COMPARISION GHAZZÂLÎ’S AND THOMAS AQUINAS’ CAUSALITY OPINIONS / GAZZÂLÎ VE THOMAS AQUİNAS’IN NEDENSELLİK GÖRÜŞLERİNİN KARŞILAŞTIRILMASI

I have compared Ghazzâlî's (d.1111) causality view who made his causality criticisms on logical ground and Thomas Aquinas' (d.1274) view who addressed causality issue in context of metaphysical and scientific data. The reason I have chosen Aquinas from Latin thought is he affected by Ghazzâlî's criticisms that is directed to philosophers' causality view. Ghazzâlî, in order to maintain the understanding that God is always the agent and to allow the miracle, he criticized the philosophers' conception of causality that explaining causal relationship between cause and effect based on His knowledge rather than His will. We can see a similar understanding Gazzâlî's occasionalist approach in Aquinas's thought. While Ghazzâlî criticizes the philosophers' view which claim determinist relation between God and world as well as determinist order between cause and effect from the point of view of occasionalism; Aquinas, on the one hand accept the relation between cause and effect and secondary causes by taking under consideration the data of science and observation; on the other hand, he reject cause- effect necessary relation which disable the will of God. In my study, first I will explain how Ghazzâlî's philosophy transmitted to Latin World, then examine that similarities and differences between Ghazzâlî's and Aquinas' causality concepts, then will determine how much Aquinas significantly affected by Ghazzâlî's thought by analyzing and comparing their texts.