I am not sure if they same conditions apply for the blogs of the second half of the class but I’m just going to assume so. We didn’t yet receive an email about the blogs so I’ll just start blogging again.
First of all, I really enjoy the freedom that was given to us through the pre-recorded online lectures. I find myself taking breaks whenever I need them and I feel that it allows me to watch the lectures more attentively. I could definitely see myself rewatching lectures if they were recorded. I also like the lenght of the online lectures.
This weeks lecture was about Al-Ghazali’s theology and his critiques of contemporary and past philosophers and philosophy in general. The lecture discussed the point that Al-Ghazali didn’t bring forth the decline of Middle Eastern philosophy, but how Al-Ghazali wasn’t able to prove the incoherance of philosophy and how the decline of philosophy in the Middle East started way after Al-Ghazalis influence.
Al-Ghazali lived in the Seljuks Empire, an empire set on islamicizing Iran. They had to fight Avicennan philosophy. Avicenna was diffamed but the Seljuks weren’t able to completely remove the influence of Avicenna’s philosophy. Al-Ghazali tried proving the incoherence of philosophers, but he failed to do so. The Golden Age of Arabic Philosophy came after Al-Ghazali.
I missed the discussion on Friday and I hope that after I have attended this weeks discussion I will have more topics to write about. I didn’t want to copy the content of the lecture too much, so I wrote a little less than I could’ve written.
fjs’ blog 