Online research in philosophy

The aim of this article is to present a new witness of Averroes' reception in the Muslim world, in the years that immediately followed his death. Indeed Aba al-Mikl (d. 1237) is an Aarite theologian, who was born in Fez. He is the author of a Quintessence of the Intellects in Response to Philosophers on the Science of Principles in which he aims at refuting the Peripatetic philosophers in their own field, using their own weapons. This article will first attempt (...) to draw the portrait of this atypical theologian. It will then focus on showing that al-Mikl is a reader of Averroes and in particular, of his Tahfut, of which he makes various and unexpected uses. A close look at these uses will enable us to better define the nature of al-Mikl's work. More importantly, this article will try to prove that al-Mikl provides us with a key passage of Averroes' lost treatise On the Prime Mover. At the heart of the Rushdian criticism of Avicenna's proof, this passage should throw new light on Averroes' precise understanding of this proof. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the complex relationships between falsafa and kal played a decisive role at a moment when Avicennism became intrusive. It is mainly in his al-da al-nimiyya that al-Juwaynarism. One necessarily invokes here Ibn Rushd, who, by exposing the dogmas in their literal manifestation in his al-Kashf hij al-adilla faqid al-milla, actually sought to operate a systematic refutation of the Ash's evolutionary study. In this contribution, some aspects of the major issues in kal (particularization), His unicity (waniyya) (...) and the argument of muma (mutual hindering), as well as human agency with the acknowledgement of man's capacity (qudra) and its role. Albeit limited in scope, the essay attempts to make a more profound evaluation of al-Juwaynm in its specific development during which the Great Masters have not always been faithful to the classical tenets of their school, but also in its relations with falsafa and its influence on al-Juwaynlī's theological thought. (shrink)

The reception of Avicenna by medieval Jewish readers presents an underappreciated enigma. Despite the philosophical and scientific stature of Avicenna, his philosophical writings were relatively little studied in Jewish milieus, be it in Arabic or in Hebrew. In particular, Avicenna's philosophical writings are not among the ische complex attitude to Avicenna.

Once Apollonius' Conics had been translated from Greek into Arabic, they became a main reference and the principal tool in studying solid problems, algebraic equations of 3rd and 4th degrees, infinitesimal mathematics, etc. Mathematicians of the 9thhn (909bit ibn Qurra (826ln's contribution.

In the thirteenth century, the influential logician Afn al-Kh (d. 1248) departed from the Avicennan view that the subject matter of logic is . For al-Kh, the subject matter of logic is . His departure elicited intense and sometimes abstruse discussions in the course of subsequent centuries. Prominent supporters of Kh's view on the subject matter of logic included K (d. 1277), Ibn Wil (d. 1298) and Taftn (d. 1274), Samarqandb al-Dzī (d. 1365). This article presents the outline of the (...) development of this discussion down to the end of the fourteenth century and attempts to reconstruct the major arguments of both sides. (shrink)

The article aims at demonstrating that in attributing the creatio ex nihilo to both Plato and Aristotle as their unanimous philosophical conviction the Treatise on the Harmony between the Two Sages deeply depends upon the Neoplatonic reading of those two philosophers. The main obstacles for such a view in the works of the two sages are Plato's assumption of a precosmic chaos in the Timaeus and Aristotle's denial of any efficient causality to the unmoved mover in the Metaphysics. Both of (...) these points had been, however, done away with by the Neoplatonist commentators already, especially by Ammonius in his lost treatise on efficient and final causality in Aristotle the use of which in the Harmony is shown by a comparison with Simplicius. Christian and Muslim readers just had to transfer those arguments and hermeneutical techniques into an anti-eternalist context in order to make the two philosophers agree with one of the basic tenents of their face, a hermeneutical technique considerably different from the one employed by al-Fbī in his exposition of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy which is compared to the Harmony in a briefly sketched concluding section. (shrink)

What is the function of logic in al-Kind's theory of categories as it was presented in his epistle On the Number of Aristotle's Books (F treats the Categories as a logical book, but in a manner different from that of the classical Aristotelian tradition. He ascribes a special status to the categories Quantity (kammiyya) and Quality (kayfiyya), whereas the rest of the categories are thought to be no more than different combinations of these two categories with the category Substance. The (...) discussion will pay special attention to the function of the categories of Quantity and Quality as mediators between logic and mathematics. (shrink)

From Euclid to the second half of the 17th century, mathematicians as well as philosophers continued to raise the question of the angle of contact and, generally, of the concept of angle. This article is the first essay devoted to this subject in Arabic mathematics. It deals with Greek writings translated into Arabic on the one hand, and contributions of Arabic mathematicians on the other hand: al-Nayr, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Samawr, al-F, al-Q, among others. Most of these contributions are hitherto unknown.