The Dilemma of Interpretation of Religious Imagery and its Gnostic Roots in Abi Hamed El-Ghazali’s Thought.

Abstract

The main reason why Abu Hammed el-Ghazali relied on an irrational, imaginary basis in his study of “Interpretation” is the dependency of theology on a metaphysical/Quranic basis, and on the fact that this act of interpretation is the essence of religious imaginary. These criteria led him to deal with the act of interpreting from a Sufist context rather than a philosophical one. In doing so, el-Ghazali aimed to detach the text’s meaning and its indication from the interpretative contexts which are governed by the external treatment of the word, a treatment based on logicality, only to be substituted with the “profound” study of the text which allows to reveal the text’s indications through the lenses of Sufism. In a dialectical manner, el-Ghazali managed to link interpretation with imaginary, creating a functional relation that made this latter something interpretative and interpretation something imaginary. On this basis, he could hypothesise that “imaginary is an interpretative act in its essence”. Notably, he managed to found all this due to the methodological and epistemological transgression in the understanding and perception of the reality of religious imaginary from the external level in the understanding of a text into an internal one.