Sophia Vasalou
Biographic Data
| ID | 1442519 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sophia Vasalou |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sophia |
| FAMILY NAME | Vasalou |
| SIGNATURE | VASALOU S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Ethics as Medicine
The idea that ethics might be fruitfully understood in analogy with, or indeed as a form of, medicine has enjoyed a long and distinguished history. A staple of ancient philosophical thinking, it also achieved wide expression in the Islamic world. This essay explores the role of the medical analogy in the work of the eleventh-century Muslim intellectual Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. Al-Ghazālī’s use of this analogy offers a unique vantage point for approa…
Arabic Version of Ṭūsī's Nasirean Ethics
The Arabic Version of Ṭūsī's Nasirean Ethics: With an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By Joep Lameer. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science, vol. 96. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. ix + 550. $189, €136
Admiration, Emulation, and the Description of Character
The emotion of admiration has recently captured the interest of philosophers and empirical psychologists, with attention especially focused on its implications for the moral domain. Central to these discussions is the claim that admiration of virtuous exemplars leads us to emulate them. Beginning from this familiar claim, in this paper I take a different approach by focusing on the expressive dimension of this affective experience. George Eliot’s…
The Measure of Greatness
Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went…
Measure of Greatness
Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as a philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle's account of human excellence and was accorded equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. It is one of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds. It sparked important intellectual engagements and went on t…
An Ancient Virtue and Its Heirs
This essay examines the reception of the ancient virtue of greatness of soul (or magnanimity) in the Arabic tradition, touching on a range of figures but focusing especially on Miskawayh and even more concertedly on al‐Ghazālī. Influenced by a number of Greek ethical texts available in Arabic translation, both of these thinkers incorporate greatness of soul into their classifications of the virtues and the vices. Yet a closer scrutiny raises ques…
Greatness of Spirit
In this paper, my aim is to present an unexplored aspect of the Arabic ethical tradition—greatness of spirit—and to assess its philosophical merit. As philosophers in this tradition approach it, greatness of spirit is essentially a virtue of moral aspiration. I consider two construals of the virtue, one as a second-order virtue, another as a virtue whose closest cousin is neo-Aristotelian emulousness. It is the latter that enables us to pick out …
Excellent Beauty
Anyone who follows the debates between religion and science will be instantly baited by the subject of this book and by the seductive terms of its title. This is a book about a well-worn topic which proposes to enter it through a little-worn door, the notion of mystery, for which the title’s ‘excellent beauty’ turns out to be a more resplendent synonym. Setting out its stall at the heart of longstanding questions about the legitimacy of religious…
Ibn Taymiyya's Theological Ethics
Ibn Taymiyya is a thinker often associated with dogmatism, but who also valued moderation and considered himself a defender of the harmony between human reason and religious faith. By closely examining the tenets of his ethical thought, Sophia Vasalou sheds fresh light on Taymiyya's intellectual identity.
Practices of Wonder
Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint
With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim o…
Educating Virtue as a Mastery of Language
Moral Agents and Their Deserts
Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most…
Subject and Body in Baṣran Mu‘tazilism, Or
In this paper, my aim is to offer some comments on the study of Mu‘tazilite kalām , framed around the study of a particular episode in the Mu‘tazilite dispute about man (‘ mā huwa al-insān ’) – a question with a deceptively Aristotelian cadence that is not too difficult to dispel. Within this episode, my focus is on one of the major arguments used by the late Baṣrans to hold up their side of the dispute (a side heavily indebted to Abū Hāshim’s on…
Equal before the Law
This paper sets out to chart the fortunes of one of the most significant moral propositions in Mu'tazilite moral theory — namely, that it is evil to lie, and it is evil irrespective of the consequences of so doing. The reasons which promote this principle to significance relate to the broader context of Mu'tazilite theological orientation, which aims to vindicate God's justice through demonstrating that moral value does not derive from revelation…
The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur'an
This paper aims at presenting a brief survey of the background of the doctrine of the inimitability of the Qur'an (i c jāz) and the various lines along which the thesis was argued, as well as examining in greater detail the ideas of certain leading voices in the field. At the core of the doctrine are the verses of the Qur'an which issue a challenge (taḥaddī) to unbelievers to attempt to bring forth its like; their failure to do so must surely att…
Moral Agents and Their Deserts
Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most…
Educating Virtue as a Mastery of Language
The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur'an
This paper aims at presenting a brief survey of the background of the doctrine of the inimitability of the Qur'an (i c jāz) and the various lines along which the thesis was argued, as well as examining in greater detail the ideas of certain leading voices in the field. At the core of the doctrine are the verses of the Qur'an which issue a challenge (taḥaddī) to unbelievers to attempt to bring forth its like; their failure to do so must surely att…
Equal before the Law
This paper sets out to chart the fortunes of one of the most significant moral propositions in Mu'tazilite moral theory — namely, that it is evil to lie, and it is evil irrespective of the consequences of so doing. The reasons which promote this principle to significance relate to the broader context of Mu'tazilite theological orientation, which aims to vindicate God's justice through demonstrating that moral value does not derive from revelation…
Subject and Body in Baṣran Mu‘tazilism, Or
In this paper, my aim is to offer some comments on the study of Mu‘tazilite kalām , framed around the study of a particular episode in the Mu‘tazilite dispute about man (‘ mā huwa al-insān ’) – a question with a deceptively Aristotelian cadence that is not too difficult to dispel. Within this episode, my focus is on one of the major arguments used by the late Baṣrans to hold up their side of the dispute (a side heavily indebted to Abū Hāshim’s on…
Moral Agents and Their Deserts
Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most…
Educating Virtue as a Mastery of Language
Practices of Wonder
Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint
With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim o…
Ibn Taymiyya's Theological Ethics
Ibn Taymiyya is a thinker often associated with dogmatism, but who also valued moderation and considered himself a defender of the harmony between human reason and religious faith. By closely examining the tenets of his ethical thought, Sophia Vasalou sheds fresh light on Taymiyya's intellectual identity.
An Ancient Virtue and Its Heirs
This essay examines the reception of the ancient virtue of greatness of soul (or magnanimity) in the Arabic tradition, touching on a range of figures but focusing especially on Miskawayh and even more concertedly on al‐Ghazālī. Influenced by a number of Greek ethical texts available in Arabic translation, both of these thinkers incorporate greatness of soul into their classifications of the virtues and the vices. Yet a closer scrutiny raises ques…
Greatness of Spirit
In this paper, my aim is to present an unexplored aspect of the Arabic ethical tradition—greatness of spirit—and to assess its philosophical merit. As philosophers in this tradition approach it, greatness of spirit is essentially a virtue of moral aspiration. I consider two construals of the virtue, one as a second-order virtue, another as a virtue whose closest cousin is neo-Aristotelian emulousness. It is the latter that enables us to pick out …
Excellent Beauty
Anyone who follows the debates between religion and science will be instantly baited by the subject of this book and by the seductive terms of its title. This is a book about a well-worn topic which proposes to enter it through a little-worn door, the notion of mystery, for which the title’s ‘excellent beauty’ turns out to be a more resplendent synonym. Setting out its stall at the heart of longstanding questions about the legitimacy of religious…
The Measure of Greatness
Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went…
Measure of Greatness
Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as a philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle's account of human excellence and was accorded equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. It is one of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds. It sparked important intellectual engagements and went on t…
Admiration, Emulation, and the Description of Character
The emotion of admiration has recently captured the interest of philosophers and empirical psychologists, with attention especially focused on its implications for the moral domain. Central to these discussions is the claim that admiration of virtuous exemplars leads us to emulate them. Beginning from this familiar claim, in this paper I take a different approach by focusing on the expressive dimension of this affective experience. George Eliot’s…
Arabic Version of Ṭūsī's Nasirean Ethics
The Arabic Version of Ṭūsī's Nasirean Ethics: With an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By Joep Lameer. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science, vol. 96. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. ix + 550. $189, €136
Ethics as Medicine
The idea that ethics might be fruitfully understood in analogy with, or indeed as a form of, medicine has enjoyed a long and distinguished history. A staple of ancient philosophical thinking, it also achieved wide expression in the Islamic world. This essay explores the role of the medical analogy in the work of the eleventh-century Muslim intellectual Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. Al-Ghazālī’s use of this analogy offers a unique vantage point for approa…
Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Islamic Studies and History (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Medieval and Classical Philosophy (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Islamic Thought and Society Studies (4 works)