Al-Ghazali: Doubt, Knowledge, and Religious Life — In Plain Words

“Theory came easier to me than practice.”

Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error, §81; English translation by Richard J. McCarthy. English back-rendering of the article author's Russian translation based on McCarthy; not to be taken as the verbatim English text of the source.

What This Article Is About

The average human mind is arranged with touching predictability: an individual can compose an immaculate treatise on the fatal perils of vanity for the sole purpose of harvesting applause for this very manifesto of modesty. It is precisely here that Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s classical question ambushes us: at what exact moment does sound knowledge devolve into a convenient screen for a rotten intention?

We will trace the trajectory from his celebrated crisis of doubt to his dismantling of specific metaphysical pretensions held by the philosophers, arriving finally at the central fork in the road: the link connecting theoretical knowledge to actual religious practice. Along the way, we will dissect the iconic illustration of fire and cotton, learning to separate the stubborn regularity of observable events from an alleged “ironclad metaphysical necessity.” In doing so, we will promptly spoil the fun for lovers of flat sensationalism: al-Ghazali did not dump mathematics into the dustbin, nor did he “single-handedly destroy science” like some cartoonish medieval supervillain.

Comparisons with David Hume, Augustine, and Aristotle will set the record straight: parallels across human predicaments certainly exist, but tossing them into a single syncretic melting pot smacks of sheer intellectual laziness. Al-Ghazali’s personal testimony is fused into Islamic faith and Sufi asceticism; any attempt to stretch it over modern corporate time-management belongs purely to our own secular imagination. Our objective is straightforward and rigorous: to learn how to audit our own premises and motives while maintaining strict boundaries between rigorous argument, someone else’s spiritual experience, and our own concrete actions.

I. When Certainty Ceases to Be a Foundation

In daily life, we are accustomed to honoring as “knowledge” virtually any thought accompanied by ironclad internal certainty. Up until the very first collision with reality, this cozy illusion functions seamlessly. You stride confidently through your hometown neighborhood, recognize your mother’s voice over the telephone without hesitation, and recount family lore with unearned swagger. Everything is convenient—until it turns out that the subjective intensity of a belief proves absolutely nothing about its factual truth.

Picture a university lecturer: having delivered a dazzling lecture, the audience nods along in collective ecstasy, and the speaker's academic reputation shines. That evening, the scholar sits down for tea and savors not the substantive core of the problem resolved, but the admiring eyes of the students. What was being served here—truth, or an insatiable ego? The immaculate equations chalked onto the board do not even touch this question.

In his autobiographical treatise Deliverance from Error, al-Ghazali observes a mundane reality: children merely soak up the beliefs of their parents and environment like sponges (translation by Richard J. McCarthy, opening paragraphs 6–15). This is not a formal sociological laboratory study covering all world religions; it is his personal retrospective reflection upon his own intellectual and spiritual trajectory.

If two people defend contradictory worldviews with equal vehemence simply because one was indoctrinated in childhood with version “A” and the other with version “B,” their utmost sincerity does not render their dispute true. One must drag the underlying arguments into the light: what supports the claim, what evidence is presented, and how logically sound is the inferential leap from observed fact to conclusion? Tradition and upbringing transmit an enormous array of useful things (such as language and hygiene practices), but the moment the defense “that is how I was raised” is hoisted as an inviolable shield against all criticism, genuine thinking ceases.

That said, the pompous posture of “I arrived at everything through my own independent intellect” is not an ounce better. For centuries, people relying solely on their “own intellect” have reinvented square-wheeled bicycles and recycled ancient fallacies while solemnly convinced of their pioneering originality. Genuine intellectual independence is not existence inside an epistemic bunker; it is the capacity to recognize the foundations, boundaries, and vulnerabilities of one’s own assertions.

For this reason, it is healthy to drop the pompous word “obviously.” What precisely keeps your thesis afloat: firsthand personal observation, expert testimony, rigorous logical deduction, or religious trust? These are distinct kinds of grounds. Reasonable trust does not demand an infinite forensic re-examination of every nail driven into the floorboards, but it must be targeted: whom, in what specific domain, and on what grounds are you trusting? A surgeon may skillfully excise an inflamed appendix, but their casual musings on geopolitics carry no inherent epistemic weight. Demarcating spheres of competence enables one to contest a thesis without throwing a tantrum over an alleged “personal insult.”

II. Doubt Directed at the Yardstick Itself

Ordinary, mundane doubt is relatively comfortable: our checking instrument always remains close at hand. Wondering whether the front door is locked? Walk over and pull the handle. The budget spreadsheet fails to balance? Recalculate it on an adding machine. But what are you supposed to do when the measuring instrument itself falls under suspicion? If visual perception routinely serves up mirages, why should vision corroborate vision? And if the logical apparatus itself glitches, what discursive reasoning can verify the reliability of reasoning as such?

In Deliverance from Error, al-Ghazali systematically winds this skeptical spiral: moving from the deception of the sense faculties to doubting even the primary truths of reason, such as basic geometry and self-evident axioms. He describes his emergence from this epistemological paralysis not as the triumphant completion of a logical syllogism, but as an illumination cast by divine light. Let us emphasize: this is the thinker’s religious self-testimony, not a certified scientific laboratory protocol capable of being replicated in a department of experimental physics.

Here, the disciplined mind must grasp an essential distinction: the abstract possibility of error is not identical to an actual demonstrated error. If someone points directly to a calculation blunder on your tax return, your balance is refuted. However, if a couch philosopher declares, “Human beings in general are prone to making arithmetic blunders, therefore your tax balance is incorrect,” he has established absolutely nothing. Radical skepticism demands complete sterility from error, yet promptly walks into its own snare: in order to proclaim the total unreliability of human cognition, the skeptic must deploy logic, stable semantic definitions, and rules of inference. One cannot comfortably saw off the legs of the chair upon which one sits.

A modern skeptic does not need to adopt al-Ghazali’s religious experience to appreciate the core of the problem. All inquiry rests upon baseline premises, some of which can be refined from within the ongoing process of investigation. An instrument’s error is corrected by calibrating it against alternate datasets, not by shrieking that all knowledge is futile vanity. Most importantly: discovering that human cognition is fallible does not automatically validate any arbitrarily chosen religious faith, nor does it render all competing opinions equally valid. Skepticism is intelligent only when it pinpoints a specific structural failure, rather than smearing the world with the gray sludge of absolute relativism.

III. Critiquing the Philosophers Demands Understanding Philosophy

Among superficial commentators, a comic-book historical myth persists: once upon a time, a stern theologian named al-Ghazali showed up, stamped his foot, banned philosophy and human reason, and plunged the Islamic East into intellectual darkness. The actual historical reality is far more intricate. As Frank Griffel demonstrates in his fundamental study (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, sections 3–4), the celebrated Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-Falāsifa) is an exquisite philosophical vivisection directed against specific teachings—predominantly those of Avicenna and al-Farabi—dismantling their unjustified claims to apodictic demonstration.

Al-Ghazali deployed the logical toolkit of his opponents with consummate virtuosity, even as he pronounced severe religious condemnations against several of their specific metaphysical doctrines. This historical fact is intensely inconvenient for those determined to bifurcate history into two neat camps: one can reject an opponent’s metaphysics while utilizing their formal syllogistic method. Exposing a fatal logical flaw in someone’s cosmological theory does not invalidate the multiplication table that the very same opponent defended.

Disciplined critique demands three steps that routinely elude online polemicists:

Accurately state the opponent’s position so faithfully that they would sign off on the formulation themselves, rather than pummeling a straw man.
Pinpoint the exact questionable premise or expose the specific inferential breach in the deduction.
Rigorously classify the epistemic status of the outcome. There are three distinct outcomes, and they must never be conflated: - A lack of rigorous demonstration on the opponent’s part (the argument is weak, leaving the thesis unproven). - The directly demonstrated falsity of the claim. - The necessity for further clarification regarding terms and boundary conditions.

At the same time, we must avoid retroactively dressing al-Ghazali up as a tolerant, twenty-first-century liberal championing free speech in a comfortable modern coworking space. He was a thinker of his historical era: certain philosophical doctrines were subjected by him to severe religious condemnation. This is an established historical reality with all its concrete implications, not an amicable aside during an academic seminar.

Epistemic hygiene demands remembering: the collapse of an opponent’s proof does not automatically render the opposing stance true. If your rival’s hypothesis tears at the seams, that does not mean your preferred conclusion has automatically triumphed—it may simply be that both sides lack sufficient warrant. Admitting “we do not know yet” is far more honest than dancing a victory jig over the wreckage of a single bad argument.

IV. Why He Did Not “Destroy Science”

In the chapters of Deliverance from Error devoted to mathematics and logic (paragraphs 37–45 in McCarthy’s translation), al-Ghazali surgically differentiates demonstrative disciplines from religious dogmas. He explicitly cautions against two opposite blunders:

First, foolish infatuation: just because a geometer demonstrates mathematical theorems with razor-sharp precision, one should not drop one's jaw and credulously swallow whatever that same geometer asserts regarding the metaphysical or unseen realm.
Second, pious obscurantism: a believer who dogmatically rejects mathematical calculations of a lunar eclipse under the guise of “defending the faith” succeeds only in making religion itself an object of public ridicule.

Concurrently, within that very same text, al-Ghazali raises explicit checkpoints: he genuinely worries that impressionable, undisciplined minds dazzled by mathematical certainty will naively transfer that authority onto shaky theological claims, and he argues for restricting access to such studies for those unprepared. Consequently, fashioning him into a champion of contemporary open-access education is every bit as absurd as indicting him for mounting a solitary crusade against science.

The fable of “one man who shut down science across the East” is fit only for kindergarten history. Sound historical explanation requires examining educational structures, institutions, manuscript transmission, and shifting pedagogical practices over time; the actual causal footprint of any single philosophical text must likewise be historically established.

The takeaway for our own time is straightforward: technical authority in one specialized field provides zero license for spouting nonsense in another. A Nobel laureate in physics pontificating on morality or politics cannot transfer the demonstrative rigor of laboratory physics onto these new assertions; their evidentiary basis must be audited entirely on its own merits. Conversely, if a figure you personally detest presents accurate empirical figures and verifiable measurements, your ideological distaste does not magically render those figures false.

V. Fire and Cotton: What Observation Actually Shows

In the seventeenth discussion of The Incoherence of the Philosophers, al-Ghazali dissects the textbook example: cotton comes into direct contact with fire and burns. The philosophers insisted that fire burns cotton by virtue of an inexorable natural necessity; it could not possibly occur otherwise. Al-Ghazali counters: direct sensory observation verifies only that one event occurs concurrently with another, but observation on its own fails to prove that the first event necessarily generates the second.

For the disciplined mind, this must be sorted onto three distinct shelves:

Regular repetition: the conjunction of events has occurred repeatedly in past observation.
Warranted expectation: we possess sound practical grounds to anticipate that it will happen again.
Metaphysical necessity: the event could not, in principle, happen otherwise under any conceivable circumstances.

Moving from the first two tiers to the third requires importing additional metaphysical premises. But do not celebrate prematurely: this philosophical distinction does not wipe empirical science off the board. In the actual investigation of nature, scientific conclusions are vetted through sophisticated experimental procedures, controls, and replications, not through passive staring at neighboring occurrences. Hence, this medieval debate does not bury experimental knowledge en masse; yet neither should the descriptive cataloging of observable regularity masquerade as an exhaustive metaphysical explanation.

In the text available in Sabih Ahmad Kamali’s English translation (whose metadata explicitly notes its translation via Urdu), this debate unfolds within a strict theological framework. Al-Ghazali engages an objection warning that denying necessity plunges our daily world into total indeterminacy, and he presents two distinct lines of response. The text articulates different theological paths regarding divine agency and miracles, rather than declaring the incoherence of the physical world or imposing a single monolithic occasionalist dogma.

The theological nerve of this dispute is whether the ordinary course of nature constrains the sovereign will of the Creator. Yet faith in the possibility of miracles and the critical analysis of the conditions of empirical observation speak entirely different languages. A theological debate is not an empirical laboratory test report, and pointing out the metaphysical possibility of a different outcome is not a personal guarantee of a miracle to someone who foolishly flouts manifest danger. Caution within the ordinary physical world remains strictly necessary.

VI. Knowing About Life Versus Living According to Knowledge

In the Sufi section of Deliverance from Error (§§80–88 in McCarthy’s translation), al-Ghazali establishes an uncomfortable distinction: mastering the theoretical framework of a teaching is one thing; embodying it in actual life is something entirely different. He recounts a ruthless examination of his own motivations in teaching and the severe internal crisis he endured prior to his departure from Baghdad. This is a retrospective religious testimony concerning the heavy personal cost of radical self-honesty, not a clinical chart bearing a medical psychiatric diagnosis; armchair analysts eager to slap contemporary psychological labels onto ancient thinkers ought to rein in their zeal.

Anyone can observe the chasm separating intellectual apprehension from practical conduct:

You can effortlessly formulate a moral norm (“interrupting someone while they speak is bad manners”).
You can recognize the concrete situation where that norm should govern behavior.
Yet the second your own fragile ego feels slighted, you carve out an immediate exception for yourself and start yelling.

Theory remains crucial: absent sound concepts, one can enthusiastically cultivate mistaken beliefs. But theoretical grasp on its own does not make a person better. If reading books merely enriches your vocabulary of self-justification, you have simply evolved into a more sophisticated hypocrite.

For al-Ghazali, the Sufi path is centered upon standing before God, purifying the heart, and securing eternal salvation. Attempting to reduce it to a stress-reduction life hack, a productivity booster, or corporate mindfulness is the height of vulgarity. In our applied secular context, a sobering litmus test applies: what observable action will actually change if you truly believe what you profess? Are you prepared to publicly acknowledge an error in front of witnesses? Can you credit a colleague for a brilliant insight without elbowing in to claim a slice of their triumph?

Furthermore, maintain strict boundaries: even if a profound personal experience has upended your private life, your subjective interpretation does not constitute an objective fact for everyone else. Those around you are entitled to evaluate your overt actions while assessing their causes with cool sobriety. Respecting another’s spiritual experience requires distinguishing between the occurrence itself, the subjective experiential state, and the subsequent theological interpretation.

VII. The Heart, Intention, and the Machinery of Self-Deception

In the opening chapter of The Alchemy of Happiness (Claud Field’s translation), the term “heart” designates the spiritual core of the human person—the command center of the soul—not sentimental flutterings or the muscular pump thumping in one's chest. Self-knowledge here is entirely subordinated to the knowledge of God, with passions and intellect aligned under strict inner hierarchy.

Sincerity is frequently confused with smug self-satisfaction: an individual revels in the feeling of being right, carefully sweeping inconvenient counter-facts under the rug. But the interrogation of intention is merciless: what are you truly seeking? What are you unwilling to surrender? Returning to our university lecturer: his motivation may well be mixed—he genuinely loves his academic discipline and simultaneously craves public applause. A mixed motive does not invalidate the truth of his lecture, but the hunger for prestige may subtly prompt the educator to dodge difficult questions where he might look foolish, leading him to posture only where acclaim is safely guaranteed.

Our analysis does not require pristine, surgically sterile purity of intention before you dare tie your shoelaces. Trying to uncover absolute sanctity behind every mundane movement may distract from concrete action. It is enough to interrupt selfish motives in the act: stopping yourself to let an opponent finish their thought, or publicly owning up to a factual blunder.

Good intentions do not erase tangible harm. If your clumsy “help” crushed someone's dignity, mumbling “I meant well from the bottom of my heart” is utterly pointless. In the sixth chapter of The Alchemy of Happiness (Claud Field’s translation), self-examination is framed directly within the solemn horizon of divine judgment and the life to come.

Finally, an elementary rule of intellectual decency: stop diagnosing other people's souls. An opponent's factual error can be demonstrated using evidence; asserting without proof that they “intended to deceive out of vanity” is cheap vulgarity. Weaponizing pious rhetoric about “purity of heart” to discredit an opponent's argument is the oldest demagogic trick in the book, which can bypass the honest verification of facts.

VIII. An Identical Difficulty Does Not Yield an Identical Explanation

Whenever diverse thinkers run up against similar conceptual impasses, amateurs love to proclaim a “hidden, secret unity across all traditions.” Hold your horses: shared predicaments do not imply identical solutions.

Al-Ghazali and Hume: Al-Ghazali examines the burning of cotton in the seventeenth discussion of the Tahāfut, whereas David Hume, in section V, part I (§§36–38) of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, links causality to a psychological habit of expecting event B after observing event A. The point of contact: raw sensory experience fails to demonstrate logical necessity. Yet Hume investigates the mechanics of inductive inference and psychological habituation, whereas al-Ghazali is clearing space for direct divine agency and miracles. No direct historical influence is established here, and the fundamental objectives of the two thinkers are radically divergent.
Al-Ghazali and Augustine: Augustine, in Book VIII of the Confessions, laments his inability to make the decisive leap toward baptism, despite grasping the truth with his intellect. Al-Ghazali, in §§80–85 of Deliverance, records the agonizing chasm between theoretical knowledge of the path and his actual life before quitting Baghdad. Both describe how understanding can fail to bring about action, but these are prayerful confessions rooted in two distinct theological histories. Reducing their agonies to a productivity checklist is pure foolishness.
Al-Ghazali and Aristotle: Aristotle, in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, teaches that moral virtue is forged through the habitual repetition of right actions, akin to mastering a craft. Yet mechanical habitual practice offers no guarantee of the inner purity of motive that concerns al-Ghazali. One can routinely perform outward acts of charity solely to harvest social prestige and applause.

In our illustrative scenario, the lecturer can distinguish three distinct layers: the formal validity of his syllogism, the practical benefit conferred upon his audience, and his own itch of vanity. One layer does not nullify the other: the flawed motivation of the speaker does not render his equation false, yet having delivered a correct equation does not transform him into a saint.

IX. Knowledge That Does Not Hide Behind Its Own Correctness

Studying al-Ghazali makes sense only if one holds fast to his internal tensions: a brilliant logician and uncompromising critic of metaphysical overreach, a sincere mystic, and a rigorous theologian of his historical epoch. Collapsing him into a caricature of an obscurantist or into a proto-liberal academic means understanding nothing about him.

In daily life, this perspective guards against two seductive pitfalls: treating blind habit as genuine knowledge, and treating intellectual correctness as a moral indulgence for a wretched character. One can defend a doctoral dissertation on ethics with distinction while remaining a petty domestic tyrant.

The practical test is elementary. If a student catches you making a factual error, what is your immediate reflex? To take offense at the “insolent tone of the upstart”? Fixating on an opponent's tone can become a refuge for wounded pride. Examine the substantive core of the objection: if the student is correct, concede it plainly out loud. The tone can be addressed separately. The sequence of priorities gives the inquiry a concrete focus: what are you leaping to defend first—the truth, or your own supposedly infallible facade?

What This Means in Practice

What follows is an entirely secular, voluntary exercise in intellectual sobriety. It is not a Sufi tariqa, not a substitute for spiritual mentorship, and not an esoteric technique for mystical revelation. It provides no guarantees of enlightenment:

One specific thesis: Select a single assertion you recently defended with ideological fury. Write it down neutrally, stripping away names of prestigious authorities.
Audit the underlying premises: Honestly categorize the pillars supporting your thesis: - What did you observe directly yourself? - What did you accept on trust from outside reports? - What did you rigorously deduce through logic? - What represents your own foundational worldview assumption?
A strong, targeted objection: Formulate the most formidable counter-argument available to an opponent. Not the lazy dismissal “well, anyone can make a mistake,” but a targeted strike: “Does conclusion Y genuinely follow from established fact X?”
One verifiable concrete action: Identify a single micro-action in the physical world where your conviction must be substantiated in conduct. Not “become a morally perfect person by Monday,” but admitting a blunder, stepping back to let a colleague speak, or explicitly crediting someone else’s contribution. Evaluate the tangible outcome of the action, not the warm glow of your intentions.
A terminus for sufficient verification: Re-chewing the exact same doubt may cease to add fresh knowledge. Once sufficient grounds have been gathered for a concrete, circumscribed step, call a halt to the rumination. Mature responsibility does not mean paralyzed waiting for absolute, one-hundred-percent guarantees; it means acting with warranted confidence while maintaining readiness to correct course swiftly if new facts emerge.
Conditions for revision: Specify clearly in advance: what concrete, verifiable evidence (an empirical fact, independent corroboration, or an arithmetic flaw) would demonstrate that your claim is false? If you advance an empirical claim about the world while preemptively insulating it from any possibility of correction, the verification process is a farce. That said, if your conviction cannot be revised by incoming data, do not rush to brand yourself an irrational fanatic: you may well be dealing with a personal decision, a definition of terms, or a religious commitment—simply refrain from dressing them up as empirically falsifiable facts.

Key Quotation

“[My intention in public teaching] was not directed purely to God.”

Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error, §85, excerpt regarding his own motivation in teaching; English translation by Richard J. McCarthy. English back-rendering of the article author's Russian translation based on McCarthy; not to be taken as the verbatim English text of the source. The bracketed words clarify the grammatical subject from the immediately preceding clause. The confession concerns the thinker's personal motivation, not the social utility of education as such.

Connections Across Traditions

The comparative analysis below represents the synthesis of the article's author; terminological overlap does not demonstrate historical borrowing or identity of spiritual systems.

Topic	Positions and Textual Bases	Grounds for Comparison	Where the Boundary Lies
Observation and Necessity	Al-Ghazali, Discussion XVII — Hume, V.I, §36–38	Repeated sensory observation and the justification of causal expectation are distinct.	The theological debate over divine agency and the empirical analysis of psychological habit do not form a single theory of causality; al-Ghazali examines distinct theological lines not reducible to Humean empiricism.
Explaining Causes	Al-Ghazali: Causality, Griffel's Overview — Aquinas, I q.2 a.3	A causal relation requires an explanatory account beyond a bare catalog of occurrences.	The theological relations between God and secondary causes cannot be declared identical; secondary causes in Aquinas are not autonomous from God, whereas al-Ghazali presents multiple interpretations of causality.
Knowing and Commencing Action	Al-Ghazali, §80–85 — Augustine, VIII.7–8	Intellectual comprehension can readily coexist with the chronic postponement of transformation.	Divergent theological contexts and soteriological pathways; a shared existential impasse does not establish a shared doctrinal framework.
Character and Intention	Al-Ghazali: Intention, §85 — Aristotle, Ethics II.1	Theoretical awareness of virtue is insufficient for living a good life.	Aristotelian habituation through repetitive practice does not coincide with the mystical demand for inward purity of heart before God.
Praise and Responsibility	Al-Ghazali: Teaching Motive, §85 — Epictetus, §1–2	The shifting opinion of the crowd and external flattery cannot serve as the metric of an action's true worth.	The Stoic dichotomy between things in our power and external circumstances serves a fundamentally different telos than repentance and eternal salvation.

Primary Sources

Al-Ghazali. Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl). Translated by Richard J. McCarthy, published in Freedom and Fulfillment, 1980; online reproduction. Utilized: introductory paragraphs 6–15, sections on mathematics and logic 37–45, and the Sufi path 80–88. Translation text.
Frank Griffel. al-Ghazali. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Utilized: sections 3–5 and 7, including the distinction between critiquing demonstrations versus wholesale rejection of philosophy, ethics, and diverse interpretations of causality. Scholarly entry.
Al-Ghazali. The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Discussion XVII. English translation by Sabih Ahmad Kamali as hosted on the site; page metadata indicates translation via Urdu. Utilized: opening remarks, the objection regarding indeterminacy, and two distinct lines of response. Discussion of Causality.
Al-Ghazali. The Alchemy of Happiness, translated by Claud Field, Chapter I: The Knowledge of Self. Utilized: definition of the heart and the ordering of self-knowledge toward a religious end; this translation is not to be taken as an exhaustive critical edition of the Persian original. Chapter I.
Al-Ghazali. The Alchemy of Happiness, translated by Claud Field, Chapter VI: Concerning Self-Examination and the Recollection of God. Utilized: the theological framing of self-examination. Chapter VI.
David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section V, Part I, §36–38. Primary text: habit and the inference from past experience to expected events. Text and cited section.
Augustine. Confessions, VIII.7.16–18 and VIII.8.19; New Advent English edition. Primary text: self-examination, procrastination of conversion, and the difficulty of action. Text and cited section.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, II.1–2, 1103a–1103b; English translation by W. D. Ross. Primary text: acquisition of moral virtues through action. Text and cited section.
Epictetus. Enchiridion, §1–2; English translation by Elizabeth Carter. Primary text: distinction between things within our control and things outside our control. Text and cited section.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, I, q.2, a.3, the Third Way. Primary text: the possible and the necessary; New Advent English edition. Text and cited section.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research inquiries, she focuses on testing these insights in practice and observing how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between individuals and across cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.