Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings

by Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Editor)

Although strongly influenced by Greek thought, Islamic philosophers also developed an original philosophical culture of their own which flourished from the ninth through the fourteenth century. This volume offers new translations of philosophical writings by Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). A historical and philosophical introduction sets the writings in context and traces their preoccupations and their achievements.

Genres: Philosophy, Islam, Religion, Nonfiction, Medieval, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2005

About the author

Muhammad Ali Khalidi is a Palestinian philosopher. He earns his Ph.D., Philosophy, from Columbia University and
M.A., Philosophy, from Columbia University
B.S., Physics, from American University of Beirut.

He is a Presidential Professor of Philosophy at City
University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Before that, he was Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto. He has also taught at the American University of Beirut, University of Nevada at Reno, and (as a post-doc) at the University of Chicago and Columbia University.


His main areas of research are in the philosophy of science (with an emphasis on cognitive science) and the philosophy of mind. He has been particularly focused on analyzing mental phenomena such as: memory, concepts, and innateness, and what role they play in contemporary cognitive science. He is also interested in scientific classification schemes and in the means of distinguishing artificial categories from real ones in both the natural and social sciences.

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as one must protect unskilled swimmers from perilous shores, people must be shielded from reading philosophical books.

For a long time, I’ve been bothered by the tremendous gap in my philosophical reading. Most of the medieval period is simply a blank for me, an intermission that stretches from Boethius (480 – 524) to St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274). Part of the problem is that, for a variety of reasons, in most of Europe not much notable philosophy was being written in the years following the collapse of the Roman Empire; the major Christian philosophical project, scholasticism, didn’t get on its feet until St. Anselm (1093 – 1109) started writing. But another problem is that, owing to Western provincialism, most of the good philosophy written during these years isn’t read nowadays, because it was written by Muslims.

This collection was expressly put together to rectify this situation, and it does the job admirably. Now, instead of an enormous gap, I can move comfortably from Boethius to Al-Farabi (872 – 950), to Ibn-Sina, or Avicenna (980 – 1037), to Al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111), to Ibn Tufail (1105 – 1185), and finally to Ibn Rushd, or Averroes (1126 – 1198). This progression completes not only the temporal picture, but has the geographic advantage of leading from Baghdad to the Iberian Peninsula. We thus see the trajectory through which the works of Aristotle, preserved in Arabic translation, as well as copious commentary on Aristotle’s works, entered Europe, where they later gained ascendency.

The editor and translator of this volume, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, put it together for non-specialists. He made his selection with the hopes of showing the relevance of these thinkers to contemporary philosophical questions; but he also hoped to show something of the cultural significance of these philosophers. None of the selections is very long, and none is very difficult. It is a mere tasting, not a feast. For me, it was perfect, since I have only a layman’s interest in the subject.

My interest was ignited in medieval Islamic culture through my visits to Andalusia, where I was continually astounded by the beauty of Moorish architecture. If a culture was vibrant enough to build the Great Mosque in Cordoba, I figured, then they must have had some excellent thinkers too—which they certainly did.

In what follows are my brief summaries and reactions to each of the pieces in this collection. But before that, I want to add my reflections on the whole. What most struck me during my reading was how familiar were the styles and ideas. Truly, medieval Islamic philosophy does not represent some alien tradition, or a mere curiosity, nor were these philosophers mere preservers of the Greeks; rather, they should be regarded as an integral part of western philosophical history.

The fact that we still read Aquinas but seldom Maimonides and rarely Averroes has little to do with merit, and more to do with religious allegiance. All three of these traditions were engaged in similar philosophical projects—namely, the harmonization of faith with reason, relying heavily on Aristotle. Incidentally, I can’t help thinking that the persistent Islamophobia (and Anti-Semitism) in the West would be less virulent if history were not taught in such a fashion that the contributions of Jews and Muslims to European culture were not so deemphasized. But I suppose that’s another matter.

Al-Farabi. Like nearly everyone in this collection, Al-Farabi was a polymath, writing not only on philosophy, but on music, math, science, and cosmology. But he is perhaps most important for being one of the first and most prominent Muslim philosophers to elevate Aristotle as the epitome of reason. His work in this collection is taken from The Book of Letters. It puts forward a schematic philosophy of history, during which he lays out what he considers the essential stages of historical development. Most striking is Al-Farabi’s elevation of philosophy. According to him, nearly every other discipline, practical or theoretical, stems from philosophy. Even religion takes second place. In Al-Farabi’s opinion, prophets do not access supernatural knowledge, but merely transform the insights of philosophers into metaphorical garb, so that common people can understand them. Indeed, for Al-Farabi almost all religion is just popularized, allegorized, simplified philosophy—Aristotelianism for the people, you might say.

Avicenna. Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, is the Thomas Aquinas of Islamic philosophy, except perhaps greater. An astounding polymath, he not only wrote encyclopedias of science and philosophy, but an encyclopedia of medicine that was still being used in Renaissance Italy. Like Aquinas, and like Aristotle himself, Avicenna was a great systematizer. He had a prosaic, orderly, and remarkably capacious mind, allowing him to compose encyclopedic works in many disparate subjects. In this collection is the short work, On the Soul, which is an investigation into the capacities of the human mind, with a special emphasis on epistemology. Unlike Al-Farabi, Avicenna didn’t consider prophets to be popularizers, but a kind of super-philosopher whose intellects intuit things faster than other people's.

Al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali probably wouldn’t like being called a philosopher. He was, rather, a mystic who wrote against philosophy. Included in this collection is his Rescuer from Errors, which is a sort of intellectual autobiography. In it, he describes a crisis of faith he experienced when he realized that his religion was mere conformity. After doubting everything, he proceeded to study theology, which he found inadequate, and then philosophy, which he found slightly better, and eventually settled on being a mystic. This was by far my favorite work in this collection. Al-Ghazali is an excellent writer, and his procedure of radical doubt can’t help but remind one of Descartes. Indeed, if you’re inclined to doubt the existence of the world, becoming a mystic might be a more rational solution than the one Descartes settled upon.

Ibn Tufail. Ibn Tufail (sometimes called Abubekar) was born in Moorish Spain, near Granada. In addition to being a philosopher, he was a novelist, physician, and court official during his lifetime. (Reading the biographies of these guys makes you really mourn the rise of specialization.) He contributes the longest section to this book, in the form of Hayy bin Yaqzan. Not exactly a work of philosophy, it is rather the description of a man born and raised in social isolation on a deserted island. The titular character, using nothing but his cleverness, manages to deduce the entirety of Aristotelian thought, and eventually becomes a mystic. I suppose this story was meant to demonstrate that revealed religion wasn’t necessary to reach the truth, but that a monotheistic mysticism could be deduced from experience. I found it quite unconvincing.

Averroes. Averroes, or Ibn Rushd, was born in Córdoba (the same city where Seneca and Maimonides were born), and was perhaps the greatest Muslim philosopher after Avicenna. Interestingly, Averroes’s influence was bigger in Christian Europe than in Islam, because many of his key positions were seen as heretical. After his death came the trend known as Averroism, which held, among other things, that the individual soul is not eternal, only the universal soul which every individual shares. In this collection we find his The Incoherence of the Incoherence, a work written in refutation of Al-Ghazali’s work The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Al-Ghazali attempted to demonstrate that belief in causes and natural laws was heretical; there are no laws, Al-Ghazali held, and no causes except the direct intervention of God. Averroes quotes Al-Ghazali in extenso, and then argues against him point by point. The final effect is of a real debate, since Al-Ghazali anticipated many of the rejections that Averroes brought against him.

Well, that’s it for my review. I hope I’ve at least convinced you that there is a lot of historical and philosophical value in these pages, and in Islamic philosophy generally.

[Jared Tobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent read. Not all of its content was excellent (i.e., the actual excerpts from the selected Muslim philosophers, which I thought varied in quality), but the the translation appears to be of extremely high quality, the editor's commentary throughout is second-to-none, the introduction is very informative and a pleasure to read, and what has been chosen to include in this volume seems to be appropriately representative of this school of thought.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) were the only two medieval Muslim philosophers I had really been aware of, but I was not very familiar with their work (I'm still not, of course, but I can now say I've at least read some of it). Al-Farabi and Al-Ghazali I don't think I'd heard of at all. I came away from this book very impressed with Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Al-Ghazali, and relatively unimpressed with Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd. The thought of the first three fellows, in particular, struck me as being of very high quality.

One could perhaps make the argument that Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina picked up where Aristotle left off, writing in much the same fashion and derivative style; but Al-Ghazali feels like a more hardline and Muslim version of Aquinas -- much more of a theologian in spirit and argument (and with more hubris than one will ever detect from St. Thomas; Al-Ghazali claims that he reached the "utmost limits of philosophy" in less than two years, by reading books in his spare time). I found myself disagreeing with Al-Ghazali aplenty (and vehemently), but maintaining great respect for the quality of his thought at the same time. Al-Ghazali was perhaps thus the most interesting of the lot, since when one disagrees with another's thought, but has respect for his thinking, there is most likely the opportunity to learn something or other.

All in all, an illuminating look into a school of thought that I'd been more or less completely ignorant of. Recommended.

[zinzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

AWESOME. i sweat ibn sina.

[Jacci · Rating 3 out of 5]

My own mental inadequacies prevented me from rating this collection any higher.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection gathers excerpts from al-Fārābī's The Book of Letters, Ibn Sīnā's On the Soul, al-Ghazālī's The Rescuer From Error, Ibn Ṭufayl's Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān, and Ibn Rushd's The Incoherence of the Incoherence. The al-Fārābī is about the relation between theology and philosophy, and honestly gives a rather boilerplate account, at least at the level of a final "reconcilability" between the two, and that the former provides at the level of symbolic allegory what the latter translates into realist or literalist terms. Ibn Sīnā's is a pseudo-proto-phenomenological neo-Platonist reciphering of Aristotle via the byways of the soul's relation to God via the intellect, and honestly takes the worst inclinations of Platonism (i.e., the hierarchization) and extends them further. al-Ghazālī's is a sort of pseudo-Cartesian problematic solved in the reverse: instead of God's certainty grounding a sort of "rationalist" project, we instead have (prophetic) reflection leading back to faith. Ibn Ṭufayl's is a Robinson Crusoe-esque Bildungsroman on the origin of human life that blends ontogeny and phylogeny. Finally, Ibn Rushd responds to al-Ghazālī's critiques, mostly on causation and its relation to miracles. What is most frustrating regarding the above is that they largely fall into the trap that most medieval philosophy does, which is a tendency towards a certain "Scholasticism" which takes as its aim the smoothing out of certain apparent contradictions via intellectual reasoning or reflection. I simply don't adhere to the principle that this is philosophy's vocation, though you can see the afterlife of this approach in modern analytical approaches. And beyond wanting to cover some of the largest figures within the topic this collection takes into consideration, it is unclear what else groups these particular texts together, or if there is some greater narrative thread to be pulled out from their inclusion alongside each other. As a sampler, I suppose it provides a decent overview of the styles of writing one encounters within this realm, the methodologies utilized, as well as some of the major preoccupations of the field, if little else.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very challenging reading for my Middle Ages. Taking a class really helps.

[Yvonne O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Read for class

More like the Tufayl text we read last quarter, this talked about the different levels of Sufism and the goals inherent to each level.

Another text that was near impossible to get through. Without a real context of how Sufism fits into the larger picture of the Shi-ites and Sunnis, this text is just too much for the average reader and you need a companion guide (like you would with Ulysses to really get into things) to really learn anything about Sufism from this book.