So You Want to Teach Some Islamic Philosophy?

If I had to place a bet as to the biggest changes we’ll see in the philosophy profession over the next several decades, I would put my money behind the following prediction: there will be a lot more teaching and research on non-European philosophy. Even disregarding the benefits of such a change for philosophy as a discipline – and they are many – the change is inevitable, given the effects of globalism, rising student interest, the politically problematic nature of the current Eurocentric approach, and the need for young philosophers to find unexplored topics for their work. The question is not whether philosophy departments are going to pay more attention to things like Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Africana, and Latin American philosophy. The question is how they will get from the current narrow approach to a broader approach of the future.

The development will presumably involve progress along three avenues. First, more departments will be hiring experts in these traditions. This has already started to happen with my own field, philosophy in the Islamic world. When I did my PhD on the Arabic reception of Greek philosophy, one of my professors quipped that I was “diving into the shallow end of the job pool.” But the field has grown since then, to the point that there are now more openings for specialists of Islamic philosophy than specialists of Latin medieval philosophy. By 2030 or so, I suppose that most larger departments will have at least one specialist in a non-European tradition, and those few that don’t will be getting a lot of complaints from their students.

Second, non-specialists at departments large and small will need to offer courses on, say, classical Buddhism or philosophy in the oral traditions of Africa. If I may be so bold, I’d like to speak on behalf of  non-European philosophy specialists and say that we are entirely in favor of this. No one should think that, because they don’t speak Chinese or do research on Chinese philosophy, they couldn’t possibly teach a course on a topic like Confucianism. There are now many good translations of texts from the non-European traditions, as well as extensive and philosophically acute secondary literature and helpful introductions in the form of handbooks, collected volumes, and (I’ll just say it) podcasts. With such resources at their disposal, any trained philosopher can teach this material and, moreover, teach it well. After all,  plenty of instructors teach Plato and Aristotle without knowing ancient Greek or publishing research on their works.

Admittedly, this is not ideal. When a student wants to know about the nuances of the terminology in the original language, for instance, the instructor will have to confess ignorance. But surely it’s far better for non-European philosophy to be covered by an enthusiastic and broadminded faculty member who is ready for the challenge of exploring new terrain along with the students than for non-European philosophy not to be covered at all.

Third – and here we come finally to the main point of this post – texts from the non-European traditions can be integrated into courses covering broader philosophical themes. This is, of course, just a somewhat less ambitious version of the scenario just described, and requires less commitment on the part of the instructor. A non-specialist would need at least a summer to get ready for teaching a course on Buddhism, but might be able to do a session or two just on Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka Buddhism after an intense weekend of reading. The integration of these texts into syllabi would make an excellent addition to a course on skepticism: last week Sextus Empiricus, this week Nagarjuna, next week al-Ghazali, followed by Nicholas of Autrecourt and then Descartes’ Meditations. I would have loved to take a course like that when I was a university student.

Presumably, this is something that already happens. But in the interests of making it easier to do, I offer the following suggestions for integrating texts from philosophy in the Islamic world into thematic courses taught with a broadly historical approach. Again, what I’m envisioning here is not a whole semester on philosophy in the Islamic world, but the inclusion of material from the Islamic world in a syllabus that ranges over several cultures. In each case, I have suggested at least one primary text in translation and at least one piece of secondary literature (with apologies for occasionally suggesting my own work).

Finally let me add that if anyone out there would like advice on teaching philosophy in the Islamic world, or assistance in getting hold of the suggested literature, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and I will do my best to help: peter.adamson@lrz.uni-muenchen.de.

Philosophy of language and logic

Look no further than the dispute between Abu Bishr Matta, the teacher of the more famous al-Farabi, and a grammarian named al-Sirafi. The latter gets to do most of the talking, as he rejects the study of logic as a pedantic and pointless foreign import from Greek culture and complains that Aristotelian logical analysis lacks the resources to appreciate language the way it is actually used. Another interesting theme is the way that linguistic expressions relate to the meanings in the mind: Abu Bishr claims that concepts can unproblematically be expressed in a range of languages, al-Sirafi claims that one can really only think meaningfully within the context of a concrete natural language like Arabic.

Primary: D.S. Margoliouth, “The Discussion Between Abu Bishr Matta and Abu Sa’id al-Sirafi on the Merits of Logic and Grammar,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1905), 79-129.

Secondary: P. Adamson and A. Key, “Philosophy of Language in the Medieval Arabic Tradition,” in M. Cameron and R. Stainton (eds), Linguistic Meaning: New Essays in the History of the Philosophy of Language, ed. (Oxford, 2015), 74-99.

Epistemology

As mentioned in passing, there is a brilliant discussion of skepticism, and whether it can be answered, in al-Ghazali’s readable and engaging intellectual autobiography, the Deliverer from Error. Al-Ghazali even describes a kind of existential dread he felt upon confronting skeptical worries.

Primary: W.M. Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazālī (London: 1951), and there are numerous other translations of this work available.

Secondary: S. Menn, “The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography,” in J. Miller and B. Inwood (eds), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2003), 141-91.

Another theme worth tackling in epistemology is the theory of the intellect. This can get rather technical, especially when it is pursued in the context of commentaries on Aristotle, but on the other hand, it engages very directly with Aristotle and his ancient commentators. In a course where Aristotelian epistemology has been covered this would make a natural inclusion. Al-Farabi’s text On the Conditions of Certainty is a closely related and fascinating little work, which is not yet available in English translation but the gist of it can be gleaned from an excellent study by Deborah Black.

Primary: al-Farabi, Letter on the Intellect, translated in J. McGinnis and D.C. Reisman (ed. and trans.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: an Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, 2007).

Secondary: D. Black, “Knowledge (ʿIlm) and Certainty (Yaqīn) in al-Fārābī’s Epistemology,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 16 (2006), 11-45.

Finally, a more daring inclusion for a course on epistemology could be something from the mystical tradition, which challenges the forthright rationalism found in more Aristotelian thinkers. This area offers a rare opportunity to include something by a female philosopher from the Islamic world, since one can introduce students to the important early female Sufi, Rabia al-Adhawiyya. Somewhat more daunting but well worth the challenge is the elaborate mystical system of Ibn ‘Arabi, a major Sufi philosopher from medieval Spain.

Primary/secondary: Reports about Rabia are translated in C. Upton, Doorkeeper of the Heart: Visions of Rabi’a (New York 1988). For excerpts from primary texts in translation and discussion of Ibn ‘Arabi see W.C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: 1989). See also L. Lewisohn, The Heritage of Sufism, volume 1: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700-1300) (Oxford: 1999).

Secondary: A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: 1975).

Philosophy of religion

Students should really be taught Avicenna’s influential proof for the existence of God alongside Anselm’s roughly contemporaneous ontological argument. In this proof, Avicenna demonstrates that a contingent world can only be actually existent if we suppose the reality of a Necessary Existent, which is God. I’ve suggested a piece of my own here, which explains how he gets from the bare idea of the Necessary Existent to the richer one of the God as we know it from the Abrahamic religious traditions.

Primary: For the version in Pointers, see S.C. Inati (trans.), Ibn Sina’s Remarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics (New York, 2014), part 3, fourth “class.” For the version in the Salvation J. McGinnis and D.C. Reisman (ed. and trans.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: an Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, 2007), 211-19.

Secondary: T. Mayer, “Avicenna’s Burhān al-Siddiqīn,” Journal of Islamic Studies 12 (2001), 18-39. P. Adamson, “From the Necessary Existent to God,” in P. Adamson (ed.), Interpreting Avicenna (Cambridge: 2013), 170-89.

Another topic worth tackling in philosophy of religion is the relation between reason and revelation. One of the most commonly read philosophical texts from the Islamic world is directly on this question: the Decisive Treatise. Or perhaps I should say that it is a text by a philosopher, but actually a legal judgment in which Averroes argues that all Muslims have the duty to engage in philosophy if they have the ability and opportunity to do so.

Primary: Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, trans. G.F. Hourani (London: 1976). But again there are numerous translations available.

Secondary: R.C. Taylor, “Truth Does Not Contradict Truth: Averroes and the Unity of Truth” Topoi 19 (2000), 3-16.

Philosophy of mind

Speaking of Avicenna, one of the best topics to cover with students is his dramatic thought experiment in which we imagine that a human being is created by God in midair, without having any sensory awareness of anything around him. Avicenna believes that this “flying man” would be self-aware and that this shows us something about the relation between soul and body. The argument is translated in Michael Marmura’s classic study and in a piece just now appearing with the APA, which also analyzes it in terms of Avicenna’s epistemological theories.

Primary/secondary: M.E. Marmura, “Avicenna’s ‘Flying Man’ in Context,” Monist 69 (1986), 383-95. P. Adamson and F. Benevich, “The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna’s Flying Man Argument,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association (2018), 1-18.

Ethics

Some thinkers from the Islamic world, like al-Farabi and Miskawayh, adhere rather closely to Aristotelianism. More interesting for students may be the practical approach found in al-Razi, an early thinker who takes a “medical” approach to healing the soul from vices and troubles.

Primary: A.J. Arberry (trans.), The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes (London: 1950), and/or al-Razi’s short defense of his own lifestyle in the Philosophical Way of Life, which is translated in J. McGinnis and D.R. Reisman (ed. and trans.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: an Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, 2007).

Secondary: T.-A. Druart, “The Ethics of al-Rāzī,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1997), 47-71.

Political philosophy

Again, the more obvious choice would be something in the Aristotelian and Platonic tradition like al-Farabi’s account of the ideal city or Averroes’ commentary on the Republic. But I would steer instructors instead towards the later historian Ibn Khaldun, who has an ambitious theory about the natural rise and fall of dynastic civilizations.

Primary: F. Rosenthal, Ibn Khaldun: The Muqaddima, 3 vols (Princeton: 1958); this is too big for classroom use but you can use the abridged edition by N.J. Dawood (Princeton: 2005).

Secondary: A. al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldūn: an Essay in Reinterpretation (London: 1982). R. Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: an Intellectual Autobiography (Princeton: 2018).

The free will problem

This was an abiding concern of Islamic theologians, especially: they criticized philosophers like Avicenna for depicting God as a necessary cause rather than freely acting creator, and there was a debate within Islamic theology (or kalām) over the nature of human free will. A good way to approach this topic is to look at the controversy over the eternity of the world, since the key issue here was whether God naturally and automatically emanates the universe, or freely brings it into existence without needing to do so, and indeed after not having yet done so. This would be a good topic for juxtaposing Muslim authors with authors from the Jewish and Christian traditions (for instance Maimonides and Aquinas).

Primary: the “first discussion” in M.E. Marmura (trans.), Al-Ghazālī: The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Provo, 1997).

Secondary: T. Kukkonen, “Possible Worlds in the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa: al-Ghazālī on Creation and Contingency,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000), 479-502.

Metaphysics

One of Avicenna’s most discussed doctrines was the existence-essence distinction: he points out that contingent things (that is, all things other than God) have natures or essences that leave open whether or not they exist. In response authors debated whether essence and existence are really distinct or distinct only in the mind, and whether existence is different for different entities (for instance is existence the same for God as it is for you, or the same for an accidental property and a substance?). This would be a good topic for looking at “post-classical” philosophy in the Islamic world, for instance Suhrawardi, who thought the essence-existence distinction was purely conceptual, or the great later Iranian thinker Mulla Sadra.

Primary: J. Walbridge and H. Ziai (ed. and trans.), Suhrawardī: The Philosophy of Illumination (Provo, 1999); J.W. Morris (trans.), Mullā Ṣadrā: The Wisdom of the Throne (Princeton, 1981).

Secondary: F. Benevich, “The Essence-Existence Distinction: Four Elements of the Post-Avicennian Metaphysical Dispute (11–13th Centuries),” Oriens 45 (2017), 203-58; I. Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (New York, 2010).

Peter Adamson

Peter Adamson is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He is the author of "Al-Kindi" and "Al-Razi" in the series "Great Medieval Thinkers" and has edited or co-edited many books, including "The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy" and “Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays." He is also the host of the History of Philosophy podcast, which appears as a series of books with Oxford University Press.