Masterpieces of Muslim Philosophers

This paper focuses on the methodological issues related to the obstacles and potential horizons of approaching the philosophical traditions in Islam from the standpoint of comparative studies in philosophy, while also presenting selected casestudies that may potentially illustrate some of the possibilities of renewing the impetus of a philosophical thought that is inspired by Islamic intellectual history. This line of inquiry is divided into two parts: the first deals with questions of methodology, and the second focuses on ontology and phenomenology of perception, by way of offering pathways in investigating the history of philosophical and scientific ideas in Islam from the viewpoint of contemporary debates in philosophy. A special emphasis will be placed on: (a) interpreting the ontology of the eleventh century metaphysician Ibn Sīnā (known in Latin as: Avicenna; d. 1037 CE) in terms of rethinking Heidegger's critique of the history of metaphysics, and (b) analyzing the philosophical implications of the theory of vision of the eleventh century polymath Ibn al-Haytham (known in Latin as Alhazen; d. ca. 1041 CE) in terms of reflecting on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception.

ABSTRACT: Philosophy and revealed religion may appear for some so discrete in nature that there cannot be a philosophy of a particular religion. But regarding the religion of Islam and linguistic suitability of Arabic tradition, this notion is not that serious. Arabic language of al-Kindi's time was in the process of constructing and perfecting technical vocabulary for Greek scientific, medical, and philosophical words. Philosophy in the Islamic world spread initially through the medium of Arabic language. Its importance in the lives of meaning seeker Muslims helped them to standardize an articulate science of Arabic grammar and lexicography. Preserving faultless and uncorrupted text of their Holy Qur'an, helped Muslim philosophers to set a higher standard of speech and expression. Philosophical thought in Islam known as falsafah—Arabic word for the Greek philosophia—emerged as a result of an intellectual discipline that matured from the philosophical appeal of the Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit texts translated into Arabic. Islamic scholars of the seventh century meditated on falsafah, which they defined as knowledge of all existing things of divine as well as human matters. They identified falsafah with the Qur’anic term hikmah (wisdom or organized thought), believing the origin of hikmah to be divine and debated Qur’anic revelation and reason or kalam—a term used as a translation of the Greek logos. Above all, an ethical reverence for seeking knowledge was infused by the Qur’anic appeal to reasoning and its Prophet’s traditions advising Muslims to pursue learning, even if one has to go as far as China and acquire knowledge even from the heathens. This reverence and various other factors provided the impetus for knowledge. . . . . Research and success in neurobiology is amazingly bringing philosophy closer to science than ever. Consequently many unanswered questions of philosophy have been answered by science, which enjoy a general consensus, because it is easy to agree on the application of philosophical concepts within the scientific system. Therefore, today, instead of looking back to philosophical analysis and rational enquires, initiated by al-Kindi and many other Muslim philosophers of ninth century, Muslims need to understand philosophy through science. Muslims in the past transmitted philosophical and scientific knowledge to the West; they should not feel shy in receiving back its modernized version and scientific way of thinking and reasoning. — Mirza Ashraf

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2009

In the last few decades, several Cambridge Companions have been published on individual authors, schools, or epochs of the history of philosophy. The present Cambridge Companion, for the first time in the series, embraces a major area of philosophy, namely Arabic philosophy, in its entirety. Although the publication focuses inevitably on the so-called "classical" or "formative" period of Arabic philosophy (from its beginning in the IX c. until the XII c. CE), also the 'post-classical' period (from the XIII c. CE until the present) receives a considerable, albeit less extensive and systematic, treatment. In this respect, the present book overcomes the old eurocentric historical periodization, according to which Arabic philosophy ends de facto with Averroes (d. 1198) at about the time of the transmission of Arabic philosophy into Latin, and points to the importance of a serious study also of later authors and currents. The two editors (P. Adamson and R.C. Taylor) are leading scholars in the history of Arabic philosophy, combining in a remarkable way philological precision with philosophical insight. The other contributors are among the best experts in their respective fields. The result is a coherent collection of succinct, straightforward and comprehensive essays, each of which provides the reader with a fascinating picture of the topic under discussion, conveying at the same time all the relevant information thereupon.

Classical Islamic Philosophy: A Thematic Introduction, 2022

This thematic introduction to classical Islamic philosophy focuses on the most prevalent philosophical debates of the medieval Islamic world and their importance within the history of philosophy. Approaching the topics in a comprehensive and accessible way in this new volume, Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, one of the co-editors of The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, makes classical Islamic philosophy approachable for both the new and returning student of the history of philosophy, medieval philosophy, the history of ideas, classical Islamic intellectual history, and the history of religion. Providing readers with a complete view of the most hotly contested debates in the Islamic philosophical tradition, López-Farjeat discusses the development of theology (kalām) and philosophy (falsafa) during the ʿAbbāsid period, including the translation of Aristotle into Arabic, the philosophy and theology of Islamic revelation, logic and philosophy of language, philosophy of natural science, metaphysics, psychology and cognition, and ethics and political philosophy. This volume serves as an indispensable tool for teachers, students, and independent learners aiming to discover the philosophical problems and ideas that defined the classical Islamic world.

This course explores the evolution and main debates of Islamic philosophy (falsafa) from the great translation movement of ancient Greek texts under the 'Abbâsid dynasty (8th-9th centuries) until the golden age of inter-disciplinary intellectual, scientific and spiritual debates under the Mamlûks of Egypt and the Mongols of Iran (13th-14th centuries). Besides the major falâsifa known to the medieval Latins (Kindî, Fârâbî, Avicenna, Ghazâlî, Averroes…), attention will also be given to several other thinkers, generally less famous in the West, but nevertheless important: the Ikhwân al-Ṣafâ', Miskawayh, Ibn Ṭufayl, Râzî, Ṭûsî, Qûnawî… A selection of representative texts will be read in English translation and commented on. A basic knowledge of Greek philosophy, Islam and the history of Muslim societies (7th-14th. centuries) would be useful for this course.

The type of research that the author uses is a type of qualitative research using a content analysis approach, or it can be called content research. This analysis is a research technique for making a conclusion or inference that can be replicated and the correctness of the data by taking into account the context. The object of this research is explored through various information in the form of books, interpretations, and journals. This journal aims to discuss Islamic philosophy, born from the holy book of Muslims themselves because it contains many verses that tell people to think. On the other hand, because of the incessant efforts made by Alexander the Great in conquering important cities such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Persia, cultural centres were later established in these important cities which helped develop Alexander's efforts in developing knowledge. Greek knowledge and philosophy.

Aqlania

Islamic Philosophy should be observed as the worth treasure that manifested during the history of Islamic Intellectual Tradition. Quite different from the Philosophical traditions breed in Western Civilization, Islamic Philosophy affirmed its construction based on Revelation, Intuition, and demonstration. This paper will enquire several arguments reconsidering an influential position of Philosophy in Islamic Intellectual Tradition; ranged from an elaboration regarding the unity of Reason (Ratio-Intellectus), unity of existence, and the unity or relation between the Knower and the known object. Consequently, there are at least five significances of Islamic Philosophy to be studied by present-day Muslims by order: Islamic Philosophy acquired the whole competencies to seek the truth and wisdom; it is required as a systematic thought to face challenges confronted by Western Civilization; especially their destructive ideas; Islamic Philosophy also encourage mankind to find an answer an ...

Aestimatio : Critical Reviews in the History of Science, 2010

2008

Bulletin of the Institute Of Classical Studies, University of London (Special Issue: Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries), 2004

Choice Reviews Online, 2007

This book is the result of nearly fifty years of study and meditation upon philosophy and philosophical issues as seen in light of the realities revealed through prophecy both objective and inward in the form of illumination. In a world in which philosophy has become so divorced from revealed realities and secular thought has sought to marginalize and even annihilate knowledge imbued with the sacred, it is necessary to return, whenever possible, to the theme of the relation between philosophy and prophecy through different perspectives and angles of vision. Years ago we dealt with the heart of the question of the relation between knowledge and the reality of the sacred in Knowledge ad the Sacred and have returned to this subject from other angles of vision in later works such as The Need for a Sacred Science. In the present work we turn our gaze specifically upon philosophy and especially Islamic philosophy. We deal with over a millennium of Islamic philosophy, its doctrines, history, and approaches, from the angle of vision of the relation between that long philosophical tradition and the realities of prophecy that have always dominated the horizon of the Islamic cosmos and the intellectual climate and space of the Islamic people. Some of the chapters of this book were written as essays over the years. They have all been thoroughly revised and integrated into the framework of this book. Many other chapters are new and were written specifically as integral parts of the present work in order to complete the picture that we have sought to depict in the pages that follow. We wish to thank the Radius Foundation, which provided financial help to make the preparation of this text possible. We are also especially grateful to Katherine O'Brien, who prepared and readied the handwritten material and numerous alterations required patience, knowhow, and energy to carry out a Herculean task. Without her help it would not have been possible to present the text for publication. ix text for the press. Having had to endure reading hundreds of pages of Transliteration Furthermore, 'Al¥ has been associated by traditional Islamic sources with the founding of Islamic metaphysics. 5 Another Greek figure who was given the title kouros was Epimenides of Crete who also journeyed to the other world where he met Justice and who brought back laws into this world. Like Parmenides, he also wrote poetry. Now Epimenides was known as a healer-prophet or iatromantis to whom everything had been revealed through incubation while he lay motionless in a cave for years. 6 with the corporeal world and subjectively with our ordinary consciousness considered as the only legitimate and accepted form of consciousness, then prophecy as the function of bringing a message from another world or another level of consciousness would be meaningless sents many figures and ideas not known in the West at all. This emphasis on later Islamic philosophy is also of interest from the point of view of comparative studies for it shows how two philosophical traditions, the Islamic and the Christian, parted ways and followed such different destinies from the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries onward. In the West philosophy became more and more distanced from theology after the eighth/fourteenth century, and

published on June 8, 2021

Scholars have come to recognize the importance of classical Islamic philosophy both in its own right and in its preservation of and engagement with Greek philosophical ideas. At the same time, the period immediately following the so-called classical period has been considered a sort of dark age, in which Islamic thought entered a long period of decline. In this monumental new work, Frank Griffel seeks to overturn this conventional wisdom, arguing that what he calls the “post-classical” period has been unjustly maligned and neglected by previous generations of scholars. The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the twelfth century. Earlier Western scholars thought that Islam’s engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalām). Griffel argues that even this new view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kalām, Muslim theologians picked up the discourse of classical philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna—a new and oft-misunderstood genre they called “ḥikma"—in which they left aside theological concerns. They wrote in both genres, kalām and ḥikma, and the same writers argued for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world’s creation, and the afterlife depending on the genre in which they were writing. Griffel shows how careful attention to genre demonstrates both the coherence and ambiguity of this new philosophical approach. A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam" offers a detailed, insightful history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the history of Islam.

2020

What are Arabic and Islamic philosophy and sciences? How and where did they come about? I am trying in this preface to provide a short and brief answer to those two questions. Having done this, I sketch the contents of five papers trying to study Arabic and Islamic philosophy and sciences from its perspective to method and truth.