Sources of Ethical Motivation: A Comparative Approach to Abraham Maslow and Allameh Tabatabaei's Views

This study aimed to investigate the sources of motivation from Abraham Maslow and Allameh Tabatabaei's view and make a comparison between the two viewpoints to answer this question: What is the source of motivation for human moral behavior? It has been performed by the method of theoretical and rational analysis of religious and psychological texts. It, on the one hand, has an interdisciplinary approach (viz. ethics and psychology) and on the other hand it is a scientific-religious research study. According to some of the achievements of the present study, Allameh Tabatabaei has emphasized three theories: "Greek Ethics," "religious ethics" and "Quranic ethics"; respectively with the three motivational sources: "social admiration," "rewards of the next world" and "affection based on monotheism". Maslow has also emphasized the "ethics based on need and nature". Five similarities and four differences were discovered between Abraham Maslow's view and Allameh Tabatabaeis.