Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics

CONTENTS......Page 8
PREFACE......Page 10
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 14
1 The Framework: The Mu‘tazilites......Page 18
Ethics as Theology......Page 29
Approaches to the Study of Mu‘tazilite Ethics......Page 43
Moral Values between Rational Knowledge and Revealed Law......Page 55
Rights, Claims, and Desert: The Moral Economy of Huqūq......Page 75
“To Deserve”: Groundwork......Page 84
Justifying Reward and Punishment: The Values of Deserved Treatments......Page 93
Justifying Punishment: The Paradoxical Relations of Desert and Goodness......Page 104
The Causal Efficacy of Moral Values: Between Sabab and ‘Illa......Page 112
The Right to Blame, the Fact of Blame: Views of the Person ab Extra......Page 119
Time and Deserving......Page 133
An Eternity of Punishment: The Basran Justification of Dawām al-‘Iqāb......Page 138
Moral Identity and the Resources of Basran Mu‘tazilite Ontology......Page 149
The Primacy of Revealed Names: Al-Asmā’ wa’l-Ahkām......Page 165
Why Not Dhimma?......Page 169
Resurrection and the Criterion of Identity......Page 174
Accidents and the Formal Reality of Resurrected Beings......Page 186
APPENDIX: Translation from Mānkdīm Shāshdīw, “The Promise and the Threat,” in Sharh al-usul al-khamsa......Page 198
NOTES......Page 214
BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 256
B......Page 264
G......Page 265
K......Page 266
P......Page 267
V......Page 268
Z......Page 269