<b>Al-Ghazālī and Jacques Derrida: </b><b><i>Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl</i></b><b> and the Philosophy of Deconstruction</b>
<h2><b>Abstract</b></h2><p dir="ltr">This study undertakes a deconstructive reading of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s <i>al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl</i> (<i>Deliverance from Error</i>), placing his quest for certainty in dialogue with Jacques Derri...
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2025
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| Summary: | <h2><b>Abstract</b></h2><p dir="ltr">This study undertakes a deconstructive reading of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s <i>al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl</i> (<i>Deliverance from Error</i>), placing his quest for certainty in dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction. Ghazālī’s intellectual journey—through theology, philosophy, esotericism, and Sufism—is examined as a structural attempt to secure truth against doubt. Yet, read through Derrida, each foundation Ghazālī erects reveals its own instability: sense-data prove deceptive, axioms rely on contingent systems, authority collapses into suspicion, and divine illumination itself emerges as a deferred supplement rather than a fixed presence. Certainty, far from abolishing doubt, appears continually shadowed by it, generating a textual field of play rather than closure.</p><p dir="ltr">Ghazālī’s sharp critique of philosophy in <i>Tahāfut al-Falāsifa</i> is likewise deconstructed. While he condemns philosophers for mixing truth with error, Derrida’s framework shows that mixture is not corruption but the structural condition of meaning itself. Moreover, Ghazālī’s critique depends upon the very philosophical tools he seeks to repudiate, producing a paradox of dependence. Ibn Rushd’s counterargument in <i>Tahāfut al-Tahāfut</i> highlights this contradiction, exposing Ghazālī’s misrepresentation of philosophical doctrines and underscoring the impossibility of separating revelation from reason. In Derridean terms, Ghazālī’s project exemplifies the “violence of the center”—the attempt to stabilize meaning by exclusion, which inevitably reinscribes what it denies.</p><p dir="ltr">The study extends its analysis into the history of science and religion, tracing how cosmological paradigms from Ptolemy to Copernicus, and from the Big Bang to the multiverse, continually reshape theological interpretation. This demonstrates that both rationality and faith are historically contingent, bound to the epistemic frameworks of their time. Ultimately, the research reveals that Ghazālī’s text performs its own auto-deconstruction: the pursuit of pure certainty collapses into the play of differences, illustrating Derrida’s central thesis that truth is never fixed but always deferred.</p> |
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