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The Muslim scholar al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111) described in Deliverance from Error how he lost trust in both his senses and his reasoning. A shadow looks still, yet it moves; might reason, too, have limits it cannot see? Certainty returned, he wrote, only through a light that God cast into his heart.

Al-Ghazali

PhilosophyHistoryReligion & Belief

The story behind the card

Al-Ghazali was a theologian, jurist and Sufi mystic from Tus, in Persia. In 1095, while a celebrated professor at the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad, he went through the crisis he later described: he could barely speak, could not teach, and left his post to spend years travelling as a Sufi, a follower of Islam's mystical path. Deliverance from Error, written in his last years, tells that story. He is also known for The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which argued that thinkers such as Ibn Sina could not prove some of their key claims, including that the world has always existed. About seventy years after his death, Ibn Rushd answered it in The Incoherence of the Incoherence.

Türkçe oku
Müslüman âlim Gazali (1058 dolayı–1111), el-Munkız mine'd-Dalâl adlı kitabında hem duyularına hem aklına olan güvenini nasıl yitirdiğini anlatır. Gölge durgun görünür ama aslında yer değiştirir; aklın da fark edemediği sınırları olamaz mı? Gazali'ye göre kesinlik ona ancak Allah'ın kalbine attığı bir nurla geri döndü.

Gazali, İran'daki Tus kentinden bir kelamcı, fıkıh âlimi ve sufiydi. 1095'te Bağdat'taki Nizamiye Medresesi'nde ünlü bir hocayken, sonradan anlatacağı buhranı yaşadı: Konuşamaz, ders veremez hâle geldi; görevini bırakıp yıllarca tasavvuf yolunda gezgin bir hayat sürdü. Hayatının son yıllarında yazdığı el-Munkız mine'd-Dalâl bu hikâyeyi anlatır. Gazali, Tehâfütü'l-Felâsife (Filozofların Tutarsızlığı) adlı eseriyle de tanınır. Bu kitapta İbn Sina gibi filozofların, âlemin öncesiz olduğu gibi bazı temel iddialarını kanıtlayamadığını savundu. Ölümünden yaklaşık yetmiş yıl sonra İbn Rüşd, Tehâfütü't-Tehâfüt (Tutarsızlığın Tutarsızlığı) adlı kitabıyla ona cevap verdi.

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Background reading: Al-Ghazali
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