An Examination on Shahid Mutahhari’s Criterion for Moral Act (Worship)

Philosophers of ethics have suggested different criteria for moral act; altruistic emotion (Hindu and Christianity), happiness (Plato and Aristotle), reason and will (Muslim philosophers), practical reason (Kant). Having criticized many of those criteria, Shahid Mutahhari suggests knowingly or unknowingly worshipping as the criterion. His theory has been criticized here through a descriptive-analytic method. Its main advantage is that it is a realistic view; however, it mainly suffers from the fact that not only Mutahhari considered moral act devoid of intention, but also his theory suffers from contradiction. Because he has firstly restricted ethics to mankind and in the end has generalized unknowingly worshipping to all beings which implies the application of morality to none-human creatures. The author has suggested a few solutions for the two problems: that we confine the criterion for moral act to a mere knowingly worshipping or propose voluntary worshipping as the criterion. In the end, however, we have introduced voluntary proximity to God as the best criterion.