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Title: Speaking of God
WonderClub
Item Number: 9781565181694
Number: 1
Product Description: Speaking of God
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9781565181694
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9781565181694
Rating: 4/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/16/94/9781565181694.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
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$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9294 total ratings) |
Amy Bredemeyer
reviewed Speaking of God on October 07, 2015(I read this book for a medieval philosophy class and the way Al-Ghazali was taught was in juxtaposition (mostly) to Ibn Rushd so that we could see exactly what each of them were attempting to explain and explore. This review is actually a paper I wrote on how I understood what each philosopher was teaching, but since I really like Al-Ghazali I think it's fitting to use it as my review of the book, too.)
Though they disagree how, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd are both attempting to explain how exactly it is that God operates the universe. Al-Ghazali, an occasionalist (mostly), sees God active in everything at all times, whereas Ibn Rushd, a formalist and scholar of Aristotle, describes God as the agent and connective cause of all things. At first glance these (brief and laughably inadequate) descriptions might seem to be saying the same thing, but in this paper I will explain how, upon closer inspection, their philosophies differ with regard to how they lead to questions (and disagreements) about what it means to be an agent cause, how the constancy of nature can be explained, and how a person could hope to have any knowledge about the universe.
The Agent Actor
While the philosophers and Al-Ghazali both agree God is the agent / efficient cause that created the world, Al-Ghazali challenges (what he believes to be) the philosopher’s definition of what it is to be an agent. Al-Ghazali says an agent is something that, via an act of will, chooses an action rather than some other action. This agent is something that knows it has the choice to act in one way or another, that it has free action and also has the freedom and ability to also do otherwise and can choose amongst alternatives. In other words, this agent can bring about deliberate change. More specifically, what Al-Ghazali is reacting to against (how he understands) the philosophers is that God is just some sort of natural principle and that the world came about because there was no other possibility and so God had no choice in the matter.
Ibn Rushd’s reacts to what he believes is Al-Ghazali’s misunderstanding of what the philosophers are saying is an agent. Ibn Rushd believes Al-Ghazali’s claim of an agent as an actor choosing amongst alternatives is not self-evident and ambiguous and thus what an agent is needs to be more fully explored. Ibn Rushd first explains that there are two types of actors in our everyday world. First there are Natural Actors, such as fire - the things that act with necessity, where necessity means that it is impossible for that thing to act otherwise. The second actor is a Voluntary Actor, such as a human, that, lacking something, acts and choses among actions based on an awareness of possibilities. Yet neither the definition of a Natural Actor or a Voluntary Actor satisfies anyone’s definition of God, even including Al-Ghazali, because God does not lack anything, nor is God’s knowledge anything like a human’s knowledge. And neither is God like a Natural Actor, such as fire which lacks knowledge and can only act by necessity. Yet God does seem more like a Voluntary Actor than a Natural Actor, but Ibn Rushd cautions that this is only by analogy. Thus Al-Ghazali’s definition of an agent as that which has will is problematic because God isn’t choosing one action over another possible action, nor is God transforming stuff into other stuff - harnessing potency into actuality - but more radically, God as the efficient cause is that which can transform non-existence into existence: ex nihilo.
Natural Causes
Al-Ghazali’s denial that a natural cause necessarily produces some action stems from a problem, as he sees it, with the word necessity. For something to be necessary it means that it is impossible for it to be otherwise, and for something to be possible then there must be alternatives. Therefore, if a natural cause can only necessarily produce some specific result, then it would be impossible for any other result to occur. This gets at what he believes is the bigger issue in that this logic leads to atheism and the denial of miracles. In other words, there would be no alternative for a fire, for example, to do anything other than burn some thing it comes in contact with and thus the possibility that Abraham, for example, not be burnt by the fire would not actually be a possibility. If fire can only ever burn, then Abraham would have had to have been burned and thus there would have been no miracle, nor would there be the possibility that God could ever perform any miracle since fire can only ever burn. God is constrained via this line of thinking to be subservient to all the natural causes in the world.
Ibn Rushd’s reacts to Al-Ghazali’s claim that natural causes leads to atheism by pointing out that a natural cause is only a transformative occurrence, that some already existent stuff is just transforming into some other existent stuff. And this transformation in no way leads to a denial of God because what God can do is far beyond basic transformation, God can create some thing out of nothing, ex nihilo. God has thus already created the natural stuff of the world - God as the efficient cause - and thus these natural things, and the essences they posses, can now be manipulated and transformed without incurring a philosophical crisis that leads one into atheism.
Constancy of Nature
Al-Ghazali claims that the philosophers actually are saying that miracles are impossible because they say that natural causality is necessary - the fire must necessarily burn the cotton - which leaves no room for God to perform a miracle (and thus not be God). He accuses the philosophers of saying that there is no connection at all between causes and effects, such as when fire and cotton are in separate places, then when the fire and cotton are brought together, and finally when there is the remaining ash. Al-Ghazali is accusing the philosophers of saying there is no causality at all - no God - if all there is in the world is just stuff and then some other stuff and then again even more stuff. Al-Ghazali’s reaction to this is to claim that what it is for a thing to be what it is, such as fire, is all because of God’s will, but that it’s also not necessary the fire burn because God could do otherwise if he chose to, as with Abraham. In other words, God is in all things at all times because since God is the agent cause and so the only cause of anything is God. Yet since God is typically in the habit of allowing the fire to burn cotton (and prophets), we can have knowledge of God’s consistency in nature.
However, Ibn Rushd describes a natural actor as that which has a potency within it that can be realized in some actual way, such as a fire having the potency to cause the burning of a piece of cotton. In other words, fire has the capacity to burn because fire is a kind of activity, in this case a burning activity, and this cannot change because if some part of the fire changed to prevent it from burning Abraham, for example, then it would no longer be fire, it would be some other thing. The fire’s essence is fire’s proper activity and Ibn Rushd says we define any thing by its essence because there is a necessary connection between a thing and its essence.
Knowing and Grasping
Ibn Rushd tells us that this necessary connection is the foundation in how we structure knowledge because if there was no relationship between fire and burning, for example, then there could be no knowledge at all, the structure of knowledge depends on their being a relationship between cause and effect. He is also reacting to Al-Ghazali’s belief that the only cause is the agent cause and that cause is God who is in the habit of willing things together so that usually one thing follows another, but that there is no necessary connection between fire and burning, for example, and that there is a separation between the essence of a thing from the thing itself. While Ibn Rushd says that knowledge is dependent on relationships, Al-Ghazali believes that knowledge is merely our awareness of God’s constancy / habits.
And it is in the way Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd each attempt to deal with knowledge where we can see how both of them are ultimately attempting to explain the structure of reality and how the universe works. For Al-Ghazali, he sees an occasionalist universe in which God has his finger in all things at all times and though he can perform any number of miracles, he typically does things in a regular way. And from a lay person’s point of view they can have knowledge of how things behave in the world because God has given each person the ability to know how God typically does something, but they can also have knowledge of God’s ability to perform miracles when he chooses to do so. In other words, Al-Ghazali explains reality in a way in which a person can know and understand it because it is constantly being revealed to the individual by God, either in the regular way the world seems to normally behave or in a prophetic way in which miracles are revealed.
Ibn Rushd’s approach, however, is formal in that he sees the universe as structured in a way as that it is something which can be explained because of the necessary connections between the essence of things and their activities. Ibn Rushd sees knowledge as a process of understanding how things truly behave in reality - how the fire’s essence causes the burning of cotton - but this also does not limit or eliminate God because God is still the agent / efficient / formal cause of everything who gave all things their essence and potentiality as well as that which can create something out of nothing.
Who’s Correct?
I find it difficult to disagree with Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd explains the world we live in as a rational system in which the essences of things behave in a certain and based on our knowledge at the time, usually regular, predictive way. However, the one aspect of Ibn Rushd’s philosophy I find troubling is in regard to non-material things, such as the virtues (good, honor, bravery, etc,). Ibn Rushd can explain the essence of fire and how that essence causes it to burn the cotton, but I don’t see as strong a connection between the essence of goodness and how that essence can, for example, save a drowning victim. True, saving a person from drowning is good and thus the essence of goodness is made manifest in the action of saving the drowning victim, but what if the person drowning is a murderer? Is it good to rescue a murderer? Has the essence of goodness truly been made manifest in the cause of saving the life of someone who has committed a terrible crime? Ibn Rushd would argue that I just didn’t have the knowledge necessary at the time I jumped in the river to save the drowning murderer and thus I still was engaged in the essence of good. However, Ibn Rushd’s philosophy does accept that the world we live in is full of uncertainty.
Al-Ghazali, on the other hand, does posit a greater degree of certainty. God is continually acting in all things at all times so even if the drowning victim I save turns out to be a murderer, I would be certain that it was God’s will which brought about the final action and I wouldn't have to live in doubt upon the river bank about whether or not what I did was good. The downside is that it becomes very easy to start attributing all one’s actions to God and thus washing one’s hands of any moral responsibility, however this would be more of an issue with someone who is not a (Al-Ghazal approved) Sufi, someone who is not practiced in religion (or philosophy) and thus, according to Al-Ghazali, must remain subservient to a master who can guide one towards proper morality.
Thus if I had to decide who I thought was correct, I would side with Al-Ghazali because living in a world in which there is so much doubt, so much room open for someone to not have immediate knowledge of what is good is too much like the world we currently live in.
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