126 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:1

Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul:
Unveiling the Esoteric Psychology

and Eschatology of the Ihya’
Timothy Gianotti

Leiden: Brill, 2001. 205 pages.

Gianotti’s purpose behind this monograph is to draw out Ghazali’s position
on the vexed question of the true nature of the soul and its state in the after-
life. Ghazali’s actual views on this question have been a point of serious
debate in both the Muslim intellectual tradition and Ghazali scholarship in
the West. At the heart of this debate lies the question of his true allegiance:
Was the man, widely held to be the mujaddid (renewer of religion) of the
fifth Islamic century, a full-fledged Asharite, as tradition has made him out
to be, or was he, as others have suggested, a closet Avicennian? Or was he,
to complicate matters even further, neither? The source of the problem rests
on the apparently conflicting doctrines he articulated in various places con-
cerning the soul in various places in his vast and multi-layered literary oeuvre.
These seeming inconsistencies led Averroes, in the thirteenth century, to
accuse Ghazali of adhering “to no one doctrine in his books,” and of being
a Sufi with Sufis, an Asharite theologian with the Asharites, and a philoso-
pher with the philosophers (p. 19). 

Gianotti confesses that the “tensions and ambiguities are real and beg
resolution” (p. 8). He poignantly asks, however, whether they were the
“unintentional mess left by a brilliant but indisciplined mind,” or whether



the master was fully aware of the apparently conflicting views he expressed
in different places. Favoring the second view, he notes that Ghazali differen-
tiated between religious doctrines that could be openly expressed and those
that could not. These latter comprised the esoteric teachings of the mystics,
the domain to which the nature of the soul and the spirit belong. 

Gianotti argues that the tensions in Ghazali’s writings reflect his pious
restraint in treating the soul’s true nature. Yet how is this restraint to be rec-
onciled with what appear to be definitive statements about the soul scattered
across his writings? The author’s response to this question lays out the
method for his entire study: Ghazali’s writings should be divided into four
categories: falsafah (philosophy), kalam (theology), fiqh (jurisprudence),
and tasawwuf (“mysticism”). Confusion regarding Ghazali’s position on the
soul arises when we begin to cross the lines separating one category of dis-
course from another, or, put another way, when we attempt to extrapolate
from one kind of discourse more than he intended to convey in it. 

The purpose of Ghazali’s philosophical works, notes Gianotti, is prima-
rily to exposit and refute the views of the Muslim philosophers, primarily
Avicenna, and, to a lesser extent, Farabi. He does, admittedly, in this genre and
on more than one occasion, taken the positions of his interlocutors: a tactic
consciously employed in the Tahafut for the purpose of argumentation, to
demonstrate to the philosophers that even if we accept some of their prem-
ises, we are not forced to reach, through their own methods, the same conclu-
sions that they have. But Gianotti also shows that Ghazali’s relation to Islamic
philosophy was far more complex and ambivalent than one might presume,
judging from his public condemnation of certain philosophical positions. This
complexity is brought to the fore once we begin to examine his writings on the
soul in his mystical writings. The author, in effect, demonstrates that although
Ghazali has commonly been perceived as “anti-philosophical,” his actual
views were much closer to those of Avicenna than we might be led to think. 

As for his kalam works, one has to keep in mind Ghazali’s own views
about the limitations of this science: Its purpose is simply to safeguard the
faith and articulate the basic Islamic creed. Gianotti writes that Ghazali does
not explicate, as one might expect, the soul’s true nature in this genre. He also
demonstrates, through a very close reading of his main Asharite theological
texts (viz., the Qawa’id al-`Aqa’id and Al-Iqtisad fi al-I`tiqad), that Ghazali
did not ascribe entirely to Asharite notions of the soul. Gianotti illustrates this
through a close examination of Ghazali’s use and understanding of the term
jawhar (substance), showing that he was less an Asharite than one would
think on the basis of his theological profession. As for his legal works, their
purpose is simply juridical in nature. 

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128 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:1

Most of Ghazali’s mystical writings are pragmatic in nature. The purpose
of these works, primarily the Ihya’, is to encourage the faithful to piety and
sincere religious devotion. This fourth category is concerned with what he
called “the Science of the Way of the Afterlife.” This is a science that divides
into the practical (mu`amalah) and the theoretical (mukashafah). Even in this
genre, however, Ghazali does not openly explicate the secret of the soul, pre-
cisely because of its esoteric nature. But he does leave intimations and clues
within the Ihya’ to alert the minds of more perceptive readers to glimpses of
this esoteric knowledge. Gianotti laboriously follows these subtle allusions
and takes them to their most logical end. He concludes that although Ghazali
was neither a full-fledged Asharite nor a closet Avicennean, his position
comes very close to that of Avicenna. For the medieval thinker, the soul,
although ontologically immaterial, has an experience of the afterlife that is
material. He summarizes Ghazali’s view when he concludes that “to assert an
incorporeal Afterlife is to err more than to hit the mark, even when the asser-
tion is, theoretically speaking, true. Al-Ghazali is willing to uphold and live
with this paradox” (p. 176).

On the whole, this monograph is an invaluable contribution to our
knowledge of medieval Islamic thought, particularly in the domains of phi-
losophy, theology, and Sufism. David Burrel, the noted historian of medieval
philosophy, claims that we are “indebted to Timothy Gianotti for outlining
Ghazali’s way so dramatically” (Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies,
179.4 [2004]: 1074-75). Pierre Lory, the French Islamicist, has stated, in no
uncertain terms, that Gianotti’s “brillant exposé” raises Ghazalian studies to
an altogether new level (Studia Islamica 95, [2002]: 169-70). This reviewer
has no reservations in seconding both assessments.

Atif Khalil
Ph.D. Candidate, Department and Centre for the Study of Religion

University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada