The Theological Foundations of Ethics in Sheikh Mufid’s Thought

Because any moral system is organized by a school of thought and belief system, and considering that Sheikh Mofid was one of the pioneers in establishing and organizing the theological and doctrinal school of Imamiyya, the present article has attempted to extract the theological foundations of ethics via content analysis. Hence, Sheikh Mofid’s theological propositions in the fields of epistemology, theology, guidance studies, anthropology and cosmology were extracted with an ethical approach. Among them are the monotheistic moral system, the originality of the soul, the employment of the body in performing moral actions, man's free will in moral life, the necessary existence of the model of the Infallibles for proximity and the meaningfulness of the physical Resurrection in the moral-monotheistic system with heaven and hell at it center. In conclusion, the comprehensiveness of Sheikh Mofid’s theory of duty- and goal-orientation, the human inclusion of this theory, its superiority over the secular moral system, the meaningfulness of the moral life with the belief in the Hereafter, and the moral consequence of the aimlessness were revealed.