The first of a two part workshop on an introduction to Ethics and Islamic Ethics was conducted on Sunday 18^th of June by Sheikh Muhammad Zakaria.

The Speaker begun by introducing the three major theories of Ethics that are Divine Command Ethics, Virtue Ethics and Normative Ethics.

 Without following a chronological order the speaker decided to start on Normative Ethics or De-ontological Ethics known also as the Ethics of Duty and in doing so he introduced the most influential personality of this school of Ethics, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 –1804), from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

The basis of Kant’s moral philosophy is rationality and moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative”.

According to Kant, then, the ultimate principle of morality must be a moral law conceived so abstractly that it is capable of guiding us to the right action in application to every possible set of circumstances. So the only relevant feature of the moral law is its generality, the fact that it has the formal property of “universalizability”, by virtue of which it can be applied at all times to every moral agent.

With this introduction the scene was set by Sheikh Zakaria  for a discussion on the positive and negative aspects of Kantian moral philosophy. The participant divided in groups were give some time to discuss among themselves what had been said so far.

The speaker emphasised that the workshop is not designed to introduce any new ground braking theories. Its objective is to familiarize the participants with concepts that have influenced the thinking of the society in which we now live and this in itself is a good enough reason to attend. He termed it an obligation to comprehend and be aware of the ethical stands of other individual outside of the Islamic faith.

The next workshop is scheduled for Sunday the 9^th of July 2006 (See programme menu).

Listen to the lecture on Line