Philosophy in the Islamic World in Context
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Edited by:
Philosophy has always engaged with other disciplines, not staying confined within narrow boundaries but instead interacting with other areas of intellectual activity. This is something we may observe in the history of philosophy in the Islamic world. Indeed many scholars in the Islamic world were polymaths, who might be experts in law, grammar, scriptural exegesis, poetry and so on, while also pursuing philosophical interests. The book series Philosophy in the Islamic World in Context seeks to do justice to this phenomenon. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, with each volume considering the interaction between philosophy and one other important aspect of Islamic culture. Both directions of influence are considered, as the volumes explore the philosophical relevance of writings not usually thought to fall within the genre of philosophy, and also the impact of these other strands of Islamic culture on philosophical writing.
This book brings together the study of two great disciplines of the Islamic world: law and philosophy. In both sunni and shiite Islam, it became the norm for scholars to acquire a high level of expertise in the legal tradition. Thus some of the greatest names in the history of Aristotelianism were trained jurists, like Averroes, or commented on the status and nature of law, like al-Fārābī. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to the philosophical disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazālī and Ibn Taymiyya.
But this collection of papers does not only explore the relative standing of law and philosophy. It also looks at how philosophers, theologians, and jurists answered philosophical questions that arise from jurisprudence itself. What is the logical structure of a well-formed legal argument? What standard of certainty needs to be attained in passing down judgments, and how is that standard reached? What are the sources of valid legal judgment and what makes these sources authoritative? May a believer be excused on grounds of ignorance?
Together the contributions provide an unprecedented demonstration of the close connections between philosophy and law in Islamic society, while also highlighting the philosophical interest of texts normally studied only by legal historians.
What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers.
In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research.
This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally.
In the quest for true knowledge, mysticism goes one step beyond philosophy. While philosophy and mysticism are considered two distinct disciplines with their own methodological approaches in the history of Islamic thought, their metaphysical concepts reveal significant points of intersection. Their convergence follows an inherent logic. In many Muslim circles, the methodological differences between the two are not regarded as an irreconcilable opposition.
Philosophy seeks knowledge through rational reflection, whereas mysticism deepens these insights by experiencing them in a transcendent state of consciousness. The French orientalist Henry Corbin (d. 1978) argued that Islamic philosophy found its true purpose only after Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and especially with the Isfahan School and Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī (known as Mullā Ṣadrā, d. 1640), within the tradition of “spiritual intellect” in Oriental wisdom. This school of thought is also referred to as “Oriental theosophy.”
A central question in this context is whether this form of philosophizing, in Corbin’s sense, should be understood as a departure from rationalist tradition and a return to a spiritual mode of thinking, or whether, as Pierre Hadot (d. 2010) put it, philosophy is not merely a particular way of viewing the world but rather a way of life. In this understanding, philosophizing does not simply mean speculating, analyzing, or theorizing but rather leading a consciously reflective life.
Whether Islamic philosophy adheres strictly to rational inquiry or transcends rationality to serve the mystical wisdom tradition ultimately depends on how philosophy is perceived within Islam and what role mysticism plays in this context.
This edited volume examines the complex relationship between these two domains of human thought and way of life through concrete examples from the history of Islamic intellectual traditions. It not only elucidates the ways in which philosophy and mysticism are interconnected but also delineates the precise boundaries of their connection. The contributions in this volume explore both dimensions from various perspectives, highlighting their mutual influence and the intricate relationship between philosophy and mysticism.
