Arabic philosophy

in part to encourage an ascetic way of life as a necessary requirement

for those intent on following theS.

u¯ fı¯ path. In 1106, he resumed his

teaching of Islamic law first at N¯ısh¯ap ¯ ur and then atT.u¯ s, where he

died in 1111. His return to the teaching of law saw the writing of

hismajor work on Islamic law, namely, The Choice Essentials of the

Principles ofReligion (al-Mustasf ¯ amin us.

u¯ l al-dı¯n).After thewriting

of the Ih. ya¯ ’, al-Ghaza¯ lı¯ wrote a number of important shorter works

which include among others the following: The Highest Goal in

Explaining the Beautiful Names of God (al-Maqs.

ad al-asna¯ fı¯ asma¯ ’

Alla¯h al-h. usna¯ ); The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Belief

from Unbelief (Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islamwa al-zandaqa); The

Book of Forty (Kita¯b al-arba‘ı¯n), which sums up some main ideas

of the Ih. ya¯ ’; the two mystical works, The Alchemy of Happiness

(Kı¯mı¯a¯ -ye sa‘a¯dat) in Persian and The Niche of Lights (Mishka¯ t alanwa

¯ r); his autobiography, The Deliverer from Error (al-Munqidh

min al-d. ala¯ l); and his last work, Restraining the Commonality from

the Science of Kala¯m (Ilja¯m al-‘awa¯m ‘an ‘ilm al-kala¯m).

Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s religious thought is multi-faceted and is expressed

in a variety of contexts. One way to approach it is to discuss it first

in terms of the relation of his Ash‘arite theology to philosophy and

then in relation to his mysticism.

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Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı 141

ghaza￣ lı￣ and the ash‘arites

The work in which al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı expresses his Ash‘arite theology in

detail is the Moderation in Belief. It is significant that he expressed

his high regard for this work long after he had become aS.

u¯ fı¯, in The

Book of Forty (written after the Ih. ya¯ ’), in which he proclaims that

the Moderation in Belief contains the essentials of the science of the

theologians, in effect, the Ash‘arite theologians (al-mutakallim¯ın).

He then adds that it goes deeper than the Ash‘arite works of kala¯m

in ascertaining the truth and “is closer to knocking at the door of

gnosis” (abwa¯b al-ma‘rifa) than the “official discourse” (al-kala¯m

al-rasm¯ı) encountered in their books.5 It is significant that he did

not regard it as one of the “official” Ash‘arite works and that he held

it to be superior to such works in ascertaining what is true.

The cornerstone of Ash‘arite theology is its doctrine of the divine

attributes. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı endorses and expands on this doctrine. For

the Ash‘arites, the divine attributes of life, knowledge, will, power,

speech, hearing, and seeing are co-eternal with the divine essence

and intimately related to it, but are not identical with it. They are

attributes “additional” (za¯ ’ida) to the divine essence. This point is

quite basic, particularly for understanding al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s rejection and

condemnation of the philosophical doctrine of an eternal world. For

if these attributes are identical with the divine essence, then the

divine act would be an essential act, an act which proceeds as the

necessary consequence of the very essence or nature of God. Now for

Avicenna, with whom al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı is contending, God is the supreme

essential cause for all the existents that successively emanate from

him, the totality of which is the world. According to Avicenna, the

priority of the essential cause to its effect is ontological, not temporal.

The essential cause coexists with its effect. Hence, for Avicenna,

the world as the necessitated effect of the eternal essential cause is

necessarily eternal.

This consequence meant for al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı the negation of the divine

attribute of will. To be sure, for al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, whatever the divine eternal

will chooses and decrees must come about. In this sense the

existence of what it decrees is necessary. It is not, however, necessitated

by the divine essence. Not being identical with the divine

essence, the eternal will does not have to decree the creation of the

world. It does so “freely,” so to speak, by an eternal voluntary act.

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142 michael e. marmura

According to al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, by this act it decrees the world’s creation

out of nothing (ex nihilo) at a finite moment in time in the past from

the present.

Whatever the divine will decrees comes about through the

attribute of divine power. This brings us to the relation of the divine

attributes of life, knowledge,will, and power to each other. These are

conditionally related. There can be no knowledge without life, no

will without knowledge, and no power without will. Each, that is

life, knowledge, will, and power, is respectively a necessary condition

for the other. This does not, however, mean that they “cause”

each other. They are eternal coexisting uncaused attributes. Moreover,

the eternal will decrees that all created existents and events

follow a uniform course. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı refers to this uniform course

as ijra¯ ’ al-‘a¯da, God’s ordaining things to flow according to a habitual

course. But this habitual course is not in itself necessary. It can

be disrupted without contradiction. The eternal will that decrees

this uniform, habitual course decrees also its disruptions at certain

moments of history. These disruptions are the miracles that God

creates on behalf of his prophets and holy men.

The divine attribute of power is the sole cause of all created things

and events.6 It is also pervasive. By this al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı means that divine

power is one, not divisible into many powers, and is the cause of each

and every created existent and event. Our world consists of bodies,

composed of indivisible atoms and accidents that inhere in them.

The atoms, the accidents, the bodies they compose, and all sequences

of events are the direct creation of this pervasive divine power. The

uniform course of events constitutes an order which includes what

we habitually regard as causes and effects. But while these behave as

though they are real causes and effects, in fact they are not. They are

concomitant events that are not necessarily connected with each

other and are causally connected only with the one cause, divine

power. This brings us to what is meant by saying that this theology

is occasionalist. Events habitually regarded as causes are merely the

occasions for divine, direct, real causal action. They follow an order

that parallels the order (in all its details) of what Avicenna regards

as real causes and effects, so that normally one can draw “demonstrative”

inferences from the chains of occasionalist/habitual causes

and effects.7

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Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı 143

At the heart of Ash‘arite occasionalism is their doctrine of “acquisition”

(kasb). Human acts, like all other events, are the direct creation

of divine power. This power creates in us power we experience

as the cause of our deliberate actions. But just as the events we normally

regard as causes and effects are concomitants, created by divine

power, so are those acts we normally believe to be our deliberate

acts. They are acts concomitant with the events we normally regard

as the “effects” of this power. These “effects,” however, are not of

our doing. They are created for us by divine power. In other words,

the power created in us has no causal efficacy. Whatever we believe

to have been “acquired” by our own power is in reality acquired on

our behalf by divine power. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı insists that the created power

in us exists only with the acquisition the divine power creates for

us. Created power does not temporally precede the human act. It and

the act are created simultaneously. Moreover, divine power cannot

enact the impossible. It cannot enact in us created power without

first creating in us respectively life, knowledge, and will. Each of

these, however, is the direct creation of divine power.

If this then is the case, how can we differentiate our spasmodic

movements from those movements we normally regard as deliberate?

The classic Ash‘arite answer, which al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı endorses, is that

in the case of the spasmodic movement, such a movement is created

without the created power, whereas what is normally regarded as the

deliberate movement is created with it. This is how they differ. We

ourselves experience this difference. This, however, does not resolve

the question of how this theory can account for human moral responsibility,

premised on the doctrine of the freedom of the human will.

Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı is hardly unaware of this problem. But he supports this

theory of acquisition, suggesting that a resolution of its difficulties

is attained when, through mystical vision, its place in the cosmic

scheme of things is understood.

the incoherence

Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s Ash‘arite occasionalist perspective given in the Moderation

in Belief is reiterated in different contexts in the Ih. ya¯ ’, as

we shall point out. This perspective forms the background of the

Incoherence and helps us better understand some of its arguments.

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144 michael e. marmura

Now it is true that al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı regarded the Incoherence as a work

of refutation and did not intend it to be an exposition of Ash‘arite theology.

He thus declares quite plainly that he is not writing the book

from any one specific doctrinal position (Incoherence, 7). Moreover,

on two notable occasions he adopts some of the views of his philosopher

opponents to show that even in terms of their own theories, the

literal scriptural assertions they deem impossible are in fact possible.

In this he is quite consistent with his declaration that the primary

intention of the Incoherence is to refute, not to build up doctrine.

Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı, however, in one of his later works,8 declared the Incoherence

as belonging to the genre of kala¯m works – this not inconsistently.

For he held the main task of Ash‘arite kala¯m to be the

defence of what he conceived to be Islamic Sunn¯ı doctrine. The Incoherence

constitutes such a defence, even though it does not set out

to formulate a doctrine (Incoherence, 7). At the same time, there

are many assertions and hidden premises in this work that when

extracted convey a specific theological view, namely, the Ash‘arite.

As we will indicate, an Ash‘arite assertion is introduced as part of

al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s method of refuting. Hence when the chief critic of this

work, Averroes, in his Incoherence of the Incoherence (Taha¯ fut altaha

¯ fut) repeatedly refers to al-Ghaza¯ lı¯’s stance in the Incoherence

as Ash‘arite, he is to a good extent justified. But before turning to the

Ash‘arite base that underlies much of the arguments of the Incoherence,

a brief word about this work is necessary.

In the Incoherence, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı singled out for criticism the

philosophies of al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı and Avicenna. These two, he holds, are the

best exponents of the philosophy of Aristotle. Here, however, we

have to be reminded that while these two were Aristotelians, they

were also Neoplatonists, each constructing an emanative scheme

that has its own peculiarities. Their respective emanative schemes,

though similar, are not identical. Moreover, their theories of the

soul and eschatologies are also not identical. Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı’s critique

has as its more direct object the philosophy of Avicenna. Nonetheless,

many of these criticisms apply to aspects of al-F ¯ar¯ab¯ı’s thought.

In the Incoherence al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı sometimes refers specifically to Avicenna,

but in general he simply refers to his opponents as “the

philosophers.”

The Incoherence is aimed at refuting those philosophical ideas

deemed by al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı to contravene Islamic religious belief. It thus

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Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı 145

addresses itself to twenty philosophical theories, three of which it

holds to be utterly opposed to Islamic religious belief, those upholding

them to be infidels, to be groupedwith heretical innovations that

some Islamic sect or another had held. The three theories he condemns

as utterly opposed to Islamic teaching are the theory of a preeternal

world, the theory (specifically Avicennian) that God knows

only the universal aspects of terrestrial particulars, and Avicenna’s

doctrine of the immortal, immaterial soul that denies bodily resurrection.

To refute such theories, all that al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı needs to show

is that contrary to the philosophers’ claims, these theories have not

been demonstrated. He certainly endeavors to do this, but he also

argues that some of them are self-contradictory.

causality

The Ash‘arism of the Incoherence is best seen in discussions where

the concept of causality is involved. The First Discussion is devoted

to the question of the world’s origin, and consists of a debate of

four philosophical proofs for the world’s pre-eternity. The debate

of the first proof is the longest. The philosophers’ proof, which al-

Ghaz¯ al¯ı regards as their strongest, is premised on the theory of divine

essential causality. According to the philosophers, a world created

in time would mean the delay of the effect of a necessitating cause

(namely God) when there can be no impediment or any other reason

to account for such a delay. After presenting the philosophers’ argument

in its most forceful way, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı begins his refutation by

asking whether the philosophers can demonstrate the impossibility

of the contradictory of its conclusion, namely, the Ash‘arite doctrine

that the world is created at that moment of time which the eternal

divine will has chosen and decreed for its creation (Incoherence,

17). He argues that they can do this neither syllogistically nor by an

appeal to what is self-evidently necessary. If the denial of the conclusion

cannot be proven to be untrue, then its premise that the divine

essential cause necessitates its effect remains unproven. At the conclusion

of this multi-faceted debate, he refers to the philosophers’

theory that the cause for the occurrence of temporal events is the

circular movement of the celestial spheres. He denies this, affirming

the Ash‘arite view that all temporal events are “the initial inventions”

of God (mukhtara‘a li-al-La¯hi ibtida¯ ‘an; Incoherence, 30).

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146 michael e. marmura

In the Third Discussion, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı discusses the use of the term

“agent.” Agency belongs only to a living, willing, knowing being.

When the opponent appeals to correct Arabic usage, as, for example,

when it is said that fire kills, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı insists that this is merely

metaphorical usage: fire as such in reality has no action (Incoherence,

58–9) – a point repeated in the Seventeenth Discussion.

While the Seventeenth Discussion is devoted to causality, its real

purpose is to show that some of the miracles, reported in the Qur‘ ¯an

and the prophetic traditions but considered by the philosophers as

impossible, are possible.9 Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı begins the discussion with the

Ash‘arite declaration: “the connection between what is habitually

believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be the effect

is not necessary for us.” With any two things, he continues, that

are not identical, where neither the affirmation or negation of the

one entails the affirmation or negation of the other, the existence or

nonexistence of the one does not entail the existence or nonexistence

of the other. He then gives as examples, “the quenching of thirst and

drinking, satiety and eating, light and the appearance of the sun,

death and decapitation.” The connection of these and other such

observable things is due to the prior decree of God, who creates them

side by side. The connections between them are not in themselves

necessary and they are hence capable of separation. It is thus within

divine power, for example, to create death without decapitation and

to continue life after decapitation (Incoherence, 166).

Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı then takes his well-known example of the contact of

a piece of cotton with fire. What we see is the occurrence of the

burning of cotton at the point of contact with the fire.We do not see

its being burnt by the fire. What we witness are two concomitant

events. He then asserts that the one who enacts the burning by creating

blackness in the cotton, producing separation in its parts, and

rendering it cinder and ashes, is God, either directly or through the

mediation of his angels (Incoherence, 167). (We will be turning to

the question of what al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı means by angelic mediation when

discussing aspects of the Ih. ya¯ ’.)

As the discussion of causality proceeds, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı puts in the

mouth of his opponents a major objection. From the denial of necessary

causal connection in natural events, they argue, repugnant

impossibilities will ensue. There will be no order in the world.

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Al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı 147

All occurrences would be sheer possibilities whose contraries can

equally occur. A man, for example, will be confronted by wild beasts

and raging fires but will not see them because God has not created

sight for him. All kinds of similar absurdities will then follow

(Incoherence, 169–70). To this al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı replies that if things

whose existence is possible are such that there cannot be created for

an individual knowledge of their nonexistence, the impossibilities

the opponents mention would follow. These things they mention,

however, he goes on, are mere possibilities that may or may not

occur. God, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı then asserts, creates in us the knowledge that

he did not enact these possibilities. (Implicit in this answer is al-

Ghaza¯ lı¯’s concept of ijra¯ ’ al-‘a¯da, God’s ordaining events to proceed

along a uniform, orderly, habitual course.) As such, the philosophers’

objection amounts to nothing more than sheer vilification

(Incoherence, 170).

Still, to avoid being subject to such vilification, al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı proposes

another causal theory (Incoherence, 171–4). He will concede

that when fire touches two similar pieces of cotton it will burn both.

A measure of causal efficacy is thus allowed in things. But it is

allowed only if the divine act remains voluntary, not necessitated

by his essence, and divine power is such that it can intervene in

nature to allow the miracle. Thus, for example, a prophet placed in

a fiery furnace may be miraculously saved, either by God’s changing

the character of the fire or by creating a cause that impedes its action.

Now al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı tells us that both theories, the Ash‘arite, and the

modified philosophical theory that allows a measure of causal efficacy

in natural things, are possible. But in what sense are both possible?

As they are mutually exclusive, one denying causal efficacy in

things, one allowing it, they cannot be compossible. What al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı

probably means is that either theory, independently of the other, is

internally consistent and that each allows the possibility of those

miracles deemed impossible by the philosophers. This parallels his

argument in the Twentieth Discussion where he concedes the possibility

of the human soul’s being immaterial and proceeds to argue

that even if this is granted, bodily resurrection, denied by Avicenna,

is still possible. In the Moderation in Belief, where al-Ghaz¯ al¯ı reaffirms

the Ash‘arite doctrine of a material soul, he refers us back to

the Incoherence, saying:

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148 michael e. marmura

We have treated this problem in detail in the Incoherence adopting in refuting

the philosophers’ doctrine the view that affirms the immortality of the

soul – which according to them has no position in space – and that allows

the resumption of its management of the body, regardless of whether or

not such a body is the same as the original human body. This, however,

is a consequence [we made logically incumbent on them to accept] that

does not agree with what we believe. For that book was written for the

purpose of refuting their doctrine, not for the purpose of establishing true

doctrine.10

Turning back to the second causal argument, we find no reaffirmation

of it in theModeration in Belief, nor in the Ih. ya¯ ’ and subsequent

writings. All the indications are that it was introduced in the Incoherence

for the sake of argument, to show that even if one concedes a

measure of causal efficacy in things, one can still accept themiracles

rejected by the philosophers.

The Moderation in Belief affirms the Ash‘arite occasionalist position

forcefully and unequivocally. It reaffirms it by a detailed refutation

of the doctrine of generation (al-tawallud) espoused by the

Mu‘tazilite school of kala¯m, a doctrine al-Ghaza¯ lı¯ in the Incoherence