Papers by Taneli Kukkonen
Journal of Islamic Studies, 2013
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2013
Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, 2016
In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the scienc... more In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the science of ethics is supposed to have developed. Al-Ghazālī contends that the philosophical ethics taught by the Arabic Aristotelians necessarily depends upon prior revelations handed to religious aspirants of a vaguely Sufi stamp. Al-Ghazālī's argument is reminiscent of similar ones made in late antiquity; I maintain, however, that for al-Ghazālī the point bears added systematic significance. Given the central position held by the purification of the soul in al-Ghazālī's conception of true religion , he can hardly admit that the philosophers should have discovered independently any of the philosophical ethics al-Ghazālī himself espouses. It is the supernatural power of prescribed ritual acts that ultimately allows al-Ghazālī to maintain the superiority of religiously predicated ethics.
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In: Faculties (Oxford Philosophical Concepts), ed. Dominik Perler.
Islam and Rationality. The Impact of al-Ghazālī. Vol. 2, ed. Frank Griffel
Given that God is omnipotent and supremely good and that He has decreed that our true happiness s... more Given that God is omnipotent and supremely good and that He has decreed that our true happiness should lie in the contemplation of reality as it truly is, how and why do humans ever go wrong in their beliefs or stray from the path of true religion? Al-Ghazālī's answer to this question has attracted little commentary in modern scholarship,1 which is surprising given the prominence of the concept of error in the very title of his best-known work in the West-the quasi-autobiographical al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverer from Error)-and the amount of attention lavished on the related issue of skepticism in al-Ghazālī. This study aims at filling a minor lacuna in the scholar ship.
Islam and Rationality. The Impact of al-Ghazālī. Vol. 1, ed. Georges Tamer
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 46, 311–352, 2014
Encyclopedia of Islam Three, 2014-3, 2014
The concept of eternity served Muslim thinkers, from an early date, as a means of spelling out th... more The concept of eternity served Muslim thinkers, from an early date, as a means of spelling out the difference between Creator and creation: God is eternal, while everything else has an origin in time. Both theological and philosophical considerations served to complicate this seemingly simple dichotomy. The terminology for eternity thus long remained fluid, allowing for further distinctions to be drawn, according to need and circumstance. Eternity past, eternal present, and future eternity all received their share of attention, and poets as well as philosophers probed the limits of the use of such temporal language to connote that which is not subject to the ordinary passage of time. This article aims to throw light on the basic terms used in the classical sources.
The Oxford handbook of medieval philosophy, (Ed.) Marenbon, John, 2011
This article points to some of the ways in which future research into medieval philosophy might h... more This article points to some of the ways in which future research into medieval philosophy might help the discussion of eternity break out of its present confines, and examines some modern takes on Boethius, Neoplatonic influences, historicity, and sempiternity. It notes that the Middle Ages' enquiries into the nature of eternity were invariably and intimately intertwined with ontological concerns. Another observation that arises from a comparison of the historical and contemporary readings is that, at the heart of the controversy regarding the temporal and atemporal interpretations of eternity, is a fundamental difference in philosophical intuitions regarding questions of time and knowledge.
Journal of the History of Philosophy 52.3 (2014): 433–459, Jul 2014
Leila Haaparanta & Heikki Koskinen, eds., Categories of Being (OUP), 2012
Travelling through Time: Essays in Honour of Kaj Öhrnberg, 341–358, 2013
Axel Fleisch (African Studies) Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (Arabic and Islamic Studies) Tapani Harviain... more Axel Fleisch (African Studies) Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (Arabic and Islamic Studies) Tapani Harviainen (Semitic Studies) Arvi Hurskainen (African Studies) Juha Janhunen (Altaic and East Asian Studies) Hannu Juusola (Middle Eastern and Semitic Studies) Klaus Karttunen (South Asian Studies) Kaj Öhrnberg (Librarian of the Society) Heikki Palva (Arabic Linguistics) Asko Parpola (South Asian Studies) Simo Parpola (Assyriology) Rein Raud (Japanese Studies) Saana Svärd (Assyriology) Jaana Toivari-Viitala (Egyptology) Typesetting Lotta Aunio
The Muslim World, Oct 2012
The Muslim World, Oct 2011
A l-Ghazālī's (1056-1111) Al-maqs · ad al-asnā fī sharh · ma'ānī asmā' Allāh al-h · usnā, hereaft... more A l-Ghazālī's (1056-1111) Al-maqs · ad al-asnā fī sharh · ma'ānī asmā' Allāh al-h · usnā, hereafter referred to as the Beautiful Names, is widely regarded as having ushered in a new phase in the tradition of commenting on the names of God. The ontological status of the divine attributes had been probed by kalām theologians over the past two centuries; for their part, Sufi writers had been keen to exploit the famous Prophetic saying according to which the believer who recounts the divine names will one day enter Paradise. 1 But before al-Ghazālī no-one had attempted to wed a theoretical analysis of the names and attributes to that devotional focus which their remembrance (dhikr ) is meant to evoke. It is this dual emphasis that lends al-Ghazālī's work its particular character and force, and yet it also proved a difficult model to emulate. For the centuries following al-Ghazālī it is hard to find examples of treatises that would replicate all the features of his writing. If anything, al-Ghazālī's Beautiful Names provided later writers with a toolkit upon which they could draw, with some of its lessons being absorbed while others went largely unheeded. The situation in this respect does not differ substantially from what happened with al-Ghazālī's other mature works.
Vivarium 48.1–2, 2010
Al-Ghazālī's most detailed explanation of how signification works occurs in his treatise on e Bea... more Al-Ghazālī's most detailed explanation of how signification works occurs in his treatise on e Beautiful Names of God. Al-Ghazālī builds squarely on the commentary tradition on Aristotle's Peri hermeneias: words signify things by means of concepts and correspondingly, existence is laid out on three levels, linguistic, conceptual, and particular (i.e. extramental). is framework allows al-Ghazālī to put forward what is essentially an Aristotelian reading of what happens when a name successfully picks out a being: when a quiddity is named by some kind term, its referent in the mind is formally identical to the quiddity of an individual existent which belongs to that natural kind. Al-Ghazālī then proceeds to tease out the implications of this scheme for the special problem of signifying God. It turns out that the Peripatetic theory, which al-Ghazālī appropriates from Ibn Sīnā, is ill equipped for the task as al-Ghazālī envisions it.
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Papers by Taneli Kukkonen
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