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

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Main author: Shihadeh, Ayman
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-33272
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description 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.
format Journal Article
author Shihadeh, Ayman
author_facet Shihadeh, Ayman
authorStr Shihadeh, Ayman
author_letter Shihadeh, Ayman
title Psychology and Ethical Epistemology: An Ashʿarī Debate with Muʿtazilī Ethical Realism, 11th-12th C.
publisher University of Bergen
publishDate 2021
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/33272/

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