Ethical system in Pahlavi teachings

Master's Thesis in Non-Abrahamic Religions

Abstract

The subject of ethics has an important place in Zoroastrian religion. In the Sassanid era, we witness the flourishing of a special style in moral literature, which is known today as Andrzanamehs. Instructables are a type of practical ethics that try to make their audience moral with special features. This article tries to show that it is possible to see the instructions in a framework. The importance of this issue will be clear when the elements of this system and its key concepts are explained and they are explained with other words. Meanwhile, the researcher has no choice but to adopt a textual approach and discuss the texts with each other. What will become clear after this article is that the ethics found in the epistles is a virtue ethics and is closely related to the Greek model of virtue. In this ethics, man has two areas of mind and body, and of course, the originality of a person is his soul. Other concepts such as wisdom, moderation, tent, luck, religion, etc., all see themselves in the direction of a happy soul. A person, both in the small world and in the big world, should try to help the gods and finally make them his guests. On the other hand, the practical outcome of normative ethics is in practical ethics. Therefore, it will be shown that the foundation of the practical ethics of the injunctions, such as the ethics of urbanism, citizenship, war and peace, physical and mental health, family, sexual ethics, and socializing, should be seen in the existing normative ethics and, accordingly, in their key moral concepts. 

Introduction

As societies become more advanced, the subject of ethics has become a basic need for humans in the age of anxiety. Today's man, more than anything else, sees his need to find a peaceful life without any danger. Therefore, this man tries to present a moral narrative of his life. To satisfy such a feeling, various thinkers from all over the world are looking for solutions to human moral dilemmas, which has led to the emergence of several moral schools. One of the views that is given to the category of morality and morality today is a view that arose from tradition and was modified in the laboratory of the modern world. Proponents of such a view make a great effort to oblige the contemporary man to observe the moral principles of the past and to institutionalize it in the human life today. On the other hand, ethics is a vital issue for a positive reading of religion. The combination of these two elements has caused the issue of ethics to be important in the thinking of modern man and to appear more attractive than ever.  

2. Discussion plan

Ethical aspects are very colorful in Zoroastrian religion. The most important period of development and historical view of this religion was during the Sassanid period. Zoroastrian ethics has had various manifestations; But perhaps it is possible to consider Saint Andrew's and Adrezgoi as a special and popular style among other moral opinions in this period. Signs have been so important that they are placed next to tables, clothes, dishes, tombs, etc. They were inserting In general, it can be concluded that the ethics of instruction enjoyed great success during the Sassanid era. This fortune did not disappear with the collapse of the Sassanids, and after Islam, this tradition was even more welcomed.

Applicable ethics is one of the important topics of ethics. Our assumption is that by categorizing practical ethics in Pahlavi texts, it is possible to show an order of practical ethics. How social ethics, health, environmental, urbanism, citizenship, war and peace and so on. All are listed under this heading. On the other hand, before dealing with applied ethics, the basic ethical concepts of the directives should be extracted and their meanings, applications, and also their relationships with other key concepts should be clarified and the meaning and basis of such an action should be clarified. One of the essentials of this work is to show the type of ethics approach of the instructions, which should also be researched. What kind of approach is there in the normative ethics of injunctions is also included in this research.

3. Background of the research

According to the search made by the author of this research, no research has been found about the subject of this research and the systematization of instructions. Only in some cases, in the works of Iranian scholars such as Shaked and Zener, one can find the explanation of some concepts in a cursory manner. It goes without saying that the treatise of Ms.It goes without saying that Ms. Farishte Davaran's treatise[1] at Berkeley University is dedicated to the subject of instructions, although her view does not arise from a special order to instructions.

4. Necessity and importance of research

Until now, there have been various views on the issue of Zoroastrian ethics and many researchers have referred to this ethics. This flow can be clearly seen from the time of Plato to the present; However, Zoroastrian ethics has never been comprehensively taken into account considering its essential and defining elements, and the author thinks that this issue has always been neglected. Surely the Zoroastrian moral system will not be understood unless the key concepts and the way of looking at these concepts are understood. Therefore, an attempt has been made to examine the context of the ethical issues that are represented in this article. Therefore, the author requests the reader of this article to look at the chapters of this research not with the view of distant islands, but with the view of stars in a system. It is at that time that a clear picture of the Zoroastrian moral system will be widened.

5. Chapters

This article is composed of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. In the introduction, the general issues of this research were discussed and an attempt was made to clarify how to read the text for the readers of the chapters. In the first chapter, the what, why and how of instructions are discussed. The second chapter will be a crucial chapter for understanding the problem of the ethical system of instruction; Because on the one hand, it will play an important role in explaining the practical ethics in the instructions, and on the other hand, it will explain the ethics in the instructions. The third chapter is about the ethical system of Andrazi and in this chapter an attempt is made to discover the historical and philosophical basis of this ethics and to point out some of its angles. In the fourth chapter, some parts of applied ethics have been examined.

6. Research method

The author has never tried to build and build an ethical system for newspapers. There is no attempt to show the instructions in the form of a tailored model and a regular dress of morality. In fact, all the efforts of the author to show the body of ethics in the instructions and their platforms have been in the mind of the speaker and the listener, and no other intention can be intended for this writing. For this purpose, in all of this writing, we have tried to bring out the moral issues from the heart of the texts. Surely, for such a purpose, there was no choice but to study and compare various topics and put them together in the form of a puzzle by analyzing them in order to obtain a more correct and realistic meaning of the moral atmosphere of the directives. It should be said that in this way, the author used the descriptive method, which, of course, was also a library study.

7. Research limitations

Regardless of time, administrative and educational limitations, progressive writing has also faced some limitations, among which it can be pointed out that moral issues are scattered and not categorized. The lack of resources, whether in Farsi or other modern languages, has been another limitation in the way of this research. Perhaps another limitation was the unavailability of some of the same few resources, which added to the difficulty of the work. Also, conflicts sometimes occurred among the translations made from the instructional texts, and it was difficult to choose the most correct opinion.

8. Conclusion

In the end, it seems necessary to mention a few points, and that is that the author considers science to be democratic and has a collective identity, and therefore believes that this writing is not the end, but the beginning. This writing is an attempt to discover moral reserves, not capitalize them. In other words, since we are at the beginning of this path, we must first discover the treasures of Iran's precious culture and then turn them into capital. And this important thing will require another effort. Another point is that in the writing of this research, an attempt has been made to present the issues in a concise and sufficient manner to the reader, therefore, it was possible to state the transcriptions of the instructional texts here, but due to the avoidance of long words, it was deemed appropriate to mention only the transcriptions of Dinkord VI, and in some cases, Dinkord III and Menoikhard. The reason for this was that the audio writings of other instructions were found in other books such as Pahlavi texts and were considered a reference for the author.