Research Quarterly in Islamic Ethics
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:31|Papers Count:7

One of the ancient ethical problems in regard to psychology of ethics which is dealt by ethical philosophers has been analysis of “conscious ethical error”. Does human possibly commit ethical errors consciously and deliberately? If yes, what factor this documented event is upon? Two cognitive and non-cognitive approaches have been formed to answer this question. According to the first approach, the possibility of committing conscious ethical error is ruled out and it is believed that ethical error is always attributed to ignorance and lack of knowledge. Giving a positive answer to the possibility of occurrence of this phenomenon, the second approach searches for its roots within both cognitive and non-cognitive layers in human free will system and it considers that the root of occurrence of ethical error is related to incorrect knowledge. Historically, the first person who proposed the first approach was Plato (the one who fixed Socrates’ viewpoint) and the first person who proposed the second viewpoint was Aristotle. This paper is dealt with explaining these two approaches toward the Holy Quran and they are judged based on Quranic teachings. The author has found no verses supporting the first approach while 7 groups of the verses were found which confirm the second approach in that cleavage of viewpoint from action and ethical weakness is possible and realizable and has introduced various non-cognitive roots for it.

One of the serious topics in theories of ethical education is about their philosophical basis about “ethical knowledge” that each one deals with interpretation of “ethical concepts and propositions” based on its own specific philosophy and makes relations between the nature of human ethical knowledge and philosophical nature of these concepts and propositions. Having a review on the ideas of David Ross and Lawrence Kohlberg, this paper has a comparative approach between principles of the philosophy of ethics in two intuitionism and ratiocination approaches and their implications in ethical education. Intuitionists believe that the ethical precepts are valid independent of each other and intuitive understanding would be enough to justify them. For ratiocination, ethical precepts are valid when their deduction from each other and their relations are proposed reasonably. Also, when explaining the human ethical recognition, the intuitionism approach believes that ethical concepts are naturally intuitive and the ethical propositions being independent of each other are valid either and consequently, human will understand ethical precepts by his own intuition not by the power of thought and reasoning. On the other hand, for ratiocination approach, the validity of ethical precepts is due to a reasonable relation between a precept and ethical common principles and consequently, the discursive thinking is the ethical recognition tool, not intuition. By adapting intuitionism and ratiocination, we can achieve “critical intuitionism” based on which we will intuitively come to a judgment in each ethical situation that we need to measure our information and emotions in relation to that situation. Acceptance of this philosophical principle leads to following two principles in ethical education: 1. By hearing, seeing and experiencing the ethical experiences the trainee will be noted. 2. The trainee should learn critical thinking in regard to ethical judgments.

The rhetoric and order of the Quran’s verses, proportion and coordination among the form and meaning, arrangement of the words, expressions, and sentences, emphasizes in the words of divine speech and also the order and priority of the divine words are among the indices through which serious purpose of God could be realized. This paper is an attempt to investigate “the method of emphasis in the Quran” and its various forms (emphasis by nominal and verbal sentence and subject) in order to achieve priorities and order of ethical values. The verbal and expressive indices should be taken into account along with other indices and try to get assistance from it. Also, the function of the verbal index of “emphasis” should be studied in prioritizing ethical values in manifestations of the Quran’s verses.

Khajeh Nasiroddin Tusi’s ethical theory is one of the most important and noteworthy theories about Islamic philosophical ethics. In this paper we analyze his ethical theory from an ethical epistemology perspective−which is itself one of the main branches of meta-ethics. The primary issue in his theory is the possibility of ethical epistemology. According to the fact that he believes the good and evil actions are rational, it can be concluded that knowledge will make the ethical precepts possible correctly or incorrectly. The second issue is the method of justifying ethical precepts. According to the findings of the study, about justifying the ethical propositions, he is a naturalist in terms of definition. At the end, due to the significance of relativism in epistemology of ethics, absoluteness or relativity of Tusi’s ethical theory will be evaluated. Based on the main principles of his ethical theory it could be concluded that he rejects ethical relativism and accepts the generality and universality of ethical precepts.

Governance of discipline and rule of law is one of the most important factors of an organized community that provides the security and tranquility grounds for people to move in the direction of their individual and collective purposes. To achieve a society enjoying public order there is a need to related laws and appropriate legal case to enforce these laws. Undoubtedly, the most important guarantee for enforcing the laws with public discipline aspects are the governments, social, judicial and police institutes; however, considering ethics indicates ethical and internal case to observe the mentioned laws. Therefore, coordination and accompaniment of the internal and external requirements are the most important achievements to reach public discipline. To realize this purpose, the concept of ethical conscience with its functions has a fundamental function. By referring to scholars’ viewpoints, in addition to studying the concept of “ethical conscience”, the effect of this available and public factor for training ethical people followed by formation of ethical societies which put discipline and rule of law at their first priorities are studied and it has been attempted to propose the ethical concept of conscience in a more functional form.

The relation of virtues with each other is among the controversial issues about virtues that was firstly dealt with by Socrates and Plato and they proposed the theory of uniqueness of virtue. Aristotle did not accept this theory and divided virtues into two rational and ethical groups. He has mostly dealt with ethical virtue and has provided no clear response to this question that what relation is between rational and ethical virtues. Farabi and Zagzebeski do not accept the theory of uniqueness of virtue and they believe that rational virtues are different from ethical ones. In response to the relation between virtues, Farabi and Zagzebeski have proposed priority and posteriority, and subset theories respectively. The analysis that Farabi and Zagzebeski propose from the relation between virtues is finally another version of uniqueness of virtues.

Socrates believed that there is no gap between ethical knowledge and action because human knowledge causes realization of actions. In addition to criticizing Socrates’ theory, Aristotle considered that the reason of gap between ethical knowledge and action is weakness of free will. Unlike Socrates, Avicenna was not seeing knowledge as the enough condition of action. Also unlike Aristotle, he believed that the effect of desire on free will is not the reason of gap between ethical knowledge and action while he believes that the free will caused by rational knowledge is led to realization of ethical action. To illustrate the gap between ethical knowledge and action, he mentions several internal and external reasons which prevent realization of rational knowledge in human. Therefore, if knowledge is based on weaknesses such as illusion and fantasy and not made of reason, action will not be realized and if it is realized, it will be unethical. In addition, by having rational commentary from verses and narrations, Avicenna provides evidence for his statements and finally he believes that factors such as real worshiping, governance of reason on other powers and realization of certain knowledge will remove the gap between ethical action and knowledge.