SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE AND ETHICS IN THOUGHT OF IBN KHALDUN

Abstract

Ibn Khaldun claims that man’s morality is deeply influenced by the socio-economics structure of the environment in which he lives. To him, this effect is so strong that he finds almost all of these structures related to human beings dominated by it. In this system, we see human beings as a creature who is both able to adapt himself to the environment and also able to evolve in this harmony. From the perspective of Ibn Khaldun, man cannot be evaluated or defined separately from the environmental conditions, the technique and architecture he developed. He is the being that changes the environment in which he lives and changes within this change. According to Ibn Khaldun, the main aim of this change is the desire to make life easier and to prosper. Therefore, the most natural of the motivations that provide human evolution are the challenges he encounters. Challenges are factors that make people fit and powerful. From bedouin (nomadic society) to hadharin (sedentary society), from there to the welfare of the human progress, through this difficulty in every process makes his life a little easier. Every effort in this sense causes her physical and moral loosening, as the difficulties in human life and his difficulties will decrease. Physical slack by breaking the resistance of the human to resist the environmental conditions; and moral looseness by making people vulnerable against the temptation of desires, pleasures and welfare cause moral dilemmas. As a matter of fact, while the power of human resistance weakens, it encounters new pleasures and tends to follow them. Because he has an inclination to zest and avoids pain. Pleasure and pain are two important influences that have been accepted by the moral tradition since ancient Greece in moral choices. In this sense, the transition from bedouin to sedentary represents a transition from pain to pleasure. The transition from prosperity to decadance represents the deterioration of moral dignity in favor of pleasure and the emergence of both social and moral crises. Ibn Khaldun’s moral thought with its social, political, economic etc. all contexts enable an understanding of the devaluation of mone-hedonist morality in all ways. This article aims to analyze the moral dilemmas and challenges that the capitalist, mone-hedonistic, consumption-based mone-hedonist morality from the perspective of Ibn Khaldun.