ABSTRACT
The fundamental gap, as we pointed out while discussing alGhazālī and Ibn Taymīya, between the orthodox and the philoso phical Weltanschauung, concerns the nature of m a n and therefore of
the nature of the divine message to the prophet. According to the philosophers the goal of man in which his ultimate bliss consists is the contemplation of reality; in their thoroughly intellectualistmystical attitude to life, life of religio-moral action is at best a ladder which is to be transcended. The orthodox impulse is activist; it does not reject intellectualism but subordinates it to the end of moral dynamism. The philosophers’ reality is an immobile eternal truth; the orthodoxy’s ultimate reality is also certain eternal truth, but being primarily a moral truth, it must result in moral action. The orthodox conception of truth is therefore not of something which merely is but essentially of something which ‘commands’. It is thus the evaluation of the Sharī’a that is at stake. This issue is implicit in the orthodox Kalām, but is explicitly formulated by Ibn Taymīya and partly by al-Ghazālī.
