Al-Ghazali : Incoherence of the Philosophers

Tahafut al-Falasifa
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE)
Translated into English from Urdu by Sabih Ahmad Kamali


Table of Contents:


Introduction

I - Refutation of the philosophers' belief in the Eternity of the world

II - Refutation of their belief in the everlasting nature of the world, time and motion

III - Of their dishonesty in saying that God is the agent and the maker of the world which is His action or product: and the explanation of the fact that these words have only a metaphorical, not real, significance to them>

IV - To show their inability to prove the existence of the creator of the world

V - Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that God is one, and that it is not possible to suppose two necessary beings each of which is uncaused

VI - Refutation of their denial of the Divine Attributes

VII - Refutation of their thesis that it is impossible that something should share a genus with God, being separated from Him by differentia; and that the intellectual division into genus and differentia is inapplicable to Him

VIII - Refutation of their thesis that God's is simple being — i.e., it is pure being, without an essence to which existence would be related — and that necessary existence is to Him what essence is to any other being

IX - Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that God is not body

X - Of their inability to prove by rational arguments that there is a cause or creator of the world

XI - Refutation of those philosophers who hold that God knows the Other, and that He knows the species and genera in a universal manner

XII - To show their inability to prove that God knows Himself either

XIII - Refutation of their doctrine that God (may He be exalted above what they say) does not know the particulars which are divisible in accordance with the division of time into 'will be,' 'was,' and 'is'

XIV - To show their inability to prove that the heaven is living, and obeys God through its rotary motion
XV - Refutation of what they consider to be the purpose which moves the heaven

XVI - Refutation of their theory that the souls of the heavens are aware of all the particulars which originate in the world

XVII - Refutation of their belief in the impossibility of a departure from the natural course of events

XVIII - Of their inability to give a rational demonstration of their theory that the human soul is a spiritual substance which exists in itself; is not space-filling; is not body, or impressed upon body; and is neither connected nor disconnected with body — as God is neither inside the world nor outside it, or as the angels are

XIX - Refutation of their thesis that, having come into being, the human souls cannot be destroyed; and that their everlasting nature makes it impossible for us to conceive of their destruction

XX - Refutation of their denial of the resurrection of bodies


Conclusion