by using the highest techniques of argumentation. In The Incoherence of
Philosophy he examines the proofs of the major propositions given by his
opponents and finds them wanting by stricter logical standards. His major
weapon is to attack the notion of necessary causality, using arguments like
those later made famous in Europe by Hume. For al-Ghazali, necessity is
limited to logical relations; possibility excludes necessity, and hence the things
of the world can become actual only through the action of a voluntary cause,
God’s will.
In this al-Ghazali justifies the traditional position of the AshÀarites: exalting
God’s omnipotence so that God alone is the cause of everything that happens
in the world. There are no spheres of emanation, no realm of secondary causes
which diminish God. But kalam is not very important; it is useless for the
religiously healthy person unafflicted by doubt, while its ability to settle doubts
is far from perfect, as we can see by holding it up to the logical standards of
falsafa. Here epistemological acuteness was raised by religious traditionalists
seeking to puncture the claims of rational argument. But al-Ghazali faced
further problems on the religious front, especially the challenge of the IsmaÀilis,
then in open revolt against al-Ghazali’s Seljuk patrons (Hodgson, 1974: 2:180–
192). By what criterion could one tell if the IsmaÀili Imam were to be accepted
or rejected against Sunni religious claims? Reason cannot decide, since it leads
only to recognizing the need for an authority beyond itself on ultimate matters.
But there is a faculty capable of recognizing valid spiritual authority, and that
is the insight given by Sufi mystical experience. We have come a long way from
the condemnation of al-Hallaj; Sufism of this sort is no longer a heresy, but is
brought close to the orthodox center.
Al-Ghazali himself, after lecturing on conventional AshÀarite theology at
Baghdad, underwent a personal crisis that caused him to withdraw from
teaching (al-Ghazali, 1951; Hyman and Walsh, 1983: 277). He recalls that he
vacillated between giving up philosophy and continuing to teach (after all, he
held the preeminent chair in the Islamic world), until finally his tongue dried
up in his mouth, whereupon he slipped away from the city to make a long
pilgrimage in search of mystical experience. Al-Ghazali responded to the in-
creasing prestige of the Sufi ideal replacing the decline of philosophy and
kalam, for as he himself laments, the mystical experiences did not come; he
was motivated by a theoretical ideal. There were also political reasons for his
leaving Baghdad in 1095. It had been only 20 years since his AshÀarite prede-
cessors had been mobbed by the Hanbalis, and in 1092 his protector Nizam
al-Mulk (who had reversed the policy of persecuting AshÀarites) was assassi-
nated by the IsmaÀilis. After al-Ghazali’s period of wandering in unsuccessful
search of mystical enlightenment, he returned to Nishapur and organized a
contemplative community. His brother (211 in Figure 8.3) became a famous
Sufi, and their lineage established an AshÀarite version of Sufism.
422 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths