How ca we define faith? And reason according to Al-ghazali ? Compare with St. Augustine's ideas...

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How ca we define faith? And reason according to Al-ghazali ?Compare with St. Augustine's ideas on the subject.

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Faith and reason according to Alghazali AlGhazali introduces his discussions in a manner reminiscent of Descartes The bonds of mere authority ceased to hold him as they ceased to hold the father of modern European philosophy Looking for necessary truths alGhazali came like Descartes to doubt the infallibility of senseperception and to rest his philosophy rather on principles which are intuitively certain With this in mind alGhazali divided the various seekers after truth into the four distinct groups of Theologians Philosophers Authoritarians and Mystics 1 Scholastic theology had already achieved a fair degree of elaboration in the defence of Islamic orthodoxy as a perusal of alIrshad by alJuwayni translated into French will show AlGhazali had been brought up in this tradition and did not cease to be a theologian when he became a mystic His criticism of the theologians is mild He regards contemporary theology as successful in attaining its aims but inadequate to meet his own special needs because it did not go far enough in the elucidation of its assumptions There was no radical change in his theological views when he became a mystic only a change in his interests and some of his earlier works in the field of dogmatics are quoted with approval in alMunqidh 2 The Philosophers with whom alGhazali was chiefly concerned were those he calls theistic above all alFarabi and Ibn Sina Avicenna Their philosophy was a form of Neoplatonism sufficiently adapted to Islamic monotheism for them to claim to be Muslims Though the part they played in stimulating the medieval Christian scholastics is acknowledged the contribution of these men to the intellectual progress of mankind as a whole has not yet been fully appreciated To the great body of Muslims however some of their positions were unacceptable because they tended to contradict principles essential to the daily life of believing Muslims The achievement of alGhazali was to master their technique of thinkingmainly Aristotelian logicand then making use of that to refashion the See Answer

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