Author: Dimitri Gutas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000226220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Professor Gutas deals here with the lives, sayings, thought, and doctrines of Greek philosophers drawn from sources preserved in medieval Arabic translations and for the most part not extant in the original. The Arabic texts, some of which are edited here for the first time, are translated throughout and richly annotated with the purpose of making the material accessible to classical scholars and historians of ancient and medieval philosophy. Also discussed are the modalities of transmission from Greek into Arabic, the diffusion of the translated material within the Arabic tradition, the nature of the Arabic sources containing the material, and methodological questions relating to Graeco-Arabic textual criticism. The philosophers treated include the Presocratics and minor schools such as Cynicism, Plato, Aristotle and the early Peripatos, and thinkers of late antiquity. A final article presents texts on the malady of love drawn from both the medical and philosophical (problemata physica) traditions.
Author: Ahmed Alwishah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107101735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
Examines Aristotle's vast influence upon the medieval Arabic philosophical tradition and includes contributions from every discipline within his corpus.
Author: Sophia Vasalou
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198842821
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
There are few ideals of character as distinctive and divisive as the ancient virtue of 'greatness of soul'. A larger-than-life virtue embodying nothing less than a vision of human greatness, it has often been seen as a relic of the Homeric world and its honour-loving heroes. In philosophy, it found its most celebrated expression in Aristotle's ethics, and it has lived on in the minds of philosophers and theologians in different forms ever since. Yet among the many lives this virtue has led in intellectual history, one remains conspicuously unwritten. This is the life it led in the Arabic tradition. A virtue of Greek warriors and their democratic epigones -- what happened when this splendid virtue made landfall in the Islamic world? This world, too, had its native heroes, who bequeathed their conception of extraordinary virtue to posterity. Heroic virtue is above all expressed in a boundless aspiration to what is greatest. Could we admire such virtue enough to want it as our own? What can we learn from the Arabic tradition of the virtues? In answering these questions, Sophia Vasalou elucidates a larger family of virtues that are united by their preoccupation with all things great: the 'virtues of greatness'. An important constituent of the character ideals expounded within the Islamic world, this type of virtue tells us as much about the content of these ideals as about their kaleidoscopic genealogies.
Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107494699
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
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 (such as al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes) 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.
Author: Frank Griffel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190886323
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 665
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Book Description
In recent decades, scholars have come to recognize the importance of classical Islamic philosophy both in its own right and in its preservation of and engagement with Western philosophical ideas. At the same time, the period immediately following the so-called classical period has often beenseen as 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 ofscholars.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 endedduring that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalam). Griffel argues that even this view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kalam, Muslim theologians pickedup the discourse of philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books on philosophy. Books in these two genres, kalam and philosophy, argue for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world's creation, and on the afterlife - even when written by the same authors. Griffel explains theemergence of a new genre of philosophical books called "hikma," works that stand opposed to Islamic theology and at the same wish to complement it. Offering a detailed history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century, together with an analysis of the way philosophywas practiced during this time, Griffel shows how works of falsafa, written by major Muslim theologians such as al-Ghazali developed step-by-step into critical assessments of philosophy that try to improve philosophical teachings, and eventually become fully fledged philosophical summas in the workof Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Griffel's examination of the different methods of kalam and hikma demonstrate both the coherence and ambiguity of a Muslim post-classical philosopher's oeuvre.A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Philosophy or the history of Islam.
Author:
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603840338
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
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.
Author: Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546173
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
What does it mean to be a Muslim philosopher, or to philosophize in Islam? In Open to Reason, Souleymane Bachir Diagne traces Muslims’ intellectual and spiritual history of examining and questioning beliefs and arguments to show how Islamic philosophy has always engaged critically with texts and ideas both inside and outside its tradition. Through a rich reading of classical and modern Muslim philosophers, Diagne explains the long history of philosophy in the Islamic world and its relevance to crucial issues of our own time. From classical figures such as Avicenna to the twentieth-century Sufi master and teacher of tolerance Tierno Bokar Salif Tall, Diagne explores how Islamic thinkers have asked and answered such questions as Does religion need philosophy? How can religion coexist with rationalism? What does it mean to interpret a religious narrative philosophically? What does it mean to be human, and what are human beings’ responsibilities to nature? Is there such a thing as an “Islamic” state, or should Muslims reinvent political institutions that suit their own times? Diagne shows that philosophizing in Islam in its many forms throughout the centuries has meant a commitment to forward and open thinking. A remarkable history of philosophy in the Islamic world as well as a work of philosophy in its own right, this book seeks to contribute to the revival of a spirit of pluralism rooted in Muslim intellectual and spiritual traditions.
Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Explores a range of sources for texts from the classical period of Arabic philosophy, and also the influence exerted by these texts. This volume focuses on the influences felt by, and exerted by, the four main philosophers of this period: al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes.
Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000946967
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
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. In a first section, Adamson provides general studies of the ’formative’ period of philosophy in the Islamic world, discussing the Arabic reception of Aristotle and of his commentators. He also argues that this formative period was characterized not just by the use of Hellenic materials, but also by a productive exchange of ideas between Greek-inspired ’philosophy (falsafa)’ and Islamic theology (kalÄm). A second section considers the underappreciated philosophical impact of Galen, using Arabic sources to understand Galen himself, and exploring the thought of the doctor and philosopher al-RÄzī, who drew on Galen as a chief inspiration. A third section looks at al-FÄrÄbī and the so-called ’Baghdad school’ of the 10th century, examining their reaction to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, his epistemology, and his famous deterministic ’sea battle’ argument. A final group of papers is devoted to Avicenna’s philosophy, which marks the beginning of a new era of philosophy in the Islamic world.
Author: Dimitri Gutas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134926359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
From the middle of the eighth century to the tenth century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, including such diverse topics as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were not available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture explores the major social, political and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids', during the first two centuries of their rule. Dimitri Gutas draws upon the preceding historical and philological scholarship in Greco-Arabic studies and the study of medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic and analyses the social and historical reasons for this phenomenon. Dimitri Gutas provides a stimulating, erudite and well-documented survey of this key movement in the transmission of ancient Greek culture to the Middle Ages.
