Material quoted here is drawn from the paper by Elizabeth M. Bucar, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Northeastern University, which was published in “Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology and Psychology” edited by Nancy E. Snow, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Professor Bucar analyzes the writing of “one exemplary Islamic figure: the tenth-century thinker Ibn Miskawayh. Specifically, (her) focus is on the theory of virtue in the ethics of Ibn Miskawayh and its contemporary applications to Islamic everyday practices like veiling.”
The second part of Bucar’s paper, on the practice of veiling, is a more detailed expansion on one of the central points she discusses earlier on the theory of virtue ethics in Islam. While there is some interesting material in that discussion, the bulk of this comment will be on the first part of Bucar’s paper.
One introductory point made by Bucar is that the majority of the work done on the subject of ethics in Islam is in the general field of jurisprudence. This, she finds:
“…is a particular challenge for contemporary Islamic studies of character formation. Moreover, while it is deeply problematic to separate any one Islamic discipline and call it ‘ethics,’ if we do so for the sake of study, it is not fiqh but adab discourse that is the closest to current philosophical and religious discussions of virtue. Adab is concerned with Islamic etiquette, or more specifically for our purposes, with how to acquire good manners, morals, and character.”
Bucar uses the work of Ibn Miskawayh as a vehicle for her discussion because he is “arguably the founding father of what could be called Islamic virtue ethics. He reformulates Greek philosophy to infuse it with spiritual virtues and to balance personal and political dimensions of character formation, which has implications beyond Islamic studies.”
In the discussion of any approach to ethics that is grounded in a religious tradition, especially one that is based on revelation, accommodation must be found in the ethical theory for the essentials of the religious belief.
“Ibn Miskawah’s Tahdhib al-akhlaq (“The Refinement of Character”) is an example of a specific genre of adab whose purpose is to bring together two sources, Islamic revelation and the Greek philosophical canon, and it is one of the earliest examples of this type of tahdhib we have. In this work, Ibn Miskawayh develops a practical theory of virtue ethics that draws selectively from Greek philosophy to make it consistent with an Islamic ethos and worldview.”
“As Ibn Miskawayh puts it, character is a two-part state of the soul, involving both natural and moral virtue. On the one hand, there is the natural temperament of an individual that determines her character. On the other hand, there is the part of character that is ‘acquired by habit and self-training. This training may have its beginning in deliberation and thought, but then it becomes, by gradual and continued practice, an aptitude and a trait of character’.”
As we’ve seen so often, the influence of Aristotle is clear. Bucar writes:
“He draws heavily from Aristotle in his formulation of what virtue is and what the process of moral development looks like. Like Aristotle, for Ibn Miskawayh virtues are dispositions related to faculties of the soul. Virtues are acquired through a process of training, which begins as a struggle, requires the repetition of moral acts, and the formation of a habit (malaka). Good habits, in turn, help cultivate virtues. Virtues are character traits, which are permanent parts of a state of the soul that ‘go all the way down,’ so that to have a virtue is to be a certain sort of person. Moreover a virtue, as opposed to a habit, effects multiple actions and causes a person eventually to perform a variety of moral actions without deliberation.”
There are two key points here:
1) that the acquisition of virtue requires practice and study and repetition, and
2) that, once acquired; once so internalized as to become a part of one’s nature; the virtues are expressed in virtuous action essentially automatically. That is, the right action is spontaneous. It does not require the conscious assessment of alternatives and selection among them. The one possessing a virtue simply acts in a manner expressing that virtue.
“Character formation for Muslims is a process of perfecting the soul for God, who is the perfection. There are three tenets of Ibn Miskawayh’s ethics that are important to grasp in order to understand character as cultivated in his view: the centrality of bodily practices, the possibility of habituating sexual appetites, and the social dimensions of virtue.”
On the centrality of bodily practices…
“Religions are not concerned only with right beliefs but also with right action. Islam is no exception, and Muslims believe that completing certain bodily actions—such as prayer, fasting, alms-giving, and so on—are the “pillars” of a pious Muslim life. In religious ethics this is formulated along the following lines: belief, understanding, discussion, or persuasion are not enough to transform a person; repetitive behavior and physical habits are also part of moral development.”
“Some virtues can only be formed through proper bodily practice, just like some aspects of bodily health can only be acquired through exercise.”
“As Ibn Miskawayh put it, a disposition to do the right thing ‘may have its beginning in deliberation and thought, but then it becomes, by gradual and continued practice, an aptitude and a trait of character’.”
“In addition, Ibn Miskawayh’s view of bodily practices means that the right actions are understood sometimes to be necessary to create virtue independently of the intent…of the believer. In fact, the action itself sometimes seems to be what cultivates the correct intent.”
So, virtue can be cultivated or acquired from either:
a) actions undertaken expressive of a potential virtuous tendency, already cultivated or created, which over time transmute the potential into a virtuous reality, or
b) absent the potential or tendency, repeated virtuous action over time creates the initially absent potential or tendency which then, after further action, creates the virtue itself.
This is a very interesting point and an important one. If virtue can be acquired even absent an initial tendency toward it, then virtue is available to all who will take proper action to acquire it. Something, though, is needed to spark the initial impulse toward virtuous action in those without virtuous tendency.
Bucar addresses the issue…
“…whether individuals (1) are simply born good or bad; or (2) have a greater natural potentiality or aptitude for goodness.
Here Ibn Miskawayh sides with the ancients who argue, ‘no part of character is natural to man, nor it is non-natural. For we are disposed to it, but it also changes as a result of discipline and admonition either rapidly or slowly.’ In other words, there are not ‘good individuals’ versus ‘bad individuals.’ However, our receptivity to change is different. Following Aristotle, Ibn Miskawayh asserts ‘that the repetition of admonitions and discipline and the good and virtuous guidance of people cannot but produce different results on different people: some are responsive to discipline and acquire virtue rapidly, while others are also responsive but acquire it slowly’.”
This seems to unambiguously favor nurture over nature which is an optimistic point of view but one that doesn’t address more recent findings about the genetic predisposition toward some character traits in certain persons.
It also seems to deny any significant karma-like idea, which is a useful point to make.
Bucar’s comments on the second of the three areas of character cultivation, that of habituating sexual appetites is interesting but do not add meaningfully to the overall argument for our purposes, so I won’t bring that material in at this point. However, the third area, that of “the social dimension of virtue” is very interesting.
Bucar writes:
“One objection to virtue ethics is that it can support forms of egoism when it focuses on character formation as a process of personal cultivation. Ibn Miskawayh’s theory of virtue is an important challenge to this critique, and it is a model for how this problem might be avoided in future work, because… To achieve perfection, the individual’s own efforts must be reinforced by those of others. The good man must have good friends to help guide him to good thoughts and deeds.”
This notion that we need objective observers of our behavior who will honestly share their assessments of our actions (or at least serve to reflect them back to us) is an important one. While the process of self-reflection is valuable and important, we are not always our own best critics. This implies the openness to others’ criticisms and the willingness to solicit them to advance our own efforts at virtue cultivation or right action.
“…we need others to act virtuously insofar as interpersonal spheres of activity create occasions to be virtuous. In other words, true virtue requires not only dispositions but also an opportunity to act virtuously. Ibn Miskawayh writes, For he who does not mingle with other people and who does not live with them in cities cannot show temperance, intrepidity, liberality, or justice.”
If we need to practice right action in order to cultivate virtue we need to be in an environment conducive to practice. And that means one in which there are others to practice with. This is an important point and brings up the issue of practice by those who follow a path that separates them from society or creates one that constrains the types of interactions one has with society.
In addition to our own need for others…
“our public performance of virtue can transmit virtue to others, even if in a lesser degree. This shining of our virtue on others is itself a virtuous act, which is impossible without having others to shine upon. And …our community and our social institutions help us see (or reflect on) our own process of character formation.”
So being a part of society creates mutual opportunity for virtue cultivation among all members of society.
“I highlighted four ways in which character cultivation requires others in Ibn Miskawayh’s ethics, mainly by providing an arena (1) to become virtuous, (2) to act virtuously, (3) to see our own virtue, and (4) to create communal virtue.”
“For Ibn Miskawayh, the cultivation of an individual’s character was the first step to virtue acquisition, but he understood the ultimate goal of this cultivation was to have a community in which individuals, acting cooperatively out of habit, create a virtuous society.”
This statement reinforces the idea that virtue derives from character. That seems to parallel the Aristotelian idea of a single fundamental virtue, or goodness. The expression of that goodness through the members of society is a very Confucian idea and notion of the creation of a virtuous society has a near parallel in the Mohist consequentialism of the 5th century BCE.
Bucar concludes:
“The account of virtue I present should not be understood as a universal or exhaustive Islamic ethical theory. I happen to believe that such a project would fundamentally misunderstand the dynamic nature of Islamic ethics. My intent here is simply to show how aspects of Muslims’ practice of virtue can be understood by referring to Islamic religious texts and traditions. I have tried to show that Ibn Miskawayh’s views open important perspectives on the place of virtue and its cultivation in the Islamic worldview.”
We see again and again in the study of virtue the influence of Aristotle and of the links from much earlier Chinese thought, to the Greeks and then to those that came after them, whether Islamic, Christian or Judaic.
©Charles R. Lightner