Comparing The Averroes Of Ghazali And The Aristotelians

Throughout the ages when new religions or schools of thought emerge, it is quintessential for the new ideas to reconcile with older, more widespread ones. This has played an important role the development of societies from the very beginning of civilization. When, in the 6th century, a new voice came preaching Islam, immediately people set to this task of reconciliation. Two people who set out to this task were the philosophers Al-Ghazali, a theologian, and Averroes, a logician. Both of these men concerned themselves with many wide areas of discussion, and one big area was that of the Greek philosophers, especially the Peripatetics, also known as the Aristotelians. Their views on that school of study, however, were vastly different. In his

This is claimed to be an error in the interpretation of the means of the Peripatetics. The problem is in the human definition of knowledge, which is not applicable to God, as “His Knowledge transcends qualification as ‘universal’ or ‘particular’” (Averroes 317). Rather, God’s knowledge is beyond our full understanding. This is because of the fundamental difference between the origins of human knowledge, which is the observation of what has happened, called “effect” by Averroes. Meanwhile, “God’s knowledge of existence is the opposite of this: it is the cause of the object” (Averroes 317). As the cause and effect are completely different types of knowledge, we cannot use human concepts such as universal or particular. Therefore, Averroes says there is no point to even discuss this topic or to use it to qualify someone an unbeliever or

In order to find his view of this, one must look closely at the rest of the essay to find what his view is on the idea that punishment will be only spiritual not corporeal. By looking at his idea of where error stems from, one can get an idea. Averroes says error can be “…error that is excused to one who is a qualified student of that matter tin which the error occurs” (320). The Aristotelians would certainly be categorized by Averroes as qualified students, as he shows through the work. As well as this, it can be said that the error of the concept of death would stem from the fact that, since judgement day is well beyond human experience, it cannot be understood by philosophers. He also goes on to point out that there is a class of scripture that is between certainly and uncertainty, which includes the concept of a future life. He says that it is “…inexcusable to deny the fact of a future life altogether” (321). Since the philosophers do not deny this life, and since the minutia of it can be debated as to whether they are literally or not, the philosophers are forgiven any error a second time. Any mistake they make is either from the misinterpretation of current scholars or is forgivable because the mistake was made by experts who just overstepped their