Philosophy of Religion

The Incoherence of the Incoherence

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Averroes

1180

The Incoherence of the Incoherence — Tahafut al-Tahafut — is Averroes's masterpiece of philosophical polemics and the decisive text in the medieval conflict between philosophy and theology. It was written as a point-by-point refutation of al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa, 1095), which had attacked Aristotelian philosophy as incompatible with Islamic faith. Averroes takes each of al-Ghazali's twenty charges against the philosophers — including the eternity of the world, divine knowledge of particulars, and bodily resurrection — and argues systematically that al-Ghazali misunderstood Aristotle, employed invalid arguments, and contradicted his own theological commitments. The work is structured as a dialogue in which Averroes quotes and then refutes al-Ghazali section by section. It secured Aristotle's place in Islamic philosophy and became central to the Latin Scholastic tradition when translated in the thirteenth century.