SOURCE: Hourani, George F. “Ghazālī on the Ethics of Action.” In Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, pp. 135-66. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

In the following excerpt, Hourani analyzes al-Ghazālī's theory that rules for action derive from revelation and cannot be learned through reasoning independently.

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With all the breadth of his interests as a theologian, jurist, logician, educator, Sūfī, critic of philosophy and foe of Isma‘ilism, Ghazālī's central concern throughout his life (a.d. 1058-1111) may fairly be described as an ethical one: right conduct and the purification of the soul by the individual, as means to a harmonious relation with God and the attainment of everlasting joy. This is of course a religious view of ethics, and one believed to have been learned from God through prophetic revelation and associated divine sources accepted in classical Islam.

The present study...