Download or read book Averroes and the Enlightenment written by Mourad Wahba and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-four scholars from 18 countries on five continents met in Cairo to debate for the first time the ideals of the Enlightenment and secularism while celebrating the 800th anniversary of the death of one of Islam''s greatest philosophers. Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known in the West as Averroes, may be viewed as a medieval precursor of the European Enlightenment and as a rallying point for dialogue between East and West. Averroes''s attempt to harmonize philosophy and religion, reason and faith, led to a rethinking of the tenets of Christianity. His work spurred on some of the great rational syntheses of Christian thought, such as Thomas Aquinas''s Summa Theologica.This book offers a rare opportunity to learn about the contemporary Arab world and its efforts to dialogue with the West.
Download or read book Averroes Kant and the Origins of the Enlightenment written by Saud M. S. Al Tamamy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth-century philosopher Averroes is often identified by modern Arab thinkers as an early advocate of the Enlightenment. Saud M. S. Al-Tamamy demonstrates that an historical as well as comparative approach to Averroes' thought refutes this widely held assumption. The philosophical doctrine of Averroes is compared with that of the key figure of the Enlightenment in Western thought, Immanuel Kant. By comparing Averroes and Kant, Al-Tamamy evaluates the ideologies of each thinker's work and in particular focuses on their respective political implications on two social groups: the Elite, in Averroes' case, and the Public, in the case of Kant. The book's methodology is at once historical, analytical and communicative, and is especially relevant when so many thinkers - both Western and Middle Eastern - are anxious to find common denominators between the formations of Islamic and Western cultures. It responds to a need for comparative analysis in the field of Averroes studies, and takes on the challenge to uncover the philosopher's influence on the Enlightenment.
Download or read book Averroes Precursor of the Enlightenment written by Charles Edwin Butterworth and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Averroes on Plato s Republic written by Averroes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In one fashion or another, the question with which this introduction begins is a question for every serious reader of Plato's Republic: Of what use is this philosophy to me? Averroes clearly finds that the Republic speaks to his own time and to his own situation.... Perhaps the greatest use he makes of the Republic is to understand better the shari'a itself.... It is fair to say that in deciding to paraphrase the Republic, Averroes is asserting that his world—the world defined and governed by the Koran—can profit from Plato's instruction."—from Ralph Lerner’s IntroductionAn indispensable primary source in medieval political philosophy is presented here in a fully annotated translation of the celebrated discussion of the Republic by the twelfth-century Andalusian Muslim philosopher, Abu'l-Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd, also know by his his Latinized name, Averroes. This work played a major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in the West. In a closely argued critical introduction, Ralph Lerner addresses several of the most important problems raised by the work.
Download or read book Averroes Natural Philosophy and its Reception in the Latin West written by Paul J.J.M. Bakker and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CONTENTS Paul J.J.M BakkerIntroduction Cristina CeramiL’éternel par soi Jean-Baptiste BrenetAlexandre d’Aphrodise ou le matérialiste malgré lui Dag Nikolaus HasseAverroes’ Critique of Ptolemy and Its Reception by John of Jandun andAgostino Nifo Silvia DonatiIs Celestial Motion a Natural Motion? Cecilia TrifogliThe Reception of Averroes’ View on Motion in the Latin West Edith Dudley SyllaAverroes and Fourteenth-Century Theories of Alteration Craig MartinProvidence and Seventeenth-Century Attacks on Averroes Bibliography Index Codicum Manu ScriptorumIndex Nominum
Download or read book Averroes Kant and the Origins of the Enlightenment written by Saud M. S. Al Tamamy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth-century philosopher Averroes is often identified by modern Arab thinkers as an early advocate of the Enlightenment. Saud M. S. Al-Tamamy demonstrates that an historical as well as comparative approach to Averroes' thought refutes this widely held assumption. The philosophical doctrine of Averroes is compared with that of the key figure of the Enlightenment in Western thought, Immanuel Kant. By comparing Averroes and Kant, Al-Tamamy evaluates the ideologies of each thinker's work and in particular focuses on their respective political implications on two social groups: the Elite, in Averroes' case, and the Public, in the case of Kant. The book's methodology is at once historical, analytical and communicative, and is especially relevant when so many thinkers - both Western and Middle Eastern - are anxious to find common denominators between the formations of Islamic and Western cultures. It responds to a need for comparative analysis in the field of Averroes studies, and takes on the challenge to uncover the philosopher's influence on the Enlightenment.
Download or read book Averroes the Decisive Treatise written by Averroës and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Decisive Treatise is perhaps the most controversial work of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198) and belongs to a trilogy which boldly represent the philosophical contribution to Islamic theology of this famous Andalusian commentator on Aristotle. The Decisive Treatise is a fatwa (a legal opinion) that the judge, Averroes, promulgated for his fellow Malikite jurists in order to demonstrate that the study of philosophy is not only licit from the point of view of religious law, but even mandatory for the skilled people. However, many subjects are dealt with in this comparatively short book: An epistemology aimed to show that philosophical truth and religious truth are not in contradiction; a sociology of knowledge pointing out that humans are classified in three classes (philosophers, theologians, common folk); a Qur'anic hermeneutics suggesting how to approach philosophically the Holy Book in agreement with religious requirements and linguistic rules.
Download or read book Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe written by Anna Akasoy and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?
Download or read book Lost Enlightenment written by S. Frederick Starr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.
Download or read book What Is Enlightenment written by Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political sociology has struggled with predicting the next turn of transformation in the MENA countries after the 2011 Uprisings. Arab activists did not articulate explicitly any modalities of their desired system, although their slogans ushered to a fully-democratic society. These unguided Uprisings showcase an open-ended freedom-to question after Arabs underwent their freedom-from struggle from authoritarianism. The new conflicts in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya have fragmented shar’iya (legitimacy) into distinct conceptualizations: “revolutionary legitimacy,” “electoral legitimacy,” “legitimacy of the street,” and “consensual legitimacy.” This volume examines whether the Uprisings would introduce a replica of the European Enlightenment or rather stimulate an Arab/Islamic awakening with its own cultural specificity and political philosophy. By placing Immanuel Kant in Tahrir Square, this book adopts a comparative analysis of two enlightenment projects: one Arab, still under construction, with possible progression toward modernity or regression toward neo-authoritarianism, and one European, shaped by the past two centuries. Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and the contributing authors use a hybrid theoretical framework drawing on three tanwiri (enlightenment) philosophers from different eras: Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes (the twelfth century), Immanuel Kant (the eighteenth century), and Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri (the twentieth century). The authors propose a few projections about the outcome of the competition between an Islamocracy vision and what Cherkaoui terms as a Demoslamic vision, since it implies the Islamist movements’ flexibility to reconcile their religious absolutism with the prerequisites of liberal democracy. This book also traces the patterns of change which point to a possible Arab Axial Age. It ends with the trials of modernity and tradition in Tunisia and an imaginary speech Kant would deliver at the Tunisian Parliament after those vibrant debates of the new constitution in 2014.
Download or read book The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment written by Samar Attar and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007-10-23 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays which deal with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. His philosophical novel, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, could be considered one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution. Its thoughts are found in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Kant. But if Ibn Tufayl's fundamental values, such as equality, freedom and toleration, which the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had adopted as theirs, paved the way to the French Revolution, they certainly marked the end of the age of reason in southern Spain and the rest of the Islamic world. Ibn Tufayl's philosophy was appropriated, subverted, or reinvented for many centuries. But the memory of the man who wrote such an influential book was buried in the dust of history. The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment reexamines Ibn Tufayl's momentous book and its continued influence over contemporary philosophy. This intriguing book will appeal to those interested in comparative literature and religion.
Download or read book Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left written by Ernst Bloch and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and religious thought, Bloch also wrote incisively about ontological questions. In his short masterpiece Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers’ encounter with Aristotle. Bloch argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today. He contrasts Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s interpretations of Aristotle on form and matter to argue that Avicenna’s reading democratizes power and undermines clerical and political authority. Bloch explores Avicenna’s world and metaphysics in detail, showing how even his most recondite theoretical concerns prove capable of pointing toward radical social transformation. He blazes an original path through the history of ideas, including Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Spinoza, and Marx as well as lesser-known figures. Here translated into English for the first time, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left is at once a succinct summation of Bloch’s own idiosyncratic materialism, a provocative reconstruction of the Western philosophical tradition in light of its exchanges with Islamic thought, and a vital resource for contemporary debates about materialism in critical theory.
Download or read book A Magical World written by Derek K Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning some of the most vibrant and fascinating eras in European history, Cambridge historian Derek Wilson reveals a society filled with an ardent desire for knowledge and astounding discoveries—and the fantastic discoveries that flowered from it. Thinkers were drew from surprising intellectual traditions: some from folk religion, which in its turn had deep roots in a pagan past; others referred to spirits or tapped into stores of ancient wisdom and herbal remedies. This was the world of wise women, witches, necromancers, potions and incantations. Even the mighty Catholic Church, which permeated all elements of life, had its own "magical" traditions.In 1663, the Royal Society in London received its charter. Just three years later, the French Academy of Sciences was founded, and other European capitals rapidly followed suit. In 1725, the word "science" was at last defined as "a branch of study concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified." Yet just nine years before, the last witch had been executed in Britain. Fascinating and thought-provoking, A Magical World is a reminder of humanity's paradoxical nature—our passionate pursuit of knowledge alongside deep-rooted fears, superstitions, and traditions.
Download or read book The Enlightenment written by Anthony Pagden and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters tells nothing less than the story of how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient creed; but in its modern form it was a creature of the Enlightenment attempt to create a new 'science of man', based upon a vision of humanity made up of autonomous individuals, free from all the constraints imposed by custom, prejudice, and religion. As Pagden shows, this 'new science' was based not simply on 'cold, calculating reason', as its critics claimed, but on the argument that all humans are linked by what in the Enlightenment were called 'sympathetic' attachments. The conclusion was that despite the many tribes and nations into which humanity was divided there was only one 'human nature', and that the final destiny of the species could only be the creation of one universal, cosmopolitan society. This new 'human science' provided the philosophical grounding of the modern world. It has been the inspiration behind the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union. Without it, international law, global justice, and human rights legislation would be unthinkable. As Anthony Pagden argues passionately and persuasively in this book, it is a legacy well worth preserving - and one that might yet come to inherit the earth.
Download or read book Reopening Muslim Minds written by Mustafa Akyol and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating journey into Islam's diverse history of ideas, making an argument for an "Islamic Enlightenment" today In Reopening Muslim Minds, Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and opinion writer for The New York Times, both diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world, and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he reveals how Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He especially demonstrates how values often associated with Western Enlightenment — freedom, reason, tolerance, and an appreciation of science — had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views, often for political ends. Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.
Download or read book The Orange Trees of Marrakesh written by Stephen Frederic Dale and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Khaldun’s Islamic history of the premodern world, its philosophical underpinnings, and the author himself. In his masterwork Muqaddimah, the Arab Muslim Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), a Tunisian descendant of Andalusian scholars and officials in Seville, developed a method of evaluating historical evidence that allowed him to identify the underlying causes of events. His methodology was derived from Aristotelian notions of nature and causation, and he applied it to create a dialectical model that explained the cyclical rise and fall of North African dynasties. The Muqaddimah represents the world’s first example of structural history and historical sociology. Four centuries before the European Enlightenment, this work anticipated modern historiography and social science. In Stephen F. Dale’s The Orange Trees of Marrakesh, Ibn Khaldun emerges as a cultured urban intellectual and professional religious judge who demanded his fellow Muslim historians abandon their worthless tradition of narrative historiography and instead base their works on a philosophically informed understanding of social organizations. His strikingly modern approach to historical research established him as the premodern world’s preeminent historical scholar. It also demonstrated his membership in an intellectual lineage that begins with Plato, Aristotle, and Galen; continues with the Greco-Muslim philosophers al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes; and is renewed with Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, and Durkheim. Praise for The Orange Trees of Marrakesh “Stephen Dale’s book contains a careful account of the dizzying ups and downs of Ibn Khaldun’s political and academic career at courts in North Africa, Andalusia and Egypt. For these and other reasons The Orange Trees of Marrakesh deserves careful and respectful attention.” —Robert Irwin, The Times Literary Supplement (UK) “Historian Stephen Frederic Dale argues that Ibn Khaldun’s work is a key milestone on the road from Greek to Enlightenment thought, chiming with the radical reasoning of philosophers such as Montesquieu and Adam Smith.” —Barbara Kiser, Nature “Dale’s interest in Greco-Islamic philosophy contributes to this biography’s uniqueness . . . This work provides indispensable background information to truly appreciate this single most influential Islamic historian.” —R. W. Zens, Choice “Excellent scholarship on a fascinating subject.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Genera Monopeltis and Dalophia in Southern Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
