As al-Kindī and al-Fārābī, Miskawayh lived and worked in the intellectual milieu of the Abbasid capital of Baghdad,⁴ where engagement with Greek culture as well as Christian philosophy and theology was an everyday occurrence.⁵ In the wake of their geographical expansion, Muslims gained access to the Hellenistic culture still present in Syria, Egypt, and Persia, and the confrontation with Greek philosophy grew out of this opportunity.⁶ The Graeco-Arabic translation movement proved to be of utmost importance for scholarly circles in Baghdad. In the 4th/10th century, Baghdad was a city of scholarship and a center for cultures old and new.⁷ The opportunity to consult scholars who were native speakers of Greek or to access translations and studies of Greek sources bore witness to this.⁸

Miskawayh’s work is consistently praised in Muslim research literature. In certain Islamic traditions, he is even revered as the “third teacher” – after Aristotle and al-Fārābī.⁹ According to this view, Miskawayh’s religious-philosophical synthesis evinces a number of original qualities that distinguish his work from other works written in a similar context. Such traditions argue that, on the one hand, the disparate claims of Islamic thought and philosophy are not decided in favor of one or the other discipline; instead, the “collision”¹⁰ of the two value systems is moderated and brought into balance through the employment of reason.¹¹

Miskawayh lived and worked in an environment that was not only regarded as a center of Islamic scholarship, but also indelibly marked by the work of Christian philosophers, translators, and authors.¹² Richard Walzer speaks of a school of Christian philosophy which established itself in Baghdad primarily in the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries.¹³ The Christian scholar Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 260/873), for example, was not only heavily involved in the translation of Greek works into Arabic, but his work also exerted a strong influence on later philosophical teachings.¹⁴ Accordingly, intra-Christian debates also played an important role in the emergence and development of Islamic thought.¹⁵ Miskawayh’s Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq, the first systematic treatise on Islamic moral philosophy, is similar to the Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq written by Yaḥyā b. ʿAdīy (d. ca. 363/974), a Christian philosopher from Baghdad and al-Fārābī’s student.¹⁶ The two works share not only their title, but also aspects of their structure and content.¹⁷

Miskawayh’s work was not only influenced by philosophy, but also by the cross-cultural learning environment in which he lived. It is defined not by clear cut differentiations between disciplines and modes of debate, but rather through the innovative and creative, at times highly aesthetic, employment of language.¹⁸ Many Muslim philosophers (falāsifa) in the Middle Ages, for instance, used Ṣūfī language to introduce their unconventional, rationalist ideas under the protection of an extant linguistic culture.¹⁹ In Miskawayh’s case, however, this is not self-evident; an influence is assumed based on comparable language and content.²⁰ Traces of Ṣūfī sources are discernible and believed to have left a lasting imprint, particularly on Miskawayh’s understanding of love.²¹ The connection between Islamic moral doctrine and Ṣūfism can be traced back to Iḫwān al-Safā (The Brethren of Purity). Miskawayh, however, does not stand in this tradition. Rather, his moral philosophy is practice-oriented and intended to serve as a concrete guide. It is not proximity to Ṣūfism, but instead parallels with ethical debates in Greek philosophy that are obvious here. Only with the work of al-Ghazālī would Ṣūfism find its way into ethical philosophical debates.²²

As was the case with many of his contemporaries, Miskawayh was invested in both a political and an academic career. Miskawayh was consecutively in the service of the viziers Abū Muḥammad al-Muhallabī, Abū l-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAmīd, and the latter’s son Abū l-Fatḥ Dhū l-Kifāyatayn, the monarchs ʿAḍud al-Dawla and Ṣamṣām al-Dawla, then served at the court in Rayy under the Buyids, a Shīʿī ruling dynasty in Baghdad, working in various administrative and advisory capacities.²³ His duties as a librarian and secretary at the Buyid court provided him with access to an array of philosophical works and he also actively engaged in discussions with other intellectuals and learned circles.²⁴ Miskawayh had contact with a number of well-known philosophers of his time, namely Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī al-Manṭīqī, Al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār ibn al-ḫammār, Abū l-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmirī, Ibn Sīnā, and Abū Ḥayyān at-Tawḥīdī.²⁵

Greek philosophy exerted a formative influence on Miskawayh’s thinking. Ancient philosophy inspired the development of new fields of knowledge, which over the course of Islamic intellectual history came to enjoy a certain semi-independent status and made a substantial contribution to the civilizational development of Muslim societies. The influence of Greek thought could be found in all fields of Muslim scholarship. Yet this cannot be described as simply a takeover; it is instead a systematic appropriation – understood here as the ongoing creative and innovative development of knowledge and culture.²⁶ This process was not linear. Sometimes the recipients of texts which had been translated into Arabic were overwhelmed, struggling with the dense structure of the arguments. The reception of Greek philosophy in Islamic thought is the result of a multi-generational effort.²⁷ It is therefore not surprising that, in Islamic intellectual history, the culture of philosophizing was closely tied to the reception of ancient Greek philosophy. The study of Aristotelian texts in particular lies at the heart of early Islamic philosophy. It is important to highlight, however, that Muslim philosophers did not “find an Aristotle pure and undiluted, but an Aristotle commented upon, re-interpreted and rewritten by a millennium of philosophical tradition.”²⁸ The philosophical tradition referred to here is the so-called Neo-Platonic line of reasoning, which had been the prevailing school of Greek philosophy since its founding in the 3rd century by Plotinus (d. 270). According to Neo-Platonism, philosophy was perceived essentially as a systematization of Plato’s philosophy. Aristotelian philosophy, on the other hand, was perceived in this context as an introductory study to prepare the student for the “divine” teachings of Plato. This sort of Aristotelian philosophy, transmitted as a product of the late ancient commentary tradition, was subsequently comprehensively interpreted and reworked by Ibn Sīnā.²⁹ The resulting synthesis, though broadly Aristotelian in outlook and structure, has come to be known as the Avicennian tradition (derived from Avicenna, the name under which Ibn Sīnā became known in Latin Europe). Subsequent Muslim thinkers built their works on Ibn Sīnā, not Aristotle.³⁰ Although Miskawayh is not believed to have influenced later generations of philosophers to the same extent as Ibn Sīnā did,³¹ one can, nevertheless, identify him as another source of Aristotelian philosophy in the Islamic world.

In Miskawayh’s case, it is striking how strongly Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics influenced his work in different phases.³² Books three, four, and five of Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq – on the themes of happiness, justice, and friendship – are based on books one, five, eight, nine, and ten of the Nicomachean Ethics.³³ The subsequent analysis of this book will consist of a source-critical examination of the text of Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq. It is important to ascertain in which cases Miskawayh followed the philosophical ideas and in which cases he deviated from them – and of course, on what grounds.

To answer these questions, a full view of the author is necessary. How did Miskawayh see and classify himself? What were his beliefs, his background, and his worldview? At the same time, historical conditions that forged both constraints and opportunities, shaping his work, should be interrogated. What can be said about the source material available to him on the one hand, and what he has made of it on the other? These questions can only be clarified if Miskawayh’s work is thoroughly analyzed by looking at how he utilized and reshaped the Greek models, and how this procedure relates to comparable contemporary projects.