By many Al-Ghazali is seen as the bad guy who ended the beautiful tradition of Arabic philosophy. He is considered to be an irrational thinker, who blindly followed the truth of Islamic religion and brutally refuted great thinkers such as Aristotle and Avicenna. Al-Ghazali indeed was recognized as an authoritative figure in the Seljuk empire. The Seljuks people tried to reverse the widely accepted Arabic philosophy back to the dominance of Islamic theology. Al-Ghazali wrote many books defending the Islam religion and taught Islamic theology in one of the most important educational institutes. However, I would like to argue that Al-Ghazali was the opposite of irrational and could be considered a philosopher himself.
Al-Ghazali was a well-educated and travelled man. He was an itinerant polymath, who followed education in a wide range of subjects, including traditional philosophy such as the theories of Aristotle. He travelled through most parts of the Seljuk empire, ranging from modern day Iran to modern day Jerusalem. He even wrote a book, called the ‘Doctrine of the philosophers’, explaining traditional Arabic philosophy in an objective and comprehensive manner. It did not contain any critique on philosophy and was soon translated to Hebrew and Latin, enabling many readers to properly understand philosophical theories.
Later he wrote his most famous book; ‘the incoherence of the philosophers’. The goal of this book was demonstrating that philosophy is not error-free and so he tried to burst the bubble of those who believed in the absolute truth of philosophy. However, this refutation of philosophy was not irrational or brutal. He used philosophy itself to refute philosophy, by showing that many philosophical theories were not based on proper logic. He wrote that especially in metaphysics there was too much disagreement to be logically valid, caused by the lack of empirical prove. He showed incoherency within the philosophical tradition by using logic, in stead of by simply stating that theology was better than philosophy. Al-Ghazali clear use of logic and proper argument, proves that he was in some sense a philosopher himself.
Medieval philosophy Lecture 1 