al-Ghazali and the virtues to knowledge

When discussing al-Ghazali we covered his book about knowledge, which is part one in a long list of books, together forming four volumes, where he formulates an answer to the problem of incoherence he describes he foudn within himself in the book Deliverance from Error. In this book on knowledge he tries to create coherence between philosophy, theology and mysticism, which for him is in the service of virtue. He has an Aristotelean conception of knowledge.

This reminded me of virtue epistemology; where it is considered what kind of virtues a person should have in order to be able to get to knowledge. This concerns certain attitudes such as open-mindedness, critical thinking, good memory, clear sight and intellectual humility. It speaks partly of how we should relate to knowledge and thus to the world.

In a way al-Ghazali holds some of these beliefs as well I would argue. For example when he argues for the need for ritual; someone inclined to traditoion does not go into extremes as easily as someone who does not adhere to tradtion. This is the case because pure rationality does not exist, and so even philosophers sometimes blindly adhere to older ideas, acting and thinking dogmatic. This might lead to using wrong ideas and in such keep the philosopher away from true knowledge. Tradition and scripture can be the foundational mode of knowing that keep you from escaping a set of laws created in the world of metaphysics, for their origin is in the divine - unchanging and eternal. Ghazali was not opposed to rational thinking however. He believed rationality to be very important. Having a critical and logical mind was essential to gain knowledge.

Something else that reminded me of this system of virtue epistemology was his spiritual psychology. Here he says the heart, which is symbolic for the soul, is the locus of cogniton and allows us to differentiate between good and evil and helps us to gain insight. The heart gets to know, but does this through intelligence. The intelligence is required to be able to get to knowledge effectively. It is the intelligence that polishes the mirror the heart is. This intelligence is not the same as the heart, but a quality of it. It is he intrinsic virtue with which the heart is able to apprehend knowable objects.