نشریه معرفت اخلاقی
پیاپی 6 (بهار 1390)

The Holy Quran contains a lot of religious, moral, and educational guidelines which ought to be extracted and made known, to the young. Many orientalists have dealt with this issue with the aim of understanding and presenting the invaluable Quranic concepts to western people, and explained to the western societies only part of the revealed and divine sciences. One of these orientalists is the Japanese scholar, Toshihiko Izutsu, who sought to examine the Quran, understand and explain its moral concepts and translate them into his own language. Professor Allamah Mohammad TaqhiMisbah, a contemporary scholar on ethics, has used a new method to explain the moral concepts from a Quranic perspective. This present paper compares between some of the works of each these two authors on ethics and makes a contrast between them with regard to the authors’character, subject matter, aims, contents, and method. Finally, it investigates and criticizes the two books and shows their strengths and weaknesses. The author concludes that “Morals in the Qur’an” by AllamahMisbahYazdi has real strengths and “Semantic Structure of Religious-ethical concepts in Qur’an" by Izutsu has some shortcomings.

The present paper uses an analytical method to investigate consequentialism in philosophy of ethics which is considered as a general approach in normative ethics. First, this approach focuses on the consequence of act instead of its inherent characteristics. Secondly, it gives prime importance to and stresses actions when actions and characters are included in moral values. Among the theories of consequentialism is the general moral utilitarianism which stands as the most intelligent theory. This theory tries to find the criterion of the moral value in the emergence of the greatest good (utility) for the greatest number. There are differences of opinion among the supporters of utilitarianism over the nature and concept of the greatest good (utility) which we are after. However, if we want to compare the theories presented on this regard with the ethical theory of Islam, we will find that none of them is identical to it. Anyway, in order to find a common ground between ethical consequentialism and practical Islamic mysticism, we need to modify utilitarianism theory and give a plausible explanation of the issues about practical gnosis related to this subject.

The present paper uses an analytical method to investigate and compare between the views ofJohn Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, two classical utilitarians, and IbnHazmAndalusi's views.Utilitarians believe that morality is based on the greatest happiness and joy. Classical hedonist utilitarians claim that the aim of ethics is the ever- increasing dominance of pleasure over pain. Therefore, classical hedonist utiliterians consider happiness and joy to be the same as pleasure, and pleasure as the only inherent good (utility). They believe that creating pleasure and preventing pain determine our moral decisions. IbnHazmAndalusi has had utilitarian views as well. This research compares between the views of classical utiliterains and those of IbnHazmAndalusi.

The present paper uses an analytical method to investigate moral education from the viewpoints of two scholars, KhwajahNasiral-Din Tusi and Kohlberg. The research has three headings: foundations, aims, and methods of moral education. Kohlberg holds that the foundations of moral education constitute audience's perception and demonstration, and proposes six steps for moral development; whereas, KhwajahNasir al-Din maintains that the foundations of moral education are represented in human soul. Kohlberg thinks that the aim of moral education is prevalence of justice among all people and application of human transcendental values to their lives; whereas KhawjahNasir al-Din thinks that the aim of moral education is to attain nearness to God. According to Kohlberg, the way to achieve moral education is not through training, rather it means transferring of the learners from lower stages of moral development to higher stages by having them take part in discussing moral problems; whereas, according to KhwajahNasir al-Din, the basic means of achieving moral education are improvement of behavior conditioning, and making use of encouragement and punishment. Furthermore, he thinks that the general ways of moral education include refraining from listening to unbecoming and obscene words, balancing between concupiscent faculty and irascible faculty, and the particular ways include curing some vile practices.

The environmental crises which have endangered life on the earth have made man think of finding ways to solve these crises and stop their development. Since it cannot be denied that man has a crucial role in causing these crises, some believe that protecting the environment requires setting a behavioral framework or code to ensure a proper interaction between man and nature and encouraging all people to observe it. In the last decades, philosophers have made a major contribution to explicating and designing this behavioral code extending moral views and obligations to creatures other than man. In the meantime, anthropology founded on Islamic thought is able to provide a comprehensive framework which ensures a proper moral interaction between man and nature. The present paper, using an analytical-descriptive method, tries to provide a comprehensive idea of the approach to environmental ethics (standards) called “self-ecology”.

The one-dimensional and instrumental view of research by academic and scientific institutions has distracted researcher's attention from observing the moral principles in conducting their researches.“Ethics” is one of the issues that has affected all the dimensions and aspects of man’s life and identity. The subject of “ethics-orientation in research” is one of the most common topics of applied ethics and professional ethics. The components of ethics in research can be explored from several aspects. The special attention given to the question of components can be ascribed to the great advances in scientific information and technology which occurred in the modern age; therefore, if morality is not observed in conducting research, the problems will not end. The present paper tries, by studying domestic and value research, to recognize the moral and cultural components in research and to provide methods for raising the level of ethics-orientation in research and identify the dimensions and factors influencing research morality, as well.

The present paper introduces an empirical study of the applied moral principles in driving. One part of this essay deals with empirical observations about the drivers’ bad-temperedness and misbehavior, and their violation of moral principles. The other part, using a descriptive-analytical method, explains and analyzes the applied driving moral principles in that account for drivers’ bad-temperedness and misbehavior. It seems that bad-temperedness and misbehavior in driving are partly related to the merely legal, not moral perception of driving and partly to negligence of and inattention to moral principles. Therefore, traffic department and those in charge of cultural affairs have to think of changing the drivers’ merely legal perception of driving into a moral perception. It is necessary to observe some important moral principles such as abstaining from disturbing others by making noise, avoiding unnecessary beeping, double parking, and making traffic jam, the necessity of compensation for physical and intellectual loss caused by car accidents, avoiding scurrility, being kind and friendly with others, and self-control and patience. We suggest that a compulsory course on driving morals be offered by the traffic department along with the course of teaching driving skills.