Islamic Philosophy

Oliver Leaman

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745645995, 9780745645988
• eBook ISBN: 9780745659077
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Although Islamic philosophy represents one of the leading philosophical traditions in the world, it has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves in the non-Islamic world. This important text provides a concise and accessible introduction to the major movements, thinkers and concepts within that tradition, from the foundation of Islam to the present day.

Ever since the growth of Islam as a religious and political movement, Muslim thinkers have sought to understand the theoretical aspects of their faith by using philosophical concepts. Leaman outlines this history and demonstrates that, although the development of Islamic philosophy is closely linked with Islam itself, its form is not essentially connected to any particular religion, and its leading ideas and arguments are of general philosophical significance. The author illustrates the importance of Islamic thought within philosophy through the use of many modern examples. He describes and contrasts the three main movements in Islamic philosophy ? Peripatetic, Sufi and Illuminationist ? and examines the Persian as well as the Arabic traditions. Wide coverage is given to key aspects of Islamic philosophy, including epistemology, ontology, politics, ethics and philosophy of language, providing readers with a balanced view of the discipline. The second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout, including the addition of two new chapters on recent debates surrounding Islam's need for an enlightenment, and on the future of Islamic philosophy.

The new edition of Islamic Philosophy will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars of the subject, as well as anyone wanting to learn more about one of the most significant and influential philosophical traditions in the world today.

1

A Short History of Islamic Philosophy

Adherents of religion often start off by thinking that the religion provides everything they need in order to understand reality. Not practical or scientific knowledge, perhaps, but certainly knowledge of how to live and what the real nature of the world is (Islam does also provide scientific information in the view of some believers, see Shamsher Ali 2006). It is interesting to speculate about why a religious movement should feel the need to take on systems of theoretical thought which come from outside that movement. After all, many such movements possess a considerable theoretical machinery of their own. Believers might well feel that there is enough within the system of thought of Islam itself to encompass any conceptual problems or issues which could arise. Within the system of Islam itself there exists, first and foremost, the Qur’an, with its detailed analysis of the nature of reality and its advice to readers. The Qur’an stresses that it is written in a simple Arabic and the implication is that it is then not difficult to understand (19: 97; 54: 17). Then there exist for many Muslims the practices (sunna) of the Prophet and his Companions, and his community (umma), while for others there is the continuing guidance of a spiritual leader (imam). The former acquire their name of Sunni Muslims from the fact that they are committed to using the reports of the practices of the Prophet and his close Companions as a source of information about how to behave. The latter are the Shi‘ites, or Shi‘i, who derive their name from the term shi‘at‘Ali (the party of‘Ali), because they pay particular attention to the Prophet’s son-in-law,‘Ali, and his successors as sources of spiritual knowledge (Muhajirani 1996; Lalani 2006). As sources of authority there are also the traditions (ahadith, sing. hadith) that reproduce important sayings of the Prophet and his Companions, and a methodology for distinguishing between reliable and suspect traditions. On this basis, a superstructure of theology (kalam) was constructed, which investigates the theoretical problems in understanding the combination of all the former techniques, and jurisprudence (fiqh), which specifies what actions are acceptable or otherwise. Finally, there is the grammar of the Arabic language, the language in which the Qur’an itself was transmitted, the speech of God himself, so crucially important for understanding the meaning of the message in the text. It is hardly surprising that many Muslims felt, and continue to feel, that there is more than enough within Islam and its systems of knowledge, often called the Islamic sciences, to deal with any problem which might arise, and hence that there is no need for any additional source of theoretical information to be employed. This is a common reaction of adherents to many religions which have a sophisticated system of explanation, who, as a result, resent the idea of going outside the religion in order to resolve theoretical and even practical problems (Leaman 1988b, 2000c).

The growth of Islam

Once the Islamic empire expanded into areas of the Middle East which were imbued with Greek culture, the question immediately arose as to whether any use could be found for that culture. A similar issue arose with the conquests in the East, which brought the Islamic world into contact with Indian and Persian cultures (Nomanul Haq 1996). This is not just an issue about what sorts of knowledge are useful and important but even more, perhaps, about identity. Is the identity of Muslims so self-sufficient that they do not need any theoretical information from outside Islam itself? Obviously not, since there is a lot of information which is neutral in religious terms, but which it is important to know. However, there are also many theoretical issues where Islamic and Greek thought seem to be in opposition or, at the least, offer answers which are different. Even where they agree, Islamic and Greek thought stem from distinct bases, so any concurrence between them might appear to be a matter of chance. Where Islam conflicts with any other theoretical system, the conclusion for a Muslim seems to be obvious: that the other system must be rejected.

This is not the conclusion that was always drawn, though. Greek philosophy is so powerful in what it can do and explain that it proved a temptation too powerful to resist. Why not, then, just incorporate it in the Islamic view of the nature of reality? One reason not to do this would be if aspects of that philosophy contradicted Islam in some way; but, as we shall see, it was often argued that such contradictions were more apparent than real. Another reason would be the xenophobic one of rejecting the foreign, of asserting a specifically Islamic identity that excludes other cultural frameworks, except perhaps those of the other people of the Book. The other people of the Book are generally taken to be the Christians and the Jews, although on occasion other religions have also been included, their allegiance to a book based on an earlier prophecy providing them with a higher status in the Islamic world than those entirely bereft of prophecy. There were, and continue to be today, powerful political and cultural forces which seek to reject knowledge from non-Islamic sources. On the other hand, there were, and are, Muslims who are so confident of their identity as Muslims that they are prepared to consider using alternative methodologies in combination with their religious beliefs to throw light on the structure of reality. They are relaxed enough about their identity to take on board the idea that other ways of viewing the world may be significant and should be explored. Since they often operate within a context in which their peers do not share their attitudes on this, they have to be careful how they express themselves and what sort of audience they are likely to have. But this problem can be, and often has been, exaggerated (Leaman 1980a). Islamic philosophers, like philosophers everywhere, wrote in ways that they hoped would resonate with their local intellectual communities. They naturally expressed themselves as Muslims, or within a Christian or Jewish context, and used the language and culture of their religion to explore and explain ideas and arguments that were often originally mediated by Greek thought.

Neoplatonism

One of the interesting aspects of the influence of Greek thought on Islamic philosophy is the application of a form of Neoplatonism, which was the leading way of doing philosophy within what was left of the Greek cultural realm. Since Neoplatonism is rather different from the thought of Plato and Aristotle themselves, it is intriguing to see those two philosophers credited with ideas which are in fact very different from those we now know them to have proffered. A particularly popular work at the time was the so-called Theology of Aristotle, which was in fact part of Plotinus’s Enneads plus some additions. In any case, it is far better to talk of Neoplatonisms rather than Neoplatonism, since the latter was far from a definitive system with a common party line. Although many Neoplatonists were atheists, Neoplatonism does as a doctrine fit rather neatly into religion, especially a religion such as Islam. For instance, there is an emphasis on the existence of one supreme being or principle, out of which everything else emerges in such a way as not to interfere with the absolute unity of the One. This philosophical issue mimics a theological problem in Islam: namely, how we should link the one God of revelation with the multiplicity of existence without compromising God’s absolute perfection and self-subsistence. Can we even say that God has properties, or is this to associate God with other things, the sin of idolatry (shirk)? There were heated theological debates around this issue, so it is hardly surprising that the language of Neoplatonism struck a chord within Islamic culture (Leaman 2002).

One of the problems with Neoplatonism from a religious point of view is that it does not treat seriously the idea of God creating the world out of nothing at a particular time. On the contrary, creation is generally identified with emanation (fayd), a continual process of generation which has no beginning or end, and which is automatic. This picture of the natural world has everything connected with everything else in a determined way, and this pattern of determination is necessary from a logical point of view. That is, at least at the higher levels of reality, the way in which interaction takes place is determined by the most rational way in which it can take place. It is pretty obvious that this is going to cause problems with the traditional Islamic notion of God, but it is worth pointing to the advantages of this sort of philosophical theory. It does trace the production and reproduction of everything back to a source and a single source at that, and it establishes a rational structure behind the universe. Thus the various Neoplatonic thinkers did provide a suitable set of principles for use by Muslim thinkers, albeit those principles often clashed with Islam itself. What is important, though, is not so much whether there is agreement between Neoplatonism, in whatever form, and Islam, but whether both systems of thought speak a language with some common points (Morewedge 1995).

A point that many commentators on Islamic philosophy make about its use of Neoplatonism is that it reproduces the syncretism of that doctrine or, rather, series of related doctrines. Neoplatonism appears to be a less ‘pure’ theory as compared with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, for example; in addition, Islamic thinkers often shared a great deal of interest in philosophers such as Empedocles and Pythagoras. It is said that there was an attempt to make many of these thinkers, who actually had quite disparate views, agree on central philosophical points. This does not accurately describe the situation, however, despite the existence of occasional texts that did try to link the different Greek thinkers in ways that do not reflect their real views. There were eclectic thinkers, and it is worth mentioning here the Ikhwan al-Safa’, the Brethren of Purity (fourth or fifth to tenth or eleventh centuries), who constructed an encyclopaedic work which discussed a route to spiritual liberation through philosophical perfection (Netton 1982, 1996). There were other thinkers like al-Farabi who occasionally explored the scope for agreement in Plato and Aristotle; but Islamic philosophy entailed far more than just combining the ideas and arguments of the various Greek thinkers. Overall, a very real attempt was made to group the varying arguments in Greek philosophy into common positions, then analyse the strength and weakness of those positions, while at the same time relating those arguments to contemporary issues in Islam. Far from it being the case that Islamic philosophers were unable to distinguish Plato from Aristotle, they were able even to distinguish Plato from Socrates, often regarding the latter as a more spiritual thinker as compared to both Plato and Aristotle (Alon 1991).

Major thinkers

Al-Kindi (died between 252/866 and 260/873) is often called the first philosopher of the Arabs, and he followed a Neoplatonic path, albeit attempting to argue for the creation of the world as against the theory of constant production and reproduction. He was working at a time when the philosophical curriculum and vocabulary were still being constructed, and it is noticeable how difficult he sometimes found it to express a point that he wished to make. The Arabic language of his time had not yet really taken on board the sorts of distinctions which were later to become commonplace in theoretical discussion (Klein-Franke 1996; Kennedy-Day 2003). He was followed by a group of philosophers centred on Baghdad that reached its acme in al-Farabi (b. c.257/870), a thinker who was highly influential on subsequent thought (Black 1996; Fakhry 2004). Al-Farabi not only established the sorts of topics which were going to be the focus of Islamic philosophy for the next few centuries; he also played a large part in refining the vocabulary, to enable it to be used far more subtly than had been the case up to his time. He provided the theoretical basis for an aspect of Islamic philosophy which is not going to be explored in any depth in this book, but which was very important, the study of logic (Street 2005). A great deal of the Greek work that was translated into Arabic dealt with logic, and this was greeted with great initial enthusiasm in the Arabic-speaking world. For one thing, it could be used in debates with non-Muslims in an attempt to persuade them of the merits of Islam through rational debate. Second, it fitted well with the translation project’s concentration on scientific manuscripts, since logic seeks to organize our ideas on the topic of thinking itself, while natural science organizes the phenomena of nature systematically.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of logic was that it seemed to challenge what had hitherto been taken to be the leading role of grammar as an explanation of how language works. Since the grammar of the Arabic language is the grammar of the language that God used in transmitting his final revelation, it was taken to represent formally the structure of what can be said and how it can be said. The miracle of the Qur’an (i‘jaz al-qur’an) lies to a degree in the language itself, and one of the proofs of Islam is taken to be the purity and beauty of the form of expression of the text itself. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the grammar of that language is accorded high status as an explanatory vehicle also. Al-Farabi argued that grammar did not really represent deep structure; it merely expressed the rules for the surface structure of the language, and even more basic than these rules are the principles of logic itself. This became a highly controversial topic, and it is not difficult to see why. The argument was really about power. Who has access to the more profound analysis of language, the grammarian or the logician? If al-Farabi was right, then the grammarians were dethroned from their previous crucial role. All they could comment on were the particular rules of an individual language, while the logicians could establish the principles of any and every language (Abed 1991; Mahdi 1970). This represented the spirit of the philosophers over the next few centuries, a spirit of ambition and confidence in their ability to express rationally the basic principles upon which all other forms of thought and expression are built.

An especially creative thinker who followed in this tradition was Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (370/980–429/1037). It is impossible to summarize his huge corpus, but for our purposes what is of particular interest is his development of the argument that the universe (apart from God) consists entirely of determined and necessitated events (Goodman 1992; Inati 1996b). God is the exception; God is the only thing that is not brought about by something else; and he represents the starting point of the series of causes and effects which make up the structure of reality. Now, this sounds quite compatible with religion; yet, when one looks a bit more closely, one sees that Ibn Sina does not leave God much of a role. God does not know about the world of generation and corruption – our world – since transitory and material events cannot be apprehended by an eternal and perfect consciousness. God cannot change anything in existence, since whatever happens does so because of something else causing it to happen, and although God is the nominal ultimate cause, he does not really seem to have the power to do anything to interfere with how things will turn out anyway. This attitude to the deity led to the fierce attack on philosophy by al-Ghazali (450/1058–505/1111), which is commonly credited with having destroyed it (Campanini 1996). Al-Ghazali brought two main charges against philosophy, both of which are interesting. The first is that philosophy offends against its own principles, since it cannot establish its conclusions on the basis of its premises. Second, philosophy is irreconcilable with religion, since the former leaves no room for the latter. That is, however much the philosophers may talk about God, they treat him as the name for a vacuous notion, since they give him nothing to do.

It is wrong to think of al-Ghazali as having brought philosophy to an end within the Islamic world, although it is true that after his attack philosophy fell into disrepute in much of the west of the Islamic world. He was answered by perhaps the greatest Islamic philosopher in the West, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (520/1126–595/1198), the best representative of Andalusi thought (Urvoy 1996). Within al-Andalus (the Muslim part of the Iberian peninsula) a particularly significant strain of philosophy flourished. It will be argued later that there is a specifically Andalusi character to philosophy, and here we will only skim the surface of thinkers such as Ibn Bajja (d. 537/1138) and Ibn Tufayl (d. 581/1185–6), philosophers who both pursued the Peripatetic tradition, yet also placed it within a broader philosophical context (Goodman 1996a, c). The latter’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Living Son of the Awake), which will be discussed later, provides an account of how an individual in complete isolation can use intellect alone to understand the important things about reality, knowledge which is later shown to be in accordance with the details of revelation. Ibn Rushd set out to refute al-Ghazali’s critique, and at the same time tried to refine philosophy. That is, he tried to return it to its Aristotelian roots, since he suspected that a good deal of the curriculum up to his time was infected (in his view) by Neoplatonic and Avicennan impurities. His main contribution to Islamic philosophy, and to philosophy in Christian and Jewish Europe, is the thesis that there are different routes to the same truth, and that all these routes are equally acceptable. The theory of meaning on which this is based is highly original and rich in its metaphysical implications, as we shall see.

Ibn Rushd is unusual in the world of Islamic philosophy in that he is one of the very few thinkers who was at best neutral about mysticism (Urvoy 1998). Most Peripatetic thinkers found no difficulty in combining their Greek-style philosophy with the mystical tradition. This is put nicely by Ibn Sina when he compares Peripatetic philosophy with what he calls ‘oriental’ philosophy, the idea being that the latter is far more significant than the former (Nasr 1996a). That is, Peripatetic thought exists within a more limited perspective than the sort of wisdom that is capable of putting its followers in experiential touch with the source of reality. So Peripatetic (mashsha’i) philosophy is often regarded as a part of the wider hikma, or wisdom, or as an alternative form of organized thought. This idea of there being alternative routes to knowledge is an important one within Islamic intellectual life, and many thinkers start their intellectual biographies by running briefly through the options which they saw as available to them. For example, al-Ghazali states in his work Munqidh min aldalal (What Saves from Error):

I came to regard the various seekers (after truth) as comprising four groups: (i) The Theologians (mutakallimun), who claim that they are the exponents of thought and intellectual speculations; (ii) the Batiniyah, who consider that they, as the party of ‘authoritative instruction’ (ta‘lim), alone derive truth from an infallible Imam; (iii) the Philosophers, who regard themselves as the exponents of logic and demonstration; (iv) the Sufis or Mystics, who claim that they alone enter into the ‘presence’ (of God) and possess vision and intuitive understanding. (1953: 267)

These groups should not be seen as necessarily exclusive, of course; but what this sort of proposition does is to set out the varieties of intellectual routes that were seen as available. Thinkers would be expected to make a conscious decision about which route they were going to take, and why. Al-Ghazali is quite right in explaining these alternatives in ways that emphasize their competing claims to authority. But there is no reason why a particular thinker should not combine all four approaches, and many did.

Sufism, as a form of mysticism, became very important in Islamic philosophy, sometimes as an alternative to other kinds of philosophy, and sometimes as an accompaniment (Nasr 1996c; Kılıç 1996). Al-Ghazali did a great deal to make Sufism respectable, but its systematization was really initiated by Ibn al-‘Arabi (560/1164–638/1240). The whole point of mysticism is to provide a taste (dhawq) of ultimate reality, and there has been a wide variety of accounts of how to do this. One of the most powerful mystical traditions in Islamic philosophy is found in Isma‘ili thought, the sort of thought referred to in alGhazali’s statement above as supporting ta‘lim (Nasir Khusraw 1998; al-Din Tusi 1998; Nanji 1996). The imam, the spiritual and intellectual guide of the community, is able to understand the meaning of the message of God, and communicates that meaning to his followers. There is no route to the real meaning of the message except through the imam; only he has access to the appropriate form of interpretation (ta’wil) which reveals its inner (batin) nature. Persian thinkers were often concerned to differentiate their approach to reality from Sufism; so, instead of calling their approach ‘ilm al-tasawwuf (which would identify it too closely with Sufism), they sometimes used the express...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Author’s Note and Abbreviations
• Glossary
• 1. A Short History of Islamic Philosophy
• 2. Main Controversies
• 3. Knowledge
• 4. Mysticism
• 5. Ontology
• 6. Ethics
• 7. Politics
• 8. The Question of Transmission
• 9. Language
• 10. Islamic Philosophy Today
• 11. Does Islam Need an Enlightenment?
• References and Bibliography
• Guide to Further Reading
• Index