Interdisciplinary Studies in Ethics

Interdisciplinary Studies in Ethics

The Phoenix of Ethics and the Ashes of Politics: A Rereading of Siyavash's Character Based on Martha Nussbaum's Idea of the Fragility of Goodness

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Alireza Aram
PhD in Moral Philosophy, Department of Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.
10.48308/jiethics.2026.246264.1091
Abstract
Introduction: The story of Siyavash in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh contains one of the deepest tragic layers of Iran's national epic: a hero who, despite possessing complete moral virtue, becomes ensnared in the machinations of power and courtly politics and meets an untimely, unjust death. Previous scholarship has largely approached the character through personality psychology, cultural semiotics, or ritual sociology, while the relationship between ethics and politics in his fate has rarely been examined through a contemporary philosophical lens. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's theoretical framework in The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, this article rereads Siyavash as a symbol of "fragile goodness". By focusing on the vulnerability of human flourishing (eudaimonia) to chance (tuchē), Nussbaum sets the Greek tragic tradition and Aristotelian philosophy against the Platonic project of rendering goodness invulnerable to external harm. The article aims to show that accepting this fragility is not a moral weakness but the very condition of the possibility of living ethically within the sphere of politics.
This research follows an analytical-comparative, documentary method. First, Nussbaum's theoretical framework was extracted and formulated through the book's three main parts (Greek tragedy, the Platonic project, and Aristotelian philosophy). The story
of Siyavash, based on Khaleghi-Motlagh's critical edition of the Shahnameh, was then matched stage by stage (birth and upbringing under Rostam, the trial with Sudabeh, the ordeal of fire, the war and treaty with Turan, seeking refuge, and death) against this framework.
Findings: The analysis shows that Siyavash exemplifies fragile goodness at three key points. First, his adherence to moral duty in the face of Sudabeh's temptation, read through the Kantian notion of acting from duty, provides no guarantee of his political safety. Second, the ordeal of fire shows that even the proof of his innocence depends on a factor beyond his own control, namely divine mercy. Third, and most importantly, his fidelity to the peace treaty with Afrasiyab, an exercise of Aristotelian phronesis, is precisely the act that leads him to Turan and ultimately to his death. Thus his "being good" not only fails to save him from political ruin but directly paves the way for it, confirming Nussbaum's central thesis that virtue is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for eudaimonia.

Discussion: Siyavash's death is the death of a moral ideal at the hands of realpolitik; yet this ending takes on a phoenix-like structure through the revival of ethics in the legacy
of Kay Khosrow and in the collective memory of Iranian culture, showing that accepting fragility is not weakness but the condition of the possibility of moral resistance. Nonetheless, an important incompatibility exists between Nussbaum's framework and the Shahnameh's text: in the fire ordeal, unlike the Greek tragic universe which offers no guarantor of goodness, the "high wheel" swears that no harm shall come to the innocent; this difference marks the main limitation of the comparison and shows that Siyavash's fragility is fragility before politics rather than before an indifferent cosmos. By opening a dialogue between the Iranian epic tradition and contemporary Western moral philosophy, this study contributes to Siyavash scholarship and to comparative studies of ethics and literature.
Keywords
Ethics and Power
Tragedy
Siyavash
Shahnameh
The Fragility of Goodness
Nussbaum
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Interdisciplinary Studies in Ethics
Volume 2, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
September 2026
Pages 261-278

  • Receive Date 02 September 2026
  • Revise Date 13 September 2026
  • Accept Date 15 September 2026
  • First Publish Date 15 September 2026
  • Publish Date 21 March 2026