Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical
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This page intentionally left blank Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical Theology Fr ank Griffel 2009
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Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Frank Griffel Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Griffel, Frank, 1965– Al-Ghazali’s philosophical theology / Frank Griffel.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-533162-2
1. Ghazzali, 1058–1111. 2. Islamic cosmology. 3. Philosophy, Islamic. I. Title. B753.G34G75 2009
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper per Magda Lena e Tanya La gloria di colui che tutto move per l’universo penetra, e risplende in una parte più e meno altrove. —Dante, Paradiso , 1.1–3 This page intentionally left blank Contents Timetable , xi Introduction , 3 1. A Life between Public and Private Instruction: Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Biography , 19 The Main Sources for al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Biography , 21 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Date of Birth: Around 448/1056 , 23 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Early Years and His Education , 25 Becoming a Famous Jurist and Theologian , 31 Leaving Baghdad, Traveling in Syria and the Hijaz, and Returning to Khorasan , 40 The Ideal of a Secluded Life—His Last Years in Khorasan , 49 2. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Most Infl uential Students and Early Followers , 61 Abu
¯ Bakr ibn al- ¶Arabı¯ (d. 543/1148) , 62 Ibn al- ¶Arabı¯’s First Report of His Meeting with al-Ghaza¯lı¯ , 65 Ibn al- ¶Arabı¯’s Second Report of His Meeting with al-Ghaza¯lı¯ , 66 As ¶ad al-Mayhanı¯ (d. 523/1130 or 527/1132–33) , 71 Mu .hammad ibn Ya.hya¯ al-Janzı¯ (d. 549/1154) , 74 Ibn Tu
¯mart (d. 524/1130) , 77 ¶Ayn al-Qud.a¯t al-Hamadha¯nı¯ (d. 525/1131) , 81 The Anonymous Author of The Lion and the Diver ( al-Asad wa-l-ghawwa¯s. ) , 87 v i i i c on t e n t s 3. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ on the Role of falsafa in Islam , 97 The Refutation of the fala¯sifa in the Incoherence ( Taha¯fut ) , 98 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s fatwa¯ against Three Teachings of the fala¯sifa , 101 Unbelief and Apostasy , 103 The Decisive Criterion ( Fays.al al-tafriqa ) , 105 4. The Reconciliation of Reason and Revelation through the “Rule of Interpretation” ( Qa¯nu ¯n al-ta 7wı¯l ) , 111 Three Different Types of Passages in Revelation , 115 A Dispute about al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Approach: Ibn Ghayla¯n versus Fakhr al-Dı¯n al-Ra¯zı¯ , 116 Demonstrative Knowledge ( burha¯n ) and Its Opposite: Emulation of Authorities ( taqlı¯d ) , 120 5. Cosmology in Early Islam: Developments That Led to al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Incoherence of the Philosophers , 123 Ash ¶arite Occasionalism in the Generations before al-Ghaza¯lı¯ , 124 Secondary Causes in Ash ¶arite Theology , 128 The fala¯sifa ’s View of Creation by Means of Secondary Causality , 133 The fala¯sifa ’s View That This World Is Necessary , 141 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Treatment of Causality in MS London, Or. 3126 , 143 6. The Seventeenth Discussion of The Incoherence of the Philosophers , 147 The First Position: Observation Does Not Establish Causal Connections , 150 The First Approach of the Second Position: How the Natural Sciences Are Possible Even in an Occasionalist Universe , 153 The Second Approach of the Second Position: An Immanent Explanation of Miracles , 156 Overcoming Occasionalism: The Third Position , 157 Julian Obermann’s “Subjectivist” Interpretation of the Seventeenth Discussion , 160 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Critique of Avicenna’s Conception of the Modalities , 162 The Different Conceptions of the Modalities in falsafa and kala¯m , 167 What Does al-Ghaza¯lı¯ Mean When He Claims That Causal Connections Are Not Necessary? , 172 7. Knowledge of Causal Connection Is Necessary , 175 The Dispute over al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Cosmology , 179 Five Conditions for Cosmological Explanations in the Incoherence , 183 Determination by an Unchanging Divine Foreknowledge , 187 Divine Foreknowledge in the Revival of Religious Sciences , 190 Prophetical Miracles and the Unchanging Nature of God’s Habit , 194 Necessary Knowledge in an Occasionalist Universe , 201 c on t e n t s i x
Concomitant Events and Rational Judgments , 204 Experience ( tajriba ) in Avicenna and in al-Ghaza¯lı¯ , 208 8. Causes and Effects in The Revival of the Religious Sciences , 215 The Creation of Human Acts , 216 The Conditional Dependence of God’s Actions , 222 The Conditions of a Creation That Is the Best of All Possible Creations , 225 The Necessity of the Conditions in God’s Creation , 231 9. Cosmology in Works Written after The Revival , 235 God’s Creation as an Apparatus: The Simile of the Water Clock , 236 Cosmology in The Highest Goal in Explaining the Beautiful Names of God , 242 The Niche of Lights : The Philosophers’ God as the First Created Being , 245 The Cosmology of the “Fourth Group” in the Veil Section of The Niche of Lights , 253 An Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite Infl uence on the Cosmology in the Veil Section? , 260 Final Doubts about Cosmology: Restraining the Ordinary People ( Ilja¯m al- ¶awa¯mm ) , 265 Conclusion , 275 Notes , 287 Bibliography , 361 General Index , 395 Index of Works by al-Ghaza¯lı¯, 403 Index of Manuscripts, 405 Index of Verses in the Qur’an, 407
This page intentionally left blank Timetable 445/1053 The persecution of Ash ¶arites in Khorasan (in north-east Iran) begins. Al-Juwaynı¯ emigrates to the Hijaz; Abu ¯ l-Qa¯sim al-Qushayrı¯ is incarcerated in Nishapur, the capital of Khorasan. Circa 448/1056 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ is born in T.a¯bara¯n, one of two major towns in the district of T.u¯s in northeast Iran. 455/1063 The death of Sultan Toghril-Bey ends the threat of persecution for the Ash ¶arites in Khorasan. Alp Arslan becomes his successor; his vizier Niz.a¯m al-Mulk supports Ash ¶arism. Al-Juwaynı¯ returns to Nishapur and becomes head teacher at the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa. Circa 461/1069 At age thirteen, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ begins his “plunge into the sea of religious sciences.” After studying with local teachers in T.u¯s, he enters the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa in Nishapur and studies with al-Juwaynı¯. 465/1072 Alp Arslan is assassinated; his son Maliksha¯h becomes sultan; Niz.a¯m al- Mulk becomes an even more powerful vizier. According to a statement in one of al-Ghaza¯lı¯ letters, it was at this time that he joins the service of Maliksha¯h. x i i t im e table Circa 473/1080 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ composes his fi rst book, The Sifted ( al-
478/1085 Al-Juwaynı¯ dies in Nishapur. Now or sometime earlier, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ joins the entourage ( mu ¶askar ) of Niz.a¯m al-Mulk. He spends most of his time in the Seljuq capital Isfahan. Juma¯da I 484 / July 1091 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrives in Baghdad from Isfahan to take his post as head teacher of the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa. Ramad.a¯n 485 / Assassination of Niz.a¯m al-Mulk on the road be- October 1092 tween Isfahan and Baghdad. Shawwa¯l 485 / Death of Maliksha¯h in Baghdad. His succession is November 1092 contested between the supporters of his two minor sons Berk-Yaruq and Ma.hmu¯d, who have different mothers. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ is involved in the negotiations with Terken Kha¯tu ¯n, a Qipchak princess and the mother of Ma.hmu¯d, about the appointment of her son as sultan. Mu.harram 487 / After the death of Ma.hmu¯d and his mother, Terken February 1094 Kha¯tu
¯n, Berk-Yaruq is declared Sultan of the Seljuq Empire. A day after his appointment, the caliph al- Muqtadı¯ dies in Baghdad. His fi fteen-year-old son, al-Mustaz.hir (d. 512/1118), becomes his successor. Mu.harram 488 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ completes work on The Incoherence of the January 1095 Philosophers. Dhu ¯ l-Qa ¶da 488 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ suddenly gives up his post at the Niz.- November 1095 a¯miyya madrasa, departs from Baghdad, and travels to Damascus. Summer 489 / 1096 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ travels from Damascus to Jerusalem. Dhu ¯ l-Qa ¶da 489 / He visits Hebron and vows at the grave of Abraham October– no longer to serve state authorities. From Hebron, November 1096 he joins the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. Dhu
¯ l-.hijja 489 / Pilgrimage to Mecca, later to Medina. November– December 1096
Mu.harram 490 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ returns to Damascus. His host, Abu ¯ January 1097 l-Fat .h Nas.r, had just died. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ stays only a few months and embarks on his return to Baghdad. Juma¯da II 490 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrives in Baghdad. He reads from his May–June 1097 Revival of the Religious Sciences. t im e table x i i i
490/1097 Berk-Yaruq appoints his half brother Sanjar as gov- ernor ( malik ) of Khorasan. He reigns in Khorasan until a few years before his death in 552/1157. Fall of 490 / 1097 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ leaves Baghdad for Khorasan. Dhu ¯ l-.hijja 490 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrives in Khorasan. He establishes a November 1097 madrasa and a kha¯nqa¯h in T.a¯bara¯n-T.u¯s where he teaches numerous students.
497/1104 Berk-Yaruq agrees to a division of power with his half brothers Mu .hammad Tapar and Sanjar. Mu .hammad Tapar becomes ruler of northwestern Persia, the Jazira, and Syria, while Sanjar remains in Khorasan, acknowledging Berk-Yaruk as the su- preme sultan. 498/1105 Death of Berk-Yaruq. Mu .hammad Tapar becomes the supreme sultan in Isfahan. Sanjar remains his governor ( malik ) in Khorasan. Summer 499 / 1106 Under pressure from Sanjar and assurances from his vizier, Fakhr al-Mulk, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ begins to teach at the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa in Nishapur. Mu.harram 500 / Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite agents asassinate Fakhr al-Mulk. September 1106
around 502/1109 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ is summoned before Sanjar and con- fronted with accusations of his adversaries. A short time later, he composes the Persian mirror for princes Council for Kings (Nas.ı¯.hat al-mulu¯k ). Fall of 504 / 1110 After the death of al-Kiya¯ 7 al-Harra¯sı¯ in Baghdad, al- Ghaza¯lı¯ is offered the same position at the Baghdad Niz.a¯miyya that he left fi fteen years earlier. He de- clines in a widely publicized letter. 14 Juma¯da II 505 / Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ dies in his
in T.a¯bara¯n-T.u¯s. 18 December 1111
This page intentionally left blank Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical Theology This page intentionally left blank Introduction Today people both in the West and in the Muslim world think of Islamic civilization as a phenomenon of the past. We assume that like the ancient Egyptian or Roman civilizations, the Islamic civiliza- tion had a “Golden Age,” a period of prosperity and discovery from the second/eighth to the sixth/twelfth centuries that was followed by decline and the rise of another, more innovative civilization. This later civilization is usually referred to as “the West,” a vague term that includes the achievements of Galileo Galilei and Christopher Colum- bus just as much as the development of the personal computer and the Internet search engine. Since the eighteenth century, scholars in the West who have examined the reasons for the end of Islam’s “Golden Age” often focus on the differing roles of philosophy in these two cultures. 1 In the West, philosophy and the production of ra- tional arguments have always been regarded as motors that triggered and accelerated the development of new ideas and technologies. It was assumed, however, that although in the Islamic world philosophy grew tremendously during its Golden Age, later scholars in Muslim societies abandoned the study of philosophy and turned their atten- tion toward religious scholarship. During the nineteenth century, Western researchers of Islam developed a by-now well-established account of the fate of philosophy in Islam, postulating that Islamic civilization became acquainted with the tradition of Greek philosophy during the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, when many philosophical works—most important the writings of Aristotle and their ancient commentaries—were translated into Arabic. These translations triggered the development of a philosophic movement in Islam known in Arabic as falsafa (from the Greek word philosophía ). This movement was not limited to Muslims, and included Christian,
4 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y Jewish, and even some pagan authors. It benefi ted from the open-mindedness and curiosity about other societies that characterizes the early Islamic period. Although falsafa developed in Islamic society, it quickly became subject to the harsh criticism of a conservative group of Muslims. Still, until the fi fth/elev- enth century, the philosophical movement in Islam was able to generate signif- icant support among scholars, literates, and, most important, caliphs and local rulers who patronized their works. During these years, falsafa and its critics existed side-by-side among the numerous intellectual movements of classical Islam. According to the traditional understanding, which dominated Western Islamic studies through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, philosophy ceased to exist in Islam after the sixth/twelfth century. It was as- sumed that some of the instigating factors for its disappearance were political, such as a lack of patronage from local rulers; some of them economical, such as an assumed demise of the city economies after the arrival of nomadic Turks in the mid-fi fth/eleventh century; and some of them educational, such as the beginning of a state-sponsored system of religious seminaries ( madrasa s) that supposedly favored traditionalist religious scholarship and put obstacles to the pursuit of the rational sciences. According to this account, these factors led to the demise of rational science and philosophy under Islam. Tjitze J. de Boer’s History of Philosophy in Islam , published in German in 1901 and in English two years later, was the fi rst textbook on this subject. It ends its presentation—apart from an appendix on the thought of Ibn Khaldu¯n (d. 808/1406)—with Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who died in 595/1198. De Boer re- alized that, after Averroes, there were philosophical teachers and students “by hundreds and by thousands.” Yet these were mostly epitomists—that is, au- thors who only commented on early works without themselves contributing original thoughts—he says, and after Averroes, “philosophy was not permitted to infl uence general culture or the condition of affairs.” 2 In a widely read article of 1916, Ignaz Goldziher analyzed the attitude of Muslim theologians toward the rationalist sciences. He concluded that although there had always been op- position to rational science among the theologians of Islam, after the fi fth/ eleventh century, this opposition manifested itself much more forcefully. In the case of philosophical logics, for instance, he concluded that “from this period on, the study of logic was more or less decisively considered to be part of the category of haram (forbidden).” 3 In an earlier article, Goldziher had already said that with Averroes, the history of philosophy in Islam had come to an end. 4
When new sources and fresh studies corrected Goldziher’s view that the study of logic fell into decay after the fi fth/eleventh century—there was indeed a blossoming of logics in the three subsequent centuries—this traditional view of the fate of philosophy in Islam did not change. In the 1960s, for instance, George Makdisi argued that the main current in Muslim theological thought after the fi fth/eleventh century was represented by conservative traditionalists such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), who opposed falsafa . 5 In a well-received in- troductory textbook on Islam, Jonathan Berkey wrote in 2003 that between the fi fth/eleventh and ninth/fi fteenth centuries, the rational sciences such as phi- in t roduc t ion 5 losophy and logics tended to become marginalized from what he calls “Sunni intellectual mainstream.” 6
The infl uential Muslim theologian al-Ghaza¯lı¯ (d. 505/1111) has always played a leading role in Western attempts to explain the assumed decline of philoso- phy in Islam. In his work The Incoherence of the Philosophers ( Taha¯fut al-fala¯sifa ), al-Ghaza¯lı¯ criticizes twenty teachings of the Muslim philosophers. According to al-Ghaza¯lı¯, three of those twenty teachings not only are unproven but also vi- olate central tenets of Islam that all Muslims have agreed upon. For al-Ghaza¯lı¯, these three teachings mark a departure from Islam. These are the views (1) that the word has no beginning in the past and is not created in time, (2) that God’s knowledge includes only classes of beings (universals) and does not extend to individual beings and their circumstances (particulars), and (3) that after death the souls of humans will never again return into bodies. In these three cases, the teachings of Islam, which are based on revelation, suggest the opposite, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says, and thus overrule the unfounded claims of the Muslim phi- losophers. Those people who actively propagate these three teachings cannot be regarded as Muslims, he says. Rather, they are apostates from Islam and— according to a ruling of Islamic law—subject to the death penalty. 7
coincided with al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s condemnation of 487/1095, or happened within the next three generations, triggered the suggestion that his verdict contrib- uted to or even caused the disappearance of philosophy in Islam. Solomon Munk, author of the fi rst comprehensive history of Arabic and Islamic phi- losophy, set the tone of the debate when in 1844, he wrote that with his In-
recovered in the Orient.” 8 Soon thereafter, Ernest Renan described al-Ghaza¯lı¯ Download 4.03 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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