Al-Ghazali

Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al -Ghazali (Arabic أبو حامد محمد بن محمد الغزالي, DMG Abū Muḥammad al - Hamid Muhammad b Gazzali; . Persian ابو حامد محمد غزالی; Latin Algazel; * 1058 TUs in Mashhad, † 19 December. 1111) was a Persian Muslim theologian, philosopher and mystic.

Ghazali is still regarded as one of the greatest religious thinkers of Islam. He is due to the introduction of Aristotelian syllogistic logic and the Islamic law and theology. In his philosophy he represented nonetheless a religiously motivated skepticism, defending the truths of faith and revelation by means of philosophical doubt against the truth claims of philosophy. While he (as opposed to Islamic Spain, where they flourished ) is blamed on the one hand for the downfall of philosophy in the Islamic East, he effected on the other side a revival of theology.

Life

After the death of his teacher, Imam al -Haramain al schafiitischen - Dschuwaini (1028-1085), Ghazali went to the court of Nizam al - Mulk, the vizier of Seldschukensultane, who in 1091 appointed him to a professorship at the Nizamiyya - Madrasa in Baghdad. He gained in this position as the highest-ranking teacher of the Islamic Community of Baghdad best reputation was also in demand as a political consultant.

While triggered by the assassination of Nizam al - Mulk turmoil Ghazali fell by his own admission in a spiritual crisis and turned to Islamic mysticism, Sufism, too. He gave up his professorship, donated his property to the poor and left Baghdad in 1095. As a Sufi, he led then in Palestine and Syria, a wandering life until he finally returned to his hometown of Tus, where he apart from a shorter resume his work as a professor in Nishapur (1106 ) until his death led a secluded life as a Sufi teacher.

Teaching

Ghazali's attitude towards philosophy is ambivalent: on the one hand, witness his works from a thorough knowledge of Greek and Islamic philosophy, on the other hand, he rejected philosophy from as own path to truth and threw predecessors such as Avicenna and al -Farabi ago, by her uncritical adaptation of pagan Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy ( there especially metaphysics ) to destroy the Islamic faith. Especially against the Emanationismus which by way of the intellect and in connection therewith also taught the necessary emergence of the world from God, the eternity of the world, he defended the guaranteed by the Koranic revelation divine creation and temporality of the world by the philosopher denied right to apply its principle of causality on the other-worldly God.

By mitigating the radical asceticism of the early Sufis and the systematization of the Sufi body of thought Ghazali contributed significantly to the general recognition of Sufism in Islam. Although he ash represented ʿ aritische positions in dogmatics, so he gave himself but with the mere reason as source of knowledge not satisfied and taught the way to an awareness of God, which springs from the heart to " to move away from the non-Islamic influences of the mind ". With this attitude, he paved anti- rational tendencies in the intellectual debates of his era the way. His Sufism is considered nevertheless as " sober ," as this is not excessive in sheer emotion.

Ghazali tried in his world view, a synthesis of the divine determinism with human free will:

• On the top level, the always self-sustaining God is.
• At the lowest level the material world that is predestined by God.
• In between the world of people whose soul and self is characterized by the free will is. God gives people ideas and inclinations, but the following acts solely the responsibility of the people. ( In the Stanford Encyclopedia but al -Ghazali is rather described as determinist. See the discussion here.)

Ghazali gave the concept of jihad through the reinterpretation of a verse from the Qur'an (4, 95) a new, additional meaning: not only the fight on the battlefield is Jihad, but also the struggle against one's own lower self ( an-nafs al - Ammara ).

Reception

Latin tradition

Al- Ghazali wrote in 1094 maqasid al - falasifa ( The intentions of the philosophers ), illustrating the basic concepts of logic, metaphysics, theology and physics and is a preparation of Ibn Sina's Dānishnāma -e Ala'i, is early in the first half of the 12th century probably translated in Toledo Dominicus Gundisalvi into Latin and circulates among others philosophiae under the title Liber de Algazelis summa theoreticae. The Latin readers did initially not at this network status and considered it a mistaken for an exposition of al - Ghazali's teachings - the cause of a high estimate of the latter among theorists who sympathize with methods and teachings in the tradition of al -Farabi and Ibn Sina. The false attribution of this document has to modern times makes it difficult to understand the thinking al - Ghazali's sustainable.

As Ghazali Tahafut al - falasifa ( Incoherence of philosophers ) of Averroes was reproduced verbatim in its refutation ( Tahafut al - Tahafut ), it was philosophorum known in the West under the title Destructio than the Tahafut at- Tahafut 1328 seven of the Jewish Translator Kalonymus Kalonymus ben Meir was translated from Arabic into Latin. This translation was first printed with a commentary by Agostino Nifo 1497 in Venice ( reprints in Lyon in 1517, 1529, 1542). Another translator, Calonymos ben David ben Todros, created 1318-1328 and a complete transfer of Tahafut at- Tahafut from Arabic into Hebrew ( Happalat ha - Happalah ), and this Hebrew translation was later translated into Latin by Calo Caloymos and 1527 printed in Venice ( reprints in 1550, 1560, 1573).

History of Research

The harsh assessment of philosophy by Ghazali - he judged at the end of this refutation of the philosophers even as infidels - was for centuries in the Latin West as not present, including due to the prevailing reception of Ghazali's view of the philosophical doctrines but not of this rater plant or plant part. An important turning point came in 1842 at all groundbreaking for research to study Schmölders Ghazali '.

Works

Theology

• About 1108 - al - Munqiḏ min ad- Dalal - dt The Savior translated from error, from the Arabic, edited with an introduction, with notes and indices. of ʿ Abd- Elṣamad ʿ Abd- Elḥamīd Elschazlī, Meiner, Hamburg 1988 ( = Philosophical Library, 389), ISBN 3-7873-0681-1
• 1095 - al - Iqtiṣād fī al - ʿ i tiqād ( The single-minded approach in the dogmatic expediency kidneys)
• 1097 - ar - Risala al - Qudsiyya ( The Letter from Jerusalem)
• Kitaab al - arba ʿ fī īn Usul ad - dīn ( Forty chapter on the principles of religion )
• 1095 - Mizan al - ʿ amal - dt The criterion of action, translated from Arabic, edited with an introduction, with notes and indices. of ʿ Abd- Elṣamad ʿ Abd- Elḥamīd Elschazlī, University Press, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-534-19039-3
• Ad - Durra al - Fahira fī ʿ KAsF ulūm al - Ahira - dt The pearl of great price in the knowledge of the afterlife, translated from Arabic by Mohamed Brugsch, Lafaire, Hannover 1924 ( digitized ), reprint GMSG, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-937297 - 06-5; revised version Spohr Verlag, Kandern 2003, ISBN 3-927606-47-2
• Ayyuhā al - walad - dt O child, Arabic text with Übs by Muhammad Harun Riedinger, Edition minaret, Braunschweig 2002, ISBN 3-9808396-0-5!
• Faysal at- al - Islām wa tafriqa bayn - az- Zandaqa - dt The criterion of distinction between Islam and atheism, introduced, translated and provided with comments by Frank pen, trace Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-9520127-8-5
• Fada ʾ al - IH Bāṭiniyya - German polemic against the Batinijja sect, by Ignaz Goldziher commented, reprint Brill, Leiden 1956 ( = Publications of the De Goeje Foundation, 3)
• Doubtful: ar - Radd al - ʿ Gamil alā to - niṣārā al - Ingîl - it dt Against the divinity of Jesus, ÜBS. by Franz Elmar Wilms, Brill, Leiden 1966

Sufism

Philosophy

Law ( Fiqh )

Logic

See also: http://www.ghazali.org/site/oeuvre.htm