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Islamic philosophy developed largely out of a dialogue with classical
Greek philosophy, with the work of Aristotle (384–322 BC), Plato
(c.427–347 BC), and the neoplatonist Alexandrian philosopher
Plotinus (AD 204/5–70) being key sources. In fact, it was largely
through the Islamic tradition, and the work of Averroes (Ibn Rushd;
1126–98) in particular, that the work of such philosophers was kept
alive after the break-up of the Roman Empire. The Orthodox
Byzantine empire, ruled from Constantinople, had turned its back
on Greek philosophy – the Emperor Justinian closing the famous
School of Athens in AD 529 – because of its pagan heritage.
When a
reaction to Aristotelianism set in after the first few centuries of
Islamic culture it brought in its wake a measure of scepticism, with
philosophy as a discipline itself coming to be called into question
by some thinkers. One such prominent anti-Aristotelian was the
eleventh-century philosopher Al-Ghazali (or Algazali; 1058–1111),
who was noted for exhibiting sceptical leanings at several points in
his career, although he ended up as a mystic, turning to Sufism. He
is described by the commentators Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh
as someone who ‘had a skeptical streak within his nature, sampled
a number of theological and philosophic positions, and left an autobiographical
record of his spiritual quests’. The work in which his
scepticism is most evident, as well as his anti-philosophical bent, is
The Incoherence of the Philosophers (written between 1091 and 1095).
From our point of view it is unfortunate that Al-Ghazali’s scepticism
ultimately was overcome by his religious belief. Whereas for
Pyrrhonians dogmatism was the ‘disease’ to be feared, for Al-Ghazali
that was scepticism. He speaks of God having ‘cured me of this
malady’ in his autobiographical work Deliverance from Error (c.1100),
after a prolonged period in which he felt himself to be ‘a sceptic in
fact though not in theory nor in outward expression’. Al-Ghazali
then goes on to denounce philosophy in the same work, dismissing
the claims of the various schools on the grounds that ‘unbelief affects
them all’, and that their influence on Muslims is ‘baneful and mischievous’.
It is a claim that many in the Muslim world would
uphold still today. But at least we can see the seed of scepticism
present there within the Islamic tradition, and it is fascinating to
observe the dialectic between scepticism and theology unfolding in
this context – as it was later to do in Descartes, another philosopher
for whom God was in some sense the ‘cure’ for his intellectual
‘malady’. When that scepticism is directed against philosophy it fits
into the tradition of Western scepticism, and there are similarities to
be noted between Al-Ghazali and Hume on the subject of causality.
Both philosophers deny any necessary connection between cause
and effect, although with Al-Ghazali there is a theological aspect
in God being the only source of causes in the universe. There can
even be ‘causeless’ effects in Al-Ghazali’s scheme; as Hyman and
Walsh note, it is a consequence of Al-Ghazali’s conception of divine
omnipotence that, ‘God is able to produce any effect without any
intermediate cause at all.’ Al-Ghazali is also thought to have influenced
the fourteenth-century French philosopher Nicholas (sometimes
spelled Nicolaus) of Autrecourt, who has been dubbed ‘the
medieval Hume’, so he genuinely has a role to play in the Western as
well as the Islamic tradition.
In The Incoherence of the Philosophers Al-Ghazali systematically
works his way through twenty philosophical doctrines to prove that
they are inconsistent with the Koran. In each case he offers a detailed
refutation, and although his position is theologically based –
Koranic doctrines are taken as given and felt to require no proof – he
argues his case, in the words of some recent commentators, ‘with
great philosophical acuity’. The doctrines in question can be traced
back to Greek philosophy, and in Al-Ghazali’s reading they have
come to infect Islamic philosophy with heretical notions. He speaks
disparagingly of a group of thinkers, such as Alfarabi (c.870–950)
and Avicenna (980–1037), who ‘have entirely cast off the reins of religion
through multifarious beliefs’. ‘The source of their unbelief’,
Al-Ghazali goes on to argue, ‘is their hearing high-sounding names
such as “Socrates [469–399 BC],” “Hippocrates [c.460–377 BC],”
“Plato,” “Aristotle,” and their likes’. The author’s appointed task
is ‘to show the incoherence of their belief’ in such matters as the
nature of the universe, God’s attributes, the uniformity of nature,
and the nature of the soul.38 What all the philosophers being
attacked have in common, in Al-Ghazali’s opinion, is that they
underestimate God’s power. Some have argued for an eternal universe,
whereas for the devout it is necessary to accept that it was
created in an act of will by an omnipotent God. God also had the
power to alter the course of nature if he chose, meaning that belief in
nature’s uniformity was tantamount to heresy, as was any denial of
bodily resurrection after death.
Al-Ghazali’s attack on the Aristotelian tradition in Islamic philosophy
is damning, and as one of his translators has noted, ‘[i]t
brought to a head the conflict between Islamic speculative theology
and philosophy’. Averroes responded with a work entitled The
Incoherence of the Incoherence, but Al-Ghazali’s theology-led approach
exerts a considerable appeal within Islam. If one puts the theological
bias to one side, however, one has some very powerful arguments
against metaphysical claims. Difficult though it may be to
ignore the theology, it is still worth emphasising sceptical attitudes
wherever one finds them within the Islamic system.
If Al-Ghazali’s encounter with philosophy was decided in favour
of religion, then the dialogue with Greek classical philosophy within
Islam prompted several thinkers of the same period to start questioning
the claims of religion instead. Ibn al-Rawandi (c.910?), for
example, rejected the concept of prophethood and even queried the
authority of the Koran: ‘even if we grant that he [Mohammed]
exceeds all the Arabs in eloquence, what compelling force will this
have where Persians, who do not understand the [Arabic] tongue are
concerned, and what probative evidence can he advance?’
Philosophy-inspired free thought led to such iconoclastic sentiments
as those expressed by the poet Abul-Ala al-Maarri (973–1057) on religious
strife in the Islamic territories:
Each party defends its own religion
I wonder in vain where the truth lies!
Abu Isa al-Warraq (active early eighth century) argued that neither
Christianity nor Judaism could be considered to have any validity
because many of their doctrines broke the rules of Aristotelian logic
(al-Warraq himself was accused of Zoroastrian leanings by his Islamic
contemporaries). Even if, as Majid Fakhry has noted, most theologians,
like Al-Ghazali, ultimately ‘reacted violently’ against the
impact of Greek philosophy on their culture, scepticism was capable
of making its presence felt in the Islamic world none the less.
Scepticism is always going to be in a dialectic with theology in
Islam, but that dialectic needs to be given as much encouragement
as it can, such that it can be seen as intrinsic to that cultural tradition
rather than a Western imposition signalling yet another round of
colonial imperialism. At the very least the potential for scepticism is
present in every culture. Doubt is a universal phenomenon, one that
creeps into everyone’s mind at some point or other, and we can draw
hope from that. Regardless of whether it is conceived of as disease
or cure it is something to build upon.
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