al-Ghazzali Alchemy of Happiness: Kimiya al-sacadat (2 Volume Set)

Al-Ghazzali; Jay R. Crook trans

ISBN 10: 1567446744 / ISBN 13: 9781567446746

Published by Great Books of the Islamic World, 2008

About this Item

1260 pp. Complete in two volumes. Enclosed box-cutter wound to rear cover of vol. 2, both volumes entirely clean and sharp otherwise.

Seller Inventory # 500739

Bibliographic Details

• Title: al-Ghazzali Alchemy of Happiness: Kimiya al-sacadat (2 Volume Set)
• Publisher: Great Books of the Islamic World
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567446744
• ISBN 13: 9781567446746
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Edition: Second Edition.
• Condition: FINE
• Seller catalogs:
  • Religion

About this title

Synopsis

The first complete English translation of The Alchemy of Happiness, this is Imam Ghazzali s Persian summary of his famous Arabic treatise on morality and ethics in Islam, The Revival of Religious Sciences. In this work, Ghazzali details the many pitfalls, snares, and distractions internal and external that lie in wait to divert the traveler of the Way from attaining the goal which Ghazzali calls spiritual happiness. But there are also defenders, guides, and helpers which the traveler may enlist in his aid if he recognizes them. In The Alchemy, Ghazzali has provided the traveler of the Way with a critique of faith and a detailed guidebook to guide him safely to that goal. If he follows its counsels, he will successfully pass through the awesome tribunal of the Resurrection to achieve everlasting salvation, the highest degree of which is that state in which there remains neither fear of the terrors of hell nor appetite for the pleasures of Paradise. It is the pure ecstasy of the loving Divine Presence: Absolute spiritual happiness.

About the Author

Al-Ghazālī (c.1056 1111) was one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, and mystics of Sunni Islam. He was active at a time when Sunni theology had just passed through its consolidation and entered a period of intense challenges from Shiite Ismā īlite theology and the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy (falsafa). Al-Ghazālī understood the importance of falsafa and developed a complex response that rejected and condemned some of its teachings, while it also allowed him to accept and apply others. Al-Ghazālī's critique of twenty positions of falsafa in his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa) is a significant landmark in the history of philosophy as it advances the nominalist critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century Europe. On the Arabic and Muslim side al-Ghazālī's acceptance of demonstration (apodeixis) led to a much more refined and precise discourse on epistemology and a flowering of Aristotelian logics and metaphysics. With al-Ghazālī begins the successful introduction of Aristotelianism or rather Avicennism into Muslim theology. After a period of appropriation of the Greek sciences in the translation movement from Greek into Arabic and the writings of the falāsifa up to Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, c.980 1037), philosophy and the Greek sciences were naturalized into the discourse of kalām and Muslim theology (Sabra 1987). Al-Ghazālī's approach to resolving apparent contradictions between reason and revelation was accepted by almost all later Muslim theologians and had, via the works of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126 98) and Jewish authors a significant influence on Latin medieval thinking.
-- Griffel, Frank, "Al-Ghazali", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)