Arabic Thought and Its Place in History

by De Lacy O'Leary

THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHERS

The Aristotelian philosophy was first made known to the Muslim world through the medium of Syriac translations and commentaries, and the particular commentaries used amongst the Syrians never ceased to control the direction of Arabic thought. From the time of al-Ma´mun the text of Aristotle began to be better known, as translations were made directly from the Greek, and this resulted in a more accurate appreciation of his teaching, although still largely controlled by the suggestions of the commentaries circulated amongst the Syrians. The Arabic writers give the name of failasuf (plur. falasifa), a transliteration of the Greek [Greek: philosophos φιλόσοφος], to those who based their study directly on the Greek text, either as translators or as students of philosophy, or as the pupils of those who used the Greek text. The word is used to denote a particular series of Arabic scholars who arose in the third century A.H. and came to an end in the seventh century, and who had their origin in the more accurate study of Aristotle based on an examination of the Greek text and the Greek commentators whose work was circulated in Syria, and is employed as though these falasifa formed a particular sect or school of thought. Other philosophical students were termed hakim or nazir.

The line of these falasifa forms the most important group in the history of Islamic culture. It was they who were largely responsible for awakening Aristotelian studies in Latin Christendom, and it was they who developed the Aristotelian tradition which Islam had received from the Syriac community, correcting and revising its contents by a direct study of the Greek text and working out their conclusions on lines indicated by the neo-Platonic commentators.

The first of the series is Yaqub b. Ishaq al-Kindi (d. circ. 260 A.H. = 873 A.D.), who began very much as a Mu`tazilite interested in the theological problems discussed by the members of that school of thought, but desirous of testing and examining these more accurately, made use of the translations taken directly from the Greek and then only recently published. By this means he brought a much stricter method to bear, and thus opened the way to an Aristotelian scholarship much in advance of anything which had been contemplated so far. As a result his pupils and those who came after them raised new questions and ceased to confine themselves to Mu`tazilite problems, and al-Kindi was their intellectual ancestor in those new enquiries which his methods and his use of the Greek text alone made possible. It is a strange fact that al-Kindi, the parent of Arabic philosophy, was himself one of the very few leaders of Arabic thought who was a true Arab by race. For the most part the scientists and philosophers of the Muslim world were of Persian, Turkish, or Berber blood, but al-Kindi was descended from the Yemenite kings of Kinda (cf. genealogy quoted from the Tarikh al-Hakama cited in note (22) of De Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khallikan, vol. i. p. 355). Very little is known about his life, save that his father was governor of Kufa, that he himself studied at Baghdad, under what teachers is not known, and stood high in favour with the Khalif Mu`tasim (A.H. 218-227). His real training and equipment lay in a knowledge of Greek, which he used in preparing translations of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Ptolemy’s Geography, and a revised edition of the Arabic version of Euclid. Besides this he made Arabic abridgments of Aristotle’s Poetica and Hermeneutica, and Porphyry’s Isagoge, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora, Sophistica Elenchi, the Categories, the apocryphal Apology; on Ptolemy’s Almagesta and Euclid’s Elements, and original treatises, of which the essay “On the Intellect” and another “On the five essences” are the most noteworthy (Latin tr. by A. Nagy in Baeumker and Hertling’s Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des MA. II. 5. Münster, 1897).

He accepted as genuine the Theology of Aristotle which had been put into circulation by Naymah of Emessa, and, we are told, revised the Arabic translation. The Theology was an abridgment of the last three books of Plotinus’ Enneads, and presumably al-Kindi compared this with the text of the Enneads, corrected the terminology and general sense in accordance with the original, and evidently did so without any suspicion that it was not a genuine work of Aristotle. The Theology had not been long introduced to the Muslim world, and it is certain that the use of it made by al-Kindi was a main cause of its subsequent importance. Endorsed by him it not only took an assured place in the Aristotelian canon, but became the very kernel of the teaching developed by the whole series of falasifa, emphasizing the tendencies already marked in the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias. The influence of the Theology and of Alexander appear most clearly in the treatise “On the Intellect” which is based on the doctrine of the faculties of the soul as described in Aristotle’s de anima II. ii. Al-Kindi, developing the doctrine as presented by the neo-Platonic commentators, describes the faculties or degrees of intelligence in the soul as four, of which three are actually and necessarily in the human soul, but one enters from outside and is independent of the soul. Of the three former one is latent or potential, as the knowledge of the art of writing is latent in the mind of one who has learned to write; the second is active, as when the scribe evokes from the latent state this knowledge of writing which he desires to put into practice; the third is the degree of intelligence actually involved in the operation of writing, where the knowledge now quickened into activity guides and directs the act. The external faculty is the “Agent Intellect” (`aql fa``al) which proceeds from God by way of emanation and which, though acting on the faculties in the body, is independent of the body, as its knowledge is not based upon perceptions obtained through the senses.

It is futile to maintain that the history of Arabic philosophy shows a lack of originality in the Semitic mind; for one thing not one of the philosophers of first rank after al-Kindi was of Arab birth, very few could be described as Semitic. It would be more correct to say that the Greek philosophers stood alone, until quite modern times, in attempting anything which could be described as a scientific psychology. Until the methods and material of modern natural science came to be applied to psychological research there was little, if any, advance on the psychological theories of the ancient Greek investigators, and the only point of difference in later schools was as to which particular aspect of ancient research would be selected as the starting-place. Here lies the great importance of al-Kindi, for it was he who selected and indicated the starting-point which all the later Arabic philosophers began from, and selected the material which they developed. The particular basis thus selected by al-Kindi was the psychology of Aristotle’s de Anima as expounded by Alexander of Aphrodisias. This was suggested but not in all respects clearly indicated by the Syriac philosophers, and it seems certain that al-Kindi’s development was very largely influenced by the Theology of Aristotle, a work which he evidently esteemed very greatly. The relation between Alexander Aphr. and Plotinus, whose teaching appeared in the Theology, may be described as being that Alexander’s teaching contained all the germs of neo-Platonism, whilst Plotinus shows the neo-Platonic system fully worked out. As first presented this system must have seemed fully consistent with the teaching of the Qur´an, indeed it would appear as complementary to it. In man was an animal soul which he shared with the lower creation, but added to it was a rational soul or spirit which proceeded directly from God and was immortal because it was not dependent on the body. The possible conclusions which proved to be inconsistent with the teachings of revelation were not as yet fully worked out.

We need not linger over al-Kindi’s logical teaching which carried on and corrected Arabic study of the Aristotelian logic. This was not a mere side issue, it is true, although logic did not play so important a part in Arabic education as it did in Syriac. In Syriac it was the basis of all that we should regard as the humanities, but in Arabic this position was taken by the study of grammar, which was developed on rather fresh and independent lines, though slightly modified by the study of logic in later times. Still, so long as the Muslim world had any claim to be regarded as fostering philosophical studies, and to a less degree even in later times, the Aristotelian logic has been only second to grammar as the basis of a humane education. Al-Kindi’s real influence is shown in the introduction of the problems of psychology and of metaphysics, and the work of the falasifa centres in these two studies on the lines indicated by al-Kindi.

In psychology, as we have seen, al-Kindi introduced a system already fully developed by Alexander and the neo-Platonic commentators on Aristotle, kept alive amongst the Syriac students of philosophy, and then further developed from this point by his successors. In metaphysics the circumstances were different. Al-Kindi apparently was the one who introduced the problems of metaphysics to the Muslim world, but it is obvious that he did not clearly understand Aristotle’s treatment of these problems. The problems involved in the ideas of movement, time, and place are treated by Aristotle in books iv., v. and vii. of the Physics, which had been translated by al-Kindi’s contemporary, Hunayn. b. Ishaq, and in the Metaphysics, of which at the time no Arabic translation existed, so that, so far as it was used, al-Kindi must have consulted the Greek text.

The essay “On the Five Essences” treats the ideas of the five conditions of matter, form, movement, time, and place. Of these he defines (a) matter as that which receives the other essences but cannot itself be received as an attribute, and so if the matter is taken away the other four essences are necessarily removed also. (b) Form is of two kinds, that which is the essential of the genius, being inseparable from the matter, and that which serves to describe the thing itself, i.e., the ten Aristotelian categories—substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion; and this form is the faculty whereby a thing (shay´) is produced from formless matter, as fire is produced from the coincidence of dryness and heat, the matter being the dryness and heat, the form being the fire; without form the matter is abstract but real, becoming a thing when it takes form. As De Vaux points out (Avicenne, p. 85) this illustration shows that al-Kindi does not grasp Aristotle’s meaning correctly. (c) Movement is of six kinds: two are variations in substance, as either generation or corruption, i.e., production or destruction; two are variations in quantity by increase or decrease; one is variation in quality, and one is change of position. (d) Time is itself akin to movement, but proceeds always and only in one direction; it is not movement, though akin, for movement shows diversities of direction. Time is known only in relation to a “before” or “after,” like movement in a straight line and at a uniform rate, and so can only be expressed as a series of continuous numbers. (e) Place is by some supposed to be a body, but this is refuted by Aristotle: it is rather the surface which surrounds the body. When the body is taken away the place does not cease to exist, for the vacant space is instantly filled by some other body, air, water, etc., which has the same surrounding surface. Admittedly al-Kindi shows a crude treatment of these ideas, but he was the first to direct Arabic thought in this direction, and from these arose a new attitude towards the revealed doctrine of creation on the part of those who came after him.

Al-Kindi, the “Philosopher of the Arabs,” as he was called (circ. 365), contains our best account of the various sects existing in Islam towards the end of the 3rd century A.H. as he met them in the course of his travels. It has been published as the second volume of De Goeje’s Bibliotheca Geographorum Arab. (Leiden., 1873).