[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
PETER ADAMSON: OK.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all for coming.
And thank you for
the invitation.
When someone from Google says
that your publications are
countless, it really
means something.
[LAUGHTER]
Actually, I wanted to say that
I'm very grateful to Google,
not only for inviting me
but because you give me
my best way of
impressing people when
I am trying to blow their
minds about my podcast, which
is, I tell them about it.
And they say, where
can I find it?
And I say, just google the
phrase "history of philosophy"
and after Wikipedia,
I'll be the first hit.
And they're all like, no way.
I also sometimes try
to impress people
by telling them how many
times it's been downloaded.
But I think if I
told you the number,
it probably wouldn't
impress you.
So I won't bother.
OK.
So I was asked to come
speak about this book.
This is a little
slide I like to call
"Shameless Self-Promotion."
So I published this
last year, I guess.
And it's a very
short introduction
to "Philosophy in
the Islamic World"
that was published by
Oxford University Press.
And nowadays, when I'm
asked what areas I work on,
I usually say late-ancient
philosophy and philosophy
in the Islamic world.
And that's a little
bit of a mouthful.
And in fact, when I was
talking to the editors at OUP
about what to call the
book, they said, well,
can't we just call it
"Islamic Philosophy?"
That would be a lot easier
and maybe easier to sell.
And I said, no, we can't.
And I want to first
of all explain why.
So why is it called that?
Why is it called philosophy
in the Islamic world?
There's really been a
kind of debate about what
to call this topic,
Arabic philosophy
or Islamic philosophy.
Islamic philosophy is
kind of the obvious thing
to call it because most
of the philosophers who
leap to mind from this
tradition, to the extent
that any philosophers at all
leap to mind, are Muslim.
And also, a big role
in this tradition
is, of course,
played by the context
of the Quranic revelation.
So a lot of the thinkers
in the tradition
are, in fact, sort of
using philosophical ideas
to interpret the
Quran or respond
to ideas from the Quran.
But I think actually, in a
way, although that's true
and I wouldn't for
a moment deny it,
it maybe prejudges
the tradition as one
that's primarily about
responding to the Quran
so that we assume that any
philosopher who was working
in the Islamic world
would necessarily
have been mostly interested
in using philosophy to,
for example, prove
that God exists,
or prove that
revelation is possible,
or prove that Muhammad
was really a prophet
and that the things
he said are true.
There are certainly thinkers
who were very interested
in that project and were
even primarily motivated
by doing that.
But that doesn't apply
to all philosophers who
worked in the Islamic world.
And especially it doesn't
apply to philosophers
who worked in the Islamic
world who weren't Muslim.
And in fact, it
turns out that there
were quite a few of these.
So just to give some examples,
the people who originally
translated Greek philosophical
works into Arabic,
and I'll say more about
that in just a moment,
were mostly Christians because
they were either from Syria
or of Syrian extraction.
This is what's going to pass
for ripped-from-the-headlines
relevance at my talk--
they were from Syria.
And the reason why
they were the ones
you could turn to
for translating
Greek works into Arabic is that
there was a living tradition
in Syrian Christian monasteries
of working with Greek texts
and translating them
into Syriac, which
is another Semitic language,
and thus, a lot closer to Arabic
than Greek was.
So they played an important
role in the transmission
of Greek philosophy
into the Islamic worlds.
And then after that, you
have more Christians who
engage with these translations.
So a good example is a
group that we sometimes
call the Baghdad Aristotelians
who lived in the 10th century.
And they were
Christians and known
in this metropolis, the
center of the Islamic empire
of Baghdad, as experts in
Aristotelian philosophy.
Another example, and maybe
a more prominent example,
in a way, is that a lot of
important Jewish philosophers
have lived in the
Islamic world, including
the most famous and important
ever Jewish philosopher,
unless you count
Spinoza, which--
topic of a whole other
talk, with Spinoza,
a Jewish philosopher.
But even perhaps more
famous than Spinoza
is Maimonides, who lived
in the 12th century,
was born in Islamic
Spain, and when
conditions became unfavorable
for Jews, moved to Cairo.
So when I wrote the
VSI, and in general when
I do research on
this area, I always
try to make a big
deal about the fact
that if you're going
to study philosophy
from this cultural
context, you have
to realize that some of them
were Christians and Jews.
And you shouldn't,
therefore, call the topic
Islamic philosophy.
That would just be
kind of bizarre, right?
In fact, it would be
more appropriate to call
medieval European philosophy
Christian philosophy,
than to call this
Islamic philosophy,
because in medieval
Christian Europe
almost all thinkers were,
in fact, Christians.
But we don't do that, so I don't
call it Islamic philosophy.
Sometimes people have suggested
calling it Arabic philosophy.
And this is in part to
highlight something I just said,
which is that philosophy
in the Islamic world
more or less kicks off with
the Greek-Arabic Translation
Movement in the 9th century.
And since a lot of
you are engineers,
I should mention that this
isn't just about philosophy.
The Translation Movement also
renders many works of science,
and even engineering,
into Arabic,
so you have works
by Ptolemy, Euclid,
and other mathematicians who
are translated into Arabic.
They translated not
necessarily everything
they could get their hands
on, but an astonishing amount,
to the point that, for
example, Aristotle,
who for them, just
as in medieval Europe
was the most
important philosopher,
they could read pretty
much all the Aristotle we
can read, but in Arabic.
Sometimes you might hear--
if you kind of know anything
about the importance
of philosophy in
the Islamic world,
one of the things
you might know is
that Europeans got their
hands on people like Aristotle
through the Islamic world.
So the idea would
be Greek philosophy
was translated into Arabic in
the 9th and 10th centuries.
And then the Arabic versions
were translated into Latin
around 1200.
And as you'll see, that's going
to be an important feature
of the tradition that
I'm going to talk
about later on, the translation
into Latin around 1200.
And so the thought would
be, oh, well, the reason
we can read Aristotle is because
his works were translated
into Arabic and then
from there into Latin
in a kind of medieval
version of Chinese whispers.
That's actually not true
because if you think about it,
we have Aristotle in Greek.
We don't have to read
him in Arabic and Latin.
So actually, we get
Plato and Aristotle
from the Byzantine Empire,
which was basically
the remnants of
the Roman Empire.
After it had collapsed in the
West, it survived in the East.
And they still have--
there are manuscripts
of Plato and Aristotle
that still exist today.
That's how we can
read them in Greek.
But although it's not true
that the Greek is completely
lost for these guys,
there are some ancient
philosophical and
scientific works that
are only preserved in Arabic.
And it is certainly
true that for a while
in the medieval Christian
world, their primary access
to ancient philosophy was
through the Arabic tradition.
And they used
Muslim philosophers
as commentators and guides
to understanding figures
like Aristotle.
OK.
So this whole fact
that Arabic plays
a crucial role in the
transmission of knowledge,
both science and philosophy,
from the ancient worlds
of ancient Greece
and then the Roman
Empire into the Islamic
world, that's certainly true.
And so an advantage of calling
this field Arabic philosophy
is precisely that.
I actually am the co-editor
of an earlier book called "The
Cambridge Companion
to Arabic Philosophy,"
which I would now call--
I wish I had called,
actually, "The Cambridge
Companion to Philosophy
in the Islamic World."
But this is what
we were thinking
when we called it that.
We were thinking it's
either Islamic or Arabic.
And we don't want
to call it Islamic,
so we have to call it Arabic.
And this seemed like a
good rationale for it.
But as we actually already
admitted in the introduction
to that book, this is
actually quite misleading.
So maybe the most
misleading thing about it
is that it suggests that all
philosophical and scientific
literature in the Islamic
world was written in Arabic,
which just isn't true.
Actually, especially as you
go on into the later period,
and I'll be saying more
about that in a moment,
a lot of philosophical
literature
from the Islamic world
is written in Persian.
And there are other
languages, too,
where they write philosophy,
so, for example, Syriac,
which I've already mentioned.
So I'm actually not very happy
with Arabic philosophy anymore
either.
Arabic philosophy has
one other problem,
which is that whenever
you say Arabic philosophy,
people then come up to you
and very self-righteously say,
oh, but you do know that most
of them weren't Arabs, right?
Which is true, actually.
So a lot of the major figures
from the Islamic world
were not ethnically Arabs
but were from Central Asia,
including Avicenna
who, as we'll see,
is the most important
figure in philosophy
of the Islamic world.
But I just think
that this just shows
that people don't know English
because, in my opinion,
Arabic is a language.
People aren't Arabic.
People are Arab.
I don't know what you
all think about this.
But to me, as a sort
of native speaker,
that's what Arabic an Arab mean.
So this is to me, it's
sort of a fallacious reason
not to call it
Arabic philosophy.
But it's really annoying to keep
getting people who keep saying,
well, you know that
they weren't all Arabs.
So I just don't really
want to deal with it.
There was actually
another phrase,
which is a sort of
term of art which
has been developed within the
field of Islamic studies, which
is the so-called Islamicate.
Islamicate would mean
the geographical regions
under Muslim dominion, and
that's really what I mean.
So I would call it
Islamicate philosophy
if I thought people
wouldn't know what
the heck I was talking about.
But I take it that--
I mean, if this
had been called--
you notice how I keep
getting back to this slide.
As an American, I
am a born marketer.
I mean, imagine if it was
called Islamicate philosophy.
You'd have no idea what
it was about, right?
Like, what is that
supposed to mean?
So I don't say Islamicate.
I say philosophy in
the Islamic world.
OK.
Now, this is a
little slide I like
to call "Shameless
Self-Promotion, Part II."
If you actually look at
the bottom of the slide,
that's where you get--
if you google "history
of philosophy."
So I've been running
a podcast since 2010
whose aim is, as it says
at the top of the books,
to cover the entire
history of philosophy
without any gaps in 20-
to 25-minute episodes.
So it starts with
the Pre-Socratics,
the earliest Greek philosophers,
and it goes until I get hit
by a bus or meet some other--
or I get to now.
So some people say,
well, what will
you do, like, when you run
out of history of philosophy?
And I say, well, I can
just, like, cover whatever
was just published that week.
It comes out once a
week every Sunday.
And as we already heard, it's
up to Episode 273, I think.
There's also about 40
episodes on Indian philosophy,
which I've been doing
with Jonardon Ganeri.
So one of the important
features of the project
is to cover philosophy
in other cultures
and also to cover philosophy
in a way that doesn't just
mean talking about the
major figures of philosophy.
So this is kind of introduction
into this wider project.
Oh, and maybe I should explain,
the relevance to the very short
introduction is that, in a way,
the very short introduction
is kind of like an
introduction to the material
that I cover much more
in-depth in this book
because this book is about five
times as long as the other one
because it's without any gaps.
OK.
So what does it mean to do
the history of philosophy
without any gaps?
Well, if you sort of think about
what the history of philosophy
means--
so none of you are philosophers
or professional philosophers.
But you've all heard of
some philosophers, right?
And if you conjure in your mind
who is a philosopher-- everyone
sort of think of a philosopher.
Don't think of me.
Think of just a kind
of generic philosopher.
So you're all thinking
of a man probably.
You're thinking of a white guy.
You're probably even thinking
of an older white guy
with a beard, right?
So you're basically
thinking of someone
who looks like God on the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
right?
And to be fair, there have
been plenty of white guys
with beards who
were philosophers.
And in fact, if
you start thinking
who are some famous
philosophers, like if I spent
the rest of the time
of this talk asking you
to name philosophers,
I'm sure you
would all come up
with plenty of names.
So you might come up with Plato,
Aristotle, Socrates, Thomas
Aquinas, Descartes,
Kant, Leibniz, Bertrand
Russell, Wittgenstein, right?
These are all names that are
presumably known to all of you.
If not, you can google them.
A little google humor.
And of course, these are
all, like, huge figures
in the history of philosophy.
And when I get to them, I
give them extra coverage.
So for example,
Plato and Aristotle
got something like
15 episodes apiece.
And when I get to Kant,
god knows how many episodes
it will take me to cover him.
Actually, I'm already sort of
getting night sweats wondering
how I'm possibly going to
adequately deal with Kant when
I get to him in the podcast.
But especially because
I work in sort of more--
lesser known, let's say--
areas of history of philosophy,
it's important to me
to try to communicate the idea
that the history of philosophy
is not just these
brilliant people who
turn up every few centuries
and, apparently, sometimes
after a long period of nothing.
So if you think
about the list I just
gave you, Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
that's literally
almost 2,000 years
that I jumped over there because
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
are 5th and 4th century BCE.
And Thomas Aquinas is-- anybody?
AUDIENCE: 12th?
PETER ADAMSON:
13-- oh, so close.
13th century AD, right,
so he died in the 1270s.
And if we played this
game again and I said,
OK, name me some
philosophers who
lived between
Aristotle and Aquinas,
it would be a very
short discussion
probably unless you've been
listening to my podcasts,
because I've done
hundreds of episodes
on what happened in that gap.
OK?
And if you think about that--
I mean, let's just
step back and talk
about that a little bit more.
That's more than half of the
history of philosophy, I mean,
chronologically.
Of course, the closer we
get to the current day,
the more text there
is that survives.
So we have much more
from the 17th century
than we have from
the 12th century.
But we have a lot of
information about philosophy,
pretty much in an
unbroken line stemming
from the most ancient
of the ancient Greeks
all the way up to now.
And of course, it's
not one single line,
because it's actually
multiple lines moving
from multiple cultures and
sometimes independently.
So Islamic philosophy,
or philosophy
in the Islamic world,
as I was saying before,
draws from Greek philosophy.
But there's also
philosophy in ancient India
and ancient China,
which is basically
independent of Greek
philosophy, although that's
sometimes disputed.
But it's primarily
independent, even
if there's some filtering
of ideas back and forth.
And there's also philosophical
tradition of Africa,
of South America,
et cetera, which
never gets covered in courses
on the history of philosophy.
So I'm trying to cover all
of this in the podcast.
I've already done philosophy
in the Islamic worlds.
And I'm now doing
Indian philosophy
with a co-author named Jonardon
Genari, next year with someone
named Chike Jeffers,
who works in Canada.
I'll be starting to cover
African philosophy, including
the philosophical movements
in the African Diaspora.
And I'm hoping to do
Chinese philosophy
after that, and then who knows.
So one other thing I should
mention about not having
any historical gaps
is that, as I said,
when you imagine a
famous philosopher,
you imagine a woman--
sorry.
You imagine a man, right?
But there have been plenty
of female philosophers.
And to me one of the most
important kind of implications
of the project is, alongside
covering philosophy
from other cultures, you
cover female philosophers.
And you don't cover them
because you're being politically
correct or something.
You cover them
because they're there.
And you're covering the
entire history of philosophy,
and why would you
skip them, right?
So I have, especially
in the Medieval Period
I've been able already
to give a lot of coverage
to individual female
thinkers, like Hildegard
of Bingen, Mechthild of
Magdeburg, Marguerite
Porete, who's there on the
left, Christine de Pizan, who's
there on the right who I haven't
gotten to yet but I will.
So I think that's
Christine de Pizan.
So that's a real
advantage, I think,
of the project and
the way I'm doing it.
OK.
So for the rest of the time, I
want to sort of narrow in now
on philosophy in the Islamic
world and tell you about three,
kind of, implications of doing
it this way on this topic.
So of course, in a sense,
like, covering philosophy
in the Islamic
world already at all
is sort of filling a gap because
there are arguably no truly
famous philosophers
from the Islamic world,
famous in the sense that
Descartes and Plato are famous.
So almost everyone has heard
of Descartes and Plato.
Very few people have
heard of more than one
or two Muslim philosophers.
If you've heard of
anyone, you might have
heard of Avicenna or Averroes.
Avicenna lived from the
10th to the 11th century.
He died in 1037.
Averroes lived in 12th
century Islamic Spain
and is the most important
medieval commentator
on Aristotle.
And Averroes is an
interesting figure
because he's bound up
with a kind of narrative
that you will often
hear about philosophy
in the Islamic world,
which is that it flourishes
with Greek-Arabic
translation movements,
and then it ends around the
end of the 12th century.
And it maybe even ends at a
very specific-- it actually
ends on one day, namely, the
day that Averroes has died.
And he died in 1198, right at
the end of the 12th century.
So if you think about it, this
is, in a way, a very convenient
narrative because
the thought would be,
oh, well, philosophy
was invented in Greece.
Actually, it already existed
in China and India before that.
But let's leave that aside--
and maybe Egypt as well.
But let's leave that aside.
So it begins in Greece.
The Roman Empire collapses.
Oh, no, philosophy is dead.
Oh, no, it's not, because the
Muslims come along and save it
and translate it into Arabic.
And then, having fulfilled
their historical destiny
by carrying the
torch of philosophy
for three or four
centuries, they then pass it
on to the medieval Christians
who translate it into Latin,
and then you get Thomas Aquinas,
scholasticism, the Renaissance,
and et cetera.
So one of the things I
want to say and emphasize
a lot in both the podcast and
the very short introduction
is that this is just not true
and that this whole story
about philosophy basically
ending around 1200
in the Islamic world,
is a kind of myth.
Let me just check the time.
So that's one thing
I want to say.
Another thing I want to sort
of narrow in on a bit more
is to say more about the
Christian philosophers I
was mentioning before, just as
an example of what I was saying
earlier, which is
that this is kind
of an ecumenical
historical phenomenon.
It's not only the
story of Muslims
using philosophy to
understand the Quran.
And the last thing I
want to do, just briefly,
is say something about
Islamic theology, which
is a kind of test case for
my approach of including
absolutely everything
you might want to include
in the history of philosophy.
OK.
So first, something
about philosophy
of the later Islamic world.
Here's a map which
shows the three--
actually, not all of, but most
of the-- because the Ottoman
Empire is cut off there--
but the three later empires
in the Islamic world.
So these are the
empires that exist
around the time of
early modern Europe,
so around the time
of the Enlightenment,
or the late Renaissance
and Enlightenment.
So, like, Descartes,
Leibniz, that period,
this is what the Islamic
world looks like,
and moving up into the
17th, 18th centuries.
And if you look at
that map, you can
see that it's pretty
damn big, right?
Incidentally, for
those who don't know,
the clash between
Sunni and Shiite Islam
today is traceable to
some extent, to the fact
that the Ottoman Empire--
the green bit is Sunni,
and the Safavid Empire, the red,
pink, orange bit, is Shiite.
So when the Safavids
came to power in Iran,
they sort of turned
Iran Shiite or made
sure that Iran
would stay Shiite.
And it still is today.
And Muslims also had
control over much of India.
And there were philosophers
in all three of these areas.
Notice that we're way past
the 12th century here.
Here's a selective list
of some philosophers
who lived after 1200.
OK.
Fakhr al-Din al Razi didn't
live much after 1200.
But I put him on
because he's a really
important and interesting
figure in the history
of philosophical theology that
I'll be talking about later on.
Razi and Tusi are both
commentators on Avicenna.
The
Ibn Khaldun, you might
have heard of, actually.
He's a very famous
theorist of history
and wrote this amazing history
of the Islamic world, where
he prefaces it with
an explanation of how
civilizations rise and fall.
The School of Shiraz,
which exists just
before the rise of
the Safavids in Iran,
was kind of a group of
Avicenna philosophers
who argued about the
interpretation of his works.
Mulla Sadra is an important
later mystic philosopher who
lives in the Safavid empire.
Katib Celebi is an important
Ottoman philosopher.
Dara Shikoh is a
really amazing guy.
He lived in Mughal, India.
And he was a prince who was
assassinated, or actually had
been put on trial and killed
by his brothers to get him out
of the line of succession.
And he was a kind of
scholar who was fascinated
with ancient Indian thought.
So he translated the
Upanishads and wrote
a book called "The Confluence
of the Two Oceans,"
where he argued that the
teachings of the Quran,
as sort of filtered
through Sufism,
and the teachings of the
ancient Indian scriptures,
like the Upanishads, actually
amounted to the same teachings.
So he's quite interesting.
Khayrabadi is
another later Mughal,
or Indian, rather, philosopher.
And then I put on
Mohammed Abduh,
who is an interesting
turn-of-the-century philosopher
and mention Fatema Mernissi
because she is one of the more
interesting female thinkers
in the last century.
One of the problems
I actually ran
into when I was doing
philosophy in the Islamic world
is that I really
wanted to cover--
as I said before, I wanted
to cover female thinkers
in the Islamic world.
And it's not a very
good picture there.
So you find some
interesting female thinkers
over the last 150 years or so.
Prior to that, there are
quite a few female scholars
in the Islamic
world but not anyone
who you could really
designate as a philosopher
as far as I know.
But if anyone has
a counter-example,
I would love to hear it.
OK.
So the point of
that was just to--
sorry.
Before I leave this-- so
the point of that was just,
I mean, in a way,
I can just show you
that this narrative of
decline is wrong by saying,
well, here are some people
that the narrative leaves out.
Maybe I should say
that there is actually
a-- because you might be
sitting there thinking, well,
hang on a second.
If these people
all exist, then why
is it that when we pick up,
like, Bertrand Russell's
History of Philosophy?
Or actually, pretty
much almost any textbook
on the history of
philosophy, if it
bothers to mention philosophy
in the Islamic world at all,
it says, well, it
ends around 1200.
Why do we get that idea if--
what's with all these people?
So how did this happen?
And the answer goes
back to something
I said earlier, which is
the Arabic-Latin Translation
Movement.
So remember, I said that
happened around 1200.
It was mostly in Spain where
the Islamic and Christian worlds
were confronting one another.
And it actually even
involved collaboration
between Christian, Muslim,
and Jewish scholars
who would sort of team
up to translate things
from Arabic into Latin.
And the effect of that was to
translate not just Greek works,
like Aristotle, but also
works by Muslim philosophers,
like Avicenna and Averroes.
So the death of philosophy
in the Islamic world
to some extent is
an illusion created
by the date of that
translation movement,
because what it meant
was that anyone who
lived after that, or too
far East to be translated
around 1200 in Spain, was
just unknown in Europe.
And because they were
unknown in Europe,
they played no
role in influencing
people like Aquinas,
and more generally
medieval scholasticism.
And that further meant that in
the 19th and 20th century when
modern-day scholars
turned their attention
to look at philosophy
in the Islamic world,
they thought, well,
what we need to do
is study Avicenna and Averroes.
They read them in the
Medieval Latin translation,
or they even learned Arabic
and read them in the original.
But they weren't
interested in looking
at later thinkers who
had no impacts on Europe,
like these people.
So in a way, the
tradition splits.
And until very
recently, most scholars
have only been
interested in the kind
of line of Islamic
philosophy that gets
received in the Medieval West.
OK.
So Christian
philosophers, like I said,
one of the most important
roles of Christians
in the philosophical
tradition I've been describing
is the translation of works
from Greek into Arabic.
And I just wanted to
mention a few examples.
So there's this guy named Hunayn
ibn Ishaq who was from Iraq.
And his son was named
Ishaq ibn Hunayn.
Ibn means "son of."
And it's actually-- this sort
of confusing naming practice
is quite common, unfortunately.
And they're a very
interesting couple of guys.
So Hunayn was raised
to be able to speak
classical Greek in his family.
So he tells a story about
being told to recite Homer
as a child to impress visitors
to their home, which I'm sure
worked.
And he was a specialist
in medical literature.
He translated the works of the
late ancient medical authority
Galen from Greek into Arabic,
or from Greek into Syriac
And then he would often have an
assistant translate the Syriac
into Arabic because
that's easier.
And his son, Ishaq ibn
Hunayn, was probably
the greatest translator
of Aristotle into Arabic.
So they're a one-family
factory for rendering
Greek works of philosophy
and science into Arabic.
And they were both Christians.
There were other Christians
around the same time
who collaborate with Muslims,
with the Muslims basically
paying them and also telling
them what they want translated.
One of the interesting
things to look at
is what things they
translate and how early.
So for example, one of
the choices they make
is that, early
on, they translate
works that will help them engage
in dialectical disputation.
And the idea here
seems to be that they
don't want the Christians
to be the only people who
know how to make good
arguments, because then they'll
lose in the public
debates over whether Islam
is better than Christianity.
So ironically,
they pay Christians
to translate books
to give them the kind
of argumentative weapons
to argue with Christians.
And a good example
of this, actually,
is Yahya ibn 'Adi, who is
a really fascinating figure
for whom we have a lot of works,
including a bunch of works that
were only just discovered
in a manuscript that's held
in Tehran just a few years ago.
And I've been involved in
editing and translating
a few of these treatises.
He's really interesting because
he's a Christian philosopher
who lives in Baghdad, but he had
Muslim colleagues who were also
members of the same school.
And we have an exchange between
him and a Jewish philosopher,
where the Jewish
scholar asked him
questions about Aristotle and
Yahya ibn 'Adi writes back
and explains the answer.
So it's a really good example
of the way that philosophy
was a freeway interchange
between the three
Abrahamic faiths in
the Islamic world.
Another thing I just
wanted to mention briefly,
although I mentioned
it in passing before,
is that this language of
Syriac which is, as I said,
another Semitic
language, was not only
an intermediary
text for translating
from Greek into Arabic,
but was actually
used to write philosophy.
So there's another post-1200
thinker, Bar Hebraeus
who actually wrote in Syriac.
And as I already
mentioned, a lot
of important Jewish philosophers
lived in the Islamic world
I've already mentioned
Maimonides, that's Maimonides.
Earlier on in the
10th century, there
is a philosopher Saadia
Goan, who lived in Iraq.
And one reason I
want to mention him
is that, when you
read his works,
he's commenting on
the Hebrew Bible
from a philosophical,
theological point of view.
And some of the ideas he's using
are taken from the Greek-Arabic
translation movements.
But other ideas come
from this tradition,
and this is the last
thing I want to tell you.
Still on time.
So kalam.
Kalam is an Arabic
word meaning "word."
So it's the Arabic for "word."
And it is usually used to refer
to an intellectual tradition
in the Islamic world,
which is sometimes
translated as rational
theology or Islamic theology.
But it may be important to
say that Kalam doesn't have
anything to do etymologically
with the word theology, which
actually is a Greek
word originally,
whereas the Greek the Arabic
word for philosophy is falsafa.
So it's derived directly from
the Greek word for philosophy.
And I would say there's a quiet
debate going on in my field,
this is the kind of thing we
argue about at conferences.
It's also fascinating.
I'm sure you're really jealous
about these wonderful arguments
we have over coffee.
So there's a debate going
on about whether the study
of philosophy in
the Islamic world
should include this
material, because there's
a whole separate intellectual
tradition, this kalam
tradition, where
what they're doing
is giving rational elucidations,
arguments, and interpretations
of the Koran and other
Islamic materials.
So one way to
think about this is
that it's very
much like the fact
that, in medieval Latin Europe,
a lot of the philosophers
do theology.
So for example, the most
famous work of Thomas Aquinas,
who I've mentioned
numerous times,
is the Summa
Theologica, the summary
or the summa of theology,
and he was a theologian.
There was in the
medieval university,
there was actually a faculty
called the theology faculty,
and most of the important
medieval Latin philosophers
were actually theologians,
professionally theologians.
So my attitude about
this, effectively,
is, well, if we're willing
to count people like Aquinas
and other medieval
theologians as philosophers,
then we should count
these guys, too.
And in fact, I have
a thought experiment
I'd like people to
entertain, which
is imagine that they
hadn't translated Aristotle
into Arabic.
So you wouldn't have people
like Avicenna or Averroes,
who are primarily
inspired by Aristotle.
All you would have had is
this, this kalam stuff.
Well, what would happen now
when historians of philosophy
turn to the Islamic world and
looked for stuff to study?
They would just
treat this as part
of the history of philosophy.
Completely
unproblematic, really,
just as we treat medieval
Christian theology as part
of the history of philosophy.
But instead, what we get is
that, in part because there was
this distinction in the
Islamic world itself
between falsafa, philosophy,
and kalam, theology,
people tend to treat the
falsafa part, the part that's
inspired by Aristotle,
as the real philosophy,
and this stuff
not as philosophy.
But I think this
is just another way
of missing a bunch
of philosophically
interesting material.
And so this whole
project that I have
of trying to fill in the gaps
of the history or philosophy,
to me, means that you should
take things like kalam
seriously as a part of
the history of philosophy.
Also, by the way,
things like Sufism,
which I also covered in
this series, and even things
like the physical sciences,
like theories of optics,
theories of physical
motion, and so on and even
the history of
mathematics, I try
to cover that in the
podcast series as well.
And a little bit in the
very short introduction.
OK, so just to wrap up,
what's the point of all this?
So as you might have
been able to tell by now,
I'm really a history
of philosophy nerd.
And in fact, the reason I
do the podcasts, in a way,
is just curiosity about
the history of philosophy.
And for me, the point
of it is to tell
the history of philosophy
as one continuous story, so
a narrative that doesn't
miss anything out.
But someone might say, well, I'm
not really interested in that.
It's not like normal
history, where
you need to know each
thing that happens.
What we should care about is
the big ideas, the greatest
figures, and what they said.
So I'm perfectly happy
to be told about Kant,
but I don't want to
be told about all
of the other random little
German figures that Kant was
reading and responding to
because they're probably
quite boring.
And to be honest, it's at
least tacitly the attitude
that most historians
of philosophy have,
if only because of lack
of time and energy.
But I think this is a mistake,
and there are several reasons
I think it's a mistake.
One is that if you do genuinely
want to understand someone
like Plato or
Aquinas or Kant, you
had better know what
they were responding to.
And Kant isn't responding to the
last most famous philosopher.
He's responding to his
contemporaries, people
in the previous generation,
dozens and dozens of authors
who are now forgotten.
And of course, that's
true for everyone
in the history of philosophy.
It's a lot like
the history of art.
So if you go to museums,
there's the really famous people
like Picasso.
But then in the same
galleries, there's
paintings by people you
haven't necessarily heard of,
and you can see that
Picasso's in dialogue
with these less famous people.
It's the same thing in
the history of philosophy.
But in addition to
that, it's just not true
that the really interesting
philosophical ideas only turn
up in the most famous authors.
They have a better hit rate.
There's more interesting
ideas per page, maybe,
or they just have a larger
total number of great ideas.
And that's why we think
they're so awesome.
But actually, a
lot of supposedly
minor or lesser-known figures
are just as interesting,
like Avicenna, for instance.
And even more minor figures
may have a brilliant argument
or idea somewhere in there.
Otherwise, rather
derivative and turgid works.
So I think if what you're
interested in is finding
good philosophy, you should look
everywhere where it might be.
And you should
take it wherever it
comes, even if it's in
a work that's primarily
not a philosophical work,
like a theological work
or a mystical work.
And the other thing which I
haven't said very much about,
but if you want, we can
talk about it in the Q&A,
is, well, how does
all of this relate
to what's going on in the
contemporary Islamic world?
I'm not an expert on
contemporary Islamic culture
or politics.
But even I can see that it's
intuitive and obvious in a way
that, if philosophy
in the Islamic world
had ended in 1200, it would
be of very minimal relevance
for what's going on
now, because that was--
I'm not very good at
math, you're probably all
very good at math, but
it was a long time ago.
Whereas if we take
seriously the idea
that philosophy
and Islamic world
is a continuous
tradition that does
survive the death of Averroes
and go on century after century
into empires like the Ottoman
and [? Seljuk ?] Empire, whose
political structures
still, in a way,
structure the contemporary
political scene
in the Islamic
world, then that's
a big step in the
direction of seeing
how these historical
traditions affect the world
we're living in today.
OK, thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much.
We do have time for questions.
Please wait for the microphone.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
Nice.
Very interesting talk.
And we have been talking
more about the interaction
with the West and
the Arabic world.
And so what about the
similar kind of interaction
that happened to the east,
to India, Persia, or China?
We know that, through the
art, through the mathematics,
a lot of interaction
has happened.
So what about on the
philosophical side?
Is there, more
specifically, is there
anything that the
Indian philosophy,
whether it has been
influenced by Arabic
in a major Islamic world
philosophy in some major way?
And reverse also.
PETER ADAMSON: Right, OK.
AUDIENCE: Having heard about
anything like that in the past?
PETER ADAMSON: So what
was the last part?
The India--
AUDIENCE: In the reverse.
How the Indian philosophy
affected or influenced
or enhanced the Islamic
world philosophy.
PETER ADAMSON: OK.
Yeah, so actually one of the
questions I get most often,
especially now that I'm doing
a podcast on Indian philosophy,
is whether Indian philosophy was
influenced by Greek philosophy,
or vice versa.
And I tend to be a
skeptic about that
because there is no
Sanskrit Greek translation
movement, or vice versa.
You've got a lot of
striking similarities.
For example, just to take
one scientific example,
there's a theory of the four
humors in ancient medicine.
Blood, bile, the
two kinds of bile,
and phlegm, which
constitute the human body.
And there's a very similar
humoral theory in India,
although it's not
the same humors,
and there's five and not four.
So it doesn't match up exactly,
but it makes you think.
And we also have
very concrete cases
where Greek astronomy
and astrology
affects India, and vice versa.
So that's clear.
But I actually,
generally speaking,
I don't personally
think that the influence
of Indian philosophy
on Greek philosophy
was strong, if it
was there at all.
And the reverse, as far
as I can tell, nothing.
With Islam, it's very different.
So obviously, first of
all, the Islamic world
is very different
from India and China
because it's massively
engaged with Greek philosophy,
as I've been saying.
It is also engaged
with Indian culture.
So I mentioned Dara Shikuh.
He is really late, so
he's an interesting case.
But there's also a contemporary
of Avicenna's named Al-Biruni,
who in fact, wrote an
exchange of letters
with Avicenna, like the
other one that I mentioned,
where Biruni asks tricky
questions about science
and philosophy, and Avicenna
has to try to answer.
And Biruni wrote a
work called Al-Hind,
meaning India, in which
he's basically interviewed--
he lives very near
India, and he's
speaking to, basically,
prisoners of war or guests
of the [INAUDIBLE] war lord.
And he interviewed them
about their culture,
and wrote this huge work about
Indian culture and religion.
And it has some stuff about
philosophy in it as well.
So that's an early case that's.
So that would be 10th or 11th
century, so it's around 1100.
No, sorry, it's around 1000 AD.
And really, from
that point on, you
have an interweaving of
Indian and Islamic culture.
And of course, the Mughal
Empire is an Indian empire
that's Islamic.
So there's no doubt
that, once you
get past the kind of formative
early period of Islam,
you have a lot of interaction
between Islam and India.
Prior to that,
it's more minimal.
But you find very strong
influence, especially
in the sciences, like
in astronomy again.
So if you look into Islamic
astronomy and astrology,
they make constant
reference to Indian theories
of astronomy and astrology.
They even talk about
the Indian world
cycles and how long they
are and things like that.
So there's plenty of
evidence for that,
for the Islam-India exchange.
SPEAKER 1: More questions?
AUDIENCE: Hi there.
One question that
you mentioned, just
to expand a bit on the Africa
side, what is the connection,
or is there a connection,
with Islamic works,
especially with the
Library of Alexandria
and the Tunisian
centers of influence
when they were under the
Ottoman occupation, basically?
PETER ADAMSON: Yeah, OK.
So actually, just
as, for a while,
philosophy in the
Islamic world is just
part of Indian philosophy,
because the Mughal Empire's
Indian.
So the Ottoman Empire, to
a large extent, is African.
I mean, not to a large extent.
But part of it's African.
And I mentioned at
least one thinker
who's from Africa,
namely Ibn Khaldun.
So often, people talk
about the Maghreb,
the Western Islamic world,
which for a while, of course,
included Spain.
And you can think about
Islamic Spain, Northern Africa,
all the way over to
Egypt as a cultural unit,
which is the Western analog
to the Islamic heartlands
in, basically, Iraq and
Iran, and then further
into Central Asia.
So on the one hand, that's
true for the Islamic world.
But also hearing about late
antiquity, the Roman Empire,
to a large extent,
is North African.
By the way, one of my
favorite tips to give people
is, if you're ever
playing 20 questions,
you have this game where
you think of someone,
they have to--
So usually, people
will try to narrow down
who you are thinking of by
finding out where they're from.
Pick Saint Augustine,
because Saint Augustine
is from Northern
Africa, from Tunisia,
and no one will ever get that.
So if they think, OK, I'm trying
to think of an African person,
they'll never come up
with Saint Augustine.
Of course, now that
we've videoed this
and put it on the Internet,
it's not nearly as good a tip.
OK, and then you just mentioned
the Library of Alexandria.
So that Alexandria is really
the last phase of philosophy
in late antiquity.
And when these guys translated
Greek philosophy into Arabic,
they aren't only translating
things like Aristotle.
They're translating the
commentaries written
on Aristotle in Alexandria.
So actually, both
in late antiquity,
in the period of
the Roman Empire,
and then also during
the Islamic empire,
you have Northern Africa
completely involved culturally.
And so it's very
unhelpful here to think
as we normally do about Europe.
Because actually what you've
got is a Mediterranean sphere,
which includes the Byzantine
Empire in that period
as well until it
falls to the Ottomans.
And then you've
got another sphere,
which is the Islamic
east, which actually
is where most of the
action is philosophically,
but not all of the action.
So really, North
African philosophy
is constantly involved.
And in fact, one of the
things I've been talking to
with my future
co-author Chike about
is, how do we deal with the
fact that I already covered
a bunch of African philosophy?
Because we're going to start
by talking about ancient Egypt.
But actually, I
already covered a bunch
of African philosophers, like
these Alexandrian commentators
and Augustine.
So we're just going
to mention that
and say go listen
to the old episode
if you want to know about that.
And then move on.
But you're right that
that's completely
integrated into everything
that I was just saying really.
AUDIENCE: So what are
the different motives
that actually drove these
philosophers to actually go
about their work?
So for example, you
mentioned some doing it
for the purpose of
debating religion,
say, whereas others may do
it just purely academically,
as it were?
PETER ADAMSON: Yeah.
Yeah, so of course, that
varies from thinker to thinker.
One thing that seems
to have happened
in both the Latin medieval
and medieval Islamic worlds
is that you get a kind of
person who considers himself,
and it's always a him, to be
a professional philosopher.
So in the Latin
medieval context,
it's not these theologians.
I mentioned there's
a theology faculty.
There's also something called
the arts faculty, where
they taught students logic.
And by the way, just
an interesting fact,
the students are teenagers.
A medieval university student
would have been starting off
at 13 or 14, and they would
be taught Aristotelian logic.
And then they would
move up and maybe
become a master
at the university,
either of arts or theology.
And these arts guys
were not theologians,
and were very clear that that's
not what they were doing.
So for example, there's the
14th century philosopher
named Jean Buridan who just
says, well, I'm an arts master.
I do logic and physics.
I do Aristotle.
I'm a specialist in Aristotle.
And this theology stuff is
above my pay grade right.
And you have the same
kind of thing going on
in the Islamic world.
So especially someone
like Averroes,
he was actually a
Muslim jurist as well.
But in his
philosophical works, he
very explicitly presents himself
as an expert on Aristotle,
whose explaining Aristotle
is his intellectual mission
is to recover and explain
the teachings of Aristotle,
because he just thinks
Aristotle's the greatest
thinker who has ever lived.
And then when he comes to
think about how that relates
to the Koran, he
says philosophers
are the people in
the best position
to interpret the Koran because
they already know what's true.
Because they have
proofs and everyone else
is just kind of
lost in the dark.
And they should follow the
surface meaning of the Koran,
but they shouldn't really
try to interpret it,
because they'll just come up
with all kinds of wacky ideas.
Whereas philosophers
actually know the truth,
and so they can
sort of explain how
the Koran is
expressing something
they already know to be true.
So that's a very radical
rationalist project.
And it's unusual.
Most philosophers have
a much more nuanced view
about the relationship
between philosophy
and their Abrahamic faith,
whichever of the three
that it is.
And they may or may
not admit that there
are certain things you can know
through revelation that you
wouldn't be able to
know through reason.
But generally speaking,
this may surprise you,
the philosophers in the Islamic
world in all three faiths
tend to be more rationalist than
the ones in medieval Europe.
So you very commonly
get the idea
that you wind up with the
same truth through revelation
or reason, and they agree.
And there isn't really much
that revelation will tell you
that you wouldn't already
have known through philosophy.
I mean, maybe like how many
times a day you should pray
or something, you wouldn't
be able to figure that out.
But that God exists,
what God is like, what
His relationship to the universe
is like, what our soul is like,
what virtue is, [INAUDIBLE].
This is all something
they think they
can get through the
Greek-inspired philosophical
sources.
SPEAKER 1: Yep.
Over there.
AUDIENCE: I'm
wondering if there are
any Islamic world-based
researchers, philosophers that
are writing about the
history of philosophy
in the Islamic world.
Because if you consider
yourself slightly Western,
are there any biases that
you think you might have?
PETER ADAMSON: No doubt.
Yeah.
Yes, definitely.
And in fact, one of the
things. things-- so actually,
if we go back to my lists.
This guy, the fifth one
on the list, Mulla Sadra,
is still seen in Iran as a very
major thinker who continues
to be studied seriously.
Not as a historical
figure, but as
a serious source of
philosophical inspiration
in Iran.
Not so much in other parts
of the Islamic world.
I mean, the situation
in the Islamic world
is very complicated,
as you might imagine.
There's a lot of different
cultures and countries
with different university
systems and so on.
But certainly, there
are many universities
in the Islamic world where they
teach kalam and philosophy,
maybe as two
separate disciplines,
and they do do a
history of philosophy.
However, of course,
they're also very
interested in
European philosophy.
So one of the things
that has happened
since the late 19th century
is that European ideas,
philosophical as well
as scientific ideas,
obviously, have been--
I mean, actually, there's
a permanent engagement
between the Islamic world
and European thought.
But specifically, European
philosophy, like, say, Marxism,
for example, has played a
major role in generating many
of the political movements that
we've seen in the Islamic world
over the last
century-and-a-half.
And that continues
to be the case.
So historians of
philosophy there obviously
pay more attention to the
history of Islamic philosophy
than we do.
But they pay a lot of
attention to the history
of European philosophy as well.
Something I'm not
so sure about is
whether you'd find very
many people there who
say, oh, I'm just a historian,
which is my-- anyway, that's
my bias is this pretense of
neutrality and like I'm a blank
and I'm just telling
you what they thought,
and I have no pre-suppositions
or philosophical biases
of my own.
Which, of course, can't be true.
But by definition,
I can't tell you
about the biases I
have I'm not aware of.
So what I'm trying to do is be a
neutral, completely open-minded
interpreter who is
interested in everything,
and just wants to explain it
in as clear a way as possible.
That's my goal.
But obviously, I admit
that I can't possibly
be attaining that, but that's
what I'm striving to do.
And I'm not sure you'd find too
many thinkers, actually, here
or there, who have that
purely historical approach.
I mean, most historians
of philosophy
wouldn't readily admit to
that in Europe, either.
So it's an unusual stance.
SPEAKER 1: We, unfortunately,
are out of time.
Thank you very much, Peter.
PETER ADAMSON:
Thanks for coming.
[APPLAUSE]
as
