A Christian Introduction to Philosophy

Journal for Christian Scholarship, 2019

Establishing a new philosophical school of thought in the course of its development naturally generates the need for understandable introductions. The new philosophical movement, initially known as " De Wijsbegeerte der Wetdsidee " (the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea), is no exception. After its main contours took shape during the twenties and thirties of the previous century, its innovating and penetrating systematic analyses inspired first of all J.M. Spier to write such an Introduction. The fourth edition of a largely expanded version appeared in 1950 and the second edition of its English translation in 1976. After establishing special chairs in Reformational Philosophy at various state universities, the respective professors each wrote their own orientations in this philosophy (Popma, Mekkes, and Van Riessen). This process was continued in the appearance of a new generation of Introductions (Kalsbeek, Strauss and Hommes). Soon introductory texts, providing an opportunity for their authors to introduce new insights and developments, entered the scene as well. Hart published a work on " Understanding our World " and Jan Dengerink one on the meaning of reality. Roy Clouser wrote his The Myth of Religious Neutrality and Strauss published a work on Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines. Recently we witnessed the appearance of a number of 21 st century Introductions, published by Troost, Bartholomew and Goheen and Ouweneel. While appreciating these new efforts the main focus of this article is directed at demonstrating that

Routledge eBooks, 2005

Philosophy and Global Affairs (Philosophy Documentation Center), 2022

Reverend Father Luciano Mattei-IMC is an Italian Consolata Missionary Priest with vast experience in Roman Catholic Missionary Priesthood as well as in academic scholarship. He was the head of Philosophy Department and Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He is the author of „Guide to Research Work: For Humanistic studies’, ‘Philosophy and Early Christianity’, ‘Sapientia Christiana: Origins and African Contribution to Christian Philosophy‟, the controversial ‘Saint Augustine: The last African Christian Philosopher’ and „Introduction to Philosophy’. This review occupies itself with „Introduction to Philosophy‟. Mattei indicates that „Introduction to Philosophy is meant for students who intend to pursue Philosophical studies as a Propaedeutic to their theological formation, and as such he lays out two objectives for the book namely: i.) To offer an initiation into the activity of Philosophizing, and ii.) To show the importance of philosophizing in the pursuit of Catholic Religious Studies

Analysis, 2011

2016

Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Dates xv Maps xxii Part I. The Formative Period 1. The Straight Path-Philosophy and Islam 3 2. All for One-The Muʿtazilites 10 3. Founded in Translation-From Greek to Syriac to Arabic 19 4. Philosopher of the Arabs-al-Kindı ˉ26 5. The Chosen Ones-Philosophy and Judaism 33 6. Reasoned Belief-Saadia Gaon 41 7. High Five-al-Ra ˉzı ˉ48 8. Aristotelian Society-The Baghdad School 55 9. The Second Master-al-Fa ˉra ˉbı ˉ63 10. State of Mind-al-Fa ˉra ˉbı ˉon Religion and Politics 70 11. Eye of the Beholder-Theories of Vision 77 12. Strings Attached-Music and Philosophy 84 13. Balancing Acts-Arabic Ethical Literature 91 14. Undercover Brothers-Philosophy in the Bu ˉyid Age 98 15. God Willing-The Ashʿarites 106 16. The Self-Made Man-Avicenna's Life and Works 113 17. By the Time I Get to Phoenix-Avicenna on Existence 120 vii 18. By All Means Necessary-Avicenna on God 19. Into Thin Air-Avicenna on the Soul 20. Special Delivery-al-Ghaza ˉlı ˉ140 21. Miracle Worker-al-Ghaza ˉlı ˉagainst the Philosophers Part II. Andalusia 22. Philosophy's Reign in Spain-Andalusia 23. Laying Down the Law-Ibn Ḥ azm and Islamic Legal Theory 24. Fantasy Island-Ibn Ba ˉjja and Ibn Ṭ ufayl 25. Back to Basics-Averroes on Reason and Religion 26. Single Minded-Averroes on the Intellect 27. A Matter of Taste-Ibn ʿArabı ˉand Sufism 28. Team Spirit-Ibn Khaldu ˉn 29. Matter over Mind-Ibn Gabirol 30. Choosing My Religion-Judah Hallevi 31. Born Under a Bad Sign-Freedom and Astrology in Jewish Philosophy 32. With All Your Heart-Ethics and Judaism 33. The Great Eagle-Maimonides 34. He Moves in Mysterious Ways-Maimonides on Eternity 35. Burnt Offerings-The Maimonidean Controversy 36. Man and Superman-Gersonides and the Jewish Reception of Averroes 37. Neither the Time nor the Place-Ḥ asdai Crescas 38. When Bad Things Happen to Good People-Suffering in Jewish Philosophy 39. Chariot of Fire-Kabbalah 40. A Matter of Principles-Joseph Albo and Isaac Abravanel CONTENTS viii Part III. The Later Traditions 41. Golden Ages-The Later Traditions 295 42. All Things Considered-Abu ˉl-Baraka ˉt al-Baghda ˉdı ˉ302 43. For the Sake of Argument-Fakhr al-Dı ˉn al-Ra ˉzı ˉ309 44. Let There Be Light-Suhrawardı ˉ316 45. Bright Ideas-Illuminationism 323 46. A Man for All Seasons-Naṣ ı ˉr al-Dı ˉn al-Ṭ u ˉsı ˉ330 47. To Be or Not To Be-Debating Avicenna's Metaphysics 337 48. Eyes Wide Shut-Ru ˉmı ˉand Philosophical Sufism 344 49. Proof Positive-The Logical Tradition 351 50. By the Book-Ibn Taymiyya 358 51. Aftermath-Philosophy and Science in the Mongol Age 365 52. Family Feud-Philosophy at Shı ˉra ˉz 372 53. Follow the Leader-Philosophy under the Safavids 379 54. To Be, Continued-Mulla ˉṢ adra ˉon Existence 386 55. Return to Sender-Mulla ˉṢ adra ˉon Motion and Knowledge 393 56. Subcontinental Drift-Philosophy in Islamic India 400 57. Turkish Delights-Philosophy under the Ottomans 407 58. Blind Alley-Taqlı ˉd, Sufism, and Philosophy 414 59. The Young Ones-Encounters with European Thought 421 60. The Stronger Sex-Women Scholars in the Islamic World 426 61. All for One and One for All-Muḥ ammad ʿAbduh and Muḥ ammad Iqba ˉl 434 62. Iran So Far-The Heirs of Mulla ˉṢ adra ˉ441 Notes 449 Further Reading 489 Index 503 ix CONTENTS from other scholars. To be honest, I might have thought that myself at some point, but it turned out to be very much otherwise. So sprawling and complex are the intellectual traditions surveyed here that I was glad to profit from the advice of many friends and colleagues. Invaluable advice and feedback on the chapters concerning Jewish philosophy were provided by Jeremy Brown and Daniel Davies, and especially by Steven Harvey, who kindly and carefully read all these chapters in their revised form and saved me from numerous imprecisions and errors. I'd also like to give a special mention to Lukas Mühlethaler, who convinced me that it would indeed make sense to integrate Jewish philosophy into this book, rather than giving it separate treatment. For the rest of the volume, I received helpful advice from Asad

2021

We hope the books (or chapters in the books) will be adopted for introductory-level courses in philosophy, as part of required readings. You may use the books as they are, or create adaptations or ancillaries. One of the important benefits of the Introduction to Philosophy series is that instructors can mix and match chapters from various books to make their own customized set of readings for their courses. Be sure to read the licensing information carefully and attribute the chapters or book properly when reusing, redistributing, or adapting. Each book can be read online, and is also downloadable in multiple formats, from their respective book home pages (e.g., Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion). • The .odt format can be opened by Open Office, Libre Office, or Microsoft Word. Note that there may be some issues with formatting on this format, and hyperlinks may not appear if opened with MS Word. • The PDF files can be edited with Adobe Acrobat (the full program, not just the Reader) or printed out. The print version of the PDF does not have hyperlinks. • The EPUB and MOBI files can be loaded onto digital reading platforms like Adobe Digital Editions, Apple Books, and Kindle. They can also be edited using Pressbooks or tools like Calibre. • Edits can be made using the XHTML format or via the Pressbooks XML format (for easier adaptation in Pressbooks). • The book is also available for download as a Common Cartridge 1.1 file (with web links) for import into your learning management system (see instructions for importing Common Cartridge files, from the Pressbooks User Guide). The multiple editable formats allow instructors to adapt the books as needed to fit their contexts. Another way to create adaptations is to involve students in contributing to open textbooks. Students may add new sections to an adapted book, link to other resources, create discussion questions or quiz PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION xi questions, and more. Please see Rebus Community's A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students for more information and ideas. If you plan to use or adapt one or more books (or chapters), we'd love to hear about it! Please let us know on the Rebus Community platform, and also on our adoption form. And if you have feedback or suggestions about the book, we would really appreciate those as well. We have a separate form for keeping track of issues with digital accessibility, so please let us know if you find any. xii HOW TO USE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION xiii PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION xv PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION xvii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BEAU BRANSON AND CHRISTINA HENDRICKS BEAU BRANSON, BOOK EDITOR I'd like first to acknowledge Christina Hendricks, the series editor for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series of which this book is a part. A great debt is owed to her for her vision and initiative in conceiving of and executing the plan for the series as a whole. One of the most natural impulses for human beings is to ask questions, which, at bottom, is what philosophy is. Yet, many never become aware of the range or the depth of the questions that might be asked in life or the various answers proposed down through the centuries, either because they lack the opportunity, or because they are too intimidated by the reputation of philosophy even to make a beginning. Thus, producing textbooks that are both free and written in a style accessible to most any student is a noble goal that helps open up philosophy to all who might benefit from it. Christina's efforts in this regard are to be applauded, and we can all hope that this experiment will serve as a model for others in the future to build on. Apurva Ashok was our project manager from Rebus, and her assistance was invaluable. Nobody who has tried to publish in academia could fail to marvel at the speed with which she responded to any request for information or assistance. Without her help, neither this book nor others in the Introduction to Philosophy series would have been completed as quickly as they have been. Great thanks are also due to our peer reviewers, Thomas Carroll and Finley Lawson, as well as to Helena Fisher, our undergraduate reviewer. Drs. Carroll and Lawson were extremely gracious to volunteer their time for this project. They caught numerous issues and provided valuable questions, comments and objections at various points in every chapter, which helped make the final product simultaneously more rigorous and yet more accessible to undergraduates with no prior knowledge of philosophy. Helena Fisher was a brilliant addition to the reviewers, coming on board specifically to give us the perspective of an undergraduate on how understandable and relevant the text might be to most students. I have no doubt she has a bright future ahead of her, and wish her well in her further studies. Finally, my greatest debt of gratitude is due to the authors, without whom the book would not be what it is. In chapter order, they are Marcus William Hunt, Robert Sloan Lee, Steven Steyl, Hans van xviii PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Eyghen, and Timothy D. Knepper. All of them have been extremely easy to work with and highly professional, which has made my job as editor not only much easier, but even-gasp!-a joy. Each has brought something unique to the text, and I cannot thank them enough. CHRISTINA HENDRICKS, SERIES EDITOR I would like to thank the authors in this book for their patience as we worked through the process of conceiving the book and getting it to publication. Because this is one of the first books to be published in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series, we were sometimes creating processes and workflows as we went along, and this meant things may have taken longer than anyone expected at first! Special thanks to Beau Branson, who signed up to this project early on and has been a joy to work with. He has shown great patience and flexibility as we worked through the process of figuring out just how to go about publishing the books in this series. He has also done an excellent job of selecting authors for chapters and editing those chapters to result in a clear, engaging, and accessible book. Also instrumental to the success of this book are the peer reviewers, Thomas D. Carroll, Helena Fisher, and Finley Lawson, who volunteered their time and expertise to read through a draft of the whole book and provide constructive comments and suggestions. Jonathan Lashley has done an amazing job with the design of the book covers for this series, using original artwork by Heather Salazar (who is the editor for the Philosophy of Mind book in this series). The book covers are exceptionally well done, and really bring the series together as a whole. Colleen Cressman has provided much-needed help with copyediting. I am very grateful for her thorough and detailed efforts, and for the suggestions she made to help make the chapters as accessible as possible for introductory-level students. And thank you to Chris Hubbard for help with inputting and formatting the content into Pressbooks so that it looks and reads well. This is a great deal of effort to learn to do starting from scratch, and I am deeply grateful to Chris for taking it on. When I started this project there were many discussions amongst philosophers from various parts of the world on the Rebus Community platform, and their ideas and suggestions contributed significantly to the final products. There were also numerous people who gave comments on draft chapter outlines for each book. Thank you to the many unnamed philosophers who have contributed to the book in these and other ways! This book series would not have gotten beyond the idea stage were it not for the support of the Rebus Community. I want to thank Hugh McGuire for believing in the project enough to support what we both realized at the time was probably much bigger than even our apprehensions about its enormity. Zoe Wake Hyde was instrumental in getting the project started, particularly in helping us develop workflows and documentation. And I'm not sure I can ever thank Apurva Ashok enough for being an unfailingly enthusiastic and patient supporter and guide for more months than I care to count. She spent a good deal of time working with me and the book editors to figure out how to make a project like this work on a day-today level, and taught me a great deal about the open publishing process. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION xix Apurva kept me on track when I would sometimes drop the ball or get behind on this off-the-side-ofmy-desk project. She is one of the best collaborative partners I have never (yet!) met in person. Finally, I want to thank my family for understanding how important this work is and why I have chosen to stay up late so many nights to do it. And for their patience on the many groggy, pre-coffee mornings that followed. xx ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. Pass the parcel is a parlour game in which a parcel containing a prize is passed around and around in a circle.

Teaching Philosophy, 2023

Discovering Philosophy aims to provide students with an easy-to-read book. T. I. White wanted to organize his book in terms of content and formatted it accordingly. Given that the purpose of the book is mostly targeting students who are being introduced to philosophy for the first time, the study might be lacking depth throughout the text when dealing with philosophical issues. However, despite the diversity of chapters and abundancy of philosophical areas, the author dealt with each chapter sufficiently. Considering the work as a whole, it is likely to say that the text is compatible with the author’s purpose.

2011