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, 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 Mona Fathy · 5 replies
• Discussion Do the world’s ethical traditions really agree about how to live, or does it only look that way from far off? Kenneth Leung Chi-ho · 6 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Miskawayh, The Refinement of Character, on happiness Zainab Kadhim · 5 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Miskawayh’s Refinement of Character, and Tusi’s Persian reworking of it Layla Haddad · 6 replies
• Debate Traditions that disagree about the self agree about how to live, so ethics can do without metaphysics Henrike Vogel · 6 replies