AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE KING REFLECTIONS ON “CHINESE” AND “GREEK” KNOWLEDGE IN AL-GHAZALI’S ‘MARVELS OF THE HEART’

EDWARD MOAD

ABSTRACT

In his Revival of the Religious Sciences, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111)
relays a parable about a competition between Greek and Chinese artisans, with
each group decorating an opposing inner wall of a king’s portico. The explicit
purpose of the analogy was to illustrate a point about the relation between
discursive reason and the direct spiritual insight of the Sufis. In this paper, we
will explore the use that can be made from this image, as an analogy for exploring
the nature of intercultural dialogue, and the process by which diverse cultures
influence each other in the course of their ongoing development. We will
describe an epistemological problem that arises in considering the conditions for
the possibility of such a process, and that seems to impose a dilemma between
cultural chauvinism and cultural relativism. I take the position that both of these
horns are false, and show how the parable of the artisans helps us understand why
the problematic dilemma is a false one.