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Ghazali and the taste for truth

Speaker: Professor Eric Ormsby
13th October

From his youth the Persian mystic and theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) was driven by a fierce quest for final truth. The search, which led him to explore all the intellectual disciplines of his age, from logic and the sciences to philosophy and esoteric teaching, plunged him into doubt and brought him to despair on two occasions. In the end he renounced public life with its rewards of influence and prestige to pursue the solitary path of the Sufi. During 11 years of wandering and meditation he wrote his masterpieces, and especially The Revival of the Sciences of Religion for which he is still revered as the "Proof of Islam." A controversial figure, whose influence lives on in the Islamic world, Ghazali left a candid autobiographical account of his spiritual development which continues to inspire readers of all faiths. This lecture, drawing on his Arabic and Persian writings, traced his passionate and sometimes tormented quest from the scepticism of his youth to the illuminated certainty of his final years when he finally discovered "the taste of truth".

Professor Eric Ormsby is a scholar and poet who has written widely on Islamic theology, philosophy and mysticism. His scholarly books include Theodicy in Islamic Thought (Princeton, 1984), and the forthcoming Ghazali (Oxford: Oneworld), to appear in November 2007. He has written many scholarly articles on Islamic thought, but he is also a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, and The New Criterion. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently Time's Covenant: Selected Poems (2007). His poems have appeared in major journals in the UK and North America, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New Republic, and are included in The Norton Anthology of Poetry. For 20 years a Professor of Islamic Studies at McGill University, he is now Professor and Chief Librarian at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London.