Imam Mosque, one of the World Heritage in UNESCO, located in Isfahan, Iran; the harmony of Islamic, Iranian and philosophical beliefs of the Iranian Theosopher Sheykh Bahaee. This is one of Sheykh Bahaee’s architectural masterpieces.

Islamic Philosophy is a part of the Islamic Studies, and forms a longstanding attempt to create harmony between faith, reason or Philosophy, and the religious teachings of Islam. A Muslim engaged in this field is called a Muslim philosopher.

The attempt to fuse Religion and Philosophy is difficult because there are no clear preconditions. On the other hand, classical religious believers have a set of religious principles that they hold to be fact. Indeed, due to these divergent goals and views, some hold that one cannot simultaneously be a philosopher and a true adherent of Islam, which is believed to be a revealed_religion by its adherents. In this view, all attempts at synthesis ultimately fail.

However, others believe that a synthesis between Islam and Philosophy is possible. One way to find a synthesis is to use philosophical arguments to prove that one’s preset religious principles are true. This is a common technique found in the writings of many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but this is not generally accepted as Philosophy-proper by philosophers. Another way to find a synthesis is to abstain from holding as true any religious principles of one’s faith at all, unless one independently comes to those conclusions from a philosophical analysis. However, this is not generally accepted as being faithful to one’s religion by adherents of that religion. A third, rarer and more difficult path is to apply analytical philosophy to one’s own religion. In this case a religious person would also be a philosopher, by asking questions such as:

What is the nature of God How do we know that God exists?
What is the nature of revelation How do we know that God reveals his will to mankind?
What is the nature of divinely guided Messengers vis ? vis philosophers?
What is the nature of Imamat or vicegerency of humans on earth?
Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted literally?
Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted allegorically?
What must one actually believe to be considered a true adherent of our religion?
How can one reconcile the findings of Philosophy with religion?
How can one reconcile the findings of Science with religion?

Introduction

Islamic Philosophy may be defined in a number of different ways, but the perspective taken here is that it represents the style of Philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture. This description does not suggest that it is necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor even that it is exclusively produced by Muslims. (Oliver Leamman, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

As the name implies, this refers to philsophical activity within the Islamic milieu. The main sources of classical or early Islamic Philosophy are the religion of Islam itself and the Greek philosophical heritage which the early Muslims inherited as a result of conquests when Alexandria, Syria and Jundishapur came under Muslim rule. Many of the early philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason, the latter exemplified by Greek Philosophy.

The Classical Period

Independent minds exploiting the methods of ijtihad sought to investigate the doctrines of the Qur’an, which until then had been accepted in blind faith on the authority of divine revelation. The first independent protest was that of the Qadar (Arabic: qadara, to have power), whose partisans affirmed free will, in contrast with the Jabarites (jabar, force, constraint), who maintained the belief in fatalism.

In the second century of the Hegira, a schism arose in the theological schools of Basra, Iraq. A pupil, Wasil ibn Ata, who was expelled from the school because his answers were contrary to then orthodox Islamic tradition, proclaimed himself leader of a new school, and systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites. This new school or sect was called Mu’tazilite or Mutazilite (from i’tazala, to separate oneself, to dissent). Its principal dogmas were three:

God is an absolute unity, and no attribute can be ascribed to Him.
Man is a free agent. It is on account of these two principles that the Mu’tazilites designate themselves the “Partisans of Justice and Unity”.
All knowledge necessary for the salvation of man emanates from his reason; humans could acquire knowledge before, as well as after, Revelation, by the sole light of reason. This fact makes knowledge obligatory upon all men, at all times, and in all places.

The Motazilites, compelled to defend their principles against the orthodox Islam of their day, looked for support in Philosophy, and founded a Rational Theology called Ilm-al-Kalam (Scholastic Theology); those professing it were called Mutakallamin. This appellation, originally designating the Mu’tazilites, soon became the common name for all seeking philosophical demonstration in confirmation of religious principles. The first Mutakallamin had to combat both the orthodox and the infidel parties, between whom they occupied the middle ground; but the efforts of subsequent generations were entirely concentrated against the philosophers.

Ninth Century

From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma’mun and his successor, Greek Philosophy was introduced among the Persians and Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them; such were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina(Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd(Averro?s), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as heresies by the Mutakallamin.

During the Abbasid caliphate a number of thinkers and scientists, many of them non-Muslims or heretical Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. Three speculative thinkers, the Persians, al-Farabi, and Avicenna, and Arab thinker, al-Kindi combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. They were highly unorthodox and it is open to question whether they could be considered Islamic philosophers.

From Spain Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, contributing to the development of modern European Philosophy. The philosophers Moses_Maimonides (a Jewish born in Muslim_Spain) and Ibn Khaldun (born in modern-day Tunisia) were also important.

Aristotle attempted to demonstrate the unity of God; but from the view which he maintained, that matter was eternal, it followed that God could not be the Creator of the world. To assert that God’s knowledge extends only to the general laws of the universe, and not to individual and accidental things, is tantamount to denying prophecy. One other point shocked the faith of the Mutakallamin ? the theory of intellect. The Peripatetics taught that the human soul was only an aptitude ? a faculty capable of attaining every variety of passive perfection ? and that through information and virtue it became qualified for union with the active intellect, which latter emanates from God. To admit this theory would be to deny the immortality of the soul.

Wherefore the Mutakallamin had, before anything else, to establish a system of Philosophy to demonstrate the creation of matter, and they adopted to that end the theory of atoms as enunciated by Democritus. They taught that atoms possess neither quantity nor extension. Originally atoms were created by God, and are created now as occasion seems to require. Bodies come into existence or die, through the aggregation or the sunderance of these atoms. But this theory did not remove the objections of philosophy to a creation of matter.

For, indeed, if it be supposed that God commenced His work at a certain definite time by His “will,” and for a certain definite object, it must be admitted that He was imperfect before accomplishing His will, or before attaining His object. In order to obviate this difficulty, the Motekallamin extended their theory of the atoms to Time, and claimed that just as Space is constituted of atoms and vacuum, Time, likewise, is constituted of small indivisible moments. The creation of the world once established, it was an easy matter for them to demonstrate the existence of a Creator, and that God is unique, omnipotent, and omniscient.

The oldest religio-philosophical work preserved is that of the Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon (892-942), Emunot ve-Deot, “The Book of Beliefs and Opinions”. In this work Saadia treats the questions that interested the Mutakallamim, such as the creation of matter, the unity of God, the divine attributes, the soul, etc. Saadia criticizes other philosophers severely. For Saadia there was no problem as to creation: God created the world ex nihilo, just as the Bible attests; and he contests the theory of the Motekallamin in reference to atoms, which theory, he declares, is just as contrary to reason and religion as the theory of the philosophers professing the eternity of matter.

To prove the unity of God, Saadia uses the demonstrations of the Mutakallamin. Only the attributes of essence (sifat al-dhatia) can be ascribed to God, but not the attributes of action (sifat-al-fi’aliya). The soul is a substance more delicate even than that of the celestial spheres. Here Saadia controverts the Mutakallamin, who considered the soul an “accident” arad (compare “Moreh,” i. 74), and employs the following one of their premises to justify his position: “Only a substance can be the substratum of an accident” (that is, of a non-essential property of things). Saadia argues: “If the soul be an accident only, it can itself have no such accidents as wisdom, joy, love,” etc. Saadia was thus in every way a supporter of the Kalam; and if at times he deviated from its doctrines, it was owing to his religious views; just as the Jewish and Muslim Peripatetics stopped short in their respective Aristotelianism whenever there was danger of wounding orthodox religion.

Twelfth Century

The twelfth century saw the apotheosis of pure Philosophy and the decline of the Kalam, which latter, being attacked by both the philosophers and the orthodox, perished for lack of champions. This supreme exaltation of Philosophy was due, in great measure, to Al-Ghazali (1005-1111) among the Persians, and to Judah ha-Levi (1140) among the Jews. In fact, the attacks directed against the philosophers by Ghazali in his work, “Tuhfat al-Falasafa” (The Destruction of the Philosophers), not only produced, by reaction, a current favorable to Philosophy, but induced the philosophers themselves to profit by his criticism, they thereafter making their theories clearer and their Logic closer. The influence of this reaction brought forth the two greatest philosophers that the Islamic Peripatetic school ever produced, namely, Ibn Baja (Aven Pace) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), both of whom undertook the defense of Philosophy.

Since no idea and no literary or philosophical movement ever germinated on Persian or Arabian soil without leaving its impress on the Jews, the Persian Ghazali found an imitator in the person of Judah ha-Levi. This poet took upon himself to free his religion from what he saw as the shackles of speculative Philosophy, and to this end wrote the “Kuzari,” in which he sought to discredit all schools of Philosophy alike. He passes severe censure upon the Motekallamin for seeking to support religion by Philosophy. He says, “I consider him to have attained the highest degree of perfection who is convinced of religious truths without having scrutinized them and reasoned over them” (“Kuzari,” v.). Then he reduced the chief propositions of the Mutakallamin, to prove the unity of God, to ten in number, describing them at length, and concluding in these terms: “Does the Kalam give us more information concerning God and His attributes than the prophet did” (Ib. iii. and iv.) Aristotelianism finds no favor in Judah ha-Levi’s eyes, for it is no less given to details and criticism; Neoplatonism alone suited him somewhat, owing to its appeal to his poetic temperament.

Ibn Rushd (or Ibn Roshd or Averro?s), the contemporary of Maimonides, closed the first great philosophical era of the Muslims. The boldness of this great commentator of Aristotle aroused the full fury of the orthodox, who, in their zeal, attacked all philosophers indiscriminately, and had all philosophical writings committed to the flames. The theories of Ibn Roshd do not differ fundamentally from those of Ibn Baja and Ibn Tufail, who only follow the teachings of Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi. Like all Islamic Peripatetics, Ibn Roshd admits the hypothesis of the intelligence of the spheres and the hypothesis of universal emanation, through which motion is communicated from place to place to all parts of the universe as far as the supreme world?hypotheses which, in the mind of the Arabic philosophers, did away with the dualism involved in Aristotle’s doctrine of pure energy and eternal matter.

But while Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and other Persian and Muslim philosophers hurried, so to speak, over subjects that trenched on religious dogmas, Ibn Rushd delighted in dwelling upon them with full particularity and stress. Thus he says, “Not only is matter eternal, but form is potentially inherent in matter; otherwise, it were a creation ex nihilo (Munk, “M?langes,” p. 444). According to this theory,therefore, the existence of this world is not only a possibility, as Ibn Sina declared?in order to make concessions to the orthodox?but also a necessity.

Driven from the Islamic schools, Islamic philosophy found a refuge with the Jews, to whom belongs the honor of having transmitted it to the Christian world. A series of eminent men?such as the Ibn_Tibbons, Narboni, Gersonides?joined in translating the Arabic philosophical works into Hebrew and commenting upon them. The works of Ibn Rushd especially became the subject of their study, due in great measure to Maimonides, who, in a letter addressed to his pupil Joseph ibn Aknin, spoke in the highest terms of Ibn Rushd’s commentary.

It should be mentioned that this depiction of intellectual tradition in Islamic Lands is mainly depend upon what West could understand (or wants to understand) from this long era. In contrast, there are some historian and philosophers who do not agree with this proposition & describe this era in a completely different way. Their main difference is on the influence of the some philosophers on Islamic Philosophy, especially the consequence of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina and the effect of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd. (for more discussion, refer to the history of Islamic Philosophy by Henry Corbin)

Later Islamic Philosophy

The death of Ibn Rushd effectively marks the end of a particular discipline of Islamic Philosophy usually called Peripatetic Arabic School; and philosophical activity declined significantly in the west of Islamic lands namely in Spain and North Africa, though it held for much longer in the Eastern lands, mainly Iran.

Since the political power shift in Western Europe (Spain and Portugal) from Muslim to Christian. Naturaly, Muslims did not practice Philosophy in Western Europe. Also a disconnect between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’ took place. Muslims in the East continued to do Philosophy as is evident from the works of Ottoman Scholars. This fact has escaped Pre-Modern historians of Islamic (or Arabic) Philosophy. Also, Logic continued to be taught in religous seminaries up to modern times.

After Ibn Rushd, new disciples in Islamic Philosophy arose out. we can mention just some few like Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra schools, these new schools are very important, because there are still active disciplines in Muslim World.

Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy is usually divided into two main categories according to the Shia denomination believes & Sunnis. Of course, there are many contemporary philsophers and thinkers such as Professor Nasr and Imam Musa Sadr who do not agree with this classification. But there is a consensus that we can categorize this era according to the two main approaches: Thinkers who mainly discussed the Shia beliefs and thinkers who did not. If we accept this division then we can summarize each part as follows.

Modern Islamic Philosophy

The tradition of Islamic Philosophy is still very alive today despite the beliefs of many Western cycles considering this tradition to have abruptly ceased after the golden ages of Mulla Sadras doctrine & Suhrawardis (Mulla Sadras doctrine is called Hikmat-e-Motaaliye or Transcendent (Exalted) Philosophy and Suhrawardis as Hikmat al-Ishraq or Illumination Philosophy). Another unavoidable name is Allama_Muhammad_Iqbal (1877-1938) who reshaped and revitalized the concept of Islamic philosophy amongst muslims of Indian sub-continent. Besides his Urdu and Persian poetical work, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is assumed a milestone in modern political philosophy of Islam.

In contemporary Islamic lands, the teaching of hikmat or hikmah has continued and flourished. Among the traditional masters of Islamic philosophy most active during the past two decades may be mentioned ? or Allameh Tabatabaei, the author of numerous works including the twenty seven-volume Quranic commentary al-Mizan, Sayyid Abul-Hasan Rafii Qazwini, the great master of Mulla Sadra school who has written a few treasuries but has trained many outstanding students such as Sayyid Jalal-al-Din Ashtiyani, who has studied with both him & Allamah Tabatabai; Allamah Muhammad Salih Hairi Simnanin, the most loyal follower of Peripatetic philosophy & opposed to Mulla Sadra school.

The younger traditional scholars who have been most active recently in Islamic Philosophy include Mirza Mahdi Hairi, the only one of the traditional class of hakims with an extensive experience of West & author of Ilm-I Kulli and Kavoshha-ye Aqli-Nazari; Murtaza Motahhari, the best student of Allamah Tabatabai, a martyr of the Iran Islamic Revolution; and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

In Malaysia, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas is a prominent metaphysical thinker.

Thinkers largely ignoring Shia Belief:

Theosophers:
Fakhr al-Din Razi (d. 1209 )
Iji
Taftazani
Jorjani

Anti-Philosophy
Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328) and his students

History of Philosophies
Zakariya Qazwini
Shams al-Din Mohamamd Amuli
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406)

Thinkers referred to Shia Belief:

Nasir al-Din Tusi (d.1274)
Isaili
Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and Illumination School
Jaldaki
Sadr al-Din Dashtaki and Shiraz School
Mir Damad (d. 1631) and Isfahan School
Mir Fendereski and his students
Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) and Transcendent Philosophy
Rajab Ali Tabrizi and his students
Qazi Said Qumi
Tehran and Qom School
Khorasan School
Mulla Hadi Sabzevari and Neyshabor School

External Links

Some content adapted from the Wikinfo article “Islamic_philosophy” under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Islamic Philosophy

Introduction

The Classical Period

Ninth Century

Twelfth Century

Later Islamic Philosophy

Modern Islamic Philosophy

See Also

Further Reading

External Links