فصلنامه قبسات
پیاپی 53 (پاییز 1388)

Religious wisdom is “the final result of well-founded attempts for the exploration of religious teachings and interpretations”. The philosophy of religious wisdom is “the field that is responsible for the macroscopic intellectual study of general religious axioms and significant issues of religious wisdom”. The clarification of the processes and varieties of the development of religious wisdom is one of the main responsibilities of the philosophy of religious wisdom. The “Ibtena” view is one aimed at this kind of clarification. It also attempts to pave the way for the design of a modern and comprehensive logic for understanding religion. In short, the view holds that religious wisdom is the outcome of the continued alternative interaction of the five basic fundamentals of religion as a divine message. The view is founded on four basic principles: Principle one: the process nature of the development of religious wisdom and the product nature of religious wisdom itself,Principle two: the duality of (due and undue) factors contributing to the development of religious wisdom resulting in religious wisdom that is either pure or impure,Principle three: the message-orientedness of religion and its five basic components, andPrinciple four: the all-encompassing discovery and application of religion and its five basic fundamentals to eliminate the intervention of unjust and misleading factors.

According to Aristotle’s virtue-centered ethical system, the objective of everything is goodness. Among the different objectives, there is one objective which we want it for itself and everything else is for this objective; this is the best and highest goodness called prosperity and felicity. Aristotle believes human’s goodness and felicity is the activity of soul according to virtue; and if there are many virtues it should be in accordance with the best and most complete virtue; and virtue is the habit of choosing a middle-term which is the most correct and rational one. In other words, the definition and nature of virtue is a middle-term which is a good criterion to help us distinguish between virtues and vices in human’s deeds and feelings. Various problems have been posed for the golden rule of moderation which are categorized here in four main groups and investigated as follows:1. Non-generality of the moderation rule;2. Non-proficiency of the moderation rule in ethical training;3. Inconsistence of the moderation rule with nature;4. Contradiction of virtues;

We can call practical reason, ethical practical reason because it understands ethical practical proposition. Reason independently understands goodness and badness of some deeds and on this base, creates some ethical practical propositions. For example: ‘justice is good’ and ‘injustice is bad’ are two propositions of ethical practical reason and are the fundamental laws of ethics. Another way to understand the goodness and badness of deeds is to get help from the Divine law; yet this help is not in conflict with the rationality of goodness and badness. Allameh Tabataba’i believes that for the formation of any optional action, there are some intermediate understanding and thoughts between human’s nature on the one hand and it's natural and genetical properties and effects on the other hand; these thoughts are first made by nature and then nature displays its effects and properties in the world by their aid. This article will try to present a solution to transfer us from (understanding) ethical propositions of practical reason to ethical deeds.

One of the subjects posed among Islamic scholars is as follows: can we expand jurisprudence to the field of ethical matters; and can we see ethical matters and subjects as obligations and from the perspective of Jurisprudence or not? Two main views are posed by scholars in this regard:The first perspective –accepted by most Islamic scholars including jurists and scholars of ethics which is in practice approved by their jurisprudential and ethical writings – is that ethical matters and subjects are separated from jurisprudence; therefore jurisprudence cannot be expanded to the field of ethics. The main reason presented for this perspective is that jurisprudence and ethics are two separate sciences with different discussions and each should be discussed and investigated on their own. In addition, expanding jurisprudence to the field of ethics causes some detriments for both jurisprudence and ethics which prevents this expansion. The second perspective – confirmed and validated in this article – is that expanding jurisprudence to the field of ethics is permissible and even necessary due to some considerations because this expansion not only does not have the claimed detriments for jurisprudence and ethics, rather it has some advantages for people and the society which makes it really necessary. The main reasons of this perspective is some of Quran’s verses, narrations and the manner of some jurists and interpreters of Quran’s command-verses. This view is fully elaborated and validated in this article.

The divine command ethics which make ethics dependent on religion always had and still have some proponents but it has not a unified form. Rather it is articulated in different forms. This paper deals with the divine command ethics articulated by Robert Mary Adams. His divine command theory firstly limited the domain of dependency to obligatory concepts like ‘ought’ and ‘right’ and secondly didn’t accept the conceptual dependency but hold only that without religious concepts we can not explain the essence of these moral concepts. Finally his divine command ethics allowed for the independency of some non obligatory concepts like ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This independency allowed him to refute some famous objections to Divine Command ethics like the problem of ‘arbitrariness’ of morality.

Four perspectives are posed regarding the meaning of absolute obligations and ethical obligations. Four of these views are important which are as follows: 1- the meaning of obligation is a necessity by something arisen from the agent’s will; 2- the meaning of obligation is a claimed and spurious necessity; 3- the meaning of obligation is a necessity in relation to something; 4- the meaning of obligation is a necessity by something and a necessity in relation to something; more exactly it is a 'bel-qias bel-qeir' necessity. The fourth theory is accepted in this article because the first theory has not clarified the necessity before the agent’s will, the second theory is pointless and the third theory has not considered the relation between the agent and the action.

This article has tried to investigate the views of John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), the Scottish philosopher and theologian, regarding Voluntarism and will briefly criticize it. The difference between Scotus’s philosophy of ethics and the Aristotelian and Peripatetic philosophy of ethics (both in the Christian and Muslim tradition) is that Scotus believes reason and will are separate and human’s will does not obey his reason. This theory naturally ends up to a kind of voluntarism. Finally considering the important views of Islamic philosophy, the relation between reason and will, especially in ethical matters, is investigated.

One of the most foundational and challenging points of the discussions related to the environment is ethics and the philosophy of ethics. These two fields are very closely related to each other due to the dynamic status of philosophy and ethical issues and the changes of environmental subjects and questions. Three main and distinct perspectives can be imagined regarding environmental ethics: 1- the humanist ethical school; 2- the naturalist ethical school; 2- the Quran-based ethical school. The main question of this article is as follows: which ethical school can more effectively decrease the environmental crisis and the destruction of the environment? Analyzing and criticizing the bases of the two humanist and naturalist ethical schools and explaining the bases of the Quran-based ethical school, we will show that even though the first two schools have positive potentialities, but compared with Quran’s ethical bases, they have many flaws and have not been successful in this field as proved by experience. On the other hand, the Quran-based ethical school has many undeniable potentialities in this field.