دانلود کتاب راهنمای فلسفه اسلامی

Like any set of ideas, Islamic Philosophy (falsafa in Arabic), along with its early philosophers (falasifa), was influenced partly by what went before and partly by something new and distinctive. In terms of what went before, the influences are vast and spread over countless times, arguably to the origins of human thought. Three of the major and most demonstrable influences are those of the Mesopotamian world, those of Hellenistic (or Greek) civilization, and those of the Abrahamic religions, three influences that are themselves not wholly separable. From the Mesopotamian world came the many Arabic, Persian, and Babylonian influences, the revolutionary thoughts on mathematics, astronomy, and spirituality, to name just a few. This is an influence that accounts in part for the remarkable philosophical, scientific, and educational features to be found in Islam’s so-called Golden Age in its early centuries. From the Greeks came ideas about how to construct viable civilizations and the personal, social, and political philosophies needed to sustain them. These ideas also contributed to the highly enlightened civilizations that characterized Islam during the West’s medieval “Dark Ages.” From the Abrahamic religions, at least partly, came the distinctive theology of a High God that is all-creative, allpowerful, infused, and active in the life of its people. It was largely in Islam’s simplifying of the message of such a God, and the kind of community (Ummah) that accorded with its divine commission, that accounts for Islam’s rapid spread, including the relative ease with which it attracted disaffected Jewish and Christian populations and incorporated other religious cultures. Much Western literature casts Islam as purely an inheritor of one or all these influences, paying overly scant attention to its own revolutionary thought. When, for instance, Western philosophy addresses the topic of Islamic philosophy, it tends often to focus on the demonstrable influences of Greek philosophy, most especially of Plato and Aristotle, but fails to highlight the unique ways in which Islamic scholars interpreted and built on that influence, much less the influence that these interpretations would have in turn on later Western philosophy. Nor do they take account of the far older philosophical traditions on which Islam relied, traditions invariably lost to the West. In similar fashion, Western theologies, especially of Judaism and Christianity, will often depict Islam as an outpouring of their theologies, wholly dependent on the religious thought to be found in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures, while underestimating Islam’s own self-identity as partly dependent but moreover a revolutionary reform of those theologies. This handbook represents a scholarly collection that recognizes the balance between a philosophical tradition that relies on a myriad of other philosophical traditions but is also very much a tradition in its own right, a unique contribution to the world of human thought. Elements of that contribution might be regarded as more aesthetic, the kinds of considerations germane to professional philosophers and theologians, while other elements are more obviously applied to practical facets of world commerce, its legal, political, scientific, and educational pursuits, among others. Regardless, a unifying feature of the handbook is in the attempt of each chapter to illustrate the distinctive nature of Islamic philosophy. Hence, while it is structured into Section A denoting the more aesthetic emphasis, and Section B denoting the more applied, the structure should be understood as a light one, the division between the two sections being eminently permeable. When Islamic philosophy is applied to any part of human commerce, it is its aesthetic ideas that make for its distinctive contribution. Conversely, it was in its application to the realities of a people, their beliefs, and their desire to form a unique community according to a divine commission that has shaped the distinctiveness of those aesthetic ideas.