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The Nasirean Ethics

Akhlaq-i Nasiri

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi·c. 1235 CE·Persian

About this text

The most influential work of ethics in the Persian language, ordering the care of the soul, the household, and the city into a single science of human flourishing. Al-Tusi joins Greek moral philosophy to Islamic thought with the same exactness he brought to the stars.

Man is civic by nature: his perfection cannot be reached in solitude, for he needs cooperation to survive and companions in order to become virtuous. Hence the discipline that studies the household, and the discipline that studies the city, stand beside the discipline of character among the practical branches of philosophy.

Justice is the noblest of the virtues, for it is not one excellence among others but the equilibrium of them all — wisdom, courage, and continence in right proportion, as health is the right proportion of the humours.

Love is the bond of society. Justice, indeed, is needed only where love is absent; for when men love one another, equity comes about of itself, and the judge sits idle.

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