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What did al-Ghazālī mean by beauty as a thing’s proper perfection?

Ratna Wulandari Fellow
· 4 replies
Beauty & artIslamicSufismAl-Ghazali#craft#ihya#inner-beauty#perfection
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Its coordinates: 5.1 Theories of Beauty · 5.2 Philosophy of Art · 5.2.1 Definition and Boundaries +7 more

I make hand-drawn batik in Yogyakarta, in a workshop my mother started. At a study circle last month, the teacher said that for al-Ghazālī everything has its own beauty, which lies in the perfection proper to it: a horse is beautiful as a horse, handwriting as handwriting.

I liked this very much, but I'm not sure I understood it.

  • Is "proper perfection" just "it does its job well"? A batik that sells well is doing its job. That can't be what makes it beautiful.
  • The teacher also said al-Ghazālī thought the beauty seen by the heart is greater than the beauty seen by the eye. What does that mean, and how does it fit with the horse?

I'd be grateful for an explanation from someone who has read him properly.

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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Bilal Rashid

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    The passage your teacher meant is in the Iḥyā', in the book on love and longing. Al-Ghazālī says that the beauty of each thing lies in the presence of the perfection possible and fitting for it. When all its fitting perfections are present, it is at the peak of beauty; when only some are, it has beauty to that degree.

    It isn't "does its job well". His examples show that. Beautiful handwriting has letters well formed, well proportioned, well arranged and harmonious with one another. A beautiful horse has the right form, colour and gait, and ease of movement. These are the excellences of each kind, not its usefulness to a buyer. A batik that sells well might lack its perfections; one that sells badly might have them all.

    The second point follows. Some perfections can't be seen with the eye: knowledge, character, courage, piety. Al-Ghazālī argues that we clearly love people for these, people we have never seen, such as the great imams and the Prophet's Companions, which shows there is a beauty perceived by inner sight (baṣīra). And since inner qualities are higher perfections, their beauty is greater.

    So the horse and the heart fit together: each thing is beautiful by the perfections proper to its kind, and some kinds of perfection are only visible to the heart.

    Helpful · 3

Other answers

  1. Ratna Wulandari

    Fellow

    Thank you, Bilal. So a batik's perfections are in the line, the colour, the motif and what the motif means, not the price. That is what my mother taught me with her hands, and I never had the words.

  2. Layla Sfeir

    Fellow

    A note for comparison. The Arabic word behind "perfection" (kamāl) carries the sense of completeness: a thing having everything its kind can have. That puts al-Ghazālī close to Aristotle's idea that a thing's excellence depends on its characteristic work, though his framework is theological in a way Aristotle's isn't. It also gets around the old proportion theory: why beauty looks different in different kinds of thing without becoming arbitrary.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Hicham Ouazzani

    Fellow

    In my trade the old men speak this way without having read anything. A cedar door is judged as a door: how true the joints are, how the pattern fills the panel, how it swings and closes. Nobody judges a door by whether it would make a good ceiling. It's comforting to learn that this is a philosophy and not just stubbornness.

    Helpful · 2