Al-Ghazali Quotes on Knowledge
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), the principal Sunni theologian of the eleventh century, gave classical Islamic thought one of its most influential epistemological itineraries in the autobiographical Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl) and the long Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn). The framework systematically tests the available cognitive paths — kalām, philosophy in the Avicennan style, Ismāʿīlī authoritarianism, Sufism — and finally settles the case for the experiential knowledge (dhawq, taste) of the Sufi as the only path adequate to certainty about ultimate matters. The earlier Incoherence of the Philosophers had supplied the corresponding philosophical critique of the metaphysical claims of Avicennan rationalism.
Quotes
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Attributed to Al-Ghazali:
“Knowledge without action is wastefulness, and action without knowledge is foolishness.”
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Attributed to Al-Ghazali:
“The deeper one travels into the path of knowledge, the further one is from being satisfied.”
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“There is no denying existence itself. Something must exist and anyone who says nothing exists at all makes a mockery of sense and necessity. The proposition that there is no denying being itself, then, is a necessary premise. Now this Being which has been admitted in principle is either necessary or contingent… What this means is that a being must be self-sufficient or dependent… From here we argu”
Fada’ih al-Batiniyya. Edited by Abdurahman Badawi. Kuwait: Muasassa Dar al-Kutub al-Thiqafa (1964), p. 82. -
“Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) “Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology”. In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3–4 (1965), 3-4.”
How can even the lowest mind, if he reflects at all the marvels of this earth and sky, the brilliant fashioning of plants and animals, remain blind to the fact that this wonderful world with its settled order must have a maker to design, determine and direct it? -
“We attest that He is the Willer of all things that are, the ruler of all originated phenomena; there does not come into the visible or invisible world anything meager or plenteous, small or great, good or evil, or any advantage or disadvantage, belief or unbelief, knowledge or ignorance, success or failure, increase or decrease, obedience or disobedience, except by His will. What He wills is, and ”
Ihyaa ‘Ulum al-Deen. Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm (2005), p. 107. -
“if man’s love for himself be necessary, then his love for Him through whom, first his coming-to-be, and second, his continuance in his essential being with all his inward and outward traits, his substance and his accidents, occur must also be necessary. Whoever is so besotted by his fleshy appetites as to lack this love neglects his Lord and Creator. He possesses no authentic knowledge of Him; his gaze is limited to his cravings and to things of sense.”
Al-Ghazali on Love, Longing, Intimacy & Contentment. Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society (2011), p. 25. -
“Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.”
Deliverance from Error | III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 29. -
“[K]nowledge that is not Infallible is not certain knowledge.”
Deliverance from Error | I. Introduction, p. 7.