The Place of Logic and Philosophy in Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Psychology

Ghazali is one of the Islamic scholars with research works in the field of jurisprudence, ethics, theology and philosophy. Despite his alleged opposition to philosophy and philosophical thinking, his works shows, especially in topics related to psychology, that he is a rationalist thinker who has benefited from the methods and approaches of Islamic philosophers. In the present article, using a descriptive-analytical method, we have surveyed Ghazali's views on logic and philosophy and their application in psychology and we have come to the conclusion that, contrary to the opinion of some researchers who have considered Ghazali a strict anti-philosophy theologian, he  should be considered a rationalist theologian who, in all stages of his life, even when he turned to Sufism, remained loyal to rational principles and methods and considered reason to be the most important criterion for the validity of any kind of knowledge. In psychology, he is totally influenced by peripatetic philosophy, and due to his strong attachment to Ibn Sina's philosophical method in psychology, he sometimes borrow words from his books to support his own views. He adheres to logical arguments and considers reason as the criterion for testing the validity of other means of knowledge, that is, tradition, experience and intuition. According to some of Ghazali's theoretical foundations such as the negation of causality between phenomena, it seems that, by replacing causality with the theory of habit of Allah, he has managed to solve some of the requirements of the negation of causality in psychology. But such a theory is not free of ambiguities and problems.