نشریه علوم سیاسی
سال هفتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 26، تابستان 1383)

The truth, the reality, and nature of ethics and politics and their relationship, though an old issue, have been recently considered globally. Any politics and objective political behavior and relationships are the resultant of ethics as normative system. As opposed to the non-transcendental political and moral strategy, which advocates the separation of ethics and politics, the human ethical and political strategy is based on the correlation and correspondence of ethics and politics and their positive and constitutive interaction. Based on this model, ethics and the normative system like the skeleton and the infrastructure of politics forms the society and the political system of a country and politics and political system is the country's form, behavior, and strategic structure. Thus two have constant causal interaction.

Political philosophy based on transcendental wisdom is a type of ethical, teleological, and thus, virtue-based philosophy. Among the significant characteristics of the virtue-based and transcendental politics dealt with in this paper are the depiction of the School of Guidance as opposed to the School of Power in the real of politics, an instrumental approach to man's worldly life to help him come close to God, God-basedness as opposed to the idea of a self-sufficient man, emphasis on man's being self-determined and as a result setting up a correspondence between the political system and the intrinsic wills of the people, the principle of Divine Leadership in three levels of the Prophets, the Saints ['Owliya'], and the Inheritors ['Owsiya'], and emphasis on the realization of the ethical virtues of the leaders, political system, law, institutions, structures, people, and behaviors.

The intellectual achievement of the most prominent Western philosopher during four decades of scientific endeavor, John Rawls (1921-2002), is an interpretation of liberalism, which, despite its commonalities with the liberal tradition, comprises a new approach to interpretation and explanation of the basics of this political and philosophical school. Rawl's intellectual endeavor includes two stages the output of which is two different interpretations of liberalism. The first stage of his political thought, expressed in his famous book devoted to the theory of justice, shows his philosophical and moral approach to social justice and its output is an interpretation of liberalism founded on a particular moral and philosophical doctrine. In the second stage of his political thought, Rawls, proposing the theory of "political justice" and "political liberalism", claims that it is possible to propose an interpretation of liberalism and social justice that, despite the content of the book Theory of Justice, in not based on any particular moral and philosophical doctrine. The present paper deals with Rawls moral interpretation of liberalism, excluding political liberalism that is the output of his second intellectual stage.

Discussions over the relationship between ethics and politics in international politics arena was an important issue among international relations authorities and theoreticians. The realists reject the possibility of applying ethical requirements to international politics, while the idealists are optimistic with respect to realization of ethics. This paper examines the relationship between ethics and politics in regard with the distribution of power in three structural situations, i.e. emperorship, nation-states, and global governments.

The problem of the stability or flexibility of ethical and political propositions has been examined in different disciplines such as philosophy, principles of jurisprudence, theology etc. Apart from studying the sources of the political and ethical propositions (practical wisdom), this paper tries to investigate concepts such as practical reason, the well-known [mashhoorat], the behavior of the wise, and relationship between "must" and "is" so that the ground be prepared for approximating the mind to the problem of stability or flexibility of these propositions. Finally, ethical and political propositions are classified into propositions arising from the behavior of the wise and those arising from the reason. The first type is particular and relative whereas the second is general and universal.

Immaculacy is so important in the political thoughts of Sheikh or-Raees Bu Ali Sina that, when the prophet passes away and the revelation finishes, an immaculate Imam appointed by the prophet takes over leadership and people are asked to follow him as they followed the prophet. The prophet has accomplished law making, but guardianship of the affairs never comes to an end unless the resurrection starts and human society vanishes. Assuming that Islam is political, in this paper, we propose the question whether Islam's being political is intrinsic or transient, and finally, we proved that immaculacy has a particular importance in the political thoughts of the great Islamic philosopher, Bu Ali Sina.

Ethics and freedom are two prescriptive corpulent concepts, which have drawn the best discussions of political philosophy. These concepts are so prominent that they have been reflected in the thoughts and minds of intellectuals and in the life of man through the long history of political thought. Thus, the present paper tries to study the ideas of one of the contemporary Muslim philosophers concerning the correspondence of ethics and politics and, evaluating these two corpulent concepts, presents and evaluates the claim that freedom is prior to ethics.

Explaining the relationship between ethics and politics is one the oldest but most serious issues in political philosophy. This paper tries to study four theories concerning this relationship and to evaluate the correspondent arguments. These four theories concern with the separation of ethics and politics, the conformity of ethics with politics, the two-level ethics, and the unity of ethics and politics.

The present paper is to explain the concept and the mechanisms of the realization of social justice. Four aspects of the concept are introduced first to present a tangible picture of justice. Then, there is a discussion over the mechanisms of the realization of social justice to realize the mentioned aspects at the level of agents in the political, economic, and cultural arenas.