Research Quarterly in Islamic Ethics
Year:2016 | Volume:8 | Issue:30|Papers Count:8

As a concept being discussed in mysticism, austerity goes within a different direction in religious texts, especially the verses and hadiths. According to Islamic educations, austerity gives “strength” and “humility” to human soul and these two traits guarantee success in all areas including individual and social, economic and political, as well as mundane and eternal aspects. Austerity is divided into two voluntary and involuntary types that all religious obligations fall within the voluntary type. By involuntary austerity, we mean the divine hardships and tests. These two types are each other’s complement in the process of human education and are tied to the philosophy of human creation. The philosophy of exiling human to the tribulations of the mundane world, and the superiority of his soul among the other creatures exposed him to the most dangerous ethical disorders i.e. pride and arrogance. Since the remedy of every vice is by its opposite, austerity is the sole path in which not only human vice of pride will be refined but also it will tie him to the most beautiful ethical virtue i.e. divine love and kindness.

Ethical sentences are being expressed in two compositional and declarative forms. In the compositional sentences, an ethical behavior, trait, or goal is considered as the focus of order and prohibition. In the declarative ones, the same affairs turn into the subject and they will be judged by a valuable or necessary concept. The concepts such as good, bad, correct, incorrect, ought to and ought not are containers of ethical propositions which are called “ethical concepts”. In addition, the concepts of perfection and desirability are embedded in the concept of ethical value; therefore, unlike the unrealistic-oriented viewpoints, because of objectivity of perfection, the ethical values are objective affairs. According to the concepts of duty and responsibility and their relation with value, one can consider all voluntary affairs of ethical actions, traits, and goals as ethical valuation. This is because of involvement of free will in ethical duties and with the relation between values and ethical duties, every voluntary affair will become the subject of judgment.

Accepting the rationality good and evil, Imam Khomeini believes that like the statement propositions, the dignity of the moral propositions is the same as dignity of discovery and he argues that the ethical commandments are also absolute and non-relative; however, in differentiating correct actions from incorrect ones, the reason requires religion. In regard to ethical commandments, Imam Khomeini is deontological and pays serious attention to results and virtues. In his ethical thought, deontologism is inseparable from consequentialism and virtue-oriented ethics because he introduces good and evil as the foundation of ethics while happiness is considered as the purpose of ethics to him. Meanwhile, he believes that reaching happiness or desirable consequence as well as educating virtuous human is impossible except through fulfilling the duties being determined for human by reason and religion. According to ethical viewpoint of Imam Khomeini, reason is necessary but insufficient; therefore, religion and reason have gone hand in hand to guide human to the ultimate goal. Also, in his viewpoint, ethical commandments are absolute and non-relative the ethical propositions are originated from real and good and evil things. Therefore, there are constant and permanent ethical values that prepare paths of virtue and happiness for human.

There are two challenges in application of ethical principles: one is about adopting appropriate methods and the other one is resolving the conflicts within the principles and methods. Some of the principles are widely used in some professions. For instance, in army, especially the relationship between commanders and soldiers, the principle of preserving human dignity is widely used because a strict environment is dominant in army. Therefore, by adopting an analytico-descriptive approach in this paper we have dealt with how to operationalize the principle of preserving dignity among the soldiers, the methods and also one of the epistemic obstacles and how to remove them i.e. the conflicts and resolving them. Among the findings of the study, we can refer to investigating and criticizing the methods of preventive methods from servile behavior, intentionally showing ignorance and optimistic behavior and also resolving the conflict of apparent, not real. ignorance method by other methods, preserving the principle of dignity, the principle of maintaining religion, the principle of expressing the right in relief, and the principle of being faithful to a secret. The most important result of the study is elaboration on preference of soldiers’ dignity being in conflict with commanders’ dignity in the issue of “expressing the right in relief”.

Ethical discussion of genetic counseling is taken into account by the framework of genetic ethics; however, firstly, it is an applied issue rather than being a theoretical one. And there is much dependence to acquiring scientific, psychological, and communicative skills. Genetic counseling needs to pursue a comprehensive ethical strategy. In this strategy, some principles can be utilized that their frequent application for explaining and evaluating bioethical issues has made them known as bioethical principles’ including: “self-regulation’’, “doing good deeds’’, “avoid doing damages’’ and “justice’’. However, application of bioethical principles in genetic counseling is not general and abstract and these principles are firstly, flexible and revisable in relation to a critical state and situation and secondly, they rely on acquiring particular and minor knowledge and skills. The thing that gives more depth and precision to application of the bioethical principles and helps the counselor to understand the situations is being dominant to technical skills in genetic counseling such as scientific and communicative ones.

One of the important problems about mystical discussions and narrated ethics is giving commentary on the difficult narrations. Serol ’esra’ is a book written by Hojatul-Haq Ayatollah Sa’adatparvar which is one of the valuable contemporary texts in the fields of narrated mysticism and ethics. Under each mystical and ethical discussion, he has dealt with collecting verses and narrations about this topic as well as developing Hadith family about it being resulted in proposing a valuable collection in Fiqh ul-Hadith of narrations including giving commentary on the difficult mystical and ethical narrations. This study is an attempt to investigate the author’s method in analyzing the difficult mystical and ethical narrations by applying an inductive method of thematic analysis to achieve the patterns (themes) present in the author’s method in giving commentary on the difficult mystical and ethical narrations. Having extracted these patterns, the study has been succeeded to prove the importance of formation of Hadith family and its particular purposes in analyzing the mystical and ethical narrations in that the constant reference to the Quran and prayers and adopting a monotheistic approach toward giving commentary on the mystical and ethical narrations in regard to content understanding of these types of Hadiths as his patterns and methods were used in giving commentary on the difficult mystical and ethical narrations. Developing a collection of such narrations and reproducing their commentary and analysis in the form of specific patterns can be taken into account as the implicit achievements of this study.

According to various interpretations about conventional concepts from Allameh Tabatabaie’s viewpoint, every reader is faced by various interpretations and vague impressions. Based on the philosophical foundations of the existential principality, gradual state of the levels of existence, and knowledge by presence to the realities in Allameh’s viewpoint and a new impression of his realism, the paper intends to clarify the theory of E’tebariat. In the epistemological reviews, it should be noticed that there are two separate territories called realities and values. Based on the perception by presence, human has knowledge by presence to himself and his own actions and this knowledge is not mistakable and reasonable. Therefore, in the first stage, human will perceive the reality of the ethical sentences by presence of ethical actions to himself. When hearing this reality, he has no other options except stating an imagination and confirmation of this received reality of himself in the form of subject and container or subject and predicate in the form of an achievable science. Finally, the reality of ethical value is a kind of meaning creation being proposed to the world. Inattention to the commandments of these two perceptual and existential principality territories as well as gradation of Allameh’s philosophical system will have nothing for the readers except vagueness. According to Allameh’s viewpoint, analyzing the ethical concepts, the criterion for ethical truth and falsity, ethical motivations and the meanings of ethical sentences are related to the area of the acquired perception.

Since the beginning of Islam, there have been two clear mystical and narrative approaches to ethics. The focus of this study is on the features of the mystical approach to ethics and their differences with those of the narrators’ approach. The differences of these two approaches include: 1. The purpose of ethics in the first approach is the material pleasures of heaven while in the second one the purpose is God’s knowledge and manifestation of His attributes; 2. Observing ethics in practical mysticism is a habit of the seeker about divine ethics; 3. In the first approach, ethics is assumed as the characteristics having positive effects on correcting social relationships but in the second approach, the significance of ethics is its effect on reaching God’s knowledge; 4. From the viewpoint of narrative ethics, good moral is spiritual dignity, and from viewpoint of the mystics, divine moral and appearance of God’s traits are in individual; 5. Self-conceit is not absolutely excluded in the first approach while in practical mysticism, destruction of soul is concerned. 7. Unlike science of ethics, the esteemed moderation in practical mysticism is not the balance of powers but it is the appearance of God’s traits and in some cases, moderation is not defined.