10. Classical Islamic Philosophy. A Thematic Introduction

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التصنيف:

الوصف

While numerous introductions to the history of philosophy in the Islamic lands have been written in recent decades, López-Farjeat’s volume is a unique contribution to like handbooks in the field. It approaches the topic of the history of philosophy by threating the subject thematically while providing considerable historical and philosophical insights. Including more recent advancements in the field, the volume presents some of the main themes developed by Islamic philosophers in the so-called “Classical Age” of philosophy in medieval Islam. Still, the author does not refrain from brief forays into post-classical authors, including the radical positions developed by the theologian Ibn Taymiyya. My contribution will attempt to summarise the main themes developed by López-Farjeat and, following the author’s path, highlight the continuity in the transmission of ideas between the Arabic-speaking philosophers and the late ancient commentators, in order to emphasise their efforts to harmonize Hellenic thought with the Islamic conception of the world.

As is well known, the early Islamic civilization embraced Hellenic philosophy by preserving and developing it through various encounters, among which the ʿAbbāsid translation movement (2nd-4th centuries H/8th-10th centuries CE) played a special role. In addition to the great and still under-studied development within the Muslim world, this broad scientific and philosophical reflection came back to the Latin West, in the 12th and 13th centuries, via the Arabic-Latin translation movement – a movement that took place in Toledo, southern Italy, and other cultural centres in Europe. This is explicitly argued in chapter 1 of the volume against Sylvain Gouguenheim’s Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne (Paris, 2008), which completely excludes the Arabic-Islamic contribution to the recovery and development of Hellenic philosophy for the medieval Latin West.

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