The Scale of Action
Al-Ghazālī’s Moral Psychology - From Self-Control to Self-Surrender - Joel Craig Richmond
Joel Craig Richmond [+]
Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia
Description
Chapter Two Before the Revival, Al-Ghazālī’s first attempt to approach the field of ethics appears in his Scale of Action (Mizān al-‘amal), a book that takes for its methodology a much more philosophical emphasis than the more visible Sufism of his later work. The chapter examines how habits of desire are central to the acquisition of self-control. It is the right disposition of habit that corrects the neglect of moral responsibility in human action, and the value of correct ends and the correct choice of means to those same ends, results in a balanced person capable of directing their life toward a higher purpose. For al-Ghazālī, the directedness of moral ends and the achievement of God’s good pleasure is often fixed by a number of instrumental means, such as the law, inward intentions, motivations, emotions, and, ultimately, the concern with achieving excellence of character.