Islamic Ethics, IIUM,UIAM

1. Naturalistic Ethics
• Scientific ethics does not wish to deal with the
ideological basis of morality.
• Ethical societies in Europe from which the conception of
God or religion was explicitly excluded.
• “Moral obligations accepted by the civilised communities”
during the last two centuries included the worst form of
capitalism and colonialism, subjugation and inhuman
exploitation of the non-whites and even unjust
discrimination against the poor and the weak.

2. • All this was the natural result of moral
chaos produced by rejecting any absolute
standard or criterion of good and right
except self-interest.
• According to nationalism, a nation is or
should be the highest ideal of moral
conduct.

3. • A society under the influence of this idea will be
capable of great efforts of creativeness and self-
sacrifice, its individuals will be disciplined and
their behaviour fully coordinated for the
realisation of the ideal of national welfare and
prosperity.
• But in the absence of any higher guiding ideals,
it always develops anti-foreign and aggressive
tendencies, with the result that the spirit of self-
devotion in the citizens is apt to be largely, if not
wholly, replaced by the desire of personal gain.

4. • The motives lose the purity of personal virtue at
the same time that the national end becomes
injurious inter-nationlly and morally.
• The code of morality under the inspiration of
nationalism is neither consistent nor uniform.
• The ideal of such people is not absolute moral
ends but national welfare and prosperity.

5. • National morality can be justified only if it is
based on the ideal of universal human
brotherhood.
• Islam wants to raise a society built upon purely
human outlook.
• It finds the principle of unification not in blood or
geography but in the principle of tauhid.

6. • No national morality would like a nation to treat
its enemy with justice and fair play.
• Such a code of universal moral justice could
have no place in nationalistic ethics.
• Comte founded the so-called Religion of
Humanity.
• He believed in the unity of mankind and looked
upon human race as one great organism.

7. • Religion, according to him, is the full
harmony of life and embraces equally the
heart and the intellect.
• In the earlier stages of man’s development
this was attained, according to him, by the
unconscious creation, first of mania, then
of gods.

8. • It was a noble ideal but, being based on no
concrete reality, it could not evoke any healthy
and warm response from the heart of people.
• What are the bonds that may unite people of
different nationalities and races together?
• In the absence of any living and concrete
ideology, it will not be possible to bring people
together on a common platform.

9. • Any system of thought that tries to combine such
diverse creeds as fetishism and polytheism with
monotheism, or godliness with atheism, cannot
be expected to evoke any uniform loyalty among
its followers.
• In the absence of a basic moral ideology, there
can be no unanimity among the congregation of
people subscribing to the Religion of Humanity
as to what constitutes real service.

10. • The ideal of humanity as presented by Comte
was no doubt an advance on the narrow and
one-sided ideals of nationalism and racialism,
but due to lack of any spiritual basis, it could not
succeed in winning the loyalty of the people at
large.
• These secular moral ideologies proves that the
best that they could achieve was to arrive at
some form of utilitarianism.

11. • But, if pleasure and pain, the two subjective
feelings of main, are to be considered, in the
words of Bentham, as the sovereign masters
and are to determine our conduct, there remains
nothing for ethics to do.
• Morality means enunciation of certain objective
principles which should help an individual order
his life.

12. • Utilitarianism allows man to put no
restraint on himself and thus the very
notion of duty or ought is dispensed with.
• According to Bentham, it was “very idle to
talk about duties” and “ought is a word that
ought to be banished from our vocabulary.

13. • Green said, there must be permanence in the
ethical end, for in its absence there can be no
consistency in the moral behaviour of man who
will find himself at the mercy of passing whims
and momentary passions.
• If we accept pleasure and utility as the only
criterion, we shall be face with total anarchy and
disharmony in life.

14. • Man’s nature, if explained in terms of feeling
alone, as utilitarianism does, would be to reduce
moral consciousness or “ought” to the
psychological “must” or fear of pains and hope
of pleasures.
• All ethical codes that are divorced from the truly
spiritual basis of human life.
• Unless we accept some objective standard of
right and wrong, it is impossible to arrive at any
universally valid ideal of moral conduct.

15. • Kant’s argument for immortality was based on the fact
that reason demands the harmony of pleasure and
virtue, and since they do not always or ever perfectly
unite here, they must, on the ground of rational
congruity, be at one somewhere.
• It is an undeniable fact that to raise pleasure or
expediency to the level of virtue is to bring down the
moral ideal to mere material or sensuous utility.
• It is here that religious ethics, i.e., ethics based on
spiritual presuppositions, help us in avoiding this
dangerous path.

16. • One distinctive service which religion
renders to morality is to give a
comprehension of the dimension of the
depth of life.
• A secular moral act tries to resolve the
conflict of passion and interest by resort to
prudence, by the counsel of moderation
appropriate to the moment.

17. • A religious morality is led to trace every force
with which it deals to some ultimate origin and to
relate every purpose to some ultimate end, thus
giving it a place of permanence.
• Its main interest is not only with immediate
values and disvalues, but with the problem of
good and evil, not only with immediate objective,
but with ultimate hopes.

18. • Our life and existence is a unity and coherence of
meaning which cannot be realised without positing the
transcendent source of meaning, God, by which alone
confidence in the meaningfulness of life and existence
can be maintained.
• The sense of obligation in morals, from which Kant tried
to derive the whole structure of religion, is really derived
from the religion itself.
• Man seeks to realise in history what he conceives to be
already the truest reality, the supreme value, the highest
ideal.

19. Definition of Ethics
• It is defined as the science that deals with
conduct, in so far as this is considered right or
wrong, good or bad.
• The term ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’ are derived from a
Greek word ‘ethos’ which originally meant
customs, usages, especially those belonging to
some group as distinguished from another, and
later came to mean disposition, character.
• They are like the Latin word ‘moral’ from ‘mores’.

20. • Nietzsche adopts an attitude of moral relativism.
• That only is good which leads to enhancement
of the will to power, and because in different
times and climes it is possible to achieve this
result with the help of different moral devices.
• He did not see any point in prescribing a
universal code of morals.

21. • Morality has been only a weapon in the
hands of those who had the will to gain
power, hence various systems to suit the
various ends.
• He who is strong and powerful is on the
right side, and who is weak is destined to
be reckoned as false.

22. • According to Dewey, it was in customs that the
moral or ethical made its appearance, for
customs were not merely habitual ways of
acting; they were ways approved by the group or
society.
• To act contrary to the customs of the group was
to incur its displeasure and disapproval.
• The customs, therefore were strictly observed
which gave birth to customary morality.

23. Customary Morality
• The group life first took the form of Kinship group as a
body of persons conceived of themselves as sprung
from one ancestor.
• Group life controls the behaviour of its members and
tries to maintain right relations between them.
• Group morality is based upon its customs which are
controlling agencies of its members and which are the
product of certain approved way of acting common to the
group or ‘mores’ as they are called by Sumner.

24. • Men inherited from their savage ancestors psychological
traits, instincts, and dexterities, or at least dispositions.
• The result is mass phenomena, currents of similarity,
concurrence, and mutual contribution which produce
folkways or the behaviour to a people.
• Folkways are unconsciously adopted without knowing
who led in devising them.
• They develop into traditions which ultimately assume the
forms of ‘mores’ or ‘customs’.

25. • Customs had the force of law and were considered as
good.
• Being the approved standards of morality, their violation
brought the censure of the whole society.
• But there are periods in history when a whole community
or a group finds itself dissatisfied with its old customs, for
they fail to adequately meet the new issues and
problems of life.
• This is the starting point of reflective morality which
supplants the customary morality.

26. Reflective Morality
• Reflective morality takes into
consideration the nature of moral act.
• Conduct and character are considered to
be of the same nature and men, according
to Aristotle, become good by education
which he defines as character training that
a person receives in a good family and a
good city.

27. • Kantian theory of morals: “The concept of good
and evil must not be determined before the
moral law, but only after it and by means of it”.
• Kant subordinates good to moral law and to
explain it he adds that “natural impulse suggests
to a mother care of her infant; but to be morally
good, but to be morally good, the motive of her
conduct must be reverence for the moral law
which makes it her bounden duty to care for the
child. Thus, the act of good is only when it is
performed under moral law”.

28. • A man engaged in service of a client is moved
either by ambition for professional success or by
acquired professional habits to do the best he
can for the affairs of clients entrusted to his
charge.
• His acts are morally good are right as distinct
from satisfactory-only when such motives as
affect his conduct, including even the wish to be
of service to others, are subordinated to
reverence for moral law.

29. • The conception of reverence for moral law and
duty is the only right way of doing things.
• All that is required is to know our duty in a
particular case and ask ourselves if the motive
of that act can be made universal without falling
into self-contradiction.
• This principle if made universal simply
contradicts itself, for with such a principle there
would be no such things as a promise.

30. • The principle of right action, according to Kant:
“Act in a way that you would like to be paid back
in your own coin”.
• To treat every other as end not as a means to
gain one’s own end.
• The person who makes a lying promise to
another uses that person as a means to his
benefit which is immoral.

31. • There is a conflict between one’s good and the
good of others, for in many cases men have a
strong tendency to estimate their own
satisfaction as of higher value.
• Kant’s theory become ineffective and
meaningless.
• Character building is therefore, of prime
importance but it cannot be built unless and until
there is a well specified moral system and well-
defined moral education.

32. • Without character, no good can be
expected, for morality changes with the
change in social conditions.
• Even the conception of as a virtue has
different meanings and is defined in
various ways.

33. • Plato, in his Republic treats of justice as one of the 4
principal values, the other 3 being temperance, wisdom
and courage.
• Justice, according to him, is the controlling or
architectonic virtue, the just man is the self-disciplined
man whose passions are controlled by reason.
• Nietzsche conceives of it as the right of strong man-
might is right.
• According to Hume, justice is an ‘artificial virtue’.

34. • Virtue yet cut-throat competition is fair and just in
Individualistic competitive Capitalism.
• Kant attaches great importance to moral law but, unless
backed by character, it has no binding influence.
• Kant seems to have affirmed what Islam had established
centuries ago but failed to observe that man’s character
is the basis of morality.
• His theory of morals appears to have been derived from
Islamic teachings.

35. • Mark the highest standard of morality, for no one should
wish for the other except what is good, let alone false
promise referred to by Kant is his theory of morality.
• Another instance from Kant wherein he holds that
motives alone count in determining the acts.
• Such being the case Kant’s theory of morals has nothing
original in it.
• His failure to arrive at a right conclusion lies in the fact
he lost touch with the original.

36. • Not only is character stressed upon, in
Islam, but also a noble pattern is provided,
in the life of the Prophet.
• Thus, Islam aims first at character training
and builds in man a disposition to do good
to others without which no moral theory
can be effective.

37. • Kant’s theory of morals stressed on moral laws and
motives.
• To him, motives alone count in determining an act.
• Bentham lays stress on consequences and says that
morality consists in producing such consequences as
contribute to human happiness.
• Kant puts sole emphasis upon how far the chosen act is
conceived and inspired.
• Bentham lays stress upon what is actually produced or
done.

38. • A survey of moral theories discloses the fact that thinkers
of modern times have differed in their opinions.
• There are some who attach importance to the way in
which an act is inspired, for the consequences are often
out of control.
• Some are impressed by the importance of the purpose
and ends leading to the concept of ‘good’ as ultimate.
• Some others who judged the goodness of an act simply
by its approbation and dis-approbation, praise and blame
as the primary moral fact.

39. • The fundamental is that we cannot discriminate
between the ends that deceptively promise to be
good and the ends that truly constitute good.
• The real good, as such, is beyond our ken and
God alone knows what s really good.
• It is better to rely upon the Divine revelations,
than to be lost in the blind alleys of human
thought and reason.

40. • Reflective morality, with its bearing upon
human thought, proved of a character,
erratic and not constant, unstable and not
Permanent.
• Customary morality was unsound as it had
respect and regard even for such
Customs as were defective, irrational and
injurious.

41. • With the growth of intellect, man did not feel
himself satisfied with the group control.
• The passive acceptance of old customs was,
therefore, discarded.
• It is interesting to know how changes occur in
social conditions and shake the foundations of
morality.

42. Bentham’s Utilitarianism
• Bentham developed a theory that all ethics, thought and
psychology rest on this fundamental principle that
pleasure is preferable to pain.
• Utilitarianism- a doctrine that the greatest happiness of
the greatest number should be the guiding principle of
conduct.
• ‘Nature’ has placed man under the empire of pleasure
and pain.
• His only subject is to seek pleasure and shun pain.
• The principle of utility subjects everything to these 2
motives.

43. • Good and evil are, thus, interpreted in terms of pleasure
and pain and this represents ‘utilitarian ethics’.
• Utilitarianism assumes that man is motivated and
controlled by the desire to secure pleasurable and avoid
painful experiences.
• The utilitarians have their own suspicious of reason and
look to human observation and experience in order to
find what men actually value.
• Instead of judging the conduct by its feelings and
motives, they would judge it by its consequences.

44. • Bentham’s theory is criticised as contradictory in
itself.
• The whole object of all actions is the obtaining of
personal pleasure, which the proper standard for
judging the morality of act is its contribution to
the pleasure of others.
• In his theory, “desire for private pleasure as the
sole motive of action and universal benevolence
as the principle of approval are at war with each
other”.

45. • Personal pleasure is indeed, a low set of pleasure and “it
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied”.
• Pleasure has no sound basis, for it depends mostly upon
the existing state of a person.
• “What pleases in health is distasteful in illness, what
annoys or disgusts in a state of repletion is gratifying
when one is hungry and eager,
• “Which is pleasant to men of generous disposition
arouses aversion in a men and stingy person, what is
pleasant to a child may bore an adult”.

46. • There can be no standard of judgement as to
know what exactly constitutes pleasure and
morally speaking pleasure as an end cannot be
considered ‘good’, for vile person takes pleasure
in his wickedness and so on.
• The utilitarian theory that pleasure is the good
and the end is baseless and immoral.