Aristotle and Iranian Ethicists: Friendship as a Moral and a Political Paradigm
Issue: Vol 13 No. 1-2 (2017) Special Issue: Iranian Cosmopolitanism
Journal: Comparative Islamic Studies
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Islamic Studies
DOI: 10.1558/cis.32527
Abstract:
From Aristotle to the end of the Middle Ages, friendship was considered to be a core notion in Western political philosophy. However, as Von Heyking and Avramenko argue, friendship has lost its prominent politico-philosophical status in the modern era, particularly in the Western liberal tradition. In the Muslim tradition, and specifically in the history of Iranian thought, friendship as a moral paradigm went through a different course of development. In this article, I will present a comparative view of friendship as reflected in the works of Aristotle and three major Iranian ethicists: Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad Miskawayh (d. 1030), Abūʾl-Qāsim Ḥusayn al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī (d. ca. 1108) and Naṣir al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274). I will examine friendship-related perspectives rooted in the Irano-Islamic philosophical traditions that represent a significant but overlooked dimension of Iranian cosmopolitanism valuable for modern peacemaking approaches beyond such concepts as: “justice before peace,” “liberal peace” and “cold peace.”
Author: Mohammad Jafar Amir Mahallati
References :
Aḥmadpour, Mehdī, et al. 2008. Bibliography of Islamic Ethics. Qum: Research Center for Islamic Law and Jurisprudence.
Algar, Hamid. 2002. Wahhabism: A Critical Essay. New York: Islamic International Publications.
Al-Isfahānī, ar-Rāghib. 2007. Al-dharī ʿa ilā makārim al-sharī ʿa. Abu Zaid, Al-Rahmān, ed. Cairo: Dār al-Islam waʾl-Nashr waʾl-Towdiʾ waʾl-Tarjama.
———. 1954. Al-Dharī ʿa ilā makārim alsharī ʿa (Persian). Translated by Farid Gulpāygānī. Tabriz: Ketabforoushi Soroush.
Al-Shaar, Nuha. 2014. Ethics in Islam: Friendship in the Political Thought of Al-Tawhidi and his Contemporaries. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739144
Al-Shārūnī. n.d. Al-ḥubb waʾl-ṣadāqa f ī al-turāth al-ʿarabī waʾl-dirāsāt al-muʿāṣira [Love and Friendship in the Arabic Heritage and the Contemporary Scholarships]. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārīf bi Miṣr.
Al-Tawḥīdī, Abū Ḥayyān. 1905. Al-adab waʾl-inshāʾ f ī al-ṣadāqa waʾl-ṣad īq [The Ethics and the Literature on Friendship and Friend]. Cairo: Al-Matbaʿa al-Sharqīyya.
Al-Yaqoubi, Muhammad. 2015. Refuting ISIS: A Rebuttal of its Religious and Ideological Foundations. New York: Sacred Knowledge Publications.
Audard, Catherine. 2006. “Peace or Justice? Some Remarks on Rawls’s Law of Peoples.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 3: 301–326.
Barnes, Jonathan ed. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bhandari Surendra. 2014.“The Ancient and Modern Thinking about Justice: An Appraisal of the Positive Paradigm and the Influence of International Law.” Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies 13: 1–41.
Bloom, Allan. 1994. Love and Friendship. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Chroust, Anton-Hermann and David. L. Osborn. 1942. “Aristotle’s Conception of Justice.” Notre Dame Law Review 17: 129.
Enright, Robert D, Jeanette Knutson Enright and Anthony C. Hotler. 2010. “Turning from Hatred to Community Friendship.” In Strategies of Peace, edited by Daniel Philpott and Gerard F. Powers, 291–312. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0012
Fakhry, Majid. 1991. Ethical Theories in Islam. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Fanāʾī, Abūʾl-Qāsim. 2014. “Akhlāq-i Dīnī wa Akhlāq-i farā Dīnī" (Religious and meta-religious ethics). Interview published in Persian by the website of Jamāʿat-i Daʿwat wa Iṣlāḥ (Society for Invitation and Reform).
http://islahweb.org/content/2014/4/11517/اخلاق-دینی-و-اخلاق-فرادینی-در-گفت%E2%80%8Cوگو-با-دکتر-ابوالقاسم-فنایی-بخش-اول
Goodman, Leonard. 1996. “Friendship in Aristotle, Miskawayh and al-Ghazali.” In Friendship East and West: A Philosophical Perspective, edited by Oliver Leaman, 174–201. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press.
———. 2003. Islamic Humanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hamilton, Edith and Huntington Cairns, eds. 1989. Plato: The Collected Dialogues. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ḥūjwīrī, Abū’l-Ḥasan. 2007. Kashfuʾl-maḥjūb. 3rd edition. Tehran: Soroush Press.
Ibn Bābawayh, Abī Jaʿfar. 1982. Fi Muṣādaqat al-ikhwān, translated to Persian by al-Khorāsānī, Sayid ʿAlī. Qum: Manshurat Imam Maktabat al-Sahb al-Zaman. https://books.rafed.net/view.php?type=c_fbook&b_id=1737
Khaleghi-Motlagh, Djalal. 1982. The Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “ADAB i. Adab in Iran.” http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/adab-i-iran
Kraemer, Joel L. 1986. Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival During the Buyid Age. Amsterdam: Brill Publication.
Lambton, Ann K. S. 1962. “Justice in the Medieval Theory of Kingship.” Studia Islamica 17: 91–119. https://doi.org/10.2307/1595003
Lewis, C. S. 1960. The Four Loves. New York: HarcourtBooks.
Mahallati, Mohammad Jafar Amir. 2016. Ethics of War and Peace in Iran and Shiʿi Islam. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442629523
Miskawayh, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad. n.d. Tahdhīb al-akhlāq wa taṭhīr al-aʿrāq (Arabic). Isfahan: Entesharat Mahadavi.
———. 2000. Tajārib al-umam. (Persian). Translated by Alīnaqī Monzawī. Tehran: Tus.
———. 2003. The Refinement of Character (Tahdhīb al-akhlāq). Translated by Constantine K. Zurayk. Chicago, IL: Kazi Publications.
Mousavi ʿAqiqi, Sayyed Muhammad. 2014/1393 AH. Sh. Mabānī-e naẓarī-e Daesh. http://www.letoarafu.blog.ir.
Nixon, Jon. 2015. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship. London: Bloomsbury.
Odabaei, Milad. 2016. Review of Lucian Stone ed., “Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism, Spheres of Belonging.” Journal of Comparative Islamic Studies 9(2): 235–240. https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v9i2.30456
Pagden, Anthony. 2000. “Stoicism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Legacy of European Imperialism.” Constellations 7(1): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.00167
Philpott, Daniel and Gerard F. Powers, eds. 2010. Strategies of Peace: Transforming Conflict in a Violent World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Qarāʾī, Ali Qulī, trans. 2005. The Quran. 2nd ed. London: ICAS Press.
Salkever, Stephen. 2008. “Taking Friendship Seriously, Aristotle on the Place(s) of philia in Human Life.” In Friendship and Politics, Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by J. Von Heyking and R. Avramenko, 53–83. Norte Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Saʿdī Shīrāzī, Shaykh Muṣliḥ al-Dīn. n.d. Ghazalīyāt. https://ganjoor.net/saadi/divan/ghazals/sh505/
Sherman, Nancy. 1993. “Aristotle on the Shared Life.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Neera Kaptur Badhwar, 91–107. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501741104-007
Schall, James. 1996. At the Limits of Political Philosophy. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
Shriver, W. Donald. 1995. An Ethics for Enemies, Forgiveness in Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sokolowski, Robert. 2002. “Phenomenology of Friendship.” The Review of Metaphysics 55(3): 451–470.
Stone, Lucian, ed. 2014. Iranian Identity and Cosmopolitanism: Spheres of Belonging. Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought. London: Bloomsbury.
Taqdīrī, Moḥammad and Moḥammadī, Moḥammad, eds. 2007. Friendship in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth (Arabic) 3rd ed. n.d. Translation to Persian by Islami, Ḥasan. Qum: Dār al-Ḥadīth.
Ṭūsī Naṣīr ad-Dīn. 1964. The Nasirean Ethics. Translated by G.M. Wickens. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
———. Akhlāq Nāṣirī, 6th ed. 2008. Annotated by Mujtaba Mīnowī, Mujtaba and Ḥeydarī, Alīrezā. Tehran: Sherkat-e Sahami Entesharat-e Khawrazmi.
Von Heyking, John and Richard Avramenko, eds. 2008. Friendship and Politics,
Essays in Political Philosophy. Norte Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.