PHILOSOPHY

MUSLIM. Arabic falsafah ( فلسفة‎ ), or ʿilmu ʾl-ḥikmah ( علم الحكمة‎ ). The following account of Arabian philosophy is taken with permi ion from Profe or Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy , translated by G. S. Morris, M.A. (Hodder and Stoughton), vol. i. p. 405:— “The whole philosophy of the Arabians was only a form of Aristo tel i an ism, tempered more or le with Neo-Platonic conceptions. The medical and physical science of the Greeks and Greek philosophy became known to the Arabs especially under the rule of the Aba idæ (from A.D . 750 on), when medical, and afterwards (from the time of the reign of Almamun, in the first half of the ninth century) philosophical works were translated from Greek into Syriac and Arabic by Syriac Christians. The tradition of Greek philosophy was a ociated with that combination of Platonism and Aristo tel i an ism which prevailed among the last philosophers of antiquity, and with the study by Christian theologians of the Aristo tel i an logic as a formal organon of dogmatics; but in view of the rigid monotheism of the Mohammedan religion, it was nece ary that the Aristo tel i an metaphysics, and especially the Aristo tel i an theology, should be more fully adopted among the Arabs than among the Neo-Platonists and Christians, and that in consequence of the union among the former of philosophical with medical studies, the works of Aristotle on natural science should be studied by them with especial zeal. “Of the Arabian philosophers in the East, the most important were Alkendi (al-Kindī), who was still more renowned as a mathematician and astrologer; Alfarabi (al-Fārābī), who adopted the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation; Avicenna (Abū Sīnā), the representative of a purer Aristo tel i an ism and a man who for centuries, even among the Christian scholars of the later med iæval centuries, stood in the highest consideration as a philosopher, and, still more, as a teacher of medicine; and, finally, Algazel (al-G͟hazzālī), who maintained a philosophical skepticism in the interest of theological orthodoxy. “The most important Arabian philosophers in the West were Avempace (Ibn Badja), Abubacer (Abū Bakr Ibn T̤ufail), and Averroës (Ibn Rashīd). Avempace and Abubacer dwell in their works on the idea of the independent and gradual development of man. Abubacer (in his ‘Natural Man’) develops this idea in a spirit of opposition to positive religion, although he affirms that positive religion and philosophical doctrine pursue the same end, namely, the union of the human intellect with the divine. Averroës, the celebrated commentator of Aristotle, interprets the doctrine of the latter respecting the active and the pa ive intellect in a sense which is nearly pantheistic and which excludes the idea of individual immortality. He admits the existence of only one active intellect, and affirms that this belongs in common to the whole human race, that it becomes temporarily particularized in individuals, but that each of its emanations becomes finally reabsorbed in the original whole, in which alone, therefore, they po e immortality. “The acquaintance of the Mohammedan Arabs with the writings of Aristotle was brought about through the agency of Syrian Christians. Before the time of Mohammed, many Nestor i an Syrians lived among the Arabs as physicians. Mohammed also had intercourse with Nestor i an monks. Hareth Ibn Calda, the friend and physician of the Prophet, was a Nestor i an. It was not, however, until after the extension of the Mohammedan rule over Syria and Persia, and chiefly after the Aba idæ had commenced to reign ( A.D . 750), that foreign learning, especially in medicine and philosophy, became generally known among the Arabs. Philosophy had already been cultivated in those countries during the last days of Neo-Platonism, by David the Armenian (about 500 A.D .; his Prolog . to Philos . and to the Isagoge , and his commentary on the Categ , in Brand is’ Collection of Scholia to Arist.; his works, Venice, 1823; on him cf . C. F. Neumann, Paris, 1829) and afterwards by the Syrians, especially Christian Syrians, translated Greek authors, particularly medical, but afterward philosophical authors also, first into Syriac, and then from Syriac into Arabic (or they, perhaps, made use also of earlier Syriac translations some of which are to-day extant). “During the reign and at the instance of Almamun ( A.D . 813–833), the first translations of works of Aristotle into Arabic were made, under the direction of Johannes Ibn-al-Batrik ( i.e . the son of the Patriarch, who, according to Renan [ l.l. , p. 57], is to be distinguished from Johannes Mesue, the physician), these translations, in part still extant, were regarded (according to Abulfaragius, Histor. Dynast . , p. 153 et al .) as faithful but inelegant. “A man more worthy of mention is Honein Ibn Ishak (Johannitius), a Nestor i an, who flourished under Motewakkel, and died in 876. Acquainted with the Syriac, Arabic, and Greek languages, he was at the head of a school of interpreters at Bagdad, to which his son Ishak Ben Honein and his nephew Hobeisch-el-Asam also belonged. The works not only of Aristotle himself, but also of several ancient Aristo tel i ans (Alexander Aphrodisiensis, The mist i us, and also Neo-Platonic exegetes, such as Porphyry and Ammonius), and of Galenus and others, were translated into (Syriac and) Arabic. Of these translations, also, some of those in Arabic are still existing, but the Syriac translations are all lost. (Honein’s Arabic translation of the Categories has been edited by Jul. Theod. Zenker, Leips. 1846 . ) In the tenth century new translations, not only of the works of Aristotle, but also of Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Theomistius, Syrianus, Ammonius, etc.,