Al-Ghazâlî, Causality, and Knowledge Essay

The purpose of this investigation will be to assess how the House of Wisdom contributed to the preservation of knowledge. This question is important because it addresses the academic advances with the Islamic civilization that lead to new information. To determine the extent of the contribution to the preservation of knowledge, this investigation will examine the achievements al-Khawarizmi made in science and the achievements that were made in this library and how they were preserved through time. The area of research will be focused during the time of the Islamic Golden Age, 750-1258, and in the city of Baghdad, where the House of Wisdom flourished. A method that will be used during this investigation is the examination of

For Schleiermacher, in particular, and, additionally, the Islamic mystic Al-Ghazali, true religion was completely experiential and it should therefore be felt rather than thought. He believed that logic destroys religious experience because religious experience is a matter of intuitive knowledge, not processed knowledge. Intuition is belief, where as logic creates doubts. In many spiritual systems (religious or independent of religion) the human instinct is held in high regard. It was for this reason that Iqbal, the late Islamic philosopher of the modern era, disagreed with Al-Ghazali.

The Sunni Creed of Adud al-Din-Iji and the Zaydi creed of Imam al-Mutawakkil have some major fundamental differences, as you may expect since both come from opposite spectrums of Islam; but, after careful analysis, one may be surprised to find that both creeds hold a fair amount of similarities. In this essay, I plan to compare and contrast the Sunni creed and Zayid creed by showing you evidence of the significant similarities and differences in these two short texts. Even though one branch may have something that the other may not have, one can still see that both creeds of Islam provide the instructions and general beliefs of how a Muslim must act, how God is the most powerful. The biggest

In God's elemental metaphysics, Angels, Jins, demons and the universe of nature are intertwined and interact continuously and continuously to form the process of metaphysics in everyday life. Metaphysics is an abstract reconstruction of events composed of components of human action that starts with the physical action thought, done and spoken. Metaphysics is also a typical manifestation of humanity and the phenomenon of human existence. The close interconnection between man and metaphysics is illustrated by the role of metaphysics in the process of forming attributes that ultimately shape the character of the human identity. The introduction of metaphysics is a fact that can trace back from the earliest human development. In this case, humans play a role in presenting the existence of history that can arise if the human life had moved to tomorrow and leave yesterday. Thus, "yesterday" as the embodiment of human existence in the history of his life. The person who is forty, or sixty years old, is of course not born at that age, and this proves that every human being has a past as a proof of the existence of history in which there is a human role in history. Impossible Iqbal's history can express as the process appears without the meaning of human role. Man as an object of metaphysics consists of physical, soul and spirit is the inherent unity of humans.

To prevent the possible hypothetical problem of infinite regression, Aquinas believes in an unmoved mover. Based on the foundations of Aristotle’s God the unmoved mover who thinks about nothing but himself as in thinking about other things would cause movement and contradict his state of unmovement. In the same way, Aquinas adopts the same model of an unmoved god who first puts other things in motion. However, unlike Aristotle, Aquinas merely adopts the idea of contingency to postulate a non-antideity. From the bases of causation and motion we arrive at two attributes of God ‘unmoved mover’ and ‘uncaused first cause’. with motion, “nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality” therefore cannot be simultaneously in actuality and

In this essay, I shall analyse the problem of “Why didn’t a temporal God create the world sooner?”. This essay shall begin with an exposition of the problem as provided by Leftow, and then explain Leftow’s and Swinburne’s solutions. Furthermore, I shall explain the ineffectiveness of these solutions exposed by Craig, and I shall provide the view that the most effective solution to the problem is that God’s temporal mode of existence changes from timeless prior to creation, and temporal post-creation. However, firstly, we must understand the problem with which we are dealing.

Different methodologies are used between Carl Ernst and Fred Donner as one uses a non-fundamentalist view and textual evidence to describe a broad view of Islamic civilization, which speaks to non-Muslims and explains the concept of Islam better, while the other uses archeological and religious texts to explain a specific time period of the Believers’ movement and how it was solely a religious movement, regardless of what others may say. Fundamentalists are those who believe literally in religious text. Therefore, when Ernst says that he is going to use a non-fundamentalist view he means that he will not be biased while talking about the Muslims and the Islamic civilization. Donner is trying to cancel out the ideas of those who say the Believer’s movement was hardly a religious one. One thought is “the movement that grew into what we know as Islam ‘was produced almost without religious faith’” (Fred Donner, xi). Donner is trying to prove this statement by Ernest Renan wrong with his archeological evidence and religious texts. However, interpretations and materials available to them can all be used to form their arguments. Their interpretations and methodologies show how they portray things of the same topic using different bases to frame their arguments.

Despite the fact that Ghazali in “The Rescuer from Error” is searching for certain knowledge but states in a paradoxical manner that this may actually not be possible, he is the most persuasive author when considering the knowledge of the divine alongside Plato in “The Republic” and Augustine in “City of God”. Ghazali considers both belief and knowledge as necessary for knowledge of the divine while Plato focuses solely on knowledge. On the other side, while Augustine does support the idea of a rational soul, he refutes his own claim when considering the miracles of God. In this essay I will argue that incorporating both knowledge and belief, Ghazali provides an approach in which humans gain the most knowledge of the divine because knowledge-based belief combines a necessary personal journey and faith in the divine when human intellect can only go so far. I will outline this argument by looking at what each author defines as knowledge of the divine, how he sees this divine affecting human life, and why this argument is either persuasive or non-persuasive using Ghazali as a base to refute and/or support their claims.

On the other hand, even though Alhomedi did a good job organizing his bibliography by explaining, summary, and commentary paragraph his research articles, what Alhomedi need to work on and improve his

The book that we have chosen to review is titled “Lost History, the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists”. The author of the book is Michael Hamilton Morgan. The book was published in the year 2007 and also holds the same copyright date. The book is a non-fiction. The main subject matter of the book is the history of the Islamic civilization from the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)

Al-Ghazali criticizes Muslim Peripatetic philosophers on the idea that there is a necessary relationship between cause and effect on his work Incoherence. He does not reject the relationship but he argues that this relationship between cause and effect is not logically necessary. We perceive this relationship based on our observations of succession of events, and we think that they are necessarily connected. Ghazali gives an example of fire and burning; we observe that fire burns the cotton again and again, and we conclude that fire causes the effect of burning. Ghazali says that there is not such a necessary relationship between fire and burning because it is also possible that cotton can burn without fire or fire may not burn the

Within Sufism, Al-Ghazali defined the difference between Ilham (inspiration) and Ta’allum (reasoning or learning). He believes that inspiration and revelation in union with religion hold a superior position than reasoning that originates from philosophy. Rational knowledge, according to Al-Ghazali, is always relative to the senses. The knowledge of the senses, however, cannot be trusted as valid. True knowledge, known as the Truth, only comes through inspiration and revelation (McCarthy 378). Al-Ghazali introduces the aspect of God, or Allah, in the acquisition of perfect knowledge. “Inspiration can bring one closer to Allah than philosophical learning alone” (Inglis). Ultimately, this idea of Ilham brings with it the Supreme Reality which is equivalent to Truth (McCarthy 378). In practical terms, Al-Ghazali believes that the necessary Truths of the intellect begin from “a light which God most high cast into my breast. That light is the key to the greater part of knowledge” (Al-Ghazali 25). An individual can only experience this light of God if he or she has reached the “state.”

Al-Ghazali begins his discussion of theodicy with a conditional statement that will frame the rest of his one-hundred-line discussion contained in his Ihya text. This conditional statement has as its antecedent a series of eight hypotheticals which are aimed at creating a hypothetical multitude of immensely knowledgeable and wise creatures. The antecedent contains the following hypotheticals: all creatures being as intelligent and knowledgeable as the most intelligent and knowledgeable human, God giving each creature the maximum knowledge and wisdom that their souls can handle, God then giving each creature the combined knowledge of all creatures, God revealing to each creature the consequences of things, God teaching each creature the mysteries of the transcendent world, God teaching each creature about divine favor, God making each creature aware of final punishments, God making each creature aware of good and evil and of benefit and harm. All of these components of the antecedent serve to set up a scenario in which there exists a multitude of extremely wise and knowledgeable creatures. These components are presented in lines one through sixteen of the passage quoted by Ormsby on his pages 38-41 of Theodicy in Islamic Thought.

Ibn al-Arabi and Chuang-tzu were and continue to be very influential to the study of both religion and philosophy. Their separate notions of dream and reality have survived through the centuries and we continue to attempt to explain and analyze them today. In this paper I will first examine Ibn al-Arabi's concept of dream and reality and then move on to study Chuang-tzu's thoughts on the subject. After reviewing both of these constructs I will compare and contrast some of the similarities and differences between the two. Through this analysis I will show that although they were written hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart, their conclusions on dream and reality are strikingly similar.

Due to its ability to harbor some notable rhyme, it hardly appears as plain prose. Concurrently, the Quran lacks the appropriate meters to categorize it as a piece of poetry. It firmly appears as an ascertained approach that was popularly referred to as Saj in pre-Islamic Arabia, although it was an epoch of heated discussions among scholars (Mir). Although the contents, language, and method of the Quran, as well as the social and legal implications emanating from the same, have been examined since ancient duration, new advances have typically been proposed to investigate the book in the light of the mentioned approaches.