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Philosophy in the Islamic World

Falsafa is a borrowed word, and those who used it said so. The encyclopaedist al-Khwārizmī wrote in his Keys of the Sciences (Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm): “Falsafa is derived from a Greek word, fīlāsūfiyā, which means love of wisdom; when it was Arabised one said faylasūf, and falsafa was then derived from it. The meaning of falsafa is knowledge of the realities of things and acting by what is best.” Ibn Khaldūn called those who held that the whole of existence could be known “by mental speculation and intellectual reasoning” “‘philosophers’ falasifah, plural of faylasuf – which is Greek and means ‘lover of wisdom’” (Muqaddimah VI, tr. Rosenthal). Beside the borrowed word stood a native one, ḥikma, wisdom, a Qurʾānic word: “whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been given much good” (2:269, tr. Saheeh International). Beside it stood kalām, the theologians’ reasoned defence of the creed, whose name al-Taftāzānī explained among other ways as a science that had become “so to speak, ‘the speech’ (al-kalam) to the exclusion of all other sciences” (tr. Elder).

The tradition also sorted kinds of knowing. al-Ghazālī: “Certainty reached by demonstration is knowledge (ʿilm); actual acquaintance with that ‘state’ is immediate experience (dhawq); the acceptance of it as probable from hearsay and trial … is faith (iman). These are three degrees” (Deliverance from Error, tr. Watt). Ibn Khaldūn sorted the sciences into two kinds: “one that is natural to man and to which he is guided by his own ability to think, and a traditional kind that he learns from those who invented it”. In the traditional sciences “There is no place for the intellect … save that the intellect may be used … to relate problems of detail with basic principles”; the intellectual sciences “are not restricted to any particular religious group. They are studied by the people of all religious groups who are all equally qualified to learn them” (VI).

The maps of the sciences place philosophy in different ways. al-Fārābī’s Enumeration of the Sciences (Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm) runs in five chapters, from the science of language and logic through mathematics, physics and metaphysics to political science, jurisprudence and kalām. al-Khwārizmī’s Keys has two discourses, the first “for the sciences of the Law and the Arabic sciences joined to them”, with kalām among them, the second “for the sciences of the foreigners, the Greeks and other nations”, which opens with philosophy, theoretical and practical. Ibn Sīnā divided science into “a theoretical, abstract part and a practical part … the end of the theoretical part is truth, and the end of the practical is the good”, and placed prophecy and the Law within the practical part (tr. Mahdi). The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ) gave philosophy a beginning, a middle and an end: “its beginning is love of the sciences, its middle knowledge of the realities of existing things as far as human capacity allows, and its end speaking and acting in accordance with knowledge” (Epistles 1). The doxographer al-Shahrastānī, surveying the religions and sects (al-Milal wa-l-niḥal), divided people by how they hold a belief: either they take it from another, which is obedience, and “religion is obedience”, or they are “independent in opinion”. “Those wholly independent in opinion, who deny prophecies, are such as the philosophers, the Sabians and the Brahmins; they do not hold to revealed laws, but lay down rational bounds so that they can live together by them.” In the seventeenth century Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s bibliography filed the subject under ʿilm al-ḥikma, the science of wisdom.

The scholars of Timbuktu and Sokoto, who worked within the same sciences, are on The scholars of the Sahel.

The lines

English without a named translator is rendered from the original.

The reception and al-Kindī — how the Greek sciences came, in the tradition’s own accounts; al-Kindī’s truth from wherever it comes; the debate over whether logic is universal or Greek grammar.
Kalām — the theologians’ reasoned defence of the creed in its own definitions, al-Ashʿarī’s defence of it, the philosophers’ verdict on it, and its mixing with philosophy, with Ibn Khaldūn’s refutation of philosophy.
al-Fārābī — philosophy as the science of sciences, the philosopher as ruler, lawgiver and imām, and religion as philosophy’s likeness, later in time.
Ibn Sīnā — the soul as an intelligible world, the two books for colleagues and for the unbiased view, and how he learned.
al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd — the four classes of seekers and the refutation of the philosophers; the Law’s command to study by demonstration and the three kinds of assent.
al-Andalus — Ibn Bājja’s solitary, Ibn Ṭufayl’s tale of Ḥayy, and Maimonides’ guide for the perplexed.
The later ḥikma — Suhrawardī’s wisdom of illumination and his ranks of sages, and Mullā Ṣadrā’s definition of philosophy and his four journeys.
The modern Islamic world — al-Afghānī’s reply to Renan, ʿAbduh, Iqbal’s reconstruction, ʿAbd al-Rāziq’s beginning in jurisprudence, al-Jābirī and Nasr.