A Comparative Study of the Paradigm of Egoism in the Islamic and Conventional Economics

Majid Habibian Naghibi / Assistant Professor at Allameh Tabataba'i Uni

                                                                                                                      majidhabibian@atu.ac.ir

@Mahmoud Dehghani Mahmoud Abadi / Ph.D. Student of Economics, Allameh Tabataba'i Uni

                                                                                                                          asemanha41@gmail.com

Received: 2018/02/09 - Accepted: 2018/07/13

Abstract

One of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of Islamic economics is explaining the foundations of normative ethics of the theories of Islamic economics. Using analytical method, this paper seeks to study the paradigm of egoism in the Islamic and conventional economics. Now, this question arises whether or not egoism, which is accepted as the paradigm and hard core of the conventional economy, can be considered as the foundations of normative ethics in the Islamic economics. Basically, Islamic thought accepts Consequentialism or Deontology? Answering the above question, this paper exposes that, the foundation of the normative ethics of Islam is Deontology. According to the hypothesis, in cases where consistency of duty depends on the consequence in action, the clause of consequence is assumed in the generality of the duty, and the subject of duty has the generality by the specific clause state; thus, there is no need to look for of Consequentialism; because the attempt to achieve a result in these cases is itself a part of duty; this type of "Deontology" is called "General Deontology". This Deontology has a booster engine by the name self-interest as a motive. Findings show that, the realization of the dual union of duty and self-interest is not paradoxical in economics and so on. There is a significant difference between self-interest in Islam and egoism in the conventional economy in terms of foundations and identity.

Keywords: normative ethics of Islamic economics, egoism, general Deontology, utilitarianism, Consequentialism, normative ethics of the conventional economy.

JEL: B40، P4.