Books of Definition in Islamic Philosophy

The Limits of Words

Kiki Kennedy-Day

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135787301
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Islamic Philosophy has unusual origins. Originally a hybrid of Greek philosophy and early Islamic theology, its technical language consisted of a number of words translated from the Greek. This book studies how Islamic philosophers of the ninth century AD, such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, developed an indigenous set of terms and concepts. Their Books of Definition influenced the revision of the Arabic language to incorporate these new fields of knowledge.
Books of Definition in Islamic Philosophy: The Limits of Words uses the work of these philosophers as a basis from which a comparison with their Greek precedents is enabled. The book presents a framework for incorporating an Islamic and historically contextualised philosophy into a continuum of world philosophers. At the core of this framework is Ibn Sina's Kitab al-hudud which the author has translated into English and situates it in its correct geopolitical framework. In establishing a historical and literary context for the writing and circulation of Ibn Sina's definitions, the book breaks new ground in the integration of Islamic philosophy within a general history of philosophies.
This fascinating and comprehensive study will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students of Islamic Philosophy.

Part 1

Definitions of the Philosophers

1

What is a Definition?

But the essence of the Plotinian system lies in the new meaning which the whole imposed on the parts; its true originality is not in the materials but in the design (as, indeed, I suspect is the case with every great philosophical system).

E. R. Dodds¹

The Role of Definition in Philosophy

Scholars of Islamic philosophy have tended to view the history of Islamic philosophy in terms of Greek philosophy. This is due, on its face, to the fact that early Islamic philosophy originated from Arabic translations of Greek philosophy, which formed the starting point for a native philosophy. Since the initial philosophical writings in the Arabic language were translations, someone had to fashion lists of philosophical vocabulary to express technical philosophical language in Arabic. This also led to books of definition, short lexicons of terms used to express foreign concepts. If philosophy was an imported science, books of definition were evidently indigenous, as they existed in many fields. The evolution of philosophical terms is a historical process that can be observed by investigating these books. While modern scholars of Islamic philosophy have sometimes gone so far as to assert that developments in Islamic philosophy merely reflected the changing status of translation techniques from Greek to Arabic, via Syriac, this is not the case. They have rarely concentrated on the Arabic in itself, as used over time by the Islamic philosophers.² In the period under consideration here, the ninth to eleventh centuries AD, scholars consider al-Farabi as having a more accurate acquaintance with Aristotle. By way of explanation they point to the purportedly improved quality of the translations from Greek to Syriac to Arabic between the ninth to tenth centuries AD.

Individual studies and translations have appeared of the books of definitions of al-Kindi and Ibn Sina. Among the published studies, Samuel Stern gives a critique and partial translation of al-Kindi’s Book of Definitions, and A.-M. Goichon gives a French translation of Ibn Sina’s Book of Definitions with references to many Aristotelian sources and similarities to Ibn Sina’s definitions.

Here the development of a set of terms from the earliest Islamic philosopher, al-Kindi, who lived in the ninth century AD through al-Farabi, an interim figure who lived in the tenth century, to Ibn Sina, who died early in the eleventh century, is under consideration. The words are a selection of terms for substance, cause, and matter, chosen in part because the ideas behind these terms are basic for any philosopher’s organization of a philosophical universe and because words to express these ideas had to be adapted from ordinary language Arabic.

The word for substance, jawhar, is adopted from the Persian language and originally means “jewel” or “gem.” The word for cause, ^cilla, means “illness” or “deficiency” in the ordinary language. For matter, the philosophers used either madda or hayula. Hayula is a transliteration of the Greek term, hyle, which Aristotle appropriated from the ordinary language and used to refer to the stuff of the universe. Although Arabic is a rich language, the philosophers had to re-imagine it to do the work they needed: to form abstract nouns, to find names for concepts without expression, and to indicate the process that happened to something. These terms are not only central to philosophical thought, but used by all the philosophers, which allows comparison.

The term jawhar (substance) is not only one of Aristotle’s primary terms in the Categories, but of the ten categories, it is the single most important term. Substance represents the underlying entities of the universe to which things happen, in contrast to the nine remaining categories, which are accidents, in Aristotle’s scheme. Substance is neither a particularly Arab idea, nor an ordinary language one in this usage. ^cIlla, cause, is another alien idea and immediately calls up the debate on who is the agent of change. Is it human? Is it God? Who has responsibility? Thus ^cilla (cause) represents a major debate from Islamic philosophy and theology. It leads to questions about the agent of creation, and what that might mean, particularly in terms of human responsibility and punishment. The justice of God is also at stake, since if God is the cause of all acts, how can God justly punish humans for those acts? Matter as expressed in the terms madda or hayula represents the basis for the physical nature of the universe. Matter’s relation to form and cause also informs one of the ongoing dialogues of philosophy. These terms are also selected to demonstrate three different relationships of the terms: one term that reflects similar definitions across the falasifa’s work, one term that demonstrates differing definitions, and one term that is of interest for the use of terms in its definition. Ultimately the most critical aspect is that a basis of comparison exists.

All three terms appear prominently in both al-Kindi’s and Ibn Sina’s lists of definitions. They first appear in the Arabic translations of Aristotle’s philosophy; thereafter the Islamic philosophers incorporate them in their original works. The focus is not only on large changes in meaning, but also on shifts in the way the same or similar ideas were expressed. Given the nature of Islamic philosophy and its roots in Greek philosophy, the reader should be satisfied to observe small shifts in the diachronic scheme rather than major shifts in meaning or contradictory forms.

A term’s use in the Qur’an is one of the standard earmarks of early usage. The selected terms jawhar (substance), ^cilla (cause), and madda (matter) are not found in the Qur’an.³ The Arabic language developed terms for philosophical ideas in the process of translating Hellenistic philosophy. Some documents suggest that the falasifa consulted with and amended the translators’ word selections. The indication is that the translators also realized they were dealing with a technical terminology. This is apparent when a translator who was a contemporary of al-Kindi states that al-Kindi “corrected” (aslaha) the translations.⁴ After the initial work of translation there remained the secondary task of interpreting and explaining the new vocabulary to the readers. Supposing that a new vocabulary developed organically as the translators worked, manuals or lexicons to explain this new technical vocabulary would be required. The early books of definition served this purpose, since the study of philosophy was new to the whole Arabic-speaking society, its audience as well as its practitioners. If one imagines a sophisticated, literate society whose primary expression is found in poetry, grammar, histories, and other similarly concrete endeavors here one sees guidebooks for philosophical works appearing. Since it had long been assumed that oral instructions and then written commentaries would be necessary to explicate philosophical texts, surely a word book to explain the concepts would help too? By the time of Ibn Sina’s Book of Definitions, about 100 words were defined in a ready guide for students who wished to understand philosophical works. The popularity of these lists can also be seen in the similarity of terms from list to list, especially in the early words.⁵

In observing the usage of the falasifa each term will be examined as defined by the individual failasuf. This investigation focuses on the development of these terms in the period from al-Kindi to Ibn Sina, the third to the fifth centuries AH/ninth to eleventh centuries AD For al-Kindi and Ibn Sina their definitions are found in their respective books of definitions – Fi hudud al-ashya’ and Kitab al-hudud. For al-Farabi they appear in Kitab alhuruf (The Book of Letters), his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.⁶ Thus, it will be demonstrated how definitions change over the two centuries of our study, both in regard to the references they make, and in the words selected in the definientia. As much as possible each of the terms will be followed from one philosopher to the next, except where a different term is used for the concept discussed. This development and the enduring effect of the falasifa’s definitions in Islamic philosophy as exemplified in these terms will form the focus of the study.

This work will deal with the development of terms for a technical philosophical vocabulary in the Arabic language, but a “source-hunt” will not serve that purpose.⁷ While one cannot deny Greek influence, especially in the case of al-Farabi, to view the falasifa as copyists of Aristotle is an oversimplification. The focus is on how they expressed themselves in Arabic, rather than tracking such inspiration as they may have received from Greek philosophy. Neither is it an attempt to trace the Hellenistic origin of each idea, or of each phrase, or even of each atomistic part. One might expect that Islamic philosophical enquiry proceeded along a trajectory similar to that followed by the Greeks. Thinkers speculating about metaphysics will need words for the objects of metaphysics, such as substance, cause, element and so on.

The working point of view will be to consider the transparent meanings generally, eschewing esoteric interpretations. This is not a discussion of Greek vocabulary, but of Arabic terms needed to discuss these ideas. These terms may or may not be equivalents of the Greek counterparts. For purposes of this study language will be considered as the tool of philosophy, adopting the viewpoint of E. R. Dodds, that what is original about a philosophical system is the design of the complete and finished structure – the completed mosaic – rather than the origin of each tessera.

In the mid-ninth century when al-Kindi began his philosophical enquiries, no ready-made philosophical vocabulary existed in Arabic. Consequently, he was obliged to develop terms to discuss the ideas he encountered. When particular translations demonstrate direct influence of the available texts used by the individual falasifa, then related developments in translation technique will be covered. This is shown by their understanding of particular concepts, such as, sabab in the writings of al-Farabi, which is based on particular translations.⁸ However, a detailed discussion of the role of the translators in developing this vocabulary is a separate issue and it is not the focus here.⁹ Al-Kindi’s Fi hudud al-ashya’ served as the first Arabic lexicon of philosophical terms. It was a professional lexicon, giving a technical meaning of terms that needed to be explained in this new science, philosophy. It includes terms referring to physics, metaphysics, and psychology. He proceeds by explaining the terms in wording that uses an intuitive understanding of the words, even if the meaning thus evoked is not completely accurate in philosophical terms.

It is apparent and unsurprising that al-Kindi’s choice of language will be shown to be more limited than that of his successors. This fact is attributable to his position as a trailblazer in philosophy. One noteworthy point is that al-Kindi deliberately chose terms to avoid religious connotations in some instances thereby isolating philosophy from theology and Qur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Map The Abbasid Caliphate
• Introduction
• Part 1: Definitions of the philosophers
• Part 2: Ibn Sina’s Book of Definitions
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index