What might it mean to take God as a model for virtue? Al-Ghazali and the Ideal of Godlikeness investigates how Muslim thinkers developed the idea of imitating God across diverse cultural channels and how al-Ghazali--working under both philosophical and Sufi influences--cast the idea in a distinctive form.
The idea that improving our character requires modelling ourselves on another will seem natural to many. But what might it mean to take God as a model for virtue? This book investigates how Muslim thinkers developed this idea against a rich backdrop of historical reflection on the topic and how one particular intellectual, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, shaped the conversation. The idea that becoming virtuous means becoming like God has a long history. It was a calling card of Plato's philosophy and popular among many of the ancient philosophical schools. In the Islamic world, it assumed a vivid form at the hands of Sufi thinkers who took the beautiful names of God as the headline of a project of self-transformation. God's beautiful names aren't just objects for abstract understanding; they represent moral and spiritual ideals. Moved by both philosophical and Sufi inspirations, al-Ghazali casts the idea in a distinctive form which lets us into the sources of its fascinationand to the welter of questions it provokes. What, for example, does it even mean to ascribe virtues to God, given how closely the virtues seem to be tied to human limitations? Does the imitation of God set an achievable standard-and given the risks of aiming for it, should we even try? Drawing on a range of broader perspectives on virtue, character education, and the role of exemplars, this book works through such questions and places al-Ghazali at the heart of an unfolding conversation.
Recenzijos
In the style of kulli hal, this book by Vasalou really explores in depth three works of Al Ghazali that are actually familiar to Muslims who have studied them for centuries. The difference is that Vasalou succeeded in revealing how the ethical foundation in Al Ghazali's work can actually be a reference for humanity in practicing virtue for the common good. * Rosdiansyah, RMOL *
1: An Unlikely Model?
2: The Spices of Different Cuisines: The Imitation of God between Philosophy
and Sufism
3: Big Stories and Local Weaves: Al-Ghaz=al=i's Ethics and Psychology of
Godlikeness
4: Skin in the Game: Theological Risks and Semantic Strategies
5: Praise as Good as an Insult: Can God Have the Virtues?
6: Feelings, For and Against: Patience, Compassion, and God's Emotionless
Virtues
7: Licence to Feel: Admiration, Emulation, and Human Nature
8: The Paradox of Majesty: Divine Virtues, Human Vices?
9: Lighting Matches: On How to Have a Virtuous Sense of Superiority
10: Socrates' Question, Special Edition: Does God's Character Create Value?
11: Nice Theory, Shame about the Practice: Moral Ideals, Psychological
Realism, and the Unusual Case of God's Character
12: Where Morality Stops: Cognitive Education, Moral Plenitude, and the
Importance of Lists
13: The Future of God's Beautiful Names: On Awe, the Sacramental Power of
Words, and Why Great Exemplars Attract Us
14: Conclusion: On Finding Ideas Interesting
Sophia Vasalou studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and obtained her doctorate from the University of Cambridge. She is currently Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Birmingham. Her published works include Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics (2008, winner of the Albert Hourani Book Award for Middle Eastern Studies in 2009), Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint: Philosophy as a Practice of the Sublime (2013), Wonder: A Grammar (2015), Ibn Taymiyya's Theological Ethics (2016), and Virtues of Greatness in the Arabic Tradition (2019).
