The Path to Virtue

Abstract

Modern hermeneutics, specifically H.-G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, asks what kind of meaningful horizon a text opens to us and what happens to us when we interpret and understand that particular horizon. The same questions arise when we read Yasien Mohamed’s The Path to Virtue, a scholarly organized text full of fine historical and philosophical analyses. Not only does this book meet internationally accepted research standards, but it also deserves to be a missing link between the philosophical ethical thought of medieval Islamic culture and our own modern ethical culture. When we read The Path to Virtue, we quickly find ourselves within the so-called “hermeneutical circle” as regards the text’s major topic. This circle reveals itself in two distinct viewpoints: the structure and the horizon of the text. As regards its structure, Mohamed’s text discloses both the most general aspects of al-Isfahani’s ethical thought and the critical detailed corners of his way of thinking. Hence he is able to show us how the relationship between general aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought fulfills itself in a logically coherent manner with the particularities of the same thought. He does so not only in terms of referring to the internal relations between general and particular aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought, but also by disclosing the external references of al-Isfahani’s thought, among them Plato, Aristotle, basic Islamic texts like the Qur’an and the hadith literature, Miskawayh, and others. When we focus on the text’s structure, we soon find ourselves as silent participants of a grand discussion on character ethics among Plato, Aristotle, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Miskawayh, the Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Isfahani, al-Ghazali, and others ...