According to ibn Khallikan (d. 681 A.H. / 1282 C.E.) in his famous biographical work, Wafayat al-A‛yan wa Anba’ Abna’ al-Zaman, in this month, 900 years ago, departed one of Islam’s most eminent and influential scholars, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali. True to what al-Ghazzali had once reminded, “a man’s second life in this world consists in people’s memory of him,” nine centuries later, he continues to be present and important in the intellectual and moral life of Muslims at large. And this is well attested to by the fact that his extant works are still being earnestly read and studied not only in almost all parts of the Muslim World but also in certain major parts of the West.
Knowledge being among his main concerns, one of his significant contributions was therefore in epistemology, or the philosophical study of knowledge. What we shall briefly do here in commemorating him is to reformulate one of his many illuminating thoughts on the nature of human knowledge.
In the religious, intellectual and scientific tradition of which al-Ghazzali is an outstanding representative, true and beneficial knowledge was likened, among others, to water. Just as the physical water gives life to the human body, such knowledge gives life to the human mind. But what actually is knowledge insofar as man is concerned? It is in dealing with such a question that al-Ghazzali, having the general public in mind, made good use of such metaphors as what may be termed “the parable of a mirror.”
In any normal situation, when an object—say, a tree—is facing a mirror, it will then be reflected in the mirror. Yet, the reflex is not really the tree, but something resembling it, while the real tree, despite its image being mirrored, remains existent outside the mirror and is indeed existentially different from either the mirror or its image as reflected therein. The image, in turn, though different from the tree and existentially secondary or subsequent to it, is similar to it and in fact points to it. In short, the tree—a huge one perhaps—remains where it is and does not move into that mirror which, due to its size, would have been unable to contain it.
Similarly, al-‛ilm or”knowledge” is not existentially the same as anything actual and existent that becomes al-ma‛lum, “the-object-of knowledge,” or “what-is-known,” or simply, “the-known.” Yet, although the former is different from the latter, it is still referentially related to the latter in an intimate manner. The object-of-knowledge is like the tree in the parable and the human mind or soul is like the mirror. Just as the image of the tree will be reflected in the mirror so also will knowledge be reflected in the mind if one properly attends to the object-of-knowledge.
True knowledge, as such, is a faithful reflection in one’s mind of the reality, whatever it is. And what is reflected in the mind, in order to be true, must correspond to what is outside the mind. Yet, what is reflected therein is only the form of the real object, not the object in its totality.For the actual object as a whole still exists outside man’s perception. Only something of it—that is, its form—is grasped by the man when he gets to know or understand something. Yet, the form is only an aspect of a physically real object, the other aspect being represented by its matter. Hence, the formal is different from the material and, understood as such, the formal is something non-material. Nevertheless, none of the objects in the physical realm are purely form, but such objects are instead hybrids, albeit mysterious, of form and matter. As such, any mental “grasp” of what is “formal” with regard to a tangible object has to start with the mental act of abstracting the form from not only the matter but also anything material.
It is therefore clear that there is something else about knowledge that is also conveyed by this parable, that is, “the process of knowing is a process of abstracting.” In any real process of human knowing, man finally reaches the height of apprehending abstract notions, ideas or concepts. In fact, al-Ghazzali, like many scholars in the intellectual and scientific tradition of Islam, understood pure ideas or concepts as always being abstract or non-material. Abstracting, constituting the normal process of human knowing, simply means the mental process of separating the form of an actual object from the object as such—the object as such comprising also its materiality—so that what is at last inscribed on the human mind pertains simply to the formal aspect of the object, almost like the image of the tree—its shape, colours, etc.—that is being reflected in the mirror while the tree remains where it is.
This part of the epistemic process is what, to my mind, is originally meant when one uses the word “inform” in the sense that in-form-ation is a necessary condition in any real process of knowing though one’s possession of it alone cannot be a sufficient condition to qualify one as knowledgeable. In fact, the Latin original informare (a compound verb based on forma “form”) primarily connotes “shaping” via “forming an idea of something.”
It is also interesting to note that the common understanding among Muslim scholars, based on their grasp of the Qur’an, Prophetic teachings, and human experience and experiments, is that intellect is something spiritual or non-material in man, and knowing as well as understanding pertains to this spiritual dimension of man. The form of a thing, as we have just seen, is also something non-material. Knowing, in this respect, is a sort of union of the non-material with the non-material!
However, what is somehow captured by the above parable does not reflect everything one can learn about knowledge. In fact, it serves more to highlight both the passive side of man’s noetic activities and the correspondence factor; as if knowledge is a resemblance of an object that becomes inscribed on the human soul from an external source, such a soul merely acting as its passive recipient. Yet, knowledge itself is more than just this. And to appreciate fully its other dimensions, one may well need to learn all those interesting parables which contribute to the richness and depth of our intellectual tradition.