Ethics in philosophy - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Adamson, Peter
Leiden
Brill
(3,980 words)
The treatment of ethics in philosophy in the Islamic world is best represented by several treatises on the subject of good and bad character traits (akhlāq). These works form a remarkably stable genre; similar ideas were put forward, over centuries and across a vast area, by authors of all three major Abrahamic faiths. This is partly to be explained by the Hellenic sources on which these authors draw. Especially significant were Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.E.) and Galen (d. c. 216 CE). According to Ibn al-Nadīm (d. c.