Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī

1058-1111 · Persian · Islamic Theology and Sufism

The search after truth being the aim which I propose to myself, I ought in the first place to ascertain what are the bases of certitude.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) held the most prestigious teaching chair in the Islamic world and walked away from it. Appointed at thirty-three to the Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad by the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk, he lectured to hundreds, wrote against the Ismāʿīlīs at the caliph's request, and mastered the falsafa of al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā thoroughly enough to expound it before attacking it. Then in 1095 he suffered a crisis he describes as physical — he could not speak, could not eat, and doctors told his family the cause was not in the body. He left Baghdad, gave away what he had, and spent eleven…

Topics Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī addresses

• the incoherence of the philosophers
• the twenty discussions
• the eternity of the world
• God's knowledge of particulars
• bodily resurrection
• occasionalism
• fire and cotton
• concomitance and necessity
• the custom of God
• miracles and the absence of natural necessity
• kalām
• falsafa
• the necessary existent
• the temporal origination of the world
• the aims of the philosophers
• logic as an instrument without doctrine
• takfīr and its boundaries
• the Faysal al-Tafriqa
• the Ismāʿīlī doctrine of authoritative teaching
• taqlīd and its collapse
• the crisis at Baghdad
• dhawq
• the limits of demonstrative reason
• the revival of the religious sciences

Questions to put to Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī

The Incoherence of the Philosophers

• Why did you write a book setting out the philosophers' views before attacking them?
• Which of the twenty discussions do you think does the most damage to their system?
• What is wrong with the proof that the world is eternal?
• Why does it matter whether God knows particulars rather than universals only?
• Did you mean to destroy philosophy, or only its claim to demonstration?

Causation and the Custom of God

• When fire meets cotton, what actually burns it?
• If there is no necessary connection between cause and effect, why is the world so regular?
• How does your account of causation make room for miracles?
• What would we lose if we said fire burns by its own nature?
• Does denying necessity in nature make knowledge of the world impossible?

The Crisis and the Search for Certainty

• What made you abandon your chair at Baghdad?
• How did you come to doubt the evidence of the senses and then of reason itself?
• What finally delivered you from doubt, if argument could not?
• What is dhawq, and why can it not be conveyed by teaching?
• Was your withdrawal a failure of nerve or a philosophical necessity?

Takfir and Its Boundaries

• On what three points did you judge the philosophers to be unbelievers?
• Was that a legal ruling or a philosophical one?
• Where do you draw the line between error and unbelief?
• What does the Faysal al-Tafriqa say that your earlier work did not?
• Do you regret the use later made of that judgement?

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

• What was wrong with the religious learning of your day that needed reviving?
• Why treat the vices of the heart as a subject for systematic study?
• What is the relation between outward observance and inward state?
• How should someone begin who wants to purify the heart?
• Why did you write for ordinary believers as well as for scholars?

Reason, Authority and the Sufi Path

• What is the use of logic if it carries no doctrine of its own?
• Why is taqlid — accepting on authority — not enough?
• What did you find wrong in the Ismaili claim to an infallible teacher?
• Can the philosophers' methods serve theology, or do they corrupt it?
• Where does the Sufi path succeed exactly where kalam falls short?

Converse with Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's own writing, cited to the page.