Islamic Philosophies - Philosophical Theology In Islam, Transmission And Development Of Greek Science And Philosophy, Al-kindi And The Assimilation Of Greek Neoplatonic Metaphysics
religious understanding divine wisdom
All Muslims hold the Koran as the very word of God, who provides guidance and understanding of creation and proper human conduct by divine wisdom (hikma). This wisdom is also reflected in the oral statements of the prophet Muhammad collected in the Traditions (hadith) and in the reports of the life and deeds (sunna) of the Prophet. The study of these in the traditional Islamic religious sciences of Koranic commentary (tafsir), Traditions, religious law (al-fiqh), Arabic grammar, and related religious studies is the human response to the command of the Koran to seek out knowledge and understanding (20:114; 39:9). That search for knowledge and understanding is not limited to studies strictly religious since the whole of creation manifests divine wisdom. Hence medicine, mathematics, and study of nature can be included in the divine command, though these are classified as foreign sciences and rational or intellectual sciences. Philosophy, which retains its reference to its non-Islamic origins in its transliterated form as falsafah, is located in this second group but nevertheless came to be identified by the philosophers of the Islamic milieu with the wisdom (al-hikma) mentioned in the Koran and Traditions of the Prophet. In the classical period (eighth to twelfth centuries) the major philosophers of the lands of Islam (dar al-islam) characterized philosophical understanding at the highest levels as concerned with principles ultimately founded in God and thereby claimed a rightful stake in knowledge of the divine and of God's creation for the rational sciences. The significance of this idea can hardly be overemphasized since this controversial assertion of the value of independent rationality was a hallmark of philosophy in the classical period and has had a deep and lasting influence not only among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish philosophical thinkers in Islamic lands but also in the medieval Latin West, where its effect was shocking and altogether new.
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Among the most important participants in kalam or Islamic theological dialectics were the Mu'tazilis whose name came from their reasoned disassociation from extremist views of moral purists (Kharijis), who would exclude sinners from the community and from those more accepting of transgressors (Murji'is). The name came to be associated with theologians asserting the value of human rea…
The quantity of important works of science and philosophy translated into Arabic was unrivaled until modern times. Among the philosophical writings translated were the entire corpus of Aristotle's works (with the notable exception of his Politics), the dialogues of Plato as well as their Summaries by Galen, a vast array of medical works by Galen and others, substantial portions of the Ennea…
Research on the thought of al-Kindi (d. c. 870) and an early phase of the translation movement at Baghdad has led to the conclusion that this Arab philosopher was part of a circle or group of thinkers with special interest in Greek metaphysical texts concerning God, the higher intellects moving the heavens, and the soul. Among the works translated wholly or partially and studied by this group were…
Contemporaneous with the circle of al-Kindi, the Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873) initiated a tradition of sophisticated translation of Greek philosophical, medical, and scientific works into Syriac and Arabic. In contrast to the al-Kindi group, Hunayn's group of translators and their successors made extensive efforts to track down works for translation, exercised greater care in selecti…
Abu Nasr al-Farabi (c. 870–950) likely worked for the greater part of his eighty-year lifespan in Baghdad, where he was a student of logic with the Christian Yuhanna ibn Haylan and taught the Christian Yahya ibn 'Adi, who came to be a leading philosophical figure in Baghdad. Al-Farabi was thoroughly engaged in the great project of the establishment of a new
Alexandrian Aristoteliani…
The brilliant Persian philosopher, physician, and vizier Avicenna (Ibn Sina; 980–1037) was born in the village of Afshanah near Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan. A diligent and exceptionally insightful student according to his own autobiographical account, Avicenna mastered medical, legal, scientific,
and philosophical studies in short order and went on to develop his own philosophical te…
While philosophical texts and ideas are present in the eclectic thinking of the Cordoba native and Sufi Ibn Masarrah (883–931), who drew upon Mu'tazili theology and Neoplatonic and pseudo-Empedoclean texts, the beginnings of rigorous philosophical study are with Ibn Bajjah (d. 1138). This philosopher from Saragossa is most famous for his challenge to the understanding of motion in th…
The Cordoban jurist, physician, and philosopher Averroës (Ibn Rushd; 1126–1198), more influential in the history of philosophy by his commentaries on Aristotle translated into Latin in the thirteenth century than for his work extant in Arabic, is famous for his commitment to the proper interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy and the rejection of the innovations of Avicenna, for…
Adamson, Peter. The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle. London: Duckworth, 2002. al-Farabi. Alfarabi, the Political Writings: Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts. Translated and annotated by Charles E. Butterworth. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. ——. Al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's De Int…
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