The Social Political Economy according to Ghazali’s Peripatetic Thought: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

The articulation of an epistemologically premised, conceptual, consistent, and applied worldview of unified interrelationships between God, self, the world-system with its details, and the Hereafter describes Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī peripatetic worldview. This worldview can also be thought of as the cardinal model of the Islamic worldview as premised on its most central and indispensable epistemic foundation of unity of God and the unification of the learning world-system by the evolutionary learning on unity of knowledge. These elements of Ghazali's peripatetic worldview are used to configure the social political economy by implication and study of his works. The model of the social political economy is established by primordial reference to Ghazali's thought, written works, and by implication arising from these works. Besides, a comparative study of the literature introduces Ghazali's worldview to contemporary meanings in the areas of sustainable development, money, finance and real economy, individual and social preference formation, individual rational choice and social choice, and the objective criterion surrounding social wellbeing contra social welfare concept in the economic literature. A theory of endogenous ethics is derived. Through this entire investigative study Ghazali's thought is found to be profoundly current today as it was when he thought and wrote so profoundly. Because of the objective based on the Islamic construct of the moral and social elements of political economy the paper remains focused on three selective works only of Imam Ghazali in comparative perspectives of modern thinkers in political economy.