نشریه مطالعات اخلاق کاربردی
سال دوم شماره 8 (زمستان 1391)

Definition of Morality from the Perspective of Quran Muhammad Mahdi Firouzmehr Abstract According to the Quran, the purpose behind the mission of Prophet Muhammad(S) was to spread soul purification and moral development among the individuals, the notion which was confirmed by the prophet himself. Quran has praised the prophet's temperament and has mentioned it with pride and respect. Prophet introduced himself as a student trained by divine morality. Prophet's temperament resembles the Quranic teachings and the Quran is a manifestation of God's volition for human beings, therefore, it is concluded that the Quran and the Prophet are both the expressions of divine morality. As the ultimate aim of creating man is to make him the vicegerent of God on the earth and since reaching this position requires man to have congruity and resemblance with God, the purpose of divine morality is to have man become aware of the divine names and attributes and then tries to develop those characters in himself, a purpose which is obtained only through worshiping God and has been expressed as the ultimate objective of creation. Consequently, based on the Quranic perspective, morality occurs as the result of knowing God's names, attributes and acts and the attempt to practice them to the extent possible for human being by worshiping God. This definition which is extracted from the Quranic verses and Islamic narrations explicitly associates morality with God's names and attributes.

Teachings of Islam put emphasis on salvation of human beings in all facets of life, so this religion has tried to introduce values and measures to improve human and moral principles. The Quran as the main source of human guidance has considered all aspects of human life and led man in his individual, social, mundane and spiritual way of life. Consequently, one of the most important tasks of the prophets was to invite people towards moral values and to stabilize them. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate on the methods applied by the Quran to stabilize moral values. The author has followed the method of inferential analysis throughout the study. The results indicate that some methods such as confronting the agents with the consequences of their deeds, preaching, enunciating, warning and… may result in improving moral values in people because the only distinctive feature separating human being from animal is having the power of intellect and his accessibility to human and moral values since piety is believed to be formed by following moral values.

Ethical propositions include sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate while its subject concerns human being and its existing aspects and the predicate expresses one of the seven ethical concepts including: "good and evil", "must and mustnt", "proper and improper", and "duty". Quranic ethical propositions are usually stated in the form of either statements or exclamatory sentences. Exclamatory sentences are either of imperative forms such as orders, prohibitions, questions, wishes and calling or they have non-imperative natures like Arabic verbs indicating praise and blame, exclamation, swearing, hope, special structures for establishing various Islamic contracts (Uqῡd and Iqᾱ'), and sentences starting with "Kam" and "Rubba". Considering the necessity to investigate the Quranic ethical propositions in a scientific and systematic way, this study attempts to analyze the non-imperative exclamatory sentences in Quran using a descriptive-analytic method in order to extract ethical propositions from Quran. Based on the outcome of this study, from among the non-imperative exclamatory sentences four kinds, namely Arabic verbs indicating praise and blame, exclamation, swearing and hope convey the two ethical concepts of "good and evil". When the predicates of such sentences include these concepts, they are determined as ethical propositions.

Egotism, as a moral vice, has always been attended to by the religious leaders, who tried to warn against its harmful consequences. There are a number of narrations received from Imam Ali (A.S.) about egotism in which he has pointed out the roots and harms of this psychological disorderwhich has also been discussed by Ethics scholars and psychologists. Using library method and following a referential-descriptive approach, the author of this paper has tried to first give a definition of the term and then inspect the roots and harms of egotism as expressed in the speech of Imam Ali(A.S.). In addition, the views of some psychologists have been reflected here. Some of the harms mentioned by Imam Ali(A.S.) as the consequences of egotism are: paving the way for Satan's dominance, diminishing the power of reason, abolishing man's improvement, belittlement, arrogance and downfall.

One of the characteristics of Ashura uprisingis its inclusion of Islamic morality and ethical teachings; a fact which is referred to in this essay as "Morality in Ashura Uprising" The roots of Imam Hussein's uprising go back to the early years of the prophet's mission when some of the hypocrites started plotting to destroy Islam. These conspiracies culminated at Imam Hussein's time and finally led to Ashura uprising. Following the demise of the Prophet(S) many distortions were made and added to Islam. Prophet's descendants, however, were fully aware of such improper additions and strictly fought against them. The injuries caused in the body of Islam as the result of such alterations gradually took the Muslim society away from the goals set by the Prophet(S). This put a heavy burden on the shoulder of Prophet's family to resist these attacks and to prevent the spread of such deviations and tried to eradicate them. In this paper in addition to reviewing the events happening between the demise of the prophet(S) and the martyrdom of Imam Hassan(A.S.), some of the moral aspects of Imam Husseinsuprising such as: social reformation, chivalry and gallantry have been discussed. Using a library method, this research tries to answer this question: Was Ashura uprising formed based on Islamic moral principles? This moral-oriented uprising caused to reveal the immoral nature of Imam's enemy some of whose details will be briefly mentioned in this essay.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the level of ethical instructions and its components as reflected in the social sciences textbooks taught in Iranian High schools. The method applied in this research is a descriptive-analytic type.Topics and examples of each of the components of the data have been collected by using a list of ethical criteria in political, social, economic and public aspects. The population of this study includes all the social sciences textbooks taught in Iranian high schools in the field of literature and humanities which encompass four textbooks. Census methods have been used for sampling. To measure the scope and analytic level of the questions, descriptive statistics have been used. Finally, after assessing the results, we find out that the ethical indexes attended to in social sciences textbooks of Secondary Schools in political aspect is 27%, in social aspect (family and civil sections) 49 percent, in economical aspect, 10 % and in the public aspect is 14%. This indicates that there is no balance among the different aspects of ethical indexes in various aspects and it requires that education authorities consider further revisions to the textbooks in coming years.

This article reviews the challenges and problems found in an article titled "Is religious ethics possible?"which argues that the transition from religion to morality is neither easy nor straightforward. Following a long introduction, the author of the above mentioned article expresses the following six philosophical subjects as the obstacles in the way of transition from religion to ethics: 1- the issue of God's existence, 2- the issue of God's presence, 3- the issue of God's acts and the centrality of divine assignments, 4- the issue of God's attributes "morality of God", 5- the issue of God's power and His dispensation, 6- the issue of resurrection and reckoning. In the present paper, first the introduction and then the six mentioned issues have been discussed and reviewed.