Exploration of the Model of the Self Attributed to Ostad Elahi and Its Implications for the Education of Ethical Literacy: An Education That Enhances an Individual’s Sense of Dignity

Abstract

The broad aim of this thesis is to develop a holistic conception of the self in relation to the complex interplay between education for ethical literacy and the notion of an agent as an ontological reality capable of self-transformation and self-realisation. To this end, ethical literacy, as a function of a holistic education, is conceived as enabling individuals to realise their essential nature through leading morally decent lives. The purpose of enquiry into the concept of the self is to highlight that since the self- transformative aims of ethical literacy are exercised on the self by the self, revitalising the focus on the agent’s ethical development therefore depends on grasping the true nature of the person who will live or aspire to live an ethical life. The notion of ethical literacy, as a moral empowerment that enables individuals to understand, analyse, reflect and practice that which makes them humane, postulates a holistic understanding of what it means to be human, which in turn implies that it is in understanding who human agents truly are, how they are to better themselves and what they can become, that the question of ethical literacy acquires a more concrete meaning.

This thesis is divided into four parts, with part one providing a brief analysis of the moral landscape existing within the global community and highlights the need for effecting an equitable and compassionate moral horizon through education for ethical literacy. Part two, engages with the conceptual understanding of three influential ‘self‘ paradigms, namely, those of Descartes, Hume and Freud, which in tracing a line of these significant ‘self’ paradigms within the Western evolution of the concept of the self, places contemporary views on this subject in a historical context and informs how the conceptual consequences of these have formed, affected and influenced the postmodern humanist understanding of the self experienced today. To this end, in the search for a model of the self that may have the potential to close the epistemic gap existing between the differing concepts of the self, part three investigates the model postulated by the contemporary Eastern philosopher, Nour Ali Elahi, which in considering the self as an ontological reality, puts a special emphasis on the bi-dimensionality of human beings. Finally, in part four, the thesis is concluded by drawing on the analysis of the aforementioned influential self-paradigms, whose concepts of the disengaged individualistic self, the sense-content illusory self and the drive-driven fragmented self, have contributed to the prevalent ambiguity of the notion of the self in terms of relationality, in terms of continuity in time, and in terms of depth. By contrast, Ostad Elahi’s holistic model of the self, as an integrated theory of the self constitutive of its psychological, ontological and metaphysical dimensions, is offered as providing an alternative underpinning for a form of education for ethical literacy that is conducive to the enhancement of one’s sense of dignity.

Date of Award	1 Apr 2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Philip Barnes (Supervisor) & Andrew Wright (Supervisor)