alt=Illustration of various old men discussing and reading books.|thumb|The [[Brethren of Purity were a medieval secret society, consisting of Islamic philosophers, here seen in an illustration from the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, .]]
Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa (), which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and physics; and kalam (), which refers to a rationalist form of Scholastic Islamic theology which includes the schools of Ash'arism, Maturidism and Mu'tazilism.
Early Islamic philosophy began with al-Kindi in the 2nd century of the Islamic calendar (early 9th century CE) and declined with Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in the 6th century AH (late 12th century CE), broadly coinciding with the period known as the Islamic Golden Age. The death of Ibn Rushd effectively marked the end of a specific discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Islamic peripatetic school, and philosophical activity declined significantly in the west of the Islamic world, including al-Andalus and the Maghreb.
Islamic philosophy persisted for much longer in the east of the Islamic world, particularly in Safavid Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mughal Empire, where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish: Avicennism, Averroism, Illuminationism, mystical philosophy, transcendent theosophy, and the school of Isfahan. Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, made important contributions to the philosophy of history. Interest in Islamic philosophy revived during the Nahda ("Awakening") movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and continues to the present day.
Islamic philosophy had a major impact in Christian Europe, where translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics.
Hans Daiber’s Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy lists approximately 9 525 works (books and articles) on Islamic philosophy up to 1998, covering both primary sources and secondary literature in Western and non-Western languages. A later Supplement (2007) adds over 3 000 additional books and articles to the original bibliography.
Introduction
Islamic philosophy refers to philosophy produced in an Islamic society. As it is not necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor exclusively produced by Muslims, many scholars prefer the term "Arabic philosophy."
Islamic philosophy is a generic term that can be defined and used in different ways. In its broadest sense it means the world view of Islam, as derived from the Islamic texts concerning the creation of the universe and the will of the Creator. In another sense it refers to any of the schools of thought that flourished under the Islamic empire or in the shadow of the Arab-Islamic culture and Islamic civilization. In its narrowest sense it is a translation of Falsafa, meaning those particular schools of thought that most reflect the influence of Greek systems of philosophy such as Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism.
Some schools of thought within Islam deny the usefulness or legitimacy of philosophical inquiry. Some argue that there is no indication that the limited knowledge and experience of humans can lead to truth. It is also important to observe that, while "reason" (aql) is sometimes recognised as a source of Islamic law, it has been claimed that this has a totally different meaning from "reason" in philosophy.
The historiography of Islamic philosophy is marked by disputes as to how the subject should be properly interpreted. Some of the key issues involve the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, and also whether Islamic philosophy can be read at face value or should be interpreted in an esoteric fashion. Supporters of the latter thesis, like Leo Strauss, maintain that Islamic philosophers wrote so as to conceal their true meaning in order to avoid religious persecution, but scholars such as Oliver Leaman disagree.
Formative influences
The main sources of classical or early Islamic philosophy are the religion of Islam itself (especially ideas derived and interpreted from the Quran) and Greek philosophy which the early Muslims inherited as a result of conquests, along with pre-Islamic Indian philosophy and Persian philosophy. Many of the early philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason, the latter exemplified by Greek philosophy.
Early Islamic philosophy
200px|thumb|An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting [[Socrates (Soqrāt) in discussion with his pupils]]
In early Islamic thought, which refers to philosophy during the "Islamic Golden Age", traditionally dated between the 8th and 12th centuries, two main currents may be distinguished. The first is Kalam, which mainly dealt with Islamic theological questions, and the other is Falsafa, which was founded on interpretations of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. There were attempts by later philosopher-theologians at harmonizing both trends, notably by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who founded the school of Avicennism, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who founded the school of Averroism, and others such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī.
Kalam
ʿIlm al-Kalām () is Islamic theology that seeks to establish principles through dialectical reasoning. In Arabic, the word literally means "speech".
One of the first debates was that between partisans of the Qadar ( meaning "Fate"), who affirmed free will; and the Jabarites ( meaning "force", "constraint"), who believed in fatalism.
At the 2nd century of the Hijra, a new movement arose in the theological school of Basra, Iraq. A pupil of Hasan of Basra, Wasil ibn Ata, left the group when he disagreed with his teacher on whether a Muslim who has committed a major sin invalidates his faith. He systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites and Jabarites. This new school was called Mu'tazilite (from i'tazala, to separate oneself).
The Mu'tazilites looked in towards a strict rationalism with which to interpret Islamic doctrine. Their attempt was one of the first to pursue a rational theology in Islam. They were however severely criticized by other Islamic philosophers, both Maturidis and Asharites. The great Asharite scholar Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi wrote the work Al-Mutakallimin fi 'Ilm al-Kalam against the Mutazalites.
In later times, Kalam was used to mean simply "theology", i.e. the duties of the heart as opposed to (or in conjunction with) fiqh (jurisprudence), the duties of the body.
Falsafa
Falsafa is a Greek loanword meaning "philosophy" (the Greek pronunciation philosophia became falsafa). From the 9th century onward, due to Caliph al-Ma'mun and his successor, ancient Greek philosophy was introduced among the Arabs and the Peripatetic School began to find able representatives. Among them were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes. Another trend, represented by the Brethren of Purity, used Aristotelian language to present a primarily Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean worldview.
During the Abbasid caliphate, a number of thinkers and scientists, some of them heterodox Muslims or non-Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. Three speculative thinkers, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.
Ahmad Sirhindi held the view that the Greek philosophical view of creation was incompatible with Islamic teachings. Furthermore, he criticized the use of philosophical methods in Quranic interpretation.
End of the classical period
By the 12th century, Kalam, attacked by both the philosophers and the orthodox, perished for lack of champions. At the same time, however, Falsafa came under serious critical scrutiny. The most devastating attack came from Al-Ghazali, whose work Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) attacked the main arguments of the Peripatetic School.
Averroes, Maimonides' contemporary, was one of the last of the Islamic Peripatetics and set out to defend the views of the Falsafa against al-Ghazali's criticism. The theories of Ibn Rushd do not differ fundamentally from those of Ibn Bajjah and Ibn Tufail, who only follow the teachings of Avicenna and Al-Farabi. Like all Islamic Peripatetics, Averroes admits the hypothesis of the intelligence of the spheres and the hypothesis of universal emanation, through which motion is communicated from place to place to all parts of the universe as far as the supreme world—hypotheses which, in the mind of the Arabic philosophers, did away with the dualism involved in Aristotle's doctrine of pure energy and eternal matter.
But while Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and other Persian and Muslim philosophers hurried, so to speak, over subjects that trenched on traditional beliefs, Ibn Rushd delighted in dwelling upon them with full particularity and stress. Thus he says, "Not only is matter eternal, but form is potentially inherent in matter; otherwise, it were a creation ex nihilo" (Munk, "Mélanges," p. 444). According to this theory, therefore, the existence of this world is not only a possibility, as Avicenna declared, but also a necessity.
Logic
In early Islamic philosophy, logic played an important role. Sharia (Islamic law) placed importance on formulating standards of argument, which gave rise to a novel approach to logic in Kalam, but this approach was later displaced by ideas from Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy with the rise of the Mu'tazili philosophers, who highly valued Aristotle's Organon. The works of Hellenistic-influenced Islamic philosophers were crucial in the reception of Aristotelian logic in medieval Europe, along with the commentaries on the Organon by Averroes. The works of al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali and other Muslim logicians who often criticized and corrected Aristotelian logic and introduced their own forms of logic, also played a central role in the subsequent development of European logic during the Renaissance.
According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Important developments made by Muslim logicians included the development of "Avicennian logic" as a replacement of Aristotelian logic. Avicenna's system of logic was responsible for the introduction of hypothetical syllogism, temporal modal logic and inductive logic. Other important developments in early Islamic philosophy include the development of a strict science of citation, the isnad or "backing", and the development of a method to disprove claims, the ijtihad, which was generally applied to many types of questions.
Logic in Islamic law and theology
Early forms of analogical reasoning, inductive reasoning and categorical syllogism were introduced in Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), Sharia and Kalam (Islamic theology) from the 7th century with the process of Qiyas, before the Arabic translations of Aristotle's works. Later, during the Islamic Golden Age, there was debate among Islamic philosophers, logicians and theologians over whether the term Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning, inductive reasoning or categorical syllogism. Some Islamic scholars argued that Qiyas refers to inductive reasoning. Ibn Hazm (994–1064) disagreed, arguing that Qiyas does not refer to inductive reasoning but to categorical syllogistic reasoning in a real sense and analogical reasoning in a metaphorical sense. On the other hand, al-Ghazali (1058–1111; and, in modern times, Abu Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi) argued that Qiyas refers to analogical reasoning in a real sense and categorical syllogism in a metaphorical sense. Other Islamic scholars at the time, however, argued that the term Qiyas refers to both analogical reasoning and categorical syllogism in a real sense.
Aristotelian logic
The first original Arabic writings on logic were produced by al-Kindi (Alkindus) (805–873), who produced a summary on earlier logic up to his time. The first writings on logic with non-Aristotelian elements was produced by al-Farabi (Alfarabi) (873–950), who discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. He is also credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being "idea" and the second being "proof".
Averroes (1126–1198), author of the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic, was the last major logician from al-Andalus.
Avicennian logic
Avicenna (980–1037) developed his own system of logic known as "Avicennian logic" as an alternative to Aristotelian logic. By the 12th century, Avicennian logic had replaced Aristotelian logic as the dominant system of logic in the Islamic world.
The first criticisms of Aristotelian logic were written by Avicenna (980–1037), who produced independent treatises on logic rather than commentaries. He criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to Aristotle at the time. He investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions, and developed an original theory on "temporal modal" syllogism. Its premises included modifiers such as "at all times", "at most times", and "at some time".
While Avicenna (980–1037) often relied on deductive reasoning in philosophy, he used a different approach in medicine. Ibn Sina contributed inventively to the development of inductive logic, which he used to pioneer the idea of a syndrome. In his medical writings, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method.
Ibn Hazm (994–1064) wrote the Scope of Logic, in which he stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge. Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111) had an important influence on the use of logic in theology, making use of Avicennian logic in Kalam. and in favour of inductive reasoning.
Metaphysics
Cosmological and ontological arguments
Avicenna's proof for the existence of God was the first ontological argument, which he proposed in the Metaphysics section of The Book of Healing. This was the first attempt at using the method of a priori proof, which utilizes intuition and reason alone. Avicenna's proof of God's existence is unique in that it can be classified as both a cosmological argument and an ontological argument. "It is ontological insofar as ‘necessary existence’ in intellect is the first basis for arguing for a Necessary Existent". The proof is also "cosmological insofar as most of it is taken up with arguing that contingent existents cannot stand alone and must end up in a Necessary Existent."
Essence and existence
Theologians, particularly among the Muʿtazilites, agreed with Aristotelian metaphysics that non-existence is a thing (s̲h̲ayʾ) and an entity (d̲h̲āt). According to Aristotelian philosophy, non-existence has to be distinguished by absolute non-existence, that is absolute nothingness, and relative non-existence. The latter can refer to the absence of a quality or the potentiality of something. Muʿtazilite thinkers such as al-Fārābī and ibn Sīnā hold the position that things had a relative existence prior to creation. God knew what he was going to create and God gave them the accident of existence. Contrarily, Asharites regard existence as essence.
Islamic philosophy, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism the difference between essence and existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. This was first described by Avicenna's works on metaphysics, who was himself influenced by al-Farabi.
Some orientalists (or those particularly influenced by Thomist scholarship) argued that Avicenna was the first to view existence (wujud) as an accident that happens to the essence (mahiyya). However, this aspect of ontology is not the most central to the distinction that Avicenna established between essence and existence. One cannot therefore make the claim that Avicenna was the proponent of the concept of essentialism per se, given that existence (al-wujud) when thought of in terms of necessity would ontologically translate into a notion of the "Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself" (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi), which is without description or definition and, in particular, without quiddity or essence (la mahiyya lahu). Consequently, Avicenna's ontology is 'existentialist' when accounting for being–qua–existence in terms of necessity (wujub), while it is essentialist in terms of thinking about being–qua–existence in terms of "contingency–qua–possibility" (imkan or mumkin al-wujud, meaning "contingent being").
Some argue that Avicenna anticipated Frege and Bertrand Russell in "holding that existence is an accident of accidents" and also anticipated Alexius Meinong's "view about nonexistent objects." He also provided early arguments for "a "necessary being" as cause of all other existents."
The idea of "essence preced[ing] existence" is a concept which dates back to Avicenna and his Illuminationist philosophy. "[[Existence precedes essence|Existence preced[ing] essence]]", the opposite (existentialist) notion, was developed in the works of Averroes
----->
Resurrection
Ibn al-Nafis wrote the Theologus Autodidactus as a defense of "the system of Islam and the Muslims' doctrines on the missions of Prophets, the religious laws, the resurrection of the body, and the transitoriness of the world." The book presents rational arguments for bodily resurrection and the immortality of the human soul, using both demonstrative reasoning and material from the hadith corpus as forms of evidence. Later Islamic scholars viewed this work as a response to Avicenna's metaphysical argument on spiritual resurrection (as opposed to bodily resurrection), which was earlier criticized by al-Ghazali.
Soul and spirit
The Muslim physician-philosophers, Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis, developed their own theories on the soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and in particular, the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics. Some of Avicenna's views on the soul included the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.
Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis (Ibn al-Nafis), Islamic philosophers and physicians who followed Aristotle, put forward a different theory about the soul than Aristotle's, and made a distinction between soul (In. spirit) and soul (In. soul). [32] Especially Avicenna's teaching on the nature of the soul had a great influence on the Scholastics. According to Ibn Sina, the soul is a spiritual substance separate from the body, it uses the body as a tool. The famous example given by Ibn Sina to show that the soul is a spiritual substance separate from the material body and to show one's self-awareness, is known as "insan-i tair" (flying person) and was used throughout the West in the Middle Ages. In this example, he asks his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the sky (in the air), without any sensory contact, isolated from all sensations: The person in this state is still realizing himself even though there is no material contact. In that case, the idea that the soul (person) is dependent on matter, that is, any physical object, does not make sense, and the soul is a substance on its own. (Here, the concept of “I exist even though I am not in the dense-rough matter of the world” is treated.) This "proving by reflection" study by Ibn Sina was later simplified by René Descartes and expressed in epistemological terms as follows: “I can isolate myself from all supposed things outside of me, but I can never (abstract) from my own consciousness”. According to Ibn Sina, immortality of the soul is not a goal, but a necessity and consequence of its nature.
Avicenna generally supported Aristotle's idea of the soul originating from the heart, whereas Ibn al-Nafis on the other hand rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs." He further criticized Aristotle's idea that every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Ibn al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying ‘I’."
Thought experiments
While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. He referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. His "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance.
This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."
Truth
In metaphysics, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth as:
Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth in his Metaphysics:
In his Quodlibeta, Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on Avicenna's definition of truth in his Metaphysics and explained it as follows: