Activity last 6 months
Debates 3
Calling al-Jahiz a forerunner of Darwin does him no favours
DebateFor 2 · Against 1
Biology & evolutionAnalyticIslamicMu'tazilaAl-JahizCharles Darwin#al-jahiz#anticipation#history-of-biology#kitab-al-hayawan
5 repliesThe Mu’tazila were right: reason can know that injustice is wrong before any revelation
DebateFor 3 · Against 2
Meta-ethicsIslamicJewishAsh'arismKalamMu'tazilaAl-Ash’ariAl-Ghazali#divine-command#kalam-ethics#moral-rationalism#mutazila
6 repliesQuestions 1
Discussions 7See all
The translation movement: what was gained and lost between Greek, Syriac and Arabic?
Al-Farabi’s Virtuous City and Plato’s Republic
Did al-Ghazali’s Incoherence kill philosophy in the Islamic world?
Essence and existence: why Ibn Sina’s distinction mattered to Aquinas
The floating man is not the cogito: Ibn Sina and Descartes compared
What Ibn al-Haytham actually did, and why “father of the scientific method” overstates it
Reading groups 4
Reading group: Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise
Reading group: al-Bīrūnī’s India, the preface and the chapter on why understanding is hard
Reading group: Miskawayh’s Refinement of Character, and Tusi’s Persian reworking of it
Reading group: al-Mawardi’s Ordinances of Government, on the conditions of legitimate rule
Journal 1
Recent replies
- What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
Gladly. Ibn Sina distinguishes the five external senses from five internal ones, each with a function and a location in the brain: common sense (al-hiss al-mushtarak): combines the data of the externa…
- Reading group: Suhrawardi’s Philosophy of Illumination, introduction and Part One
I'll join. The critique of definition is underrated; it's a sharp argument, and modern philosophers who complain about the limits of conceptual analysis would find a friend in him.
- How does Ibn Sina’s proof of the Necessary Existent avoid the infinite regress problem?
Good question, and Ibn Sina's answer is subtle. He doesn't need to assume that an infinite regress is impossible. Consider the whole collection of contingent beings, however many there are,…
- Can a translation of a poem be as beautiful as the original?
In seventeenth-century France, elegant but loose translations of the classics were nicknamed les belles infidèles, the beautiful unfaithful ones. The phrase is sexist, but it captures a dilemma transl…
- Did Hume ever read al-Ghazali?
The short answer is that there is no evidence Hume knew al-Ghazālī's argument, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. Some background on why people wonder. The Incoherence of…