جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "اخلاق فضیلت" در نشریات گروه "علوم قرآن و حدیث"

Educational systems in any society have the responsibility to educate and prepare a skilled workforce for the economic growth of the community and its integration into the labor market and society. Governments, especially in countries with a public economy, have a significant influence on two aspects of the labor market. First, they legislate and provide the necessary budget for this sector, and second, they act as consumers. In essence, the university is a factory that the government both supplies with raw materials and capital and utilizes its product, which is the skilled workforce. However, it seems that in addition to individual expertise and abilities, individuals graduating from universities need to possess ethical qualities to effectively interact with society, the workplace, and their families based on their ethical principles, in addition to their expertise. The importance of nurturing ethical individuals arises from its potential to reduce internal conflicts, financial and moral corruption, and increase mental well-being and happiness. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate and implement strategies for ethics education in universities, both by the government and university management, through a comprehensive approach. However, having a strategy and providing ethical guidelines alone will not make the educational system ethical until ethics become ingrained in the character and inner behavior of individuals. In this article, a descriptive-analytical method is used, and solutions for institutionalizing ethical behavior are proposed based on the views and theories of Mulla Sadra, who is considered a prominent figure in the group of virtue ethicists.

Moral philosophers hold that virtue is a character trait that can be considered as a model for the moral agent’s behavior. Michael A. Slote, a contemporary moral philosopher, viewed virtue from a different perspective and presented a new account of virtue ethics. He adopted a comprehensive attitude towards explaining virtue. Criticizing and modifying the ethical conceptions of philosophers such as Aristotle, he has analyzed the nature of virtue and the relationship between virtues in the different situations from different moral and rational perspectives. In this article, after indicating Slote’s moral thoughts and his agent-based version of virtue ethics, the foundations and constituents of his account of virtue are discussed. He holds an ontological view to present the relativity of virtues, to identify them, and finally to resolve the conflicts between them. He maintains that the function of virtues can be interpreted in terms of psychological cognitive, conative, and affective aspects. In his view, the virtues of "flexibility" and "practical reason" are two qualities which can both bring about the unity of virtues and resolve the conflicts between them.

Unlike virtue ethicistswho emphasize the existence of robust character traits in individuals, philosophical situationists argue that character traits do not exist. Based on the findings of social psychologists, situationists claim that the virtue ethicist's view of character traits is false. Arguments presented by situationists such as Harman, Doris, and Flanagan are grounded in empirical evidence provided by social psychologists; the empirical findings that lead to serious concerns and tensions for virtue ethics. In response to situationists, virtue ethicists, including Christian Miller, strived to defend the existence of character traits. The present paper is an attempt to introduce a novel and multidimensional viewpoint about the role of character traits and situations. First, the paper reviews Miller’s responses to situationists while elaborating on the situationists’ questions and arguments. Second, both stands are critically analyzed and evaluated and a novel viewpoint is suggested as a better alternative for understanding the basis of individual’s moral thoughts and actions. The paper proposes that the reality of individuals' moral thoughts and actions are neither solely based on situations, nor exclusively determined by robust character traits. Rather, it is a dual-aspect unit of character and situation that determines an individual’s moral thoughts and actions.

The revival of virtue ethics in the last century was an origin of new philosophical debates over friendship. Neo-Aristotelian schools disregard Aristotle’s definition of happiness; therefore, they have revived and modified certain Aristotelian notions as well as ancient post-Aristotelian schools, introducing “friendship” and “care” for the other as inseparable components of human happiness. Moreover, since ancient Aristotelian schools considered the most important demand of virtue ethics to consist in rational formation of one’s feelings, emotions, and internal passions in order to enjoy an internally good life, they were always accused of self-centrism, among other things. In this paper, we deal with “care for the other” as a new component of modern virtue ethics and consider the importance and role of “care for the other” as well as friendship in human happiness from an Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian perspectives. Then, we consider the reasons why Annas—a neo-Aristotelian philosopher—does not take ancient theories of happiness to be imbued with self-centrism and why she gives more weight to “friendship” and “care for the other” as compared to ancient theories. She seeks to find an answer to questions such as whether humans can, in addition to thinking of their own happiness, develop a care for the other in a non-instrumental way.

A common concern among advocates of Aristotelian virtue ethics is the problem of human character. The problem was particularly scrutinized by researchers of education in the last two centuries, and after the revival of virtue ethics in 1950s, it evolved into practical application of virtue-based approaches to moral training. Since then, character-based or virtue ethics faced new challenges mainly from advocates of care ethics and contextualists. They generally take the existence of character, and virtue for that matter, into question. In this paper, I begin by a consideration of how serious these challenges are through an analytic and critical method, and then I deal with the question: given the Aristotelian requirement of practical wisdom for virtue, is it an achievable goal to present a sage as a role-model for moral training of people in the society, particularly children and teenagers? If not, what is the purpose of virtue-based moral training? This paper is concerned with an inquiry into the nature and place of this goal in the human life today, together with an account of effective methods of training virtuous agents.

Virtue ethics is a moral theory that is particularly focused on the agent’s character and characteristics. Virtue ethics is contrasted with act-based theories (deontological and teleological theories) . It seems necessary to identify the Quranic perspective on normative moral theories, since the Quran is the most important source of Islamic beliefs and acts. Thus, in this paper, we seek to precisely formulate virtue ethics and its properties, and then look for the Quranic view of such ethics. The view gleaned from the bulk of Quranic evidence is an endorsement of virtue ethics with an orientation to the subject’s virtue (agent-based), but no evidence can be found for virtue-based, subject-based approaches. Quranic ethics is very close to virtue ethics because it assigns a central place to one’s heart and soul as opposed to external acts, and faith as opposed to righteous actions. Moreover, it offers a “role-model” (uswa) as the criterion for morality.

In his A Theory of Virtue, Robert Adams tries to provide a new formulation of virtue ethics. For Adams, the main components of virtue consist in “being for the good” and “excellence.” The good is, according to Adams’s Platonic-theological conception, identical with the Merciful God as an infinite Good, and all good things, as the finite good with their wide extent, are excellent to the extent of their similarity to the Good and Excellent God. Thus, being for the good refers to different manners of the relationship with the good, including desire, love, respect, and the like. Excellence refers to the kind of good that is non-instrumental, which makes what possesses it be praiseworthy, worthy of love and respect, and in its highest degree, worthy of worship. Thus, virtue refers to a position with respect to the good that is excellent. What is objectionable in Adams’s view is that he has failed to offer a criterion for the excellence of “being for the good, ” leaving it to our intuitions. However, the recognition of excellence in order to distinguish the virtue from non-virtue requires a criterion.

Virtue ethics is one of the oldest moral theories which has in recent decades attracted the attention of moral philosophers and was widely received by many researchers. Edmund Pincoffs, an advocate of virtue ethics, and according to some people, the contemporary reviver of the virtue theory, has provided a new, different version of the virtue theory by rejecting what he calls reductivism in ethics. In this paper, after sketching the principles of the virtue theory as introduced by Plato and Aristotle, the traditional classical pioneers of virtue ethics in Ancient Greece, we will compare classical virtue theories with Edmund Pincoffs’ version of virtue ethics. It is widely known that Plato and Aristotle had a teleological approach, taking the virtues to be non-relative and irreducible to one single virtue, but Pincoffs criticizes the reduction of morality to one or more moral virtues or principles, and instead of teleology, he subscribes to functionalism. We will compare the two versions of virtue ethics from 4 perspectives in analytical, historical terms: semantics, types of virtues, arguments for a virtue theory, and the criterion of selecting the virtues.