The Philosophers

I'll now turn to secular learning and before I consider various sciences and the humanities I want to examine an area that was a special challenge for some time for what I may call fundamentalist Islam: philosophy, as inspired by the Classical Greeks.

Up until the 12^th century, the philosophers were concerned to build upon Hellenistic philosophy. Many of the philosophers were Christian Arabs but philosophy didn’t require a specific religion. Schools of mainly Christian scholars in mainly Syria and Iraq continued the Neo-Platonist teachings of Plotinus and Porphyry of Tyre of the School of Alexandria. Philosophy was (initially, at least) considered useful for theological argument. The Four new philosophy masters of the Islamic world were al-Kindi, al-Fārābi (called Alfarabius or Avennasr in the West), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes).

Al-Kindi was a Muslim Arab who lived in Iraq in the early to mid 9^th century. He also studied mu’tazila theology. He distinguished between human and divine knowledge and sought a détente between reason and revelation. He also studied arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, astrology, natural sciences and alchemy. He received the support of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate and some of his work was considered sufficiently important in the mediaeval West to translate into Latin in the 12^th Century. He suggested to Arabs that they should not fear knowledge from wherever it came.

Al-Fārābi lived in Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo in the 9^th and 10^th Centuries and was a student of Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic form taught in Alexandria. He sought truth and happiness in his philosophy. He asserted that religious dogma was inferior philosophically to human reason while claiming that they do not necessarily conflict. His commentaries on various Aristotelian works earned him the title (after Aristotle) of “the second master” in both the East and the West. He also wrote a famous work on musicology and works on science, cities and politics, among many others.

Avicenna lived in the 10^th and 11^th Centuries in Eastern Iran and was also a physician, politician and scientist. He wrote a famous work on medicine along with his philosophical works.

Averroes, also a practicing physician, lived in the mid 12^th Century in Cordova and Morocco and is considered the best Arabic translator of Aristotle. He also criticised other interpretations and contributed to the commentaries. He famously wrote a refutation of al-Ghazali’s Refutation of the Philosophers (known informally as "The Refutation of the Refutation") and also wrote a significant work of Islamic jurisprudence and one of medicine.