The structure and doctrine of the path of praxis (Muʿāmala) of the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn: The integration of reason and revelation in al-Ghazālī’s revival project
Keywords: Kalam
Ghazālī
Avicenna (ibn Sina)
scriptural hermeneutics
Sufism
philosophical theology
praxis (mu'amala)

Ghazālī studies has undergone a revision that successfully undermining the myth of al-Ghazālī as the destroyer of philosophy and rational thought in Islam. In the wake of this revision, one manner of re-imagining al-Ghazālī is as a crypto-philosopher, covertly deploying philosophical doctrines, including those rejected in his very own text, Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Another stance is that taken by Fazlur Rahman already in the 1950’s: viewing al-Ghazālī’s use of philosophical texts and doctrines as involving modifications and producing an intermediate position reflecting aspects of philosophy and the pre-existing orthodoxy, akin to the famous example of the doctrine of causality. Showing how, even at his most philosophical, that al-Ghazālī is not only waxing rhetorical, but synthesising and accommodating, requires discipline and an ear for more than one subject or discourse. Within the revision efforts, the present thesis offers a more nuanced position shifting the discussion from that he used philosophical texts to how. To this end, this thesis uncovers the structure of his most important work, his monumental Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (the Revivification of the Religious Sciences). In spite of its centrality, this work remains an under-studied lacuna in Ghazālī studies and turns out to be singularly informative regarding his nature as a thinker, and a central case-study of inter-cultural interaction between Islamic and Hellenic currents.
The Iḥyāʾ, from one perspective, is a veritable summa. From another perspective, it is an extensive treatise negotiating several epistemological sources or cultural systems: scripture, orthodoxy, Sufism, Greek thought, and the philosophical inquiry of the intellect. These sources are appropriated to produce theological doctrine, worship, virtue, invocation, and contemplation deployed towards achieving the work’s ostensive overriding aim: an eschatological telos. The structure of al-Ghazālī’s product in the form of the Iḥyāʾ must be studied before the implications of this structure may be analysed. The current study is the first to systematically study its structure. Al-Ghazālī’s own statements regarding the structure are cross-checked against the his actual practice. The practices comprising the forty books of the Iḥyāʾ are examined to determine their common features, and their inconsistencies with each other and the said statements. The results of this research may be expressed through comparing the Iḥyāʾ with another work that has been called its blueprint—the Mīzān al-ʿamal—asking how it is they treat the same subject, praxis, yet have an entirely different structure. Our findings include that the Iḥyāʾ is constructed according to a consistent two-layered structure not found in al-Mīzān. Through this structure, the philosophical praxis of the Mīzān is stretched into what is termed here the path of praxis (muʿāmala) and the philosophical discourse is expanded into two levels: abstract discourse and truth versus corporeal similitudes of scripture, the reality being implicit in scripture, but requiring interpretation. A crucial finding is that the two-tier structure built on al-Ghazālī’s cosmological terms mulk and malakūt is itself appropriated from philosophers holding that religion is a corporeal imitation of the abstract philosophical truth (whose use is interpreted below). These epistemological levels, achievable via both philosophical and sharia praxis, are linked by al-Ghazālī himself to eschatological outcomes.
Chapter 1 investigates the basis for uniting reason and revelation into two epistemological and eschatological levels: the corporeal and incorporeal. It then shows how the Iḥyāʾ adopts the related notion that religion is the corporeal similitude of the incorporeal (and abstract) higher truth. These notions then assist in interpreting the misunderstood classification of the sciences in the Iḥyāʾ, 3rd Quarter. In this classification, the two levels are present as religious sciences, termed imitative, and the abstrusely termed ‘intellectual sciences of the afterlife’ (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya al-ukhrawiyya). Here, the two levels manifest and it becomes clear that religion (part of the title of his work) has two meanings: higher and lower, kernel and shell. However, al-Ghazālī renders the higher truth the science of unveiling incorporating religious insights, so careful interpretation is engaged with.
Chapter 2 establishes that between the two levels is a hermeneutic connecting them. Al-Ghazālī is shown to effectively respond to Avicenna’s al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya which claims that kalām scholars are alternatively literal or figurative when it suits them and without minding any consistent rule (qānūn). While in several works al-Ghazālī is known to address valid and invalid hermeneutical methods, here he deploys a hermenutic to speak simultaneously on two levels regarding the major topics of theology in the Iḥyāʾ: the divine attributes, eschatology, and the divine law (including ritual worship). Producing the two consistent levels of discourse woven into the Iḥyāʾ—the outward similitude and the reality known secondarily by the light of reason after being revealed to prophets—require constant interpretation, and show him, not Avicenna, to be the inheritor of the prophets, able to interpret all (or most) of scripture.
Chapter 3 elucidates a doctrine that is termed here on as the ‘afterlife criterion’. It studies the 3rd Quarter passage drawn from the Miʿyār al-ʿilm which sets out in technical terms the divide between the eternally true demonstrative knowledge fit to cause felicity to the human soul and that which changes, which are objects of desire in the here-below (dunyā). This true, eternal knowledge is thus associated with true religion, the religion of the afterlife. The psyche must detach from corporeal objects of the here-below before it may apprehend and enjoy the pleasure of incorporeal objects, al-Ghazālī here drawing on Avicenna’s arguments for intellectual pleasures.
Chapter 4 shows this dichotomy to be fundamental to the epistemology of the Iḥyāʾ, expressed as imitation versus true knowledge (i.e. demonstration). Kalām is placed nearer to the level of the masses. Direct beholding and annihilation are for the state produced by knowledge to dominate the heart. This domination of the heart by a state or attribute effects perception such that, for instance, instead of mere rational acknowledgement of the theological doctrine that God is one, the heart only sees God, even seeing itself and the objects of knowledge as the acts of God expressing His attributes.
Chapter 5 shows some of the key steps and levels by which praxis is extended to a path of praxis, serving as a bridge from the mulk to the malakūt. The eschatological aim of the Iḥyāʾ is framed terms a path from the corporeal to the incorporeal world, treating the philosophical problem of how the two separate worlds interact. This is termed a metaphysicalisation of praxis and this chapter sets out the levels of the psyche and shows how they map onto stages of the Iḥyāʾ’s path of praxis.
Chapter 6 proves that the dichotomy is fundamental to the structure of the Iḥyāʾ by studying its presence in each virtue and how the two teleological and eschatological ends of the Iḥyāʾ are related to the virtues. While the philosophical virtues inherited from Greek ethics are merely character traits, the Iḥyāʾ’s virtues are layered. They have a root, branches, and fruits which are belief, states of the heart, and acts of the limbs, respectively. Al-Ghazālī caters for two audiences, allowing that this root may be imitative knowledge, not demonstrative knowledge, though imitative knowledge is shakeable and must be reinforced. While imitative knowledge is not true knowledge (and hence is corporeal), it is, as shown in Chapter 2 on interpretation, complementary (muwāfiq) to the higher reality because it is the product of revelation. So, even those unable to produce true knowledge through the syllogistic method explained in the penultimate Kitāb al-Tafakkur may gain the religious traits by which their heart inclines towards the afterlife and its eschatological consequences outlined in detail. Al-Ghazālī’s virtues (and the psyche expressed in it) are integral: knowledge necessarily causes states which necessarily cause acts. In this manner, he makes the virtues signs that one has true religious knowledge and inclines towards it with the heart to protect religion from worldly scholars who use religion for material benefit. Additionally, higher virtues have progressively more conditions, so by possessing the higher, such as love, one necessarily possesses the lower, such as patience. Thus, he has constructed the virtues to be a proof of (true) Islam by logically valid structural argument: where the states (and their acts) described in the 4th Quarter are not present, there is no religious knowledge and states (i.e. where there is no smoke, there is no fire, a valid hypothetical mood termed the modus tollens shared with and described in al-Ghazālī’s Miʿyār). This proof also works against philosophers who neglect ethics, by whom al-Ghazālī would likely have Avicenna and his followers in mind.
Many of the above findings are abstract structures. However, these structures relate important matters such as knowledge, ethical traits, and speculative knowledge with enormous implications. The conclusion turns to interpret these findings. Of special interest is Chapter 1 that found that imitation and intellectual inquiry are related to each other as shell and kernel. This implies that intellectual inquiry is the cause of felicity and hence above religion. However, the fact that al-Ghazālī terms the higher level the kernel of religion and the religion of the afterlife complicates this, as does the fact that previous Ashʿarī and even Muʿtazilī theology also founded the branches of religion on speculative inquiry (naẓar). A second central concern is the so-called audience question. The Iḥyāʾ’s two primary levels—imitation and demonstration—cater for two separate audiences, leaving the door open to the argument that what has been termed the Maḍnūn syllabus is not out of step with the structure of the Iḥyāʾ. Thirdly, al-Ghazālī insists on a notion of direct witnessing and annihilation which is above reason, without undermining it, but rather through seeing the same intelligible forms as manifestations. Al-Ghazālī conceives of reason and revelation as two sources, each sent by God. This notion obliges the endless task of drawing out the mutual implications of reason and revelation and the need to master both before speaking. This road he chooses is difficult to interpret and outside easy and comfortable assessment by theologians and philosophers alike. There are further interpretive engagements needed, but the most salient feature of the Iḥyāʾ is a two-level structure in which various terms are used, but which encompasses a) corporeal / incorporeal, b) imitation / demonstration, c) corporeal salvation / incorporeal felicity, and d) outward practice / inward attributes of the heart and intellect. This forces us to consider the theme of development in al-Ghazālī’s syllabus, for this dichotomy changes as early as al-’Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn in which intellectual knowledge is lumped with imitation below spiritual tasting.