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TRANSLATOR’S PREFATORY NOTE.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFATORY NOTE.
This edition of Dr. de Boer ’s recent work is produced in the hope that it may prove interesting to not a few English readers, and especially that it may be of service to younger students commencing to study the subject which is dealt with in the following pages. The translator has aimed at nothing more than a faithful reproduction of the original. His best thanks are due to the accomplished author, for his kindness in revising the proof-sheets of the version, as it passed through the Press. E.
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
T. J. de Boer. [ IX ] 1 S. Munk , “ Mélanges de Philosophie juive et arabe ”, Paris 1859. ↑ 2 Carra de Vaux , “ Avicenne ”, Paris 1900. ↑ 3 [ Translator’s Note : In this version the transliteration has been adapted as far as possible to English sounds .] ↑ CHAPTER I. Introduction . [ X ] CHAPTER II. Philosophy and Arab Knowledge . CHAPTER III. The Pythagorean Philosophy . CHAPTER IV. The Neo-Platonic Aristotelians of The East . CHAPTER V. The Outcome of Philosophy in The East . CHAPTER VI. P
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CORRIGENDA.
CORRIGENDA.
[ 1 ] 1. In olden time the Arabian desert was, as it is at this day, the roaming-ground of independent Bedouin tribes. With free and healthy minds they contemplated their monotonous world, whose highest charm was the raid, and whose intellectual treasure was the tribal tradition. Neither the achievements of social labour, nor the accomplishments of elegant leisure were known to them. Only on the borders of the desert, in regularly constituted communities, which often had to suffer from the incur
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1. The Theatre.
1. The Theatre.
From the time of Harun at least, there existed in Bagdad a library and a learned institute. Even under Mansur, but especially under Mamun and his successors, translation of the scientific literature of the Greeks into the Arabic tongue went forward, largely through the agency of Syrians; and Abstracts and Commentaries bearing upon these works were also composed. Just when this learned activity was at its highest, the glory of the empire began to decline. The old tribal feuds, which had never bee
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2. Oriental Wisdom.
2. Oriental Wisdom.
Nor did the logical and metaphysical speculations of the Indians remain unknown to the Muslims. These produced, however, much less effect on scientific development than did their Mathematics and Astrology. The investigations of the Indians, associated with their sacred books and wholly determined by a religious purpose, have certainly had a [ 10 ] lasting influence upon Persian Sufism and Islamic Mysticism. But,—once for all,—Philosophy is a Greek conception, and we have no right, in deference t
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3. Greek Science.
3. Greek Science.
5. In Persia, at Gondeshapur, we find an Institution for philosophical and medical studies established by Khosrau Anosharwan (521–579). Its teachers were principally Nestorian Christians; but Khosrau, who had an inclination for secular culture, extended his toleration to Monophysites as well as to Nestorians. At that time, just as was the case later at the court of the Caliphs, Christian Syrians were held in special honour as medical men. Farther, in the year 529, seven philosophers of the Neo-P
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1. Grammatical Science.
1. Grammatical Science.
Next to Logic the influence of the preparatory or mathematical sciences falls to be noticed here. Like the prose of ordinary intercourse and the rhymes of the Koran, the verses of the poets were not only collected but also arranged according to special principles of classification,—for example, according to metre. After Grammar Prosody arose. Khalil († 791), the teacher of Sibawaih, to whom the first application of Qiyas to grammatical science was attributed, is said even to have created metrica
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2. Ethical Teaching.
2. Ethical Teaching.
We are not called upon here to enter into the minutiae of the fine-spun casuistic of the Fiqh. The main subject handled in it is an ideal righteousness, which can never be illustrated in all its purity in our imperfect world. We are acquainted now with its principles, and with the position which it holds in Islam. Let us merely add a brief notice of the division of moral acts which was formulated by ethical teachers. According to this classification there are: 4. Greek philosophic enquiries have
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3. Doctrinal Systems.
3. Doctrinal Systems.
3. Very numerous are the various opinions which found utterance in the days even of the Omayyads, but especially in those of the early Abbasids. The farther they diverged from one another, the more difficult it was for the men of the Tradition to come to an understanding with them; but gradually certain compact doctrinal collections stood out distinctly, of which the rationalist system of the Mutazilites, the successors of the Qadarites, was most widely extended, particularly among Shiʻites. Fro
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4. Literature and History.
4. Literature and History.
Other literary men had a more practical philosophy, and could make their weight more felt in the world. They subscribed to the wise doctrine of the Theatre-Manager in Goethe’s Faust: “He who brings much, will something bring to many”. The most perfect type of this species is Hariri (1054–1122), whose hero, the beggar and stroller, Abu Zaid of Serug, teaches as the highest wisdom: “Hunt, instead of being hunted; All the world’s a wood for hunting. If the falcon should escape you, Take, content, t
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1. Natural Philosophy.
1. Natural Philosophy.
Admirable discourse and lamentation were expended upon this theme, without much advancing thereby the interests of Science. 4. The science of Medicine, which on obvious grounds was favoured by the ruling powers, appears to have proved somewhat more useful. Its interests furnished one of the reasons, and not the least considerable, which induced the Caliphs to commission so many men to translate Greek authors. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the teachings of Mathematics and Natural Sci
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2. The Faithful Brethren of Basra.
2. The Faithful Brethren of Basra.
In this scheme, the negative tendencies of the Brethren, are kept somewhat in the background, for reasons which are quite intelligible. But their criticism of human society and of positive religions is exhibited with least reserve in the ‘Book of the Animal and the Man’, in which the figurative dress makes it possible for them to represent animals as saying what might he questionable if heard from a human mouth. 4. The eclectic character of the scheme, and the far from systematic method adopted
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1. Kindi.1
1. Kindi.1
4. In Kindi’s opinion, as has already been said, the world is a work of God, but His influence in its descent is transmitted through many intermediate agencies. All higher existence affects the lower, but that which is caused has no influence upon its cause, standing as this does above it in the scale of Being. In all the events of the world there is a pervading causality, which makes it possible for us, from our knowledge of the cause, to foretell the future,—for example, of the positions of th
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2. Farabi.
2. Farabi.
3. The chronological order of the works of Farabi has not been determined. Shorter treatises in which he comes into touch with the Dialecticians and Natural-Philosophers, if these are at all genuine in the form handed down to us, may have been popular or juvenile productions of his; [ 109 ] but his mature powers were applied to the study of Aristotle’s writings, for which reason the name given him by the East was ‘the Second Teacher’, that is, ‘the Second Aristotle’. Since his day the number and
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3. Ibn Maskawaih.
3. Ibn Maskawaih.
Besides, in Ibn Maskawaih’s opinion, the Religious Law when rightly apprehended, pre-eminently accords with an Ethics of Benevolence. Religion is a moral training for the people. Its prescriptions, with regard to the worship of God in common and the pilgrimage to Mecca for instance, have plainly in view the cultivation of the love of one’s neighbour in the widest acceptation. In certain special points Ibn Maskawaih has not been successful in combining harmoniously the ethical doctrines of the Gr
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4. Ibn Sina.
4. Ibn Sina.
The question of Universals is also treated in a manner similar to that which is adopted by Farabi. Prior to any plurality, every thing has an existence in the Mind of God and of the Angels (the Sphere-Spirits); then as material form it enters upon plurality, to be raised finally in the intellect of man to the universality of the Idea. Now just as Aristotle has distinguished between First Substance (Individual) and Second Substance (cogitable as a Universal), so Ibn Sina similarly makes a distinc
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5. Ibn al-Haitham.
5. Ibn al-Haitham.
Perception then is a compound process, arising out of (1) sensation, (2) comparison of several sensations or of the present sensation with the memory-image which has been gradually formed in the soul as a result of earlier sensations, and (3) recognition, in such fashion that we recognize the present percept as equivalent to the memory-image. Comparison and recognition are not activities of the Senses, which merely receive impressions passively, but they devolve upon the Understanding as the fac
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1. Gazali.
1. Gazali.
After his return Gazali once more engaged in teaching for a short time in Nishabur; and he died in Tos, his native town, on the 19 th of December, 1111. His closing years were chiefly devoted to pious contemplation and the study of the Traditions, which as a youth he could never remember. A beautifully complete and rounded life, in which the end comes back to the beginning! 3. Gazali passes in review the spiritual tendencies of his time. These are: the Dialectic of the Theologians; Sufi Mysticis
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2. The Epitomists.
2. The Epitomists.
At the greatest University in the Muslim world, that of Cairo, the Epitomes of the 13 th and 14 th centuries are used, up to this day. There the word still is, as for a long time it was with ourselves: “First of all a College of Logic”, and, we need scarcely add, with no better result. They indulge themselves, within the limits of the Law, in the luxury of studying the rules of thinking discovered by the ancient philosophers, but all the while they smile at these men and at the Mutazilite Dialec
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1. Beginnings.
1. Beginnings.
Among the Muslims, however, the number of those who addressed themselves to a thorough study of Philosophy was very limited. No master gathered about him a numerous band of disciples; and meetings of the learned, for the discussion of philosophical subjects, were scarcely ever held. The individual thinker must have felt very lonely in these circumstances. In the West, just as in the East, Philosophy was developed subjectively; but here it was more the concern of a few isolated individuals; and,
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2. Ibn Baddja.
2. Ibn Baddja.
6. Every man does not rise to such a height of contemplation. The greater number grope about continually in the dark; they merely see the adumbrations of things, and like shadows they will pass away. Some see the Light, [ 180 ] it is true, and the coloured world of things, but very few indeed recognize the essence of what they have seen. It is only the latter, the blessed ones, who attain to life eternal,—in which state they themselves become Light. But now, how does the individual man get to th
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3. Ibn Tofail.
3. Ibn Tofail.
On that island, however, our Hai ibn Yaqzan,— i.e. ‘the Active one, the son of the Vigilant’,—had been trained into a perfect philosopher. Cast upon the island when a child, or else brought into existence there by spontaneous generation, he had been suckled by a gazelle, and then had been in the course of time left, like a Robinson Crusoe, and that entirely, to his own resources. Yet he had secured a material existence, and farther, by observation and reflection, had acquired a knowledge of Natu
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4. Ibn Roshd.
4. Ibn Roshd.
Like his predecessors, Ibn Roshd lays especial emphasis upon Grammar, as far as it is common to all languages. This common principle, and therefore the universal one, Aristotle, he thinks, keeps always before him in his Hermeneutics, and even in the Rhetoric. Accordingly the Arab philosopher is also bound to adhere to it, although in illustrating universal rules he may take his examples from the Arabic language and literature. But it is universal rules which form his object, for science is the k
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1. Ibn Khaldun.
1. Ibn Khaldun.
5. What then is the subject of History as a philosophical discipline? Ibn Khaldûn answers that it is the Social life,—the collective, material and intellectual culture of Society. History has to show how men work and provide themselves with food, why they contend with each other and associate in larger communities under single leaders, how at last they find in a settled life leisure for the cultivation of the higher arts and sciences, how a finer culture comes into bloom in this way out of rude
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2. The Arabs and Scholasticism.
2. The Arabs and Scholasticism.
Kindi became known chiefly as a physician and an astrologer. Ibn Sina produced a notable effect by his ‘Medicine’, and his empirical psychology, and also by his Natural Philosophy and his Metaphysics. Compared with him, Farabi and Ibn Baddja exercised a less considerable influence. Lastly came the Commentaries of Ibn Roshd ( Averroes ); and the reputation which they gained, along with that which was secured by Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine, has been longest maintained. 3. What then does the Chris
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Corrections
Corrections
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