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Discussing the relationship between ethics and politics and searching for a way to regulate the relationship between these two important areas of human life has been one of the most important concerns of philosophers and political thinkers in the history of human thought since Plato. In this essay, with reference to Nahj al-Balaghah, as one of the significant and influential texts in the intellectual heritage of Islam and Iran - which is the narration of Imam Ali's (a.s.) moral encounter with the world and the result of the lived experience of that noble person as the caliph of Muslims in one of the most critical periods of Islamic history, an attempt has been made to examine and analyze the approach of this text in facing the fundamental question of the relationship between ethics and politics, using the analytical method. The results indicate that in the tragic situation of adhering to moral principles and rules, on the one hand, and the durability and stability of his government, on the other hand, in spite of his accurate and intelligent understanding of the realities of the society and his knowledge of conventional and usual ways of politics and maintaining power, in the framework of his monotheistic ontology, Imam prefers maintaining the dignity of human beings and observing moral principles and avoiding violence, intimidation, deception, and terrorism over the survival of power and government - a government that is aimed at the public interest.

While it may seem that ancient thinkers didn't explicitly discuss the concept of security in isolation, the constant concern for security among humankind ensured it was addressed in their works, albeit using different terminology. For example, the authors of "Andarznameh" (political Books of Advice) were focused on preserving governance and kingship. This paper, through a case study of Siyar al-Muluk (also known as Siyasatnameh/Book of Politics) by Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, aims to reconstruct the "logic of politics" as understood by these thinkers. By exploring their "intellectual world," we seek to show what meanings the themes associated with the contemporary concept of "security" could have held within their framework and worldview.

Analyzing the ideas in Siyar al-Muluk, it's clear that Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk identified three main pillars of security: the king (malik), the kingdom (mulk), and the realm (mamlakat). These three elements form an interconnected whole. The concept of justice (adl) for Khwaja wasn't just about modern-day fairness; it included this tripartite framework. Under this notion of justice, values like moderation, adherence to traditions, avoiding religious innovation, oversight of officials' performance, defending against enemy threats, and avoiding extravagance were crucial. Khwaja's idea of "good kingship" was a well-ordered system where everything had its place. In this system, all officials were chosen based on merit and capability, and the king would intervene if any deviation or misconduct was detected. This "ideal" state or "good times" was synonymous with a "just kingship," ensuring the well-being of the subjects and the prosperity of the world. Any departure from this justice was seen as a path to decline and downfall.

From Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk's perspective, all forms of policymaking are intrinsically tied to security policymaking, as the ultimate goal is to preserve power, governance, and kingship. Security policymaking focused on preventing threats from emerging, neutralizing them in their early stages, and eliminating any actual and critical threats. It seems that Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk identified three main types of threats: 1) threats from foreign enemies and rival kings; 2) "hard" threats from internal enemies, which he often referred to as "Khawarij"; and 3) threats arising from "deviation from justice," or in modern terms, system malfunctions or dysfunctions.It seems that Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk devised strategies to counter each type of threat. For external threats, he emphasized the need for a ready army and the expenses for maintaining it, a well-stocked treasury, the king paying soldiers' salaries, keepingsubjects content, and showcasing the Sultan's majesty and greatness. According to Khwaja, internal "hard" threats, like uprisings and rebellions, stemmed from the gradual growth of latent or invisible "soft" threats. These were often caused by the spread of false religions and bad beliefs, which laid the groundwork for rebellion and sedition against the government. To counter these threats, Khwaja recommended continuous examination of religious affairs, strengthening true religion, purging the government and bureaucracy of heretical influence, and combating the Khawarij and heretics.When it comes to the third aspect of security, maintaining "justice," he highlighted several necessities: fulfilling royal duties and establishing good governance, preserving and expanding desirable royal qualities, continuously overseeing officials' work and punishing misconduct, preventing multiple job holdings, avoiding delegation of authority without supervision, creating and maintaining a network of informants, ensuring subjects’ access to the Sultan, monitoring and supervising the army, and basing jobs and titles on merit.

While the modern concept of security isn't explicitly outlined in Siyar al-Muluk, it serves as the cornerstone and unifying thread connecting the various aspects of Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk's intellectual framework. This perspective sheds new light on his intellectual world.

The issues of “predestination and free will” have long been among the contentious topics in the history of Iranian-Islamic thought. The conducted studies have chiefly showcased the dominance of fatalistic ideology in the political and mystical history of Iran. Ayn al-Qudat Al-Hamadani is one of the prominent thinkers of mysticism in medieval period of Islam as well as one of the dauntless critics of Seljuq government who paid particular attention to predestination and free will topic. One of the most important epistemological foundations that can be deployed for scrutinizing the political thought of thinkers is their conceptualization of predestination and will—as an important anthropological aspect. In this article, adopting an implication-based approach, the researchers examined and analyzed anthropology of Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani with the aim of discovering and understanding the political implications of his conceptualization of predestination and free will. The main question of the article is what the political consequences of Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani’s conceptualization of predestination and free will are. The findings of the study reveal that Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani, upon determining a predestined nature for the world of divinity and detaching the nature of the human world from it, has criticized and condemned the dominant and exclusively deterministic ideology of his time by laying emphasis on the inherent nature of free will in human beings. The finding of the study can be a counterexample to the narratives that have assessed the whole history of Iranian political thought and culture as believing in fatalism.

Mystical texts are an important part of the intellectual heritage of Iran and Islamic World. In spite of the differences of opinion between scholars about the history of political thought in Iran, there is no doubt that mystical tradition was rich and influential in medieval Islamic period. However, most of the research conducted on these texts are in the form of biographies and had almost exclusively concentrated on the literary aspects and moral teachings of these texts. Little attention has been paid to the intellectual themes and implications of these texts for politics and civic engagement in public life in society. A critical reading for the purpose of gaining a deeper and more accurate understanding of  the political value of these texts can be useful in the analyses of the historical development of Iranian-Islamic thought. Furthermore, by doing so, we might find appropriate answers to the challenges of today's Iranian society. Abu’l-maʿālī ʿabdallāh Bin Abībakr Mohammad Mayānejī Known as Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni is one of the incomparable thinkers in Iranian-Islamic thought. He was considered one of the Sufi sheikhs of his time and had many disciples, some of whom had political influence and positions in the Seljuk political system. He died at the young age of thirty-three when the Seljuk executed him in 1131, but his works secured him a place in the history of Iran as a mystical philosopher. Henry Corbin, a French theologian and Iranologist with renowned expertise in Islamic philosophy and Sufism, has referred to him as a jurist, mystic, philosopher, and mathematician, but he is better known as a mystic among the Iranian scholars of Islamic-Iranian thought. Ein Al-Qozāt has not been recognized as a politicalthinker in the literal sense or a writer who has directly been interested in politics, and thus his works have seldom been evaluated from this perspective. Indeed, some scholars have argued that “mysticism never seeks to add, know, rearrange or improve anything in the earthly world”, and mysticism as an independent epistemological realm is in conflict with politics as a science that is responsible for organizing the public arenas.In the present study, the authors use certain components of Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner's methodology to analyze important writings of Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni, particularly his letters in order to reveal the civic virtues and capacities of thought of this famous mystic, and find political significance not previously traced. The main research question to be answered is: How can civic life be organized by relying on the basic concepts of the mystical thought of Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni.By civic implications, we mean virtues such as justice, love, friendship, and tolerance, which being at the junction of mystical thought and political thought, strengthen social relations and create the desired political order. In the view of Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni, justice is considered as an element that provides a basis for welfare for all members of society.Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni considered love as an inherent thing and believed that the love of God is hidden in the human nature, and wrote that the love of a human being to another human being is useful in moving towards transcendental love. He described love as the cause of moral strength, the promoter of friendship, and the basis for the movement toward true love leading to public good and eternal bliss. By his attention to love, Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni rejected prejudice and called on different societies to nurture friendship. He considered all religions as being equal and worthy of respect, and saw all religions and sects on the path to love. In fact, he considered love as the basis for tolerance, acceptance of pluralism and reconciliation of societies. In spite of the unsettled situation of his time, which was full of prejudice and rage, he insisted on the solidarity and reconciliation of religions. He showed his conviction that the observance of the principle of tolerance is a necessity in society. In conclusion, the authors’ comprehensive analysis of Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni’s writings show a kind of systematic interactions between the various aspects of his thought, which was ultimately aimed at establishing a well-organized and just society free from crises, moral disorders and social conflicts. Introducing Ein Al-Qozāt Hamedāni as a great thinker in the mystical tradition with no interest in politics is an example of a contradiction in the narratives that have defined mystical thought in fundamental conflict with politics and political action, because of the characterization of mysticism as a promoter of apostasy and isolationism.

Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani, despite his short life, is one of the prominent thinkers of the mystic tradition of Iran and Islam. Most of the research about this famous mystic has been around historical issues related to his lifetime or his mystic and theological views. This is while Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani’s thoughts contain significant political dimensions that have been neglected so far. This study, adopting the framework of paradigmatic-implicative approach, intends to examine the way he dealt with the crises of his time and his interpretations of them. Accordingly, the study aims to investigate the most important political implications and intellectual potentials residing in Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani’s method of confronting the political and intellectual crises of his time. The results of this study show that Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani is a thinker who, while being immersed in mystic thought, has a precise and conscious analysis and explanation of political crises and circumstances of his time and has offered serious and vehement criticisms of them. The present article argues that Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani’s critical confrontation with the intellectual and political crises and challenges of his time entails obvious political implications in his thoughts. Accordingly, Ayn al-Qudat can be considered not only a prominent figure in the realm of mysticism but also a sagacious intellectual who is deeply concerned about issues in public and political spheres.

The purpose of this study is to investigate collective responsibility from the perspective of Imam Ali (as) with reference to Nahj al-Balagha and its valid explanations. The main question is whether from the point of view of Imam Ali (AS) in Nahj al-Balagha, based on the rule of collective responsibility, the whole community or parts of it can be held responsible for the acts committed by individuals or groups of society? Likewise, are individuals or groups in society responsible for the actions and behaviors, committed by their community in which they themselves have no role? ? The research is based on the assumption that Imam Ali (AS) in Nahj al-Balagha, based on his own ontological and anthropological principles while accepting the moral responsibility of the individual for the consequences of his actions, accepted the collective responsibility in the sense of mutual moral responsibility of the individual and society towards each other's actions. It means that not only participation in the action or assisting in the preparation of its action causes responsibility, but also heartfelt satisfaction with action and silence towards it (even if it is not from consent), is like participation in the performance of the action. It causes responsibility in front of its effects and consequences.

One of the most important factors influencing the authenticity of the political subject and the civil action of recent mankind is the issue of the ontological meaning of humanity and the nihilism of the modern world. Some political thinkers concentrating on the relationship between the meaning of life and political action in humans seek to justify this meaning through classical thought, particularly Greek art and virtuosity. While analyzing the incompatibility of classical art and virtue with modern ontology, this article will elaborate on some implications of Islamic mysticism in the wisdom of Attar. The conclusion of the discussion presented in this paper is that although Attar's individualist mysticism related to "political theory" seems the refusal at least from the viewpoint of some scholars, it has some meaningful ramifications for the genuine presence of the political subject and the negation of ideological and mass politics at the semantic level.

The critique is one of the inevitable means of organizing society. Hence, in various intellectual traditions of human thought, there have been significant attempts to establish and consolidate theoretical foundations of critique and the theory of social critique as a form of critique. Due to the important role of social critique in excellence and promotion of collective life and the establishment of a desirable social system and in view of the position of Imam Khomeini as a religious scholar and social reformer, the subject of social criticism in the thought of this thinker was investigated. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate Imam Khomeini's thoughts on social critique and to measure their attitude toward critical thinking and ultimately to explore the possibility of discovering and deducing a systematic and coherent framework for social critique using their thinking and practical experience during the period of sovereignty. The hypothesis is that from the perspective of Imam Khomeini, social critique, relying on a special understanding of man and within the framework of criteria such as maintaining human dignity, public interest, and observance of the principles of the Shari'a, are recognized as a universal right and duty and social responsibility. The meaning of this is that social critique from Imam Khomeini's point of view is an intracultural category that is possible within the framework of common values of the community and within the meaning of the tradition.

Social criticism as an important issue, in spite of its long- established background in the history of human thought and behavior, has nowadays become more important due to the requirements of the present- day society. Advancement of the human society rests upon the enrichment of thought of criticism which in turn requires that criticism be systematic and methodical. Thus in various traditions of human thought, particularly among contemporary western scholars, valuable attempts have been made to establish and strengthen a theoretical foundation for criticism and offer a theory of social criticism. In the present study attempts have been made to investigate the possibility of inferring and developing a theory of social criticism from the texts of nahj- al- Balaghah, as one of the leading and valuable texts in the Islamic intellectual tradition. Considering a theory of criticism as a coherent framework consisting of principles and assumptions of criticism, criteria for distinguishing good and bad, a source of determining such criteria, characteristics of a critique, and agents of criticism; the present study claims that Nahj- al- Balaghah enjoys the capacity of offering a theory of social criticism.

Understanding the nature of "mysticism" as an important part of the Intellectual heritage of Iran and evaluating its relationship with the "political thought" and explaining and elaborating on its ability and capacity to establish normative political thought is the main purpose of this article. In spite of approaches that believe to incompatibility of political thought and mysticism, in this paper by use of interpretative method and study of some of important mystical texts we have showed that proportions like the world escape, individualism, esotericism, elitism and anti-rationalism that according to some statements by the defendants of incompatibility the political thought and mystical thought, have typically been used selective and will never lead to no purpose.
Instead there are the signs in the mystical tradition such as companionship, tolerance, generosity ,Friendship and ..., that prove the compatibility of mysticism and political and civil thought, or at least seriously challenge the "refusal" approach.

One of the basic components of political thought is the notion of «civic virtue». Civic virtue is an important concept that the accomplishment of the ultimate objectives of politics depends on its development in human society. In this article، we review the important writings of great Iranian aref، Jalal-al-din Muhammad Balkhi، known as Mowlana، and analyze political capacities and capabilities of his thoughts based on Sprigens'' theoretic framework and paradigmatic-implicative theory. The article claims that، based on cognitive، normative and explanatory implications of Mowlana''s thoughts، his thoughts contain important elements like love، friendship، tolerance، and politico-social criticism.

Mentioning historical developments of Ashura, this article tries to study its impacts on social developments of Iran from the uprising of June 5th 1963 to December 30th 2009 public movement and examines similarities and differences of Ashura's function in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran. It also tries to present an analysis of the prospects of this subject.