“Al-Ghazālī’s Cosmology in the Veil Section of His Mishkāt al-Anwār.” (original) (raw)
Related papers
Al-Ghazali's Mystico-Philosophical Elucidation on the Verse of Light
Al-Ghazali was born in 1058 AD (450 AH) in or near the city of Tus in Khurasan to a Persian family of modest means, whose members had a reputation for learning and an inclination towards Sufism. His father died when he was young, having entrusted one of his Sufi friends with the education of his two sons. The friend undertook that task until the money bequeathed by the father ran out, whereupon the friend advised the two brothers to enter a madrasah, where they would be afforded. Al-Ghazali appears to have begun his elementary education at approximately age 7, studying Arabic, Persian, the Qur'an and the principles of religion. He went on to intermediate and higher education at a madrasah, where he studied fiqh, tafsīr and hadīth.
Al-Ghazālī’s Moderation in Belief
American Journal of Islam and Society
Al-Ghazali (Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Ghazali,1058-1111) is one of the most important thinkers in the history of Islamic andArabic thought. He lived and wrote at the height of the intellectual ferment ofIslam. Originally from Tus (in modern day Iran), he traveled extensivelythroughout the Muslim world. Al-Ghazali was a leading religious intellectualduring his lifetime; he was a jurist (faqīh), a theologian (mutakallim), as wellas a Sufi. Three of his most famous works are: The Incoherence of the Philosophers,Deliverer from Error, and Revivification of the Religious Sciences. Thefirst work contains al-Ghazali’s famous and devastating attack on philosophy,and while it deals in large measure with theology and theological claims, it isprincipally a refutative work. In this book, al-Ghazali investigates philosophicaldoctrines and criticizes philosophers for holding many heretical opinions,especially for three blasphemous views that are deserving of death: the beliefin th...
Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies
This paper discusses the question of an Ismaʿili influence within the cosmology of al-Ghazālī and argues that al-Ghazālī appropriated certain features of the Ismaʿili cosmology from the Persian Ismaʿili thought of Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 481/1088). After introducing Nāṣir-i Khusraw and his Ismaʿili Neoplatonic cosmology, the paper first examines some of the Ismaʿili doctrinal material presented in al-Ghazālī’s anti-Ismaʿili polemical work Faḍāʾiḥ al-bāṭiniyya—concerning cosmology, revelation, and taʾwīl—and traces this content back to Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s works, arguing that Nāṣir-i Khusraw was one of the sources for al-Ghazālī’s knowledge of Ismaʿili doctrines. Secondly, the paper highlights a number of commonalities and shared terminology between the cosmology, epistemology, and doctrine of prophecy in al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār (‘The Niche of Lights’) and the Ismaʿili doctrines of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, revealing how the two thinkers understand the cosmos as containing precisely ‘two worlds’, emphasize the correspondence (muwāzana) between the spiritual and physical realms, and conceive the faculty of prophecy as a higher supra-intellectual spirit (rūḥ) or ‘eye’ of perception. Thirdly, the paper revisits the scholarly debate concerning al-Ghazālī’s higher theology and cosmology in the Veils section of the Mishkāt. It demonstrates that al-Ghazālī’s worldview, which places the transcendent God above the First Mover of the Aristotelians and the Necessary Existent of the falāsifa using the Qurʾānic symbolism of Moon and Sun worship, has been appropriated from Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Ismaʿili Neoplatonic cosmology.
“Taqlīd of the Philosophers. Al-Ghazālī’s Initial Accusation In the Tahāfut.”
This paper tries to answer the question of whether there is an overall line of argument in al-Ghazali’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa. The book is divided into twenty discussions, most of which could stand by themselves and are not explicitly connected to an overall aim of the book. The book, however, also has five different “introductions” (singl. “muqaddima”) where al-Ghazali addresses a number of subjects. This paper offers a close reading and analysis of these introductions and concludes that there is indeed an overall strategy in the Tahāfut that is different from being a straightforward “refutation” (radd) or the philosopher’s (falāsifa) teachings. Al-Ghazali identifies two kinds of adversaries, first a group of “vulgar followers” (“jamahir”) of the philosophers, who misunderstand their teachings, believe that the falāsifa offer an alternative to revealed religion, and use their teachings as an excuse to neglect religious duties. Then, there are the philosophers themselves, or “leaders and the heads of the falāsifa,” who do believe in God, divine prophecy, and who abide by the religious law. Yet, through their claim of apodictic or demonstrative knowledge in the field of metaphysics they have led people astray. In his Tahāfut, al-Ghazali aims at addressing this claim of apodeixis or demonstration (Arab. “burhān”) in the metaphysical sciences. While he acknowledges that demonstration is possible in such sciences as geometry, for instance, he denies its possibility in metaphysics. In the twenty discussions, he aims to show that “in [their] metaphysics, they are unable to fulfill apodeixis (burhān) as they have set it out as a condition in their logic.” Thus, al-Ghazali made his “refutation” of the teachings of the falāsifa easy for himself. He does not need to show that their teachings are wrong, he only needs to show that they are not supported by demonstrative arguments.
“The Western Reception of al-Ghazālī’s Cosmology from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century.”
Among subjects of Islamic theology, the cosmology of al-Ghazali has received much attention in the West. Scholars in the Renaissance were familiar with al-Ghazali’s critique of philosophical theories of causality in the 17th discussion of his "Incoherence of the Philosophers" (Tahāfut al-falāsifa). During the first half of the 19th century, when the Western academic study of Islamic theology began, scholars came to the conclusion that in this chapter, al-Ghazali denied the existence of causal connections. That position was connected to an apparent lack of progress in scientific research in the Muslim countries. Ernest Renan (d. 1892), for instances, understood al-Ghazali's critique of philosophical theories of causality as an anti-rationalist, mystically inspired opposition to the natural sciences. This view became immensely influential among Western intellectuals and is still widely held. When al-Ghazali’s "Niche of Lights" (Mishkāt al-anwār) became available during the first decades of the 20th century, Western interpreters understood that at least here al-Ghazali does not deny the existence of causal connections. During much of the 20th century, Western scholars favored an explanation that ascribes two different sets of teaching to al-Ghazali, one esoteric and one exoteric. The last decades of the 20th century saw two very different interpretations of al-Ghazali’s cosmology in the works of Michael E. Marmura and Richard M. Frank. Both rejected that al-Ghazali held exoteric and esoteric views. Marmura explained causal connections as direct actions of God and Frank regarded them as expressions of secondary causality. Their contributions led to the understanding in the West that al-Ghazali did not deny the existence of causal connections and cannot be regarded as an opponent of the natural sciences in Islam. Quite the opposite, he was a champion of the natural sciences and was often quoted as someone opposed to unscientific views of the world.
New Light on the Reception of al-Ghazālī’s Doctrines of the Philosophers (Maqāṣid al-Falāsifa)
In the Age of Averroes: Arabic Philosophy in the Sixth/Twelfth Century, 2011
In the preface to his Maqās . id al-falāsifa (The Doctrines of the Philosophers), 1 Abū H . āmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) explains that this book is intended to act as a prelude to his more in uential work Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). Before putting forth his refutation of many of the philosophers' doctrines and arguments in the latter book, he found it imperative, as he indicates, to expound them to the non-specialist reader. This he does in a concise and neutral manner in the Maqās . id, which he divides into three parts, on logic, metaphysics and physics, respectively. The philosophers' metaphysical doctrines, he writes, are mostly erroneous, their logic mostly correct, whereas their physics contain a mixture of truth and falsehood. Truth, as he indicates in the preface, will be sifted from falsehood elsewhere: 'The erroneousness of [those doctrines] that one ought to deem erroneous will be made clear in the Tahāfut.' 2 A similar point is made in the concluding statement in the Maqās . id: This is all that we had intended to report (nah . kī) concerning [the philosophers'] disciplines of logic, metaphysics and physics, without seeking to sift the good from the bad, or what is true from what is false. After this, we will commence Tahāfut al-falāsifa, so that the falsehood of what is false among these views becomes evident. 3