A Reflection on the Relationship between Habit and Education in Martyr Mutahhari’s and William James’ View (Comparative Approach)

The present article deals with a comparative exploration of the relationship between habit and education for Martyr Mutahhari and William James to clarify what the definition of education is for them, what the definition of habit is and what the relationship between the two is.
In this fundamental-historical study conducted through a descriptive-analytical method, to explore the views of those two thinkers on habit and its relation to education, we have collected and organized the necessary data, and then analyzed the findings to conclude that while none of those two scholars has an independent work on habit and its relation to education, both have spoken about habit and education and agree with creating habits in apprentices, and have regarded ‘habit’ as one of the educational methods. Martyr Mutahhari divides habit into ‘active’ and ‘passive’, attempting to explore the status of positive and negative habits in education. For James, education is the very good habit. He has attempted to attract the teachers’ and students’ attention to the importance and the role of habit in education and clarify that the human’s felicity and misery is due to habit. Although one cannot say that their beliefs on the relationship between habit and education is quite the same, their opinion on creation of habit and its relation to education is, altogether, positive and essentially the same. The other achievement of this study is a reference to the common points and differences in the two thinkers’ views.