41 Facts About Arabic philosophy

1.

Islamic Arabic philosophy is a development in Arabic philosophy that is characterised by coming from an Islamic tradition.

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2.

Early Islamic Arabic philosophy began with Al-Kindi in the 2nd century of the Islamic calendar and ended with Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in the 6th century AH (late 12th century CE), broadly coinciding with the period known as the Golden Age of Islam.

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3.

The death of Averroes effectively marked the end of a particular discipline of Islamic Arabic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Islamic school, and philosophical activity declined significantly in Western Islamic countries such as Islamic Iberia and North Africa.

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4.

Interest in Islamic Arabic philosophy revived during the Nahda movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and continues to the present day.

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5.

Islamic Arabic philosophy is a generic term that can be defined and used in different ways.

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6.

Some of the key issues involve the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, and whether Islamic Arabic philosophy can be read at face value or should be interpreted in an esoteric fashion.

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7.

Arabic philosophy is credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being "idea" and the second being "proof".

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8.

Arabic philosophy criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to Aristotle at the time.

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9.

Arabic philosophy investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions, and developed an original theory on "temporal modal" syllogism.

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10.

Islamic Arabic philosophy, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism the difference between essence and existence.

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11.

Arabic philosophy referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature.

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12.

Arabic philosophy's "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies.

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13.

Arabic philosophy argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness.

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14.

Arabic philosophy thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance.

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15.

Early Islamic political Arabic philosophy emphasized an inexorable link between science and religion and the process of ijtihad to find truth.

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16.

Atomistic philosophies are found very early in Islamic Arabic philosophy, and represent a synthesis of the Greek and Indian ideas.

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17.

Arabic philosophy's reasoning was adopted by many, most notably; Muslim philosopher, Al-Kindi; the Jewish philosopher, Saadia Gaon (Saadia ben Joseph); and the Muslim theologian, Al-Ghazali (Algazel).

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18.

Arabic philosophy speculated on the influence of the environment on animals, considered the effects of the environment on the likelihood of an animal to survive, and first described the struggle for existence, a precursor to natural selection.

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19.

Arabic philosophy articulated a relationship between the physical and observable world and that of intuition, psychology and mental functions.

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20.

Arabic philosophy's theories regarding knowledge and perception, linking the domains of science and religion, led to a philosophy of existence based on the direct observation of reality from the observer's point of view.

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21.

Arabic philosophy showed that place was akin to space, foreshadowing Descartes's notion of place as space qua Extensio or even Leibniz's analysis situs.

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22.

Arabic philosophy wrote that children can learn better if taught in classes instead of individual tuition from private tutors, and he gave a number of reasons for why this is the case, citing the value of competition and emulation among pupils as well as the usefulness of group discussions and debates.

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23.

Arabic philosophy writes that children after the age of 14 should be given a choice to choose and specialize in subjects they have an interest in, whether it was reading, manual skills, literature, preaching, medicine, geometry, trade and commerce, craftsmanship, or any other subject or profession they would be interested in pursuing for a future career.

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24.

Arabic philosophy wrote that this was a transitional stage and that there needs to be flexibility regarding the age in which pupils graduate, as the student's emotional development and chosen subjects need to be taken into account.

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25.

Arabic philosophy held that the criticism of existing theories—which dominated this book—holds a special place in the growth of scientific knowledge:.

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26.

Arabic philosophy believed that human beings are inherently flawed and that only God is perfect.

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27.

Arabic philosophy reasoned that to discover the truth about nature, it is necessary to eliminate human opinion and error, and allow the universe to speak for itself.

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28.

Arabic philosophy was responsible for introducing the experimental method into mechanics, the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena, and a pioneer of experimental psychology.

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29.

Arabic philosophy argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts.

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30.

Early Islamic political Arabic philosophy emphasized an inexorable link between science and religion, and the process of ijtihad to find truth—in effect all Arabic philosophy was "political" as it had real implications for governance.

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31.

Arabic philosophy's Muqaddimah laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history, and he discussed the rise and fall of civilizations.

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32.

Arabic philosophy's Muqaddimah was the introduction to a seven volume analysis of universal history.

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33.

Islamic Arabic philosophy found an audience with the Jews, to whom belongs the honor of having transmitted it to the Christian world.

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34.

Oldest Jewish religio-philosophical work preserved in Arabic philosophy is that of Saadia Gaon, Emunot ve-Deot, "The Book of Beliefs and Opinions".

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35.

Arabic philosophy passes severe censure upon the Mutakallimun for seeking to support religion by philosophy.

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36.

Arabic philosophy says, "I consider him to have attained the highest degree of perfection who is convinced of religious truths without having scrutinized them and reasoned over them".

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37.

Muslims in the 'east' continued to do Arabic philosophy, as is evident from the works of Ottoman scholars and especially those living in Muslim kingdoms within the territories of present-day Iran and India, such as Shah Waliullah and Ahmad Sirhindi.

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38.

Illuminationist Arabic philosophy was a school of Islamic Arabic philosophy founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi in the 12th century.

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39.

Tradition of Islamic Arabic philosophy is still very much alive today, particularly among followers of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq and Mulla Sadra's Hikmat-e-Mota'aliye (Transcendent Theosophy).

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40.

Arabic philosophy's criticism was that they arrived at theologically erroneous conclusions.

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41.

Arabic philosophy maintains that its renewal requires a radical reform in ontology and epistemology within Islamic thought.

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