Greatness of Soul

Part 1 explores how thinkers in the Islamic world received the ancient virtue of greatness of soul by focusing on one particular ‘virtue of greatness’ found in works of Arabic philosophical ethics. Greatness of soul appears in the works of prominent Muslim thinkers such as al-Fārābī, Miskawayh, and al-Ghazālī under the Arabic term kibar al-nafs. In Miskawayh’s and al-Ghazālī’s classifications of the virtues and vices, it is defined in terms approximating to Aristotle’s account. The overall treatment of the virtue is cursory yet apparently approving. This will seem surprising given the oft-remarked conflict of the virtue, particularly in its Aristotelian version, with an ideal of humility. Did thinkers in the Arabic tradition take a different view of this ideal? Part 1 investigates this question by offering a substantive reading of Miskawayh’s and, more concertedly, al-Ghazālī’s account of the ethics of esteem and self-esteem. There are delicate interpretive issues to be navigated in piecing together an account of al-Ghazālī’s ethical commitments. Yet the author’s conclusion is that al-Ghazālī privileges the virtue of humility and denigrates the status of honour as a good. The virtue of magnanimity he incorporates in his tables of the virtues thus appears to be in profound conflict with his considered ethical viewpoint, and with values central to Islamic religious morality more broadly. Why then does al-Ghazālī (like Miskawayh) pass this conflict over in silence? Part 1 concludes with some suggestions about this puzzle and about what it may have to tell us about these thinkers’ engagement with ancient philosophy.

Introduction

When we survey the rich terrain of ancient ethics and the different visions of the best human character that flourished within it, there is one element—one virtue within these visions—that stands out as particularly distinctive. This is a virtue usually translated as ‘magnanimity’ or ‘greatness of soul’. For philosophical readers, its most familiar expression is the one it received at the hands of Aristotle in the ...

Greatness of Spirit

The denouement of Part 1 might seem disappointing. Greatness of soul, that larger-than-life ancient virtue, enters the Islamic world only to fade away. Yet there was another concept belonging to the same broad family that led a more flourishing life in the Islamic world. This virtue, designated as ‘greatness of spirit’ (ʿiẓam al-himma), appears in philosophical treatises but also in other genres, including mirrors for princes and works of literature (adab). Unlike the first concept, which thematized the right attitude to the self and its merits, this second concept thematizes right desire or aspiration, and some of its architects parse it as a foundational virtue of aspiration to virtue. Part 2 first documents its development in works of a philosophical character, notably Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī’s and al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī’s, before considering its presentation in mirrors for princes. There are interesting comparisons to be drawn between the way the virtue is articulated across different genres, and also suggestive comparisons with approaches familiar from broader philosophical history. These observations invite a question about the origins of the virtue. While the Greek influence cannot be excluded, a stronger argument can be made for the influence of the Persian cultural tradition and, more compellingly, pre-Islamic Arab culture. ‘Greatness of spirit’ was an epithet applied to the Arab hero of pre-Islamic times. This heroic ideal is reconfigured in the Islamic era in important ways. This genealogy allows us to place on new footing the question about the relationship of the ‘virtues of greatness’ to Islamic religious morality.

Postlude

The virtue of greatness identified as a distinctive element of the ideals of character developed in the Arabic tradition—greatness of spirit—has much to tell us about the nature of these ideals and the intellectual processes that shaped them. Yet does this historical lesson exhaust the interest contemporary readers might take in this particular ideal? Is there anything in it to engage the attention of contemporary philosophers of the virtues? The Postlude seeks to answer these questions. This involves first confronting a more basic question: What kind of virtue is this? The author considers two different ways of construing its identity, one as a meta-virtue, another as a substantive virtue that has an affinity with the trait of ‘emulousness’ as theorized in recent philosophical work. It is the latter construal that enables us to pick out the distinctive commitments that constitute the virtue, above all its emphasis on open-ended moral aspiration. Philosophers of the virtues may find these commitments contentious. The Postlude outlines a number of ways in which this virtue can be defended. Yet the greatest value of engaging with this ideal may lie in the very space for debate it opens and in persuading us that this debate is worthwhile.