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Does The Interpretation of Islamic Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Oliver Leaman
Oliver Leaman
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
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Extract

When discussing the Kuzari of Halevi, Leo Strauss comments in a footnote that “One cannot recall too often this remark of Goethe (in the Noten und Abhandlungen zum besseren Verständnis der West-östlichen Divans): ‘Das eigentliche, einzige und tiefste Thema der Welt — und Menschengeschichte, dem alle übrigen untergeordnet sind, bleibt der Konflikt des Unglaubens und Glaubens.’” It will be argued here that the influence of such a conflict on Islamic philosophy has been much exaggerated, especially by the highly influential approach that Strauss brings to such a mode of thought and its means of expression.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 525 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

Notes

I should like to thank Dr. E. I. J. Rosenthal for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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2 Keddie, , Nikki, , “Symbol and Sincerity in Islam,” Studia Islamica, 19 (1963).Google Scholar

3 Strauss, , Persecution, p. 36;Google Scholar see also the account that Hourani, G. F. gives of Ibn Sīnā, “Essay on the Secret of Destiny,” Bulletin of the School of African and Asian Studies (1966), 45.Google Scholar

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5 See the discussion of the distinction between heresy and disbelief in Ghazālī, , Tahāfut al-falā-sifa. ed. Bouyges, M. (Beirut, 1927).Google Scholar

6 See Maimonides's description of the sort of person to whom the Guide for the Perplexed is direcled at the start of that work.

7 Fārābī quotes from a letter from Aristotle to Plato, in which Aristotle is supposed to defend his practice of committing his teaching to writing in unenigmatic writing in this way: “If I have written down these sciences and the wisdom contained in them, I have arranged them in such an order that only those qualified for them can attain them.” See his Jam'bayna ra' yay al-hakīmain Aflātūn al-ilāhī wa Aristūtālīs, ed. Nader, A. N. (Beirut, 1960), p. 85.Google Scholar

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10 Strauss, , Leo, , “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” Persecution, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar There are good grounds for thinking that Strauss wildly overemphasizes this distinction. See in particular Hartman, D., Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia, 1976).Google Scholar

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12 Mahdi, M. ed., Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (New York, 1962), p. 3.Google Scholar

13 This is particularly obvious in the refutations Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd offer of philosophical positions that oppose theirs.

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16 Who in any case writes logic in an exciting style?

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20 Ibid., p. 27.

21 Ibid., pp. 66, 72.

22 Ghazālī, , Mīzān al-'Amal (Cairo, AH 1328/1938), p. 160.Google Scholar For an account of how the term jadal was understood in Islamic philosophy, see Van, Ess, “The logical structure of Islamic theology” in Logic in classical Islamic culture, ed. von Grunebaum, G. E. (Wiesbaden, 1970), pp. 21–50.Google Scholar

23 “The jurisprudent takes the opinions and the actions which the founder of the religion enunciated as given and makes them fundamental principles from which he deduces those things which are necessary corollaries, but the theologian defends the things which the jurisprudent employs as fundamental principles without deriving other things from them,” Fārābī, , Enumeration 5, pp. 75–6,Google Scholar in Alfarabi's Book of Religion and Related Texts, ed. Mahdi, M. (Beirut, 1968).Google Scholar

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26 See n. 11, supra.

27 Strauss, , “How Farabi,” pp. 330–31.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 333.

29 Fārābī, , Compendium Legum Platonis, ed. and trans. Gabrieli, F. (London, 1952), pp. 4, 20–21.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 42, 20–21.

31 Ibid., 11, 5; 21, 5; 27, 18, 32, 3, 22.

32 Strauss, , “How Farabi,” p. 326.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 338.

34 A significant contribution to understanding this genre is to be found in von Grunebaum, G. E., “The Concept of Plagiarism in Arabic Literary Theory,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1944), 234–53.Google Scholar

35 Strauss, , “How Farabi,” p. 325.Google Scholar

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37 Mahdi, M., ed., Alfarabi's Book of Letters (Beirut: 1970), p. 131.Google Scholar

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39 Fārābī, , “Against John the Grammarian,” p. 257.Google Scholar

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41 Strauss, , “Literary Character,” p. 48. But there are good grounds for thinking, pace Strauss, that the question of permitting or prohibiting the study of philosophy arose only in the wake of the anti-Maimonides controversy.Google Scholar