The Influence of al-Ghazâlî on the
Theory of Causality
One
of the most interesting features of the “Big Three” religions of the world is
that the underlying doctrines of each can trace their lineages directly to an
ongoing debate between the Aristotelian view of Materialism and Plato’s Theory
of Forms that began nearly 24 centuries ago.[1]
In dealing with the history of interaction between the adherents of Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam, Western scholarly views traditionally pitted
Christianity—touted as the central
religion—against the others in what essentially amounted to a power struggle to
maintain the one true Will of the one
true God. However, many scholars over
the past several decades have begun adopting what is now understood to be the
more appropriate, more accurate version of the history of the Mediterranean—namely,
that these religions developed along similar lines in a broad, multicultural
region of the world that was rich in trade, politics, and scientific
advancements. For example, by the time of the Islamic Golden Age from roughly
the mid-7th to the mid-13th centuries[2],
the Mediterranean Sea had offered a relatively easy route for traders and
conquerors alike to travel from Valencia to Tripoli and anywhere in between for
several hundred years. Along with myriad goods, ideas on everything from
religion to politics; from medicine to astrology; and from atoms to the
formation of the universe were readily exchanged in cities such as Córdoba,
al-Andalus (Spain) and Alexandria, Egypt, drawing influence from virtually
every known part of the world at the time. Baghdad once served as the site of
one of the intellectual, cultural, and scientific centers of the world and
economic powerhouses such as Cairo began exerting a much larger trading
influence around the Mediterranean through the trade of a number of ‘exotic’
goods.[3]
By the mid-11th century, Islamic influence on the entire region was
ubiquitous and many great works of Greek philosophy, mathematics, and science
had been translated into Arabic by Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi and
others that followed.[4]
Then in 1095, Abû Hâmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazâlî (Ghazâlî, or Muhammad,
hereafter) began publishing works critically examining the philosophical
arguments of Ash’arites and Mu’tazilites (collectively, Mutakallimûn) and those
of the Greeks.[5]
And it is to this most influential scholar that attention is turned.
Ghazâlî
was born in the mid- to late-1050s in what is now northeastern Iran. Educated
in Ash’arite theology by al-Juwaynî, Muhammad eventually ascended the political
and religious ranks of Baghdad and was appointed to a position at the Nizâmayya
Madrasa in 1091.[6] It
was during this time that Ghazâlî began his endeavor to develop a rigid, more
coherent analysis of the foundations of Islam. One of the ambiguities that
arose during some of the preliminary translations of Ghazâlî’s
tahâfut al-falâsifa (falâsifa) by
Dr. Simon Van den Bergh was his view
of the Theory of Causality.[7]
But, before diving into falâsifa,
perhaps it would be prudent to briefly examine the basics of the Aristotelian
and Platonic views in which Islamic ideology find its roots.
On the one hand, Aristotle argued
that in order to understand the internal structure of the physical world,
experiments must be conducted within the framework of a rigid methodology. “The
most exact sciences,” he writes, “are those that, more than the others, study
the first things; for the sciences that are derived from fewer principles (for
instance, arithmetic) are more exact than those (for instance, geometry) that require
further principles… Further, the most superior science—the one that is superior
to any subordinate science—is the one that knows the end for which a given
thing should be done; this end is something’s good, and in general the end is
what is best in every sort of nature” (Aristotle et al., p. 118). Aristotle later begins a long discussion Substance
with, “The things called substances are, first, the simple bodies (earth, fire,
water, and everything like that) and in general bodies and the things composed
from them (animals and divine things and their parts). All these things are
said to be substances because they are not said of a subject, but the other
things are said of them” (Aristotle et
al., p. 149). After a long line of reasoning that examines everything from
Plato’s and Democritus’ arguments to the interaction between potentiality and
actuality, he arrives at a few noteworthy understandings. “It is evident from
what has been said, then, that there is an everlasting, unmoved substance that
is separated from perceptible things (Aristotle et al., p. 191). He continues:
The nature of
understanding raises a number of puzzles. For understanding seems to be the
most divine of the things we observe, but many difficulties arise about what
state it must be in if it is to be so divine…
Finally, Aristotle wraps up his
discussion of Substance by addressing knowledge:
[K]knowledge, like knowing, is of
two kinds, potential and actual. Since the potentiality, as being matter, is
universal and indefinite, it is of the universal and indefinite. But since the
actuality is definite, it is of what is definite, and, since it is a this, it
is of a this…
It is clear, however, that in a way
knowledge is universal, and in a way it is not (Aristotle et al., p.195).
On
the other hand, Plato used, for example, the parable of the cave to question
whether something actually exists or
whether it exists within the essence
of that thing—what he called Forms. Although Ghazâlî eventually offers a sort
of compromise between the two, since the majority of Ghazâlî’s refutations examined
here regard Aristotelian Materialism, further elaboration on Plato’s Forms is
unnecessary.
In his treatise falâsifa, referring to the authors of
ancient works collectively as the philosophers,
Ghazâlî begins the section ‘Refutation of their belief in the eternity of the
world’,
THE philosophers
disagree among themselves as to the eternity of the world. But the majority of
the philosophers - ancient as well as modern-agree upon its eternity, holding
that it always coexisted with God (exalted be He) as His effect which was
concurrent with Him in time -concurrent as an effect is with the cause, e.g..,
light with the Sun -and that God's priority to the world is the priority of the
cause to the effect - viz., priority in essence and rank, not in time. Plato is
said to have maintained that the world began in time. But some people put
different interpretations on his words, for they would not have him believe in
the origin of the world... The consensus of opinion among the philosophers is
that as a rule it is inconceivable that something which has a beginning in time
should proceed from the eternal without there being any intermediary (Ghazâlî
1058-1111 CE).[8]
In other words, the discussion
involves determining causes and their effects. In Did Al-Ghazali Deny Causality, Goodman notes, “Ghazâlî’s argument
against the sufficiency of observed causes to produce their effects does not
deny but rather exploits the Philosophers’ emanative view of nature and assumes
the rejection of a reductionistic view which might consistently have regarded
the material objects as self-sufficient in their causal action” (Goodman, p.
91). And in Alon’s interpretation:
The definition of the
universality of causality, namely the assertion that nothing has ever occurred
without some cause, usually maintains that the existence of a phenomenon
implies that of a cause. Such a definition of causality would seem to be
acceptable to Al-Ghazâlî, as well as to even the most extreme opponents of
causality among the Ash’arites, who accept the doctrine that Allah is the sole
cause of everything…
Allah alone is
responsible for their creation in a specific order, but it is in His power to
disconnect them at will (Alon, p.399).
Abrahamov
briefly examines falâsifa while
referencing both Goodman and Alon:
Alon proves through a
structural, contextual and semantic examination of chapter XVII of tahâfut al-falsâsifa (referring mainly
to the above quoted section and what follows) that al-Ghazâlî seeks to
reconcile the two opposing views on causality, the philosophical view and that
of the Kalâm.[9]
According to Alon, al-Ghazâlî’s admission that God acts through physical means
and his acceptance of impossibility not only in the logical domain but also in
the ontological one affirm causality. Goodman proves that al-Ghazâlî, using Aristotelian
axioms expressed in Islamized terminology, holds causality but rejects the
philosophers’ doctrine that causes are necessary… Thus we have only a partial
picture of al-Ghazâlî’s views of causality, namely that which is found in his tahâfut (Abrahamov, p. 77-78).
Rather than rehash prior,
exhaustive examinations of the same doctrine, Abrahamov decided to look at
three of Ghazâlî’s other works, ilyâ, k.
al-arba’în, and al-maksad al asnâ,
to find the rest of the picture. In al-adba’în,
Abrahamov explains that Ghazâlî, “begins with the assertion that God has willed
every existing thing and that everything in this perishable corporeal world (mulk) as well as in the everlasting
spiritual world (malakût) happens in
accordance with God’s decree (kadâ) and
by His determination (kadar),
judgement (hukm) and will (mashî’a)” (Abrahamov, p. 78). The issue
of kadar is then framed within the
context of people misinterpreting verses of the Qur’an and how:
…only God and those
firmly rooted in knowledge (al-râsikûn
fî’l-‘ilm) know their true meaning… Kadar, according to al-Ghazâlî, is a
secret, and any attempt to understand it is forbidden. Whoever wants to know
God’s secrets must obey His precepts sincerely and do what pleases Him. But if
he cannot be satisfied with only devotion, he must believe (‘alayhi an ya’takida) what Abû Hanîfa
and his adherents say about this matter, namely, that it is God’s action that
creates power in man (ihdâth al-istitâ’a
fi’l allah) while man’s action consists of using the power that was created
(wa’isti’mâl al-istitâ’a al-muhdatha fi’l
al-‘abd) really and not just metaphorically using it (Abrahamov, p. 78-79).
Ghazâlî
then goes on to explain four stages of God’s will and how it is manifest in the
world. In the first stage, a direction for causality originating with God is
established while in the second stage He “establishes (nasaba) absolute, basic, fixed and stable causes… which neither
disappear nor change till the end of days” (Abrahamov, p. 80). The third stage
deals with the abovementioned kadar
(determination) and how God is directing cause toward their effects. And the
final stage is where Ghazâlî concludes that, “nothing exists outside God’s
decree and determination” (Abrahamov, p. 81). Using a parable involving a water
clock, Ghazâlî writes that, “Everything that happens in this world, be it good
or bad, useful or harmful, is according to God’s will, just as the clock moves
according to the will of its maker” (Abrahamov, p. 83). This line of reason
culminates in a compromise made between faith and philosophy. “Using the term hukm, which denotes wisdom… on the one
hand, and the terms kadâ and kadar, which connote power, on the other
hand, he reconciles the philosophical view that God is wisdom with the
religious view that God is power” (Abrahamov, p.84). To sum up, “Man is led to
act by a cause-effect chain” (Abrahamov, p. 89).
However,
it appears that contradictions exist between ihyâ and falâsifa. It is
within these contradictions that questions regarding Ghazâlî’s foundational
views have arisen. For example, in falâsifa,
Ghazâlî uses the idea of cotton coming into contact with flames to show the
direction of cause-effect while allowing for God to circumvent such rules.
Abrahamov explains,
In ihyâ, al-Ghazâlî holds the opposite view. He explicitly states that
it is impossible for a conditioned thing to precede a condition; e.g., volition
must come after knowledge. “Possibility (imkân)
means derivation (tarlîb), and
derivation does not admit change (lâ yakbalu
al-taghyîr).” Likewise it is impossible that God would cause plants to
sprout without man sowing or that a woman should give birth without sexual
intercourse (Abrahamov, p. 96).
(It is interesting to note the
first argument in that last line of this passage since it is now well
understood that plants existed long before humans showed up to destroy the
Earth through arrogance.)
Before
moving on to other sources, Abrahamov’s conclusions are important to discuss
since it is through them that an understanding of the compromise made between
philosophy and Orthodox Islam can be understood. “Al-Ghazâlî’s theory,” he
explains, “is that God created things and their natures and the he established
the plan by which things influence each other. The condition-conditioned chain that
al-Ghazâlî depicts in ihyâ is no
other than the scheme he elaborates in al-maksad
and k. al-arba’în” (Abrahamov, p.
97). Finally, he concludes the investigation by enumerating four facets of
Ghazâlî’s causality:
By establishing a
cause-effect chain with God as its First Cause and Maintainer, al-Ghazâlî
affirms the following: a. God is Omnipotent and One, since He alone, at His
will has created and continues to maintain the cause-effect chain. b. God acts
through His wisdom and not capriciously. c. Consequently it is possible to
acquire knowledge about the world, since every event or thing has a cause, and
things happen or change according to a fixed scheme. d. Man is obliged to
choose his actions but his choice is really compulsory too… Points a and d represent the religious view, while points b and c represent the
philosophical view. (Abrahamov, p. 97-98).
While
Ghazâlî at least partially accepted causality through his discussion of fire
and cotton in falâsifa, he wanted to
maintain the possibility of miracles—the second of his two main objectives
along this line of reasoning. Alon details Muhammad’s first objective by
saying, “He accepts the concept of the “nature” of a thing, without accepting
this term itself. The word he uses instead is sifah, i.e. quality (literally “description,” “attribute”)” (Alon,
p. 403). Even with the concession to causality, Ghazâlî still believed in the
omnipotence of Allah because of his view toward miracles. “This,” Alon
explains, “Al-Ghazâlî manages to do despite his partial acceptance of
causality; he agrees to reduce the miracle to a phenomenon which follows the
course of nature without the usual lapse of time” (Alon, p. 403-404). That is, Allah
has the power to make things that would naturally happen over long periods of
time happen instead over much shorter periods of time or instantaneously. And
this is a main point of departure from the mutakallimûn
view that some things, such as having knowledge and life contained within the
dead, are impossible even for Allah. Ghazâlî accepted the idea of impossible but, “managed to attack the
extremist mutakallimûn for their
rejecting any notion of impossibility of Allah” (Alon, p. 404).[10]
Ghazâlî
also departs from the Aristotelian view in how old he thinks is the universe. Goodman
recognizes that in falâsifa, “Ghazâlî
does not attempt to refute the Aristotelian view that matter is continuous. Nor
does Ghazâlî attempt to refute the Philosopher’s notion of the continuity of
time, but only to expose Aristotle’s fallacious inference that the continuity
of time implies time’s perpetuity” (Goodman, p. 110). In other words, the
Universe must have begun when Allah willed it so. Continuing:
If we wish to situate
Ghazâlî’s own position as to causality, then he helps us a great deal by
stating clearly his agreement with the Philosophers’ doctrine (which he takes
them to task for not adhering to more strictly) that God is the ultimate cause
of all events… but that one event within nature may be the proximate cause or
effect of another and that within the frame of reference of nature and the
characters with which things are created, one can even say that proximate
causes must have their effects and vice versa unless other causes interfere…
Thus Ghazâlî retains causality while rejecting the Philosophers’ doctrine of
necessity among created causes (Goodman, p. 111).
Addressing
the concepts of nature and creation, Ghazâlî makes a particular distinction
within a framework that serves to actually bolster the Aristotelian views on
the subjects:
Ghazâlî has a
conception of nature (khalqa)
distinct from that of the Philosophers, as a divinely created character of
things. What is at issue for him is not whether the familiar pattern of
nature’s operation, which we have learned to expect habitually in the course of
long observation, is itself necessary in the sense that things could never have
been otherwise and could never become other[w]ise. Ghazâlî’s answer to that
question and the answer which all monotheists inspired by the Biblical
tradition would give is… implicit in acceptance of the concept of creation
itself… To put the matter in terms of Ghazâlî’s paradigm example, if life were
an essential and inseparable property of living thing, then life would have
belonged to all living things perpetually and would be inalienable from them in
concept and in fact (Goodman, p.113).
In other words, if life is
intrinsic to certain collections of matter, it should be that way in
perpetuity. And, if that was the case, everything that has ever lived would
still live. However, we see that this is not what is experienced so it is thus
rejected.
At
the outset, Goodman asked the question Did
Ghazâlî Deny Causality and concludes, “[W]e have seen quite clearly from a
thorough examination of his discussion on the subject, that even in the course
of affirming the reality of the miraculous—of which the paradigm for Ghazâlî
was the mystery of life and intelligence being imparted to what is in itself
lifeless and inert matter—quite consistently he did not” (Goodman, p. 120).
A
final topic of interest is in Ghazâlî’s ideas about the concept of doubt.
Introduced in his al-Munqidh min al-Dalal,[11]
Rayan has this to say regarding his Method of Doubt:
Al-Ghazali believes
that reaching the truth of things requires knowledge of “true science.” It is
apparent to him that “certain science” is the one in which the “known thing” is
revealed in an undoubted way, and is not connected to the possibility of error
and illusion, and the heart cannot have room to assess it. This means that
al-Ghazali has doubt in every science that is not certain, and certainty for him is the criterion for the truth of things. Science is considered real only when
it is absolutely certain and proves true in the face of any expression of doubt
(Rayan, p. 166).
Ghazâlî used this method of doubt
to shore up his developing arguments against Aristotelian views. “This thorough
critical thinking,” Rayan concludes, “leads to an assessment of all types of
knowledge that have been accepted for a long time, and to the shaking of trust
in concepts that have been taken for granted as reliable. This in turn leads to
review of the sciences according to logical criteria that are meant to
distinguish the right from the wrong, the correct from the incorrect” (Rayan,
p. 173).
So,
in conclusion, it appears that, after examining exhaustive research from multiple
scholarly sources, Ghazâlî ultimately did not deny causality but instead sort
of embraced it through the application of a glorified “God of the Gaps”
argument. That is, Allah functioned as Prime Mover that set all things,
including time, into motion. And this, of course, implies that free choice in
humans is something that doesn’t actually exist since, “even man’s thoughts and
motives are determined by God” (Abrahamov, p. 86). Although he elaborates on
the concept in ihyâ, the conclusion
is ultimately the same: God did it.
Bibliography
Abrahamov,
Binyamin. "Al-Ghazālī's Theory of Causality." Studia Islamica,
no. 67 (1988): 75-
98. doi:10.2307/1595974.
Alon,
Ilai. "Al-Ghazālī on Causality." Journal of the American
Oriental Society 100, no. 4
(1980): 397-405.
doi:10.2307/602085.
Aristotle,
et al. Aristotle: Introductory Readings. Hackett Pub., 1996.
Catlos,
Brian A. Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence
in the Age of
Crusade and Jihad. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Edward
Omar Moad. "Al-Ghazali on Power, Causation, and 'Acquisition'." Philosophy
East and
Goodman,
Lenn Evan. "Did Al-Ghazâlî Deny Causality?" Studia Islamica,
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120. doi:10.2307/1595550.
Plato,
and W. H. D. Rouse. Great Dialogues of Plato. New York: Signet
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Rayan,
Sobhi. "Al-Ghazali's Method of Doubt." Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin 38, no.
[1]
This is from my class notes.
[3]
Brian A. Catlos, Infidel Kings and Unholy
Warriors (New York 2014) p. 192.
[5]
Specifically, Neoplatonist’s interpretations of Aristotle.
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Lenn Evan Goodman, Did al-Ghazali Deny
Causality?, p. 105.
[9]
Generally speaking, the word Kalâm
refers to an Islamic medieval theology. However, The Kalâm Cosmological Argument is the title of a 1979 book by
William Lane Craig that elaborates on the debate Ghazâlî entered when he began discussing causality.
[10]
This can easily be interpreted as a Procrustean argument, as appears to be the
case for most of Ghazâlî’s line of reasoning.
