Book: Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Islamic World

This book brings together the study of two great disciplines of the Islamic world: law and philosophy.

In both sunni and shiite Islam, it became the norm for scholars to acquire a high level of expertise in the legal tradition. Thus some of the greatest names in the history of Aristotelianism were trained jurists, like Averroes, or commented on the status and nature of law, like al-Farabi. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to the philosophical disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya.

But this collection of papers does not only explore the relative standing of law and philosophy. It also looks at how philosophers, theologians, and jurists answered philosophical questions that arise from jurisprudence itself. What is the logical structure of a well-formed legal argument? What standard of certainty needs to be attained in passing down judgments, and how is that standard reached? What are the sources of valid legal judgment and what makes these sources authoritative? May a believer be excused on grounds of ignorance?

Together the contributions provide an unprecedented demonstration of the close connections between philosophy and law in Islamic society, while also highlighting the philosophical interest of texts normally studied only by legal historians.

Table of Contents

Philosophical Reflections in the Poetry of al-Shāfiʿī by Tamer, Georges

Ethics and Fiqh in al-Fārābī’s Philosophy by Bouhafa, Feriel

Ibn Sīnā’s Moral Ontology and Theory of Law by Erlwein, Hannah C.

In the Footsteps of Ibn Sīnā? The Uṣūlī Debate on the Argumentum e Contrario by Kalbarczyk, Nora

Al-Ghazālī on Philosophy and Jurisprudence by Rudolph, Ulrich

Syllogistic Logic in Islamic Legal Theory: al-Ghazālī’s Arguments for the Certainty of Legal Analogy (Qiyās) by Opwis, Felicitas

Deontic Modalities in Ibn Ḥazm by Lameer, Joep

Splitting the Process and the Result: Philosophy from a Legal Perspective in Averroes’ Decisive Treatise by Akl, Ziad Bou

Foundations of Ibn Taymiyya’s Religious Utilitarianism by Hoover, Jon

Value Ontology and the Assumption of Non-Assessment in Postclassical Shīʿī Legal Theory by Gleave, Robert

Tajarrī as Religious Luck by Mohammad Kazem Askari, Mirza / Mohammad Emami, Amir

Concomitance to Causation: Arguing Dawarān in the Proto-Ādāb al-Baḥth by Young, Walter Edward

Bibliographic Information

Title: Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Islamic World

Editor: Peter Adamson

Publisher: De Gruyter

 Language: English

Length: 316

ISBN: 978-3110551976

Pub. Date: November 8, 2019