Arbitrating Between Al-Ghazālī and the Philosophers the Tahāfut Commentaries in the Ottoman Intellectual Context

CHAPTER 18 Arbitrating between al-Ghazālī and the Philosophers The Tahāfut Commentaries in the Ottoman Intellectual Context

M. Sait Özervarlı

The contribution of classical Ottoman thinkers to Islamic intellectual history is relatively neglected in modern and contemporary studies. With the inten- tion of analyzing the impact of al-Ghazālī and related interactions between philosophical rationality and religious sources, this contribution aims to open a space for Islamic studies within existing Ottomanist scholarship. Following the emergence of Muslim philosophy ( falsafa) with al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866), the relationship between philosophical rationality and sacred doctrine became controversial in the 11th and 12th centuries, when two major thinkers, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Abū l-Walīd Ibn Rushd wrote treatises on the subject, both entitled “The Incoherence” (tahāfut): al-Ghazālī’s work was Tahāfut al-falāsifa, literally “the incoherence of the philosophers,” to which Ibn Rushd riposted with Tahāfut at-tahāfut, or “the incoherence of ‘The Incoherence [of the Philosophers].’ After this medieval flare, however, scholars writing on this issue generally skip to the 19th and 20th centuries, when rationalism reemerged as a modernist discourse of Muslim religious writing. I propose, however, that these approaches overlook an important phase of the debate: namely, the literature written by Ottoman scholars (ʿulamāʾ) of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The present study suggests that a close examination of Ottoman philosophical literature, especially commentary texts on the Tahāfut, demonstrates that Ottoman works were not just mere repetitions of the previ- ous legacy, but also examples of critical analysis and profound insight. As a part of the Ottoman philosophical context, I will examine the case of Tahāfut commentaries written by major Ottoman scholars of the classical period, such as Hocazāde, Ṭūsī, Kemalpaşazāde, and Karabāğī.1

1 I will use Turkish characters for spelling the names of Ottoman thinkers, and will keep the usual transliteration when referring to the pre- or non-Ottoman authors as well as Arabic titles.

The Historical Background of the “Incoherences”

In the eleventh century, al-Ghazālī’s (d. 504/1111) well-known work Tahāfut al-falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers), the first comprehensive critique of the philosophers, marked a turning point in Islamic intellectual history in terms of the relationship between philosophy and the Islamic disciplines.2 Within the text, al-Ghazālī asserted that the views of the Islamic philosophers were hopelessly contradictory, criticizing their metaphysical doctrines on twenty topics. The Tahāfut is often regarded as aimed primarily at Ibn Sīnā, due to extensive quotation from his work; Janssens, however, in his examination of the targets and sources of the book, refutes this, seeing al-Ghazālī’s intended object as an open question.3 Nevertheless, the book was probably intended to combat the school of Ibn Sīnā in general, the members of which were regarded as Muslim peripatetics (mashshāʾiyyūn) in philosophical circles and philosophers ( falāsifa or ḥukamāʾ) among the theologians. According to al-Ghazālī, the emanation (ṣudūr) theory of the philosophers – which was based on the necessary production of the universe from God’s essence, just as the sun produces its light – contradicted the theological doctrine of the world being created by God. Al-Ghazālī was also displeased with their denial of the attributes of God as real entities, with their defense of deterministic causal- ity in the physical world, and with their physiological theories of the human soul. In his criticism, therefore, al-Ghazālī argued that the philosophers were “incoherent,” not only in regards to Islamic principles, but also intra se, dem- onstrating clear contradiction between specific details of their logical-philosophical system.4 It has been a tradition in the West to consider al-Ghazālī’s cannonade a decisive setback for philosophical inquiry in the medieval Islamic world. Indeed, the well-known modernist scholar of Islam Mohammed Arkoun asserts that “Many schools of thought started to be weakened and disappear after the thirteenth century. Philosophy, as inherited from Classical Greece, disappeared after the death of Ibn Rushd (1198), though it survived in Iran

2 See al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-falāsifa: The Incoherence of the Philosophers, ed. and trans. by Michael Marmura, Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1997. 3 Jules Janssens, “Al-Ghazzali’s Tahafut: Is it really a rejection of Ibn Sina’s Philosophy?” Journal of Islamic Studies, 12: 1 (2001), 1–17. 4 See Leor Halevi, “The Theologian’s Doubts: Natural Philosophy and the Skeptical Games of Ghazali,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 63, Number 1 (January 2002), 19–39; cf. also M. Sait Özervarlı, “An Unedited Kalam Text by Qadi al-Baydawi: Misbah al-arwah,” İslâm Araştırmaları Dergisi / Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies, 12 (2004), 75–125, in particular 76.