Psychology and Ethical Epistemology: An Ashʿarī Debate with Muʿtazilī Ethical Realism, 11th-12th C.

Shihadeh, Ayman

Abstract

This article examines a hitherto unstudied debate, turning on the epistemology of value judgements, between Ashʿarīs and Baṣran Muʿtazilīs of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī countered Muʿtazilī ethical realism, here defended by al-Malāḥimī, by developing an emotive subjectivism underpinned by increasingly sophisticated psychological accounts of ethical motivation. Value judgements, they maintained, arise not from knowledge of some ethical attributes of acts themselves, but from subjective inclinations, which are often elusive because they can be unconscious or indirect. We also argue against the widespread notion that Ashʿarīs espoused an anti-rationalist ethics, and we show that they were not only ethical rationalists, but also the more innovative side.

Citation

Shihadeh, A. (2021). Psychology and Ethical Epistemology: An Ashʿarī Debate with Muʿtazilī Ethical Realism, 11th-12th C. Journal of Arabic and Islamic studies, 21, 81-102. https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.9573

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 10, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jan 4, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 16, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 16, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
• Electronic ISSN: 0806-198X
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 21
• Pages: 81-102
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.9573
• Publisher URL: https://journals.uio.no/JAIS/article/view/9573