30 years after Richard M. Frank: Al-Ghazali and Avicenna in Post-Classical Islam
In 1992 and 1994, Richard M. Frank published two books that would change the study of Islamic intellectual history. In Creation and the Cosmic System: al-Ghazālī & Avicenna, Frank portrays Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī as a thinker who was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Avicenna. He thus deconstructed the myth of the Ashʿarite theologian’s ferocious and uncategorical animosity to philosophy. Two years later, Frank followed up with his monograph Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School where he analyzes several of al-Ghazālī’s late works and sheds new light on his complicated relationship with his fellow Ashʿarite theologians. The two books’ novel approach and ground-breaking theories initiated a conversation among scholars of falsafa and kalām in the West that resulted in a paradigm shift away from the narrative of decline espoused and popularized by 19th and 20th centuries orientalists. In addition to their special place within Richard M. Frank’s oeuvre, these two books denote one of the earliest instances of a neoteric disciplinary habitus that continues to undergird much of today’s vanguard research in the fields of Ghazalian studies and post-classical falsafa and kalām.
2023 marks three decades since the publications of Creation and the Cosmic System as well as Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite School. In celebration of these books and of Richard M. Frank’s contributions to the field of Islamic Studies Yale University’s Departments of Religious Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, together with the Council on Middle East Studies (CMES), is pleased to host a conference …