Al-Ghazali’s Ethics and Natural Law Theory

Abstract

In this chapter, I will make the case that we can accurately describe Ghazali’s position as a natural law theory. Kevin Reinhart (Before Revelation. SUNY Press, Albany, 1995), on whose translation of al-Mustaṣfā I will be depending in what follows, has also treated this topic. Though he did not specifically compare Ghazali’s position there with natural law theory, like Hourani (Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985) he interprets Ghazali’s position as subjectivist on key points rendering it incompatible with natural law theory. Thus, I will begin with a prima facie case for this incompatibility roughly along the lines one finds in Reinhart, and argue that a closer examination of the relevant text of al-Mustaṣfā along with the parallel section of al-Iqtiṣād, also cited by Hourani, shows that Ghazali’s position is not conclusively subjectivist, but instead is compatible with a natural law theory. I will examine key sections of Ghazali’s Kimiya al-Sa’dāt that quite clearly express a natural law theory of morality.