture and his natural ability to access authentic monotheistic worship is the continuation of the theological thinking of late antique authors who sought to highlight the harmony existing between the state of creation and the economy of salvation. The Qur'anic notion of fitra is, in this perspective, the culmination of the historical unfolding of a very ancient philosophical-religious tradition that goes back, in part, to Epicurus (342-270 BC), considered to be the first to have argued in favor of the existence of divinity through the observation that every human being has a prenotion ( anticipatio ), or innate knowledge of it. 13 The idea of a natural and universal apprehension of the divine was then developed by the Stoics (300 BC-200 AC), who declared that the gods had created "standing man", as opposed to animals whose faces are turned t ow ards the ground, so that he could raise his face to heaven to find celestial deities in place of earthly idols. 14 These philosophers were alluding to the astral divinities of the Greek pantheon, celestial bodies animated by regular movements having been considered the true gods since the "Pythagorean revolution", a term covering a set of doctrines that h ad drawn this consequence from the discovery, by the 13 Cicero (106-43 BC), De natura deorum , Book I, XVI, 65, mentioning the Canon of Epicurus . 14 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I, 70. Babylonian Magi, of their regular cyclical revolutions. 15 This theme is also found in the corpus of Hermes Trismegistus. 16 In monotheistic circles, the question was first developed by Philo of Alexandria, who argued that only the Jewish people, by their fidelity to the one transcendent God, had made themselves worthy of the religious knowledge conferred on all human beings by their original nature. He added the statement that the Creator having deemed it profitable for his work, man, to be able to form an idea of the One who, in making him, sent him from above a breath of his own deity, the invisible divinity has therefore imprinted in the human soul the marks of his o wn being, which differentiates him from the rest of creation. 17 It is in the thought of his Christian disciple, Clement, that we find the same theme in a form that more significantly resembles the Qur’anic verse, in connection with a criticism of the philosophers, in this case the Stoics: "On this point the chorus of philosophers is mistaken, who acknowledge that man is truly born for the contemplation of heaven, but who adore celestial phenomena and the spectacle that is revealed to their eyes. Let none of you worship the sun, but direct your desires to the maker of the sun; let you not di vin ize the world, but seek the creator of the world." 18 These are the main elements of the hoopoe's denunciation of the leader of the Sabâ (queen of Sheba in the Bible), for having fallen into the error of worshipping the sun, the verse (Q 27, 24) echoing 15 Louis Rougier, La religion astrale des Pythagoriciens , Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1959. 16 The theme of the verticality of human stature was addressed by Xenophon (430-355 BC ) in his Memorabilia as follows: "They (the gods) created man to be the only upright person among all the animals, an attitude that enables him to see further, to look more easily at the objects above him, and to avoid danger more easily". From the time of the Tusculan Disputations, onwards, this upright posture had been linked to the purpose of worshipping one or more celestial deities: "Man himself, placed here below as if to contemplate and honor with worship the sky and the gods (stars)". Cicero takes up this argument in his De Natura Deorum (330-7,11)., where he talks about the upright position, the exclusive privilege of man, who has received it to be able to see the sky and, consequently, to attain knowledge of the gods: "Man alone has an upright stature, so that he can look up to heaven as to the place of his kinship and his first abode". H. Festugières notes that this same argument is put forward in Corpus Hermeticum XI, 20. The Hermetic texts state that: "Man contemplates the sky" and that "Everything is clear to him : the sky does not seem too high". See : La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, II, Le Dieu Cosmique , par le R. P. Festugière, Société d’édition les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1981, ch. XIII, "le témoignage de Cicéron sur la religion cosmique", pp. 370-468. Nevertheless, this is the only common element between the Hermes texts and the Qur’an, since their points of view diverge radically afterward, this characteristic of man having as its result, for the former, his ability to "grasp" divine power in the sky, which he brings down into the idols to confer it on them. 17 Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat, 86-90. 18 Clement of Alexandria ( Protrepticus ), Le Protreptique , Introduction, translation and notes by Claude Mondésert, S.J., Sources Chrétiennes, Le Cerf, Paris, 1949, IV, 63, 4-5.