Written after al-Ghazali’s period of private philosophical study...

Written after al-Ghazali’s period of private philosophical study, and finished in January 1094 CE, the Tahafut al-Falasifa had the aim of “pursuing the critique of reason which underlay his bout of skepticism, and was trying to show that reason is not self-sufficient in the field of metaphysics and is unable out of itself to produce a complete world-view.”[^4] Even though, as Montgomery Watt explains, al-Ghazali personally held certain doctrines that he refuted in the Tahafut .[^5] Al-Ghazali wanted to show that reason itself “cannot prove that the world has a creator, that two gods are impossible, that God is not a body, that He knows both others and Himself, and that the soul is a self-subsistent entity.”[^6] Al-Ghazali, in a form reminiscent of Plato and Justin Martyr’s dialogues, created dialogue partners with a group called “the philosophers.” Whether this representation of the Islamic philosophers with whom he was in dialogue with is true or not, is a subject for another essay.

This essay will examine al-Ghazali’s argument for the temporal finiteness of the universe, as found in the first area of discussion with the philosophers. It will show that the criticisms given by al-Ghazali’s dialogue partners remain largely unanswered. Given that, this paper will provide alternative philosophical proofs that allow al-Ghazali to uphold his central thesis, while maintaining some air of the orthodoxy he sought to defend.…