Ghazali's Occasionalism in Adam Smith's Invisible Hand
… by Shakil Ahmed Shah …
According to al-Ghazali, philosophizing mental or social action is the path to evil and hell. A mental or social act is a momentary feeling created by God at some point under God's will and wisdom. Everyone refrains from doing actions that do not seem right to him according to his momentary feeling. Philosophizing about mechanical or technological processes is the path to goodness and heaven. If the car runs out of petrol, it will stop at the limit of God's physics. Where it is customary to drive on the right, driving on the right is God's social limit. Where driving on the left is the norm, driving on the left is God's God's social limit. The social attitudes of the old society were God's social boundaries for the old society. New age social attitudes are God's social boundaries for modern society. The social behavior of quiet people is God's social limits for them. The social behavior of talkative people is God's social limits for them. The desire of a philosopher or jurist to impose his personal social thought on the whole society is a denial of God's absolute authority in social action, which is actually a denial of monotheism. God has placed it in every human being's instinct to act according to God's physical and social limits for the betterment of life. Accepting the mental or social condition of those living in the social boundaries of Africa or those living in the social boundaries of America as God's will or wisdom is the consciousness of Tawheed, which is the consciousness of God's absolute authority. Mental or social process and mental or social evolution is the macro design of God for which God creates a mental demand or micro design in different people through different opportunities and creates social conditions or means of supply for it. Such a network of spontaneous processes is called momentary feeling by Ghazali and invisible hand by Adam Smith.