Analysis Of Al-Ghazali's The Deliverance From Error

In his autobiographical writing, The Deliverance From Error, Al-Ghazali tells his audience about the reason for his leaving his prestigious teaching position in Baghdad while also addressing numerous theological, philosophical, and practical problems facing Islam in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A sizeable chunk of Al-Ghazali’s writing is aimed at tackling the topic of prophethood as a possibility, an actuality, and its specific realization by the prophet Muhammad. Within his discussion and defense of the Muslim conception of prophethood, he is primarily occupied with the philosophical problems that the philosophers of his day had presented him with, and their erroneous views about prophethood that resulted from their misunderstandings. …show more content…
On page 31 of The Deliverance From Error, Al-Ghazali gives what he believes to be a proof of prophethood in the world which will satisfy both those who doubt its possibility and those who doubt its actuality. He states quite hastily that some laws of science, including those in astronomy, cannot be learned through observation. From this, Al-Ghazali concludes that these particular laws of science of which he is writing also cannot be known through the faculties of the ordinary intellect. About these unnamed scientific laws and principles, he says that they are “beyond the kin of intellect” (The Deliverance From Error, page 31). Al-Ghazali never makes clear which laws or principles in particular he has in mind in giving this description, and to a modern audience it is unclear if there actually exist any such laws or principles of …show more content…
Here, though, he also adds an implicit recourse to Sufism in his argumentation. He begins, as before, by setting up the analogue. If a philosopher were sick with some disease, Al-Ghazali claims, and the philosopher’s father were a known, reputable physician, then the philosopher would trust their father to give them an appropriate cure for their disease. Al-Ghazali explains this decision in two parts. The first prerequisite for that decision is that the philosopher must come to believe in the capability of his father as a physician. This belief can be arrived at by the philosopher through trusting the experiences of others whose diseases their father had cured. The second necessary condition for the philosopher to trust his father to cure him of disease is that the philosopher must trust the good will of his father. This trust can be arrived at only by observing the father’s conduct in various situations (The Deliverance From Error, page