The Gap between Moral knowledge and Moral Action in the View of Qāzi ‘Abd al-Jabbār and Abūhāmid Ghazalī

One of the most important questions in examining human moral action is that why human beings doesn’t sometime act according to their knowledge of good and bad. This subject is known in history of philosophy as the gap between moral knowledge and action. The Mutazelite scholar, Qadi ‘Abd al-Jabbar Hamadani (935-1025), believed that knowing bad action and believing that there is no need to do such action will prevent doing bad action. Therefore, in the first place, this idea is close to that of Socrates who supposed the impossibility of this gap. On the other hand, ‘Abd al-Jabbar believed that full and direct moral knowledge makes no room for free will and thus there is not such knowledge. In the other side, the Asharite scholar, Abu-Hāmid Ghazali Tusi (1058-1111), believed that whenever one can receive special knowledge from God, he can act according to his knowledge. But no one can acquire this knowledge and just can make himself subject to that knowledge. Therefore, we can say that this idea is close to that of Aristotle’s who recognised the possibility of this gap, and saw moral knowledge not being sufficient reason for moral conforming action. Thus, in spite of their different attentions to free will, we can say that they eventually recognised the possibility of this gap. Of cours, their different theological and psychological approaches caused different advises for bridging on this gap.