Strengths of virtue and character in the moral thought of Taşköprîzâde Ahmet Efendi

The main purpose of this study is to examine the subject of virtue, character and character strengths, which are the focus of attention again in contemporary philosophy and psychology, in the philosophical studies of Taşköprîzâde. Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman's comprehensive work Character Strengths and Virtues brings a new philosophical-psychological approach to the relationship between virtue and character forces. In this thesis, how virtue, character and character strengths are classified and associated throughout islamic and Ottoman moral studies and in the special context of Taşköprîzâde Ahmet Efendi, the place of this classification in the tradition of Islam and Western philosophy is determined. The classification of basic virtues of Taşköprîzâde overlaps with almost all of the philosophers of Antiquity and medieval Islam and the West, with the exception of Thomas Aquinas. Unlike many of these discussions, it distinguishes in detail the basic virtues, sub-virtues classification and their distinctions of overdoing and understatement, with a distinction similar to the strengths of virtue and character. The similarities and differences between the views of Antiquity, medieval Islamic world, Ottoman world and Taşköprîzâde will be examined as the parts of virtues and sub-virtues in the soul. It has been determined that there are important similarities between the classification of virtue of Taşköprîzâde and the strengths of virtue and character in contemporary psychology. We found that some sub-virtues in the definitions of virtue of Taşköprîzâde made the wrong sampling in the opposite direction when detecting the situations of overdoing and understatement. The findings we made during the thesis were revealed in the conclusion section.