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WorkAbu Bakr al-Razi

The Spiritual Physick

A physician's course of treatment for envy, anger, avarice and the fear of death, with reason as the doctor.

by Abu Bakr al-Razi90 passages held

  • Arabic, the original language
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Original title
al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī
Original language
Arabic

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Overview

A prince heard one day of an essay on reforming character, written for friends in Baghdad, and asked for a book. Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī, the physician of Rayy, tells the story in the opening lines of al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī (Spiritual Medicine). The book was to be short and to stand beside the Kitāb al-Manṣūrī, the medical handbook al-Razi had dedicated to the same prince, Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Manṣūr, governor of Rayy — one book for the body, one for the soul. Its claim is that the passions can be treated the way a doctor treats a disease, once reason rather than appetite is allowed to decide. Twenty chapters take the complaints one at a time, vanity, envy, anger, lying, drunkenness and the chase after rank among them. The second chapter sets out Plato's account of the soul as the frame for the rest. Pleasure, al-Razi argues, is only the feeling of returning to one's natural state after something has disturbed it, so every pleasure is paid for by a harm that came first. The last chapter, on the fear of death, sets the afterlife aside, since settling it would mean judging every religion. It speaks instead to readers who believe the soul dies with the body: harm needs feeling, and the dead feel nothing. Paul Kraus edited the Arabic in Cairo in 1939, and Arthur Arberry's English version followed in 1950.

Key concepts

What is hawā, the desire the book sets against reason?

Hawā is the pull toward whatever relieves the present discomfort or offers the pleasure at hand, without regard for what follows. Reason, ʿaql, compares that pleasure with the pain or loss it may bring and chooses what is better in the long run, even when it costs effort now. Every chapter applies the same diagnosis: a vice is hawā deciding where reason should.

Why is pleasure only a return to the natural state?

Pleasure is the feeling of being restored after something painful has disturbed one's natural condition: cooling after heat, food after hunger. Its strength matches the disturbance before it and the speed of recovery. So pleasure is never a free-standing good. Those who chase it mistake relief for something lasting, and every pleasure has a harm behind it.

What is envy, strictly speaking?

Envy is distress at another person's good fortune when that fortune does you no harm at all. Resentment of someone whose success actually costs you is not envy but hostility in proportion to the harm. Envy is compounded of stinginess and greed and is worse than either, since the envious begrudge others even a good that comes from elsewhere.

What is sufficiency, and why is it safer than ambition?

Sufficiency is a familiar, adequate condition of life: enough income, a reserve for bad times, no strain after more. Higher rank and greater wealth delight only until they become ordinary, while the effort of keeping them, the fear of losing them and the wish for still more remain. Measured by reason, the climb usually costs more pain than it returns in pleasure.

Why do appetite and anger serve the reasoning soul?

Following Plato, the book divides the soul into a reasoning part, a spirited part that drives anger, and an appetitive part that keeps the body alive. The body is the reasoning soul's instrument, so appetite exists to sustain it and anger to defend it. Each becomes a vice when it rules instead of serving, and reason can even enlist anger and self-respect against a desire.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Reason as the Physician

Can the soul be treated the way a doctor treats a fever? The cure works only once reason, not desire, is allowed to decide.

Desire, hawā, pulls toward the pleasure at hand and never counts what follows; reason weighs the pleasure against the pain it brings. Plato's three-part soul frames the treatment: appetite and anger exist to serve the reasoning part. The method is a physician's. Start by refusing a few desires and let habit do the rest. Because self-love hides one's faults, ask friends and neighbours, and learn from enemies what they are eager to expose.

  • reason
  • desire
  • self-control
  • self-discipline
  • habit
  • soul
  • moral psychology
  • self-knowledge
  • human nature
  • appetite
  • prudence
  • virtue

Enter a dialogue

The Price of Pleasure

Pleasure is only the feeling of returning to one's natural state after something has disturbed it. Every pleasure therefore comes with its cost already paid.

Coolness pleases after heat, food after hunger, and the stronger the pleasure, the greater the harm before it. Those who chase pleasure mistake that relief for a good that lasts. Lovers fare worst: they use reason to refine desire, picture possession and never the road, and lose every beloved in the end. Rank and wealth follow the same curve, delight fading as they grow familiar while the work of keeping them stays. Sufficiency is the safer state.

  • pleasure
  • romantic love
  • attachment
  • sexual desire
  • ambition
  • wealth
  • contentment
  • happiness
  • addiction
  • health

Enter a dialogue

Envy, Anger and the Lie

Which passions harm the one who feels them more than the one they aim at? Envy, anger and casual lying each turn back on their owner.

Envy is worse than stinginess, since the miser begrudges only what is his and the envious begrudge others any good at all, even good that costs them nothing; it wrecks sleep and appetite and punishes no one but its owner. Resentment of real harm is not envy. Anger serves against injury but, once it overturns reason, injures the angry; punishment should wait until it cools. A lie told to seem well informed costs trust, though a false report that truly helps someone is not blamed.

  • envy
  • anger
  • deception
  • honesty
  • drunkenness
  • justice
  • cooperation
  • emotion

Enter a dialogue

Grief and the Fear of Death

Since everything loved will be lost, how should a person meet loss before it comes? The last chapters turn the medicine on grief and on death itself.

Grief grows with attachment: losing a child hurts in a way that never having one does not. The remedy is preparation, imagining the loss in advance and never letting one beloved thing become indispensable. If the cause of grief can be removed, act; if not, turn the mind away. On death, the book leaves the afterlife aside, since settling it would mean judging every religion, and speaks to those who think the soul dies: harm needs feeling, and the dead feel nothing.

  • grief
  • loss
  • death
  • fear of death
  • afterlife
  • anxiety
  • mental health
  • pain

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
90
distinct concepts
149
by passages held, corpus-wide
#522

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “desire” and “self-control”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 16 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
desireself-control9
desirepleasure7
desireprudence4
desiremoderation3
desirereason3
pleasurereason3
pleasureself-control3
reasonself-control3
desireenvy2
desiregrief2
griefprudence2
moderationpleasure2
moderationprudence2
prudenceself-control2
envyreason1
griefpleasure1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Fī mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa

    A polemic on nature and the eternity of motion, printed among al-Razi's philosophical writings in 1939, with some doubt over whether he wrote it.

     AR
  2. The Book of the Philosophic Life (al-Sīra al-falsafiyya)

    A short apologia in his own voice, which sends its reader to al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī (Spiritual Medicine) for the detailed cure of each vice.

     AR
  3. The Spiritual Physick (al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī) you are here AR
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