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WorkAl-Ghazali

ميزان العمل

(lit.: The Scale of Action)

An ethics of the soul's three powers, written in Baghdad, which argues that character can be retrained and ends in praise of doubt.

by Al-Ghazali198 passages held

  • Arabic, the original language
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Overview

The book states its plan in its first lines. Happiness, which all people, past and future, seek, is reached only through knowledge and action; The Standard of Knowledge had supplied a test for knowledge, and this book supplies one for action. It was written around 1095, in al-Ghazālī's last year of teaching in Baghdad, and it is a treatise on ethics built largely from the philosophers: the scholar Jules Janssens has traced it to Avicenna and to al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, a Persian writer on the Qurʾān and on ethics. The soul has powers of reason, anger and appetite. Virtue is the condition in which reason governs the other two, and the four virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance and justice follow from that rule. Some people, the book says, excuse their idleness by claiming that a person's character is as fixed as the shape of the body; it answers that character can be changed by training, since otherwise the Prophet's command to improve it would be pointless, and so would every sermon. It also sets two roads to happiness side by side, the scholar's road of learning and the Sufi road of purifying the heart. The last pages urge readers to doubt what they have inherited, since someone who never doubts never examines anything, and so never sees. W. Montgomery Watt, the Scottish historian of Islam, translated only part of the book, because he doubted that its second half was by al-Ghazālī. It was translated into Hebrew in the Middle Ages, and its ethics returned, reworked, in the Revival of the Religious Sciences and in the Persian Alchemy of Happiness.

Key concepts

What does the book mean by “action”?

Action, in this book, is not doing good deeds in general but a specific labour: training the appetites and restraining anger until they obey reason instead of ruling it. The book presents this as a kind of freedom. Unchecked appetite makes a person its captive, bringing endless effort, risk and grief, while desire that has been disciplined asks for less and leaves the person free to pursue knowledge.

What is the “middle” that each virtue aims at?

The middle is the point between too much and too little at which a power works well. Courage is the middle of anger, between rashness and cowardice; temperance is the middle of appetite, between greed and the dullness that wants nothing. The middle is not a fixed amount the same for everyone. Reason has to find it in each case, which is why reason must rule before any virtue is possible.

How does the intellect grow, according to the book?

The intellect that grasps general truths develops in stages. At first it is only a capacity, as in a newborn. Then it holds the first principles everyone knows without being taught, such as that two is more than one. Then it gains knowledge it can call on at will. The book places prophetic knowledge, received suddenly from God, above all three.

What is the Preserved Tablet, and why does it matter here?

The Preserved Tablet is the heavenly record in which, by Islamic teaching, everything that is and will be is written. The book uses it to explain the Sufi road to knowledge. Learning writes knowledge into the soul directly, piece by piece. Purification instead makes the soul clear enough to receive knowledge from that higher source, the way a cleaned surface takes an image. Both roads aim at the same knowledge of God.

What are the three powers of the soul?

Thought, appetite and anger are the three powers of the soul that need discipline. Thought is the power to know and judge, appetite is the pull towards food, pleasure and possession, and anger is the push to defend and dominate. The book gives each its virtue: wisdom to thought, temperance to appetite, courage with forbearance to anger. Justice is the fourth virtue, the condition in which thought governs the other two.

Themes of the book

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

Reason Over Anger and Appetite

Who should be in charge inside a person? The book answers with a map of the soul borrowed from the philosophers and put to work for a believer's life.

The soul, in this book, has three powers: reason, anger and appetite. Anger and appetite cannot be removed, and should not be, since they serve life; the question is who rules. When reason governs the other two, four virtues follow: wisdom in reason, courage in anger kept to its measure, temperance in appetite, and justice in the right order of all three. Each virtue is a middle between two failures, courage between rashness and cowardice, generosity between waste and meanness, and the middle is found by reason, not by rule of thumb.

  • virtue ethics
  • virtue
  • moral psychology
  • desire
  • reason
  • soul
  • anger
  • appetite
  • temperance
  • courage
  • justice
  • moderation
  • intellect

Enter a dialogue

Character Can Be Retrained

Is a bad temper or a greedy streak simply who someone is? The book insists it is not, and sets out how a character is trained the way a body is cured.

Some people excuse their faults by saying character is as fixed as the shape of the body. The book answers that some created capacities can grow towards their completion through nurture and choice, otherwise every command to improve, and every sermon, would be pointless. Appetite is the hardest to reform because it appears first and roots deepest. A vice is treated by practising its opposite in a measured dose, as a physician adjusts a remedy to the patient, and character hardens through repeated acts and the belief that they are good.

  • self-discipline
  • moral education
  • education
  • habit
  • self-control
  • spiritual discipline
  • spiritual development
  • asceticism
  • moral responsibility

Enter a dialogue

Knowledge, Action and Useful Doubt

What must someone know and do to be happy, and what if they are not sure the promises are true? The book's frame argument ends, unexpectedly, in praise of doubt.

Happiness, the opening says, is reached only by knowledge and action, and every school agrees on that much, with knowledge ranking above action and action serving it. A reader unsure of the afterlife is offered a plain comparison: nobody eats food that might be poisoned, however tasty, when the warning is serious. The book sets the scholar's road of learning beside the Sufi road of purifying the heart, and ends by urging readers to doubt what they inherited: whoever never doubts never looks, whoever never looks never sees, and stays blind.

  • knowledge
  • happiness
  • afterlife
  • death
  • worship
  • wealth
  • mysticism
  • pleasure

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
198
distinct concepts
295
by passages held, corpus-wide
#352

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: “education” and “knowledge”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
educationknowledge13
knowledgevirtue8
moral psychologyvirtue ethics8
afterlifedesire5
afterlifeknowledge5
knowledgereason5
desirereason4
desirevirtue4
knowledgevirtue ethics4
reasonvirtue ethics4
afterlifemoral psychology3
afterlifevirtue ethics3
desiremoral psychology3
educationreason3
educationvirtue3
moral psychologyreason3
desirevirtue ethics2
educationmoral psychology2
moral psychologyvirtue2
reasonvirtue2
educationvirtue ethics1
knowledgemoral psychology1

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. Deliverance from Error (المنقذ من الضلال)

    An intellectual autobiography, written at Nishapur after his return to teaching in 1106; Claud Field's Confessions of Al Ghazzali first brought it into English in 1909.

     EN
  2. The Alchemy of Happiness (Kīmiyā-yi Saʿādat)

    His major work in Persian, written around 1105 for readers without Arabic, and a shorter companion to the Revival of the Religious Sciences.

     EN
  3. The Incoherence of the Philosophers (تهافت الفلاسفة)

    The book by which he is known in philosophy, finished in Baghdad in January 1095, months before he gave up his chair there and left the city.

     AR
  4. The Just Balance (القسطاس المستقيم)

    One of several answers to the Ismāʿīlīs, this one cast as a dialogue on the road; his autobiography points readers to it instead of repeating its case.

     AR
  5. The Marvels of the Heart (كتاب شرح عجائب القلب)

    The twenty-first of the forty books of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, and the ground for the books on vices and virtues that follow it.

     AR
  6. The Niche of Lights (مشكاة الأنوار)

    Among his late works, and the one in which his thought comes closest to the mystics: three chapters on a single verse of the Qurʾān and a single saying of the Prophet.

     AR
  7. The Standard of Knowledge (معيار العلم في فن المنطق)

    Written after The Incoherence of the Philosophers to explain the philosophers' technical vocabulary to its readers, and to give jurists and theologians a test for their own arguments.

     AR
  8. مقاصد الفلاسفة

    A report before a refutation: Avicenna's system set out without a word of objection, then framed by a short preface and ending that point ahead to The Incoherence of the Philosophers.

     AR
  9. ميزان العمل you are here AR
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