Warburg Institute Colloquia 11

CLASSICAL ARABIC PHILOSOPHY: SOURCES AND RECEPTION

Edited by Peter Adamson

The nine papers collected here explore a broad range of sources for texts from the classical period of Arabic philosophy, and a broad range of influence exerted by these texts. By the 'classical period' is meant that part of the Arabic philosophical tradition normally included in the canon of 'medieval' philosophy. It begins in the ninth century, which is when the impact of Greek philosophical and scientific works began to be felt, thanks to their translation under the 'Abbasid caliphs, and ends in the twelfth century. This volume focuses on the influences felt by, and exerted by, the four main philosophers of this period: al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes. But the historical range covered extends well past the twelfth century, into Latin Renaissance philosophy and Islamic philosophy of the seventeenth century. Philosophical themes include human psychology, logic, the influence of Neoplatonism, and problems in Aristotelian natural philosophy.

CONTENTS

Carmela Baffioni           Contrariety and Similarity in God according to al-Fārābī and al-Kirmānī: A Comparison

Michael Chase              Did Porphyry Write a Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics? Albertus Magnus, al-Fārābī and Porphyry on per se Predication

Peter Adamson              Miskawayh's Psychology

Cornelia Schoeck          Discussions on Conditional Sentences from the Year AH 17/AD 638 to Avicenna (d. AH 428/AD 1037)

Jon McGinnis                Avoiding the Void: Avicenna on the Impossibility of Circular Motion in a Void

Yahya Michot               Al-Nukat wa-l-fawā’id: An Important Summa of Avicennian Falsafa

Toby Mayer                  Avicenna against Time Beginning: The Debate between the Commentators on the Ishārāt

Dag Nikolaus Hasse      Spontaneous Generation and the Ontology of Forms in Greek, Arabic and Medieval Latin Sources

Sajjad Rizvi                   (Neo)Platonism Revived in the Light of the Imams: Qādī Sa´īd Qummī (d. AH 1107/ AD 1696) and his Reception of           the Theologia Aristotelis          

Preface and Index.

226 pp               2007              Price: £36.00           
ISBN 978 0 85481 140 3          ISSN 1352-9986
The Warburg Institute, London - Nino Aragno Editore, Turin