A Study on Rationalist Ethical Movement in the Islamic Seminaries in Iran over the Last Century

Abstract

Over this century, Islamic seminaries in Iran have critically engaged with Western thinkers' ethical and practical works, addressing its occasionally differing or conflicting foundations and outcomes with religious perspectives. This engagement aims to resolve practical issues pertinent to the Islamic community by delving into abstract and concrete rational inquiries in ethics. This quest for truth has led some Islamic seminary scholars in Qom to explore fields such as ethics, the philosophy of ethics, applied ethics, moral education, and the sociology of ethics. This study employs a descriptive-explanatory method, gathering data through both documentary and observational-field methods, to categorize the rationalist ethical movements in contemporary Iranian seminaries into four types of ethical rationality: 1. First Type of Ethical Rationality: This movement focuses on epistemological and ontological foundations of ethics through deductive reasoning within the Islamic tradition. 2. Second Type of Ethical Rationality: This movement emphasizes deductive reasoning but concentrates on modern ethics, particularly meta-ethics and normative ethics. 3. Third Type of Ethical Rationality: This movement shifts from foundational ethics studies toward concrete and practical ethics research, using deductive and somewhat empirical reasoning. 4. Fourth Type of Ethical Rationality: This movement fundamentally does not find deductive reasoning useful or effective; instead, it emphasizes "empirical-scientific rationality" and, thus, has adopted empirical methods in moral psychology, moral education, and the sociology of ethics.