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	The Incoherence of the Philosophers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa) is the title of a landmark polemic in Islamic philosophy by the Sufi sympathetic Imam Al-Ghazali of the Asharite school against the neoplatonic school of thought in Islamic Philosophy.
		The Incoherence of the Philosophers 1963 English translation by S. Kamali.
		The Incoherence of the Incoherence translation by Simon van den Bergh.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tahafut_falasifah (196 words)

	Al-Ghazali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The importance of his criticism lies in his philosophical demonstration that the philosophers’ metaphysical arguments cannot stand the test of reason.
		First, as for the eternity of the world, the philosophers claim that the emanation of the First Intellect and other beings is the result of the necessary causality of God's essence, and therefore the world as a whole is concomitant and coeternal with his existence (see CREATION AND CONSERVATION, RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE OF).
		Third, the philosophers deny bodily resurrection, asserting that 'the resurrection' means in reality the separation of the soul from the body after death.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Imam_Al-Ghazali (4241 words)

	MSN Encarta - Philosophy, Islamic
		As well as the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific texts, there was also a good deal of translation of Indian literature and Persian literature into Arabic, which undoubtedly affected the scientific and mathematical character of future work in Arabic.
		Finally, Muslims believe that their route to guidance is through Islam itself, while philosophers tended to replace religion with reason, implying that religion is the appropriate route for those incapable of using reason, and a rather inferior route at that.
		The first philosopher of the Arabs, al-Kindi, argued that there is no basic contradiction between Islam and philosophy, since the latter helps the Muslim to understand the truth using different methods from those primarily relevant to religion.
	uk.encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_781532964/Philosophy_Islamic.html (857 words)

	[No title]
		In the third place, there are philosophical theories which come into violent conflict with the fundamental principles of religion, e.g.., the religious doctrines of the world's beginning in time: of the attributes of the Creator; and of the resurrection of bodies.
		If the philosophers' claim of difference in spite of this similarity is a warranted claim, their opponents' claim of a difference in the case of temporal states and stages will be equally warranted.
		As regards those philosophers who believe in the temporal origin of the soul, and who do not consider it to have been impressed upon Matter, the possibility of the soul would mean to them that it is possible for Matter that the rational soul should direct it.
	www.ghazali.org /works/taf-eng.doc (21846 words)

	American Association of Teachers of Arabic Homepage \| AATA
		The first volume of the series, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, rolled off the press in October and has met with favorable reviews from scholars at even the most critical levels and at the most respected universities.
		The translator of The Incoherence of the Philosophers is Michael E. Marmura, who chaired the Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto, where he taught for 36 years.
		"Incoherence of the Philosophers" is a criticism of Muslim philosophies by Abu Hamid Muhammed al-Ghazali, who is known as the "second greatest Muslim after Muhammed." While a famous law professor in the 11th and 12th centuries, he began to doubt that he could know anything for certain.
	www.wm.edu /aata/byu.php (2851 words)

	AL GHAZALI AND AVERROES
		The chief errors of the philosophers relate to the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, reward and punishment after death, God's knowledge of all things, and the eternity of the world.
		Philosophical inquiry is for a small elite with the time and the capacity for such studies; they should not try to spread their ideas among ordinary people.
		The argument on the left is valid, and according to Averroes it is the argument of the philosophers.
	www.humanities.mq.edu.au /Ockham/x52t07.html (5811 words)

	Middle East Open Encyclopedia: Asharite (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
		In contrast to the Mutazilite school of Greek-inspired philosophers, the Asharite view was that comprehension of unique nature and characteristics of God were beyond human capability.
		Ibn Rushd, a rationalist, famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is itself to make an incoherent statement." and even wrote a book "The Incoherence of the Incoherence" to refute Al-Ghazali's views, though the work was not well received in the Muslim community.
		1209) was a Persian mathematician, physicist, physician, philosopher, and a master of Kalam - the school of early Muslim philosophy that focused on the application of ijtihad and questioning to develop fiqh or jurisprudence.
	www.baghdadmuseum.org /ref/index.php?title=Asharite (1140 words)

	al-Ghazali: Overview of "The Incoherence of the Philosophers"
		Al-Ghazali thought that such an undertaking was of an inherently contradictory nature, and that the work of his peers was ultimately fruitless.
		I focus here on a selection from the final section of "The Incoherence of the Philosophers.," wherein al-Ghazali outlines, and dissasembles, the defense for the necessary existence of a logical connection linking cause and effect.
		He focuses, specifically, on the causal relationship of fire and burning, citing the view that the former is the necessary cause of the latter.
	mdhd.tripod.com /ghazali4.html (842 words)

	Encyclopedia: The Tablet of Wisdom
		The Tablet of Wisdom was revealed by Bahá'u'lláh for the Bahá'í philosopher Aqa Muhammad "Nabil-i Akbar" Qa'ini when the latter came to visit him in `Akká sometime in 1873 or 1874 (1290 A.H.).
		A.D. 1111) had, in his Incoherence of the Philosophers, energetically attacked the idea of the pre-existence of the cosmos, while the master philosopher Averroes (d.
		Bahá'u'lláh maintains that the philosophers of antiquity were not solely concerned with abstract thought, but were often imbued with a spirit of experiment.
	www.safnet.com /bahai/docs/wisdom.html (1668 words)

	Faith and Reason in Islam
		He then proceeds to rebut the claim of the literalists and traditionalists that the use of deduction, which the first generation of Muslim scholars have shunned, is an ``innovation''on the ground that juridical deduction, which is analogous to logical deduction, was subsequently practiced by the next generation and was regarded as perfectly legitimate.
		By those ``well-grounded in knowledge¯, Averroes is categorical, only the philosophers or ``people of demonstration'' are intended, followed, in the order of their aptitudes to understand the intent of Scripture, by the ``dialectical' class (or the Mutakallimun), and the ``rhetorical'' class (or the public at large).
		In The Decisive Treatise, he argues that the differences between Al-Ghazali and the Ash`arites, on the one hand, and ``the ancient philosophers'', with Aristotle at their head, on the other, are purely semantic, and are not so divergent as to justify the charges of irreligion (Kufr) leveled at the philosophers by Al-Ghazali.
	www.oneworld-publications.com /books/texts/faith-and-reason-intro.htm (4377 words)

	Incoherence of the Incoherence: First Discussion
		The philosophers may object: The assumption of a quality the nature of which is to differentiate one thing from a similar one is something incomprehensible, nay even contradictory, for ‘similar’ means not to be differentiated, and ‘differentiated’ means not similar.
		The philosophers, therefore, began their argument, as if they had it granted to them that all things were equivalent in relation to the First Agent, and they forced them to admit that there must be for God a differentiating principle which precedes Him, which is absurd.
		Therefore, just as among philosophers the theory is upheld that all times are equivalent in regard to the creation of the world, their opponents are justified in claiming that the parts of heaven are equivalent for the reception of the quality through which stability in position becomes more appropriate than a change of position.
	www.muslimphilosophy.com /ir/tt/tt-ch1.htm (11162 words)

	Arab and Jewish Thought
		Several generations later, al-Ghazali wrote a lengthy treatise called Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of Philosophers), in which he used logical methods derived from the philosophical tradition to generate puzzles and contradictions, thereby undermining confidence in the power of human reason and encouraging reliance on an unreasoned faith instead.
		Among the philosophers who flourished in the eastern portion of the Islamic territory during the eleventh century, the Persian Ibn Sina (whom the Christians called "Avicenna" in Latin) was the most subtle and sophisticated.
		Most medieval Jewish philosophers dealt with the familiar difficulty of trying to synthesize philosophy with religion, but their neoplatonism was often infused with a greater degree of emphasis on the mystical apprehension of reality.
	www.philosophypages.com /hy/3k.htm (1015 words)

	Adventures in Philosophy: A Brief History of Islamic Philosophy
		Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (picture) was a Persian philosopher who spent his life as a physician and scholar-in-residence at many Islamic courts.
		Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, born in the northeastern part of the Persian empire, was a philosopher, theologian, mystic, and apologist, and one of the most revered personalities in the Muslim world.
		In fact, Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages soon became aware that Ghazali's principles and teachings were closely akin to those of Judaism, a fact that has often been confirmed by modern Christian scholars.
	radicalacademy.com /adiphilislam2.htm (1144 words)

	Incoherence of the Incoherence
		He starts by saying rather arbitrarily that the philosophers have four arguments, but, in discussing them, he mixes them up and the whole discussion is complicated by the fact that he gives the philosophical arguments and theological counter arguments in such an involved way that the trend is sometimes hard to follow.
		The ten arguments of the philosophers for the spirituality of the soul derive all from arguments given by the Greeks.
		According to the philosophers, the fact that it is a substance independent of a body and is immaterial shows that a corruption of the body cannot affect it.
	www.muslimphilosophy.com /ir/tt/tt-all.htm (12379 words)

	ALGAZALI 1058-1111
		According to Julius R. Weinberg, Algazali criticized philosophers for denying bodily resurrection, G's knowledge of particulars, and for affirming the eternality of the universe.
		Rather, Algazali claims, their work falls under 3 heads--what must be counted as unbelief, what must be counted as heresy, and what is not to be denied at all.
		The incoherence of the philosophers Algazali begins by pointing out that there's no logically necessary connection between C & E. He then considers cotton burning in contact with fire.
	web.lemoyne.edu /~kagan/alg.htm (997 words)

	Evidence to the existence of God-Page 3--Ummah.comGeneral (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
		In his famous 'Tahafut al-falsafa' (the incoherence of the philosophers), Hujjatul Islam has criticised philosophers on twenty points and exposed what he believes to the be the incoherence in their thought.
		The difference between the philosophers and the Mutakallomun is that the latter regard themselves as committed, committed to the defence os the bounds of Islam.
		According to philosophers, wisdom means understanding truth for what it truly is. This, however, is an inaccurate description, since understanding truth is but a fruit of wisdom.
	www.ummah.net /forum/showthread.php?t=51703&page=3 (2241 words)

	Philosophers : Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali
		A number of Muslim philosophers had been following and developing several viewpoints of Greek philosophy, including the Neoplatonic philosophy, and this was leading to conflict with several Islamic teachings.
		However, he adopted the techniques of Aristotelian logic and the Neoplatonic procedures and employed these very tools to lay bare the flaws and lacunas of the then prevalent Neoplatonic philosophy and to diminish the negative influences of Aristotelianism and excessive rationalism.
		In contrast to some of the Muslim philosophers, e.g., Farabi, he portrayed the inability of reason to comprehend the absolute and the infinite.
	www.trincoll.edu /depts/phil/philo/phils/muslim/ghazali.html (552 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
		Not surprisingly, Averroes deduced that the philosophers were the only ones "confirmed in knowledge." Further, he accused theologians of divulging the secrets of the Koran to the masses, which was considered heresy in the Islamic faith, and this alone made them unqualified to possess true religious knowledge.
		In his work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, al-Ghazali charged that "the philosophers al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) had failed to prove twenty theses about God and the world that were irreligious are at least heretical from the viewpoint of Islam" (Hourani 568).
		Averroes wrote the Incoherence of the Incoherence, in which he refuted al-Ghazali's arguments in the name of Aristotelean philosophy often rejecting the validity of the other two philosophers' arguments.
	www.smcm.edu /Users/rlcrowley/intellect.html (941 words)

	The Islamic World to 1600: The Arts, Learning, and Knowledge (Al-Ghazali) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
		He particularly objected to arguments made by Greek-influenced philosophers questioning the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, reward and punishment after death, God's knowledge of all things, and the eternity of the world.
		Al-Ghazali welcomed the fact that philosophers questioned some tenets of the Islamic faith, but he chastised them for not proving their positions.
		He also chastised Muslims who rejected every science connected with the philosophers, in the name of defending religion, claiming that such an approach only led the philosophers to conclude that Islam was based on ignorance.
	www.ucalgary.ca /applied_history/tutor/islam/learning/ghazali.html (549 words)

	Middle Eastern Texts Initiative
		The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), by al-Ghazali, a parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and annotated by Michael E. Marmura
		The Incoherence of the Philosophers ranks among the most important works of one of the most fascinating thinkers in the history of Islam.
		The Incoherence of the Philosophers—itself pitched at a very sophisticated philosophical level—contends that, although Muslim philosophers such as al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) boasted of absolutely unassailable arguments on crucial matters of theology and metaphysics, they could not, in fact, deliver on their claims.
	meti.byu.edu /islamic_incoherence.php (423 words)

	Averroes, the philosopher of Cordoba
		He was also a great admirer of the Persian philosopher Avicenna (in Arabic, Ibn Sina) who, as a "sceptic", was widely read by European thinkers and reviled by the Mullahs.
		The works of Averroes and Avicenna were attacked by an Islamic sophist theologian, Al-Ghazali, in his book "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", in which he accused philosophers of being dishonest, heretical and presumptuous.
		"The Incoherence of the Incoherence" incensed the Mullahs of Cordoba, who felt that Averroes' book was "dangerous", and they used it to flmail his protector the Caliph, accusing him of dabbling in heresy.
	www.andalucia.com /history/people/averroes.htm (869 words)

	Medieval Sourcebook: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE): Munkidh min al-Dalal (Confessions, or Deliverance from ...
		The philosophical systems, in spite of their number and variety, may be reduced to three: (1) the Materialists; (2) the Naturalists; (3) the Theists.
		Now this mixture of moral and philosophic doctrine with the words of the Prophet and those of the Sufis gives rise to two dangers, one for the upholder of those doctrines, the other for their opponent.
		The intelligence of thinkers, the wisdom of philosophers, the knowledge of the most learned doctors of the law would in vain combine their efforts in order to modify or improve their doctrine and morals; it would be impossible.
	www.fordham.edu /halsall/basis/1100ghazali-truth.html (10564 words)

	An overview of the introduction, and preface to al-Ghazali’s book the incoherence of the philosophers (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
		Between numerous insults al-Ghazali accuses the new philosophers of extraordinary vanity and self deception.
		As for the ancient philosophers them selves, al-Ghazali tells us that they were not the atheists they are made out to be, and in fact honored their own religious traditions.
		He also says that they “try to infer the truth of their metaphysical theories from the clarity of the arithmetical and logical sciences.
	www.smcm.edu /users/gmkelly/Mytapestry/overview.htm (477 words)

	APPENDIX
		The philosophical positions around which they center their reflexions are those which have lately been in vogue, or are flourishing today among English speaking philosophers.
		Russian philosophers have attended several sessions of the Congress, but the Marxist prestige has seduced none of the professional philosophers of Pakistan, whose courtesy and catholic curiosity never overwhelm their deep-seated Muslim distrust of Marxism.
		Whenever the Pakistani philosophers discuss the relations between reason and faith or between philosophy and religion, the divergence of their views is apparently as marked as when they discuss the nature of philosophy.
	www.crvp.org /book/Series02/IIA-3/appendix.htm (19125 words)

	Islamic political philosophy: Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes
		'To be a truly perfect philosopher one has to possess both the theoretical sciences and the faculty for exploiting them for the benefit of all others according to their capacity.
		Were one to consider the case of the true philosopher, he would find no difference between him and the supreme ruler' (p.
		Like Al-Farabi, Averroes holds that philosophy and Islam are in harmony, that superior intellects ought to philosophise but not in public, that ordinary people should be taught by means of the Koran and the traditions without trying to turn them into philosophers.
	www.fordham.edu /halsall/source/arab-y67s11.html (1998 words)

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