Introduction

Contemporary philosophers tend to regard moral and aesthetic value as fundamentally distinct. Yet the idea that the good and the beautiful are related in important ways has had a long and distinguished philosophical history. More recently, there have been growing efforts to return this relationship to the intellectual agenda and to restore credibility to the concept of moral beauty. This section introduces this background and the main aim of the study, which is to broaden the philosophical record by considering the contribution to this topic made by the eleventh-century Muslim theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī.