When you're seeking after bodily pleasure of food and drink for example, this is going to prevent you from doing what you should be doing which is contemplating.
Peter AdamsonAssuming there is an intellect, we're clearly not this universal intellect or we would know it. So that's one function of soul.
Peter AdamsonIn fact Plotinus thought not only that soul in general is eternal so that you always have soul, but he thought that each person's soul is eternal.
Peter AdamsonWhat the soul is doing is kind of walking through the forms, and so our experience of thinking isn't normally this kind of pure intuitive insight that intellect gets, and that intellect must get right, because it's always identical to its objects, it's always the same as the forms that it's thinking about.
Peter AdamsonAl-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.
Peter Adamson