Medieval Philosophy
Introduction to al-Ghazali and The Alchemy of Happiness
Al-Ghazali (c. 1056–1111) was born at Tos in Khorasan (near modern Meshed, Iran) and became one of the great philosophers of the Middle Ages. Al-Ghazali’s writings have had a crucial impact on Islamic theology and his works have been influential in European and American philosophy as well.
In addition to The Alchemy of Happiness, al-Ghazali is famous for a short autobiography known as Deliverance from Error. Early in the text he tells the story of how, much like Socrates, he questioned the established beliefs of his time. He also describes a stage of extreme doubt and a spiritual crisis that culminated in years of solitude and pilgrimage. Ultimately, he discovered the solution to his difficulties in the philosophy and practice of Sufism.
Al-Ghazali foreshadowed some of the giants of European philosophy. For example, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) is famous for a period in his life when extreme doubt led him to question even the most commonly-held assumptions. But Deliverance from Error shows that al-Ghazali took the same approach centuries before him. Similarly, al-Ghazali is considered by some to be a precursor to the famous 18th-century British skeptic, David Hume.
In some ways, al-Ghazali also echoes the great philosophers that came before him. Like Socrates in Meno, in The Alchemy of Happiness al-Ghazali encourages us to cultivate self-knowledge by looking inward. Unlike Socrates, however, in The Alchemy of Happiness al-Ghazali does not struggle with uncertainty or doubt. For him, the path to true knowledge is clear: look into your soul and know yourself; by doing so, you begin your journey toward God. Thus, while Socrates discusses possibilities of death at the end of the Apology and expresses “hope” (pp. 43-44), al-Ghazali is more self-assured. He gives the impression that he knows that death is not the end of existence. Whether we should believe al-Ghazali on this point is a different matter. In any case, his view of the world clashes with modern, secular values, and it is worth considering whether the modern era has lost something that medieval thinkers retained.
— A. Pasqualoni, 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Text:
Excerpt from The Alchemy of Happiness (PDF)Source:
Introduction and Chapters 1-4 of The Alchemy of Happiness by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali
Translator: Claud Field; revised and annotated by Elton L. Daniel
M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991
Note: this text is a revision of a translation based not on the original text, but an Urdu abridgment. For those interested, more information is available in the excerpt from the book’s preface.
Reading assignments have been posted in the course schedule of the syllabus.
Quotations for Discussion 3 (Week 3)
Quotations from The Alchemy of Happiness:
1. “Knowledge of self is the key to the knowledge of God...” (p. 5)
2. “...if passion and resentment master reason, the ruin of the soul infallibly ensues.” (p. 8)
3. “In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the senses are closed, this window is opened and man receives impressions from the unseen world...” (p. 9)
4. “...if we are to arrive at pure spiritual truth, we must put away...knowledge which has been acquired by external processes and which too often hardens into dogmatic prejudice.” (p. 11)
5. “...happiness is necessarily linked with the knowledge of God.” (p. 12)
6. “...man in this world is extremely weak and contemptible; it is only in the next that he will be of value...” (p. 14)
7. “No one can understand a king but a king...” (p. 19)
8. “The mere physicist is like an ant who, crawling on a sheet of paper and observing black letters spreading over it, should refer the cause to the pen alone.” (p. 19)
9. “God’s greatness immeasurably transcends our cognitive faculties, and...we can only form a very dim and imperfect idea of it.” (p. 22)
10. “Love is the seed of happiness, and love of God is fostered and developed by worship.” (p. 22)
11. “Even if any of them do really conquer their passions, they have no right to make such a claim...” (p. 25)
12. “This world is a stage or market-place passed by pilgrims on their way to the next.” (p. 27)
13. “While man is in this world, two things are necessary for him: first, the protection and nurture of his soul; secondly, the care and nurture of his body.” (p. 27)
14. “The proper nourishment of the soul...is the knowledge and love of God...” (p. 27)
15. “Unless a man maintains the strictest watch he is certain to be fascinated and entangled by the world...” (p. 28)
16. “...this gives rise to various business-connections and relations and those too frequently afford occasions for hatred, envy, jealousy, and other maladies of the soul...” (p. 28).
17. “...it pretends that it will always remain with you, while, as a matter of fact, it is slipping away from you, moment by moment...” (p. 29)
18. “...but each of these so-called ‘trifles’ branches out into countless ramifications until they swallow up the whole of a man’s time...” (p. 30)
19. “Other good things there are in the world, such as marriage, food, clothing, etc., which a wise man uses just in proportion as they help him to attain to the next world.” (p. 32)
20. “Even many so-called ‘learned’ men, from blindly following others’ opinions, have no real certainty in their beliefs...” (p. 33)
21. “...knowledge of God and worship are medicinal, and...ignorance and sin are deadly poisons for the soul.” (p. 33)
22. “As regards its future existence, we have already seen that the human soul is essentially independent of the body.” (p. 35)
23. “...the pains which souls suffer after death all have their source in excessive love of the world.” (p. 37)
24. “Every sinner thus carries with him into the world beyond death the instruments of his own punishment...” (p. 38)
25. “...the stationary are always hostile to the travellers or pilgrims, whom they far outnumber.” (p. 41)
26. “Thus man is capable of existing on several different planes from the animal to the angelic, and precisely in this lies his danger...” (p. 41)
27. “Many of the former class, having no fixed convictions about the future world, when mastered by their sensual appetites, deny it altogether.” (p. 41)
28. “...man’s chief business in this world is to prepare for the next.” (p 43)
Please choose a quote that has not been discussed by another student. Please see the Discussion Guidelines for additional information.
The first line of your post should be the quotation you have chosen. This will allow other students to easily determine which quotations have been previously discussed.
Supplementary Material
Video lecture on The Alchemy of Happiness:
Lecture 3 videoLecture 3 notes
Dr. Timothy Winter: The life and works of al-Ghazali
About 25 minutes in length, this is a two-part interview with an Islamic scholar at Cambridge University.
Part 1
The first 15 minutes are especially worth watching. A very interesting question is raised at about the 5:50 mark: What is the point in becoming educated and well-informed if your education doesn’t transform you? There are parallels with Socrates’ remarks in the Apology here.
Part 2
Another parallel with Socrates is indicated at the four-minute mark: the claim is made that we are half-asleep, not really awakened to the world around us (Socrates makes a similar claim about the Athenians during his trial in the Apology; see pg. 35 of Five Dialogues).
Hamza Yusuf: Interview on Imam Al-Ghazali
Hamza Yusuf is another important Islamic scholar. In this interview, he is questioned about a film about al-Ghazali’s life, but starting at about the one-minute mark, Yusuf makes several general observations about al-Ghazali that are helpful in getting a sense of who he was and what he believed. Parallels with the Apology are made here as well (e.g., at about 15:50, there is a discussion of happiness and virtue that brings to mind Socrates’ remarks on p. 41 of Five Dialogues).