نشریه معرفت اخلاقی
پیاپی 8 (پاییز 1390)

One of the ways of classifying moral schools is dividing them into the two catagories proposed by the theories of meta-ethics: realistic and non-realistic schools. Each of these schools has consequences. Moral absolutism is among the outcomes of moral realism. Referring to the source of this classification, providing a sound definition of moral realism and explaining the meaning of absolutism in the light of the views of contemporary Muslim scholars, the present paper provides a cogent answer to the main questions in this essay: "Can we confirm the idea of the eternality of the principles of moral values"?, and " How can we infer the eternality of these principles from moral realism"? The views of three contemporary Muslim scholars, that is, Martyr Motahhari (may God's mercy be upon him), Ayatollah Jawadi Amoli (may God exalt him), and Ayatollah Misbah (may God prolong his life), have been criticized and analyzed. Each of them has tried to establish the idea of absolutism and ernality of moral percepts though each one provides a different explanation. The findings show that in general moral absolutism is considered as one of the outcomes and necessities of moral realism.

Professor Misbah Yazdi (may God prolong his life) divides moral concepts into two types: obligatory (such as "ought to" and "ought not to") and value-based (such as goodness and badness). He believes that the meaning of "ought to" and "ought not to" is the very necessity in relation between a doer's act and its result. Since the result of what is liked for itself and what is desireable for itself are taken as a doer, so it also establishes relation wiht the doer. He also believes that goodness and badness are among philoshophical secondary intelligibles, whose accidences are mental and their qualifications (ittiṣäf) are external. Although he believes that goodness and badness are the agreement and disagreement of act with man's nature, it is necessary to note that while the object of this agreement and disagreement is man, he is not considered from the angle that he has particular taste and preference. Rather he is considered with regard to his perfection which is acctualized outside. In fact, he considers the "ought to" and ought not to" and "goodness and badness" as the instances of the concept "causality" which are abstracted from the casual relationship between man's action by free-will and ideal perfection. Naturally, the relationship between "ought to" and "ought not to" and "being" and "non-being" has assumed clear explanation, so that it will regain its proper position to explain the absolute ethics.

One of the important issues with which this paper is concerned is exploring the exact meaning of secularism and ethics and then finding the relationship between secularism and different aspects of human life. Secularism does not merely mean dualty of religious and political authority and every domain related to the man's choice will be under the influence of secularism. Therefore, secular ethics has a general meaning which includes politics, economy, culture, art, education, etc. The other question with which this paper is concerned is the relationship between religious ethics and secular ethics. The features of each of these two have been dealt with and fully explained to clarify the nature of this relationship.

The present paper tries to study some questions related to education through a content analysis and evaluation of two valuable works, Tahzib al-Akhlaq and Jami' al- Saadah. It is worth mentioning that the distinctive feature of the educational and moral system in Islam is the existence of fixed essential foundations taken from religious resources and its worldview of all the dimensions of man's existence. Each of these two work considers affection and kindness as the most effective and efficient methods of education. The authors of both works believe that social justice is not possible without affection infrastructure. In his discusion of the signs of affection for the Most High God, 'Allamah Naraqi considers love of death as a sign of one's sincerity in one's love of the Divine. Abu Ali Meskavayh holds that the remedy for fear of death is to becom a sage.In evaluating and measuring the stages of education and flourishing of moral virtues, both works confirm that it is necessary to observe the conformity of the stages of education with the natural stages of growth. Both consider sociability and communicating with people as the basic elements of achieving happiness. They believe that seeking absolute isolation and not mixing with people as a means of achieving perfection are a misconception and deviant way.

Moral development is one of the main aspects of man's social development. Nowadays, the psychology of moral development has gradually turned into an independent field of study as a result of the extension of theories and research. The theories of moral development focus on the development of the psychological preception of right and wrong or good and bad, the tendency towards acting the in the interests of others and ignoring one's own interests and pleasure, and acting according to these perceptions and tendencies. The present paper investigates cognitive-developmental theories to moral development as the most influential psychological study in the field of ethics. These theories fall in the province of one of the main developmental traditions governing modern psychology; namely, cognitive tradition. In cognitive –developmental tradition, moral development is dependent and based upon the increase in cognitive capacities. Jean Piaget believes that this kind of moral development is dependent upon mental maturation and evolution of social relations. Kohlberg provides a more detailed succession of the development of reasoning and moral judgment. Through expounding the growth stages of moral reasoning, he proposes an ideal condition for each stage. According to Kohlberg, the final condition of moral growth is the rule of the universal inner moral standards. The criticisms directed to Kohlberg's view have provided the ground for the continuation of this tradition. Gilligan considers the moral ends governing Kohlberg's theory as masculine by offering a gender criticism against Kohlberg's theory.

Realism means that moral value and necessity are something real and we should discover them,not invent them. Here the idea of realism considers the origin of ethics as non-empirical, rational, and metaphysical. Applied ethics means using moral principles and standards in certain cases. Therefore, the value of moral judgment is investigated in metaethics, and value standards of moral judgment by normative ethics. The most important question in applied ethics is interference. Interference refers to the lack of harmony between two binding judgements having the criteria in compliance due to the inability of the one who has the responsibility to excute them simultaneously. Realism is related to interference moral in some aspects, such as the existence of instances of interference, the possibility of providing a solution, and dependence of correct criterion for solving the cases of interference on realism. The objective criterion means that every act which is most influential concerning its nearness to God takes priority. According to non-realism, first,no interference can occur and, second, in case the idea of interference is accepted, it is not possible to provide a solution.

The nature and moral judgment about spying is one of the important issues to all people especially those whose jobs are related to spying, for example the police,security forces, detectives, journalists, reporters, etc. "spying" means investigation and inquiry into the covert priveate affairs of the others. Therefore, it is wrong to apply the word spying to those cases which have overt or social and collective nature. There are three kinds of spying, each of which has separate and distinct judgment: 1. spying on personal affairs; 2. spying on social affairs; and 3. spying on the enemy. According to the Quranic verse which reads " Do not to spy" and in the view of reason and traditions, spying on private personal affairs is impermissible. According to some traditions and veiw of reason, spying on social affairs which had better be termed "investigation" and "supervision" is permissible and sometimes obligatory. Information about social conditions, people's needs and demands and establishing social justice, which are the ruler's most important duties and their materialization which is to a large extent contingent upon choosing committed, pious, and expert governmental officials and personnels, all demand investigation and inquiry into the performance of social organizations. In the view of reason and Islamic law, spying on the enemies of government and gathering information about them is permissible.