Thinker · TH-0298
Miskawayh
Miskawayh was a Persian philosopher and historian, born in Rayy, who served as librarian and secretary at Buyid courts in Baghdad, Rayy and Isfahan,…
مسكويه
Also known as Ibn Miskawayh, Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad Miskawayh
c. 932 – 1030 · Rayy, Baghdad, Isfahan
Traditions: Islamic
Schools: Falsafa
Miskawayh was a Persian philosopher and historian, born in Rayy, who served as librarian and secretary at Buyid courts in Baghdad, Rayy and Isfahan, and wrote in Arabic. His Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq (The Refinement of Character) is a systematic work of philosophical ethics combining Platonic psychology, Aristotelian virtue theory and Islamic concerns. It became a model for later works of ethics in Arabic and Persian, including Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's.
Key ideas
- The soul has rational, spirited and appetitive faculties, each with its own virtue: wisdom, courage and temperance, with justice as their harmony.
- Virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency.
- Character is not fixed: it can be refined through habituation, training and education.
- Human perfection is social; friendship and love are needed for happiness.
Major works
- Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq (The Refinement of Character)
- Tajārib al-Umam (The Experiences of the Nations)
- al-Fawz al-Aṣghar (The Lesser Victory)
In the conversation
- Discussion Adab, and the humanism that rarely gets the name
- Discussion Do the world’s ethical traditions really agree about how to live, or does it only look that way from far off?
- Reading group Reading group: Miskawayh, The Refinement of Character, on happiness
- Reading group Reading group: Miskawayh’s Refinement of Character, and Tusi’s Persian reworking of it
- Debate Traditions that disagree about the self agree about how to live, so ethics can do without metaphysics
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Miskawayh takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 3.2.3 Character-Based Approaches Should ethics ask what to do, or who to be?