An Analytical Study of the Quiddity of Virtue from the Viewpoints of Aristotle and Ibn Meskuye

The discussion of the views of Aristotle and Ibn Miskawayh, two ethics philosophers from Greece and the Muslim world, is important because they are some of the first to deal with to the ethics of virtue. Therefore, the first step in knowing the ethics of virtue from their point of view is to examine the quiddity of virtue from the perspective of these two great thinkers. However, what is noticed in the study of the quiddity of virtue from their perspective is their commonality in some of the concepts, such as the importance of reasoning and the inclusion of the middle-term in their definitions, despite their difference in explaining the middle-term and its quiddity. The other difference concerns their specifics definitions because each of them have a certain definition of virtue. Other points include the difference between their views on the soul and its divisions, the extent of the influence of Greek virtue ethics on the Islamic virtue ethics, and the influence of Plato and Aristotle on Ibn Miskawayh. Using the descriptive- analytical method, the present paper deals with extracting, comparing and contrasting the different aspects of the definition of virtue in the discussions of these two philosophers.