Culpable Ignorance and Moral Responsibility in the Thought of Ghazālī and Zimmerman

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی

نویسندگان

1 دانشجوی دکتری فلسفه اخلاق دانشگاه قم

2 دانشیار گروه اخلاق، دانشکده الهیات و معارف اسلامی، دانشگاه قم

10.22091/jptr.2026.14548.3434

چکیده

This paper addresses a key problem in moral philosophy: Can ignorance be morally attributable when it is not directly voluntary but results from prior omissions within the agent’s control? To answer this question, the study adopts a comparative and interpretive reading of al-Ghazālī’s moral psychology and Michael Zimmerman’s analytic account of responsibility. It specifically examines al-Ghazālī’s analysis of khawāṭir (involuntary suggestions) and the ethical necessity of murāqaba (vigilance), his account of heedlessness as a failure of moral self-governance, and Zimmerman’s tracing strategy, which attributes responsibility for ignorant wrongdoing to earlier failures of epistemic duty. The paper first clarifies the conceptual problem of ignorant wrongdoing, then compares key elements drawn from al-Ghazālī’s moral psychology of vigilance with corresponding elements in Zimmerman’s framework of responsibility, and finally analyzes tracing as a model of indirect responsibility. It argues that although ignorance as an occurrent mental state is not directly imputable, it becomes culpable when traceable to prior controllable omissions. By demonstrating a structural convergence between al-Ghazālī’s account of vigilance and Zimmerman’s tracing condition, the paper concludes that ignorance is indirectly voluntary in a morally significant sense and is thus central to understanding moral agency and responsibility.

کلیدواژه‌ها

موضوعات

عنوان مقاله [English]

Culpable Ignorance and Moral Responsibility in the Thought of Ghazālī and Zimmerman

نویسندگان [English]

  • Elahe Sadeqian 1
  • Ahmad Fazeli 2
1 PhD Student in Moral Philosophy, Department of Ethics, University of Qom, Qom, Iran.
2 Associate Professor, Department of Ethics, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
چکیده [English]

This paper addresses a key problem in moral philosophy: Can ignorance be morally attributable when it is not directly voluntary but results from prior omissions within the agent’s control? To answer this question, the study adopts a comparative and interpretive reading of al-Ghazālī’s moral psychology and Michael Zimmerman’s analytic account of responsibility. It specifically examines al-Ghazālī’s analysis of khawāṭir (involuntary suggestions) and the ethical necessity of murāqaba (vigilance), his account of heedlessness as a failure of moral self-governance, and Zimmerman’s tracing strategy, which attributes responsibility for ignorant wrongdoing to earlier failures of epistemic duty. The paper first clarifies the conceptual problem of ignorant wrongdoing, then compares key elements drawn from al-Ghazālī’s moral psychology of vigilance with corresponding elements in Zimmerman’s framework of responsibility, and finally analyzes tracing as a model of indirect responsibility. It argues that although ignorance as an occurrent mental state is not directly imputable, it becomes culpable when traceable to prior controllable omissions. By demonstrating a structural convergence between al-Ghazālī’s account of vigilance and Zimmerman’s tracing condition, the paper concludes that ignorance is indirectly voluntary in a morally significant sense and is thus central to understanding moral agency and responsibility.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • culpable ignorance
  • moral responsibility
  • khawāṭir
  • vigilance
  • tracing strategy
ارسال نظر در مورد این مقاله
CAPTCHA Image
پژوهش‌های فلسفی -کلامی

مقالات آماده انتشار، پذیرفته شده
انتشار آنلاین از تاریخ 06 تیر 1405

فایل ها

هم رسانی

ارجاع به این مقاله

آمار