Al-Ghazālī on the Origins of Ethics

In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the science of ethics is supposed to have developed. Al-Ghazālī contends that the philosophical ethics taught by the Arabic Aristotelians necessarily depends upon prior revelations handed to religious aspirants of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Numen
Main Author: Kukkonen, Taneli (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2016
In: Numen
Further subjects:B al-Ghazālī Islamic Neoplatonism Platonic ethics Islamic ethics Sufism history of religions prophetology
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Summary:In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the science of ethics is supposed to have developed. Al-Ghazālī contends that the philosophical ethics taught by the Arabic Aristotelians necessarily depends upon prior revelations handed to religious aspirants of a vaguely Sufi stamp. Al-Ghazālī’s argument is reminiscent of similar ones made in late antiquity; I maintain, however, that for al-Ghazālī the point bears added systematic significance. Given the central position held by the purification of the soul in al-Ghazālī’s conception of true religion, he can hardly admit that the philosophers should have discovered independently any of the philosophical ethics al-Ghazālī himself espouses. It is the supernatural power of prescribed ritual acts that ultimately allows al-Ghazālī to maintain the superiority of religiously predicated ethics.
ISSN:1568-5276
Contains:In: Numen
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341423