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eichenb2
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It is interesting to note, and I am not sure it has, but that Islam’s current approach to philosophy was practically codified by Imam Ghazali’s text “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”.
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neploho
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And what is that approach?
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Badaliyyah
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I would not be too hard on Ghazali. He is very important and just plain brilliant at times. It is certainly not his fault that Kalam has fallen into disrepute in some parts of contemporary Islam. Reason is for him a very powerful tool in understanding revelation. The problem with the philosophers is that they think they can strike out on their own and find the truth. Instead, for Ghazali, reason must submit itself to revelation; reason needs something to work with. Otherwise it is blind. At that theoretical level, he is actually quite close to someone like Bonaventure who makes very similar claims about the problems with Islamic philosophy. Like al-Ghazali he also took it seriously and knew it well, he just thought they were wrong (but of course, to be wrong is to be irrational).
salaam.
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eichenb2
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Last things first.
Being wrong is not always irrational. One can be wrong and rational. A proper use of logic does not, necessarily, presuppose that ones “facts” are correct.
Second, my major problem with Ghazali’s thesis in the book is that God, in principle, should not contradict man’s reason. If God creates man and predisposes him to be rational, then gives him revelation, Reason and Faith would, necessarily, have to be complimentary. Otherwise, our being would be the butt of a cruel joke. If our reason cannot be trusted to deduce principles from the world around us, then why should we trust it to interpret revelation??? Ultimately, Ghazali’s book “sealed the deal”. Islam became a religion “of the book” and was interpretations were locked in. Christianity, on the other hand, developed as a religion of the Incarnate Word AND THEN the scriptures that testified to Him.
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Badaliyyah
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reason is not, first and foremost, a formal structure of reasoning, like, for instance, logic. If it were, humans would have no hope of knowing God who is not confined by the finite categories of discursive ratio. Without God providing the proper horizon and goal for reason from start to finish, the exercise of some sort of formal-discursive-reason is just blind wandering. All it talks about is its own emptiness and the darkness of human reason misapprehended as something that exists on its own. Reason is always determined by its object. Humanity must therefore be directed to the right end, and can only find the Truth to the extent that they are.
Thinkers like Bonaventure and Ghazali, who attack the Aristotelians have these kinds of concerns in mind, and regularly criticize them for the reduction of reason to the logic and categories (though Ghazali seems to have the better grasp of the way in which empiricism leads to skepticism).
On the second point, Ghazali should be understood as saying that humanity has to submit itself to and remain within the event of revelation. This is not that far from your claim about the centrality of the Incarnation. The proper comparison of the Qur’an is always to Christ, not the Bible. Here again, Ghazali seems comparable to Bonaventure in his concerns.
I agree with you about what is at stake for the falasifa. And I think in many cases the practioners of Kalam and Fiqh failed to appreciate the importance of Aristotle’s Logic. I am not sure that can be said of Ghazali, who is quite willing to put Aristotle to use more than once in the Incoherence. Al-Ghazali vs. ibn’Sina or al-Farabi is not about the enemies vs. the champions of reason, but about what actually constitutes Reason.salaam.
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eichenb2
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Islam is in a philosophical straight-jacket. In order that I may, more clearly, illustrate this point, let us look at the issue of alcohol. One simple question explodes the Islamic philosophical paradigm. Was alcohol prohibited because it is essentally harmful, that is to all people, in all places, at all times? Or, was it prohibited because God said SO? Most Muslim scholars, when presented with this question will begin to defend the prohibition on the grounds that alcohol does, indeed, has some harmful effects. Certainly there are some harmful effects, if abused. However, when pressed with possibilty that abuse of alcohol is the problem and that we don’t, for example, ban cars due to the possibility of accidents, they usually fall back to the Ghazilian opinion. They, in effect, deny an overriding principle of the use/abuse of creation. This approach hamstrings Islamic Jurisprudence. Practically speaking, the ideal for Islamic society is the legal system of 7th century Arabia. Ghazali’s Incoherence (pun intended) was, in my opinion, was a faithful elucidation of the Quran’s approach to jurispudence. We have seen this play out, recently, where a woman (though claiming rape) is stoned to death for adultery. In the Maliki school, a married woman who turns up pregnant and her husband denies that the baby (not just a fetus
) is his, she can be stoned (after delivering and nurturing the baby). The pregnancy is all the proof that is needed against the woman. Yet, as my mother would say, “it takes two to tango”. I am not suggesting her guilt or innosense. My point is that Islamic jurisprudence is cause of the struggle with modernity in the Islamic world.I am willing to acknowledge that the confines of Islamic Jurispudence has not always been so confined. However, at this point in time, it trapped in a wooden, literal approach to law, in theory. In practice, especially on an individual level, the approach to the Shari’ah is much more flexible. The Muslims who practice this type of Islam are not passing Fatawa, though.
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Badaliyyah
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we are both waaaay off the topic of the post here, but…
quickly: what you are talking about is the way in which Fiqh is understood and practiced (the denial of the need for ijtihad and reliance solely on taqlid). The people who practice Fiqh in that manner are not terribly interested in Kalam (e.g., Ghazali) or Falsafa (e.g., ibn’Sina). Once you have the laws all you need to know is how to apply them. Why they are right is irrelevant and the interpretation of them is supposedly straight-forward. It is just legal positivism: which is not rationally appealing no matter who practices it. It might be fair to say the Islamic modernists, who understand Fiqh in this way, are in a philosophical straight-jacket, if they were interested in philosophy at all. But neither falsafa nor kalam died with the so-called Golden Age. Ghazali, btw, thought that ijtihad was necessary for the ulema; though for the most part I do not care for Ash’ari theology.
salaam.
quickly: what you are talking about is the way in which Fiqh is understood and practiced (the denial of the need for ijtihad and reliance solely on taqlid). The people who practice Fiqh in that manner are not terribly interested in Kalam (e.g., Ghazali) or Falsafa (e.g., ibn’Sina). Once you have the laws all you need to know is how to apply them. Why they are right is irrelevant and the interpretation of them is supposedly straight-forward. It is just legal positivism: which is not rationally appealing no matter who practices it. It might be fair to say the Islamic modernists, who understand Fiqh in this way, are in a philosophical straight-jacket, if they were interested in philosophy at all. But neither falsafa nor kalam died with the so-called Golden Age. Ghazali, btw, thought that ijtihad was necessary for the ulema; though for the most part I do not care for Ash’ari theology.
salaam.
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eichenb2
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I would like to see a Sheikh in Saudi court try to actually put Kalam and its nuance into practice. Muslims, generally, are not too enthusiastically about this!
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neploho
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It is also rarely mentioned that the last really great Islamic Philosopher Ibn Sina was dead about fifty years before Ghazali was born. After that the center of gravity for Islamic philosophy shifted to Spain with Rushd where it eventually died out. If you look at Al Ghazali he was pretty restrained, he only said three of the Greek metaphysical assertions led to kufir. Really I doubt Islamic philosophy would have survived past Ghazali’s time (in Arab/Sunni Islam) even if he had never been born. Sufism, grass roots movements to embrace Hanbal’s literalism, et cetera. There wer numerous factors, all beyond his control, that led to the demise of philosophy in mainstream Sunni Islam.
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Badaliyyah
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eichen: ameen.
neploho: i think you are absolutely right. it is no accident that almost everything interesting in philosophy after ibn’Rushd happened in the Persian milieu (e.g., Suhrawardi and the Ishraqi School; and of course Mulla Sadra who ought to be much more widely known).
salaam.
neploho: i think you are absolutely right. it is no accident that almost everything interesting in philosophy after ibn’Rushd happened in the Persian milieu (e.g., Suhrawardi and the Ishraqi School; and of course Mulla Sadra who ought to be much more widely known).
salaam.
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famdigy
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you’e assumptions are skewed. Imam Ali (as) spoke about our belief in Allah in the following sermon.
"Praise is due to Allah whose worth cannot be described by speakers, whose bounties cannot be counted by calculators and whose claim (to obedience) cannot be satisfied by those who attempt to do so, whom the height of intellectual courage cannot appreciate, and the diving of understanding cannot reach; He for whose description no limit has been laid down, no eulogy exists, no time is ordained and no duration is fixed.
He brought forth creation through His Omnipotence, dispersed winds through His Compassion, and made firm the shaking earth with rocks.
The foremost in religion is the acknowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His Oneness, the perfection of believing in His Oneness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute.
Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognizes His like, and who recognizes His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognizes parts for Him; and who recognizes parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him.
Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence. He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence. "
I should add that we regard Him perfect in two ways, First: His creative will, God’s design and creation is perfect, 2nd: His legislative will, God is perfectly Just in his dealings with his created beings.
Also, in you’re first post you presume god created the world out of desire to show goodness, this is conjecture on your part and does not exist in any Muslim text
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