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WorkAl-Ghazali

The Just Balance

Pressed by a Shiite who says truth needs an infallible teacher, al-Ghazālī finds five scales of sound reasoning in the Qurʾān itself.

by Al-Ghazali75 passages held

  • Arabic, the original language
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Original title
القسطاس المستقيم
Original language
Arabic

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Overview

The book's author says that on his travels he was accosted by one of the ahl al-taʿlīm, the people of authoritative teaching: Ismāʿīlī Shiites, who held that certain truth comes only from an infallible imam, and who backed the rival Fāṭimid caliphs in Cairo against the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. Al-Ghazālī wrote several books against them, and built this one as a dialogue. His companion asks by what scale he weighs knowledge. The answer is the straight balance, the qisṭās al-mustaqīm of the Qurʾān's command to weigh fairly: God, al-Ghazālī argues, set five balances in the Qurʾān and taught the prophets to weigh with them, three forms of one argument from equivalence, one of implication and one of exclusion. A reader who knows Aristotle will recognise the syllogism in its three figures and the conditional and disjunctive syllogisms, here given scriptural names. His first example is Abraham disputing with a king who claimed that he too gave life and death. Abraham turned instead to the sun, which God brings up from the east, and asked the king to bring it from the west; the king had no answer. Whoever weighs in this way has no need of an imam, al-Ghazālī tells his companion, for the balances and the Prophet's teaching are enough, while reasoning from opinion and loose analogy is the devil's balance. In English the book has appeared as The Correct Balance, in Richard McCarthy's translation, and as The Just Balance, in D. P. Brewster's, printed at Lahore in 1978. His later autobiography, Deliverance from Error, sends anyone troubled by the Ismāʿīlī doctrine to this book instead of arguing the case again.

Key concepts

What are the three balances of equivalence?

The balance of equivalence weighs two premises that share a term, the way two pans hang from one beam, and comes in three sizes. The largest can prove general and particular claims, yes or no, as when Abraham shows the ruler is not divine. The middle shows two things differ because one has a property the other lacks. The smallest yields only a “some”: Moses is human and received a book, so some human received a book.

How does the balance of implication work?

The balance of implication starts from an “if … then” and one known fact. If the condition holds, its consequence holds; if the consequence fails, the condition fails. The book’s example runs: if there were gods besides God, heaven and earth would be in ruin, and they are not in ruin. A chain of such steps, from the world’s order to its maker’s knowledge and life, the book calls a spiritual ascent.

What is the balance of opposition?

The balance of opposition works with two alternatives: either this or that. Rule one out and the other is established, as firmly as by sight. The condition is strict: the two must exhaust every possibility. That is how the book catches the companion’s favourite argument, that knowledge comes either from reason alone or from an imam. Reason and teaching could work together, so the choice was never only between two.

What does the book mean by “opinion”?

In the book, “opinion” is not every belief that falls short of proof but a specific fault: judging by what seems attractive by human standards, especially when human wisdom is projected onto God. The claim that God must do what is best for people is its model case. Loose analogy is its partner. Together they make up the devil’s balance, which looks like a scale but cannot be trusted.

When can an argument’s premises be trusted?

The book names five sources from which a premise can be certain: perception, experience, reliable transmission, first principles, and what is derived from these. A well-built argument still fails if one premise is weak, just as a well-made sword fails if its metal is bad. In debate one may also argue from premises the opponent grants, but such an argument persuades him without establishing the truth.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Five Scales From the Qurʾān

Can scripture itself teach a person how to reason? The book's central claim is that the methods of sound proof were in the Qurʾān all along, used by the prophets in their arguments.

Asked by what scale he weighs knowledge, al-Ghazālī answers that God set five in the Qurʾān: three balances of equivalence, a balance of implication and one of opposition. Each is shown at work in a prophet's argument. Abraham tells a ruler who claims to give life and death to bring the sun from the west; the ruler cannot, so he is not divine. The moon sets and God does not, so the moon is not God. A reader of Aristotle will recognise the syllogism; the names, he admits, are his own.

  • logic
  • syllogistic reasoning
  • demonstration
  • inference
  • reasoning
  • predication
  • measurement
  • quran
  • scripture
  • revelation
  • certainty

Enter a dialogue

No Infallible Teacher Needed

Must certain truth come from a teacher who cannot err? The dialogue answers a companion who says yes, and offers a method that anyone can learn in place of an imam.

His companion on the road believes that certain knowledge comes only from an infallible imam, and fears punishment if he questions him. Al-Ghazālī replies that belief in such an imam is not self-evident and would itself have to be weighed. Whoever learns the balances, as one learns to check a sum, needs no imam. Ordinary believers should hold to the Qurʾān, do the duties every school agrees on, and stop denouncing one another, since each is accountable for acting on careful judgment, not for a certainty out of reach.

  • religious authority
  • authority
  • debate
  • disagreement
  • religious practice
  • legal reasoning
  • education
  • prophecy

Enter a dialogue

The Devil's Balance

How does a convincing argument go wrong? The second half of the book examines the counterfeit scales, the plausible inferences that pass for proof.

Opinion and loose analogy are the devil's balance, and the book shows how it cheats. The devil himself argued that he was made of fire and Adam of clay, so he was the better; but worth comes from a thing's own qualities, not from what it was made of. Two things sharing a feature are not thereby one, as the sun and the divine are both great. A remedy that once cured one headache proves nothing about another. Even theologians, the book warns, make God a body because every agent they have seen is one.

  • fallacies
  • analogy
  • argumentation
  • causation
  • theology
  • religious argument
  • experience
  • knowledge

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
75
distinct concepts
118
by passages held, corpus-wide
#564

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “causation” and “logic”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 70 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
causationlogic5
epistemologylogic5
logictheology5
analogylogic4
epistemologyreligious authority4
analogyepistemology3
certaintyepistemology3
logicscripture3
certaintylogic2
scripturetheology2
analogycausation1
analogycertainty1
analogyreligious authority1
analogyscripture1
analogytheology1
causationcertainty1
causationepistemology1
causationtheology1
certaintytheology1
epistemologyscripture1
logicreligious authority1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Deliverance from Error (المنقذ من الضلال)

    An intellectual autobiography, written at Nishapur after his return to teaching in 1106; Claud Field's Confessions of Al Ghazzali first brought it into English in 1909.

     EN
  2. The Alchemy of Happiness (Kīmiyā-yi Saʿādat)

    His major work in Persian, written around 1105 for readers without Arabic, and a shorter companion to the Revival of the Religious Sciences.

     EN
  3. The Incoherence of the Philosophers (تهافت الفلاسفة)

    The book by which he is known in philosophy, finished in Baghdad in January 1095, months before he gave up his chair there and left the city.

     AR
  4. The Just Balance (القسطاس المستقيم) you are here AR
  5. The Marvels of the Heart (كتاب شرح عجائب القلب)

    The twenty-first of the forty books of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, and the ground for the books on vices and virtues that follow it.

     AR
  6. The Niche of Lights (مشكاة الأنوار)

    Among his late works, and the one in which his thought comes closest to the mystics: three chapters on a single verse of the Qurʾān and a single saying of the Prophet.

     AR
  7. The Standard of Knowledge (معيار العلم في فن المنطق)

    Written after The Incoherence of the Philosophers to explain the philosophers' technical vocabulary to its readers, and to give jurists and theologians a test for their own arguments.

     AR
  8. مقاصد الفلاسفة

    A report before a refutation: Avicenna's system set out without a word of objection, then framed by a short preface and ending that point ahead to The Incoherence of the Philosophers.

     AR
  9. ميزان العمل

    The second half of a pair: having set a standard for knowing in The Standard of Knowledge, he set one here for acting, still in Baghdad, around 1095.

     AR
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