“A Nominalist Deliverance from Error: On al-Ghazālī’s Concept of Modality.” The Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities: Philosophica 1 (2016): 26–36 (original) (raw)

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

“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.

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali on Intentional Logic, Freedom and Justice

Although al-Ġazālī [Ġazālī] saw himself essentially as a legal theorist, his ‘unifying’ perspective and his systematic search for epistemological and ethical grounds for his legal theory, suggests he was a philosopher in the sense of the term current since the European Enlightenment. Ġazālī’s systematicity rests on the idea of the Aristotelian syllogism, presented as an intensional logic described as a primordial human heuristic capacity, quite separate from the speculative reason of the theologian. Intensional logic provides us with a reflective capacity which is detached from the world it observes, and where meaning becomes contextual. In so far as meaning therefore expresses belief it, rather than knowledge, becomes the driver of action. The search for epistemological objectivity is only possible through an inter-subjective linguistic platform, while the appeal to revelation for ethical guidance results in the central legal concept of consensus. Ġazālī presents this as a concept of synchrony in the light of the fact that the extraction of ethical rules from revelation cannot give us principles that can be said to exist a priori which map revelation to moral action in any unique way. The purpose of this paper is to show how justice is Ġazālī’s central concern, in the sense understood in the modern debates. This means that, reflective equilibrium, the capability approach and human rights can be judged according to Ġazālīan principles. Given the importance of Kantian ethics to modern justice theory, this discussion is grounded however, in a comparison of the notion of consensus with the Categorical Imperative.

Inverting the Void: A Comparison of al-Ghazali and Descartes

In this thesis, I compare the intellectual trajectories of René Descartes (c. 1596 – 1650) and Abū-Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (c. 1058 – 1111). In Part I, I begin by considering their initial skeptical phases, where the two thinkers are at their most similar, philosophically, methodologically and narratively. I argue that while they begin their projects almost identically, especially in their methods and course of argument, they nonetheless differ in crucial respects. I locate the principal difference to be in their particular uses of the dream. While al-Ghazālī uses the dream to doubt reason itself, Descartes uses it merely to doubt sense-perception and particulars. I analyze this difference by drawing distinctions between dream consciousness and waking consciousness, local and global states of illusion, and which position in time each thinker argues from. I conclude Part I by showing how, despite arriving at the same formal, global skeptical conclusion, our two philosophers nonetheless arrive at it in characteristically different ways. In Part II, I consider how the two thinkers attempt to defeat skepticism. I pay particular attention to their epistemological, phenomenological and metaphysical claims, and their negotiations between reason, experience and the supra-rational. In virtue of v comparing their parallel journeys out of skepticism’s void, I am able to argue that the substantive content of their skeptical phases is integral to their positive conclusions. I show that their positive conclusions are direct inversions of those early skeptical structures. More generally, I argue that skepticism –– to its own demise –– is never empty of content.

Al-Ghazali on Power, Causation, and'Acquisition

Philosophy East and West, 2007

It is a fundamental doctrine of the Abrahamic religions, following from the belief in God as the creator, that He is the primary cause of all natural phenomena. Some, however, have gone further, to claim that God is the only cause. Consequently, there are no genuine created, or secondary, causes. The Western tradition has coined the term 'occasionalism' for this doctrine, according to which all apparent instances of secondary causation are just that-instances of merely apparent, or occasional, causation. The idea behind this term, apparently, is that when a natural event is believed to have been caused by another, it is really only the case that it occurred on the occasion of the other. The earliest articulation of the idea behind occasionalism might be the one that emerged in the early days of Islamic theology, as a tenet of the Asharite school of kalam. Possibly the most sophisticated (and certainly the most famous) defender of this doctrine emerged in the eleventh century in the person of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. There has been some controversy as to whether al-Ghazali did, in fact, espouse occasionalism. L. E. Goodman and Ilai Alon, for example, have both contended that al-Ghazali either rejected or compromised Asharite occasionalism in the course of the seventeenth discussion of the Tahā fut al-Falā sifa (Incoherence of the philosophers). 1 Michael Marmura disagrees, however, contending that the passages in question merely represent a dialectical move of granting certain premises for the sake of argument, and that this is clear on a broader reading of al-Ghazali. 2 In Al-Iqtişā d fi al-I'tiqā d (Moderation in belief), for example, at the end of his chapter on divine power, al-Ghazali writes: You have known from the sum of this that all temporal events, their substances and accidents, those occurring in the entities of the animate and the inanimate, come about through the power of God, exalted be He. He alone holds the sole prerogative of inventing them. No created thing comes about through another [created thing]. Rather, all come about through [divine] power. 3 Perhaps an exclusive focus on the Tahā fut results from the presumption that it alone would contain any of al-Ghazali's philosophically relevant ideas. Some amount of clumsiness on this topic has also been the consequence of vaguely defined terms-asking, for example, whether al-Ghazali denied causality without having articulated what 'causality' or its denial amount to in this case. This explains the common view, expressed by Stephen Riker, among others, that David Hume is similar to al-Ghazali in that he ''also denied necessary causality.'' 4 But, as Goerge

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...