Risālah fī al-falsafah al-ūlá -- Risālah fī al-ḥīlah li-dafʻ al-aḥzān -- Risālah fī al-ʻaql -- Risālah fī ḥudūd al-ashyāʼ wa-rusūmihā.

Dr. Mashbad Al-Allaf presents and interprets the ideas and philosophy of the major figures of Islamic philosophy.

Faylasū al-ʻArab: al-Kindī -- al-Muʻallim al-thānī: al-Fārābī -- al-Shāʻir al-ḥakīm: al-Mutanabbī -- Baṭalīmūs al-ʻArab: Ibn al-Haytham -- Shaykh al-Islām: Ibn Taymīyah.

al-Kindī. - al-Fārābī. - Ibn Sīnā. - Ibn Khaldūn.

Al-Kindi was the first philosopher of the Islamic world. He lived in Iraq and studied in Baghdad, where he became attached to the caliphal court. In due course he would become an important figure at court: a tutor to the caliph's son, and a central figure in the translation movement of the ninth century, which rendered much of Greek philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic. Al-Kindi's wide-ranging intellectual interests included not only philosophy but also music, astronomy, mathematics, and (...) medicine. Through deep engagement with Greek tradition al-Kindi developed original theories on key issues in the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, physical science, and ethics. He is especially known for his arguments against the world's eternity, and his innovative use of Greek ideas to explore the idea of God's unity and transcendence. Despite al-Kindi's historical and philosophical importance no book has presented a complete, in-depth look at his thought until now. In this accessible introduction to al-Kindi's works, Peter Adamson surveys what is known of his life and examines his method and his attitude towards the Greek tradition, as well as his subtle relationship with the Muslim intellectual culture of his day. Above all the book focuses on explaining and evaluating the ideas found in al-Kindi's wide-ranging philosophical corpus, including works devoted to science and mathematics. Throughout, Adamson writes in language that is both serious and engaging, academic and approachable. This book will be of interest to experts in the field, but it requires no knowledge of Greek or Arabic, and is also aimed at non-experts who are simply interested in one of the greatest of Islamic philosophers. (shrink)

This comparative examination of Nietzsche and the Islamic philosopher al-Kindi emphasizes their mutual commitment to the recovery of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought and the idea of philosophy as a way of life. Affiliating both thinkers with the Stoic lineage in particular, I examine the ways in which they appropriate common themes such as fatalism, self-cultivation via spiritual exercises, and the banishing of sorrow. Focusing primarily on their respective conceptions of self and nature, I argue that the antipodal worldviews (...) of al-Kindi and Nietzsche can be understood as a bifurcation of Stoic philosophy. (shrink)

Al-Kindi is believed by many scholars to be the first Islamic philosopher. At a time when Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages, the Islamic world was experiencing an important time of cultural growth and scientific advancement. While many considered Muslim students of ancient Greek philosophers to be infidels, al-Kindi was able to master the scholarship while interpreting it through his Muslim faith. His conclusions always supported the teachings of Islam, but the methods that he drew upon to (...) reach these conclusions were rooted in science, math, and principles accepted by many other cultures and faiths. (shrink)

Al-Kindi was the first philosopher of the Islamic world. He lived in Iraq and studied in Baghdad, where he became attached to the caliphal court. In due course he would become an important figure at court: a tutor to the caliph's son, and a central figure in the translation movement of the ninth century, which rendered much of Greek philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic. Al-Kindi's wide-ranging intellectual interests included not only philosophy but also music, astronomy, mathematics, and (...) medicine. Through deep engagement with Greek tradition al-Kindi developed original theories on key issues in the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, physical science, and ethics. He is especially known for his arguments against the world's eternity, and his innovative use of Greek ideas to explore the idea of God's unity and transcendence. Despite al-Kindi's historical and philosophical importance no book has presented a complete, in-depth look at his thought until now. In this accessible introduction to al-Kindi's works, Peter Adamson surveys what is known of his life and examines his method and his attitude towards the Greek tradition, as well as his subtle relationship with the Muslim intellectual culture of his day. Above all the book focuses on explaining and evaluating the ideas found in al-Kindi's wide-ranging philosophical corpus, including works devoted to science and mathematics. Throughout, Adamson writes in language that is both serious and engaging, academic and approachable. This book will be of interest to experts in the field, but it requires no knowledge of Greek or Arabic, and is also aimed at non-experts who are simply interested in one of the greatest of Islamic philosophers. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL ARABIC PHILOSOPHICAL ETHICS is a much neglected field. Not many texts have survived. Some of them are rather popular and belie the assumption that Medieval Arabic philosophy is essentially Aristotelian. For instance, al-Kindi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, Avicenna, and Miskawayh all wrote about treating sadness. Were philosophers at the time subject to acute bouts of depression? or did they have some serious philosophical reasons to deal with this topic? How can one conciliate the popular and highly successful genre of (...) the "Spiritual Medicine," which considers passions as diseases of the soul that are badly in need of eradication, with the need for a rigorous normative ethics? As Islam and its Shari'a provide detailed ethical prescriptions and prohibitions, as well as guidance for any situation in the life of pious Muslims, how can philosophy vindicate the autonomy and importance of philosophical ethics? Can it be done on Aristotelian grounds? Why do serious philosophers devote such efforts to "Spiritual Medicine," a very un-Aristotelian enterprise? Such questions are puzzling. To even begin answering them, we need to study carefully the works of each philosopher in order to understand on their own terms what place and what role they assign to ethics, and then to analyze their ethical works to determine their purpose, audience, and philosophic worth. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers were the first to postulate the possibility of explaining nature in theoretical terms and to initiate attempts at this. With the rise of monotheistic religions of revelation claiming supremacy over human reason and envisaging a new world to come, studies of the natural order of the transient world were widely considered undesirable. Later, in the Middle Ages, the desire for human understanding of nature in terms of reason was revived. This article is concerned with the fundamental reversal (...) of attitudes, from "undesirable" to "desirable", that eventually led into the foundations of modern science. One of the earliest, most ingenious and most interesting personalities involved was Eriugena, a theologian at the Court of Charles the Bald in the 9th century. Though understanding what we call nature is only one of the several aspects of his philosophical work, his line of thought implies a turn into a pro-scientific direction: the natural order is to be understood in abstract terms of "primordial causes"; understanding nature is considered to be the will of God; man encompasses the whole of creation in a physical as well as a mental sense. Basically similar ideas on the reconciliation of scientific rationality and monotheistic religions of revelation were conceived, independently and nearly simultaneously, by the Arab philosopher al-Kindi in Bagdad. Eriugena was more outspoken in his claim that reason is superior to authority. This claim is implicit in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa with his emphasis on human mental creativity as the image of God's creativity; and it is the keynote of Galileo's "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" some 800 years later, the manifesto expressing basic attitudes of modern science. (shrink)

Al-Kindī's views concerning time are dispersed in different places in his works, but they are to be found principally in his On First Philosophy and De quinque essentiis. Yes, he does follow Aristotle, but he insists on the homogeneity of the instant and of time; he also distances himself from the Philosopher by denying the eternity of the world a parte ante as well as a parte post. On the other hand, in his accounts of the realization of possible things (...) and of the organization of the cosmos, he presents certain views that sometimes tend toward the principle of plenitude, and sometimes toward the doctrine of the best possible world, and here one can discern a principle that is distinctly theological. (shrink)

Thought of al-Kindi, the Arab philosopher, on Islamic philosophy and their influence on Malaysian and Indonesian Muslim intellectuals.

L’article se penche sur l’opposition bi‑l‑majāz vs. bi‑l‑ḥaqīqa qu’on rencontre dans plus d’un traite d’al‑Kindī. Il s’agit de determiner si l’usage qu’en fait al‑Kindī se situe sur le plan lexical, voire semantique, a savoir l’opposition ‛sens propre’ vs. ‛sens figure’ ou devrait plutot se lire sur le plan ontologique, ḥaqīqa s’appliquant alors a tout ce qui est propre a Dieu et majāz a ce qui est cree par lui et donc en derive. S’appuyant sur les conclusions de Wolfhart Heinrichs au (...) sujet de la genese de la dichotomie ḥaqīqa ‑ majāz, l’auteure montre que l’usage qu’al‑Kindī en fait releve de l’ordre ontologique, ce en quoi il s’accorde avec les milieux mu‛tazilites contemporains du philosophe. Cette interpretation est relayee par un temoin plus tardif, a savoir le theologien et philosophe andalou Baḥya Ibn Paqūda dont le traite al‑Hidāya ilā farā’iḍ al‑qulūb fait d’importants emprunts a la Philosophie Premiere d’al‑Kindī. (shrink)

In his day, al-Kindi was the only philosopher of pure Arab descent, and became known as “the philosopher of the Arabs.” He was one of the first Arab scholars interested in a scientific rather than theological viewpoint, and played a key role in bringing Greek learning into the orbit of Islam. al-Kindi wrote over three hundred fifty treatises, for the most part short studies on special topics in science and philosophy. Nicholas Rescher assembles this annotated bibliography, listing of (...) over three hundred items, to assist students and scholars through the maze of publications related to al-Kindi. (shrink)

The Arabic-Islamic tradition is founded on the following new epistemic attitude that reinvents knowledge: to learn from the contributions of previous civilisations through the systematic survey of all extant scientific works; to contribute to the further development of knowledge by linking it, through usefulness, to practice and the practical need of society; to facilitate its learning for younger generations and its transmission to future civilizations since it is conceived not as a finished product but as an ongoing process. The worldwide (...) development of the reinvented knowledge has led to its universalisation and the rapid expansion of mathematics has particularly and led to the complete de-hellinisation of the Greek conception of science and philosophy. (shrink)

In the ninth century, Arabic philosophy was in ferment, and an inquisition of heretics was in process. Al-Kindi, a court scholar, physician, and philosopher functioning at Baghdad, courageously produced, in that context, a treatise, Fi al-Falsafah al-Ula, in which he attempted to unify the philosophical tradition, starting from Aristotle, with basic Islamic concepts. Part One of the treatise is here published for the first time in a non-Arabic language. Al-Kindi, in this treatise, tries to show, by philosophical reasoning, (...) that the world could not have come spontaneously into being ex nihilo, that there must be a unique, eternal being, and that the ad hoc unity and plurality of individual things rest on a prior, creative, self-subsisting, and eternal unity, which is the Ultimate Cause. This volume contains a résumé of al-Kindi studies, a description and analysis of the text, On First Philosophy, a "reevaluation" of al-Kindi’s relation to the Mu'Tazilah sect of Moslem theologians, a translation of On First Philosophy, and a learned passage-by-passage commentary on it, with perspicuous discussions of nuances in Arabic terminology. This is primarily a book for medieval specialists, but students of ontology and theology will find some of al-Kindi’s argumentation relevant to their concerns.—W.G. (shrink)

Al-Kind la littcrivant sur les mcouverte des trcrivit sur ce sujet a survditions et des traductions de l'un et l'autre textes, ainsi que les deux traductions latines faites du chapitre dans Les quarantes chapitres et des commentaires de la proce par al-Kindī.

Este artigo procura investigar um encontro bastante curioso de tradições. Neste caso em particular, sobre como uma paráfrase da obra de Plotino, de autoria atribuída a Aristóteles, poderia ter influenciado na elaboração de um esquema argumentativo que, aparentemente, visava utilizar a Herança grega recebida pelos árabes no século VI, em questões inerentes ao contexto de disputa intelectual do Islã nascente. Mais especificamente, nosso trabalho se aprofunda em algumas relações que se pode levantar entre a obra Teologia de Aristóteles, uma paráfrase (...) das Enéadas de Plotino que circulou entre os árabes do período, e a Filosofia Primeira de Al-Kindi, famosa obra inacabada, cuja primeira parte (texto que nos chegou), se destina a apontar como a investigação dos fundamentos da natureza leva a compreensão do que ele chama de "Um Verdadeiro", o princípio que sustenta todo o Universo como seu fundamento criador. Embora inacabada, a primeira parte desta obra de Al-Kindi já indica sua inclinação em utilizar elementos da Teologia de Aristóteles no sentido de elaborar o que podemos chamar de uma prova da existência de Deus. Palavras-chave: Teologia, Unidade, Multiplicidade, Falsafa, Filosofia primeira. (shrink)

A translation and commentary on al-Kindi's “On First Philosophy,” a seminal work of early Islamic thought.

Al Kindi was, according to Rescher, one of the first of the Medieval Arabian philosophers who took science rather than theology as the locus for his philosophical efforts. Rescher's well-ordered bibliography is meant to provide the most essential part of the research apparatus for the as-yet-unwritten comprehensive study of Al-Kindi and the place of his work in the history of philosophy.—E. A. R.

The Arabic-Islamic tradition is founded on the following new epistemic attitude that reinvents knowledge: to learn from the contributions of previous civilisations through the systematic survey of all extant scientific works; to contribute to the further development of knowledge by linking it, through usefulness, to practice and the practical need of society; to facilitate its learning for younger generations and its transmission to future civilizations since it is conceived not as a finished product but as an ongoing process. The worldwide (...) development of the reinvented knowledge has led to its universalisation and the rapid expansion of mathematics has particularly and led to the complete de-hellinisation of the Greek conception of science and philosophy. (shrink)

On the life and eminence of Kindī, d. ca. 873, noted Muslim philosopher, mathematician, physicist from Iraq.

Al-Kindlidlid's œ;uvre. Two appendixes give respectively details of the manuscripts of the Arabic text and the two Latin translations, and an edition of a specimen chapter from these three versions.

The author examines the relationship between mathematics and philosophy in the works of al-Kind on the approximation of 's knowledge of mathematics, and on the history of the transmission of The Measurement of the Circle of Archimedes. The author shows that al-Kind M, and that it was one of the sources of the Florence Versions, the Latin commentary on the same proposition.