Winter’s Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul

The position of the Isma’iliyyah in the ideas of Nizam al-Mulk and Ghazali

Iranian political thought was transformed in the Seljuq period. In this transformation, political power and administration of social affairs promoted the monarchy as a non – rival concept to the sphere of politics. In the plurality of causes and multiplication of contributions involved in this process, political writers, who rather than thinking, were also involved in stabilization of this patt...

Ghazali and Ash‘arism Revisited

Much has been written on the relation of Ghazali (al-Ghaz®l¬) to Ash‘arism1 that, among other things, indicate his criticisms of the kal®m.2 Underlying his criticisms is a primary thesis, namely that the main function of kal®m is the protection of traditional Islamic belief (‘aq¬da), rooted in the Qur’®n and guided by the customary practice of the prophet, the sunna, against heretical innovatio...

On the Soul

Imagining the Divine: Ghazali on Imagination, Dreams, and Dreaming

Journal of the American Academy of Religion March 2002, Vol. 70, No. 1, pp. 33–53. © 2002 The American Academy of Religion This study presents a phenomenological analysis of Ghazali’s discussion of dreams and dream discourse as it specifically relates to the faculty of the imagination. The imagination is an important, though ambiguous and understudied, category, as it is responsible for diverse...

The Soul According to Rāmānuja

Rāmānuja was the founder of Visistādvaita Vedānta School, which is one of the three main schools of Vedānta. According to Rāmānuja, the soul (cit), Brahman, and matter (acit) constitute the three principal ontological realities. Rāmānuja provides some proofs for the existence of the soul, which are mostly based on self-consciousness. The relationship of the soul with the matter, on one hand, an...