Meta-Ethical Contributions of Ashʿarī Theological Writings : A Reading in al-Juwaynī’s al-Irshād and al Shahrastānī’s Nihāyat al-Iqdām

This chapter argues that classical Ashʿarī works of theology (kalām) or foundations of religious belief (uṣūl al-dīn) were, at a crucial level, projects in theoretical ethics. Specifically, we will see that a guiding objective of the works in question was to uphold the key Ashʿarī claim that knowledge of the moral status of acts, and therefore legal norms, is epistemologically impossible without revelation. This central claim informed both the structure of kalām arguments and how they were advanced. To do so, this chapter will introduce and situate two classical Ashʿarī works of theology in their historical and intellectual contexts: al-Irshād ilā Qawāṭiʿ al-Adilla fī Uṣūl al-Iʿtiqād (“Guidance to the Essentials of Evidence in the Fundamentals of Belief”) by Imām al-Ḥaramayn Abū l-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085), and Nihāyat al-Iqdām fī ʿIlm al-Kalām (“The Ultimate Conclusion in the Science of Theology”) by Abū l-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153). This overview will allow us to trace the development of some foundational Ashʿarī doctrines in one of the most active phases of their development. The purpose of this juxtaposition will be to highlight and reconstruct the meta-ethical project advanced by those works.

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Published in: Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
See chapter on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004459472_009