Study of Islamic philosophy of Yaḥyá ibn Ḥabash Suhrawardī, 1152 or 1153-1191.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900--Criticism and interpretation. ; Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900--Views on ethics.

This scholarly discussion on the inextricable links between Arabic and Western philosophy features six eminent experts in the field.

This volume introduces the major classical Arabic philosophers through substantial selections from the key works (many of which appear in translation for the first time here) in each of the fields—including logic, philosophy of science, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and politics—to which they made significant contributions. -/- An extensive Introduction situating the works within their historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts offers support to students approaching the subject for the first time, as well as to instructors with little or (...) no formal training in Arabic thought. A glossary, select bibliography, and index are also included. (shrink)

Philosophy written in Arabic and in the Islamic world represents one of the great traditions of Western philosophy. Inspired by Greek philosophical works and the indigenous ideas of Islamic theology, Arabic philosophers from the ninth century onwards put forward ideas of great philosophical and historical importance. This collection of essays, by some of the leading scholars in Arabic philosophy, provides an introduction to the field by way of chapters devoted to individual thinkers or groups, especially during the (...) 'classical' period from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. It also includes chapters on areas of philosophical inquiry across the tradition, such as ethics and metaphysics. Finally, it includes chapters on later Islamic thought, and on the connections between Arabic philosophy and Greek, Jewish, and Latin philosophy. The volume also includes a useful bibliography and a chronology of the most important Arabic thinkers. (shrink)

Although the two worlds, Arabic and Byzantine, were in proximity for many centuries, the influence of Arabic philosophy on the Byzantine intellectual tradition has not been studied thoroughly. Recent studies have substantiated the influence of the Arabic and Persian thought over Byzantine science. However, in the field of philosophy, research is still at an early stage and the impact of Arabic thought on Byzantine and vice versa has not been examined widely and in depth. Direct references to philosophers (...) in the Islamic world are rare and, apart from occasional studies, there is not an organised, in-depth account of the influence the Arabic philosophy exercised on Byzantine scholars. The present study is a wider, complete, and renewed presentation of the initial conclusions of my research, which aims to bring out and evaluate the perception of Arabic philosophy by the Byzantine intelligentsia during the 14th and 15th centuries. As exemplary cases Ι have chosen Georgios Gemistos Pletho (c.1360-1454) and Georgios Scholarios (c.1400-1472), whose rivalry defined Byzantine philosophy of the 15th century to a considerable degree. (shrink)

Philosophy in the Islamic world from the 9th to 11th centuries was characterized by an engagement with Greek philosophical works in Arabic translation. This volume collects papers on both the Greek philosophers in their new Arabic guise, and on reactions to the translation movement in the period leading up to Avicenna.

It has long been a truism of the history of philosophy that intentionality is an invention of the medieval period, and within this standard narrative, the central place of Arabic philosophy has always been acknowledged. Yet there are many misconceptions surrounding the theories of intentionality advanced by the two main Arabic thinkers whose works were available to the West, Avicenna and Averroes. In the first part of this paper I offer an overview of the general accounts of intentionality (...) and intentional being found in the linguistic, psychological, and metaphysical writings of Avicenna and Averroes, and I trace the terminology of “intentions” to a neglected passage from Avicenna’s logic. In the second part of the paper I examine the way that Avicenna and Averroes apply their general theories of intentionality to the realm of sense perception. I offer an explanation of why Avicenna might have chosen to denominate the objects of the internal sense faculty of estimation as “intentions”, and I explore the implications of Averroes’s decision to attribute intentionality to the external senses and the media of perception. (shrink)

Contains papers that cover a conference held at the Warburg Institute in 2006 to consider the philosophy of al-Farabi alongside other intellectual developments of his time, together with a wide range of other figures and traditions from the period.

These essays on the way medieval Arabic philosophy was first introduced into European universities explain their formal working and provide fascinating accounts of the hardy souls who first ventured, literally, into hitherto unknown terrain.

These essays on the way medieval Arabic philosophy was first introduced into European universities explain their formal working and provide fascinating accounts of the hardy souls who first ventured, literally, into hitherto unknown terrain.

In this volume, fourteen scholars, many of them contemporaries of Professor Frank, engage with his legacy with important and seminal works which take some of ...

The domain of Islamic thought and intellectual history boasts an important body of studies relevant to the Arabic philosophy of language, as well as a growing interest in Islamicate argumentation theory and practice. There remains, however, a dearth of volumes which pool research from both areas and examine them together. Filling this gap is more critical than ever. In our time, significant work is being conducted in argumentation theory, but little of it draws from, or relates to, the rich (...) i... (shrink)

The ten essays in this book present the thoughts of major Arabic philosophers in history, while speaking to their basis in Greek philosophy and the influence of ...

This paper closely examines Strauss’ conception of “Medieval Enlightenment”. It focuses on the central role that Arab philosophy has played in the development of Strauss’s thought and discusses the validity of the uses he makes of it. It also emphasizes the interest of Strauss’s analyses as regards Arab philosophy while drawing attention to the tensions they create. It claims that Strauss’ involvement in the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns aims at showing that medieval philosophy cannot (...) be reduced simply to the effort to reconcile philosophy and religion. The ideas of some Arab philosophers cropped up throughout Strauss’s philosophical development and determined his interpretation of Maimonides and Plato as well as his stance in opposition to the moderns. However Strauss’s idea of the “medieval Enlightenment” remains fundamentally ambiguous. Is that Enlightenment supposed to be an argument for the preservation of faith alongside reason or does it rather express a kind of atheism or disguised materialism? (shrink)

لأننا نعيش في عالم يكتنفه الغموض من كل جانب؛ عالم تتسم معرفتنا لأحداثه ووقائعه بالتناقض واللاتحديد، وتُفصح قضايانا اللغوية الواصفة له عن الصدق تارة وعن الكذب تارة أخرى، فنحن في حاجة إلى فلسفة جديدة تعكس حقيقة رؤيتنا النسبية لهذا العالم وقصور معرفتنا به؛ ونحن في حاجة إلى نسقٍِ منطقي يُلائم معطياته غير المكتملة ويُشبع معالجاتنا لها، سواء على مستوى ممارسات الحياة اليومية أو على مستوى الممارسة العلمية بمختلف أشكالها. والفلسفة التي يقترحها هذا الكتاب هي «النيوتروسوفيا»؛ تلك النظرية التي قدمها الفيلسوف (...) والرياضي الأمريكي «فلورنتن سمارانداكه» العام 1995 كتعميم للنزعة الجدلية، والتي تكشف بأسلوب جديد عن تناقضات الفكر وحركته الدائبة والمتصلة بين الصدق والكذب، وتُعيد لملكة السلب هيبتها المفقودة لدى العقل القانع بوهم الثبات المطلق. ومن هذه النظرية ينبثق المنطق النيوتروسوفي كتعميم لأنساق المنطق المعاصر متعدد القيم، لاسيما المنطق الحدسي الغائم. ورغم حداثة النظرية والنسق، وتعدد مجالات تطبيقهما في الفكر الغربي المعاصر، وبصفة خاصة مجالات العلم التقني، إلا أن ثمة استخدامات أخرى لهما لدى مفكري العرب والإسلام إبان مرحلة ازدهار الحضارة الإسلامية، وهو ما يكشف عنه الكتاب من خلال دراسة منطقية مقارنة، تميط اللثام عن أصالة وخصوبة الفكر العربي، فضلاً عن تحرره وتسامحه وجمعه بين الرأي والرأي الآخر، في وقت يوسم فيه من قبل الغرب بالانغلاقية، والتشدد، والتحجر، ورفض الآخر، وخصومة الحوار الجدلي. (shrink)

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume (...) examines what happened to Averroes's philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition? (shrink)

This collection results from a colloquium of the same title presented at Georgetown University in 1982. Its diversity of approaches and concerns reflects the complicated interaction between the two philosophical traditions.

Collected in this volume are ten essays on Islamic philosophy, some of which have appeared before. The topics range from historical observations on the Islamic-European transmission of ideas to detailed examinations of Arabic developments in logic. The most comprehensive discussion of the latter concerns the theory of temporal modalities as found in Avicenna, al-Qazwini al-Katibi, et al. Of much wider interest is the inquiry into the Arabic concern with the notion of "existence." The author surprises the reader here by (...) pointing out that Al-Farabi was the first to deny that existence is an attribute; that Brentano's notion of "intentional inexistence" was anticipated by both Avicenna and Averroes; that certain teachings of al-Qazwini al-Katibi accord exactly with Russell's work concerning vacuous definite descriptions. The work as a whole provides considerable evidence for Rescher's thesis, fully articulated in the final essay, that "there is no such thing as an Arabic philosophy" but only "Greek philosophy carried forward in an Arabic-language setting." Indicative of this is the correspondence between Avicenna's formulation of the "logic of questions" and the Aristotelian table of categories. Another example is the commentary of Ibn al-Salah on Book II of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. More familiar is the syncretistic Arabic adaptation of the doctrines of Timaeus and De Caelo; this influence is discussed at length with respect to Al Kindi's cosmology. In summation, this author's work fills a number of gaps in the continuity of logical development from the Ancient-Medieval period to that of the early Renaissance.--W. S. (shrink)