Social Commitment: A New Concept in Social Science or an Archaic Idea in the History of Thought

Definition, distinction and detailed analysis of concepts are essentials to science. Of important concepts in the literature of sociology, which is poorly conceptualized, is “social commitment”, although it has a lasting origin in human thought. “Ethics” is the field of science that has dealt with the concept. In this paper, we have studied the books “jāmi’ al-sa’ādāt”, “mi’rāj al-sa’ādah”, and “al-maqāmāt al-‘aliyyah fi ‘ilm al-akhlāq” as the major books of ethics. In this study, we have extracted 51 features for social commitment and have eventually categorized them into 4 main dimensions. These dimensions have an ascending order. The first one, “affability”, is the most superficial- i.e. one could have this dimension and be void of others and consequently social commitment. The next one is “honesty’; i.e. in addition to affability, one should be honest too. Regarding “philanthropism” as the third dimension, one should be philanthropist alongside being affable and honest.
Finally, the last one, as the most profound level in making social commitment, is “stability of the goodness”. Whenever somebody has these four dimensions, he could be called “committed”.