sations of heresy. Ibn Sina was in a position to stand back and survey the whole
development, and then systematically set forth the fundamental metaphysical
terms in which these issues could be resolved. To de-particularize this devel-
opment, one should say that the Muslim intellectual community after eight
generations of debate had pushed these problems to successively higher levels
of abstraction; Ibn Sina was the individual in whom the process reached an
explicit metaphysics, detached from theology, and systematized into a compre-
hensive chain of proofs. Proofs of the existence of God go back to the MuÀtaz-
ilite theologians; chains of logical argument were developed as technical skills
by the Baghdad specialists in this art; the Neoplatonic cosmology of emana-
tions had been Islamicized by al-Farabi and popularized by the Brethren of
Purity. Ibn Sina was heir to all these developments. His work is a grand
synthesis, carried out with a logical thoroughness that goes far beyond mere
eclecticism. Structurally, his scholasticism represents the drawing together of
the entire corpus of rational thought in Islam, at a time when the social space
on this side of the field was closing down and the anti-rationalists were
palpably growing in strength.
Ibn Sina, like other very great intellectuals, was an energy star. He wrote
encyclopedically and fundamentally on numerous subjects. This outpouring of
energy was what carried his work to later generations, despite the fact that his
personal network broke off with a few minor local disciples. His philosophy
was criticized and rejected by the Hanbali and AshÀarite theologians who now
dominated. Ibn Sina’s reputation was kept alive by his eminence in the world
of medicine; and it was along with his Canon that his philosophy eventually
spread, via Spanish doctors and translators, into the Latin world under the
name of Avicenna.
Creative networks had become even thinner by the time of al-Ghazali.
Figure 8.2 shows no rival philosopher in his generation of even secondary
importance. He does, however, have significant network ties backwards and
forwards in time: he was a pupil in the main line of AshÀarite theologians; he
was in the main intellectual centers of the time, Nishapur and Baghdad; and
his lineage led on to the relatively more important figures of subsequent
generations. The fact remains that al-Ghazali’s generation had the thinnest
network of significant thinkers in the history of Islamic philosophy up to this
time; it was the turning point between the dense competition among rival
chains that characterized the heyday of the Basra and Baghdad networks, and
the later period of thinner and rather routinized networks of Sufis and madrasa
theologians. The content of al-Ghazali’s thought incorporates this change; his
is the creativity of structural crisis.
Al-Ghazali was connected with all the main trends of his time. Toleration
for philosophy was disappearing. In Baghdad, violent outbreaks took place
420 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths