Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical

the ruler has become too deep for him to stay, and here it is the jackal who 

eventually determines the terms of their relationship. He leaves royal service 

and becomes an ascetic. 

 The appearance of the Seljuq warrior-kings during the mid-fi fth/eleventh 

century brought a new aspect to the age-old confl ict in Islamic civilization be-

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tween those who use the sword as their weapon and those who use the pen. The 

Turk nomads’ military hegemony—today we would say their military dictator-

ship—triggered much refl ection about the mores and the conduct of this new 

type of rulers who, unlike earlier sovereigns, were most often not participants 

in the literary, moral, or theological discourses of their time. Such refl ections 

appear frequently in the Islamic literature of the sixth/twelfth century. The Per-

sian poet Niz.a¯mı¯, for instance, who wrote at the end of that century, includes 

in the fi rst of the fi ve epics of his highly popular  Quintet   ( Khamsah ) a story of 

how an old woman admonished the powerful sultan Sanjar. The poor woman 

who had been wronged by one of Sanjar’s troops approaches his entourage and 

grabs the sultan’s garment (fi gure 2.4).   

figure 2.4 

Sultan Sanjar admonished by an old woman. Miniature illustrating a 

story from Niz.a¯mı¯’s Quintet (Khamsah), attributed to the famous painter Bihza¯d 

(d. 942/1535–36) or his workshop in Herat (Afghanistan) and dated 901/1495–96. 

(MS London, British Library, Or. 6810, fol. 16a).  

 

m os t   in f lue n t i a l   s t u de n t s   a nd   e a r l y   f ol low er s  

9 5

 She complains and accuses Sanjar of neglecting justice ( a¯zarm ), and she 

makes dire predictions about his future. Sanjar sets her admonishments at 

naught, and, according to Niz.a¯mı¯’s implied message, would regret to have 

done so once his own fate had turned and he has fallen into the hands of the 

oppressive Oˇguz Turks. The story ends in Niz.a¯mı¯’s lament that “in our time, 

justice can no longer be found.” 

194

  

 The arrival of the warrior-kings carried with it a new kind of relationship 

between Muslim scholars and political power.  The Lion and the Diver   explores 

these new types of relationships. With regard to this subject, al-Ghaza¯l

ı

¯ was 

an almost unavoidable focus point. He began his career as an infl uential and 

highly visible supporter and advisor of the Seljuq dynasty, yet he ended it in 

the seclusion of his private madrasa and  kha¯nqa¯h   in  T.u¯s after a very vocal dis-

illusionment with those who hold power. The striking parallels between the 

jackal’s biography and the way al-Ghaza¯l

ı

¯ wrote about his own life may indeed 

simply be because of a similar analysis of the historical situation. 

 The widespread appearance of Ghazalian notions in books of the early sixth/

twelfth century should not be surprising. Reading the works of Ibn Ba¯jja, Ibn 

Ghayl

a¯

n al-Balkhı¯, Ibn T.ufayl, Averroes, Shiha¯b al-Dı¯n Yah.ya¯ al-Suhrawardı¯, or 

Ibn al-Jawzı¯ reveals that there is hardly any religious writer of this century who 

does not grapple in one way or another with al-Ghaza¯l

ı

¯’s legacy, and probably 

none who does not refer to him. Al-Ghaza.l

ı

¯ was by far the most infl uential reli-

gious fi gure during the sixth/twelfth century, and he left his traces in all kinds 

of religious writing of this period. 

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 3 

 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ on the Role 

of  falsafa  in Islam 

 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s  Incoherence of the Philosophers   ( Taha¯fut al-fala¯sifa )  marks 

the start of a signifi cant development in medieval philosophy. With 

its publication, the particular Neoplatonic understanding of Aristotle 

that developed in late antiquity and dominated the Middle Ages until 

the fourteenth century began to be challenged by what later became 

known as nominalism. Nominalism is the position that abstract con-

cepts and universals have no independent existence on their own. As 

we will see, many of the arguments used by al-Ghaza¯lı¯ are nominal-

ist. The move toward a nominalist critique of Neoplatonist Aristote-

lianism occurred not only in Arabic and Islamic philosophy but also 

in the Hebrew and, most of all, Latin traditions. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ stands at 

the beginning of this development. 

 In his  Incoherence,   al-Ghaza¯lı¯ critiques twenty teachings of the 

 fala¯sifa , sixteen from their metaphysics and four from their natural 

sciences. He writes in his autobiography that during his time at the 

Baghdad Niz.a¯miyya, he studied the works of the  fala¯sifa  for two years 

before writing his  Incoherence of the Philosophers  in the third year. 

1

  

Most likely apologetic, this account is designed to reject the claim of 

some of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s critics that he had learned  falsafa  before complet-

ing his own religious education. 

2

   The Incoherence of the Philosophers   is 

a masterwork of philosophical literature, perhaps decades in the mak-

ing. Several other texts exist in which al-Ghaza¯lı¯ provides faithful re-

ports of the philosophers’ teachings. At least two of those reports are 

available to us. The fi rst is an untitled and almost complete fragment 

of a long book in which al-Ghaza¯lı¯ copies or paraphrases passages 

from the works of philosophers and produces a comprehensive ac-

count about their teachings in metaphysics. In an earlier publication, 

I described this text and showed that it is, in fact, written by 

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al-Ghaza¯lı¯. 

3

  The second report of the philosophers’ teachings is the  Intentions 

of the Philosophers   ( Maqa¯sid al-fala¯sifa ), an adapted Arabic translation of the 

parts on logics, metaphysics, and the natural sciences in Avicenna’s Persian 

work  Philosophy for   ‘Ala¯’   al-Dawla   ( Da¯nishnamah-yi ‘Ala¯’ı¯ ). 

4

  Earlier scholars as-

sumed that the  Intentions of the Philosophers  was written as a preparatory study 

to his major work, the  Incoherence.  

5

  This contention no longer seems viable. 

 The Intentions of the Philosophers  bears only a very loose connection to the text 

of the  Incoherence . For example, the  Incoherence  and the  Intentions  use different 

terminologies, and the latter presents its material in ways that do not support 

the criticism in the  Incoherence . 

6

    The Intentions of the Philosophers  may have 

been a text that was initially unconnected to the  Incoherence  or was one that 

was generated after the composition of the latter. Only its introduction and 

its brief  explicit  at the end of the book create a connection to the refutation in 

the  Incoherence . 

7

  These parts were almost certainly written (or added) after the 

publication of the  Incoherence . 

8

  

 The Refutation of the  fala¯sifa  in the  Incoherence  ( Taha¯fut ) 

 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ describes  The Incoherence of the Philosophers  as a “refutation” ( radd  ) 

of the philosophical movement. 

9

  This professed stance has contributed to the 

scholarly misconception that he opposed Aristotelianism and rejected its teach-

ings. In reality, his response to  falsafa  was far more complex, even allowing 

him to adopt many of its teachings. By “refutation,” he does not mean the 

plain rejection of the philosophical teachings discussed in that book. It is clear 

that in his  Incoherence,   al-Ghaza¯lı¯ does not set out to prove the falsehood of all 

of—or even of most of—the philosophical teachings discussed there. The great 

majority of its twenty chapters focus on the  fala¯sifa ’s inability to demonstrate 

given elements of their teachings. In a 1924 article, David Z. Baneth reminded 

his readers that al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s criticism of the  fala¯sifa ’s teachings had often been 

overestimated. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s goal is to show that the metaphysics of al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯ 

and Avicenna are “unscientifi c,” as Baneth put it, meaning they are not backed 

by demonstrative proofs. Even unproven positions can still be correct. Whether 

or not these teachings are wrong depends upon a second criterion: only if these 

unproven teachings are incompatible with the literal wording of revelation 

must their truth be rejected. In the fi fth and the ninth chapters, for instance, 

al-Ghaza¯lı¯ attacks the  fala¯sifa ’s proofs for their view that God is one and that 

He cannot have a body. Despite his critiques, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ shares these positions; 

what he attacks are the  fala¯sifa ’s arguments and not their results. He claims 

that these arguments are not demonstrative and do not establish certain knowl-

edge about God’s unity or His incorporeity. Humans do have knowledge about 

these two facts, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says, yet not the kind of knowledge that the philoso-

phers claim. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ also attacks the  fala¯sifa ’s arguments for the existence 

of souls in the heavens and for the incorruptibility of the human soul in the 

afterlife. Other of his works show, however, that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ taught these same 

things. According to Baneth, al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s explicit goal was “to remove these 

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¯   on   t h e   role   of   fa l sa fa   in   is l a m  

9 9

questions from the realm of pure rational knowledge and assign their answer 

to another source of truth, namely revelation.” 

10

  In doing so, the  Incoherence  

follows the technique of  kala¯m  disputations. Any reader of the  Incoherence   is 

struck by its careful composition and the economy of its language. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s 

reports of philosophical teachings are short and precise. His counterarguments 

make productive use of the  kala¯m  technique of “exhaustive investigation and 

disjunction” ( al-sabr wa-l-taqsı¯m ), where the consequences or implications of 

an adversary’s position are fully investigated and individually discussed and, in 

this case, dismissed and refuted one by one. The book’s twenty discussions are 

interspersed with objections and with further rejections, with secondary discus-

sions, and with parallel attempts to convince the reader that alternative expla-

nations to those put forward by the  fala¯sifa  are just as plausible and  tenable. 

 In the twenty detailed and intricate philosophical discussions of the  Inco-

herence,   al-Ghaza¯lı¯ aims to show that none of the arguments supporting the 

twenty convictions fulfi lls the high epistemological standard of demonstration 

( burha¯n ) that the  fala¯sifa  have set for themselves. Rather, the arguments that the 

 fala¯sifa  bring to support these teachings rely upon unproven premises that are 

accepted only among the  fala¯sifa , not established by reason. 

11

  The twenty dis-

cussions of the  Incoherence  are one element in a larger case about the authority 

of revelation. In the thirteenth discussion, for instance, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ maintains 

that when Avicenna argues that God does not know individuals and has knowl-

edge only of the classes of beings, none of the arguments he uses is a demon-

stration. The truth of the opposite position—that God knows  everything  in this 

world—is established in countless passages in the Qur’an and in the propheti-

cal  .hadı¯th . 

 By criticizing a selected number of teachings in the  fala¯sifa ’s  metaphysics 

and the natural sciences, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ aims to make room for the epistemological 

claims of revelation. At the beginning of the  Incoherence,   al-Ghaza¯lı¯ complains 

that a group among the  fala¯sifa  fl atly denies the claims of revelation because it 

believes its way of arguing to be superior to that of the religious scholars who 

accept revelation. 

12

  The claim that their teachings are based on demonstrative 

arguments has been repeated from generation to generation of philosophers, 

leading them to accept this claim as a fact that has passed from teacher to 

student. However, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ maintains that if someone who is not tainted 

by their blind acceptance ( taqlı¯d  ) of the authorities of Aristotle and Plato thor-

oughly investigates the teachings of the  fala¯sifa , he will fi nd that the  fala¯sifa ’s 

arguments do not fulfi ll their own standard for apodictic proofs (singl.  burha¯n ). 

This standard is set in their own books of logic, following the  Organon  of Ar-

istotle. The demonstrative method is most clearly explained in those books of 

the  fala¯sifa ’s works on logics that are equivalent to Aristotle’s  Second Analytics . 

Demonstration relies on the method of syllogistics, which is explained in the 

 First Analytics . In Avicenna’s  Healing   ( al-Shifa¯ 7 ), for instance, the books on logic 

follow Aristotle’s curriculum of studies and have the same titles as those of the 

Stagirite. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ claims that Avicenna’s arguments in his metaphysics do 

not comply with the standard set out in his logical writings. In the introduction 

of the  Incoherence,  he writes: 

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 We will make it plain that in their metaphysical sciences they have 

not been able to fulfi ll the claims laid out in the different parts of the 

[textbook on] logics and in the introduction to it, i.e. what they have 

set down in the  Second Analytics   ( Kita¯b al-Burha¯n ) on the conditions 

for the truth of the premise of a syllogism, and what they have set 

down in the  First Analytics   ( Kita¯b al-Qiya¯s ) on the conditions of the 

syllogism’s fi gures, and the various things they posit in the  Isagoge  

and the  Categories . 

13

  

 In his autobiography, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ repeats this charge without referring to the 

individual books of the  Organon , the standard textbook on logics: 

 The majority of their errors ( agha¯lı¯t. ) are in metaphysics. [Here,] they 

are unable to fulfi ll demonstration ( burha¯n ) as they have set it out as 

a condition in logics. This is why most of the disagreements amongst 

them is in (the fi eld of ) metaphysics. 

14

  

 If the metaphysics of the  fala¯sifa  cannot maintain the standards for demon-

strative arguments made by them in their textbooks for logics, their teachings 

cannot stand up against the competing authority of revelation. This is an im-

portant element of what al-Ghaza¯lı¯ will later call his “rule of interpretation” 

( qa¯nu

¯n al-ta 7wı¯l  ). We will be dealing with this rule in the next chapter. 

 Many of the twenty discussions in the  Incoherence , however, discuss ques-

tions that do not contradict the literal wording of revelation. We learn from 

many of his later works that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ did not object to the position discussed 

in the fi fteenth discussion, namely, that the heavens are moved by souls. Like 

the  fala¯sifa,  he thought that the heavens are indeed moved by souls, referred to 

as angels in the Qur’an. In these and in other cases, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ accepts the truth 

of the  fala¯sifa ’s teaching but rejects their claim to knowing it through demon-

stration. These things are known from revelation, he objects, and the  fala¯sifa ’s 

so-called demonstrations are merely attempts of proving this knowledge  post 

factum  with arguments that do not fully convince. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ held that many 

philosophical teachings come from sources that are not acknowledged by the 

 fala¯sifa , most important from the revelations sent to Abraham and Moses that 

were available to the nations before Jesus and Muh.ammad. Through making 

use of arguments, these revelations teach syllogistic logics to humankind. The 

philosophers simply extracted ( istakhraja ) this method from there. 

15

   Humanity 

learned all the sciences, including the “method of reasoning” ( t.arı¯q al-naz.ar  ), 

from prophets who were given this knowledge in revelation. 

16

  Once the rational 

sciences ( al- ¶ulu

¯m al- ¶aqliyya al-naz.ariyya ) such as logics and mathematics were 

made available to humans, each individual had the ability to learn them from a 

good teacher (  fa¯d.il  ), without resorting to a prophet or someone who claims to 

have been given divine insight. 

17

  

 The initial argument of the  Incoherence  focuses on  apodeixis  and the de-

monstrative character of the philosophical teachings that it refutes. While the 

book does touch on the truth of many of these teachings, it clearly “refutes” 

numerous positions whose truths al-Ghaza¯lı¯ acknowledges or to which he 

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¯   on   t h e   role   of   fa l sa fa   in   is l a m  

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subscribed in his later works. In these cases, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ wishes to show that 

although these particular philosophical teachings may be sound and true, they 

are not demonstrated by proofs. If anything, the details of God’s arrangements 

in the heavenly spheres are made known to prophets by way of inspiration 

( ilha¯m ) and have not been made known by way of rational arguments. 

18

  The ul-

timate source of the  fala¯sifa ’s knowledge about God’s nature, the human soul, 

or the heavenly spheres is the revelations given to early prophets such as Abra-

ham and Moses. Their information made it into the books of the ancient phi-

losophers who falsely claimed that they gained these insights by reason alone. 

 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s  fatwa¯  against Three Teachings of the  fala¯sifa  

 In his  Incoherence ,  al-Ghaza¯lı¯ does more than simply make room for the epis-

temological claims of revelation. One of the fi rst things students of Islamic 

history or of the history of philosophy learn is that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ condemned the 

tradition of Aristotelian philosophy in Islam. That condemnation is fi rst ex-

pressed at the end of the  Incoherence of the Philosophers   ( Taha¯fut al-fala¯sifa ),  pub-

lished in 487/1095, and later repeated in his  Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing 

Islam from Clandestine Apostasy   ( Fays.al al-tafriqa bayna l-Isla¯m wa-l-zandaqa ) 

and in his widely read autobiography  The Deliverer from Error   ( al-Munqidh min 

al-d.ala¯l ), both works written around 500/1106. 

19

  Earlier intellectual historians 

of Islam claimed that this condemnation destroyed the philosophical tradition 

in Islam, 

20

  while today we know that this is not true. 

 Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s legal verdict in the  Incoherence  extends to no more than a sin-

gle page at the end of the book. It is, in effect, a  fatwa¯ , a legal response to a 

question posed by a real or fi ctitious inquirer. In its original version on the last 

page of the  Incoherence,  it reads: 

 If someone asks: “Now that you have discussed in detail the teach-

ings of these [philosophers], do you [also] say decisively that they hold 

unbelief ( kufr ) and that the killing of someone who upholds their 

convictions is obligatory?” 

 We answer: Pronouncing them unbelievers must be done in 

three questions. One of them is the question of the world’s pre-

 eternity and their saying that the substances are all pre-eternal. The 

second is their statement that God’s knowledge does not encompass 

the temporally created particulars among individual [existents]. The 

third is their denial of the resurrection of bodies and assembly of 

bodies [on Judgment Day]. 

 These three teachings do not agree with Islam in any way. 

Whoever holds them [also] holds that prophets utter falsehoods and 

that they said whatever they have said in order to promote the public 

benefi t, [meaning that the prophets] use symbols for the multitude 

of people in order to make them understand. Such [a position] is 

manifest unbelief ( kufr s.ira¯h. ) which none of the [various] groups of 

Muslims [ever] held. 

21

  

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 In his verdict against the  fala¯sifa,   al-Ghaza¯lı¯ singles out a limited number of 

theological or philosophical positions as unbelief. Here in the  Incoherence,  

he lists three teachings: (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 the rewards and punishments in the next life are 

only spiritual in character and not also bodily. In his  Scandals of the Esoterics  

( Fad.a¯ 7ih. al-ba¯t.iniyya ), he adds (4) instances of blatant violations to the mono-