It takes two to tango: the salvific potential of reason

Revisiting reason and revelation...again

Whenever I have the misfortune of coming across another dreary discussion of the rivalry between reason and revelation in Islam, I either yawn or cringe. For the most part, it’s a tired topic and poorly understood. Yet sometimes, revisiting the topic doesn’t always feel like beating a dead horse.

Anyone with a basic familiarity of the issue should come to recognize that there’s more than one way to skin a cat (forgive the animal abuse idioms). About as many stabs were taken at the issue as there were people willing to attempt a solution. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya — each arguing from entirely different standpoints — are only some of the most famous writers on the topic.¹ The abundance of theories might very well leave the impression that the “problem” is inescapably intractable.

Skepticism can be healthy, but cynicism is lazy. What seems clear is that reason, however we define it, is neither self-evident, neutral, nor isolable. Instead, we have kinds of reason, which is another way of saying that reason is entangled with a whole bunch of different things: language, the body, emotions, evaluations, tradition, and the other.² (Each theory also depends on an ontology, or a “picture of reality,” that I’m not prepared to comment on; but if you feel like taking a whisk to your gray matter then see the books in this footnote).³

What’s more, there are many angles to approach the reason-revelation problematic from. But a particular challenge pertains to what I’ll call the issue of the “salvific potential of reason.” To what extent can reason save us?

Can reason save us? It did not take long for European thinkers to lose confidence in the promise of Enlightenment (or instrumental) reason. It helped human beings conquer nature, but at the cost of severing our connection to it. So reason cannot save us from meaninglessness.⁴ Nor absurdity, for that matter — reason never disenchanted us.⁵ From a more literally existential perspective, can we reason our way out of impending ecological disaster? Nuclear war? Genocide?

One way to think about the failures of reason is to understand them as instances where reason is torn from its constitutive and constituting matrix (the body, language, emotions, etc.). Indeed, one of the most extreme episodes of the irrationality of reason features just such a radical reduction.⁶ The “Cold War rationality” of the mid 20th century, which survives today, conceived of reason as formal, algorithmic, mechanical, and generalizable. In other words, reason, in the ideal, is independent of context (historical, cultural, etc.) and judgement.⁷

But perhaps the most significant elements modern reason divorced itself from are morality and spirituality. Here the salvific question emerges once more, casting into sharp relief, again, the intricate web of entanglements that constitute reason itself. The ecological crisis, a product of instrumental reason, is a moral failure. Human beings could exercise their intellects towards ruthlessly unquenchable possession and extraction because they had lost their moral compass. In other words, we’re continuing to “reason” our way to self-destruction because morality is not seen as a constitutive element of reason.

Several scholars have called attention to this phenomenon, but none better than Abdurrahman Taha⁸ (the full argument can be found in Wael Hallaq’s Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha). In a nutshell, my point is to show how the salvific potential of reason depends on appreciating its interconnectedness to morality and value. In its highest form, Taha argues, reason is not exercised with or through morality — it is constituted by it.

For Taha, because morality and value are embedded in the cosmic fabric of God’s creation — in the ontology of reality and anthropology of the self — revelation is essential to the salvific potential of reason. There’s much more to say, but I want to point out that the discussion thus far as been only with respect to one side of the salvific question: our physical existentialism. Which brings me to the impetus for this particular post on the relation between reason and revelation: reason’s role in postmortem salvation, or spiritual existentialism.

For Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, reason’s salvific potential is contingent upon its intimate dialectical integration with moral and spiritual dimensions, altogether forming an axiological constellation whose domains interweave in a mutually reinforcing onto-epistemic dance. For Ghazālī, the full potential of our humanity is realized through this intricate choreography.⁹

That’s fancy talk for saying that our spiritual existentialism depends on safeguarding reason through virtue and worship, and that virtue and worship also depend on sound reason. Religious praxis (virtue and worship) purifies and refines reason, reason helps us realize the full potential of moral and spiritual self-cultivation — each domain continuously transforms the other.

Knowledge, Ghazālī writes, is either rational (ʿaqliyya) or religious (sharʿiyya, dīniyya). In brief, rational knowledge includes things we know innately, like the law of non-contradiction, as well as knowledge we acquire through learning and inference (e.g., science, math, theology, psychology). Religious knowledge, on the other hand, is “received” (samāʿ, lit. hearing) on the basis of the authority (taqlīd) of God’s prophets. In other words, because it is revealed, we’re not in a position to question the basis of religious knowledge.

So the first difference between them is that unlike religious knowledge, rational knowledge is falsifiable. Second, Ghazālī says that religious knowledge serves to perfect the “mind”¹⁰ and protect it from (spiritual) diseases. Rational knowledge is necessary for safeguarding the mind, but not sufficient on its own.

Interestingly, both rational and religious knowledge are essential to salvation (so much for the “Ghazālī-caused-the-demise-of-philosophy/science myth”). He offers this helpful metaphor: Reason cannot ensure the health of the body without receiving knowledge from physicians (the metaphorical stand-in for prophets); and at the same time it is only through reason that this knowledge can be comprehended. Thus, Ghazālī writes, reason needs kinds of knowledge beyond its ken, and such knowledge needs reason in order to be understood. Stated differently, there is an interdependence between reason and revelation.¹¹ He continues:

Whoever calls for pure imitation (maḥd al-taqlīd) while completely isolating reason is ignorant, and whoever relies solely on reason without the lights of the Qur'an and Sunna is deluded.… For rational knowledge is like food, while religious knowledge is like medicine. A sick person is harmed by food when they neglect medicine; likewise, the diseases of the mind [qulūb] cannot be cured except by the remedies derived from the Sharīʿa [the revealed law].

So reason is prone to error, and the causes of its folly are moral and spiritual failures. In the pages preceding this passage, Ghazālī notes that every mind is inherently capable of knowing reality, or the nature of things as they are (maʿrifat ḥaqā’iq al-umūr), because the mind is a “noble, divine thing” (amr rabbānī sharīf). However, the mind can fail to grasp reality for any of five reasons:

1. An inherent limitation, like the mind of a child.

2. The accumulation of sin, which clouds and veils the mind.¹²

3. Distractions and inattention to reality.

4. If it is “veiled” by ideology and dogma (the handicap of many well-intention theologians [mutakallimūn] and jurists [fuqahā’]).

5. Not searching for knowledge in the right place.

So sins, or vices and moral failures, can cloud reason. The only way to maintain or regain this clarity is through obeying God and controlling the impulses of desire (shahawāt).

This is where revelation enhances reason. The “diseases of the mind” can only be cured through the remedies derived from revelation, which:

consist of acts of worship and the deeds established by the prophets, may God’s peace and blessings be upon them, for the rectification of minds. Whoever does not treat their sick mind with the remedies of revealed acts of worship (al-ʿibādāt al-sharʿiyya) and relies solely on rational knowledge will suffer from them.…

Whoever thinks that rational knowledge contradict religious knowledge and that combining them is impossible is under an illusion stemming from blindness in the eye of insight (ʿayn al-baṣīra). We seek refuge in God from this. This person might even see some religious knowledge as contradictory, failing to reconcile between them, leading them to believe there is contradiction in the religion, causing confusion and leading them to distance themselves from religion, like a hair slipping from dough. This is only because their own shortcomings have tricked them into believing there is a contradiction in the religion.

The example of this is like that of a blind person who entered the house of a people and tripped over the vessels in the house. He said to them, “Why are these vessels left on the road? Why are they not returned to their places?” They replied, “Those vessels are in their places; rather, it is you who cannot find your way because of your blindness.” The astonishing thing is that he does not attribute his stumbling to his blindness but rather blames it on others' carelessness.

Thus, revelation — the spiritual exercises and moral values taught by God through his prophets — is essential to ensuring the health and reliability of reason.

At the same time, reason actively participates in this dialectical dance, cultivating a dynamic, recursive process of interpretive refinement. Rational knowledge, Ghazālī writes, either pertains to this world (e.g., science, geometry) or the hereafter. What he means is that reason serves us in the fulfillment of our ultimate telos: the knowledge of higher truths and God. Through reason, we can understand such things as the conditions of the mind (aḥwāl al-qalb), which helps us cultivate virtue through psycho-spiritual techniques (e.g., disciplining our passions). Reason also allows us to know things about God, His attributes, and His actions.

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Of course, this is only a partial account of Ghazālī’s ideas. A fuller one would require a holistic presentation of his thoughts on ontology (e.g., all that exists is God), epistemology, and anthropology (the above shows several ways in which the latter two are entwined).

At the very least, situating Ghazālī’s discussion on the relation between reason and revelation requires drawing attention to two more things. The first is the thoroughly and profoundly Qur’anic nature of his theory of anthro-epistemology, which my discussion omits (due to space, time, and laziness).

The second, is his understanding of the purpose of human existence: “Knowledge is the telos (maqṣūd) of human beings and their distinctive characteristic for which they were created.” In fact, this is the Trust (amāna) that humanity was made to bear (Q 7:172). More specifically, the highest objective is knowledge of God, through which human beings attain their perfection and, in turn, happiness (saʿāda).

The mind was created to contemplate the beauty of the Divine Presence (al-ḥaḍra al-ilāhiyya). Whoever strives in this craft is truly a servant, among the attendants of the Presence. It is said: “And I did not create the jinn and humankind except to worship Me” (Q 51:56), meaning: [God] created the mind... so that it may travel from the world of dust to the highest of heights. When one wishes to fulfill the right of this blessing... they make the Divine Presence their direction and destination, and make the Hereafter their homeland and place of rest.¹³

“The mind’s pleasure (ladhdhat al-qalb) is uniquely found in the knowledge of God, as it was created specifically for this purpose.”¹⁴

This knowledge is achieved when the veils between the mind and the supernal world (al-malakūt) dissolve, because the Lordly Presence (al-ḥadra al-rubūbiyya), which envelops everything in existence, consists of the entirety of the worldly (mulk) and supernal realms: “There is nothing in existence but God and His actions, and His kingdom and servants are a part of His actions.”

Whatever part of [the Lordly Presence] that is manifested to the mind is, for some, paradise itself, and it is the reason for deserving paradise in the eyes of the people of Truth. The extent of one’s kingdom in paradise corresponds to the extent of his knowledge and to the degree to which God, His attributes, and His actions manifest to him.

To be sure, the dogmatic belief of the “commoner” will earn him eternal felicity and a high station in the hereafter, but he will not be among those who are “drawn near” (al-muqarrabīn). By comparison, for the gnostic (al-ʿārifīn), the one whose belief is based on “directly witnessing the light of certainty,” worship and praxis are observed not as part of a calculus of divine compensation, but as a transformative process of inner purification and ontological refinement: “The one who purifies it succeeds” (Q 91:9).¹⁵

It is through the mind, Ghazālī writes, that one can attain nearness to God. But to achieve that, the mind must ascertain the knowledge of the reality of things, and that requires both reason as well as revelation, the pairing and mutual enhancement of intellectual rigor and moral and spiritual virtue.

1. For a good overview, see Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation: A Study of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql (Brill, 2020).

2. Alastair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (1989); idem., The Language Animal (2016); Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (2001); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980). Lakoff and Johson expanded on the embodied nature of reason in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (1999) and later Johnson in The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (2013) and idem., Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding (2017).

3. David Bentley Hart, All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life (2024); Bernardo Kastrup, The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality (2019); Donald D. Hoffman, The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes (2020); Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge (2019).

4. See Charles Taylor, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment (2024).

5. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (2017).

6. I am conflating between reason and rationality only for the sake of staying on point.

7. Paul Erickson et. al., How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (2015).

8. See especially his al-ʿAmal al-dīnī wa tajdī al-ʿaql.

9. The following, with the exception of two quotes from Kimyā’ al-saʿāda, is from Ghazālī’s Iḥyā’ ʿulūm al-dīn, kitāb ʿajā’ib al-qalb, translated by Walter James Skellie as The Marvels of the Heart (Fons Vitae, 2010). I have not read the translation, and I’m sure my translation of certain terms will differ considerably.

10. The word used here is qalb (lit. heart), but in Ghazālī’s usage this is more akin to what we might understand as mind or consciousness (to be sure, it’s a problematic translation, and I’m open to other suggestions). I opt for mind because, for Ghazālī, the qalb is a “divine spiritual subtlety (laṭīfa rabbāniyya)…the essence of the human being (ḥaqīqat al-insān) that is the perceiving and aware part of the human (al-mudrik al-ʿālim al-ʿārif min al-insān).” Other words use for this faculty of “consciousness” are spirit/soul (rūḥ), self (nafs), and, interestingly, intellect (ʿaql).

11. Ghazālī writes: فلا غنى بالعقل عن السماع ولا غني بالسماع عن العقل. Given the context, samaʿ here would seem to refer to “received” knowledge, like the knowledge a patient receives from a physician (the metaphorical stand-in for a prophet). But Ghazālī’s choice of words is clever, and more than likely not coincidental, since samāʿ (hearing) is also a synonym for revelation.

12. Here it is important to note that Ghazālī conceives of the mind as a mirror. It does not contain the realities of things as they are. Instead, when the mind confronts knowledge, it either reflects it faithfully if it is pure (knowledge of the reality of the thing) or it fails to because it is soiled and rusted.

13. Kimyā’ al-saʿāda (The Alchemy of Happiness), 1:129-30.

14. Kimyā’ al-saʿāda, 1:139.

15. It here refers to the nafs, which for Ghazālī is synonymous with qalb, what I have been translating as “mind.”