Jun.-Prof.in Feriel Bouhafa

Feriel Bouhafa is a scholar of Arabic/Islamic philosophy with a focus on moral/legal philosophy in medieval thought. After receiving her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 2016, she took fellowships at Harvard Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, the Orient Institute in Beirut, and the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Later, she joined the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge where she served as a lecturer (2017-2020) and was awarded the Pilkington Prize for Teaching Excellence of the University of Cambridge in 2020. She then held a position as senior research associate (2020-2021) at Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge to work on her book in which she interrogates how Muslim thinkers (Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes) have articulated their ideas on the epistemological and ontological roots of moral principles, especially in their logical writings. Since October 2021,  She has been appointed as the junior professor for Islamic and Arabic studies (tenure track) at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

Manuscript and edited issues

• Guest editor of the special issue “Towards  New Perspectives in Ethics in Islam: Casuistry, Contingency, and Ambiguity,” The Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies,  Vol. 21 (2021)“
• Natural Justice under the Scope of Rhetoric: The Written and the Unwritten Laws in Ibn Rushd’s Political and Legal Philosophy,” 2016, (Dissertation, Georgetown University, published online)
• Guest editor of the special issue “The Conceptual Ground of Good and Evil in Islamic Discourse: A Fecund Domain For Ethical Reflections,” Journal of Islamic Ethics, Brill. (submitted).
• Ibn Rushd’s Moral Philosophy.(Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming).

Articles and Book chapters

• “Averroes’ corrective philosophy of law,” in Interpreting Averroes, eds. Peter Adamson and Matteo Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Peer-reviewed.
• “Rhetoric in the court: Averroes on testimonial witnessing and oaths,” in L'histoire des commentaires à la Rhétorique d'Aristote, ed. Frédérique Woerther (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Peer-reviewed.  
• “Ethics and fiqh in Farabi’s philosophy,” in Philosophy and Islamic jurisprudence in the Islamic World, ed. Peter Adamson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). Peer-reviewed.
• “After Adam: Ibn ‘Aqīl on language origin, change, and expansion,” in Philosophy and Language in the Islamic World, ed. Nadja Germann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). Peer-reviewed.
•  “The Dialectics of Ethics: Moral Ontology and Epistemology in Arabic Philosophy,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21 (2021)
• “Towards  New Perspectives in Ethics in Islam: Introduction,” ed. Feriel Bouhafa, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21 (2021). Peer-reviewed.
• “Ethical Norms between Law, Virtue, and Logic: the Written and Unwritten Laws in Avicenna’s Philosophy” in Feschrift for Maroun Aouad, eds. Jawdat Jabour and Frédérique Woerther (Leiden: Brill, in print).
• “Beyond Moral Objectivism: the Diversity of Moral Theories in Arabic/ Islamic Philosophy,” Proceedings of the Second International Philosophy Conference in Abu Dhabi in February 2024 (in print).