RT Article
T1 Al-Ghazālī on the Origins of Ethics
JF Numen
VO 63
IS 2/3
SP 271
OP 298
A1 Kukkonen, Taneli
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2016
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1540718913
AB 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.
K1 al-Ghazālī : Islamic Neoplatonism : Platonic ethics : Islamic ethics : Sufism : history of religions : prophetology
DO 10.1163/15685276-12341423