Ibn Sina,commonly known in the West as Avicenna,was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world,flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age,serving in the courts of various Iranian rulers. He is often described as the father of early modern medicine. His philosophy was of the Peripatetic school derived from Aristotelianism.
Plotinus was a Greek Platonist philosopher,born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius Saccas,who belonged to the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term "neoplatonism" and applied it to refer to Plotinus and his philosophy,which was vastly influential during late antiquity,the Middle Ages,and the Renaissance. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' most notable literary work,The Enneads. In his metaphysical writings,Plotinus described three fundamental principles:the One,the Intellect,and the Soul. His works have inspired centuries of pagan,Jewish,Christian,Gnostic,and early Islamic metaphysicians and mystics,including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions,such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states.
Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa,which refers to philosophy as well as logic,mathematics,and physics;and Kalam,which refers to a rationalist form of Scholastic Islamic theology which includes the schools of Maturidiyah,Ashaira and Mu'tazila.
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects,including astronomy,epistemology,mathematics,political philosophy,ethics,metaphysics,ontology,logic,biology,rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy.
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH. The period is known as the Islamic Golden Age,and the achievements of this period had a crucial influence in the development of modern philosophy and science. For Renaissance Europe,"Muslim maritime,agricultural,and technological innovations,as well as much East Asian technology via the Muslim world,made their way to western Europe in one of the largest technology transfers in world history." This period starts with al-Kindi in the 9th century and ends with Averroes at the end of 12th century. The death of Averroes effectively marks the end of a particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Arabic School,and philosophical activity declined significantly in Western Islamic countries,namely in Islamic Spain and North Africa,though it persisted for much longer in the Eastern countries,in particular Persia and India where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish:Avicennism,Illuminationist philosophy,Mystical philosophy,and Transcendent theosophy.
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi,known in the Latin West as Alpharabius,was an early Islamic philosopher and music theorist. He has been designated as "Father of Islamic Neoplatonism",and the "Founder of Islamic Political Philosophy".
Averroism refers to a school of medieval philosophy based on the application of the works of 12th-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes,a commentator on Aristotle,in 13th-century Latin Christian scholasticism.
AbūYūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥal-Kindī was an Arab Muslim polymath active as a philosopher,mathematician,physician,and music theorist. Al-Kindi was the first of the Islamic peripatetic philosophers,and is hailed as the "father of Arab philosophy".
Aristotelianism is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle,usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes,including purpose or teleology,and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics,biology,metaphysics,logic,ethics,aesthetics,poetry,theatre,music,rhetoric,psychology,linguistics,economics,politics,and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
Logos is a term used in Western philosophy,psychology and rhetoric,as well as religion;among its connotations is that of a rational form of discourse that relies on inductive and deductive reasoning.
The House of Wisdom,also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad,was believed to be a major Abbasid-era public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad. In popular reference,it acted as one of the world's largest public libraries during the Islamic Golden Age,and was founded either as a library for the collections of the fifth Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century or as a private collection of the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur to house rare books and collections in the Arabic language. During the reign of the seventh Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun,it was turned into a public academy and a library.
The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation,but some theorists also include myth,religious traditions,and proverbial lore.
Early Islamic law placed importance on formulating standards of argument,which gave rise to a "novel approach to logic" in Kalam . However,with the rise of the Mu'tazili philosophers,who highly valued Aristotle's Organon,this approach was displaced by the older ideas from Hellenistic philosophy. The works of al-Farabi,Avicenna,al-Ghazali and other Muslim logicians who often criticized and corrected Aristotelian logic and introduced their own forms of logic,also played a central role in the subsequent development of European logic during the Renaissance.
Ancient Roman philosophy is philosophy as it was practiced in the Roman Republic and its successor state,the Roman Empire. Roman philosophy includes not only philosophy written in Latin,but also philosophy written in Greek in the late Republic and Roman Empire. Important early Latin-language writers include Lucretius,Cicero,and Seneca the Younger. Greek was a popular language for writing about philosophy,so much so that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius chose to write his Meditations in Greek.
Classical theism is a theological and philosophical form of theism that conceives of God as the ultimate,transcendent reality,characterized by attributes such as omnipotence,omniscience,and perfect goodness. Rooted in the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle,classical theism presents God as a being who is immutable,impassible,and entirely self-sufficient. This understanding of God emphasizes divine simplicity,where God's essence and existence are identical,making Him fundamentally distinct from all created beings.
The Theology of Aristotle,also called Theologia Aristotelis is a paraphrase in Arabic of parts of Plotinus' Six Enneads along with Porphyry's commentary. It was traditionally attributed to Aristotle,but as this attribution is certainly untrue it is conventional to describe the author as "Pseudo-Aristotle". It had a significant effect on early Islamic philosophy,due to Islamic interest in Aristotle. Al-Kindi (Alkindus) and Avicenna,for example,were influenced by Plotinus' works as mediated through the Theology and similar works. The translator attempted to integrate Aristotle's ideas with those of Plotinus —while trying to make Plotinus compatible with Christianity and Islam,thus yielding a unique synthesis.
The transmission of the Greek Classics to Latin Western Europe during the Middle Ages was a key factor in the development of intellectual life in Western Europe. Interest in Greek texts and their availability was scarce in the Latin West during the Early Middle Ages,but as traffic to the East increased,so did Western scholarship.
Commentaries on Aristotle refers to the great mass of literature produced,especially in the ancient and medieval world,to explain and clarify the works of Aristotle. The pupils of Aristotle were the first to comment on his writings,a tradition which was continued by the Peripatetic school throughout the Hellenistic period and the Roman era. The Neoplatonists of the Late Roman Empire wrote many commentaries on Aristotle,attempting to incorporate him into their philosophy. Although Ancient Greek commentaries are considered the most useful,commentaries continued to be written by the Christian scholars of the Byzantine Empire and by the many Islamic philosophers and Western scholastics who had inherited his texts.
Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common ideas it maintains is monism,the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle,"the One".
The unity of the intellect,a philosophical theory proposed by the medieval Andalusian philosopher Averroes (1126–1198),asserted that all humans share the same intellect. Averroes expounded his theory in his long commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul to explain how universal knowledge is possible within the Aristotelian philosophy of mind. Averroes's theory was influenced by related ideas propounded by previous thinkers such as Aristotle himself,Plotinus,Al-Farabi,Avicenna and Avempace.
