A Comparative Study of the Epistemological Foundations of «Self» from the Point of View of Allameh Tabatabai and Bergson and its Implication in Moral Education

The present study aimed to analyze the epistemological foundations of the «self» from the perspectives of Allameh Tabatabai and Henri Bergson and to extract its implications for moral education. We utilized a descriptive-analytical, comparative, and inferential method to carry out this research and we have concluded that the intuitive and rational epistemology of the self provides moral philosophers like Allameh Tabatabai and Bergson with the possibility to find a solution to overcome the problem of alienation, which is one of the most important challenges of contemporary man, by discovering the intellectual impasses that affect the epistemological crises of today's world. Between the worldly journey (seyr-e-aafaaqi) and inward journey (seyr-e-anfusi) to acquire knowledge, Allameh Tabatabai considered looking at self and the journey in the self-related signs to be more beneficial and considered the self-knowledge as the only way to achieve the ultimate goal. Bergson also suggested looking at human being from another angle and believes that this new attitude, in the neglectful atmosphere arising from materialistic civilization, will once again take us to a spiritual and mystical domain. Using an intuitive and direct method, of course, with the agreement of reason, he has portrayed freedom from alienation from oneself to connect with the source of existence. In this research, after explaining the main goal of moral education from the perspectives of these two philosophers, we have discussed its general principles and methods. The principles based on epistemology in the consciousness-oriented perspective of Allameh Tabatabai and Bergson, include reasoning, intuition, and continuous insight, of course, with different levels of importance, as a result of which each of these two philosophers has provided a suitable method for achieving self-knowledge Allameh Tabatabai's proposed method in his realistic moral education is meditation and calculation of self, and Bergson's method in his intuitive moral education is the intuitive understanding of self through the triple rules.