bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Zhiyi (538–97)
Authors: Stevenson Daniel B.
Published: September 2018

The Chinese Buddhist monk Zhiyi is revered as the chief architect of the Tiantai school of Buddhism, one of the most distinctive and influential systems of Mahāyāna Buddhist thought and practice to take shape on East Asian soil. His systematization of the Tientai teachings marked the emergence of the first major indigenous articulation of Buddhist thought and practice in China. This is considered an important watershed in the development of the East Asian Buddhist tradition, for it effectively brought to a close some five centuries of Chinese dependence on Indian Buddhist traditions of exegesis and opened the way to creation of the distinctive forms of scriptural hermeneutics and motifs of religious life that we regard as representative of East Asian Buddhism today.
Platform Sutra
Authors: McRae John R.
Published: September 2018

The Platform Sutra is the single most important work of early Chinese Chan Buddhism, perhaps of the entire Chan/Sôn/Zen tradition. It purports to contain the teachings of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng (638–713), whom it celebrates as an illiterate but enlightened sage. The centrepiece is an exchange of verses attributed to Shenxiu (606?–706) and Huineng, generally taken to represent, respectively, a gradual or progressive self-cultivation leading to perfect enlightenment and a sudden or subitist style of practice in which enlightenment is attained all at once. The Platform Sutra was actually composed around 780, more than a century after the events it describes. Its reportage is demonstrably inaccurate and its traditional interpretation problematic, but this does not alter the profound mythopoeic importance of the text.
Yijing
Authors: Lynn Richard John
Published: September 2018

The Yijing (Book of Changes) or Zhouyi (Changes of the Zhou) was originally a divination manual, which later gradually acquired the status of a book of wisdom. It consists of sixty-four hexagrams (gua) and related texts. By the time the Yijing became a coherent text in the ninth century bc, hexagram divination had changed from a means of consulting and influencing gods and spirits to a method of penetrating moments of the cosmic order to learn the shape and flow of the dao and determine one’s own place in it. By doing so, one avoids wrong decisions, failure and misfortune and achieves their contrary. Tradition has it that the Yijing can only be successfully approached through humility, honesty and an open mind. Through interaction with it, one gains ever increasing self-knowledge and sensitivity to one’s relations to others and to one’s situation in life. ‘Good fortune’, ‘happiness’ and ‘success’ are but by-products of such self-knowledge and sensitivity.
Han Feizi (c.280–233 BC)
Authors: Chang Leo S.
Published: September 2018

Han Feizi was the pre-eminent Legalist philosopher. The work attributed to him, the Han Feizi, is his conscious response to the general breakdown of civil order and the interminable inter-state struggle for survival and conquest during the Warring States period (463–222 bc). However, Han Feizi’s work transcends the particular circumstances that gave rise to it and addresses perennial philosophical issues that continue to remain relevant.
Huainanzi (179–122 BC)
Authors: Roth H.D.
Published: September 2018

Huainanzi is both the honorific name of Liu An, the second king of Huainan and the title of the philosophical work for which he was responsible. The most important surviving text of the academy he established at his court, it consists of twenty-one essays that form a compendium of knowledge the Daoist ruler needs to govern effectively. In this work, the universe is a well-ordered, dynamic and interrelated whole, interfused by the unifying principle of the dao, that develops according to patterns and processes comprehensible to self-realized human beings. The ruler must cultivate himself fully so that he comprehends these patterns and processes and must establish human society in harmony with them. Embracing the best ideas of earlier philosophers within a Daoist framework, the Huainanzi represents the fullest flowering of the Huang–Lao thought that dominated the early Han dynasty.
Lu Xiangshan (1139–93)
Authors: Birdwhistell Anne D.
Published: September 2018

A leading Chinese philosopher of the twelfth century, Lu Xiangshan was the founder of that dimension of neo-Confucian thought known as the learning of the heart-and-mind. Lu emphasized the necessity for personal responsibility and action in everyday affairs, as opposed to the search for moral understanding through classical texts.
Shao Yong (1012–77)
Authors: Birdwhistell Anne D.
Published: September 2018

One of the founders of neo-Confucianism, Shao Yong was a Chinese philosopher best known for his use of numerical ideas to illustrate natural patterns of change. His thought encompassed a variety of concerns including knowledge, language and self-cultivation, and has received differing interpretations.
Wang Yangming (1472–1529)
Authors: Kwong-Loi Shun
Published: September 2018

Wang Yangming was an influential Confucian thinker in sixteenth-century China who, like other Confucian thinkers, emphasized social and political responsibilities and regarded cultivation of the self as the basis for fulfilling such responsibilities. While sometimes drawing on ideas and metaphors from Daoism and Chan Buddhism, he criticized these schools for their neglect of family ties and social relations. And, in opposition to a version of Confucianism which emphasized learning, he advocated directly attending to the mind in the process of self-cultivation.
Zhu Xi (1130–1200)
Authors: Thompson Kirill Ole
Published: September 2018

The Chinese neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi was a consummate scholar and classicist as well as a superb critical and synthetic thinker. He fused the ideas of the seminal eleventh-century thinkers Shao Yong, Zhou Tunyi, Zhang Zai, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi into a grand philosophical synthesis. In addition, by effectively editing and annotating the essential classical Confucian texts – the Analects of Confucius – the Mengzi of Mencius, the Daxue (Great Learning) and the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) – as the Four Books, Zhu worked out a lasting renewal of the Confucian project.
Shintō
Authors: Varley Paul
Published: September 2018

Shintō means the ‘way of the kami (gods)’ and is a term that was evolved about the late sixth or early seventh centuries – as Japan entered an extended period of cultural borrowing from China and Korea – to distinguish the amalgam of native religious beliefs from Buddhism, a continental import. Shintō embraces the most ancient and basic social and religious values of Japan. It is exclusively Japanese, showing no impulse to spread beyond Japan. The exportation of Shintō would in any case be exceedingly difficult since its mythology is so closely bound to the creation of Japan and the Japanese people, and since many of its deities are believed to make their homes in the mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and other natural features of the Japanese islands.

Shintō comprises both great and little traditions. The great tradition, established in the mythology that was incorporated into Japan’s two oldest extant writings, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicle of Japan), both dating from the early eighth century, is centred on the imperial institution. According to the mythology the emperorship was ordained by the sun goddess, Amaterasu, who sent her grandson from heaven to earth (Japan) to found a dynasty ‘to rule eternally’. The present emperor is the 125th in a line of sovereigns officially regarded, until Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, as descended directly from Amaterasu.

Shintō’s little tradition is a mixture of polytheistic beliefs about kami, manifested in nature worship (animism), ancestor worship, agricultural cults, fertility rites, shamanism and more. Lacking a true scriptural basis, Shintō derives from the faith of the people, and from earliest times has had its roots firmly planted in particularistic, localistic practices. Thus it has always been strongest in its association with such entities as families, villages and locales (for example, mountains thought to be the homes of certain kami or, indeed, to be the kami themselves).
Bushi philosophy
Authors: Varley Paul
Published: September 2018

Bushi is one of several terms for the warrior of premodern Japan; samurai is another. The ‘way of the warrior’ – that is, the beliefs, attitudes and patterns of behaviour of the premodern Japanese warrior – is commonly called bushidō (literally, the ‘way of the bushi’). However, bushidō is actually a phrase of rather late derivation, and in premodern times was never exclusively used to describe the warrior way.

Two of the earliest and most enduring phrases for the way of the warriors who rose in the provinces of Japan in the late ninth and tenth centuries were the ‘way of the bow and arrow’ and the ‘way of the bow and horse’. These phrases, however, referred to little more than prowess in the military arts, the most important of which, as the second phrase clearly specifies, were horse riding and archery. For many centuries no one in Japan undertook to define systematically what the way of the warrior in a larger sense was or should be. Warrior beliefs, ideals and aspirations – including loyalty, courage, the yearning for battlefield fame, fear of shame and an acute sense of honour and ‘face’ – were widely recognized, but neither warriors nor others apparently felt the need to codify them in writing.

Not until the establishment of the Tokugawa military government (shogunate) in 1600, which brought two and a half centuries of nearly uninterrupted peace to Japan, did philosophers begin to study and write about the warrior way (bushidō). Concerned about the meaning and proper role of a ruling warrior class during an age of peace, philosophers posited that warriors should not only maintain military preparedness to deal with fighting that might occur, but should also develop themselves, through education based primarily on Confucianism, to serve as models and moral exemplars for all classes of Japanese society.
Shōtoku Constitution
Authors: Kachi Yukio
Published: September 2018

The Shōtoku Constitution is the earliest fundamental political document of Japan. Promulgated in ad 604, it is ascribed to the regent Shōtoku, who was also a devout Buddhist and philosopher. The document reflects the influences of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism and Legalism in its various provisions; it is strongly marked by Chinese thought rather than being influenced by Shintō. Not a constitution in the modern sense, the document is rather a set of ideals, guiding principles and basic requirements for those in government. As well as helping to lay the foundation for a unified Japan, the Constitution also marks the beginning of a period of assimilation of Chinese culture and philosophy.
Watsuji Tetsurō (1890–1960)
Authors: Odin Steve
Published: September 2018

Watsuji Tetsurō stands out as the leading thinker on ethics in twentieth century Japanese philosophy. He is regarded as a peripheral member of the ‘Kyoto School’ of philosophers centring around the thought of Nishida Kitarō. Like Nishida and the Kyoto School, the thought of Watsuji can be characterized by the effort to formulate a syncretic East–West philosophy developed within the framework of a Buddhist metaphysic of ‘emptiness’. At the same time, Watsuji established his own highly distinctive system of ethics. He must rank as one of the most creative and profound thinkers in modern Japanese philosophy.
Kuki Shūzō (1888–1941)
Authors: Nagatomo Shigenori
Published: September 2018

Kuki’s philosophical project was focused on the issues arising from dualistic thinking. He incorporated into his work a cross-cultural, historical perspective, while applying Heidegger’s hermeneutical ontology and exhibiting bold, systematic, speculative acumen.
Wônhyo (617–86)
Authors: Park Sung Bae
Published: September 2018

Wônhyo is one of the most important figures in Korean Buddhism, and a significant influence on the development of East Asian Buddhism in general. His lifework was the reconciliation of ideological conflicts among the various Buddhist schools. His goal was to create an all-inclusive, non-sectarian Buddhist doctrine. To do this he utilized the all-embracing, systematic metaphysics of the Hwaôm school of Buddhism, deriving both a guiding theoretical principle – hwajaeng or ‘the harmonization of all disputes’ – and a powerful dialectical method for the examination of Buddhist doctrinal conflicts.
Ûisang (605–702)
Authors: Buswell Robert E.
Published: September 2018

Ûisang was the founder of the Korean branch of the Flower Garland (Hwaôm; in Chinese, Huayan) school of East Asian Buddhism which emerged as the main scholastic tradition within Korean Buddhism, thanks in large measure to Ûisang himself. His works emphasize the unimpeded interpenetration that Hwaôm posits to pertain between all phenomena in the universe.
Yi Kan (1677–1727)
Authors: Kalton Michael C.
Published: September 2018

Yi Kan was a major Korean neo-Confucian thinker. He is best remembered as a major protagonist in the Horak controversy where he opposed Han Wônjin, championing the position of the school of Yi Yulgok against Han’s novel tri-level theory of nature.
Aristotelianism in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Kennedy-Day Kiki
Published: September 2018

In Arabic, Aristotle was referred to by name as Aristutalis or, more frequently, Aristu, although when quoted he was often referred to by a sobriquet such as ‘the wise man’. Aristotle was also generally known as the First Teacher. Following the initial reception of Hellenistic texts into Islamic thought in al-Kindi’s time, al-Farabi rediscovered a ‘purer’ version in the tenth century. In an allusion to his dependence on Aristotle, al-Farabi was called the Second Teacher. Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes, was the last great Arabophone commentator on Aristotle, writing numerous treatises on his works. A careful examination of the Aristotelian works received by the Arabs indicates they were generally aware of the true Aristotle. Later, transmission of these works to Christian Europe allowed Aristotelianism to flourish in the scholastic period.

We should not take at face value the Islamic philosophers’ claims that they were simply following Aristotle. The convention in Islamic philosophy is to state that one is repeating the wisdom of the past, thus covering over such originality as may exist. There was a tendency among Islamic philosophers to cite Aristotle as an authority in order to validate their own claims and ideas.
Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Netton Ian Richard
Published: September 2018

Islamic Neoplatonism developed in a milieu already saturated with the thought of Plotinus and Aristotle. The former studied in Alexandria, and the Alexandrine philosophical syllabus included such figures as Porphyry of Tyre and Proclus. Associated with these scholars were two major channels of Islamic Neoplatonism, the so-called Theology of Aristotle and the Liber de Causis (Book of Causes). Other cities beloved of the philosophers at the time of the rise of Islam in the first century AH (seventh century ad) included Gondeshapur and Harran.

Islamic Neoplatonism stressed one aspect of the Qur’anic God, the transcendent, and ignored another, the creative. For the Neoplatonists, all things emanated from the deity. Islamic philosophers were imbued to a greater or lesser degree with either Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism or, as was often the case, with both. Al-Kindi, the father of Islamic philosophy, has a Neoplatonic aspect, but the doctrine reaches its intellectual fruition in the complex emanationist hierarchies developed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Their views are later developed (or metamorphosed) by later thinkers into an emanative hierarchy of lights, as with Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, or the doctrine of the Unity of Being espoused by Ibn al-‘Arabi. While al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd both vigorously opposed Neoplatonic views, the latter attacked the former for his general opposition to the philosophers.

Neoplatonism itself had a major impact on that sectarian grouping of Muslims known as the Isma‘ilis, and became the substratum for its theology. Historically, Neoplatonism in Islam achieved its climax with the Fatimid Isma‘ili conquest of Egypt towards the end of the fourth century AH (tenth century ad). While Neoplatonism later declined in philosophical importance in the face of rampant Aristotelianism and Hanbalism, it may be said to have bequeathed an important religious, historical and cultural legacy to the Islamic world, which in the Isma‘ili movement endures to this day.
Mystical philosophy in Islam
Authors: Nasr Seyyed Hossein
Published: September 2018

Mystical philosophy has an intimate connection with the mainstream of Islamic philosophy. It consists of several main strands, ranging from Isma‘ili thought to the metaphysics of al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi, and with a continuing powerful presence in the contemporary Islamic world. Although mystical thinkers were aware that they were advocating an approach to thinking and knowledge which differed from much of the Peripatetic tradition, they constructed a systematic approach which was often continuous with that tradition. On the whole they emphasized the role of intellectual intuition in our approach to understanding reality, and sought to show how such an understanding might be put on a solid conceptual basis. The ideas that they created were designed to throw light on the nature of the inner sense of Islam.
Political philosophy in classical Islam
Authors: Frank Daniel H.
Published: September 2018

Political philosophy in Islam is the application of Greek political theorizing upon an understanding of Muhammad’s revelation as legislative in intent. In lieu of Aristotle’s Politics, unknown in medieval Islam, Plato’s political philosophy assumed the primary role in an explanation of the nature and purpose of the Islamic state. Al-Farabi conceived of the prophet as a latter day philosopher-king, Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl took their cue from Socrates’ fate and cautioned the philosopher against the possibility of successfully engaging in a philosophical mission to the vulgar masses, and Ibn Rushd presented philosophy as a duty enjoined by the law upon those able to philosophize.
Law, Islamic philosophy of
Authors: Calder Norman
Published: September 2018

One of the principles of Islam which precedes juristic discussion proper is that God, the creator and lord of the world, has commissioned humanity to believe, confess and act in particular ways. The details of this commission (taklif) were handed down through a sequence of prophets, culminating in Muhammad, and were then embedded in two literary structures which together constitute revelation (wahy): the Qur’an, which is the word of God, and the hadith, short narratives of the prophet’s life and sayings which give expression to his (and his community’s) ideal practice or sunna. The totality of beliefs and rules that can be derived from these sources constitutes God’s law or shari‘a.

Juristic literature has generated two major literary genres. One, known as usul al-fiqh (roots of jurisprudence), deals with hermeneutical principles that can be used for deriving rules from revelation; it represents, in part, something like a philosophy of law. The other, dominant genre, furu’ al-fiqh (branches of jurisprudence), is an elaboration of rules which govern ritual and social activities. An overall philosophy of law in Islam, not fully articulated in the pre-modern tradition, can only be discovered through consideration of both genres.
Ethics in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Fakhry Majid
Published: September 2018

The study of Islamic ethics, whether philosophical or theological, grew out of early discussions of the questions of predetermination (qadar), obligation (taklif) and the injustices of temporal rulers, particularly the caliphs. Early writers on ethics from the Mu‘tazila school were probably influenced by Greek philosophy. By the third century AH (ninth century ad) a clearly discernible current of philosophical ethics began to take shape, with strong influences from Greek ethics including Stoicism, Platonism and Aristotelianism.

Al-Kindi, the first genuine philosopher of Islam, appears from his extant ethical writings to have been particularly influenced by Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic. Other classical influences can be seen in the work of Platonists such as Abu Bakr al-Razi, who followed Plato’s division of the parts of the souls, and Neoplatonists such as al-Farabi, while Aristotelian influences can be seen in al-Farabi, who also discussed the problem of evil, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. Ibn Sina developed a theory of the conjunction of the soul with the active intellect; with this conjunction is bound up the ultimate perfection of the soul which has attained the highest degree of wisdom and virtue.

Neoplatonism again surfaces in the work of Ibn Miskawayh and his followers, to whom we owe the groundwork of a whole ethical tradition which flourished in Persia well into the twelfth century AH (eighteenth century ad) and beyond. Onto Plato’s threefold division of the soul, Ibn Miskawayh grafts a threefold division of virtue into wisdom, courage and temperance. His views were elaborated upon by al-Tusi and al-Dawwani, among others. A blend of philosophical and religious ethics is characteristic of the work of some later writers such as al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, in which the road to moral and spiritual perfection has mystical overtones.
Ibn Bajja, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn as-Say’igh (d. 1138)
Authors: Inati Shams C.
Published: September 2018

Ibn Bajja’s philosophy may be summed up in two words; al-ittisal (conjunction) and al-tawahhud (solitude). Conjunction is union with the divine realm, a union that reveals the eternal and innermost aspects of the universe. Through this union or knowledge, one is completed as a human being, and in this completion the ultimate human end, happiness, is achieved. Solitude, on the other hand, is separation from a society that is lacking in knowledge. Once united with the eternal aspects of the universe, one must isolate oneself from those who are not in the same state, who may therefore distract one from the supernatural realm through their ignorance and corruption.
al-Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya (1154–91)
Authors: Cooper John
Published: September 2018

Al-Suhrawardi, whose life spanned a period of less than forty years in the middle of the twelfth century ad, produced a series of highly assured works which established him as the founder of a new school of philosophy in the Muslim world, the school of Illuminationist philosophy (hikmat al-ishraq). Although arising out of the peripatetic philosophy developed by Ibn Sina, al-Suhrawardi’s Illuminationist philosophy is critical of several of the positions taken by Ibn Sina, and radically departs from the latter through the creation of a symbolic language to give expression to his metaphysics and cosmology, his ‘science of lights’. The fundamental constituent of reality for al-Suhrawardi is pure, immaterial light, than which nothing is more manifest, and which unfolds from the Light of Lights in emanationist fashion through a descending order of lights of ever diminishing intensity; through complex interactions, these in turn give rise to horizontal arrays of lights, similar in concept to the Platonic Forms, which govern the species of mundane reality. Al-Suhrawardi also elaborated the idea of an independent, intermediary world, the imaginal world (alam al-mithal). His views have exerted a powerful influence down to this day, particularly through Mulla Sadra’s adaptation of his concept of intensity and gradation to existence, wherein he combined Peripatetic and Illuminationist descriptions of reality.
Ibn Masarra, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah (883–931)
Authors: Atiyeh George N.
Published: September 2018

Muhammad ibn Masarra is said to be responsible for the first structuring of Andalusian Spanish Muslim philosophy. The thrust of his philosophy was to show the agreement between reason and revelation. The two paths taken by honest philosophers and prophets lead to the same goal of reaching the knowledge of the oneness of God. We can only know that God exists but not what His nature is. Ibn Masarra held that the divine attributes of knowledge, will and power are a distinct aspect of the simple and ineffable essence of God, and the Neoplatonic theory that all beings have emanated from him through the First Intellect and are either invisible or apparent. There are two sciences, one of the invisible, transcendental world, the other of the apparent and sensible world. The inner meanings in the sciences can be learned through the science of letters. By studying the enigmatic letters at the beginning of the Qur’anic surahs, one can decipher the secret knowledge of the truth symbolized by them.
Ibn ‘Adi, Yahya (893–974)
Authors: Inati Shams C.
Published: September 2018

Following in the footsteps of the Greek philosophers, Ibn ‘Adi concerned himself with the ultimate human end, happiness, which he found in knowledge. However, he was primarily occupied with defending the compatibility between the concept of God’s unity and that of the trinity. He reasoned that a thing can be one in one respect and many in another. Therefore, there is no inconsistency in holding that God is both one and three. Ibn ‘Adi can best be described as the Christian philosopher of unity, as he devoted most of his career and used all his logical skills to defend the concept of God’s unity and its consistency with the concept of trinity.
Ibn Taymiyya, Taqi al–Din (1263–1328)
Authors: Pavlin James
Published: September 2018

Ibn Taymiyya was a staunch defender of Sunni Islam based on strict adherence to the Qur’an and authentic sunna (practices) of the Prophet Muhammad. He believed that these two sources contain all the religious and spiritual guidance necessary for our salvation in the hereafter. Thus he rejected the arguments and ideas of both philosophers and Sufis regarding religious knowledge, spiritual experiences and ritual practices. He believed that logic is not a reliable means of attaining religious truth and that the intellect must be subservient to revealed truth. He also came into conflict with many of his fellow Sunni scholars because of his rejection of the rigidity of the schools of jurisprudence in Islam. He believed that the four accepted schools of jurisprudence had become stagnant and sectarian, and also that they were being improperly influenced by aspects of Greek logic and thought as well as Sufi mysticism. His challenge to the leading scholars of the day was to return to an understanding of Islam in practice and in faith, based solely on the Qur’an and sunna.
al-Sijistani, Abu Sulayman Muhammad (c.932–c.1000)
Authors: Atiyeh George N.
Published: September 2018

Al-Sijistani was one of the great figures of Baghdad in the fourth century AH (tenth century ad). He assembled around him a circle of philosophers and litterateurs who met regularly in sessions to discuss topics related to philosophy, religion and language. As a philosopher with a humanistic orientation, his concerns went beyond subjects of strictly philosophical nature. His philosophical ideas displayed Aristotelian and Neoplatonic motifs. He considered philosophy and religion to be totally different in nature and method, so that the two could not be reconciled. God is only prior to the world in essence, rank and nobility, not in time. Al-Sijistani insisted that in no way should one attribute to God the imperfections of created things. According to him, the soul is simple by nature and natural reason is capable of attaining a state of pure knowledge that enables one to distinguish between good and evil. Reason, if taken as a guide, could ensure happiness.
al-Tawhidi, Abu Hayyan (c.930–1023)
Authors: Genequand Charles
Published: September 2018

Al-Tawhidi was an Arabic litterateur and philosopher, probably of Persian origin, and author of numerous books which reflect all the main themes of debate and reflection in the cultivated circles of his time. His basic outlook could be defined as a kind of simplified and vulgarized Neoplatonism, influenced by Gnostic elements, with four hypostases: God, Intellect, Soul and Nature. He also has a strong interest in moral questions on both the individual and social level.
al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din (1838–97)
Authors: Omran Elsayed M.H. , Leaman Oliver
Published: September 2018

Al-Afghani is often described as one of the most prominent Islamic political leaders and philosophers of the nineteenth century. He was concerned with the subjection of the Muslim world by Western colonial powers, and he made the liberation, independence and unity of the Islamic world one of the major aims of his life. He provided a theoretical explanation for the relative decline of the Islamic world, and a philosophical theory of history which sought to establish a form of modernism appropriate to Islam.
Ikhwan al-Safa’
Authors: Netton Ian Richard
Published: September 2018

The philosophy of the group of Arab philosophers of the fourth or fifth century AH (tenth or eleventh century ad) known as the Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity) is a curious but fascinating mixture of the Qur’anic, the Aristotelian and the Neoplatonic. The group wrote fifty-two epistles, which are encyclopedic in range, covering matters as diverse as arithmetic, theology, magic and embryology. Their numerology owes a debt to Pythagoras, their metaphysics are Aristotelian and Neoplatonic and they incorporate also a few Platonic notions into their philosophy. The latter, however, is more than a mere synthesis of elements from Greek philosophy, for it is underpinned by a considerable Qur’anic substratum. There are profound links between the epistemology and the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of the Ikhwan, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the former feeds the latter. In the history of Islamic philosophy the Ikhwan illustrate a group where the Aristotelian and the Neoplatonic clash head-on and where no attempt is made to reconcile competing and contradictory notions of God, whom the Epistles treat in both Qur’anic and Neoplatonic fashion. The final goal of the Ikhwan is salvation; their Brotherhood is the ship of that salvation, and they foster a spirit of asceticism and good living accompanied by ‘actual knowledge’ as aids to that longed-for salvation.
Illuminationist philosophy
Authors: Ziai Hossein , Leaman Oliver
Published: September 2018

Illuminationist philosophy started in twelfth-century Persia, and has been an important force in Islamic, especially Persian, philosophy right up to the present day. It presents a critique of some of the leading ideas of Aristotelianism, as represented by the philosophy of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and argues that many of the distinctions which are crucial to the character of that form of philosophy are misguided. Illuminationists develop a view of reality in accordance with which essence is more important than existence, and intuitive knowledge is more significant than scientific knowledge. They use the notion of light, as the name suggests, as a way of exploring the links between God, the Light of Lights, and his creation. The result is a view of the whole of reality as a continuum, with the physical world being an aspect of the divine. This sort of language proved to be very suggestive for mystical philosophers, and Illuminationism quickly became identified with Islamic mysticism.
al-Sabzawari, al-Hajj Mulla Hadi (1797/8–1873)
Authors: Cooper John
Published: September 2018

Al-Sabzawari was the most influential nineteenth-century Iranian philosopher. His reputation rests in part on his Sharh al-manzuma, a commentary on his own Ghurar al-fara’id (The Blazes of the Gems), a didactic poem (manzuma) encapsulating in a systematic fashion an exposition of the existentialist philosophy of Mulla Sadra. He was also the most sought-after teacher of philosophy in his day, and many students travelled to Sabzavar to be taught by him. Famous for his saintliness as well as his erudition, he set the tone for much of twentieth-century Iranian philosophy.
Islamic philosophy: transmission into Western Europe
Authors: Burnett Charles
Published: September 2018

The Arabs took on the mantle of late antique philosophy and passed it on to both Latin scholars and Jewish scholars in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. The debates among Islamic scholars between rationalism and fideism also provided texts and models for Christian and Jewish debates. In this assimilation of Islamic thought, several stages can be observed. First, there was an interest in Neoplatonic cosmology and psychology in the latter half of the twelfth century, which fostered the translation of texts by al-Kindi, al-Farabi, the Ikhwan al-Safa’ and, especially, Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Second, the desire to understand Aristotle’s philosophy resulted in the translation of the commentaries and epitomes of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Jewish scholars participated in both these movements, and from the second quarter of the thirteenth century they took the initiative in translating and commenting upon Arabic texts. Thus when, in the late fifteenth century, a renewed interest in the ancient texts led scholars to search out the most accurate interpretations of these texts, it was to Jewish scholars that they turned for new translations or retranslations of Avicenna and, in particular, Averroes. From the early sixteenth century, Arabic philosophical texts were again translated directly into Latin, Arabic speakers began to collaborate with Christian scholars and the foundations for the teaching of Arabic were being laid. With the establishment of Arabic chairs in European universities, the rich variety of Islamic thought began to be revealed. This process has lasted until the present day.
al-Muqammas, Daud (fl. 9th century)
Authors: Stroumsa Sarah
Published: September 2018

Daud ibn Marwan, called al-Muqammas, is the first Jewish thinker known to have written in Arabic and one of the earliest Arabic speaking theologians whose work is extant. He also wrote on logic, biblical exegesis, doxography and polemical matters. His pioneering efforts toward a systematic Jewish philosophy show the influence both of Muslim theology (kalam) and the Aristotelian philosophy taught in the Syriac Christian academies.
Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (1021/2–57/8)
Authors: Frank Daniel H.
Published: September 2018

Ibn Gabirol was an outstanding exemplar of the Judaeo–Arabic symbiosis of medieval Muslim Spain, a poet as well as the author of prose works in both Hebrew and Arabic. His philosophical masterwork, the Mekor Hayyim (Fountain of Life), was well known to the Latin scholastics in its twelfth century Latin translation, the Fons Vitae. The work presents a Neoplatonic conception of reality, with a creator God at the apex. The universal hylomorphism that pervades the created order, both spiritual and corporeal, has divine will as the intermediary between God and creation, allowing Ibn Gabirol to avoid the rigidly determinist emanationism of his Greek predecessors. The Fons Vitae challenged such philosophers as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus to critical reflections regarding individuation and personal immortality.
Ibn Ezra, Abraham (1089–1164)
Authors: Jospe Raphael
Published: September 2018

The philosophy of Ibn Ezra attained broad influence in Jewish literature through his Bible commentaries, included to this day in rabbinic Bibles. Born in Tudela, Spain, he was forced in later life (1140 until his death) to wander widely, at length settling in Rome and Lucca, where he composed some of his greatest works. A friend and, by some traditions, son-in-law of the poet-philosopher Judah Halevi, whom he mentions occasionally, he was himself a poet and wrote prolifically on grammar, exegesis, philosophy, medicine, astronomy and astrology. The many editions and manuscripts of his works attest their popularity, and some, especially on astronomy and astrology, were translated into Latin and then into French, Spanish, English and German.
Bar Hayya, Abraham (c.1016–c.1136)
Authors: Wigoder Geoffrey
Published: September 2018

Abraham bar Hayya (also called bar Hiyya) sought to reconcile Jewish tradition with contemporary philosophical thought, in his case that received from Arabic sources. Generally considered to be a Neoplatonist whose philosophy is enriched with Aristotelian accretions, he has also been called the first Jewish Aristotelian. He pioneered the writing of philosophy in Hebrew, and his work influenced later Jewish philosophers and the Kabbalah.
Maimonides, Abraham ben Moses (1186–1237)
Authors: Fenton Paul B.
Published: September 2018

Jewish theologian, mystical pietist, physician, and the only son of Moses Maimonides, with whom he studied rabbinics, philosophy and medicine. Upon his father’s death, Abraham became the spiritual and temporal head of Egyptian Jewry and a leading rabbinical authority. Using this position, he propagated a form of Jewish pietism, introducing ideas and ritual practices inspired by Islamic mysticism. Moving beyond defence of his father’s legal and philosophical writings, Abraham’s most important work, Kifayat al-‘Abidin (Complete Guide for Devotees) – a monumental compendium of jurisprudence and religious philosophy – develops his own pietist interests. It attracted something of a following in its time but also met with concerted Jewish opposition to its Sufi-inspired ideals.
Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome (c.1261–before 1336)
Authors: Rigo Caterina
Published: September 2018

Immanuel of Rome wrote commentaries on the Bible and poems of a religious, philosophical or jocular nature, concerning the most varied themes. His main topics are conjunction with the ‘active intellect’ and the superiority of theoretical knowledge. He participated in many of the leading controversies of his time and is interesting for the ways in which he managed to express theoretical ideas poetically.
Averroism, Jewish
Authors: Leaman Oliver
Published: September 2018

Averroism was enthusiastically taken up by many Jewish philosophers and adapted in a number of ways that extended its scope beyond mere repetition of Averroes’ own arguments. Jewish Averroists were particularly drawn by the potential they found in Averroism for resolving the delicate questions they faced about the relationship between philosophy and religion. The idea that both philosophy and religion are true even when they appear to produce different answers to the same question. Fascinated by the Averroistic idea that religious claims can be interpreted as popular expressions of philosophical truths, the Jewish Averroists followed up with vigour the programme of showing how to translate traditional religious statements into philosophical statements.

Many Jewish philosophers found themselves in a difficulty which they took great pains to resolve, namely, how to reconcile what they believed through faith with what they believed through reason. Averroism seems to be the solution to this problem, since it embodies a theory that explains how faith and reason are connected and makes it possiblc to be both religious and rational at the same time. It is not surprising, then, that many Jewish thinkers were attracted to this philosophical doctrine.
Delmedigo, Elijah (c.1460–93)
Authors: Bland Kalman
Published: September 2018

Throughout the treatises and translations commissioned by his many patrons in Italy, Elijah Delmedigo championed Aristotle and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). In Latin texts prepared for Pico della Mirandola, Delmedigo affirmed such cardinal Averroist notions as the absolute unity of all human minds and the role of God as the unmeditated principle of intelligibility in the universe. In the Hebrew Behinat ha-Dat (The Examination of Religion), Delmedigo urges the superiority of a rationalistic Judaism over other religions, especially Christianity, and over the nonphilosophic, improperly philosophic and antiphilosophic versions of Judaism. Sections of this work amount to a nuanced critique of Kabbalah. Combining ardent Averroism with qualified admiration for Maimonides, Delmedigo repeatedly argued for the compatibility of Judaism with secular philosophic speculation.
Maimon, Salomon (1753/4–1800)
Authors: Franks Paul
Published: September 2018

Educated as a rabbi in Lithuania, Shlomo (Salomon) ben Yehoshua migrated to Germany and adopted the surname Maimon in honour of Maimonides. His criticism of Kant’s dualism and his monistic account of the human mind as an imperfect expression of God’s infinite mind influenced Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Kant regarded him as the critic who understood him best.

Maimon’s system combines rational dogmatism with empirical scepticism. As a rational dogmatist, he argues that cognition requires the absolute unity of subject and object. Maimon therefore criticizes Kant’s dualistic divisions between the mental form and extra-mental matter of knowledge, and between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. Experience in Kant’s sense – empirical knowledge – is possible only if these dualisms are merely apparent. Our finite minds must be imperfect expressions of an infinite, divine mind that produces the form and matter of knowledge. Through scientific progress, our minds become more adequate expressions of the infinite mind. Kant has not refuted Hume’s scepticism, which could be refuted only if science became perfect. Perfect science is an ideal for which we must strive but which we will never reach.

Maimon is deeply indebted to Maimonides, but he reformulates Maimonidean ideas in light of modern mathematical physics and deploys them within a Kantian investigation of the possibility of experience. The result is a unique encounter between medieval and modern philosophy that decisively influenced German idealism and remains philosophically interesting.
Krochmal, Nachman (1785–1840)
Authors: Harris Jay M.
Published: September 2018

Nachman Krochmal was leader of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah in Galicia, eastern Europe. An astute observer of the German philosophical environment, Krochmal provided one of the first Jewish responses to, and adaptations of, elements of the philosophical work of Spinoza, Kant, Herder, Schelling and Hegel. His posthumously published Moreh Nevukhei ha-Zeman (Guide to the Perplexed of Today) (1851) adapted Kantian epistemological methods to interpret the Jewish religious sources with an eye to discovering their inner, philosophical meaning. Krochmal argued that at that their deeper level these sources, both ancient and medieval, anticipated the discoveries of the German Idealist philosophers. Thus, for example, the Jewish belief in a personal God who created the world and revealed a desired way of life could remain philosophically fruitful. For, when properly interpreted, such ideas were concrete representations of the truths laid bare in the metaphysics of Hegel and Schelling. Krochmal answered the regnant philosophy of history, which considered Jewish culture to have been sublated, by arguing that Jewish religion, by its apprehension of the absolute, stood outside the historical ‘laws’ that mandate the eventual cultural demise of all nations and states.

Although he was an important model for aspiring Jewish intellectuals in eastern Europe, Krochmal’s work was of limited philosophical influence. His lasting contribution may be his implicit exposure of the unstated cultural biases of modern idealist philosophy. For his work shows that alternative cultural assumptions would turn idealist philosophy towards philosophical and religious conclusions significantly different from those of the German Idealists themselves.
Buber, Martin (1878–1965)
Authors: Wright Tamra
Published: September 2018

Martin Buber covered a range of fields in his writings, from Jewish folklore and fiction, to biblical scholarship and translation, to philosophical anthropology and theology. Above all, however, Buber was a philosopher, in the lay-person’s sense of the term sense: someone who devoted his intellectual energies to contemplating the meaning of life.

Buber’s passionate interest in mysticism was reflected in his early philosophical work. However, he later rejected the view that mystical union is the ultimate goal of relation, and developed a philosophy of relation. In the short but enormously influential work, Ich und Du (I and Thou). Buber argued that the I emerges only through encountering others, and that the very nature of the I depends on the quality of the relationship with the Other. He described two fundamentally different ways of relating to others: the common mode of ‘I–It’, in which people and things are experienced as objects, or, in Kantian terms, as ‘means to an end’; and the ‘I–Thou’ mode, in which I do not ‘experience’ the Other, rather, the Other and I enter into a mutually affirming relation, which is simultaneously a relation with another and a relation with God, the ‘eternal Thou’.

Buber acknowledged that necessity of I–It, even in the interpersonal sphere, but lamented its predominance in modern life. Through his scholarly work in philosophy, theology and biblical exegesis, as well as his translation of Scripture and adaptations of Hasidic tales, he sought to reawaken our capacity for I–Thou relations.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua (1907–72)
Authors: Novak David
Published: September 2018

Born in Warsaw and educated there and in Berlin, Abraham Joshua Heschel moved to the USA in 1940, where he lived and taught for the rest of his life. His elegantly written books and essays and his striking personality made him a key figure in American Jewish philosophical theology after the Second World War. Written in German, English, Hebrew and Yiddish, his books reflect widely on the Hebrew Bible, Talmud and midrash, and on Jewish mystical writings, continuously engaging with contemporary philosophy and theology.
Theology, Rabbinic
Authors: Botwinick Aryeh
Published: September 2018

The Talmud, a shelf of folio volumes built up out of the expansive reflections of generations of scholar/thinkers whose discourse formed a commentary or complement (Gemara) to the ancient legal code of the Mishnah, encapsulates rabbinic sayings and discussions dating from before the first century to around 600. The monotheistic idea of God affords a key perspective on the Talmud’s variegated themes: God’s uniqueness and ultimacy preclude any easy direct commerce between the human and the divine. Literal contact may be endlessly deferred; yet God remains ever present and ever active in human life. Rabbinic thought, textually represented in the Talmud and in the institutions it fosters, seeks to mediate God’s ‘absent presence’ to a community of believers in a way that renders manifest the penetration of divine concern into every cranny of human consciousness without compromising God’s transcendence or explanatory uniqueness.
Midrash
Authors: Alexander Philip S.
Published: September 2018

Midrash, a Hebrew word meaning ‘investigation’ or ‘study’, denotes both the method used by the Jewish rabbis of the second to sixth centuries ad to interpret the Bible and the extensive literature that resulted from the application of that method. In rabbinic parlance midrash, or the related term derash, can also designate a homiletic, non-literal way of reading the Bible. Midrash embodies a distinctive hermeneutic which at its most extreme treats the text of Scripture as a set of symbols or signs apparently to be manipulated by the interpreter at will. In recent years midrash has been compared to reader-response literary criticism. It has also been claimed that it represents a ‘Judaic’ as opposed to a ‘Hellenic’ mode of thinking which anticipates postmodernist hermeneutics.