NDPR Sophia Vasalou Al-Ghazālī & the Ideal of Godlikeness

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.02.5 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Sophia Vasalou, Al-Ghazālī & the Ideal of Godlikeness, Oxford University Press, 2025, 224pp., $100.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780198912446.

Reviewed by Janne Mattila, University of Helsinki

Virtue ethics typically provides no decision algorithm to determine a right action. Instead of rules or principles, we have the claim that a good act is the one a virtuous person would characteristically choose. Moral exemplars therefore play a prominent role; exemplarist virtue ethics even makes them the sole criteria for goodness. If we accept that God is a perfectly good being, God should be the ultimate moral exemplar. God might also be the strangest, and, arguably, the most unattainable, model for morality. Vasalou’s book presents a nuanced exploration of the divine moral exemplar, not only in the thought of...