bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Causality and necessity in Islamic thought
Authors: Burrell David 
Published: September 2018

Discussions of causality and necessity in Islamic thought were the result of attempts to incorporate the wisdom of the Greeks into the legacy of the Qur&lsquo;‘an, and specifically to find a philosophical way of expressing faith in the free creation of the universe by one God. Moreover, that article of faith was itself a result of the revelation of God’s ways in the free bestowal of the Qur&rsquo;’an on a humanity otherwise locked in ignorance, which a purportedly Aristotelian account of the necessary connection of cause and effect might be taken to rule out. Thus free creation of the universe and free gift of the Qur’an formed a logical unit. The challenge, therefore, was to compose an account of metaphysical and ethical matters which permits rational discourse about them, without obscuring their ultimate source or precluding divine action in the course of world events and human actions.
The scheme of emanation elaborated by al-Farabi sought to give ‘the First’ the place of pre-eminence which the Qur‘an demanded for the Creator, but did so by modelling creation on a logical system whereby all things emanated necessarily from this One. It was this necessity, further articulated by Ibn Sina, which al-Ghazalii took to jeopardize the freedom of God as Creator and as giver of the Qur’an. al-Ghazali’s objections were honed by a previous debate among Muslim theologians (mutakallimun), who had elaborated diverse views on human freedom in an effort to reconcile the obvious demand for free acceptance of the Qur’an with its claims regarding God’s utter sovereignty as Creator over all that is. Natural philosophy was also affected by these debates, specifically with regard to the ultimate constitution of bodies as well as accounts that could be given of their interaction. However, the primary focus was on human actions in the face of a free Creator.
Islamic theology
Authors: El-Affendi Abdelwahab 
Published: September 2018

‘Ilm al-kalam (literally ‘the science of debate’) denotes a discipline of Islamic thought generally referred to as ‘theology’ or (even less accurately) as ‘scholastic theology’. The discipline, which evolved from the political and religious controversies that engulfed the Muslim community in its formative years, deals with interpretations of religious doctrine and the defence of these interpretations by means of discursive arguments.
The rise of kalam came to be closely associated with the Mu‘tazila, a rationalist school that emerged at the beginning of the second century AH (seventh century ad) and rose to prominence in the following century. The failure of the Mu‘tazila to follow up their initial intellectual and political ascendancy by imposing their views as official state doctrine seriously discredited rationalism, leading to a resurgence of traditionalism and later to the emergence of the Ash‘ariyya school, which attempted to present itself as a compromise between the two opposing extremes. The Ash‘arite school gained acceptability within mainstream (Sunni) Islam. However, kalam continued to be condemned, even in this ‘orthodox’ garb, by the dominant traditionally-inclined schools.
In its later stages, kalam attempted to assimilate philosophical themes and questions, but the subtle shift in this direction was not completely successful. The decline of kalam appeared to be irreversible, shunned as it was by traditionalists and rationalists alike. Although kalam texts continued to be discussed and even taught in some form, kalam ceased to be a living science as early as the ninth century AH (fifteenth century ad). Attempts by reformers to revive it, beginning in the nineteenth century, have yet to bear fruit.
Greek philosophy: impact on Islamic philosophy
Authors: Fakhry Majid 
Published: September 2018

During the Hellenistic period (323–43 bc), classical Greek philosophy underwent a radical transformation. From being an essentially Greek product, it developed into a cosmopolitan and eclectic cultural movement in which Greek, Egyptian, Phoenician and other Near Eastern religious and ethical elements coalesced. This transformation is best symbolized by the role Alexandria played as the hub of diverse currents of thought making up the new philosophy.
When the Abbasid Caliphate was founded in Baghdad in 750 ad, the centre of learning gradually moved to the Abbasid capital, which became in due course the heir of Athens and Alexandria as the new cultural metropolis of the medieval world. About two centuries later Cordoba, capital of Muslim Spain, began to vie with Baghdad as the centre of ‘ancient learning’. From Cordoba, Greek–Arabic philosophy and science were transmitted across the Pyrenees to Paris, Bologna and Oxford in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.
The initial reception of Greek–Hellenistic philosophy in the Islamic world was mixed. It was frowned upon at first as being suspiciously foreign or pagan, and was dismissed by conservative theologians, legal scholars and grammarians as pernicious or superfluous. By the middle of the eighth century ad the picture had changed somewhat, with the appearance of the rationalist theologians of Islam known as the Mu‘tazilites, who were thoroughly influenced by the methods of discourse or dialectic favoured by the Muslim philosophers. Of those philosophers, the two outstanding figures of the ninth and tenth centuries were al-Kindi and al-Razi, who hailed Greek philosophy as a form of liberation from the shackles of dogma or blind imitation (taqlid). For al-Kindi, the goals of philosophy are perfectly compatible with those of religion, and, for al-Razi, philosophy was the highest expression of man’s intellectual ambitions and the noblest achievement of that noble people, the Greeks, who were unsurpassed in their quest for wisdom (hikma).
Ibn Rushd, Abu’l Walid Muhammad (1126–98)
Authors: Leaman Oliver 
Published: September 2018

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) is regarded by many as the most important of the Islamic philosophers. A product of twelfth-century Islamic Spain, he set out to integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. A common theme throughout his writings is that there is no incompatibility between religion and philosophy when both are properly understood. His contributions to philosophy took many forms, ranging from his detailed commentaries on Aristotle, his defence of philosophy against the attacks of those who condemned it as contrary to Islam and his construction of a form of Aristotelianism which cleansed it, as far as was possible at the time, of Neoplatonic influences.
His thought is genuinely creative and highly controversial, producing powerful arguments that were to puzzle his philosophical successors in the Jewish and Christian worlds. He seems to argue that there are two forms of truth, a religious form and a philosophical form, and that it does not matter if they point in different directions. He also appears to be doubtful about the possibility of personal immortality or of God’s being able to know that particular events have taken place. There is much in his work also which suggests that religion is inferior to philosophy as a means of attaining knowledge, and that the understanding of religion which ordinary believers can have is very different and impoverished when compared with that available to the philosopher.
When discussing political philosophy he advocates a leading role in the state for philosophers, and is generally disparaging of the qualities of theologians as political figures. Ibn Rushd’s philosophy is seen to be based upon a complex and original philosophy of languages which expresses his critique of the accepted methods of argument in Islamic philosophy up to his time.
al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058–1111)
Authors: Nakamura Kojiro 
Published: September 2018

Al-Ghazali is one of the greatest Islamic jurists, theologians and mystical thinkers. He learned various branches of the traditional Islamic religious sciences in his home town of Tus, Gurgan and Nishapur in the northern part of Iran. He was also involved in Sufi practices from an early age. Being recognized by Nizam al-Mulk, the vizir of the Seljuq sultans, he was appointed head of the Nizamiyyah College at Baghdad in AH 484/ad 1091. As the intellectual head of the Islamic community, he was busy lecturing on Islamic jurisprudence at the College, and also refuting heresies and responding to questions from all segments of the community. Four years later, however, al-Ghazali fell into a serious spiritual crisis and finally left Baghdad, renouncing his career and the world. After wandering in Syria and Palestine for about two years and finishing the pilgrimage to Mecca, he returned to Tus, where he was engaged in writing, Sufi practices and teaching his disciples until his death. In the meantime he resumed teaching for a few years at the Nizamiyyah College in Nishapur.
Al-Ghazali explained in his autobiography why he renounced his brilliant career and turned to Sufism. It was, he says, due to his realization that there was no way to certain knowledge or the conviction of revelatory truth except through Sufism. (This means that the traditional form of Islamic faith was in a very critical condition at the time.) This realization is possibly related to his criticism of Islamic philosophy. In fact, his refutation of philosophy is not a mere criticism from a certain (orthodox) theological viewpoint. First of all, his attitude towards philosophy was ambivalent; it was both an object of criticism and an object of learning (for example, logic and the natural sciences). He mastered philosophy and then criticized it in order to Islamicize it. The importance of his criticism lies in his philosophical demonstration that the philosophers’ metaphysical arguments cannot stand the test of reason. However, he was also forced to admit that the certainty of revelatory truth, for which he was so desperately searching, cannot be obtained by reason. It was only later that he finally attained to that truth in the ecstatic state (fana’) of the Sufi. Through his own religious experience, he worked to revive the faith of Islam by reconstructing the religious sciences upon the basis of Sufism, and to give a theoretical foundation to the latter under the influence of philosophy. Thus Sufism came to be generally recognized in the Islamic community. Though Islamic philosophy did not long survive al-Ghazali’s criticism, he contributed greatly to the subsequent philosophization of Islamic theology and Sufism.
Israeli, Isaac ben Solomon (c.855–955)
Authors: Lasker Daniel J. 
Published: September 2018

A pioneering Jewish philosopher and a physician, Isaac Israeli was among the very first medieval Jewish writers to formulate a philosophy employing Greek sources. He based his metaphysics chiefly on the Neoplatonic theory of emanation. However, like many later Jewish philosophers, Israeli understood God as a voluntary agent who acted through power and will. He combined a commitment to the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo with the idea of emanation: the first level of the ontic hierarchy was formed by divine creation but lower levels emerged by emanation. This original synthesis was Israeli’s most prominent philosophical innovation.
Israeli’s anthropology was at base largely Neoplatonic, teaching that the soul can ascend the emanatory ladder back to God. The first Jew to give a psychological account of prophecy, Israeli, unlike later Jewish thinkers, did not discuss at length the relation between his philosophical ideas and traditional sources. His pioneering work did not have a decisive impact on later generations of Jewish thinkers; he was known in Latin Europe, but mainly for his medical writings.
Abravanel, Isaac (1437–1509)
Authors: Leaman Oliver 
Published: September 2018

Abravanel is often seen as having a unique position in Jewish philosophy, between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. His ideas point both to the past – especially to Maimonides – and to the future, in his approach to the questions of history and of authority in the state. His defence of what he takes to be religious orthodoxy is carried out with serious attention to the arguments of his predecessors. Abravanel takes great pains to understand their reasoning. He even supplies them with additional arguments, before he presents what he takes to be a decisive objection. In particular he expounds Maimonides’ thought in considerable detail, defending him from his critics, while also insisting that Maimonides misrepresented the religious notions he analyses.
Abravanel’s most original work lies in his view of history as either natural or artificial. Most human history is artificial, since it represents life in rebellion against God. The best form of government is not a monarchy, despite the views of most Jewish philosophers. For a monarchy does not essentially replicate the relationship of God with his subjects, and other forms of government can produce relatively successful societies. The Messiah, who will eventually transform artificial into natural history, is not a king but more a judge and prophet. He will establish the perfect society through a divine miracle. As long as the state is an absolute monarchy, however, its citizens owe absolute obedience to its ruler.
Abravanel, Judah ben Isaac (c.1460/5–c.1520/5)
Authors: Dobbs-Weinstein Idit 
Published: September 2018

Judah ben Isaac Abravanel was born in Lisbon. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Leone, as he was known, and his family migrated to Naples, but fled two years later following the French invasion. After brief residences in various Italian cities, Leone returned to Naples where he served as court physician to the Spanish Viceroy. Well-versed in the sciences of his day, including physics, medicine and philosophy, whether Jewish, Islamic or Christian, he composed his major work, Dialoghi d’amore (Dialogues of Love), in 1501–2. Although the work influenced such important thinkers as Montaigne, Bruno and Spinoza, its main influence was in literature rather than philosophy. Its style resembles that of other Renaissance works in the ambit of Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Symposium but, unlike these works, it is neither philosophical commentary nor courtly literature. Adopting the idiom of courtly love and drawing on Platonic and Neoplatonic sources, it complements them with mythological, biblical and Aristotelian sources to produce a novel synthesis of Plato and Aristotle with ideas drawn from the pagan and the revealed traditions, aiming to demonstrate that love is the animating principle of the universe and the cause of all existence, divine as well as material.
The three dialogues between Philo, the poetic lover, and his beloved Sophia address the relations between love and desire, the universality of love and the origin of love. Each discussion pivots on an apparent opposition between Philo’s Aristotelian and Sophia’s Platonic views. The discussion of the relations between love and desire raises fundamental questions about the relations of soul and body.
Herrera, Abraham Cohen de (c.1562–c.1635)
Authors: Yosha Nissim 
Published: September 2018

Herrera was a philosophically oriented Kabbalist who combined Neoplatonism and Kabbalistic knowledge learned from Israel Sarug, a disciple of Isaac Luria. In his Spanish works Puerta del Cielo (The Gate of Heaven), and Casa de la Divinidad (The House of Divinity), he considered Kabbalah as the source of the ancient truth.
Herrera believed that as the intellect is the highest epistemic grade, one must rely on philosophy to reach the divine secrets. He dealt with the concept of Ensoph (his own spelling of Eyn Sof – the Infinite) in terms of its Thomistic and Renaissance definitions – the Infinite that excludes limit. Tzimtzum is the voluntary Contraction of Ensoph, which prepares space for worlds to be created. The space opened up is metaphorically called Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man), the first emanation of which is the Intelligible World and the Tetragrammaton, the principle that shapes the Chain of Being around the Pythagorean number four. Neoplatonically, Adam Kadmon is the Intelligible World. Herrera’s account incorporates further complex ideas about First and Second Causes of creation.
In 1699, Herrera drew the attention of Johan Georg Wachter, who, on the basis of Knorr von Rosenroth’s Latin translations of Herrera’s works in Kabbala Denudata, blamed him for inspiring Spinoza’s supposed pantheistic heresy.
Cohen, Hermann (1842–1918)
Authors: Zank Michael 
Published: September 2018

Hermann Cohen was the founder of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and a major influence on twentieth-century Jewish thought. Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism) (1919) is widely credited with the renewal of Jewish religious philosophy. Cohen’s philosophy of Judaism is inextricably linked with his general philosophical position. But his system of critical idealism in logic, ethics, aesthetics and psychology did not originally include a philosophy of religion. The mainly Protestant Marburg School in fact regarded Cohen’s Jewish philosophy as an insufficient solution to the philosophical problem of human existence and to that of determining the role of religion in human culture. Thinkers who favoured a new, more existentialist approach in Jewish thought, however, saw Cohen’s introduction of religion into the system as a daring departure from the confines of philosophical idealism.
Cohen identified the central Jewish contribution to human culture as the development of a religion that unites historical particularity with ethical universality. At the core of this religion of reason is the interdependence of the idea of God and that of the human being. Cohen derives this theme from the Jewish canon through a philosophical analysis based on his transcendental idealism.
Bible, Hebrew
Authors: Cohn-Sherbok Dan 
Published: September 2018

Although the Bible is not a work of systematic philosophy, it none the less contains a wide variety of philosophical and theological ideas which have served as the framework for rabbinic speculation through the centuries. Although these views about the nature and activity of God are not presented systematically, they do provide an overview of the ancient Israelite understanding of the Godhead, creation, divine providence and human destiny. Throughout rabbinic literature these notions served as the bedrock for theological speculation, and with the emergence of systematic Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages, they came to preoccupy a variety of thinkers. Similarly, in the post-Enlightenment period until the present, scriptural teaching has served as the starting point for philosophical and theological reflection.
Foremost among scriptural beliefs is the conviction that one God has created the cosmos. As the transcendent creator of the universe, he reigns supreme throughout nature and is intimately involved in earthly life. God is both omnipotent and omniscient and exercises divine providence over all creatures – from on high he oversees all the inhabitants of the earth. In exercising his providential care, Scripture repeatedly asserts, God is a benevolent ruler who shows compassion and mercy to all. Furthermore, as lord of history, he has chosen Israel to be his special people and has revealed the Torah to them on Mount Sinai. The Jewish people are to be a light to the nations, and from their midst will come a Messianic redeemer who will inaugurate a period of divine deliverance and eventually usher in the world to come. Israel thus plays a central role in the unfolding of God’s plan for all human beings.
Soloveitchik, Joseph B. (1903–93)
Authors: Hartman D. 
Published: September 2018

Joseph B. Soloveitchik was a Jewish philosopher in the fullest sense. For such thinkers, the task of building intellectual and spiritual bridges between their particular traditions and other cultures permeates and shapes all their philosophic commitments and endeavours.
Medieval philosophers sought to integrate the competing knowledge claims of natural reason and authoritative revelation. Soloveitchik, by contrast, ignored metaphysics and epistemology, focusing instead on refuting the alleged incompatibility between Judaism and the active, human-centred ethos of modernity. His major concern was not the truth of religion but the relevance and significance of religious human types and ideals in modern Western culture.
Atonement
Authors: Gunton Colin 
Published: September 2018

As a theological concept, atonement articulates the acts by which relations between God and creatures, disrupted by human offence, can be restored. Although other cultures show an awareness of the need for atonement, the Christian tradition understands it as provided by God’s particular historical action in Jesus Christ. At its centre is the notion of reconciliation between God and his alienated creatures, which is achieved particularly by the death of Jesus. The distinctive philosophical and other problems of atonement theology derive from two features in particular: its claiming of universal significance for the historical life and death of Jesus of Nazareth (the problem of universality); and the moral difficulties, especially in the realm of human freedom and responsibility, which arise from the claim that he is the vehicle of atonement with God (the problem of human autonomy).
Although there were many theologies of atonement before Anselm of Canterbury’s, his systematic treatment is the fountainhead of much modern discussion, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Centring on the concept of satisfaction, it understands Christ as the God-man, satisfying both divine justice and human need by a free gift of his life. Criticisms of the formulation have centred on its understanding of sin and its tendency to understand atonement in external, transactional terms. Subsequent discussion of the concept has also raised questions about Christ’s substitutionary and representative roles and about the relation between the justice and the love of God. A significant proportion of modern thinkers have rejected the need for any concept of atonement at all. They have preferred instead to understand Jesus as an example to be followed (‘exemplarism’) or to concentrate upon the effect his behaviour and example have on the believer (‘subjectivism’) – or to adopt a combination of both.
Eliade, Mircea (1907–86)
Authors: Rennie Bryan Stephenson 
Published: September 2018

Eliade was educated as a philosopher. He published extensively in the history of religions and acted as editor-in-chief of Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Religion (1987). The influence of his thought, through these works and through thirty years as director of the history of religions department at Chicago University, is considerable.
Eliade’s analysis of religion assumes the existence of ‘the sacred’ as the object of worship of religious humanity. It appears as the source of power, significance and value. Humanity apprehends ‘hierophanies’ – physical manifestations or revelations of the sacred – often, but not only, in the form of symbols, myths and rituals. Any phenomenal entity is a potential hierophany and can give access to nonhistorical time, what Eliade calls illud tempus (‘that time’). The apprehension of this sacred time is a constitutive feature of the religious aspect of humanity.