Le Vie est Plus Belle que les Idees: Existentialist Humanism, Intersubjectivity and Transcendence in the Unified Civic Humanism of Abu 'Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Yaq'ub Miskawayh

Abstract

The dissertation investigates how the three primary works on metaphysics, history, and moral philosophy of Miskawayh, an 11th century Islamic ethicist, can be read in toto as one existential work that exhibits three Sartrean existential properties, namely, the materialization of self, the encountering of self, and the defining of self. My inquiry focuses on how Miskawayh's three works intersect with one another in one existential work with two dominant Islamic humanist themes--intersubjectivity (that is, learning about the other to discover the truth about one's self) and transcendence (that is, one's relationship with divinity). I begin by giving an account of Miskawayh's life in 11th century Baghdad. I then examine how his job as a royal court librarian inspired him as a historian and philosopher. Next, I discuss Miskawayh's contributions to 11th century Islamic humanism and how these contributions led Miskawayh to create a kind of civic humanism that shaped his moral philosophy. Finally, I conclude by arguing that Miskawayh was an Islamic existentialist humanist who anticipated Kierkegaard and Sartre. Traditional Miskawayh scholarship has focused primarily on Miskawayh as an Aristotelian philosopher in the Iranian tradition of political thought and courtly culture. My research goes beyond this notion and shows instead that Miskawayh's philosophy in particular--and Islamic philosophy in general--is not merely derivative of Greek philosophy. Rather, Islamic philosophy possesses and integrates something quite unique and foreign to Greek philosophy, namely, elements of existentialism, theology, metaphysics, mysticism, and humanism.