Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

Study of the History of Islamic Philosophy 109
and revelation and created a “prophetic philosophy,” which in turn
influenced deeply the philosophical life of the other two members of
Abrahamic monotheism, namely, Judaism and Christianity. The Quran,
as well as ¡ad¥th, served as a central source of Islamic philosophical
speculation and influenced the reflection of Muslim thinkers upon
Greek texts. 2 In later Islamic philosophy the sayings of the Shi‘ite Imams
also played a major role, especially in the works of |adr al-D¥n Sh¥råz¥
(Mullå |adrå). Far from being simply Greek philosophy in Arabic and
Persian, Islamic philosophy integrated certain elements of Greek philosophy
into the Islamic perspective, creating new philosophical
schools. Although Islamic philosophy drew from the Greek sources,
which Muslims considered to be the fruit of earlier revelations associated
with such figures as the prophet Idr¥s (Hermes), it belonged to
an independent philosophical universe of discourse. A full study of
the origins of Islamic philosophy must be able to deal with the Islamic
as well as the Greek sources and their interactions.
THE EARLY PERIPATETICS
The early centuries of Islamic philosophy were marked by the appearance
of several schools of thought. The most prominent school, which
is often identified with Islamic philosophy as such in Western sources,
is the mashshå˘¥ (Peripatetic). This school is not simply Aristotelian, as
the name might indicate, but marks a synthesis of Islamic tenets,
Aristotelianism, and Neoplatonism. Its founder is Ab¨ Ya‘q¨b al-Kind¥
(d. c. A.H. 260/873 C.E.), the “Philosopher of the Arabs.” Some Islamic
sources have spoken of the Persian philosopher Ab¨˘l-‘Abbås Árånshahr¥
as the first Muslim to have written on philosophy, but nothing survives
of his works save a few fragments. In contrast, a number of al-
Kind¥’s works have reached us, some only in Hebrew and Latin, for he
was well known in the West. Al-Kind¥, like most of the early Peripatetics,
was at once a philosopher and a scientist. Although much of his voluminous
corpus has been lost, enough has survived to reveal his mastery in
both domains. Al-Kind¥ was the first Islamic thinker to grapple with the
problem of the expression of Peripatetic thought in Arabic. He also
confronted one of the central problems of philosophy in the monotheistic
world, namely, harmonization of faith and reason. Among his
philosophical works his treatises on the intellect, Fi˘l-‘aql (On the Intellect),
and metaphysics, Fi˘l-falsafat al-¶lå (On Metaphysics), were particularly
influential in the Muslim world; Fi˘l-‘aql, known as De Intellectu
in Latin, also had a wide-spread influence in medieval Europe.