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20Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on Animal Cognition and ImmortalityArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 106 (1): 23-52. 2024.This paper is devoted to a fascinating passage in Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), in which he argues that non-human animals have rational souls. It is found in his Mulaḫḫaṣ fī l-manṭiq wa-l-ḥikma (Epitome on Philosophy and Logic). Following a discussion of the afterlife, Faḫr al-Dīn suggests that animals should, like humans, be capable of grasping universals, and that they are aware of their own identity over time. Furthermore, animal behavior shows that they are capable of rational planning and …Read more
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7Thinking with Rosa: assent in philosophy of the Islamic worldBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 32 (3): 647-665. 2024.In Thinking with Assent: Renewing a Traditional Account of Knowledge and Belief, Maria Rosa Antognazza offers a historical narrative of pre-modern epistemology. She argues that until very recently, philosophers generally held that “knowing and believing are distinct in kind in the strong sense that they are mutually exclusive mental states”. This paper tests, and ultimately confirms, that account by applying it two thinkers of the Islamic world, al-Fārābī (d.950 CE) and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, d.103…Read more
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5The Necessity and Goodness of Animals in Sijistānī’s Kashf Al-MaḥjūbPhilosophies 9 (3): 72. 2024.The Neoplatonic notion of “emanation” implies a required progression through hierarchical stages, originating from the highest principle (the One or God) and cascading down through a series of principles. While this process is deemed necessary, it is also inherently good, even “choiceworthy”, aligning with the identification of the first principle with the Good. Plotinus, a prominent Neoplatonist, emphasizes the beauty and goodness of the sensible world, governed by divine providence. This persp…Read more
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20Ibn Khaldūn's Method of History and Aristotelian Natural PhilosophyJournal of the History of Philosophy 62 (2): 195-210. 2024.The historian Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) is most often treated by historians of philosophy as part of the story of political philosophy in the Islamic world. While this is perfectly legitimate, it may be misleading when it comes to the question of the method he proposes for the historian. This paper argues that that method is in fact based on a different branch of (Aristotelian) science: natural philosophy. After rendering this proposition initially plausible by noting frequent references to "nature"…Read more
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23Philosophy in the Islamic world is a comprehensive and unprecedented four-volume reference work devoted to the history of philosophy in the realms of Islam, from its beginnings in the eighth century AD down to modern times. In the period covered by this second volume (eleventh and twelfth centuries). Both major and minor figures of the period are covered, giving details of biography and doctrine, as well as detailed lists and summaries of each author’s works. This is the English version of the r…Read more
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40A hidden wisdom: medieval contemplatives on self-knowledge, reason, love, persons, and immortality A hidden wisdom: medieval contemplatives on self-knowledge, reason, love, persons, and immortality, by Christina Van Dyke, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 256, £32.49 (hb), ISBN: 9780198861683 (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-5. forthcoming.The most annoying thing a book reviewer can do is to complain, if only implicitly, that the work under review is not quite the one that they wish the author had written. So you’ll be glad to know t...
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25State and Nature: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (edited book)De Gruyter. 2021.A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are "political animals" to Aquinas' invocation of "natural law," it may seem that pre-modern philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good, and that just political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this assumption is, at best, too crude. From very …Read more
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9Interpreting Averroes: Critical Essays (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2018.This volume brings together world-leading scholars on the thought of Averroes, the greatest medieval commentator on Aristotle but also a major scholar of Islam. The collection situates him in his historical context by emphasizing the way that he responded to the political situation of twelfth-century Islamic Spain and the provocations of Islamic theology. It also sheds light on the interconnections between aspects of his work that are usually studied separately, such as his treatises on logic an…Read more
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18Don't think for yourself: authority and belief in medieval philosophyUniversity of Notre Dame Press. 2022.How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought. In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to re…Read more
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30Indian Animal EthicsThink 22 (63): 47-52. 2023.Ancient India is famous as a home for the ethical concept of ahimsa, meaning ‘non-violence’. Among other things, this moral principle demanded avoiding cruelty towards animals and led to the widespread adoption of vegetarianism. In this article, it is argued that the reasoning which led the ancient Indians to avoid violence towards animals might actually provide a more powerful rationale for vegetarianism than the utilitarian rationale that is more prevalent among animal rights activists nowaday…Read more
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14Philosophy PodcastingIn Lee C. McIntyre, Nancy Arden McHugh & Ian Olasov (eds.), A companion to public philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2022.Philosophy has long been transmitted using different media: oral speech, papyrus rolls, parchment and paper codices, strips of bark and bamboo, and, in modern times, radio and television programs. It is only in this century, though, that one of the most popular methods ever of disseminating philosophy has emerged: podcasts. Podcasting is quietly transforming the field itself and the way that the field connects to the wider world. For all the variety of form, one constant is that philosophy podca…Read more
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13This is the first of several sourcebooks charting the reception of Avicenna in the Islamic East in the 12th-13th centuries CE. It translates and analyzes hundreds of passages on topics like existence, universals, free will, and proofs of God.
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140The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man ArgumentJournal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2): 147-164. 2018.No argument from the Arabic philosophical tradition has received more scholarly attention than Avicenna's ‘flying man’ thought experiment, in which a human is created out of thin air and is able to grasp his existence without grasping that he has a body. This paper offers a new interpretation of the version of this thought experiment found at the end of the first chapter of Avicenna's treatment of soul in theHealing. We argue that it needs to be understood in light of an epistemological theory s…Read more
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8Muratori, Cecilia. Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence. Cambridge: Legenda 2020, xiv + 276 pp (review)Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (1): 189-191. 2023.
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10Studies on Plotinus and al-KindīAshgate/Variorum. 2014.This book collects papers on the greatest philosopher of late antiquity and founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (d. 270), and the founding figure of philosophy in the Islamic world: al-KindÄ« (d. ca. 873). A number of the contributions focus on the text that joins the two: the Theology of Aristotle, in fact an Arabic version of Plotinus' Enneads produced in al-KindÄ«'s translation circle. Adamson argues that this translation is best understood as a reinterpretation of Plotinus designed to appeal t…Read more
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Freedom, providence and fateIn Svetla Slaveva-Griffin & Pauliina Remes (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism, Routledge. 2014.
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3Studies on early Arabic philosophyAshgate. 2015.Philosophy in the Islamic world from the 9th to 11th centuries was characterized by an engagement with Greek philosophical works in Arabic translation. This volume collects papers on both the Greek philosophers in their new Arabic guise, and on reactions to the translation movement in the period leading up to Avicenna.
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4Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman worldsOxford University Press. 2015.Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of Christian and Jewish philosophy and of ancient science. Chapters are devoted to such major figures as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, and Augustine. But in …Read more
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10Against Nature: Two Critics of Naturalism in the Islamic WorldIn Peter Adamson & Christof Rapp (eds.), State and Nature: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Gruyter. pp. 343-364. 2021.
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13Philosophy in the Islamic worldOxford University Press. 2016.The latest in the series based on the popular History of Philosophy podcast, this volume presents the first full history of philosophy in the Islamic world for a broad readership. It takes an approach unprecedented among introductions to this subject, by providing full coverage of Jewish and Christian thinkers as well as Muslims, and by taking the story of philosophy from its beginnings in the world of early Islam all the way through to the twentieth century. Major figures like Avicenna, Averroe…Read more
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1Fakhr al-Dīn al Rāzī on voidIn Abdelkader Al Ghouz (ed.), Islamic philosophy from the 12th to the 14th century, Bonn University Press. 2018.
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12Medieval philosophy: a history of philosophy without any gapsOxford University Press. 2019.Peter Adamson presents a lively introduction to six hundred years of European philosophy, from the beginning of the ninth century to the end of the fourteenth century. The medieval period is one of the richest in the history of philosophy, yet one of the least widely known. Adamson introduces us to some of the greatest thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition, including Peter Abelard, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Roger Bacon. And the mediev…Read more
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Creighton UniversityUndergraduate
Omaha, Nebraska, United States of America