Tradition
Islamic
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Is human dignity a religious idea that secular law borrowed?
Article 1 of the German Basic Law (1949) declares human dignity inviolable. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) begins by recognising the inherent dignity of all members of the human family.…
Started by Hamza Qureshi1 reply0 views -
Is “Islamic philosophy” a useful label?
Some colleagues prefer "Arabic philosophy". Others say "philosophy in the Islamic world". Each has problems. "Islamic philosophy" suggests that it's all religious, or that all of it was done by Muslims. But…
Started by Layla Haddad2 replies0 views -
What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
In my history of psychology course, Ibn Sina was mentioned for his theory of "internal senses", and the lecturer said it was an early version of cognitive psychology. I'd love a clear…
Started by Elif Yıldız2 replies0 views -
Reading group: Suhrawardi’s Philosophy of Illumination, introduction and Part One
Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (1154–1191) was executed in Aleppo, still young, after falling foul of the authorities. His Philosophy of Illumination (Hikmat al-Ishraq), completed in 1186, founded a school that shaped Persian philosophy…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies0 views -
How does Ibn Sina’s proof of the Necessary Existent avoid the infinite regress problem?
I understand the basic structure: things that exist are either necessary in themselves or possible (contingent) in themselves. Contingent things need a cause. So there must be a necessary being. But why…
Started by Omar Farouk2 replies0 views -
Fes, al-Qarawiyyin, and how medieval students learned to argue
I take my students past al-Qarawiyyin every year. Founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, it's often described as one of the oldest continuously operating institutions of learning in the world. What interests…
Started by Youssef Benali2 replies0 views -
The translation movement: what was gained and lost between Greek, Syriac and Arabic?
Between the eighth and tenth centuries, a huge body of Greek philosophy, medicine and science was translated into Arabic, mostly in Baghdad. Many of the translators were Syriac-speaking Christians, and texts often…
Started by Layla Haddad3 replies0 views -
Al-Farabi’s Virtuous City and Plato’s Republic
Al-Farabi (c. 870–950) is sometimes called the "Second Teacher", after Aristotle. His Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City combines Neoplatonic metaphysics with a political philosophy that owes…
Started by Layla Haddad3 replies0 views -
The “double truth” doctrine was never Ibn Rushd’s view
In thirteenth-century Paris, some arts masters were accused of holding that something could be true in philosophy and false in faith, or the reverse: the so-called doctrine of double truth. These "Latin…
Started by Youssef Benali5 replies0 views -
Did al-Ghazali’s Incoherence kill philosophy in the Islamic world?
A story you'll still find in textbooks: al-Ghazali attacked philosophy around 1095, Ibn Rushd's defence was ignored in the East, and after that Islamic philosophy died while Europe picked up the torch.…
Started by Layla Haddad4 replies0 views -
Mystical experience can count as evidence for what it reveals
William Alston, in Perceiving God (1991), argued that mystical experience is a form of perception, and that beliefs formed through it are prima facie justified in the same way perceptual beliefs are.…
Started by Reza Tehrani7 replies0 views -
Is fana in Sufism the same as nirvana in Buddhism?
My grandmother used to read Sufi poetry about fana, the annihilation of the self in God. Now I've started reading about Buddhism and nirvana, which also seems to involve the end of…
Started by Elif Yıldız4 replies0 views -
Ibn Khaldun on taxation: a fourteenth-century Laffer curve?
In the Muqaddimah (1377) Ibn Khaldun observes that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments, while at the end of a dynasty it yields a…
Started by Javier Morales3 replies0 views -
Reading group: The Muqaddimah, the introduction on historians’ errors
Before the Muqaddimah proper begins, Ibn Khaldun explains why historians get things wrong. His list includes partisanship for opinions and schools, overconfidence in one's sources, failure to understand what was intended, mistaken…
Started by Youssef Benali4 replies0 views -
Reading group: Ibn Rushd, The Decisive Treatise
The Faṣl al-Maqāl (c. 1178–80) is short and lucid. It's the best introduction to Ibn Rushd's thought, and it's written in the form of a legal opinion: what is the status, under…
Started by Layla Haddad4 replies0 views -
Al-Ghazali’s Deliverance from Error as a story about information overload
I've been reading al-Ghazali's Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Dalal), written late in his life. He describes his search for certain knowledge among four groups: the theologians, the Batinis (who relied on…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman4 replies0 views -
What is ijtihad, and why did Iqbal call it the principle of movement in Islam?
In court I know ijtihad in its narrow legal sense: independent reasoning by a qualified jurist to derive a ruling where texts are silent or unclear. But Iqbal, in the sixth lecture…
Started by Hamza Qureshi3 replies0 views -
Al-Ghazali was right: causal necessity cannot be demonstrated
In the Seventeenth Discussion of The Incoherence of the Philosophers, al-Ghazali argues that the connection between what is customarily believed to be a cause and its effect is not necessary. When cotton…
Started by Layla Haddad8 replies0 views -
Did Ibn Khaldun invent sociology, or is that a modern compliment?
Ibn Khaldun called his new science 'ilm al-'umran, the science of human social organisation or civilisation. He looked for regular causes behind historical events: climate, economy, group solidarity, the transition from nomadic…
Started by Youssef Benali3 replies0 views -
Essence and existence: why Ibn Sina’s distinction mattered to Aquinas
In the metaphysics of the Shifa', Ibn Sina distinguishes what a thing is, its essence or quiddity (mahiyya), from the fact that it is, its existence (wujud). You can understand what a…
Started by Layla Haddad4 replies0 views -
Iqbal’s khudi and Nietzsche’s Übermensch: influence or polemic?
Iqbal's Persian poem Asrar-i-Khudi (1915), translated by R. A. Nicholson as The Secrets of the Self (1920), makes the self, khudi, the centre of his philosophy. The self must be strengthened, disciplined…
Started by Hamza Qureshi4 replies0 views -
The kalam cosmological argument: what the mutakallimun actually argued
The argument that William Lane Craig revived in The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979) has three steps: whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has…
Started by Omar Farouk4 replies0 views -
Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyya and the rise and fall of states
The central concept of the Muqaddimah is asabiyya, usually translated "group feeling" or "solidarity". Ibn Khaldun argues that groups living hard lives on the margins of civilisation, often nomadic or tribal, develop…
Started by Youssef Benali4 replies0 views -
The floating man is not the cogito: Ibn Sina and Descartes compared
Ibn Sina's "floating man" appears in the De Anima of the Shifa' and again in the Isharat. Imagine a person created all at once, fully mature, suspended in the air, eyes covered,…
Started by Layla Haddad5 replies0 views -
Reading group: Iqbal’s Reconstruction, Lecture I (“Knowledge and Religious Experience”)
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam began as lectures Iqbal delivered in Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh in 1928–29. They were published in Lahore in 1930, and the 1934 Oxford edition added…
Started by Hamza Qureshi5 replies0 views -
Ibn Khaldun
North African historian, jurist and statesman who served several dynasties across the Maghreb and al-Andalus before settling in Cairo as a Maliki judge. The…
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Muhammad Iqbal
Poet and philosopher from Sialkot who studied at Cambridge and earned a doctorate in Munich before practising law in Lahore. Writing poetry in Persian…
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Ibn Sina
Persian polymath born near Bukhara whose philosophical and medical works dominated scholarship in the Islamic world and, through Latin translations, in medieval Europe. He…
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Al-Ghazali
Persian Ash'arite theologian, jurist and Sufi who taught at the Nizamiyya college in Baghdad before a spiritual crisis led him to leave his post…
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Ibn Rushd
Andalusian philosopher, judge and physician who served as qadi of Seville and Córdoba and as court physician in Marrakesh. Known in Latin Europe simply…