al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Divine Unity, Knowledge, Said Nursi, Islam 

Webinar Series 

Perhaps the most interesting part of Ibn Rushd’s response to Al-Ghazali in his Tahafut al Tahafut is that concerning God’s Unity and Attributes, and Knowledge in particular. Central to this is his apparently paradoxical assertion that God knows all things and yet knows only Himself. Instead of simply expressing it as a mystical aphorism, he actually offers a philosophical explanation of it. However, he leaves some obscurity by not offering the explanation all in one place, but in scattered pieces, mostly in Discussion 3 and 6, where it emerges in response to Ghazali’s argument against the falasifa’s theory that God knows only Himself with a Knowledge identical to His Essence. My interest is to put these pieces together into the complete account of what this means and how it follows. At the moment I am not confident I fully understand it, but in this presentation I will discuss my current understanding of its main elements, and hope that participants more knowledgeable than I can correct me and / or help me fill in the blanks. I will draw mostly from Discussion 3 and 6 of Tahafut al Tahafut, although there is also relevant material in Discussions 11 and 13. There is certainly relevant material in Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and De Anima. There is probably other relevant material, perhaps in Nursi, that I am not aware of but hopefully some of our colleagues are.