Intellectual Basis of Economic Man in Microeconomic University Textbooks and Its Position According to Islamic Values

Teaching economics in Iran, like teaching other branches of social sciences, faces fundamental challenges. One of the challenges is based on the epistemological and contextual foundations of the theories contained in the university textbooks. These theories are based on western epistemological and contextual foundations. Therefore, while teaching these theories, the university lecturers should pay attention to this important point, and foundations of the theories should be defined in the universities of Iran. This article aims to study the microeconomic university textbooks taught in Iran in order to diagnose their deficiencies, to specify the existing differences between Iranian and western epistemological and contextual foundations, and to define the foundations of economic man with a focus on Islamic values and contextual specifications that affects them. To fulfil this objective, the author used qualitative research method to review the relevant texts, analyzed the content of the texts, and applied the Islamic epistemological foundations and Iranian contextual foundations to design an intellectual-theoretical model that indicates the behavior of the economic man. The findings show that according to the intellectual-theoretical model, the intellectual foundations of economic man is derived through two approaches: a theoretical approach that is based on epistemological foundations, and a theoretical-practical approach that is based on both epistemological and contextual foundations.