Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics

George F. Hourani

Paperback, 300 pages

9780521035637

This volume collects the published essays of the late Professor Hourani on Islamic ethics in the earlier classical and formative periods of Islamic civilization. Ethics was from the start at the core of Islam, and the construction of philosophical theories to support normative ethics made those centuries among the most profound and intensely active in the history of ethical thought. The book opens with two general and contextual pieces and thereafter it is organized by schools of thought in a broadly chronological order. The essays centre around two related debates in Islamic philosophy: over the ontological status of value, and over the sources of our knowledge of value. The answers developed follow similar lines to the rational theology and philosophy of the West, and Professor Hourani brings out the frequent parallels. As a whole, the volume will introduce and establish the importance of the Islamic tradition of thought about ethics.

Contents

1. Islamic theology and Muslim philosophy

2. Ethics in classical Islam: a conspectus

3. Ethical presuppositions of the Qur'an

4. 'Injuring oneself' in the Qur'an, in the light of Aristotle

5. Two theories of value in early Islam

6. Islamic and non-Islamic origin of Mu'tazilite ethical rationalism

7. The rationalist ethics of 'Abd al-Jabbar

8. Deliberation in Aristotle and 'Abd al-Jabbar

9. Ash'ari

10. Juwayni's criticisms of Mu'tazilite ethics

11. Ghazali on the ethics of action

12. Reason and revaltion in Ibn Hazm's ethicical thought

13. The basis of authority of concensus in Sunnite Islam

14. Ibn Sina's 'Essay on the secret of destiny'

15. Averroes on good and evil

16. Combinations of reason and tradtion in Islamic ethics