Benjamín Figueroa Lackington

This article proposes reinterpreting the emergence of philosophical universalism—the idea according to which philosophical truths are universal and therefore translatable, notwithstanding linguistic, temporal, and cultural differences—in the light of the long-term structural effects of the Umayyad administrative reforms (late first/seventh, early second/eighth centuries). It argues, in particular, that these reforms led to, first, the transmission of exogenous textual corpora and disciplines—especially Greek philosophy—into the Islamic world; second, the translation of said corpora into Arabic; and, finally, the dispute over the very translatability and practicability of those disciplines in the Arabophone context. In developing this argument, this article follows the historical reconstruction of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement proposed by George Saliba (2007) and takes—as a reference—the defense of Greek philosophy advanced by Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 328/940) against Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979) and its later systematiza­tion by Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 339/950 or 951). Ultimately, this article argues—contra the still-dominant historical narrative firstly advanced in Dimitri Gutas’s Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (1998)—that philosophical universalism, as developed by Mattā b. Yūnus and al-Fārābī, was indeed the outcome, not the cause, of the transmission, translation, and purpose­ful legitimization of Greek philosophy in the Islamic world.

El presente artículo explora algunas afinidades filosóficas entre el confucianismo y el averroísmo. Se analizan ambas corrientes en su incompatibilidad con la antropología filosófica moderna y, más concretamente, con la noción cristiano–liberal de individuo. Dicha incompatibilidad se examina en tres dimensiones distintas, a saber: una dimensión historiográfica, una filosófica y una genealógica. Se concluye que ambas tradiciones intelectuales ofrecen herramientas conceptuales y hermenéuticas para pensar nuestro presente más allá de las categorías filosóficas modernas.

El presente artículo propone una nueva interpretación de la filosofía de Avicena y su problemática relación con la mística. En dos de sus enciclopedias filosóficas, Avicena introduce algunos problemas referidos a la verificabilidad de las afirmaciones empíricas y al conocimiento del Primer Principio. Teniendo en cuenta los límites del conocimiento especulativo tanto para el plano empírico como el metafísico, Avicena menciona diferentes modos de vida práctica para relacionarse con dicho Primer Principio: la profecía o legislación, la observancia religiosa de la ley, el ascetismo y la filosofía. Veremos que una práctica filosófica superior diverge radicalmente de aquellos otros caminos prácticos y políticos para relacionarse con el Existente Necesario.

Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left is the first English rendition of Ernst Bloch's thought-provoking monograph dedicated to the thought of Ibn Sīnā, the prominent eleventh-century Persian polymath. Published in 2019 by Columbia University Press as part of the New Directions in Critical Theory series, it joins a growing list of translations that goes back to the 1966 Spanish version by Jorge Deike Robles and, more recently, to Claude Maillard's and Nicola Allesandrini's French and Italian renditions, respectively. This new English edition is based on Bloch's final version of the essay--a revised version of the original 1952 text, later incorporated as an...