Truth, Philosophers and Prophets: A Critical Study of Isaac Albalag*s Sefer Tiqqun Ha-de Ot (Maimonides Library for Philosophy and Religion, 9)

This book focuses on Isaac Albalag’s perspective on the relationship between religion and philosophy. In Sefer Tiqqun ha-Deʿot, a Hebrew translation with a commentary of al-Ġazālī’s Arabic philosophical encyclopedia Maqāṣid al-Falāsifah, Albalag indicates his adherence to what is known in scholarship as the double-truth doctrine. By analysing the Tiqqun against its philosophical background and its critical engagement with the Maqāṣid, this book demonstrates Albalag’s unyielding commitment to Aristotelianism, as known to him through Averroes’s lens, concluding that his apparent embrace of the double-truth doctrine is merely a strategic tool to carve out a distinct space for philosophy, independent of religious beliefs.

Bakinaz Khalifa Abdalla, Ph.D. (2019), McGill University, is Assistant Professor of philosophy at Nazarbayev University. Her publications include a special issue of Religious Studies on the problem of evil and suffering and a number of book chapters and journal articles. Her most recent publications are "Evil and Responsibility in the Quran" in Religious Studies (2024), and "Morality and Divine Law: Reflections on Islamic Theology and Falsafah" in Global Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Saleh Zarepour and Yujin Nagasawa (2024).