Relationship between Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Iranian Discourses of Thought

The history of political thought in Iran has been so far put on paper chiefly in view of the relationship between tradition and modernity. Without exaggeration, it can be claimed that the method of recording political thought has itself turned into a dominant and hegemonic discourse, making it hard for other discourses to emerge. Adopting an analytical-descriptive methodology, this paper tries to shed a new light on Iran’s discourses of thought through investigating the relationship between ethics and politics: political Islam or Islamist discourse, liberalist discourse and Marxist discourse.Theoretically speaking, there are three forms of relationships between ethics and politics: maximum metaphysics, minimum metaphysics, and no relationship between ethics and politics. Findings of the paper indicate that in view of the relationship between ethics and politics, the Islamist discourse is of maximum metaphysics, hence seeking maximum ethical interference in politics. To that end, Iranian liberalist discourse is of minimum metaphysics favoring least ethical intervention in any aspect of human life. Given certain theoretical foundations constituting its pillars, the Iranian Marxist discourse believes in separation of ethics from politics.