Ál-Ghazali's Criticism of the Philosophers

All they have to say about the moral sciences comes down to listing the qualities and habits of the soul, and recording their generic and specific kinds, and the way to  cultivate the good ones and combat the bad. This they simply took over from the sayings of the Sufis. These were godly men who applied themselves assiduously to invoking God, resisting passion, and following the way leading to God Most High by shunning worldly pleasures. In the course of their spiritual combat the good habits of the soul and its shortcomings had been disclosed to them and also the defects that vitiate its actions. All this they set forth plainly. Then the philosophers took over these ideas and mixed them with their own doctrines, using the lustre afforded by them to promote the circulation of their own false teaching. There was indeed in their age, nay but there is in every age, a group of godly men of whom God Most High never leaves the world destitute. For they are the pillars of the earth, and by their blessings the divine mercy descends upon earthdwellers as is declared in the tradition from Muhammad — God’s blessing and peace be upon him! — in which he says: “Because of them you receive rain, and thanks to them you receive sustenance, and among them were the Companions of the Cave.” Such godly men existed in  ancient times as the Qur’ ur declares (Cf. Sura 18).--Al-Ghazali "Deliverance from Error" translated by Richard McCarthy (50).

A year and a half ago, I looked at Al-Ghazali's criticism of the political science of the philosophers. He does not deny that they know the truth, but (to simplify) he insists they are unoriginal and fail to deal with the highest matters focusing primarily on statecraft. They are original because they often just echo (and plagiarize) the wisdom of Scriptures. That is to say, Al-Ghazali treats the Bible and Quran (he uses the plural prophets) as -- inter alia -- contribution to political philosophy. (A position recently defended by Yoram Hazony [recall].)

The charge that they are unoriginal is repeated when it comes to the moral sciences of the philosophers. He treats what is true of their moral philosophy as plagiarized from the Sufis. Moreover, he suggests that they, in fact, used the prestige of the (true) Sufis's teaching, which they pass off as their own, to advance their own (false) original contributions. (For a nice contemporary example of such a strategy: Badiou uses the prestige of set theory to advance his own philosophy.)

The philosophers are contrasted with the Sufis, who are describes as the Godly men, the pillars of the earth. If I understand him correctly, Al-Ghazali is claiming with an appeal to famous story (famous in Christianity and in Islam) of the Companions of the Cave [or Seven  Sleepers], that the kind of knowledge the Sufis posses is not only always available, but also that in each generation there will be people that can, in principle, access this (Sufi-apt) knowledge. This has four implications worth noting:

First, not only does Al-Ghazali share in the philosophers' hierarchical conception of (skills, talents, natures within any) population at any given time, he thinks  that human demography/reproduction is such that the cognitive and spiritual elites will show up in any time and place such that Sufi-apt wisdom is always and everywhere a human possibility. [The philosophers, by contrast, seem to agree with Socrates that the highest type is really just a natural fluke not to be expected.]

Second, Al-Ghazali is, thus, committed to the idea (again with a not to the Quran) that Sufi-wisdom can predate all revelation. To be a Sufi is thus to have access to ancient and, would be, perennial wisdom (God never leaves the world destitute).

Third, unlike political science, the Sufi-apt wisdom (the true part of the philosophers' moral science) is not attributed to the Quran! Al-Ghazali treats the art of living ("the good habits of the soul") as distinct from Quran. It's (formally) not opposed to the revealed text, but it is clearly an alternative path toward the one-and-same-God. One could know how to live without revelation. Interestingly enough, the philosophers are in possession of elements of this alternative path. They are, so to speak, a good starting point but are, from Al-Ghazali's perspective, not its  proper end point (for the cognitive elite, that's Sufism).

Fourth, that is, (and I feel most cautious about this) Al-Aghazali seems to agree with the philosophers' Plato-inspied understanding (recall here; here; and here) of the text of the Quran as representation of the truth (at the level of opinion), but not as the eternal truth itself.

It's a peculiar feature of philosophical history that the boldness (recall; and especially here) of Al-Ghazali goes mentioned so rarely.+*

 

+I am grateful to the students of my Islamic Political Theory course of the last three years, especially Ender Rengkung, in Amsterdam for discussion.

 *Some other time we'll have to talk about the  Incoherence of the  Philosophers.

Comments

[Peter Adamson]

A few thoughts on this interesting post:

1. At the risk of stating the obvious, the general sentiment Ghazali expresses in the passage is a familiar one: the philosophers just take over the best ideas from religious traditions. Cf. late ancient Church Fathers saying Plato et al. got their ideas from Moses et al. This move is also well known in the Arabic-speaking world, Gutas talks about examples in his "Greek Thought, Arabic Culture" book re. the translation movement.
2. I am not sure I agree that the philosophers think that realized rationality is a fluke. That seems more Platonic than Aristotelian: for an Aristotelian it would seem odd that a natural aptitude would almost never be realized. And in fact none-more-Aristotelian Averroes is committed to the idea that at least some people are, at all times, realized philosophers (otherwise the universal intellect would become inactive).
3. Generally I agree that Ghazali doesn't think about the Quran and revelation as the only possible source of wisdom and virtue. Indeed in the Munqidh itself he stresses the need for each of us to evaluate prophets by, roughly, deciding whether their message makes sense. However I think your last point may go a bit too far: I don't know of a passage where Ghazali goes beyond the idea that reason and the Quran agree (which is a pretty typical view in Islamic culture, inside and outside of philosophy: the faith vs reason thing is really a Christian hang-up) to say along Farabian lines that the Quran is merely symbolic and that rational or natural approaches to the truth are in any way more adequate. I suspect he would say the reverse, that is, they do agree but the Quran is somehow better (though I couldn't say off the top of my head how he would fill out the "somehow" but it is something along the lines of fitra - natural inclination towards truth - needing to be filled out and completed with God's help).

[Eric Schliesser]

Thank you for your learned comments, Peter!
1. Agreed, it's important known trope. And thank you for the reference to Gutas.
2. Yes, it is more of a Platonic idea and not all the philosophers agree with it. My own view is that Al-Farabi does and Ibn Sinna not. But you are right that I should be a bit more cautious here.
3. On my final point, I agree I am a bit speculative, and I didn't mean to suggest that Al-Ghazali would fully agree with Al-Farabi's position. But rather to note that for Al-Ghazali there is a cognitive faculty (intuition) superior to reason that is always available to grasp the truth and, if I understand him correctly, this faculty is in a certain sense not discursive (as the textual Quran is). Yes, this faculty can be developed out of our natural inclination towards truth needing to be filled out and completed with God's help (with or without revelation).

[tjfxh]

"But rather to note that for Al-Ghazali there is a cognitive faculty (intuition) superior to reason that is always available to grasp the truth and, if I understand him correctly, this faculty is in a certain sense not discursive (as the textual Quran is). Yes, this faculty can be developed out of our natural inclination towards truth needing to be filled out and completed with God's help (with or without revelation)."

Al-Ghazali was himself a Sufi. The development of non-ordinary cognition and affect is the result of a non-intleectual process that results in cognition and affect that transcends the ordinary. This takes place in stages on the path through the inner planes that leads to God-realization.

http://chishti.org/ghaz.htm

"During my successive periods of meditation there were revealed to me things impossible to recount. All that I shall say for the edification of the reader is this: I learnt from a sure source that the Sufis are the true pioneers on the path of God: that there is nothing more beautiful than their life, nor more praiseworthy than their rule of conduct, nor purer than their morality.

"The intelligence of thinkers, the wisdom of philosophers, the knowledge of the most learned doctors of the law would in vain combine their efforts in order to modify or improve their doctrine and morals; it would be impossible. With the Sufis, repose and movement, exterior or interior, are illumined with the light which proceeds from the central Radiance of Inspiration. And what other light could shine on the face of the earth ? In a word, what can one criticize in them?

"From the time that they set out on this path, revelations commence for them. They come to see in the waking state angels and souls of prophets; they hear their voices and wise counsels. By means of this contemplation of heavenly forms and images they rise by degrees to heights which human language cannot reach, which one cannot even indicate without falling into great and inevitable errors."

Knowledge in Sufism is based on different degrees of certainty — Arabic: یقین‎‎ (yaqin or yaqeen)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaqeen

Note that the levels are traced to the Qur'an so they have different meanings in various interpretations.

hSee for instance

Meher Baba gave a Sufi explanation based on the Arabic

yaqin: Certainty. Conviction. -Sufi. (1a) -Arabic. (Du*)

ain-ul-yaqin: The conviction of sight, which comes by seeing God face to face on the sixth [inner] plane. -Sufi. Vedanta: antar drishti. (1a) -Arabic. (Du)

Haqq-ul-yaqin: The certainty of Realization. -Sufi. (1a) -Arabic. (Du)

ilm-ul-yaqin: Intellectual conviction based on rock-like faith. -Sufi. (1a) -Arabic. (Du)

urf-ul-yaqin: The certainty of Gnosis of the Avatar and Perfect Masters, who use their Knowledge to help souls in bondage. -Sufi. (1a) -Arabic. (Du)

yaqin-ul-yaqin: Conviction of souls on the first through the fifth [inner] plane. -Sufi. (1a) -Arabic. (Du)

Glossary

* Du = Duce, Murshida Ivy Oneita, How a Master Works, Copyright & published by, 1975, Sufism Reoriented, Inc., 1300 Boulevard Way, Walnut Creek, Ca., US

In comparison with Western philosophy, Sufism is Platonic and Neo-Platonic rather than Aristotelian. E. J. Urwick compared Plato with the Vedic tradition in The Platonic Quest. Meher Baba showed the similarity of Vedanta and Sufism using key terms from both traditions.

It seem that Al-Ghazali should be approached in this light instead of as a philosopher using chiefly empirical observation and reasoning. In addition, his approach to knowledge doesn't reduce to Aristotle's intellectual intuition, which the West intellectual tradition subsequently rejected.

"for Al-Ghazali there is a cognitive faculty (intuition) superior to reason that is always available to grasp the truth and, if I understand him correctly, this faculty is in a certain sense not discursive (as the textual Quran is). Yes, this faculty can be developed out of our natural inclination towards truth needing to be filled out and completed with God's help (with or without revelation)."

In light of the above, I would say this is correct.

Tom Hickey

[tjfxh]

The link to Glossary citation in the above was omitted.

http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/glossw-z.html