The Confessions of Al Ghazzali
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~13,300 words · 63 passages
Cite this work
- APAAl-Ghazali. (n.d.). The Confessions of Al Ghazzali. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/the-confessions-of-al-ghazzali
- MLAAl-Ghazali. The Confessions of Al Ghazzali. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/the-confessions-of-al-ghazzali.
- ChicagoAl-Ghazali. The Confessions of Al Ghazzali. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/al-ghazali/the-confessions-of-al-ghazzali.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Al-Ghazali's intellectual autobiography, known in Arabic as 'al-Munqidh min ad-dalal', 'the deliverer from error'.
Context and history
Al-Ghazali was the best-paid professor in Baghdad when, around 1095, he lost the power of speech: a crisis he reports as both an illness and a warning. He gave up the chair, his family and the city, and spent years in retirement before returning to teach. The book is the account of that road and, at the same time, an orderly examination of the four ways he tried: theology, philosophy, Ismailism and Sufism. He concludes that only the last gives what he was after, because the first three can be learnt and this one has to be lived — 'there is a difference between knowing what drunkenness is and being drunk'. It is often compared with Augustine's 'Confessions', and the comparison holds, though al-Ghazali is far drier and far less confessional than the English title leads one to expect.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
with the avidity of brutes. These also ought to be called atheists, for the true faith depends not only on the acknowledgment of God, but of His Apostle and of the Day of Judgment. And although they acknowledge God and His attributes, they deny a judgment to come. (3) Next come the _Theists_. Among them should be reckoned Socrates, who was the teacher of Plato as Plato was of Aristotle. This latter drew up for his disciples the rules of logic, organised the sciences, elucidated what was formerly obscure, and expounded what had not been understood. This school refuted the systems of the two others, i.e. the Materialists and Naturalists; but in exposing their mistaken and perverse beliefs, they made use of arguments which they should not. “God suffices to protect the faithful in war” (_Koran_, xxxiii. 25). Aristotle also contended with success against the theories of Plato, Socrates, and the theists who had preceded him, and separated himself entirely from them; but he could not eliminate from his doctrine the stains of infidelity and heresy which disfigure the teaching of his predecessors. We should therefore consider them all as unbelievers, as well as the so-called Mussulman philosophers, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Farabi, who have adopted their systems. Let us, however, acknowledge that among Mussulman philosophers none have better interpreted the doctrine of Aristotle than the latter. What others have handed down as his teaching is full of error, confusion, and obscurity adapted to disconcert the reader. The unintelligible can neither be accepted nor rejected. The philosophy of Aristotle, all serious knowledge of which we owe to the translation of these two learned men, may be divided into three portions: the first contains matter justly chargeable with impiety, the second is tainted with heresy, and the third we are obliged to reject absolutely.…