The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy

Abstract

Philosophy is considered a recalcitrant subject, and Arabic philosophy particularly so, both by historians of philosophy in general and by scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies in particular. Though naturally I disagree with this view, there would appear nevertheless to be good reasons for its prevalence. In the former case, the historian of ancient and medieval philosophy, at home with Greek and Latin, finds nothing in his education to help alleviate the estrangement that he inevitably feels when confronted with what is taken to be the impenetrable barrier of the Arabic language and the perceived otherness of Islamic culture; and when he tries to approach the subject through the mediation of the secondary literature by Arabist historians of philosophy, he finds little there to whet his appetite for more, as I will soon explain. In the case of the scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies, traditional education has taught him that philosophy in Islamic civilization was at best a fringe activity which ceased to exist after the death blow allegedly dealt to it by al-Ghazali in the eleventh century, was anyway frowned upon by a presumed orthodoxy, and, being therefore largely inconsequential-a feeling further corroborated through casual perusal of the unappetizing specialist secondary literature I just referred to-could be safely disregarded. In both cases this (mis)perception may be justified, but the fault lies not with Arabic philosophy3 itself but with its students and expositors: Arabist historians of philosophy themselves have not done their job properly and they have failed,