#al-kindi

[inspofromancientworld]

History of Philosophy: al-Kindi

Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī أبو يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي, more widely known as al-Kindi, lived from about 801-873 CE and was an Arab Muslim philosopher, physician, mathematician, and music theorist who is regarded as the first Islamic Peripatetic philosopher, or following in the philosophical footsteps of Aristotle, and is considered the 'father of Arab philosophy'. He was born to an aristocratic family, his father the governor of Basra and al-Kindi received his early education there. He continued his education in Baghdad, where he found patrons of the Abbasid caliphs al-Ma'mun (who reigned from 813-833) and al-Mu'tasim (who reigned 833-842). He was appointed to the recently established House of Wisdom, the center for translating Greek scientific and philosophical works by al-Ma'mun, a position which was enhanced under al-Mu'tasim, when he appointed al-Kindi to tutor his son. Under al-Wathiq (who reigned from 842-847), al-Kindi lost his favored position, possibly due to rivals at the House of Wisdom, or possibly due to al-Wathiq's 'often violent persecution of unorthodox Muslims (as well as of non-Muslims)', with al-Kindi being 'beaten and his library temporarily confiscated' at one point. Caliph al-Mutawakkil (who reigned from 847-861) employed al-Kindi as a calligrapher at one point due to the beauty of his calligraphy. He reportedly died 'a lonely man' during the reign of al-Mu'tamid (who reigned from 870-892).

While philosophy itself was rarely objected to, the conclusions that philosophers reached could be objected to by theologians for extolling intellect, 'believing in the co-eternity of the universe with God, denying the bodily resurrection, and asserting that God only has knowledge of abstract universals, not of particular things'. Al-Kindi was 'fortunate enough to enjoy the patronage of the pro-Mutazillite Caliphs al-Ma'mun and al-Mu-tasim', which means they held to 'an Islamic type of rationalism' that allowed al-Kindi the freedom to explore his work with 'relative ease'. Some hold that al-Kindi's 'real role' was to set the ground for debate between philosophers and theologians, with his work containing 'all the seeds of future controversy that would be fully realized in al-Ghazali's [about 1058-19 December 1111] Incoherence of the Philosophers'.

After his death, al-Kindi's works were lost, partially due to al-Mutawakkil's suppression and partially due to the Mongols invasion and subsequent destruction of libraries from 1219-1258, as well as the popularity of other philosophers, like al-Farabi and Avicenna. He left behind at least 260 books, with 32 about geometry, 22 on medicine and philosophy, 12 on physics, and 9 on logic, with most lost through time, but some surviving due to Latin translations by Gerard of Cremona, an Italian translator who lived from about 1114-1187, and others being rediscovered, including 24 that were found in the mid-20th century in a Turkish library.

[thebeesareback]

The House of Wisdom

I know people get annoyed about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, but I think they should also be upset about what the Mongols did to the House of Wisdom.

Founded in the late 8th century, also known as the Islamic Golden Age, the House of Wisdom was a public library, observatory and academy located in what is now Baghdad, Iraq. There were rare books and Arabic poems, and plenty of translations of texts from Arabic, Syriac, Chinese, Sanskrit and Greek. Research was conducted and scholars had access to information from India, Greece and Persia. Scholars could study astronomy, maths, medicine, science and philosophy. Some of the astronomers worked on improving the astrolabe, which was used by Muslims to find Mecca and could also help travellers plan their journeys.

The House of Wisdom was in Baghdad, which at the time was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. This meant that plenty of people, including scholars, would visit the city. Some notable examples are al-Jahiz (who lived to be 89, and apparently died when a stack of books fell on him); al-Kindi (the father of Arab philosophy) and al-Ghazali (a Mujaddid who wrote "The Incoherence of Philosphers"). al-Jahiz taught at the university and wrote there. In one of his books he discusses evolution and argued that dogs, wolves, foxes etc probably shared a common ancestor with four legs and a tail. One scholar, al-Ma-mun, put together the most detailed map of the Earth (for its time - it looks like North Africa, Europe and parts of Asia to me. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/486177722268804983/ ).

The Mongols destroyed the House of Wisdom in 1258 when they sieged the city. Hulegn, the grandson of Ghengis Khan, attacked the city and destroyed hospitals, mosques and libraries. The attackers threw all of the books into the Tigris river. Legend says that for days afterwards the river water was turned black with ink and red with blood.

[alchameth]

“In agreement with Aristotle, Al-Kindi does imply a definition of sleep as the natural cessation of the sensory faculties. Yet, instead of following the Aristotelian approach that this simply facilitates the ‘Presentation’ of previously internalised sensory experiences, Al-Kindi argues that sleep results in the access of a different cognitive function altogether; namely, the Imaginative Faculty (Musawwira). This becomes active during the isolation of The Intellectual Soul, when the Sensory Soul is dormant. Explaining how this process occurs, Al-Kindi uses the common example of how when a person is deep in thought, they may cease to use their sight and hearing, becoming lost in their imagination - a phenomena known contemporarily as ‘daydreaming’. Sleep is essentially an extension of this, in which the Sensory Soul’s inactivity induces the concentration of one’s own thoughts (manifestations of the Intellectual Soul), and following this the emergence of visions and dreams. It is the Faculty of Imagination or the Musawwira that flourishes in this stage of sleep. As will become apparent throughout the treatise, the Musawwira is what gives dreams their spiritual significance, the reason for this being that it is inherently connected to the divine. This is semantically foregrounded merely through Al-Kindi’s usage of the Arabic term Musawwira, which alludes to the Islamic doctrine of The Ninety-Nine Names of Allah where it features, denoting God as ‘The Shaper, Bestower of Forms, Creator of Lives’. As Allah is said to have this creative ability, the Musawwira can too conjure shapes, forms and lives; these being the figments of dreams. It is vital for the Western reader to acknowledge this theological perspective on the creative power of the imagination. As Corbin identifies in his monograph on the subject, connotations of the English term ‘Imaginary’ have a tendency to reduce its meaning to the futility of unconstructive fantasies. Meanwhile, in the view of Al-Kindi, and indeed a multitude of later Islamic mystical doctrines and thinkers, the Imagination is both an ontological necessity and cognitive intermediary between the world of the senses and the divine intellect. From a mystical perspective, the Musawwira can be identified as a separate metaphysical realm that lies beyond the senses, proxemically closer to the heights of the Absolute. It is this metaphysical ideal to which early Islamic theosophy designates the sphere of The Eighth Clime, known in Persian as the Nâ-Kojâ-Abâd (translating to ‘the country of non-where’). The Eighth Clime, according to Corbin, is a world ontologically as real as the world of sense-perception, existing in-between the planes of the senses and the Divine. It is only perceivable to the Imagination, a faculty of ‘noetic value’ where it is ‘represented by a world of extension and dimension, figures and colours’. The Islamic and Sufi cosmological principle of the Alam al-Mithal further represents a similar ideology of a middle way between the sensory world and the Divine, which is embraced in the works of later Islamic mystics such as Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra. Therefore, when Al-Kindi speaks of the Imagination, he does so from a branch of thought related to these principles, all of which transcend Western conceptions of the term. Although the the stated ideas did not emerge in writing until later in the Medieval Islamic period, they contribute to an understanding of the Musawwira in its mystical, theosophical context. Returning to the treatise, then, Al-Kindi offers a sophisticated development of the Imaginative faculty and its manner of pervading consciousness during the sleep state. Having asserted that sleep is ‘the cessation of the soul’s use of all the senses’, he explains that the Musawwira is able to function at its highest capacity during this state. This is because, as discussed, the absence of sensory stimuli allows the isolation of the Intellectual Faculty. Consequently, the soul becomes deeply occupied in its noetic abilities, giving rise to higher states of consciousness: ‘[During sleep] the imaginative power is able to show its activity in the highest degree. For nothing distracts his soul from giving the sensible form of the concept of his thoughts’...the form of his thought alone appears to him as more pure, cleaner and more unadulterated than the object of sense perception’.”

- Esmé L. K. Partridge, The Mysticism of The Musawwira: A Commentary on Al-Kindi’s Treatise ‘On The Quiddity of Sleep and Dream’.

[xponentialdesign]

يجب ألا نكون محرجين من تقدير الحقيقة والحصول عليها من أي مكان ، حتى لو كانت من أعراق بعيدة ودول مختلفة عنا. لا شيء يجب أن يكون أغلى لطالب الحقيقة من الحقيقة نفسها ، ولا يوجد أي تدهور للحقيقة ، ولا يقلل من شأن من يتحدثها أو ينقلها. - Alkindus أبو يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER Digital Archive Islamic art Collection Over 100 animations : Xponentialdesign Monochrome collection

[magica-pseudoacademica]

Astral causality in Pico[ della Mirandola's] thought comprises ideas derived from medieval sources: Arabic such as al-Kindi and Abu Ma'shar, and Latin such as Albertus Magnus. Even though the notion of magic in Pico is vague and the direct and indirect impact of the Arabic theories of astral influences is less evident in his natural magic, its definition as a science that actuates the seminal seeds through arranging materials that correspond to the celestial bodies and which are sympathetically linked to one another suggest a conception of natural and astral magic that we find in al-Kindi's De radiis, the stral magic of [Marsilio] Ficino, and the magical arts of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon.

Liana Saif, The Arabic Influence on Early Modern Occult Philosophy (2015)

[pluto-pizza]

‘The desire is joined to imagination just as medicine is mixed with scammony’

Al-Kindi, On Rays (foundations of magical practice)

[inspofromancientworld]

History of Philosophy: Arabic-Persian Philosophy

By Iraqi Post - Personal collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91832934

Arabic-Persian philosophy, also known as Islamic philosophy, arouse around the beginning of the 9th century CE, approximately 200 years after the death of Muhammad, continuing through the Islamic Golden Age, approximately the late 12th century CE. It began with the 'translation and interpretation of Ancient Greek philosophy', which also preserved the Greek philosopher's writings for the Western world, and then was shaped by Avincenna's 'comprehensive philosophical system'.

Early Arabic-Persian philosophy was grounded mostly in ancient Greek philosophy, primarily Aristotle and Plato's schools within the framework of Islamic revelation. Modern scholarship also seeks to tease apart the theology (kalam) and 'philosophy proper' (falsafa), with theology focused only on 'religious topics, such as proofs of the existence of God. Philosophers, on the other hand, investigated a broader range of topics, including those not directly covered by the scriptures'. Islamic philosophers were focused on 'rational inquiry and examined how to harmonize reason and revelation'.

Al-Kindi, or more fully Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي, who lived from 801-873 CE, is widely considered the first Arabic-Persian philosopher 'in contrast to the more theological works of his predecessors' and built off of Aristotle's works, especially 'regarding metaphysics as the first philosophy and the highest science' with 'metaphysics study[ing] the essence and attributes of God'. He argued for dualism between the immortal soul and the mortal body.

Al-Kindi was followed by al-Farabi, or more fully Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi أبو نصر محمد الفارابي, who lived from about 870-950, claimed 'that philosophy, rather than theology, is the best pathway to truth' with a focus on logic that gained him the title 'the Second Master', the first being Aristotle. He felt that 'logic is universal and forms the foundation of all language and thought, a view that contrasts with certain passages in the Quran that assign this role to Arabic grammar'. He endorsed Plato's philosopher-king ideal, though he also broke 'with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle […and…] moves from metaphysics to methodology, a move that anticipates modernity…at the level of philosophy, Farabi unites theory and practice […and] in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory'. He helped pave the way for Avincenna.

Avincenna, or Ibn Sīnā ابن سينا, or more fully ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdallāh bin al-Ḥasan bin ʿAlī bin Sīnā al-Balkhī al-Bukhārī أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن الحسن بن علي بن سينا البلخي البخاري, lived about from 980-1037 CE, and was a philosopher and physician. He also contributed to astronomy, alchemy, psychology, logic, mathematics, geography and geology, and physics as well as leaving works of poetry. His philosophy derived from Aristotle through the Peripatetic school that encouraged members to conduct philosophical and scientific inquiries. he was educated in the Quran and multiple works of philosophy in his youth and then trained to be a physician. As with those who went before him, he sought to understand the difference between essence (māhiya ماهية) and existence (wujūd وجود), arguing that 'the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexists with its effect'. In the field of psychology, Avincenna felt that souls 'as substances that give life to beings' and that all living things had souls, from plants, with the simplest through to animals, including humans, whose souls 'have additional faculties, such as the ability to move, sense, and think rationally'. He taught adherence to the teachings of the Quran was the way to achieve moral perfection.

[taphthartharath]

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