Comparison of the Use of History in the Texts of Mystical Ethics and Political Ethics In the Middle Centuries of Iranian History

In the system of thoughts until the new centuries, history was associated with lessons and history writing had a ethic hue. On the other hand, history was also used in ethic writing. In this study, the aim is to compare the application of history in the texts of mystical ethics with the application of history in the texts of political ethics. Ethic texts contain the thoughts of the authors of these texts and to understand this thought among different approaches, the approach of discourse analyses has been chosen to achieve the purpose of this study; an approach that, in addition to understanding the meaning of the texts, is also concerned with identifying the force in which the text was formed. With this approach, this study tries to address the following question: What are the similarities and differences between the application of history in the texts of mystical ethics and political ethics, and what is the origin of this difference? History is narrated in the texts of mystical ethics in the form of words and deeds of the past elders and in a narrative form. The audience of mystical ethics texts has a lower position than the authors of these texts in the epistemic hierarchy. The authors clearly consider the sacred history of mysticism to be a role model for the audience and emphasize it. They depict the mystical sacred history in the form of a stable and continuous whole in order to protect themselves against the rival discourse. History is narrated through admonitions and anecdotes in political ethics texts. However, because the audience of political ethics texts has a higher social status than the authors of these texts, the authors have limitations to encourage the audience to imitate history. They have regarded history to include the lesson of changing circumstances, so that in this way it has defended its position against the rival discourse.