ABSTRACT
This section tackles the interpretive quandary identified in the previous section by exploring three different strategies used by other readers of al-Ghazālī's works as a means of resolving apparent inconsistencies in his oeuvre. One strategy has been to appeal to the chronology of al-Ghazālī's works and postulate changes in his intellectual perspective. A second strategy has been to appeal to the different genres to which al-Ghazālī's works belong and to al-Ghazālī's reflective views about the nature, function, and audience of each genre. A third strategy is to emphasise the need for more dedicated interpretive engagements with al-Ghazālī's works so as to establish the underlying unity of his viewpoints. The first two approaches suffer from limitations applied to the present case. A possible contender that can be partly ranged with the third approach focuses on al-Ghazālī's chief motivations in defending the Ashʿarite meta-ethical view in his theological and legal works. A heuristic distinction between the “morality of right” implicit in theological and legal literature and the “morality of attraction” implicit in virtue literature potentially explains why the Revival's conception of moral beauty might have appeared compatible with these motivations.
