Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I RELIGION AND LAW
- PART II SOCIETIES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
- PART III LITERATURE
- PART IV LEARNING, ARTS AND CULTURE
- 20 Education
- 21 Philosophy
- 22 The sciences in Islamic societies (750–1800)
- 23 Occult sciences and medicine
- 24 Literary and oral cultures
- 25 Islamic art and architecture
- 26 Music
- 27 Cookery
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
21 - Philosophy
from PART IV - LEARNING, ARTS AND CULTURE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I RELIGION AND LAW
- PART II SOCIETIES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
- PART III LITERATURE
- PART IV LEARNING, ARTS AND CULTURE
- 20 Education
- 21 Philosophy
- 22 The sciences in Islamic societies (750–1800)
- 23 Occult sciences and medicine
- 24 Literary and oral cultures
- 25 Islamic art and architecture
- 26 Music
- 27 Cookery
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Although the original meaning of the Greek term ‘philosophy’ (falsafa in Arabic) is ‘love of wisdom’, philosophy encompasses a wide variety of methods and subjects, including the structure of reality, the character of human actions, the nature of the divine and much more. Philosophical method certainly includes human rational argumentative discourse and investigation (al-naẓar) by the use of intellect (bi-l-ʿaql) in the search for what is true or right in the realms of nature, metaphysics and ethics. If understood in this sense, philosophy – or something much like it, employing many of the methods found in philosophy – can be seen in Islam among the mutakallimūn or practitioners of kalām (Islamic argumentative theology) well before the advent of the falāsifa, or philosophers working in the framework of Platonic and Aristotelian thought. The Arabic term kalām has many senses, including speech, word, account and more, depending on context, including Divine Speech. Some later well-known philosophers of the classical rationalist period, such as al-Fārābῑ, Ibn Sῑnā/Avicenna and Ibn Rushd/Averroes, commonly regarded kalām as unscientific dialectical argumentation in defence of basic tenets of the Islamic faith.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 532 - 563Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010