THE PATH TO HAPPINESS IN AL-FARABI AND AL-GHAZALI THROUGH VIRTUE AND SPIRITUAL PERFECTION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article compares Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s accounts of the path toward human happiness. It uses "path" as an interpretive category for examining processes of human perfection, without treating al-Farabi’s philosophical account as identical to the Sufi tariqa. Al-Farabi’s Attainment of Happiness and his account of the virtuous city are examined in relation to intellectual and practical virtue, education, and social life. Al-Ghazali’s Persian Kimiya-yi saʿadat is considered through its themes of self-knowledge, knowledge of God, moral discipline, and the afterlife. The study applies hermeneutic, comparative-historical, and conceptual analysis. It argues that both thinkers understand happiness as a telos requiring knowledge and cultivated action, while assigning different weight to civic-political formation and inward spiritual discipline. The comparison offers a historically cautious framework for relating the dissertation’s study of "the path" in Arabic-Muslim philosophy and Sufism to al-Farabi’s thought.