Theology
1058 to 1111, Persia
The limits of philosophy and the renewal of faith.
Start learning Al →How al-Ghazali doubted everything - the senses, then reason itself - in a desperate search for unshakeable knowledge, six centuries before Descartes.
Al-Ghazali’s masterful attack on the Greek-influenced philosophers - turning their own rigorous logic against their boldest metaphysical claims.
Al-Ghazali’s startling argument that fire does not really cause cotton to burn - that what we call cause and effect is only God’s habit, anticipating Hume by seven centuries.
Al-Ghazali’s turn from the certainty of argument to the certainty of experience - the mystic’s ‘tasting’ of truths that reason can describe but never deliver.
The great charge against al-Ghazali - that his attack on the philosophers extinguished the golden age of Islamic science and thought - and whether it is true.
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