A Comparative Review of Allamah Tabatabai's Views and Egoistic Theories in Ethics

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Theoogy, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran.

2 Department of Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of Theoogy, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran.

Abstract

One of the fundamental topics in contemporary moral philosophy is egoism versus altruism. There is two kind of egoism, i.e. psychological egoism and ethical egoism. Psychological egoism is the descriptive theory that humans do what is in their own best interest. Ethical egoism is the normative theory that humans must do what is in their best interest. There are some resemblances between Tabatabai’s words and these two kinds. In this paper, we are looking for an answer to the question whether theses two kinds of egoism can be applied to Allamah’s opinions? First we examine objections to the these two forms of egoism and then we evaluate tabatabai’s theory in spite of the objections. Finally, we show that despite some resemblances, Tabatabai’s theory is different from these two theories, and we can deduce a different kind of egoism from his words that can be referred as Metaphysical Egoism. We also show that metaphysical egoism is a defensible theory against the most important problems of ethical egoism, i.e. problem of "conflict of interests" and problem of "logical inconsistancy".

Keywords

Islamic Philosophical Doctrines

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 19 June 2024

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