Islamic Philosophy

Introduction

Islamic Philosophy is the tradition of rational philosophical inquiry conducted within the Islamic world from the ninth century onward. The tradition preserved the Greek philosophical inheritance through systematic translation (the Translation Movement of the eighth and ninth centuries in Abbasid Baghdad), developed it through original work by al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, Averroes, and many others, and transmitted both the preserved Greek tradition and its Islamic development to medieval Christian Europe through Latin translations and through Hebrew intermediaries. The tradition is one of the major bodies of philosophical work in the medieval world and a foundational source of subsequent European philosophy.

The tradition is conventionally distinguished from Islamic theology (kalām) on the one hand and Islamic mysticism (taṣawwuf / Sufism) on the other, though the relations among the three are complex and the boundaries are not always sharp. Philosophy in this context refers specifically to falsafa — the Arabic transliteration of the Greek philosophia — and to the rational inquiry that takes the Greek philosophical tradition (especially Aristotle, Plato through Neoplatonist intermediaries, Galen, and the late ancient commentators) as its foundational sources and methods.

Founding moment

The foundational period of Islamic Philosophy is the Translation Movement of the eighth and ninth centuries CE in Abbasid Baghdad. The movement was supported by the Abbasid caliphate (especially under al-Ma'mūn, who ruled 813–833 CE) and was conducted through the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Ḥikma) and through private patronage. The translators included figures — Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, his son Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn — who produced Arabic versions of much of the Greek philosophical, medical, and scientific corpus.

The first Islamic philosopher proper is al-Kindī (c. 801–873), known as the Philosopher of the Arabs. His corpus (most now lost) attempted the systematic integration of the inherited Greek philosophical framework with the categories of Islamic theology; the surviving works include the On First Philosophy and treatises on epistemology, the soul, and ethics.

The development of the Islamic philosophical tradition through the tenth and eleventh centuries was the work of al-Fārābī (c. 870–950), known as the Second Teacher (Aristotle being the first). al-Fārābī's commentaries on Aristotle, his original work in logic, his political philosophy (especially the Virtuous City, modeled on Plato's Republic but integrated with Islamic political categories), and his epistemology of the active intellect set the framework within which the subsequent tradition developed.

Avicenna (980–1037) produced the dominant systematic framework of medieval Islamic philosophy. His Kitāb al-Shifā' (Book of Healing) and Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) developed a philosophical synthesis integrating Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, Plotinian emanation, and Islamic theological commitments. The distinction between essence and existence, the proof of God's existence from contingency, the cosmology of the ten intellects, and the doctrine of the active intellect defined the framework within which subsequent Islamic philosophy was conducted.

Core doctrines

Islamic Philosophy is a family of related positions rather than a single doctrine, but the shared commitments are substantial.

1. The compatibility of philosophy and revealed religion. The Islamic philosophers (with qualifications and exceptions) treated the Greek philosophical inheritance as compatible with Islamic revelation; the two are different modes of access to the same truths, with philosophy proceeding by demonstration and revelation proceeding by symbolic and figurative presentation suited to broader audiences.
2. The eternity of the world. Islamic philosophers, following Aristotle, defended the eternity of the world against the theological tradition that held creation to be temporally finite. The al-Ghazālī–Averroes controversy turned on this question.
3. God as Necessary Existent. Avicenna's argument for God's existence proceeds from the structural distinction between essence and existence. Every contingent being has its essence distinct from its existence; the chain of contingent beings must terminate in a Necessary Existent whose essence is to exist. The framework shaped subsequent Islamic and Christian natural theology.
4. The active intellect. Islamic philosophers (especially al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) developed accounts of the active intellect (al-'aql al-fa''āl) — a separate intellectual substance that is the source of forms in nature and of abstractive cognition in human beings.
5. The immortality of the rational soul. Islamic philosophers defended the immortality of the rational soul on philosophical grounds independent of revealed religious commitments. The argument is from the immaterial character of the rational operations of the soul.
6. The doctrine of prophetic philosophy. Islamic philosophers (especially al-Fārābī and the ishrāqī tradition through Suhrawardī) developed accounts of prophecy as a particular kind of intellectual-imaginative perfection — the prophet is the philosopher-statesman who can communicate philosophical truths to broader audiences through symbolic and imaginative means.

Major figures

• al-Kindī (c. 801–873) — the Philosopher of the Arabs; the foundational figure.
• al-Fārābī (c. 870–950) — the Second Teacher; the integration of Aristotle, Plato, and Islamic political philosophy.
• al-Rāzī (Abu Bakr; c. 854–925) — the physician-philosopher; Neoplatonist independent of the al-Fārābī–Avicenna trajectory.
• Avicenna (980–1037) — the dominant systematic philosopher of the medieval Islamic world.
• al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) — the critic of the falāsifa tradition; the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers, c. 1095) shaped the subsequent theological reception of philosophy.
• Ibn Tufayl (c. 1105–1185) — the Andalusian philosopher; the philosophical novel Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān influenced subsequent European thought.
• Averroes (1126–1198) — the Andalusian commentator on Aristotle; the Commentator of the Latin scholastic tradition.
• Suhrawardī (1154–1191) — the founder of the ishrāqī (Illuminationist) tradition; the mystical-philosophical synthesis.
• Ibn 'Arabī (1165–1240) — the Sufi philosophical synthesis; the doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd).
• Mullā Ṣadrā (1571/2–1640) — the seventeenth-century Persian synthesis (ḥikma muta'āliya / Transcendent Wisdom).

Major texts

• al-Kindī, On First Philosophy (extant in fragments)
• al-Fārābī, The Virtuous City (Mabādi' Ārā' Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila); The Book of Letters (Kitāb al-Ḥurūf); the Aristotelian commentaries.
• Avicenna, Kitāb al-Shifā' (Book of Healing); Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation); al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (Pointers and Reminders); al-Qānūn fī'l-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine).
• al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (c. 1095); Iḥyā' 'Ulūm al-Dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences); al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl (Deliverance from Error).
• Averroes, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Incoherence of the Incoherence); Faṣl al-Maqāl (Decisive Treatise); the commentaries on Aristotle.
• Suhrawardī, Hikmat al-Ishrāq (Philosophy of Illumination).
• Ibn 'Arabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Meccan Openings); Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom).
• Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār al-Arba'a (The Four Journeys).

Internal tensions and rival schools

The major internal tension within the Islamic philosophical tradition is the al-Ghazālī–Averroes controversy over the relation between philosophy and revealed religion. al-Ghazālī's Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (c. 1095) attacked twenty theses of the falāsifa tradition (especially the Avicennian version) as incompatible with Islamic orthodoxy; Averroes's Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (c. 1180) replied in detail. The controversy shaped the subsequent theological reception of philosophy in the Sunni world.

The second internal tension is the development of the ishrāqī (Illuminationist) tradition through Suhrawardī and his successors. The Illuminationist tradition modified the Avicennian framework in directions that emphasized intuitive and mystical-experiential knowledge alongside discursive demonstration; the subsequent development through Mullā Ṣadrā produced one of the major bodies of late Islamic philosophical work, especially within the Shi'i tradition.

The third tension is between the Sunni and Shi'i developments of the philosophical tradition. The Sunni reception was shaped by the al-Ghazālī critique; Sunni philosophical work continued through figures like Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), but the institutional framework was less hospitable than in the Shi'i world. The Shi'i reception, especially through the ishrāqī tradition and through Mullā Ṣadrā's seventeenth-century synthesis, sustained philosophical work through the early modern period and into the present.

The great external rivals were kalām (Islamic theology, especially the Ash'arite tradition that became Sunni orthodoxy and was critical of falsafa), the juridical tradition (which emphasized textual rather than rational sources of religious knowledge), and — in the later period — mystical traditions that sometimes engaged philosophy productively and sometimes rejected it.

Legacy

Islamic Philosophy's legacy operates along two distinct historical trajectories.

Within the Islamic world, the tradition continued through Mullā Ṣadrā's seventeenth-century synthesis and through the subsequent Iranian philosophical tradition. The modern Iranian philosophical tradition through Allama Tabataba'i, Henry Corbin's French Iranist scholarship, Seyyed Hossein Nasr's work, and the contemporary Iranian and Iraqi Shi'i philosophical schools (especially at Qom and Najaf) continues to develop the tradition.

Within medieval Europe, the Latin reception of Islamic philosophy through the twelfth-century Toledo translations (especially through Dominicus Gundisalvi and his collaborators) and through subsequent translations made Avicenna, Averroes, and other Islamic philosophers sources for scholasticism. Aquinas's engagement with Avicenna and Averroes, the Latin Averroist tradition through Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, and the Renaissance Aristotelian tradition at Padua all preserved Islamic philosophical influence into the early modern period.

The contemporary engagement is at the intersection of historical recovery and constructive philosophical development. The work of Dimitri Gutas, Peter Adamson (whose Philosophy in the Islamic World, 2016, has been the major recent comprehensive introduction), Sajjad Rizvi, Khaled El-Rouayheb, Robert Wisnovsky, and many others has recovered the Islamic philosophical tradition as a major subject of contemporary scholarship.

Internal debates within the tradition

The defining intramural dispute is the al-Ghazālī–Averroes controversy over the demonstrability of philosophical theses about God, the eternity of the world, divine knowledge of particulars, and bodily resurrection. al-Ghazālī's Tahāfut attacked twenty theses of the falāsifa tradition; Averroes's Tahāfut al-Tahāfut replied in detail. The dispute has been continuously consequential; the subsequent Sunni reception treated philosophy with suspicion, while the Shi'i reception continued the philosophical tradition through Mullā Ṣadrā and beyond.

A second sustained debate concerned the doctrine of the active intellect. al-Fārābī and Avicenna developed the doctrine of the active intellect as a separate intellectual substance; Averroes modified the doctrine in the direction of the unity of the material intellect (the doctrine that human beings share a single material intellect rather than having individual ones). The dispute shaped the subsequent Latin reception, especially through the Aquinas–Averroes controversy over the nature of human cognition.

Third, the dispute over the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of being) divided the post-Avicennian tradition. Ibn 'Arabī's Sufi-philosophical synthesis (developed in the thirteenth century) defended a strong version of the doctrine according to which only God truly exists and all created things are modes of God's existence. The dispute between defenders and critics shaped the subsequent intellectual history of the Islamic world.

Fourth, the relation between philosophy, theology, and mysticism has been continuously contested. al-Ghazālī's synthesis attempted to integrate philosophy, theology, and Sufi mysticism within a theological framework; Suhrawardī's ishrāqī tradition integrated philosophy with mystical-experiential knowledge; Mullā Ṣadrā's seventeenth-century synthesis integrated all three.

Fifth, the question of the relation between Greek philosophy and Islamic categories has been continuously debated. defenders of the Greek philosophical inheritance (especially Avicenna, Averroes, and the Aristotelian tradition) have treated the Greek tradition as compatible with Islamic revelation; critics (especially al-Ghazālī and the Ash'arite theological tradition) have treated portions of the Greek inheritance as incompatible with Islamic orthodoxy and requiring modification or rejection.

Texts and transmission

The transmission of Islamic philosophy operated through several channels. The original Arabic philosophical corpus is substantial; portions of it have been edited in modern critical editions through the work of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy, the various Egyptian, Lebanese, and Iraqi academic publishers, and through Western scholarly editions. portions of the corpus remain to be properly edited; the work of Dimitri Gutas and his students has advanced the editorial project for Avicenna.

The Latin transmission was the major channel through which Islamic philosophy reached medieval Europe. The twelfth-century Toledo translation project, especially through Dominicus Gundisalvi (an archdeacon at Toledo from around 1162) and his Mozarabic and Jewish collaborators, produced Latin versions of portions of Avicenna's Shifā'. The subsequent Latin translations through Michael Scot, Hermannus Alemannus, and others extended the corpus available in Latin through the thirteenth century.

The Hebrew transmission was a parallel channel of importance. Jewish philosophers — especially Maimonides (1138–1204), whose Guide for the Perplexed engages the Islamic philosophical tradition — developed and transmitted Islamic philosophical work into the medieval Jewish tradition. The Hebrew translations of Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle preserved the Averroes corpus through periods when the Arabic original was less available.

The modern editorial and translation project has advanced through the work of the Cambridge History of Islamic Philosophy, the Routledge History of Islamic Philosophy, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on the major figures, and the work of the various editors of the Brigham Young University Middle Eastern Texts series. The contemporary scholarly anchors include the Journal of Islamic Philosophy, the Arabic Sciences and Philosophy journal, Oriens, and the work of Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast and book series.

The tradition of rational philosophical inquiry within the Islamic world that preserved and developed the Greek inheritance and transmitted it to medieval Europe.