The Islamic world · c. 830 – 12th c.
Falsafa (Arabic Aristotelianism)
Greek philosophy, mainly Aristotle with a Neoplatonic frame, is the highest form of human knowledge, and its demonstrated truths agree with the inner meaning of revelation.
Can demonstrative reason reach the truths revelation teaches in images?
Under the Abbasid caliphs, translators in Baghdad rendered much of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic from the 8th to 10th centuries. A line of philosophers absorbed this corpus and built systems that rivalled the theologians’ kalām.
Everything that exists either exists necessarily or only possibly; possible things need a cause, and the chain must end in a Necessary Existent, which is God. From God the world flows eternally through a hierarchy of intellects, the lowest of which illuminates human minds.
- God is the Necessary Existent, the cause of all else.
- The world proceeds eternally from God through intellects.
- Philosophy and true religion express one truth differently.
Latin translations of Avicenna and Averroes transformed medieval European philosophy; in the Islamic East, Avicenna’s system remained the backbone of philosophy for centuries.
Thinkers
c. 801–873Al-KindīBaghdad polymath called “the philosopher of the Arabs”c. 870–950Al-FārābīLogician called the “Second Teacher” after Aristotle980–1037Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)Persian physician-philosopher, the most influential Islamic philosopherc. 1105–1185Ibn ṬufaylAndalusian court physician and philosophical novelist1126–1198Ibn Rushd (Averroes)Córdoban judge, known in Europe simply as “the Commentator”Key texts
Where it came from
Grew out ofAristotelianismThe falāsifa saw themselves as continuing Aristotle, “the First Teacher”, working from Arabic translations of nearly his whole corpus.Borrowed from
NeoplatonismThe so-called Theology of Aristotle, actually a paraphrase of Plotinus, gave Arabic philosophy its picture of the world emanating from the One.Borrowed from
PlatonismAl-Fārābī modelled his virtuous city and its philosopher-ruler on Plato’s Republic.
What it led to
Borrowed byScholasticismLatin translations made in Toledo and elsewhere brought Avicenna’s essence–existence distinction and Averroes’ commentaries into the universities.Carried on by
Latin AverroismParis arts masters adopted Averroes’ reading of Aristotle, including a single intellect for all humankind.Borrowed by
Medieval Jewish philosophyMaimonides worked within the Aristotelianism of al-Fārābī and Avicenna, and urged his translator to read al-Fārābī above all.Opposed by
Kalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)Al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers attacked Avicenna’s eternal world and necessary causation, while later kalām absorbed philosophical logic.Opposed by
Illuminationism & Transcendent TheosophySuhrawardī began as an Avicennan but rejected the Peripatetic theory of definition and replaced abstraction with knowledge by presence.