Thinker · TH-0045
Al-Kindi
Abu Yusuf al-Kindi, known as 'the Philosopher of the Arabs', worked in Abbasid Baghdad, where he oversaw and drew on translations of Greek philosophy…
يعقوب بن إسحاق الكندي
Also known as Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, Alkindus, the Philosopher of the Arabs
c. 800 – 870 · Kufa, Basra, Baghdad
Traditions: Islamic
Schools: Falsafa
Abu Yusuf al-Kindi, known as 'the Philosopher of the Arabs', worked in Abbasid Baghdad, where he oversaw and drew on translations of Greek philosophy into Arabic. He is usually regarded as the first major philosopher writing in Arabic. In On First Philosophy he argued, drawing on John Philoponus, that an actually infinite magnitude or past is impossible, so the world must have had a beginning and a cause, an early Arabic form of the finitist cosmological argument.
Key ideas
- An actual infinite cannot exist, so the world and time must be finite and have a beginning.
- What begins to exist requires a cause, ultimately the True One.
- Philosophy and revealed religion pursue the same truth and do not conflict.
- Truth should be welcomed from whatever source it comes, including foreign peoples.
Major works
- Fī al-falsafa al-ūlā (On First Philosophy)
- Fī ḥudūd al-ashyāʾ wa-rusūmihā (On the Definitions of Things)
- Fī al-ʿaql (On the Intellect)
In the conversation
- Reading group Reading group: Miskawayh’s Refinement of Character, and Tusi’s Persian reworking of it