l-Razi, Fakhr al-Din (1149-1209)

Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was one of the outstanding figures in Islamic theology. Living in the second half of the sixth
century AH (twelfth century AD), he also wrote on history, grammar, rhetoric, literature, law, the natural sciences and
philosophy, and composed one of the major works of Qur’anic exegesis, the only remarkable gap in his output being
politics. He travelled widely in the eastern lands of Islam, often engaging in heated polemical confrontations. His
disputatious character, intolerant of intellectual weakness, frequently surfaces in his writings, but these are also marked by a
spirit of synthesis and a profound desire to uncover the truth, whatever its source. A number of his metaphysical positions
became well known in subsequent philosophical literature, being cited more often than not for the purposes of refutation.
His prolixity and pedantic argumentation were often criticized, but he was widely considered the reviver of Islam in his
century.

1 Theology and philosophy

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was born in Rayy near present-day Tehran in AH 543 or 544/AD 1149-50. Like his predecessor
al-Ghazali, he was an adherent of the Shafi‘i school in law and of the theology of Ash‘arism (see Ash‘ariyya and
Mu‘tazila). He was attracted at an early age to the study of philosophy, in which he soon became proficient. In his late
twenties, he visited Khwarazm and Transoxania, where he came in contact with some of the last theologians in the
Mu‘tazilite tradition. Although he endured hardship and poverty at the beginning of his career, on returning to Rayy from
Transoxania he entered into the first of a series of patronage relations with rulers in the east which contributed to his
reputedly considerable wealth and authority.

Al-Razi’s skill in polemic ensured that controversy followed him in his subsequent sojourns in Khurasan, Bukhara,
Samarqand and elsewhere (he is said to have visited India). He consequently made several dangerous enemies, including
among them the Karramiyyah (an activist ascetic sect, staunch defenders of a literal interpretation of scripture and of
anthropomorphism), the Isma‘ilis, and the Hanbalites, each of whom apparently threatened his life at various points.
Al-Razi settled finally in Herat, where he had a teaching madrasa built for him, and where he died in AH 606/AD 1209.

In the religious sciences, al-Ghazali had legitimized the use of logic, while at the same time attacking those key
metaphysical doctrines of the philosophers which most offended against orthodox doctrine. This move prepared the ground
for the subsequent incorporation of philosophical argumentation into theology. It was through al-Razi that this marriage
was most completely effected in the Sunni world. His major theological works all begin with a section on metaphysics, and
this was to become the pattern for most later writers.

The problem of how far al-Razi should be considered a philosopher (rather than a theologian) is complicated by changes of
view during the course of his life, and by his highly disputatious and often intemperate personality, which he himself
acknowledged. His style is marked by an extensively ramifying dialectic, often ending in highly artificial subtleties, and is
not easy to follow. The relentlessness and sometimes obvious delight with which al-Razi used this method to home in on his
victims earned him among philosophers the sobriquet of Iman al-Mushakkikin (Leader of the Doubters). Nevertheless,
al-Razi was scrupulous in representing the views he set out to criticize, manifesting his concern to lay out a rigorous dialectic
in which theological ideas could be debated before the arbitration of reason. This predictably brought him under subsequent
attack from those who believed that upholding orthodox doctrine was the primary task of theology, one of whom remarked
that in al-Razi’s works ‘the heresy is in cash, the refutation on credit’.

One of al-Razi’s major concerns was the self-sufficiency of the intellect. His strongest statements show that he believed
proofs based on Tradition (hadith) could never lead to certainty (yaqin) but only to presumption (zann), a key distinction
in Islamic thought. On the other hand, his acknowledgement of the primacy of the Qur’an grew with his years. A detailed
examination of al-Razi’s rationalism has never been undertaken, but he undoubtedly holds an important place in the debate
in the Islamic tradition on the harmonization of reason and revelation. In his later years he seems to have shown some
interest in mysticism, although this never formed a significant part of his thought.

Al-Razi’s most important philosophical writings were two works of his younger days, a commentary (sharh) on the physics
and metaphysics of Ibn Sina’s Kitab al-isharat wa-’l-tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions) (see Ibn Sina) and another work
on the same subject, al-Mabahith al-mashriqiyya (Eastern Studies), which is based in large part on the latter’s al-Shifa’
and al-Najat as well as al-Isharat, but in which al-Razi frequently preferred the views of Abu ‘l-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. after
AH 560/AD 1164-5). Also of great philosophical interest is his theological text Muhassal al-afkar (The Harvest of Thought).
Perhaps al-Razi’s greatest work, however, is the Mafatih al-ghayb (The Keys to the Unknown), one of the most extensive
commentaries on the Qur’an, running to eight volumes in quarto and known more popularly as simply al-Tafsir al-kabir
(The Great Commentary). As its more orthodox detractors have been happy to point out, this work, which occupied al-Razi
to the end of his life and was completed by a pupil, contains much of philosophical interest.

The person who did the most to defend Ibn Sina, and philosophy in general, against the criticisms of al-Razi was Nasir
al-Din al-Tusi, whose commentary on the Kitab al-isharat was in large measure a refutation of al-Razi’s opinions. Al-Tusi
also wrote a Talkhis al-muhassal al-afkar (Abridgement of the Muhassal al-afkar), where he likewise undertook a criticism
of many of the philosophical criticisms in the Muhassal al-afkar.

2 Metaphysics

Al-Razi was associated by later authors with the view that existence is distinct from, and additional to, essence, both in the
case of creation and in the case of God, and that pure existence is merely a concept (see Existence). This view is at variance
with the Ash‘arite and Mu‘tazilite positions, as well as with that of Ibn Sina and his followers. Al-Razi only departed
from this view in his commentary on the Qur’an, where he went back to a more traditional view that in God essence and
existence are one.

Another challenge to the philosophers for which al-Razi achieved fame was his refutation of the emanationist principle ex
uno non fit nisi unum (only one can come from one.) In Ibn Sina’s formulation, if an indivisible single thing were to give
rise to two things, a and b, this would result in a contradiction, for the same single thing would be the source of both a and
of not-a ( ). Al-Razi’s refutation was based on the claim that the contradictory of ‘the emanation of a’ is ‘the
non-emanation of a’, not ‘the emanation of not-a’. On a related point, he originally denied the possibility of a vacuum,
but in his Mafatih he argues for its existence, and for the power of the Almighty to fill it with an infinity of universes.

The philosophers, following Ibn Sina, held knowledge to be an inhering in the knower of the form of the thing known, and
that consequently God knew only universals and not particulars, knowledge of the latter implying inadmissible changes in
God’s essence as particulars changed (see Immutability). For the most part theologians were opposed to thus restricting
God’s knowledge, on the grounds that he was omniscient (see Omniscience). Al-Razi upheld the theological side of the
debate through postulating that knowledge involved a relation between the knower and the thing known, so that a change in
the thing known would produce a change in the relation but not in the essence of the knower. This notion of a relation
involved the substitution of a philosophical term, idafa (relation), for a theological one, ta‘alluq (connection), in an
argument about the attribute of knowledge which belonged essentially to Abu ’l-Husayn al-Basri’s Mu‘tazilite school.

In ethics, al-Razi held that God alone, through revelation, determines moral values for man, it being these which give rise to
praise and blame. God himself was beyond the moral realm and acted from no purpose extraneous to himself, be it out of
pure goodness or for the benefit of his creation. Following al-Ghazali, and before him al-Juwayni, al-Razi’s solution to the
problem posed for divine subjectivists by God’s threats of punishment and reward was to acknowledge a subjective rational
capacity within man allowing him to understand what causes him pleasure and pain and thus enabling him to perceive where
his advantage lies. In his ‘Ilm al-akhlaq (Science of Ethics) al-Razi built upon al-Ghazali’s ethical writings, particularly
from the Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din, providing a systematic framework based on psychology, again under the influence of
al-Baghdadi (see Ethics in Islamic philosophy).

On the question of free will, al-Razi took a radical determinist position and rejected outright the Ash‘arite doctrine of kasb
(acquisition). Al-Razi postulated two factors necessary for the production of an action: the power to do it or not to do it,
and a preponderating factor, the motivation, which leads to the action being performed or not. Once the preponderating
factor exists together with the power, either the act comes about necessarily or else it becomes impossible. Al-Razi pushed
this essentially Mu‘tazilite thesis, which is also similar to Ibn Sina’s thinking, to its logical conclusion, arguing that both
the power and the preponderating factor had to be created by God for the result to exist necessarily, and hence that all
human actions have been produced through God’s determination. We thus appear to be free agents because we act
according to our motives, but in reality we are constrained. A consequence of this theory when it is applied to God’s own
acts is that since God acts through his power, he must himself either act through constraint (if there is a preponderating
factor in this case) or else by chance (if there is not), both of which conclusions violate the central Sunnite position that
God is a totally free agent. Those who came after al-Razi felt that he had never adequately solved this difficulty, and he
himself confessed that, whether from the point of view of reason or of tradition, there was in the end no satisfactory
solution to the free will problem (see Free will).

Al-Razi held the Ash‘arite position that God could re-create what had been made inexistent, and this formed the basis of
his literal understanding of bodily resurrection. However, he also expressed views which were influenced by the theory of the
late Mu‘tazili Ibn al-Malahimi, who held the contrary position on the restoration of non-existence, that the world did not
pass into non-existence but its parts were dissociated, and that the essential of these parts were reassembled on the
resurrection. This ambivalence on al-Razi’s part perhaps reflects the changes in his position on atomism, which he
vehemently denied in his earlier purely philosophical works but of which he was more supportive towards the end of his life.