And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the LMU in Munich online at

W.W. history of philosophy net. Today's episode, Miracle Worker, Al-Hazale against the philosophers.

In his autobiography work, Deliverer from error, which we talked about last time,

Al-Kazale considers a piece of advice given by the earlier theologian Ahmad

Ahmad. The advice is that if you're going to argue with someone, you shouldn't

carefully explain their views and then go on to refute them.

After all, your readers might stop before you get to the refutation part.

Better just to deny them the air of publicity.

This is a lesson the history of philosophy had already taught.

Think for instance of the pagan Neoplatinist Simplicius, painstakingly copying out quotations

from his arch enemy, the Christian thinker John Philoponus, in order to display their idiocy.

With the result, that modern day scholars are able to read the otherwise lost words of Philoponus and even to publish them without

Simpliqueius's accompanying polemic. In the words of Mrs O'Leary's cow, who kicked over a lamp and started a fire that burned down the city of Chicago in

1871. Oops.

After repeating this bit of advice, El Kazali explains that he did not follow it when he was

attacking the Ismaelis, because everyone knows what they think anyway.

But when it came to attacking philosophy, perhaps he should have listened to Ibn Hanbal.

Repeating Simplikius's tactical error, Al-Gazali wrote a work summarizing the views of Avicana,

calling it Macassid al-Falacifa, which means aims of the philosophers.

This was followed by a second treatise called to Hafut-A-Fal-Sifah, usually translated incoherence of the philosophers, although the word Tahafut

doesn't quite mean incoherence, rather it means a trip or stumble.

The Tahafut then is a study of cases where the philosophers have tripped up, going astray

...