Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Islamic World

Description

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-Fārābī. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to the philosophical disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazālī 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. Philosophical reflections in the poetry of al-Shāfiʻī / Georges Tamer Ethics and fiqh in al-Fārābī's philosophy / Feriel Bouhafa Ibn Sīnā's moral ontology and theory of law / Hannah C. Erlwein In the footsteps of Ibn Sīnā? : the Uṣūlī debate on the argumentum e contrario / Nora Kalbarczyk Al-Ghazālī on philosophy and jurisprudence / Ulrich Rudolph Syllogistic logic in Islamic legal theory : al-Ghazālī's arguments for the certainty of legal analogy (Qiyās) / Felicitas Opwis Deontic modalities in Ibn Ḥazm / Joep Lameer Splitting the process and the result : philosophy from a legal perspective in Averroes' Decisive treatise / Ziad Bou Aki Foundations of Ibn Taymiyya's religious utilitarianism / Jon Hoover Value ontology and the assumption of non-assessment in postclassical Shīʻī legal theory / Robert Gleave Tajarrī as religious luck / Amir Mohammad Emami and Mirza Mohammad Kazem Askari Concomitance to causation : arguing Dawarān in the proto-Ādāb al-baḥth / Walter Edward Young.