Books Introduced in Mostafa Malekian's Moral Psychology Sessions

The list of "Books Introduced in Mostafa Malekian's Moral Psychology Sessions," which includes 77 books and articles, is a list of all the books and articles introduced (or referenced) that Mostafa Malekian has mentioned in the Moral Psychology sessions . . .

1_ The Art of Knowing People, the best and at the same time the most scholarly and simplest book translated into Persian on recognizing psychological types, with a relatively good translation by Mohammad Gozarabadi, published by Hermes (9)

2_ The Collected Works of Plato (13)

3_ The Search after Truth, Malebranche's important and masterful book, about the theory that says humans see everything in God (p. 16)

4_ Nice and God, Iris Murdoch's classic article, about how whenever we say we love God, we are in fact in love with a good (p. 17)

5_ Infinite Good and Finite Goods, the very famous book by the renowned American philosopher Adams, about the theory that says humans have a deep psychological need to be connected to God and therefore move towards morality (p. 17)

6_ Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (p. 19)

7_ Power, Bertrand Russell's famous book (with a good translation by Mr. Najaf Daryabandari), which conceptually clarifies Nietzsche's view very well (something Nietzsche himself did not do) (21 112)

8_ Molière's famous play mocking Scholastic philosophers (21)

9_ Hayek's classic article that says why on the ladder of power, the lower we are, the higher we are (22)

10_ The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer's classic book

11_ Formal Ethics, Gensler (28)

12_ The Sovereignty of Good and especially the Gifford Lectures collection called Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Iris Murdoch, about how the reason we do not live morally is that we lack strong imaginative power and cannot put ourselves in others' shoes (31)

13_ Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt. About how the reason we do not live morally is that we lack strong imaginative power and cannot put ourselves in others' shoes (31)

14_ The novel Picnic Letters

15_ Oliver Twist

16_ Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley's treatise (has a good Persian translation), in which Berkeley says that we do many things with language that we are astonished to count (40)

17_ Speech Acts (which has been translated into Persian) and Expression and Meaning, John Searle (40)

18_ "How to Derive 'Ought' From 'Is'," Searle's famous and epoch-making article, in which he showed that one can derive value-oriented 'ought' propositions from fact-stating propositions, in such a way that our reasoning is not fallacious

19_ Two books, The Foundations of Ethics and The Right and the Good, by David Ross, about what the beliefs are that lie at the very foundation of our reasonings, which are not based on reasoning? (50)

20_ Two works by Erich Fromm about those who are in love with power, even if the powerful person has withheld it from them (70)

21_ Rasputin [the mysterious man of the Russian court], I recommend reading the life story of Grigori Rasputin; he was a poor, ragged man who had nothing, but the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia fell under his charisma and sacrificed their entire reign for this complete charlatan, and even at the very last moment, though he was dead, they did not let go of him (70)

22_ The works of Shel Silverstein, about those who value complementarity in love and say they love someone who completes them, not someone who is similar or dissimilar to them (70)

23_ The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James. In this book, one of the characteristics he enumerates for mystics is that mystics possess agapetic love (74)

24_ Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, a small yet important book by Abraham Maslow. In this book he also accepts that mystics have an agapetic love for existence (74)

25_ On Love, Stendhal, the famous novelist. On whether eros fundamentally makes living morally easier or more difficult? (77)

26_ The Crisis of Democracy, Roger Lacombe. He believes that while democracy is the best form of government and is preferable to all its rivals, it is not a good government, because leaving human beings to their own desires does not lead them to fulfill their needs (83)

27_ Socratic Reflections, Gregory Vlastos (?), the great contemporary scholar of Socrates. A very interesting book that vigorously defends Socrates' view that there is no gap between moral knowledge and moral action (88)

28_ Purity of Heart, Kierkegaard. Considered by many, myself included, to be his most important book. Kierkegaard believed that the human structure is such that it does not will only one thing, having one head and a thousand desires, but he said that through a particular kind of ethical conduct one can move toward single-mindedness, though this state is rarely achieved (88 138)

29_ The Lonely Crowd, the very famous book by Riesman, the renowned social psychologist. He believes that human beings are in reality alone, and when they do not feel lonely they are subject to an illusion, and if a person were aware of their aloneness in all states of their life, they would always live morally (89)

30_ The works of Dostoevsky. The best examples of temptation can be seen in Dostoevsky's works; no one has paid as much attention to the confrontation between temptation and moral principle as he has. Robbins, an American theologian and follower of Paul Tillich, said somewhere about Dostoevsky that he showed the simultaneous wretchedness and glory of man. That is, the hero of his stories sometimes resists great things in the face of temptation, yet has no resistance whatsoever against something far lesser (96)

31_ Fifteen Sermons, Joseph Butler. In this book, Butler puts forward the argument that the reason humans do not live morally is fundamentally because they are self-deceived and have inner hypocrisy (100)

32_ The Religious Sense, or the Fourth Dimension of the Human Spirit, Tanneguy de Quénétain. In this article, this French author speaks of a fourth dimension of the human spirit called adoration (which is distinct from love). Before the revolution, when everyone was seeking to make the youth religious, the late Bazargan was very pleased with it, translated it, and wrote an introduction to it. But this author was not an important author at all, and so it happened that this Mr. de Quénétain, like Gustave Le Bon, George Jordac, and Jurji Zaydan, suddenly turned into a great scholar! (104)

33_ The Psychology of Need. A collection of articles on the enumeration of inner and outer desires (104)

34_ The Selfish Gene, Dawkins, Nobel Prize winner. In this very famous book, contrary to Darwin, he believes that the audience of nature is genes, not species (108)

35_ An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Carnap, translated by Yusef Afifi. He referred to the generality of statistical facts (109)

36_ To Have or to Be?, Erich Fromm. I strongly recommend reading this book. There are two translations of this book, one of which is very poor, and the other, which is better, is by Mr. Kiumars Khodajooyha (Spark Publishing) (111)

37_ The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, with a good translation by Mr. Mojtabai (112)

38_ Self Fulfillment, Alan Gewirth. The only one among philosophers who has accepted the division of human beings into two groups: those who view the world as a resting place for the body and those who see it as a birthplace for the psyche (113)

39_ Pride and Prejudice, [Jane Austen], the famous novel of nineteenth-century European literature, whose title should have been translated as "Pride and Prejudice" (122)

40_ "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", the title of a very important article by Nagel about whether a human can know about an animal or not, and if so, how one can tunnel into the world of animals, which there is no time to address here (128)

41_ Various conceptions of mental health, from a female psychologist who first claimed in 1956 that among the diverse views on the components of mental health, there are six components that are common to all these views (130)

42_ The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm

43_ Mental Health, Nathaniel Branden, one of the greatest psychologists and, in the words of some, the mentor of all who work in mental health. In this book, he says that most violations of human rights are authorized by the person themselves through their behavior (speech or action) (133)

44_ On What Matters, Derek Parfit. He has raised almost half of the topics I have discussed in these classes in his book, which I encountered during these classes, but of course the content is different. This book is one of the best on moral philosophy and moral psychology

45_ The Ethics of Authenticity, an important and small book by Charles. About how self-actualization must be bound by the two constraints of rationality and morality, and if a person does not do this, they have betrayed themselves (140)

46_ The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a short novel by Tolstoy. It states that from childhood we were taught that every human dies, Socrates is human, therefore Socrates dies, but until a few days before his death he had not psychologically accepted this statement, because in facing death he experiences a psychological state he did not have before (143)

47_ On Death and Dying, the famous book by Mrs. Kübler-Ross, about the various states until the moment of death

48_ Among the books translated into Persian, the best are the books of Karen Horney, which deal with self-analysis leading to self-knowledge, although all their translations are confused and erroneous (142)

49_ The novel Solaris, written by Stanisław Lem, which later became a source of inspiration for Tarkovsky. Here he gives the example of television, which at first had one channel and a person derived all their enjoyment from it, but now there are several hundred channels and no one ever fully enjoys all of them, because they know they are watching the current channel at the cost of being deprived of several hundred others (150)

50_ Fear and Trembling and Either/Or, Kierkegaard. In these two books, he discusses the third stage of life and the story of Abraham sacrificing his son, which caused him to violate seven moral rules (151)

51_ "O Books That I Shall Not Read," an essay by Jorge Luis Borges, the foremost writer of Latin America. Addressed to the books in his library that he has not read and knows that no matter how long he lives, he will not be able to read them all. Although reading books is not an immoral act, this very fear causes suffering (156)

52_ Slowness, Milan Kundera, the postmodern writer of our time. His entire argument in this novel is that because humans hurry, they have rendered their entire lives devoid of pleasure (157)

53_ The Fruits of the Earth, André Gide. A good example of slowness and enjoying life, where he says when you eat an apricot, first press it well in your mouth, then swallow its pulp (157)

54_ The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton. About transforming life (158)

55_ The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton. About transforming life (158)

56_ How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton. About transforming life (158)

57_ A path to a deeper, that is, higher life. The most comprehensive book on transforming life (158)

58_ The works of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, about how "anyone who wants to die well must live well" (157)

59_ Intention, written by Elizabeth Anscombe, student, friend, and colleague of Wittgenstein. A classic work in Western philosophy on, firstly, what intention is ontologically, and secondly, how it can be known epistemologically. After this book, almost no psychologist or philosopher of mind has been able to offer a better theory (161)

60_ What Is History?; E. H. Carr; translated by Hasan Kāmshād; Khārazmī Publishing. Read this book to see how a monkey bit the king's finger and the First World War, and following it the Second World War, began (161)

61_ Les Misérables, Victor Hugo. Whenever discussing the judging of others' actions, I always recommend reading that part of this novel which says that one who knows through what corridors a crime has passed will never judge (162)

62_ The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire, a very important book by Eysenck senior, the famous English psychologist. He believes that Freud's account of dividing the human psyche into conscious and unconscious is entirely incorrect (166)

63_ The biography of Yogananda Mahananda (167)

64_ A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, André Comte-Sponville, a strong French philosopher, in a not-so-good translation by Morteżā Kalāntariān (this book has a more accurate translation which I have not heard has been published). In Persian, it is a good book on the virtues, their enumeration, and conceptual clarification (174)

65_ Waqʿat Ṣiffīn, in an excellent translation by Parvīz Atābakī. In this book it is recounted that at the Battle of Ṣiffīn, ʿAlī would weep at night over the enemy dead, recite poetry, strike his face, and say, "O sun, do not rise upon ʿAlī tomorrow, for he will have to kill people again." Here justice has come into conflict with benevolence (177)

66_ Read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons; there is a character in it who practices tolerance because he believes no truth exists (180)

67_ Beyond Contradiction, Maurice. A book refuting the impossibility of the removal and conjunction of contradictories (also translated into Persian) (181)

68_ Uncertainty of Mathematics, Kline, the American mathematician. In this lengthy book, despite all claims that certainty exists only in mathematics, he claimed that there is no certainty in mathematics either (181)

69_ Discourse on the Method, Descartes. At the beginning of his Discourse, Descartes says that nothing among human beings has been equally distributed except reason (181)

70_ Ethics, Spinoza. A complete discussion on how it is possible for a person not to feel pity for anyone, yet with a kind of complete equanimity, seek to alleviate the pain and suffering of others (187)

71_ The Philosophy of Spinoza, Wolfson, the greatest commentator on Spinoza. He believes that Spinoza's statement about being able to lessen another's pain and suffering without oneself experiencing pain and suffering is indefensible (188)

72_ The Book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon. Emphasis on the point that whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow (189)

73_ Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle. On the virtue of courage (195)

74_ Wittgenstein and Wisdom and Wisdom: Several Approaches to a Concept, Mālek Hosseinī. Two very instructive books in Persian about wisdom (200)

75_ A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume. On skepticism about causality and then the affirmation that common-sense understanding is compatible with accepting causality (204)

76_ The novel The Collector. In this novel, the hero (or anti-hero) of the story loves his beloved so much that, to preserve her so that nothing harms her, he keeps her in a box so that no creature can touch her, and he does something that causes her to die. Yes, the dried butterfly is in our possession, but this butterfly is not the same as the butterfly that goes somewhere every moment (204)

77_ Four Essays on Liberty, Isaiah Berlin, in a very good translation by Mohammad-ʿAlī Movaḥḥed. On negative liberty and positive liberty (205, 215)