SECTION ONE

Arabian Philosophy

In the West the Germanic tribes had obtained possession of what had hitherto formed a section of the Roman Empire, and their conquests were attaining to shape and solidity, when another religion dawned in the East, namely the Mohammedan. The East purified itself of all that was individual and definite, while the West descended into the depths and actual presence of spirit. As quickly as the Arabians with their fanaticism spread themselves over the Eastern and the Western world, so quickly were the various stages of culture passed through by them, and very shortly they advanced in culture much farther than the West. For in Mohammedanism, which quickly reached its culminating point, both as regards external power and dominion and also spiritual development, Philosophy, along with all the other arts and sciences, flourished to an extraordinary degree, in spite of its here not displaying any specially characteristic features. Philosophy was fostered and cherished among the Arabians; the philosophy of the Arabians must therefore be mentioned in the history of Philosophy. What we have to say, however, chiefly concerns the external preservation and propagation of Philosophy. The Arabians became acquainted with Greek philosophy mainly through the medium of the Syrians in Western Asia, who had imbibed Greek culture, and who were under the Arabian sway. In Syria, which formed a Greek kingdom, at Antioch, especially in Berytus and Edessa, there were great institutes of learning; and thus the Syrians constituted the connecting link between Greek philosophy and the Arabians. Syrian was the language of the people even in Bagdad.[3]

Moses Maimonides, a learned Jew, gives further historical particulars in his Doctor Perplexorum of this transition of Philosophy to the Arabians. He says: “All that the Ishmaelites have written of the unity of God and other philosophic dogmas”—especially the sect of the Muatzali (‎‏מעתוזלה‏‎, i.e. the Separated), who were the first to take an interest in the abstract intellectual knowledge of such subjects, while the sect Assaria (‎‏האשערייה‏‎) arose later—“is based upon arguments and propositions which have been taken from the books of the Greeks and Aramæans” (Syrians), “who strove to refute and deny the teachings of the philosophers.” The cause of this is as follows: The Christian community came to include within it these nations also, and the Christians defended many dogmas which were contradictory of philosophic tenets; among these nations, however, the teachings of philosophers were very widely and generally diffused (for with them Philosophy had its origin), and kings arose who adopted the Christian religion. The Christian Greeks and learned Aramæans, therefore, when they perceived that their doctrines were so clearly and plainly refuted by the philosophers, thought out a wisdom of their own, the “Wisdom of the Words” (Devarim), and they themselves received on that account the name of the Speakers (Medabberim, ‎‏מִדַבְרִים‏‎). They set up principles which served the purpose both of confirming their faith and of refuting the opposite teaching of the philosophers. When the Ishmaelites followed and attained supremacy, and the books of the philosophers themselves fell into their hands, and along with them the answers which “Christian Greeks and Aramæans had written against the philosophic books, as for instance the writings of Johannes Grammaticus, Aben Adi, and others, they eagerly laid hold of these and adopted them bodily.”[4] Christians and Ishmaelites felt the same need of philosophy; the Ishmaelites, moreover, strove all the more eagerly after knowledge of this kind, because their first desire was to defend Mohammedanism against Christianity, which was the religion of a large proportion of the nations they had conquered.

The external sequence of events is this. Syriac versions of Greek works were to be had, and these were now translated into Arabic by the Arabians; or translations were made from the Greek directly into Arabic. In the reign of Harun al-Raschid several Syrians are named who lived in Bagdad, and who had been called upon by the Caliphs to translate these works into Arabic. They were the first scientific teachers among the Arabians, and were chiefly physicians; hence the works they translated were on medicine. Among these translators was Johannes Mesue of Damascus, who lived in the reigns of Al-Raschid (d. A.D. 786), Al-Mamun (d. A.D. 833) and Al-Motawakkil (d. A.D. 847), rather earlier than the rise of the Turks to supremacy (A.D. 862); he was a hospital superintendent in Bagdad. Al-Raschid appointed him to make translations from Syriac into Arabic; he opened a public school for the study of medicine and all the sciences then known. Honain was a Christian, as was also his master Johannes, and belonged to the Arab tribe Ebadi; he applied himself to the study of Greek, and made a number of translations into Arabic, and also into Syriac, for example, Nicolaus De summa philosophiæ Aristotelicæ, Ptolemy, Hippocrate and Galen. Another is Ebn Adda, an eminent dialectician, who is quoted by Abulfaraj.[5] Among the works of the Greek philosophers it was almost exclusively the writings of Aristotle which were translated by these Syrians, and the later commentaries on the same. It was thus not the Arabians themselves who translated the above works.

In the Arabic philosophy, which shows a free, brilliant and profound power of imagination, Philosophy and the sciences took the same bent that they had taken earlier among the Greeks. Plato with his Ideas or universals laid the foundation of the independent world of intellect, and established absolute existence as an existence which is manifestly present in the mode of thought; Aristotle developed, completed and peopled the realm of thought; the Neo-Platonic philosophy reached the further conception of the intelligible world as Idea of the existence which is independent in itself, of spirit; and then this first Idea, which we have already met with in connection with Proclus, passed over into a similar Aristotelian development and completion. Consequently it is the Alexandrian or Neo-Platonic Idea which forms the essential principle or basis of the Arabian as well as the Scholastic philosophy, and all that Christian philosophy offers; it is on it that the determinations of the Notion expend their strength, and around this that they career. A particular description of Arabian philosophy has in some parts but little interest; in other parts it will be found that the main dogmas of this philosophy have much in common with those of the Scholastics.

We may say of the Arabians that their philosophy constitutes no characteristic stage in the development of philosophy. The principal points in this, as in the later philosophy, were the question whether the world is eternal, and the task of proving the unity of God and similar dogmas. One great consideration in all this, however, was to defend the doctrines of Mohammedanism, and owing to this all philosophizing had to be carried on within the limits of these doctrines. The Arabians, like the Christians of the West, were restricted by the dogmas of their Church (if one may call it so), few though these dogmas were; yet this last circumstance of the small number of the dogmas certainly gave them greater liberty. But according to all that we know of them, they established no principle of self-conscious reason that was truly higher, and thus they brought Philosophy no further. They have no other principle than that of revelation, therefore only a principle that is external.