Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 925),

This chapter offers an overview and analysis of an important ethical work by the early thinker Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī (251/865–313/925). In keeping with his main occupation as a medical doctor, this work approaches ethics as “spiritual medicine,” echoing the ancient idea of ethical improvement as a kind of regime the soul. The chapter shows how al-Rāzī drew on Galen in developing this idea, and explores the central idea of the treatise (taken ultimately from Plato, by way of Galen), which is that reason must rule the lower parts of the soul. Consideration is also given to whether the teaching of The Spiritual Medicine can be reconciled with another work of al-Rāzī’s, The Philosophical Life, and with his infamous cosmological theory.