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

Introduction 7
ern sciences and became more and more a handmaid of modern science
especially with Kant and culminating with much of twentieth
century Anglo-Saxon philosophy, which is little more than logic tied
to the scientific worldview. In an analogous way, in various traditional
worlds in which the reality of prophecy and revelation was
central, whether the embodiment of this prophecy has been a book or
some other form of the message brought from heaven or the messenger
himself as in the case of the Hindu avatårs, the Buddha, or Christ,
philosophy has had no choice but to take this central reality into consideration.
Philosophy has to philosophize about something, and in
the traditional worlds in question that something has always included
the realities revealed through prophecy, which have ranged in form
from the illuminations of the rishis of Hinduism and the Buddha, to
God speaking to Moses on Mt. Sinai or the archangel Gabriel revealing
the Quran to the Prophet of Islam.
In the traditional worlds in question, philosophy has not been
simply theology as some have contended unless one limits philosophy
to its modern positivistic definition in which case there is in reality no
non-Western philosophy or for that matter medieval Western philosophy
to speak of. But if we accept the definition of philosophy given by
the person who is said to have first used the term—that is, Pythagoras—
and see it as love of sophia, or if we accept its definition according to
Plato as “the practice of death” according to which philosophy includes
both intellectual activity and spiritual practice, then certainly
there are many schools of philosophy in various traditional worlds,
some existing until now only in oral form as among the Australian
aborigines and Native Americans, 18 while others having produced
volumes of philosophical writings over the centuries.
Even if one were to decide to deal only with written philosophical
works, one could compose volumes on the subject of philosophy
in the land of prophecy dealing with the Taoist and Confucian Chinese
philosophical traditions, with those of Tibetan and Mahåyåna
Buddhism including the schools of Japan, all of which possess their
own special characteristics, and of course with the very rich philosophical
traditions of Hindu India. One could also turn to the
Abrahamic world and write on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophical
schools from the perspective of philosophical activity in worlds
dominated by prophecy. Nor would such a treatment be completely
parallel for the three sister Abrahamic traditions—despite notable similarities—because
while the Jewish and Islamic conceptions of prophecy
and the sacred book are close together, that of Christianity, in
which the founder of the religion is seen as the incarnation of the