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Work #160 · Late (post-crisis)

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī
c. 1097-1106 (composed during al-Ghazali's years of withdrawal after the 1095 spiritual crisis) · Classical Arabic
Forty-book systematic treatise on Islamic spiritual life · Sufi-Sunni Islam / Islamic theology and ethics

Forty books reviving Islamic worship and ethics from the inside out — orthodox law transfigured by Sufi inwardness

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.

Attribute The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Late (post-crisis))
Time · Extent Infinite
Time · Ontological Status Substantival
Time · Grain Continuous
Time · Freedom Non-Deterministic
Time · Traversability Linear
Time · Dimensionality One
Time · Direction Uni-directional
Space · Extent Finite
Space · Ontological Status Substantival
Space · Curvature Flat
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality Local
Matter · Extent Finite
Matter · Ontological Status Substantival
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality Local
Observer · Time Instance Multiple
Observer · Space Instance Multiple
Observer · Knowledge Extent Partial
Observer · Knowledge Retainment Total
Observer · Physicality Embodied
Observer · Agency Both
Observer · Number Plural
Observer · Metaphysical Agency Personal
Observer · Moral Authority Experience
Observer · Theological Method
Energy · Extent Infinite
Energy · Ontological Status Substantival
Energy · Conservation Conserved
Energy · Dispersibility Irreversible
Information · Ontological Status Substantival
Information · Cosmic Conservation Conserved
Information · Personal Conservation Conserved
Information · Granularity Continuous

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

The soul's temporal journey toward the afterlife is the framing structure; eschatological time orients ordinary time.

Space

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Ordinary embodied space of the daily religious life; with the soul's inner space (the heart, the chambers of the soul) as the deeper subject.

Matter

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

The embodied human life; the body as the soul's instrument and battlefield.

Observer

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

The Muslim believer, with the soul's faculties arrayed for the struggle against the vices and the cultivation of the virtues. Personal-providential God as ultimate framework.

Energy

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

The energies of the soul — passion, anger, appetite — to be disciplined; the energy of divine grace as the deeper enabling power.

Information

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Religious knowledge as transmitted, preserved, transformed by inward realisation; personal information of the soul fully conserved through death.

Internal Tensions

Where each work's argument pulls against itself.

The Revival of the Religious Sciences

Some Hanbali scholars accused al-Ghazali of importing philosophical Sufism into Sunni orthodoxy; some Sufis thought he didn't go far enough. The relation between the Iḥyāʾ's synthesis and his later, more starkly mystical works (the Mishkāt al-Anwār) remains debated. Most importantly, the Iḥyāʾ's integration of philosophy with theology stands in tension with al-Ghazali's earlier critique of the philosophers in The Incoherence — though most scholarship now reads them as targeting different aspects of falsafa.