Introduction: Forms and Functions of Islamic Philosophy

2017

Locating masterpieces by Muslim philosophers in the field of philosophy is a challenge for several reasons: the interconnectedness between human knowledge as a discipline, and that this theme cannot be innovative. In addition, in order to understand the roots of philosophy within the Arab cultural environment and its development it is necessary to examine the history of Arab culture. Arab culture can trace its origins back thousands of years to the Mesopotamian, Pharaonic, and Saba and Himyar Civilizations. Although these civilizations witnessed the birth of streams of thought that can be considered philosophy, the word philosophy itself was not used because it is a Greek word. Despite the fact that philosophy dates to Ancient Greece, it is considered modern in comparison with the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt. Thus, it is more accurate to refer to the beliefs developed by these civilizations as thought and not philosophy. Indeed, the word philosophy only came to be applied to Arab culture with the arrival of Al Kindi (801-870 CE). When examining the use of the term philosophy in the context of Arab culture, we will determine the meaning of the word and explain how it was defined in ancient times; specifically, whether the sources that Muslim philosophers relied upon were Greek or other sources. This paper comprises only an introduction, describing the multiple approaches and the achievements conferred upon Muslim philosophers. It will take the form of an encyclopedia style entry to establish a foundation for researchers wishing to explore the achievements of Muslim philosophers.

This book investigates the methodological issues raised by the encounter between Islamic thought and contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. It features essays that examine why and how current Muslim thinkers refer to Continental philosophy. The contributors put the universality of the hermeneutic order to the test with three different approaches. The first looks at exegetical aspects. It addresses contemporary thinkers from the Islamicate world who have engaged critically or not with main representatives or key concepts of philosophical hermeneutics. The second presents an interpretative analysis. The essays here present attempts at using philosophical hermeneutics in order to develop new interpretations of canonical or traditional ensembles of texts such as the Qur’an and the Hadith as well as legal, spiritual, and philosophical corpuses from the Islamicate world. The third looks at different political and critical issues. The clear and sound reference to religion of Islamic thought makes its entanglement with philosophical hermeneutics a burning challenge for all parties involved. Is it true, as some contend, that philosophical hermeneutics can help interpret Islamic thought anew? This book reveals how the two philosophies are likely to expand each other’s horizons and influence each other’s conceptual frameworks. It features revised papers from an International Conference.

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