The Concept of Human Based on Iranian Mysticism and Wisdom: a Step toward Development of a Nursing Theory

There is a need for developing theories for professional nursing based on non-Western philosophies and worldviews. For this purpose, the four nursing main concepts of human, environment, health and nursing need to be defined and conceptualized in such a worldview. This study was an attempt to do a concept synthesis of human (person) based on Iranian mysticism and wisdom.

This study is library-based and was carried out using Ryan-Wenger’s method of concept synthesis. Inductively the anatomy of the concept of Walker and Avant were selected as the pre-determined categories; then, deductively the contents were attributed to the categories after studying one third of the items. A critical review was conducted using a targeted search in scientific Persian databases such as Noor, Yasin, Parsi Doc and HodaBlog; and English databases such as Google Scholar and EBSCO as well as thelibraries of the faculties of philosophy and religion of the two universities of Shahid Beheshti and Allameh Tabatabayi, using keywords of perfect human, antropology, the knowledge of ego, the faculties of human ego, temperaments of human and other related terms. Finally, out of 508 sources found, 51 were chosen to be included in this study, which were mostly about to explain the science of self from the perspective of Avicenna, Mulla Sadra, Rumi and Attar. In this study all the ethical considerations wereobserved and the author did not report any conflict of interests.

The attributes of the concept of human include bi-dimensional self, graded soul, tempered body, and the audience of directed order, while the supreme manifestation and graded entity were antecedents and balance/ imbalance and harmony/ disharmony were the outcomes.

The concept synthesis of human in Iranian mysticism and wisdom goes beyond the individualism and subjectivism dominant in Western nursing theories and gives human a profound responsibility for the perfection of self, others and the whole universe.Please cite this article as:Nikfarid L. The Concept of Human Based on Iranian Mysticism and Wisdom: a Step toward Development of a Nursing Theory.