In this book, Frank Griffel presents the most comprehensive examination to date of the life and thought of this important figure.

Originally published in 1958. Occasionalism is generally associated in the history of philosophy with the name of Malébranche. But long before this time, the Muslim Theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries had developed an occasionalist metaphysics of atoms and accidents. Arguing that a number of distinctively Islamic concepts such as fatalism and the surrender of personal endeavour cannot be fully understood except in the perspective of the occasionalist world view of Islam, the volume also discusses the attacks on Occasionalism (...) made by Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Although Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali lived a relatively short life, he established himself as one of the most important thinkers in the history of Islam. _The Incoherence of the Philosophers_, written after more than a decade of travel and ascetic contemplation, contends that while such Muslim philosophers as Avicenna boasted of unassailable arguments on matters of theology and metaphysics, they could not deliver on their claims; moreover, many of their assertions represented disguised heresy and unbelief. Despite its attempted refutation by (...) the twelfth-century philosopher Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali's work remains widely read and influential. (shrink)

Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation examines the controversial causation issue.