Mahmoud Khatami محمود خاتم

...bercakap soal SAINS SOSIAL ( sila rujuk FB )

Prof. Khatami's book "Historical Background of Modernity". this book is written in Persian (Persian name is "Zamineh Tarikhi Moderniteh", Elmi publisher, Tehran 1387/2008), and is an edition of one of his courses. Book is very lucid, it departs from the historical events which built up modern world and goes on in a critical manner to elaborate a dialectical dialouge between history and thought. Khatami rejects a continueous and unified conception of modernity as a matter of historical fact, and argues that such a conception is only a philosophical abstraction of an ideal world in the mind of western elite. the book is concise but deeply obssesive and inspirative.

'....the essence of the aesthetic of human beauty is spiritual, even in human body, since human body is not this animal-shaped physic in which human body manifest, but it is corporality of human being which belongs to human soul, and thanks to an ongoing kinitic essence of human being becomes purified and spritual.Modern concept of body suffers from an ontetic lack of this truth...'' Khatami, THE ETHICAL,THE AESTHETICA;, P.92

What amazing is this interpretation Khatami offers: "...the human being is the comprehensive soul (al-nafs al-koliyyah) emanated from God while intersticed between the divine and the worldly realities.The situation of human soul that is generated as a divine image, is elucidated through the Quranic verse “laysa ka-mithlih i shay” (42: 11), which is generally interpreted as “There is nothing which is His similar” but specifically interpreted as “There is nothing like His similar", which admits the existence of a being similar to God, to which no other creature resembles. This being is the Illuminative man, who faces, and mirrors, God the eternal but not created, on the one hand, and the world, the created but not eternal, on the other. Man alone is both eternal and created. He was created as God's vicegerent (khalifat Allah) while the entire world is a particularization of what exists in him." Metaphysics of Man, p.10

Self-reasoned truths are for Prof. Khatami the integrating of moral conscience as 'love' and 'want'. I think we can conclude his analysis as following:The nature of the universe can be expressed by pure data, which we logically convert to understandable information, which we then logically perceive, observe, and interpret, which is further reasoned (i.e logic, emotions, other types of reasoning) into self-reasoned truths. A pattern of application of self-reasoned truths with the intention of the pursuit of selflessness and simultaneously establishing a balance between "I want" and "I love" will result in morality as long as these applications are void of "ill-will" and, in some cases, do not knowingly prevent pleasure of a third party.

I used to think that morality was based off empathy. But I found khatami developes his moral theory upon empathy in his book 'from conscioussness to conscience,' and, secures it with a rationalizing principle in his recent work ‘morality ’, how could , then, morality goes, as khatami argues, with love and art?

We would read children simple stories like "The Little Red Hen", and at the end ask, "What is the moral of that story".The little red hen asked everyone to help her make bread and no one would, so she didn't share her bread. Of course, any who helped make the bread would share in the eating. This moral is important to understanding democracy. It is about what is justice and liberty. The little red hen couldn't force everyone to help her grow grain, grind it, and bake bread. Everyone had the liberty to help or not help. It is just that those who do the work share in the product of the labor. John Locke argued it is the labor that makes something ours.

I can not think of a moral that doesn't qualify as a matter of cause and effect. Can you?

In its wide sense ... Natural Law is the same as Social Morality. But in a more restricted sense the term ‘Natural Law’ stands for that part of social morality which treats of our duties arising from justice. It therefore designates all the rules of conduct which are logically derived from the moral law ... (M. Khatami, MORLITY, p.85)

altruism or egoism that effect the human being and these ethecal and aesthetical ( not major concern with weell-being of human) concern can be roll out from human being by more powerful element that is idealogy that discriminate between best creature and animal ,animal doesn't have idealogy even they have kingdom and civilization and culture and they have three dimension (THe Ethical,The Aesthetical,Essay Two) in moral    behaviour, roman empire was the down fall and it's admireable beauty by the uncivilized people .the most beautiful God exist in the men hearts that acts directly ,not by standing the beautiful wall and calling it culture and civilization man run away with his historical backgournd in other culture and venish with the passage of time where hunger comes ,

Professor Khatami suggests that “the concepts of self-interest and altruism are liable to be a source of confusion in our moral thinking,” and tries “to take some steps towards dispelling this confusion.” He distinguishes between three kinds of action, and gives a model to solve this dilemma in moral behavior. (The Ethical, The Aesthetical, Essay Two)

It seems that Mahmoud Khatami does not think there can be great art without serious moral purpose. (So Flaubert and Turgenev, for example, are not the equal of George Eliot). For Khatami, if a work of art is to alter the tradition to which it belongs, reshaping and giving a new meaning to the past from which it emerges..., then it must possess qualities which mark it out as `technically' original. But it can only have these if its content is informed by serious moral purpose. I agree with that; but, though he asserts that it is a necessary condition of artistic greatness that the art be informed by a vital capacity for asthetic experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity,however I think that it is not a sufficient condition.

I don't think morality exists inherently (from some undiscovered elementary particle or something) but two people(the smallest society) with an imagination, in order to go on and reproduce they must have some comparable sense of morality.(I think this is against what Khatami is telling us) So morality comes from many sources.

Prof. Khhatami’s categorization of ‘philosophical questions’ is interesting, he says that we have four types of philosphical question: (1)that is an eternal question for man,(2) that belongs to an Age/ historical Period, (3)that belongs to a specifical culture, and (4) that belongs to the questioning person himself (personal question). [Khatami, Madkhal i Falsafeh i Gharbi Mo’asir, introduction].

‎"...I try to rethink aspects of the ontetic nature of man whose existance is a becoming self-transcendence, a being that is constituted by consciousness and action at the same time, and, in a metaphysical sense, generated from a spiritual source and transcends towards a spiritual and moral life. " (M. Khatami, METAPHYSICS OF MAN, Preface, p.5)

 Human being is an accomplishing self whose onteticity fulfills in action; and he realizes himself with his action as human being. ( Mahmoud Khatami, From Consciousness to Conscience, Introduction)

I like this attitude: "a sexual ideology hidden in the core of modern concept of nudity applied to arts... emptizes them [human beings] from transcendent taste of the aesthetical, and devaluates the body...This ideology springs from physical abuse of humanity which is most clearly examplified in humiliation of women by men, and emerg...ed as a direct result of a masculine mastership that is based on the axiom which indicates that the female essential form is nudity and her subjection to man; an ideology which focused primarily on the complete annihilation of the body-values in the pursuit of pleasure. .. " (The Ethical, The Aesthetical, p.101)

Morality is a view, art is natural; one may view art morally, but I am suspicious if it's necessarily being so.

Nudity is understand that things are kept in their nature and to be represented nothing obsenidad surrounds who appreciates it because it is only interpreted from aesthetic and not moral imagination. Know differentiate is power disernir between natural of the imaginary.

Nudity is not moral. but perhaps nude painting was a reaction to moral restriction in european culture of 18th century."The nudity in art has emulated the transcendent aesthetic of beauty, and equated it with sexual explicitness of the body, and evoked a violence and female subordination. Nudity is a musculine desireful idea which sex ideology thrives by exhibiting male supremacy over the female body.

Nudity depicts women as the helpless victims of men: reduced to her body, women are bound, and humiliated. Nudity in art is the graphic depiction of human animality; it is conceived as violent and exploitative aspect of animal sexuality of human being; in other words, as an intrinsically harmful phenomenon to human degnity." From Khatami's "The Ethical, The Aesthetical"