The Possibility of Changing Temperament in Ghazali and Dawani's View

Moral teachings always constitute a great part of the religious and celestial books. A special attention to moral self-edification and human high values in those texts demonstrates the importance and high status of morality in religions. Accordingly, the philosophers have always guided human beings towards self-edification before learning other sciences. On the other hand, however, this enterprise and enjoying its results and, in other words, acquiring felicity and achieving it – which is the true subject of ethics – are dependent on the "possibility of changing human's temperament". In other words, if human beings are not able to change their temperament, or if human's temperament is immutable due to some reasons, moral teachings and drawing attention to them, and in fact the ethics, will be useless.Accordingly, most Muslim philosophers, who have dealt with moral discussions as well, having stated the priority of ethics over other sciences as well as its benefits, have put forward the possibility of changing one's temperament. Among them, Ghazali and Jalal al-Din Dawani have dealt with this issue by mentioning transmitted and rational reasons and discussing various views and doubts on it.Having explained the views of these two philosophers on the possibility of changing one's temperament, the present article will state and discuss the reasons and evidences put forward by each of them.