The Impact of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics on the Ethical and Civil Heritage of Muslim Philosophers

Document Type : Research Article (Political Ethics)

Author
Seyyid Muhammad Reza Ahmadi Tabatabai
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Islamic Studies and Political Science, ISU
Abstract
There has been a close interaction between post-Islamic Iranian philosophical, ethical, as well as political wisdom and Greek philosophy especially Platonic and Aristotelian trends of thought. Muslim Philosophers such as Farabi and Ibn Rushd have been among the major interpreters and commentators of the works of great Greek philosophers particularly Aristotle’s. Hence Aristotle was given the title of "the First Teacher” and Farabi that of “the Second Teacher". A main topic of discussion among Muslim scholars has been the great work of Aristotle, the Nichomachean Ethics, which addressed the author's son. The Arabic version of this book had a great impact on the ethical and civil heritage of Muslim scholars, since there was some closeness between those precepts and the Islamic ones. The present article discusses traces of this impact.
Keywords
Nichomachean Ethics
Aristotle
Muslim philosophers
Subjects
Aristotle (1998), Politics, Trans. by C.D.C. Reeve Hackett, Cambridge: Publishing Company.
Aristotle (1998), The Nicomachean Ethics, Trans. by David Ross, Oxford University Press.
Lenne, Goodman (2003), Islamic Humanism, Oxford University Press.
McCleland, J. S. (2003), History of Western Political Thought, London and New York: Routledge.
Okane, Stephen (1994), Politics and Morality under Conflict, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Durham: the Pent Land Press.
Plato (1977), The Portable, Edited by Scott Buchanan, New York: Penguin Press.
Plato (1995), Statesman, Edited by Julia Annas, Cambridge University Press.
Plato (2000), Statesman, Trans. by Roibn Waterfield, Cambridge University Press.
Rosenthal (1968), Political Thought in Medieval Islam, Cambridge University Press, Reprinted.
Seyyid Husein Nasr and Oliver Leman, (2003) History of Islamic Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge.
Spencer, Herbert (1907), Data of Ethics, Williams Norgate, London.
Islamic Political Thought
Volume 1, Issue 1
March 2014
Pages 41-70

  • Receive Date 23 January 2014
  • Revise Date 23 February 2014
  • Accept Date 23 March 2014