Peter Adamson

This book introduces readers to Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (known as Rhazes in Latin), one of the most innovative and divisive figures of the early philosophical tradition in the Islamic world. It attempts to reconstruct his notorious theory of "five eternals" which posited four principles alongside God for the creation of the world, which led Razi to be charged with heresy by other authors. Other topics discussed in depth include his medical works, his alchemical theories, his works on ethics, and his controversial views on religion and prophecy.

Drawing on all the extant philosophical works of Miskawayh, including his well known Refinement of Character, this paper aims to determine his attitudes towards the psychological capacities and moral standing of non-human animals. Miskawayh most often mentions animals as a contrast to the rationality of humans, but also grants animals likenesses or lesser versions of typically human traits like virtues and friendship. It is argued that for Miskawayh, the teleological design of animals gives humans reasons to show them justice.

Many later thinkers in the Islamic world pick up on, and further expand, the idea of intuition (ḥads) as they react to Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā). Focusing on figures from the twelfth–thirteenth century, in this paper we will focus especially on the following points of debate: (1) Avicenna’s idea that intuition is distingiushed from normal (discursive) thought by lacking ‘motion’, (2) The question of how and why different individuals differ in the extent of their intuition, (3) The role of intuitive thought in grounding knowledge: is intuition needed every time a certain item of knowledge is grasped for the first time, and hence without a teacher; and further, is intuition needed as an ultimate justification for all non-intuitive knowledge?

In this paper I challenge the notion that medieval philosophy was characterized by strict adherence to authority. In particular, I argue that to the contrary, self-consciously critical reflection on authority was a widespread intellectual virtue in the Islamic world. The contrary vice, called ‘taqlīd’, was considered appropriate only for those outside the scholarly elite. I further suggest that this idea was originally developed in the context of Islamic law and was then passed on to authors who worked within the philosophical tradition.

This article offers an analysis, translation, and edition of a brief, recently uncovered Arabic text by the tenth-century CE Christian Aristotelian thinker Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī. Ibn ʿAdī here takes issue with an argument for the existence of God, widely used in kalām. According to this argument, bodies cannot exist without being either in motion or at rest; motion and rest must begin; therefore all bodies and hence the universe as a whole must have begun. Ibn ʿAdī diagnoses various flaws in this reasoning, including a supposed part–whole fallacy. The analysis of the text shows how it fits into Ibn ʿAdī’s intellectual profile and the project of the Baghdad Aristotelian school.

This piece offers an edition, translation, and analysis of a newly discovered text by Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī, a leading Aristotelian of the Baghdad school in the tenth century. It briefly discusses what Aristotle meant, at the end of the Physics, by saying that the Prime Mover is “in” the outermost heaven. Ibn ʿAdī argues, in part through an exhaustive discussion of the senses of the word “in,” that God is in the sphere only in the sense that an object of intellection is in an intellect. This solution is discussed against the background of ancient commentaries on the same passage.

This last chapter presents highlights from the history of the reception of Proclus’ thought. It starts with the reception in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and subsequently discusses Renaissance and modernity. For the Greek tradition, the authors show how Damascius and pseudo-Dionysius adopt and adapt Proclus’ thought, and briefly touch on a Byzantine critic of Proclus: Nicholas of Methone. For the Arabic reception the authors show how the Discourse on the Pure Good adjusts Proclean metaphysics to Muslim and Christian revelation. For the Latin tradition, Thomas Aquinas’ ‘triangulation’ between different sources, and the fourteenth-century German reworking of Proclus are presented. The authors then discuss the fascinating manuscript tradition of the Renaissance, the metaphysical/theological revival of Neoplatonism in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, the reception of Proclus’ mathematics and astronomy in early modern thought, and finally another revival of Neoplatonic metaphysics, in German Idealism.