The Path to Virtue

Modern hermeneutics, specifically H.-G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, askswhat kind of meaningful horizon a text opens to us and what happens to uswhen we interpret and understand that particular horizon. The same questionsarise when we read Yasien Mohamed’s The Path to Virtue, a scholarlyorganized text full of fine historical and philosophical analyses. Not onlydoes this book meet internationally accepted research standards, but it alsodeserves to be a missing link between the philosophical ethical thought ofmedieval Islamic culture and our own modern ethical culture.When we read The Path to Virtue, we quickly find ourselves within theso-called “hermeneutical circle” as regards the text’s major topic. This circlereveals itself in two distinct viewpoints: the structure and the horizon ofthe text. As regards its structure, Mohamed’s text discloses both the mostgeneral aspects of al-Isfahani’s ethical thought and the critical detailedcorners of his way of thinking. Hence he is able to show us how the relationshipbetween general aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought fulfills itself in alogically coherent manner with the particularities of the same thought. Hedoes so not only in terms of referring to the internal relations between generaland particular aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought, but also by disclosing theexternal references of al-Isfahani’s thought, among them Plato, Aristotle,basic Islamic texts like the Qur’an and the hadith literature, Miskawayh, andothers. When we focus on the text’s structure, we soon find ourselves assilent participants of a grand discussion on character ethics among Plato,Aristotle, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Miskawayh, the Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Isfahani,al-Ghazali, and others ...