محدوديه العقل ولانهائيه المعرفه عند الغزالي

Abstract

This study deals with the concept of ‘limitation of the intellect and the infinity of knowledge” in al-Ghazali’s writings. It clarifies his views concerning the functions of the intellect and explains the ways in which knowledge works.                

The intellect is considered the epistemological stage that comes between the stage of the senses and the stage beyond-the-intellect, and it makes relation with both of them on the basis of epistemological completion within one epistemological system, where each stage constitutes an independent epistemological unit in itself regarding its epistemological functional role, but it is not separated from the other stages. Each stage includes gradual epistemological degrees, and each degree represents a unit that has its own limited epistemological function. It is independent functionally, but connected to other degrees. Thus, the stage or the degree is a part of a whole that works inside an epistemological system characterized by distribution of limited functions in limited fields. The difference between the stages and the degrees is only a disparity of the epistemological role that is devoted to each of them, as if we were in front of a pyramidal epistemological structure.