The intellectual thought of al-Ghazālī : The alchemy of happiness and other Persian writing / Ali Mirsepassi, New York University, Tadd Graham Fernée, University of Tours.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ghazzālī, 1058-1111, author.

Mirsepassi, Ali, author, author.

Fernée, Tadd Graham, 1971- author.

Series:

Global Middle East (Cambridge, England) ; 31.

The global Middle East ; 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ghazzālī, 1058-1111.

Ghazzālī.

Ghazzālī, 1058-1111. Kīmiyā-yi saʻādat.

Islamic ethics--Early works to 1800.

Islamic ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 257 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) was one of the most influential philosophers of the classical Islamic period, with his intellectual innovations spanning the fields of theology, logic, and law. Despite this, contemporary assessments of Ghazālī often present him as hostile to rationality, and a guardian of dogma and orthodoxy. This study provides an innovative reassessment of Ghazālī's legacy, offering a compelling depiction of a reformer in his own time with increasing relevance to the issues gripping multicultural and globalized societies today. Ali Mirsepassi and Tadd Graham Fernée closely study Ghazālī's major Persian-language text Kīmīyā-e saʿādat (The Alchemy of Happiness) and its scholarly reception, alongside his lesser-read works, arguing that Ghazālī shared a message of reform, and critique of Abbasid institutions. Ghazālī's critical stance is revealed as both pragmatic and cosmopolitan in its recognition of autonomy from religion in many aspects of life, and in the value placed upon scientific contribution.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Imprints page

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

1 The Time and Life of Ghazālī

Ghazālī and State-Making: ''Zamān al-Fatra'' (A Time of Religion's Eclipse)

Ghazālī's Early Life in Khorasan

Ghazālī in Baghdad

Legitimacy Crisis as Personal Experience

The Sufi Exit

Back Home in Khorasan

Return to the Sciences

2 Reading Ghazālī in the West

What Was the Abbasid Crisis?

Ghazālī and the Contemporary Crisis

Ghazālī as Antimodernist in the Magical Realist Tradition

Ghazālī as the Destroyer of Islamic Science

Ghazālī as Pioneer of Postmodern Antimodernism

Two Visions of Modernity: ''Sociological'' and ''Ontological''

Ghazālī as a Huxleyan Hero for the New Age

Conclusion

3 The Poetic Imagination and the Politics of Ambiguity

Dihlīz as Salvation

Ambiguity as a Viable Politics?

Secularism

The Politics of Ambiguity

A Cosmic Self-recovery

''Modernity'' in Contemporary Islamic Studies

''Discursive Tradition'' as Authoritative Orthodoxy

Ghazālī: Ethics as Pastoral Power

Ghazālī: Beyond the Limits of Islamic Studies Scholarship

Celebrating Ghazālī's Failing

Beyond the Bewitchment of Language

Ghazālī: The Chaos Thesis

The Antimodern Dream

4 The Troubled Orthodoxy in the Academic Study of Islam

The Two Rivers

The Criticisms

A New Orientalism

Religion After Religion

A New Theodicy

The Sociology and Hermeneutics Debate

Foucauldian Left

The New Orthodoxy and the Postcolonial

Full Circle

Crisis of the Public Intellectual

The Public Intellectual and Imaginative Excess

5 A Path to Reform: Escape from Madrasa

Ghazālī's Writings in Persian and His Reception in Iran

Works on Ghazali in Persian.

6 A Cosmopolitan Reading of Ghazālī

A Weberian Reading of the Abbasid World

Beyond the Conventions in Ghazālī Studies

Problem of the Sacred in the Abbasid Context

The Sacred/Profane Duality

Ghazālī as Reformer: Negotiating the Sacred/Profane Duality

Alchemy of Happiness: Science and Ethics

7 Ghazālī's Practical Ethics: Dīn and Dunyā

Ghazālī's Idea of the Heart

Ghazālī's Pragmatic Turn

The Conviviality of Religious Experience

The Science of the Word (kalām) and the Science of Knowledge

An Ethics of Happiness

A Remedy for the Sickness of the New Affluence

Sa'adat, Ghazālī's Privileged Category

Happiness: Between Sacred and Profane

Self-mastery in a Decentered World

Happiness in a Pluralistic World

Happiness in Education

The Division of Labor

Happiness in Dreams

We Must Step Outside of Ourselves

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jan 2025).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009538152

1009538152

9781009538121

1009538128

9781009538114

100953811X