Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical
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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- 9 4 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y 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. This page intentionally left blank 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
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 9 8 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y 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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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-
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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¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y 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
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
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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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
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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¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y 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- Download 4.03 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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