As a product of non-religious or even pagan social environment for non-religious and universal purposes, logic has had to undergo some evolutions and even renounce some of its parts or aspects to survive in the religion-oriented... more
As a product of non-religious or even pagan social environment for non-religious and universal purposes, logic has had to undergo some evolutions and even renounce some of its parts or aspects to survive in the religion-oriented scientific milieus. In the history of Aristotelian logic, as far as I know, the first challenge of this kind is what befell to logic while it was studied in the school of Alexandria. Ammonius, son of Hermias, the successor of his father as the master of the Alexandrian school of philosophy, tried his best to implant Greek philosophy and logic in an overwhelmingly Christian society and reportedly had to come to an agreement with the bishop not to teach some things inconvenient to the religious community. Similarly in the Syrian schools, logic was mutilated most probably for religious reasons and the Organon was read and taught only up to the end of the seventh chapter of the Book One of the Prior Analytics. When transmitted to the Arabo-Islamic World, logic seems to have suffered from the same fate for a while. In the circles of religious scholars, particularly grammarians and theologians treated logic as an unwelcome innovation and a foreign interloper and harshly questioned its very existence and legitimacy. It was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī that changed this miserable destiny of logic in the Islamicate World. Ghazali extends logic a stable and respected place in the curricula of the Islamic madrasas that has so far been endured since then, but it has been too costly for logic because logic gained that status at the expense of its philosophical features and implications.
This paper treats Ghazali’s efforts to Islamicize logic giving some illustrative examples of what we might call his ‘Islamic logic’ and reconsiders the religio-social background of these efforts. It aims to shed some light upon very important questions about the nature and reasons of Ghazali’s favorable treatment of logic and the significance of this treatment in the history of Arabic logic. Since, I think, Ghazali’s historical and doctrinal contribution to the Arabic logic has been relatively overlooked in the scholarly circles, I hope that this paper modestly contributes to filling the gap in the literature.
This paper treats Ghazali’s efforts to Islamicize logic giving some illustrative examples of what we might call his ‘Islamic logic’ and reconsiders the religio-social background of these efforts. It aims to shed some light upon very important questions about the nature and reasons of Ghazali’s favorable treatment of logic and the significance of this treatment in the history of Arabic logic. Since, I think, Ghazali’s historical and doctrinal contribution to the Arabic logic has been relatively overlooked in the scholarly circles, I hope that this paper modestly contributes to filling the gap in the literature.