Ghazali's Hellenism

Despite his aversion to metaphysical speculation, one finds that al-Ghazali was quite conversant with the cosmology of Neo-Platonism. It is important to recall, however, that, by Ghazali's time (late 11th-early 12th centuries) medieval thought was as saturated with Neo-Platonic assumptions as 21st century thought is saturated with the assumptions of contemporary materialist science. The practical effect of this "saturation" is that the underlying (Neo-Platonic) metaphysics of everyday life was as self-evident to a 12th century intellectual in Baghdad or Cairo as the underlying (Newtonian? Einsteinian?) physics of everyday life is to a 21st century intellectual in Boston or Paris.

Al-Ghazali was as at liberty to shrug off Hellenism as a fish is at liberty to shrug off the deep blue sea.