Introduction
Islamic philosophy is the product of a complex intellectual
process in which Syrians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Berbers, and others took an
active part. The Arab element is so preponderant, however, that it might be
conveniently termed Arabic philosophy. The medium in which writers, hailing from
such distant countries as Khurasan and Andalusia, chose to express their
thoughts from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries was Arabic. The racial
element that provided the cohesive force in this cosmopolitan endeavor and
determined its form and direction, at least in the early stages, was Arabic;
without the Arabs’ enlightened interest in ancient learning, hardly any
intellectual progress could have been made or maintained. Moreover, it was the
Arabs who, while they assimilated the customs, manners, and learning of their
subject peoples, contributed the one universal element in the whole complex of
Muslim culture, i.e., the Islamic religion.
As we proceed we shall note the role of each racial group in
the development of Islamic philosophy. We observe here that the intellectual
history of the Arabs, to whom the development of philosophy and science in the
Near East owed so much, virtually begins with the rise of Islam. The chief
cultural monuments of the Arabs, before the rise of Islam, were poetry and
literary traditions that were transmitted orally and embody a record of the
social, political, religious, and moral aspects of Arab life. However, this
record was primitive, regional, and fragmentary. Islam not only provided the
Arabs with a coherent and bold world-view, which sought to transcend the narrow
confines of their tribal existence, but thrust them almost forcibly upon the
cultural stage of the ancient world and set before them its dazzling scientific
and cultural treasures.
The pivot round which the whole of Muslim life turns is, of
course, the Qur’an. Revealed to Muhammad by God between 610 and 632 from an
eternal codex (the Preserved Tablet), according to Muslim doctrine, the Qur’an
embodies the full range of principles and precepts by which the believer should
order his life. The Qur’an is supplemented, however, by a mass of utterances
attributed to Muhammad and constituting, together with circumstantial reports of
the actions and decisions of the Prophet, the general body of Muhammadan
Traditions, properly designated in Muslim usage as the Prophetic "Way" (al-Sunnah).
Overwhelmed by the awesome sacredness of the divine Word (kalam)
and the Prophetic Way, the first generation of Muslim scholars dedicated
themselves wholly to the fixing of the sacred canon, commenting upon it and
drawing the legal or moral corollaries implicit in it. Thus arose the sciences
of reading (‘ilm al-qira’at), exegesis (tafsir), and jurisprudence
(fiqh), the only basic sciences the nascent community needed in order to
assimilate or live by the divinely revealed ordinances of the Qur’an. From these
sciences, however, there soon stemmed the whole body of subsidiary disciplines,
collectively referred to as the linguistic or traditional sciences, as distinct
from the rational or philosophical sciences. Grammar, rhetoric, and the allied
studies were developed during the first two centuries of the Muslim era, chiefly
as a means of adequately interpreting or justifying the linguistic usages of the
Qur’an and the Traditions. Even study of literature, and particularly
pre-Islamic poetry, appears to have been stimulated by the desire to find a
venerable basis in ancient usage for the many unfamiliar terms or idioms in the
Qur’an and the Traditions.
The canonical text of the Qur’an was finally fixed during the
reign of the third caliph, Uthman (644-656), and in honor of him the authorized
version of the Qur’an ever since has been called "Musaf Uthman". A few
minor refinements of a purely grammatical and orthographic nature were made in
the tenth century. The Traditions, on the other hand, circulated orally for
almost two centuries, and in consequence a vast amount of apocryphal material
was added to what must have been the original core. By the middle of the ninth
century, however, elaborate criteria for sifting this material were developed
and compilations of "sound" or canonical Traditions were made, the best known
and most authoritative of which is that of al-Bukhari (d. 870).
As one might expect, the greatest scholars of the early
period were primarily linguists or exegetes who addressed themselves to the
study and analysis of the texts of the Qur’an and the Traditions, on the one
hand, or the interpretation of the juridical aspects of Scripture and their
application to concrete cases, on the other. The first function was discharged
by the commentators and Traditionists, and the second by the jurisconsults (fuqaha’),
upon whom also devolved, in the absence of an organized teaching authority in
Islam, the task of doctrinal definition as well.
The criteria for settling juridical or even doctrinal
problems by the early jurisconsults were often purely linguistic or textual.
However, there soon arose a class of scholars who were willing to permit the use
of analogy (qiyas) or independent judgment (ra’y) in doubtful matters,
especially when a specific textual basis for a decision could not be found in
Scripture. Of the four major legal schools into which Muslim jurisprudence
eventually crystallized, the school of Abu Hanifah (d. 767) and that of al-Shafi’i
(d. 820) were much more liberal than the two rival schools of Malik b. Anas (d.
795) and Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 855).
The implications of this bipolarity for the subsequent
development of scholastic theology (Kalam) are not far to seek. The
conservative "people of Tradition," as the Malikites and the Hanbalites are
generally called, tended to repudiate the use of any deductive method. Their
position is best epitomized by the comment of Malik on the Qur’anic reference to
God’s "sitting upon the throne" (Qur’an 7:54 and 20:5). "The sitting," he is
reported to have said, "is known, its modality is unknown. Belief in it is an
obligation and raising questions regarding it is a heresy [bid‘ah]."4
This somewhat narrow approach to the questions raised by the
study of Qur’anic texts could not long withstand the pressures of the times.
There was first the inevitable confrontation of Islam with paganism and
Christianity, both at Damascus and at Baghdad, and the numerous tensions it
generated. Second, there were the moral and legal questions raised by the gloomy
picture of God’s overwhelming supremacy in the world as depicted in the Qur’an,
and its bearing on the responsibility of human agents. And there was finally the
necessity of safeguarding what one may call the unity of the Islamic view of
life, which could not be achieved without a systematic attempt to bring the
conflicting data of revelation (in the Qur’an and the Traditions) into some
internal harmony.
The attempt to grapple with these complex problems is at the
basis of the rise and development of Islamic scholastic theology. A good deal of
the work of the earliest theologians consisted in the rebuttal of the arguments
leveled at Islam by pagans, Christians, and Jews. Significantly, the early
Mu‘tazilite doctors are often commended for their defense of Islam against the
attacks of the Materialists (al-Dahriyah) and the Manichaeans. Indeed,
heresiographers explicitly state that scholastic theology arose as a means of
buttressing Islamic beliefs by logical arguments and defending them against
attack.
Within the confines of Islam itself, discussion began to
center by the seventh century around the questions of divine justice and human
responsibility. Authorities report that a cluster of early theologians engaged
in the discussion of the problem of free will and predestination (qadar),
an issue generally recognized as the first major one broached by the early
theologians. The Mu‘tazilah, who continued this line of speculation, asserted
the freedom of the individual on the one hand and the justice of God on the
other. And although they naturally supported their positions by quotations from
the Qur’an, their general tendency was to advance arguments of a strictly
ethical or rational character in support of these positions.
Moreover, the anthropomorphic passages in which the Qur’an
abounded made it imperative to resort to some process of allegorical
interpretation in order to safeguard the immateriality and transcendence of God.
Here again the Mu‘tazilah were undoubted pioneers. The Qur’anic references to
God’s "sitting upon the throne," as well as the possibility of seeing Him on the
Last Day," (Qur’an 75:22, etc.), are interpreted as allegories for the divine
attributes of majesty or royalty on the one hand, or the possibility; of
contemplating Him mystically on the other.
The proper prosecution of discussions of this kind naturally
called for a high degree of sophistication, which, prior to the introduction of
Greek philosophy and logic, was rather difficult, if not impossible. Scholastic
theology therefore gave the Muslims, as it had (given the Christians of Egypt
and Syria centuries earlier, the incentive to pursue the study of Greek
philosophy.
Not much progress was made in that direction during the
Umayyad period (661-750). The Umayyad caliphs, especially during the first few
decades of their rule, were concerned primarily with the consolidation of their
political power and the solution of the numerous economic and administrative
problems which governing a vast empire raised.
However, souls thirsting after knowledge were not altogether
wanting even during this period. We might mention, as a striking instance, the
Umayyad prince Khalid b. Yazid (d. 704), who appears to have sought consolation
in alchemy and astrology for his disappointed claims to the caliphate. According
to our most ancient sources, Khalid provided for the first translations of
scientific works (medical, astrological, and alchemical) into Arabic.
Nevertheless, the development of philosophy and theology in Islam is bound up
with the advent of the ‘Abbasid dynasty in the middle of the eighth century.
Interest in science and philosophy grew during this period to such an extent
that scientific and philosophical output was no longer a matter of individual
effort or initiative. Before long, the state took an active part in its
promotion and the intellectual repercussions of this activity acquired much
greater scope. Theological divisions, growing out of philosophical controversy
or inquiry racked the whole of the Muslim community. Caliphs upheld one
theological view against another and demanded adherence to it on political
grounds, with the inevitable result that theology soon became the handmaid of
politics. As a consequence, freedom of thought and conscience was seriously
jeopardized.
A fundamental cause of this development is, of course, the
close correlation in Islam between principle and law, the realm of the temporal
and the realm of the spiritual. But such a development required the challenge of
foreign ideas and a release from the shackles of dogma. This is precisely the
role played by the of Greek ideas and the Greek spirit of intellectual
curiosity, which generated a bipolar reaction of the utmost importance for the
understanding of Islam. The most radical division caused by the introduction of
Greek thought was between the progressive element, which sought earnestly to
subject the data of revelation to the scrutiny of philosophical thought, and the
conservative element, which disassociated itself altogether from philosophy on
the ground that it was either impious or suspiciously foreign. This division
continued to reappear throughout Islamic history as a kind of geological fault,
sundering the whole of Islam. As a result, throughout Muslim history reform
movements have not been marked by a great degree of release from authority or
dogma or a quest for the reinterpretation or reexamination of fundamental
presuppositions in the realms of social organization, theological discussion, or
legal thought. Instead, like the reform of al-Ash‘ari (d. 935) in the tenth
century, that of Ibn Taymiya (d. 1327) in the fourteenth century, or that of
Muhammad ‘Abdu (d. 1905) in the nineteenth century, they were marked by a
deliberate attempt to vindicate the old, Traditionist concepts and assumptions
of the earliest protagonists of Muslim dogma, the so-called good forebears, (al-salaf
al-salih) of the Muslim community.
One lasting consequence of the introduction of Greek
philosophy and the Greek spirit of inquiry, however, was that the "Traditionism"
of early theologians and jurists, such as Malik b. Anas, was no longer tenable
in its pure or original form. The great Ash‘arite "reformers" committed, as they
were to the defense of orthodoxy against heretics and free thinkers, could no
longer do so without recourse to the weapons which their rationalist opponents
had borrowed from the Greeks. It was as though most of Greek dialectic could no
longer be exorcised without recourse to the formula of exorcism which it had
itself enunciated in the first place.
Moreover, the, varying degrees of allegiance to Greek
philosophy and logic not only gave rise to the diverse theological schools of
thought, but generated the more distinctly, Hellenic current of ideas, which we
shall designate as the Islamic philosophical school.
The rise and development of this school is the primary
concern of the present history. Scholastic theology will be discussed only in so
far as it absorbed, reacted to, or by-passed Islamic philosophy. To theology
might be added another movement whose relation to philosophy has also fluctuated
between the two poles of total endorsement or total disavowal-mysticism or
Sufism. Mysticism is ultimately rooted in the original matrix of religious
experience, which grows in turn out of man’s overwhelming awareness of God and
his sense of nothingness without Him, and of the urgent need to subordinate
reason and emotion to this experience. The mystical experience, it is often
claimed, is distinct from the rational or the philosophical, and, less often, it
is said to be contrary to it. But, whether it is distinct or not, it can hardly
be irrelevant to man’s rational or philosophical aspirations; since it allegedly
leads to the very object which reason seeks, namely, the total and supreme
apprehension of reality. In fact, the history of Muslim mysticism is more
closely bound up with that of philosophy than other forms of mysticism have
been. The mysticism of some of the great Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi (d.
1240 ), culminated in a grandiose cosmological and metaphysical world-scheme,
which is of decisive philosophical significance. Conversely, the philosophical
preoccupations of some philosophers, such as Ibn Bajjah (d. 1138) and Ibn Tufayl
(d. 1185), led logically and inevitably to the conception of mystical experience
(designated "illumination") as the crowning of the process of reasoning.
The beginnings of the Islamic philosophical school coincide
with the first translations of the works of the Greek masters into Arabic from
Syriac or Greek. We might accept as credible the traditional account that
scientific and medical texts were the earliest works to be translated into
Arabic. The Arabs, as well as the Persians, who contributed so abundantly to the
scientific and philosophical enlightenment in Islam, are a practical-minded
people. Their interest in the more abstract aspects of Greek thought must have
been a subsequent development. Even the Christian Syrians, who paved the way for
the introduction of the Greek heritage into the Near East shortly before the
Arab conquest in the seventh century, were interested primarily in Aristotelian
logic and Greek philosophy as a prelude to the study of theological texts. These
were not only written originally in Greek, but also were rich in logical and
philosophical terms that previously had been unknown to the Semites. In addition
to scientific and medical works, collections of moral aphorisms ascribed to
Socrates, Solon, Hermes, Pythagoras, Luqman, and similar real or fictitious
personages appear to have been among the earliest texts to be translated into
Arabic. The Arab accounts of Greek philosophy abound in such apocryphal
literature, whose exact origin is sometimes difficult to ascertain. It might be
assumed that it was the affinity of these writings to belles lettres (adab)
and their literary excellence which insured their early vogue among the elite.
Translators had naturally to depend upon the generosity of their aristocratic or
wealthy patrons, who, even when they affected interest in other than the purely
practical disciplines of astrology or medicine at all, were content with this
species of ethical and religious literature, which was cherished and
disseminated partly as a matter of social refinement and partly as a matter of
moral edification. Interest in the more abstract forms of ancient, especially
Greek, learning was bound to follow in due course, however. First, the
translators themselves, having mastered skills required for translating into
Arabic more practical works, proceeded next to tackle works of a greater
speculative interest, and eventually to induce their patrons to provide for
their translation. Secondly, the theological controversies had reached such a
point of sophistication by the end of the eighth century that the old weapons
were no longer sufficient for the defense of orthodoxy, which had now been given
the authority of the state. Abstract philosophy was further popularized through
the personal idiosyncrasies of such men as the Umayyad prince Khalid b. Yazid,
the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (d. 833), and the Persian vizier Ja‘far the
Barmakid (d. 805), who, had acquired more than a conventional zeal for ancient
learning in its Persian, Indian, and Babylonian forms in general, and its Greek
and Hellenistic forms in particular.
The greater translators, most of whom were Syriac-speaking
Christians, of the unorthodox Nestorian and Monophysite communions, were, not
mere translators or servile imitators of Greek or other foreign authors. Some of
them, such as Hunain (d. 873) and Yahia b. ‘Adi (d. 974), are credited with a
series of important scientific and philosophical works. Hunain’s interests seem
to have been chiefly medical and scientific, whereas Yahia seems to have been
more interested in theological and philosophical questions. To a famous pupil of
his, Ibn al-Khammar (d. 940), is ascribed a treatise on the Agreement of the
Opinions of the Philosophers and the Christians, which belongs to the same
literary lineage as the parallel treatise of the Muslim philosophers (such as
Ibn Rushd, d. 1198) who dealt systematically with the questions of reason and
revelation in their works.
The works of those early translators were on the whole
compilations which lacked originality. They contained ideas that had been
gleaned at random from the works they had translated. The first genuine
philosopher to write in Arabic was al-Kindi (d. ca. 866), a contemporary of the
great Hunain.’Like the rest of the Arab philosophers and expositors, he differed
from the Christian translators in two important particulars: his religion and
his total ignorance of Syriac or Greek, the two chief languages of the times,
besides Arabic. It is surprising that even the greatest admirers of Greek
philosophy such as Averroes, lacked even a perfunctory knowledge of Greek. The
chief reason appears to have been the contempt of the Arabs for all foreign
tongues, which, seems to have spread like an infection, even to non-Arabs of the
most bigoted type. Some philosophers, it is true, chose to write in their native
tongues, in addition to writing in Arabic, as is illustrated by Ibn Sina’s and
al-Ghazali’s Persian writings. This was probably a gesture of nationalist
loyalty, not the manifestation of a genuine desire for a polyglot erudition or
distinction.
As a result of their total ignorance of Greek, those
philosophers tended to be less slavish in their interpretation of Greek texts,
if a trifle less exact, than the early Greek commentators, such as Themistius
and Alexander. Being Muslims by faith, they were naturally anxious to justify
their interest in the pagan philosophers of antiquity. Indeed, almost from the
beginning it was standard for the orthodox to reproach all those who "looked
into the books of the [Greek] philosophers" -even presumably when they did not
understand them. Such theological preoccupation was a distinctive feature of the
development of Islamic philosophy. Al-Kindi, the first genuine philosopher, was
more than a philosopher with a theological bent; he was to some extent a
theologian with an interest in philosophy. We might say that al-Kindi still
stands on the borderline of philosophy and theology, which the later
philosophers tried more boldly, perhaps, to cross. How far they succeeded in so
doing and how far it was possible for them to span the distance separating
Islamic belief from Greek speculative thought will be seen in later chapters.
But it might be mentioned at this stage that al-Kindi’s theological interests
did act as a safeguard against the total submersion of religious belief in the
current of abstract philosophical thought, and the total subordination of the
supernatural light of faith to the light of reason -a devastating temptation
which Islamic philosophy could not ultimately resist. For the subsequent "illuminationist"
trend in the history of Islamic philosophy amounted precisely to this: the
vindication of the right of reason to scale the heights of knowledge unaided and
to lift the veil of mystery which shrouded the innermost recesses of reality.
The ultimate goal of reason, according to Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Tufayl, and
others, is "contact" or "conjunction" (ittisal) with the universal mind
or active intellect, not the enlightenment which the visio Dei promises,
by admitting the soul graciously into the company of the elect, who are blessed
with understanding. In this respect, it is clear that the Islamic philosophers
remain true to the Greek ideal, in its exaltation of man and its faith in his
boundless intellectual prowess and his ability to dispense altogether with any
supernatural light.
This is the sense in which Islamic philosophy can be said to
have followed a distinctive line of development which gave it that unity of form
which is a characteristic of the great intellectual movements in history. We
should, however, guard against the illusion that the course of its development
was perfectly straight. Some of the most fascinating Muslim thinkers, such as
al-Nazzam (d. 845), al-Razi (d. 925), and al-Ma‘arri (d. 1057), fall outside the
mainstream of thought in Islam. Their dissident voices lend a discordant note to
an otherwise monotonous symphony. The difficulty of expounding their thought
with any degree of completeness is bound up with its very nonconformist
character. Islam did generate such dissentient and solitary souls, but it could
not tolerate or accept them in the end. The historian of Islamic thought cannot
overlook them, however, without distorting the total picture.
