Al-Ghazali Story - Part 2

C. METHOD

The most important thing about al-Ghazālī’s system of thought is its method which may be described as that of the courage to know and the courage to doubt. The best expression of it is given in his famous autobiographical work, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (The, Deliverer from Error), which he wrote some five years before his death.16 In al-Munqidh al-Ghazālī makes {587} a critical examination of the methods of the various schools of thought current in his time in a manner closely similar to that of Descartes’ (d. 1060/1650) in his Discours de la methods (1047/1637).



All kinds of knowledge, al-Ghazālī held, should be investigated and nothing should be considered dangerous or hostile. For himself he said that he had embarked on the open sea of knowledge right from his adolescence setting aside all craven caution: “I poked into every dark recess and made an assault on every problem, I plunged into every abyss. I scrutinized the creed of every sect and I fathomed the mysteries of each doctrine. All this I did that I might distinguish between the true and the false.

There was not a philosopher whose system I did not acquaint myself with, nor a theologian whose doctrines I did not examine. If ever I met a Sufi, I coveted to probe into his secrets; if an ascetic, I investigated into the basis of his austerities; if one of the atheistic zindiqs, I groped into the causes of his bold atheism.”17 Such was the courage of al-Ghazālī to know. He was free from the parochialism of the dogmatic theologians of his day who would rather consign the books of the atheists and philosophers to flames than read them. But prepared though he was to listen to every creed and doctrine, he would accept none and doubt all. For one thing, he came to the conclusion that the greatest hindrance in the search for truth was the acceptance of beliefs on the authority of others and blind adherence to the heritage of the past.

He remembered the traditional saying of the Prophet: “Every child is born with a sound disposition (fitrah); it is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Magian”18 and he was anxious to know what that sound disposition was before it suffered the impress of the unreasoned convictions imposed by others. Indeed, he wanted to reconstruct all his knowledge from its very foundation and was led to make the following reflections: “The search after truth being the aim which I propose to myself, I ought in the first place to ascertain what are the bases of certitude. In the second place I ought to recognize that certitude is the clear and complete knowledge of things, such knowledge as leaves no room for doubt, nor any possibility of error.”19 As one might foresee, this proposed test for certitude only led him to a series of doubts. No part of the knowledge he had acquired {588} hitherto could stand this rigorous test. He further observed, “We cannot hope to find truth except in matters which carry their evidence in themselves, i. e., in sense-perception and necessary principles of thought; we must, therefore, first of all establish these two on a firm basis.” But he doubted the evidence of sense-perception; he could see plainly as Descartes did later that they so often deceive us.

No eye can perceive the movement of a shadow, still the shadow moves; a small coin would cover any star yet the geometrical computations show that a star is a world vastly larger than the earth.19a
Al-Ghazālī’s confidence in sense-perception having been shaken, he turned to the scrutiny of what he called the necessary principles, but he doubted even these. Is ten more than three? Can a thing both be and not be at the same time or be both necessary and impossible? How could he tell? His doubt with regard to sense-perception made him very hesitant to accept the infallibility of reason. He believed in the testimony of senses till it was contradicted by the verdict of reason. Well, perhaps there is above reason another judge who if he appeared would convict reason of falsity and if such a third arbiter is not yet apparent it does not follow that he does not exist.

Al-Ghazālī then considers the possibility that life in this world is a dream by comparison with the world to come; and when a man dies, things may come to appear differently to him from what he now beholds.20 There may be an order of reality different from this spatio-temporal order which may be revealed to a level of consciousness other than the so-called normal consciousness such as that of the mystics or the prophets. Such was the movement of al-Ghazālī’s thought, which though formulated a little artificially in the Munqidh was dramatic enough to make out a case for the possibility of a form of apprehension higher than rational apprehension, that is, apprehension as the mystic’s inspiration or the prophet’s revelation.21 {589} Al-Ghazālī’s method of doubt or sceptical attitude did certainly have its historical antecedents.

The Ash’arites’ system of atomism, by reducing all categories except substance (jauhar) and quality (‘ard) to mere subjectivities, virtually amounted to a form of scepticism.22 Even earlier the Mu’tazilites like al-Nazzam (d. 231/845) and abu al-Hudhail (d. 266/840) had formulated the principle of doubt as the beginning of all knowledge.23 But with al-Ghazālī this was as much a matter of an inherent trait of his intellectual disposition as a principle. One may be tempted to say that his keenly alert and sensitive mind, though, exposed from early youth to all the various intellectual and spiritual movements of the times such as scholasticism, rationalism, mysticism, etc., was not fully captured by any one single movement.

Ambitious and self-confident, he had been in a way playing with the various influences rather than affected exclusively by anyone of them. His restless soul had always been trying to reach for what it had not attained. In his sincere and open search for absolute truth, he possibly remained oscillating for a long time between the moments of belief and disbelief-moments when he might have found comfort in his religious convictions with complete submission to the teachings of the Qur’an and the moments when his doubts and scepticism might have overwhelmed him, clamouring for indubitable certainty. It is certainly very difficult to map the exact chronology of the spiritual development of such a complex mind as that of al-Ghazālī’s.

The usual method of working out the history of the mental development of an author on the basis of the chronological order of his works is not possible in the case of al-Ghazālī for our knowledge of his works is incomplete. both with regard to their extent and relative order, not to speak of exact dating.24 None of his works, not even {590} al-Munqidh which has often been compared with the Confessions of Augustine allows us a peep into the inward workings of his soul.25 It is merely a schematized description of his spiritual development and not an existential study of the “phenomenology” of his soul: he has simply arranged in a logical order what must necessarily have come to him in a broken and sporadic form.

Nevertheless, al-Munqidh is our most valuable source to determine al-Ghazali’s relative position with regard to the various schools of thought around him. He had been moving through them all these years, studying them very closely in his quest for certainty, and of them he now gives us a critical evaluation in a summary fashion. He divides the various “seekers” after truth into the four distinct groups: Theologians, Mystics, Authoritarians Ta’limites), and Philosophers.

His criticism of the theologians is very mild. He himself had been brought up in their tradition and was thoroughly saturated into their system. It is doubtful if he ever parted company with them completely. He did not cease to be a theologian even when he became a mystic and his criticism of the philosophers was essentially from the standpoint of a theologian. Only he was dissatisfied with the scholastic method of the theologians, for it could not bring any intellectual certainty; their doctrines, he deemed, however, to be correct. His belief in God, Prophecy, and Last Judgment were too deeply rooted in him to be shaken altogether; his scepticism with regard to them, if at all, was a temporary phase; he only very much desired a confirmation of these fundamental beliefs either on some philosophical grounds or through some sort of first-hand experience.

So far as the mystics were concerned, al-Ghazālī found himself hardly in a position to level any criticism against them except for the extravagantly pantheistic utterances or antinomian tendencies of some of the intoxicated Sufis.26 They were essentially men of feeling (arbab al-ahwal) rather than men of words (ashab al-aqwal) and he had himself early realized the importance of experiences and states rather than that of definitions and dogmas. The claims of the mystics he knew could not be challenged by one who lacked their experiences.

Al-Ghazālī held a very poor opinion of the pretensions of those whom he called the party of ta’lim or authoritative instruction also known as Ismail῾iyyah and Batiniyyah.27 Theirs was a kind of Muslim popery or Montanist movement. {591} They renounced reason and held that truth can be attained only by a submissive acceptance of the pronouncements of an infallible Imam. This doctrine indeed was a part of the propaganda of the Fatimid Caliphate (297/909-555/1160) with its centre in Cairo and, thus, had its moorings in the political chaos of the day. Al-Ghazālī’s examination of the Taclimites was certainly due to his love for thoroughness in his search for truth, but perhaps he also wanted to make clear his position with regard to an ideology having political strings behind it.
It was the fourth class of the seekers of truth, namely, the philosophers, who engaged his attention most of all and troubled his mind more than anyone else.