Negotiating Authority and Emotion: A Rhetorical-Stylistic Analysis of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Al-Ghazali’s The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Abstract

One of the most influential works in the Islamic intellectual tradition, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-Dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences, 1095-1106 CE) by Al-Ghazali has been given little attention as a rhetorical artefact. This paper fills that gap through a rhetorical-stylistic analysis of the Iḥyāʾ, exploring the ways Al-Ghazali appeals to the classical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to negotiate the power, induce spiritual change, and authorise the unification of Islamic law (sharīʿa) with mystical interiority (ḥaqīqa). Based on a purposive corpus of passages in the khuhtba (preface), the Book of Knowledge, the Book of the Wonders of the Heart, and the Book of Remembrance of Death, the analysis reveals that Al-Ghazali develops a three-part persuasive structure where authority is asserted and exercised simultaneously; emotive appeals are made using eschatological imagery and rhymed prose. Importantly, the three appeals do not operate independently, e.g. Quranic citation as such is at the same time an intertextual ethos, a communal logos, and an affective pathos. Placing its results in the context of both Aristotelian rhetoric theory and the native Arabic balagha, the paper argues that the Iḥyāʾ is a kind of integrated rhetoric that challenges strictly linear approaches to persuasion and rhetoric, and the stylistics of devotional prose.