Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul

Gianotti’s purpose behind this monograph is to draw out Ghazali’s position on the vexed question of the true nature of the soul and its state in the afterlife. Ghazali’s actual views on this question have been a point of serious debate in both the Muslim intellectual tradition and Ghazali scholarsh...

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Autor principal: Atif Khalil
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Publicado: International Institute of Islamic Thought 2006
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/7e14e9113d3a4b698083a39dd98cf0e7
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:7e14e9113d3a4b698083a39dd98cf0e72021-12-02T19:23:17ZAl-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul10.35632/ajis.v23i1.16552690-37332690-3741https://doaj.org/article/7e14e9113d3a4b698083a39dd98cf0e72006-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/1655https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3733https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3741 Gianotti’s purpose behind this monograph is to draw out Ghazali’s position on the vexed question of the true nature of the soul and its state in the afterlife. Ghazali’s actual views on this question have been a point of serious debate in both the Muslim intellectual tradition and Ghazali scholarship in the West. At the heart of this debate lies the question of his true allegiance: Was the man, widely held to be the mujaddid (renewer of religion) of the fifth Islamic century, a full-fledged Asharite, as tradition has made him out to be, or was he, as others have suggested, a closet Avicennian? Or was he, to complicate matters even further, neither? The source of the problem rests on the apparently conflicting doctrines he articulated in various places concerning the soul in various places in his vast and multi-layered literary oeuvre. These seeming inconsistencies led Averroes, in the thirteenth century, to accuse Ghazali of adhering “to no one doctrine in his books,” and of being a Sufi with Sufis, an Asharite theologian with the Asharites, and a philosopher with the philosophers (p. 19). Gianotti confesses that the “tensions and ambiguities are real and beg resolution” (p. 8). He poignantly asks, however, whether they were the “unintentional mess left by a brilliant but indisciplined mind,” or whether ... Atif KhalilInternational Institute of Islamic ThoughtarticleIslamBP1-253ENAmerican Journal of Islam and Society, Vol 23, Iss 1 (2006)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Islam
BP1-253
spellingShingle Islam
BP1-253
Atif Khalil
Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
description Gianotti’s purpose behind this monograph is to draw out Ghazali’s position on the vexed question of the true nature of the soul and its state in the afterlife. Ghazali’s actual views on this question have been a point of serious debate in both the Muslim intellectual tradition and Ghazali scholarship in the West. At the heart of this debate lies the question of his true allegiance: Was the man, widely held to be the mujaddid (renewer of religion) of the fifth Islamic century, a full-fledged Asharite, as tradition has made him out to be, or was he, as others have suggested, a closet Avicennian? Or was he, to complicate matters even further, neither? The source of the problem rests on the apparently conflicting doctrines he articulated in various places concerning the soul in various places in his vast and multi-layered literary oeuvre. These seeming inconsistencies led Averroes, in the thirteenth century, to accuse Ghazali of adhering “to no one doctrine in his books,” and of being a Sufi with Sufis, an Asharite theologian with the Asharites, and a philosopher with the philosophers (p. 19). Gianotti confesses that the “tensions and ambiguities are real and beg resolution” (p. 8). He poignantly asks, however, whether they were the “unintentional mess left by a brilliant but indisciplined mind,” or whether ...
format article
author Atif Khalil
author_facet Atif Khalil
author_sort Atif Khalil
title Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
title_short Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
title_full Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
title_fullStr Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
title_full_unstemmed Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul
title_sort al-ghazali’s unspeakable doctrine of the soul
publisher International Institute of Islamic Thought
publishDate 2006
url https://doaj.org/article/7e14e9113d3a4b698083a39dd98cf0e7
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