Philosophical study of knowledge. How Imam Ghazali, saw knowledge and what’s in your mind. Fascinating article. Reproduced from The Star, written by Dr. Mohd Zaidi B. Ismail, Senior Fellow/Director Centre for Science and Environment Studies – IKIM.
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In any real process of human knowing, man reaches the height of apprehending abstract notions, ideas or concepts. In fact, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali, like many scholars in the intellectual and scientific tradition of Islam, understood pure ideas or concepts as always being abstract or non-material.
ACCORDING to ibn Khallikan (d. 681 A.H./1282 C.E.) in his biographical work, Wafayat al-A yan wa Anba’ Abna’ al-Zaman, this month, 900 years ago, departed one of Islam’s most eminent and influential scholars, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali.
True to what al-Ghazzali once said: “A man’s second life in this world consists in people’s memory of him.”
Nine centuries later, he continues to be present and important in the intellectual and moral life of Muslims at large.
His works are still being earnestly read and studied, not only in the Muslim world but also in certain parts of the West.
Knowledge was among his main concerns and one of his significant contributions was therefore in epistemology or the philosophical study of knowledge.
What we shall briefly do here in commemorating him is to reformulate one of his many illuminating thoughts on the nature of human knowledge.
In the religious, intellectual and scientific tradition, of which al-Ghazzali was an outstanding representative, true and beneficial knowledge was likened, among others, to water.
Just as water gives life to the human body, such knowledge gives life to the human mind.
But what actually is knowledge insofar as man is concerned?
It is in dealing with such a question that al-Ghazzali, having the general public in mind, made good use of metaphors in what may be termed as “the parable of a mirror”.
In a normal situation, when an object, say, a tree, is facing a mirror, it will be reflected on the mirror.
Yet, the reflex is not really the tree, but something resembling it, while the real tree, despite its image being mirrored, exists outside the mirror and is indeed existentially different from either the mirror or its reflected image.
The image, in turn, though different from the tree and existentially secondary or subsequent to it, is similar to it and in fact points to it.
In short, the tree, a huge one perhaps, remains where it is and does not move into that mirror which, due to its size, would have been unable to contain it.
Similarly, al-ilm or “knowledge” is not existentially the same as anything actual and existent that becomes al-ma lum, “the-object-of knowledge,” or “what-is-known,” or simply, “the-known”.
The object-of-knowledge is like the tree in the parable and the human mind or soul is like the mirror.
Just as the image of the tree will be reflected in the mirror so will knowledge be reflected in the mind if one properly attends to the object-of-knowledge.
True knowledge is a faithful reflection in one’s mind of the reality, whatever it is.
And what is reflected in the mind, in order to be true, must correspond to what is outside the mind.
Yet, what is reflected is only the form of the real object, not the object itself.
For the actual object as a whole still exists outside man’s perception.
Only something of it, the form, is grasped by man when he gets to know or understand something.
Yet, the form is only an aspect of a real object, the other aspect being represented by its matter.
Hence, the formal is different from the material and, understood as such, the formal is something non-material.
Nevertheless, none of the objects in the physical realm are purely form, but such objects are instead hybrids, albeit mysterious of form and matter.
As such, any mental “grasp” of what is “formal” with regard to a tangible object has to start with the mental act of abstracting the form from, not only the matter, but also anything material.
It is therefore clear that there is something else about knowledge that is also conveyed by this parable, “the process of knowing is a process of abstracting”.
In any real process of human knowing, man finally reaches the height of apprehending abstract notions, ideas or concepts.
In fact, al-Ghazzali, like many scholars in the intellectual and scientific tradition of Islam, understood pure ideas or concepts as always being abstract or non-material.
Abstracting simply means the mental process of separating the form of an actual object from the object as such, the object comprising also its materiality, so that what is at last inscribed in the human mind pertains simply to the formal aspect of the object.
This part of the epistemic process is what, to my mind, is originally meant when one uses the word “inform” in the sense that in-form-ation is a necessary condition in any real process of knowing, though one’s possession of it alone cannot be a sufficient condition to qualify one as knowledgeable.
In fact, the Latin original informare (a compound verb based on forma “form”) primarily connotes “shaping” via “forming an idea of something”.
It is also interesting to note that the common understanding among Muslim scholars, based on their grasp of the Qur’an, Prophetic teachings, and human experience and experiments, is that intellect is something spiritual or non-material in man, and knowing as well as understanding pertains to this spiritual dimension of man.
The form of thing, as we have just seen, is also something non-material.
Knowing, in this respect, is a sort of union of the non-material with the non-material!
However, what is somehow captured by the above parable does not reflect everything one can learn about knowledge.
In fact, it serves more to highlight both the passive side of men’s noetic activities and the correspondence factor; as if knowledge is a resemblance of an object that becomes inscribed on the human soul from an external source, such a soul merely acting as its passive recipient.
Yet, knowledge itself is more than just this.
To appreciate fully its other dimensions, one may need to learn all the interesting parables which contribute to the richness and depth of our intellectual tradition.
