Techniques for the Social Self: Abū Ḥāmid al- Ghazālī and the Remembrance of Death

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali is often considered the “most influential intellectual in the Muslim tradition.” While controversial in his own day, his works have influenced other Muslim writers for nearly a millennium, echoed through European philosophy and theology, and have become staples of modern collections of the “classics” of the world’s religions. From one vantage point, al-Ghazali’s achievement was to draw on the work of great tenth- and eleventh-century Islamic philosophers like Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Ibn Sina as well as the range of ideas and practices often grouped under the label of “Sufism” without committing himself to the core principles of either camp. Material continuity between the living and the dead also made it possible for the living to hear the testimony of the deceased.