Saja Parvizian (Independent Scholar), "Al-Ghazālī, nativism, and divine interventionism"
Forthcoming, British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Oftentimes it is thought that the Western philosophical tradition engages issues in (say) epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics that are thoroughly unique, and not present in the philosophical issues raised in other traditions (e.g. Eastern traditions). When it comes to Islamic philosophy in particular, it is also often thought that the Islamic philosophers were librarians and commentators of philosophy, merely interpreting, regurgitating, and preserving the ancient Greek philosophical tradition. As the story goes, then, the Islamic philosophers did not contribute anything significantly novel to the history of philosophy.
To be sure, this Orientalist view of Islamic philosophy is being resisted in recent literature on Islamic philosophy. One broad way of thinking about the implications of this paper, a study of al-Ghazālī’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, is that it puts pressure on this story as well. Al-Ghazālī is interested in much of the same debates in epistemology and philosophy of mind, specifically, the theory of innate ideas or nativism, that in part animates early modern philosophy. There is a type of continuity, then, between the Islamic and European philosophical traditions. That is not to say, of course, that al-Ghazālī is interesting merely because he is similar to the European nativists such as Descartes. Rather, the point is that some of the philosophical problems that are thought to be unique to the European philosophical tradition aren’t that unique after all.
Interestingly, it should be admitted that al-Ghazālī does not identify as a philosopher. This is due to a variety of theological reasons for which he wanted to distance himself from the Avicennan philosophical tradition that he thought was rife with unbelief, that is, philosophical positions that were inconsistent with Orthodox Sunni Islam (e.g. the eternity of the world and that God knows universals but not particulars). Al-Ghazālī’s famous Incoherence of the Philosophers offers refutations of the so-called philosophical demonstrations of Aristotle, Avicenna, and al-Farabi, showing that their metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy are not on logically solid grounds. But in offering these refutations, al-Ghazālī establishes that he is a philosopher in his own right. As such, al-Ghazālī rightfully earns a spot—indeed, a central one—in the history of Islamic philosophy.
Another key text in al-Ghazālī’s philosophical work, which is the focus of this paper, is the Deliverance from Error. The Deliverance constitutes al-Ghazālī’s intellectual and spiritual autobiography, in which he explains his epistemological path to accepting the truth of mystical Islam (Sufism). This text has attracted the attention of historians of philosophy especially for its intriguing engagement with skepticism in the first part of the text, as well as the uncanny similarities between al-Ghazālī’s skepticism and that of Descartes’s.
What is distinctive about al-Ghazālī’s engagement with skepticism—a sensory perception doubt that targets sensory beliefs and a dream doubt that targets intellectual beliefs—is that he claims that he cannot defeat these skeptical arguments. Al-Ghazālī presents the pernicious skeptical challenge he has generated as follows. In order to defeat a skeptical argument one needs to supply a proof. However, a proof requires appeal to primary truths (e.g. the law of non-contradiction). However, the dream doubt casts doubt on the primary truths of the intellect. As such, there is no way to supply a proof to defeat skepticism. Thus, it seems, one must become a skeptic. This is very much unlike Descartes, who claims that it is possible to defeat skepticism through the natural light of reason, even in the face of a hyperbolic doubt which implies that the intellect is unreliable.
Although al-Ghazālī finds himself forced to accept skepticism for some time, he does not remain a skeptic. But this did not come about through a proof. He claims that God rescued him from his skeptical condition through a divine light cast unto his heart. That light, he claims, is the key to knowledge, and that when he received it, he was able to restore trust in the intellect and its primary truths. But how exactly does this divine intervention work? More specifically, how does the divine light effect a recovery of the primary truths that are foundational to proofs and knowledge more generally?
Al-Ghazālī offers a clue to this puzzle in a cryptic text at the end of his resolution of skepticism, where he seems to imply that primary truths are present or innate to the mind, and that an experience of God—via the divine light—is needed to secure the veracity of these primary truths. This paper fleshes out the relationship between nativism and the divine light. It argues that a holistic reading of al-Ghazālī’s epistemological writings (including the Revival of the Religious Sciences and the Niche of Lights) strongly suggest that al-Ghazālī is a nativist about primary truths. That is, al-Ghazālī maintains (against Avicenna’s empiricism) that primary truths are innate to the mind, and thus are not abstracted from sensory experience. Drawing from al-Ghazali’s views on mystical experience, it is argued that the experience of the divine light constitutes a type of knowledge-by-acquaintance that offers non-propositional grounds for the veracity of innate primary truths. Through this experience, then, al-Ghazālī is able to overcome skepticism.
A further implication of this reading is that it sheds some light on a long-standing debate about whether al-Ghazālī had any influence on Descartes. There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that Descartes might have had some sort of access to the Deliverance. But the main evidence for the influence is the uncanny similarities between Descartes and al-Ghazālī’s method of doubt and engagement with skeptical arguments. However, commentators generally agree that although al-Ghazālī and Descartes have similar doubts, the way they resolve these doubts are very different. As indicated earlier, Descartes resolves his skepticism through the natural light of reason, whereas al-Ghazālī relies on a divine light. Nonetheless, this paper shows that there is plausibly a further similarity as well, for like al-Ghazālī, Descartes also requires nativism or innate ideas to defeat skepticism. While this does not demonstrate conclusively that al-Ghazālī did influence Descartes, it does establish that, though coming from different traditions and around 500 years apart, both philosophers are working within a very similar epistemological framework.