ABSTRACT
If we wish to place al-Ghazzālī within a history of Islamic philosophy we must make some preliminary remarks. The most obvious starting point is that al-Ghazzālī did not consider himself a philosopher, nor liked to be considered as such. Yet it is interesting that the Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, reading his book Maqāṣid al-falāsifah (“The Aims of Philosophers”), a reasoned and objective exposition of the main philosophical topics of his time, looked on him as a faylasūf like Ibn Sīnā or Ibn Rushd. It not only means that al-Ghazzālī studied and assimilated philosophy deeply, being aware of its theoretical glamour and its structural strength, but also it leads us to believe that philosophy must have had at least an indirect influence even on his mystical thought. Moreover, although al-Ghazzālī, who was essentially a theologian, a mystic and a jurist, fought sharply against philosophy, trying to demonstrate its contradictions, it would be misleading not to recognize that his mysticism and theology are not simply practical and religious doctrines but have a noticeable theoretical depth.
