ARABI, FILOSOFIA degli. — The A. regarded as fajlasāf, that is, philosopher in the exact sense of the term, not every thinker, but only those who concerned themselves with Greek thought and therefore followed Greek philosophy in their doctrines of logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, etc., and specifically the philosophy of Aristotle. Thus the term philosopher became synonymous with a Hellenizing, Aristotelian, and partly also Neoplatonic thinker, since Plato was not entirely unknown to the A., although known to them in Neoplatonic guise. Since Greek thought was wholly foreign to the Arab mentality, philosophers were always regarded as alien to the Arab spirit, introducers of innovations, almost pagans, and were therefore always suspect to the orthodox theologians. The A. did indeed always hold philosophy in high esteem, but Islamic orthodoxy was distrustful of philosophers, some of whom were even persecuted for doctrines wholly irreconcilable with the Muslim faith.
Arab philosophy did not arise among the A. themselves from modest indigenous beginnings; rather, it was brought to them already almost fully formed, and in its development it did not always depend on the speculative needs of individual philosophers. Its course was often determined by the introduction of new Greek sources into the philosophical life of the time. The introduction of Greek philosophy into Arab culture continued throughout the four centuries of its existence, from approximately 800 to 1200, when it died out completely after the disappearance of Averroè.
Greek philosophy passed to the A. from the Byzantine Empire in the form that Aristotelianism had assumed in the Byzantine schools, in close connection with Neoplatonism, to which not a few of the commentators on the Stagirite’s writings adhered. The A. always knew Aristotle through Neoplatonic commentaries, and thus in Neoplatonic guise. This circumstance decisively determined Arab philosophy, giving rise to the Neoplatonic Aristotelian philosophy of the A., a current to which all Arab philosophers adhered, including Averroè, who was the most Aristotelian among them. Some Greek writings translated into Arabic reinforced the close union between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism: the Liber de causis, believed to be an authentic work of the Stagirite, contains literal excerpts from the Institutio Theologica of the Neoplatonist Proclus and was composed in Arabic by a Muslim author around the year 850; the Theology of Aristotle, composed in Greek, contains excerpts from the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of Plotinus’s Eneads and was translated from Greek into Arabic by a Christian scholar.
We do not know whether the Arab philosophers read any of Aristotle’s dialogues in translation, nor whether Aristotle of the first period, closer to Platonic ideas, was known to them, as was the Stagirite of the second period. Through the Neoplatonic commentaries and the two writings mentioned above, Neoplatonism entered the current of Arab thought and became one of its integral elements. Arab philosophy may therefore be defined as Aristotelianism plus certain Platonic currents in Neoplatonic guise.
The A. knew Aristotelian doctrines through versions in Arabic, since none of the great Arab philosophers knew the Greek language. Some writings of Plato were also translated. The A. acquired a certain knowledge of pre-Socratic philosophy through Aristotle himself and through the references in the Stagirite’s commentaries. Atomism in particular was known to the A. The translators of the Greek writings were for the most part Christian scholars of Syriac speech, who at first and above all translated into Arabic versions previously made from Greek into Syriac; only later did they produce translations directly from the Greek texts. These Syriac-Arabic and Greek-Arabic versions encompassed not only philosophy but also the other sciences and the Byzantine Greek encyclopedia.
The period of the translations begins around the year 800 and extends to 1000. For the most part the translations are literal and not always accurate, both because of the poor preservation of the manuscripts and because of the double passage from Greek to Syriac and from Syriac to Arabic. Sometimes the translator summarized the text; or certain chapters were translated literally while others were merely summarized. Among others, mention should be made of the Syrian Christian Ḥunajn ibn Isḥāq, who, together with his son and one of his grandsons, rendered outstanding service to Arab science through numerous translations of Greek and Syriac texts. Later, however, people were no longer content with versions made from the Syriac text, and new translations of the same texts were produced, so that Averroè could sometimes compare two versions of the same passage and thus give a more reliable explanation of Aristotle’s thought. The Syriac versions and Syriac philosophy, which also preserved writings lost in the Greek original but known to the A. through versions from Syriac, were therefore intermediaries between Greek thought and that of the A. and promoted the diffusion of Greek philosophy in the East. Through Sicily and Spain it returned once more to the continent of its origin; indeed, not a few Arabic philosophical writings were translated into Latin, either directly or indirectly through oral versions in Castilian, or through versions in Hebrew made by Jews. In this way Arab philosophy exerted an important influence on medieval Latin scholastic speculation, and the names of the major Arab philosophers, Alchindi, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer, and Averroè, became familiar to Latin philosophers. For this reason, knowledge of Arab philosophy is always of great assistance in achieving an adequate understanding of medieval philosophy.
Among the A., philosophy was not viewed sympathetically by the stricter orthodoxy, because of the open conflict it entailed with the fundamental concepts of the Islamic religion. Philosophy was regarded as a product of a pagan and foreign mentality; it was reproached for turning minds away from religion and for wishing to substitute profane, and ultimately atheistic, science for true knowledge, which can only be religious knowledge. Some philosophers were therefore persecuted. Nevertheless, a part of Greek philosophy, first and foremost logic, penetrated the theological works of the Muslim doctors themselves; indeed, Aristotelianism became almost the foundation of the Islamic religious system. Philosophy, however, ultimately succumbed before orthodoxy, and it may therefore be said that after 1200 there was scarcely any philosophy among the A.
Yet the doctrines of one of the greatest Arab philosophers, Averroè, helped direct European rationalistic speculative thought in an entirely opposite direction, namely toward the doctrine that philosophy is superior to religion and absorbs it into its rational reflection. A profound and tenacious adversary of this conception and, in general, of Greek philosophical doctrines among the A. was Algazel, who nevertheless was himself ultimately obliged to employ philosophy, specifically in order to attack it from the religious point of view. Algazel was naturally opposed by Averroè, who, in refutation of the Muslim theologian’s Destructio philosophiae, wrote his celebrated Destructio destructionis.
The originality of the Arab philosophers lies in the effort to reconcile Greek philosophical doctrines, foremost among them those of Aristotle, with the religious and theological concepts of the Qur’an, while always assigning first place to philosophy and seeking to depreciate religion, regarded as an inferior type of knowledge in comparison with philosophy, the only discipline that provides true knowledge of reality. The problem of reconciling philosophy with religion was resolved on the basis of this premise; each philosopher then resolved it according to his own mentality, learning, and temperament. Within the sphere of this reconciliation, the speculative faculty of the philosophers was exercised, whereas in other fields of philosophy the variations are of lesser importance and result more from the external introduction of new doctrines than from an intimate spiritual struggle. It may therefore be affirmed that Arab philosophy does not represent a period of original spiritual fervor.
The Arab philosophers were almost all systematic and encyclopedic. Following especially the model of Aristotle, they attempted grandiose philosophical systems embracing every field of knowledge. In this respect, however, they did not know the genuine Aristotle, but only the Aristotle of the commentators. They were also influenced by the encyclopedic and systematic philosopher and commentator Giovanni Filopono, who was known to the A. through several of his writings and his numerous, voluminous commentaries. The encyclopedic character of Arab culture also contributed to the emergence within it of celebrated figures in other branches of knowledge: Avicenna was a famous physician, well known also to Western medicine.
Not all the Aristotelian doctrines of the Arab philosophers can be traced back to the writings of the Stagirite. This is due to the fact that they always drew upon the Greek commentaries on Aristotle and thus often adopted doctrines that the commentators had deduced from the Aristotelian text and from works of the Greek philosopher that have since been lost, especially those belonging to his earlier period. The problem of universals, for example, which occupied the minds of Arab philosophers no less than those of Latin scholasticism, was taken by them from the Greek commentators.
Some Christian and Jewish philosophers also wrote in Arabic; Alfarabi was of Turkish nationality, and Avicenna was certainly of Persian origin; Avempace was probably not of Arab origin.
The language these philosophers used to give expression to their thought is a highly suitable instrument for expressing the abstract concepts of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophies. Any philosophical concept can readily be rendered in Arabic. Its facility in forming abstract nouns, derived even from particles, and the richness of its roots make it a precious instrument for speculative thought. Arabic philosophical terminology enriched the vocabulary of Latin scholasticism, since not a few of its terms entered, through Latin translations, into the philosophy of the Middle Ages and from there into modern speculation. Some terms, however, underwent such distortions that they became unrecognizable.
The two most illustrious Avicenna (v.) and Averroes (v.), belonging to the two extreme wings of the area of expansion of Arab literature and civilization. Averroes is the pure Aristotelian, who seeks to discover the true doctrine of the Greek master and explain it, whereas Avicenna is the type of encyclopedic philosopher who relives the philosophy of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism and created a grandiose philosophical system of a type entirely different from Averroes’s philosophical literary activity, which was well known to Latin scholasticism, first and foremost for his numerous commentaries on the works of the Stagirite.
Arab philosophy was able to exert a major influence on medieval Latin speculation through the numerous translations made of the philosophical writings of the A. by Christian and Jewish writers. Translations from Arabic in the field of philosophy were made both in Spain and in Italy. Some of these translations were undertaken at the behest of Frederick II of Swabia. Aristotelianism first appeared in the fullness of its doctrines on the threshold of the Western world in Avicennian and Averroist guise. Averroism (v.) entered Europe through Spain and Sicily and had various centers of development and dissemination, the most important of which were Paris and Padua. The ZABARELLA, GIACOMO (v.), who was a professor at the University of Padua: Arab philosophy thus came to an end in Italy.