Download or read book Proofs for Eternity Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy written by Herbert Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1987 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central debate of natural theology among medieval Muslims and Jews concerned whether or not the world was eternal. Opinions divided sharply on this issue because the outcome bore directly on God's relationship with the world: eternity implies a deity bereft of will, while a world with a beginning leads to the contrasting picture of a deity possessed of will. In this exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for eternity, creation, and the existence of God, Herbert Davidson provides a systematic classification of the proofs, analyzes and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Throughout the study, Davidson tries to take into account every argument of a philosophical character, disregarding only those arguments that rest entirely on religious faith or which fall below a minimal level of plausibility.
Download or read book Maimonides the Rationalist written by Herbert A. Davidson and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his own estimation, Maimonides was neither exclusively a dedicated philosopher nor exclusively a devoted rabbinist: he saw philosophy and the Written and Oral Torahs as a single, harmonious domain, and he believed that this view was similarly fundamental to the lives of the prophets and rabbis of old. In this book, Herbert Davidson examines Maimonides’ efforts to reconstitute this all-embracing, rationalist worldview that he felt had been lost during the millennium-long exile.
Download or read book Arguments for God s Existence in Classical Islamic Thought written by Hannah C. Erlwein and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-07-22 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The endeavour to prove God’s existence through rational argumentation was an integral part of classical Islamic theology (kalām) and philosophy (falsafa), thus the frequently articulated assumption in the academic literature. The Islamic discourse in question is then often compared to the discourse on arguments for God’s existence in the western tradition, not only in terms of its objectives but also in terms of the arguments used: Islamic thinkers, too, put forward arguments that have been labelled as cosmological, teleological, and ontological. This book, however, argues that arguments for God’s existence are absent from the theological and philosophical works of the classical Islamic era. This is not to say that the arguments encountered there are flawed arguments for God’s existence. Rather, it means that the arguments under consideration serve a different purpose than to prove that God exists. Through a close reading of the works of several mutakallimūn and falāsifa from the 3rd‒7th/9th‒13th century, such as al-Bāqillānī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī as well as Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, this book proffers a re-evaluation of the discourse in question, and it suggests what its participants sought to prove if it is not that God exists.
Download or read book Hasdai Crescas on Codification Cosmology and Creation written by Ari Ackerman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work focuses on the conception of God of the medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar, Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11). It demonstrates that Crescas’ God is infinitely creative and good and explores the parallel that Crescas implicitly draws between God as creator and legislator.
Download or read book Aquinas on Creation written by Saint Thomas (Aquinas) and published by PIMS. This book was released on 1997 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The six articles that comprise Book 2, Distinction 1, Question 1 of Aquinas' Writings on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard represent his earliest and most succinct account of creation. These texts contain the essential Thomistic doctrines on the subject, and are here translated into English for the first time, along with an introduction and analysis. In Article One Aquinas argues, against Manichean dualism, that there is one ultimate cause of all created being; in so doing he gives three proofs for the existence of the Creator and the essential features of his answer to the problem of evil. Thomas establishes his definition of creation in Article Two, providing the needed distinctions between philosophical and theological senses of creation. Emanationism and the problem of whether there can be any intermediary causes in God's act of creation are the subject of Article Three. The next article demonstrates that although God is the cause of all created being, nevertheless creatures are true causes in nature. Article Five argues that it is from revelation alone that we know that the world had a temporal beginning, and that the philosophical arguments that purport to show either the necessity or impossibility of the temporal beginning are not persuasive. A detailed exposition of the meaning of the first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," follows in Article Six.
Download or read book Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy written by Dov Schwartz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-02-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with central issues of medieval Jewish philosophy. Among the subjects treated are divine immanence, the intellect, miracles, and esoteric writing and its limits. This work provides a new perspective on the history of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages.
Download or read book Averroes and Averroism in Medieval Jewish Thought written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Andalusian Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126–1198) is known for his authoritative commentaries on Aristotle and for his challenging ideas about the relationship between philosophy and religion, and the place of religion in society. Among Jewish authors, he found many admirers and just as many harsh critics. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays investigating Averroes’s complex reception, in different philosophical topics and among several Jewish authors, with special attention to its relation to the reception of Maimonides.
Download or read book Moses Maimonides written by Herbert A. Davidson and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2005 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), scholar, physician, and philosopher, was the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages. In this magisterial new biography, the work of many years, Herbert Davidson provides an exhaustive guide to Maimonides' life and works. After considering Maimonides' upbringing and education, Davidson expounds all of his voluminous writings in exhaustive detail, with separate chapters on rabbinic, philosophical, and medical texts. This long-awaited volume is destined to become the standard work on this towering figure of Western intellectual history.
Download or read book Creation written by David Fergusson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-21 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores anew the theme of creation in Scripture, tradition, and contemporary theology. David Fergusson defends the classical account of creation out of nothing but gives more sustained attention than the Christian tradition typically has given to the holistic significance of the created world. Offering both doctrinal exposition and apologetic argument, Fergusson discusses creation in relation to the problem of evil and the fall, divine providence, deism, Darwinian evolution, environmental ethics, animal rights, and other matters. Unusually, the book also touches on the topic of extraterrestrial intelligence. Concise and accessible, Fergusson s Creation will be particularly useful to students and others seeking a well-informed overview of this important subject.
Download or read book Isaac Polqar A Jewish Philosopher or a Philosopher and a Jew written by Racheli Haliva and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To date, scholars have skilfully discussed aspects of Polqar’s thought, and yet none of the existing studies offers a comprehensive examination that covers Polqar’s thought in its entirety. This book aims to fill this lacuna by tracing and contextualizing both Polqar’s Islamic sources (al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) and his Jewish sources (Maimonides and Isaac Albalag). The study brings to light three of Polqar’s main purposes; (1) seeking to defend Judaism as a true religion against Christianity; (2) similarly to his fellow Jewish Averroists, Polqar wishes to defend the discipline of philosophy. By philosophy, Polqar means Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. As a consequence, he offers an Averroistic interpretation of Judaism and becomes one of the main representatives of Jewish Averroism; (3) defending his philosophical interpretation of Judaism. From a social and political point of view, Polqar's unreserved embrace of philosophy raised problems within the Jewish community; he had to refute the Jewish traditionalists’ charge that he was a heretic, led astray by philosophy. The main objective guiding this study is that Polqar advances a systematic naturalistic interpretation of Judaism, which in many cases does not agree with traditional Jewish views. "Haliva’s lucid, learned, and incisive monograph on the thought of Isaac Polqar is the first comprehensive study devoted to this important, but neglected fourteenth century Jewish Averroist. It makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of post-Maimonidean medieval Jewish philosophy. Haliva convincingly shows that while Polqar claims to follow Maimonides, he consistently pushes his thought in a more radical direction, offering a severely naturalistic interpretation of Jewish religious principles and refusing to make any concessions to more traditional theological modes of thought. Her study leads us to ask whether it is possible to uphold such an uncompromising philosophical and naturalistic reading of Judaism as that of Polqar, that is, whether it does justice to the Jewish religious principles it purports to interpret and enables us to maintain the authority of traditional Halakhah." Lawrence J. Kaplan, McGill University, Montreal "Racheli Haliva's excellent book is the first comprehensive study of the philosophy of Isaac Polqar (late thirteenth-early fourteenth century). Polqar emerges as a radical and creative thinker–a fascinating link between the philosophy of Averroes and Maimonides and that of Spinoza." Warren Zev Harvey, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Haliva's groundbreaking book is the first comprehensive study of Polqar's intellectual world, forged in the crucible of the late Middle Ages where Greco-Arabic philosophy and the Maimonidean legacy meet inner-Jewish and anti-Christian polemics. Polqar, Haliva demonstrates, was a formidable thinker in his own right who critically engages with Maimonides and Averroes. At the same time, he defends the Jewish faith as the only true religion of reason--against Kabbalists and Jewish traditionalists and against his former teacher, Abner of Burgos, whose conversion to Christianity was a major intellectual shock. This is a meticulously researched and lucidly argued scholarly contribution that fills a crucial gap in the history of Jewish philosophy." Carlos Fraenkel, McGill University, Montreal
Download or read book Studies in Medieval Muslim Thought and History written by Wilferd Madelung and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume complements the selections of Wilferd Madelung’s articles previously published by Variorum (Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam, Religious and Ethnic Movements in Medieval Islam and Studies in Medieval Shīism). The first sections contain articles examining intellectual and historical aspects of Mutazilism, the Ibāḍiyya, Ḥanafism and Māturidism, Sufism and Philosophy. The final group of articles focuses on aspects of early Muslim history. A detailed index completes the volume.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions written by Adam Silverstein and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions includes authoritative yet accessible studies on a wide variety of topics dealing comparatively with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as with the interactions between the adherents of these religions throughout history. The comparative study of the Abrahamic Religions has been undertaken for many centuries. More often than not, these studies reflected a polemical rather than an ecumenical approach to the topic. Since the nineteenth century, the comparative study of the Abrahamic Religions has not been pursued either intensively or systematically, and it is only recently that the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has received more serious attention. This volume contributes to the emergence and development of the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions, a discipline which is now in its formative stages. This Handbook includes both critical and supportive perspectives on the very concept of the Abrahamic religions and discussions on the role of the figure of Abraham in these religions. It features 32 essays, by the foremost scholars in the field, on the historical interactions between Abrahamic communities; on Holy Scriptures and their interpretation; on conceptions of religious history; on various topics and strands of religious thought, such as monotheism and mysticism; on rituals of prayer, purity, and sainthood, on love in the three religions and on fundamentalism. The volume concludes with three epilogues written by three influential figures in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, to provide a broader perspective on the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions. This ground-breaking work introduces readers to the challenges and rewards of studying these three religions together.
Download or read book A Sufi Jewish Dialogue written by Diana Lobel and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day. Readers who know the book primarily in its Hebrew version have likely lost sight of the work's original Arabic context and its immersion in Islamic mystical literature. In A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, Diana Lobel explores the full extent to which Duties of the Heart marks the flowering of the "Jewish-Arab symbiosis," the interpenetration of Islamic and Jewish civilizations. Lobel reveals Bahya as a maverick who integrates abstract negative theology, devotion to the inner life, and an intimate relationship with a personal God. Bahya emerges from her analysis as a figure so steeped in Islamic traditions that an Arabic reader could easily think he was a Muslim, yet the traditional Jewish seeker has always looked to him as a fountainhead of Jewish devotion. Indeed, Bahya represents a genuine bridge between religious cultures. He brings together, as well, a rationalist, philosophical approach and a strain of Sufi mysticism, paving the way for the integration of philosophy and spirituality in the thought of Moses Maimonides. A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue is the first scholarly book in English about a tremendously influential work of medieval Jewish thought and will be of interest to readers working in comparative literature, philosophy, and religious studies, particularly as reflected in the interplay of the civilizations of the Middle East. Readers will discover an extraordinary time when Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers participated in a common spiritual quest, across traditions and cultural boundaries.
Download or read book Fakhr al D n al R z and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World written by Muammer Iskenderoglu and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the approaches of Fakhr-al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) to the question of the eternity of the world, which was one of the most heated issues of debate between theologians and philosophers in the Middle Ages. The first chapter of the book gives some background to the discussion from Greek philosophy, early Judaeo-Christian and Muslim traditions. The second and the third chapters discuss the approaches of Rāzī and Aquinas respectively to the question of the eternity of the world. The last chapter compares their approaches, brings out some similarities of their approaches between them as well as in relation to their own traditions, Islam and Christianity respectively. The book tries to show that though they were theologians, both Rāzī and Aquinas were more in line with the philosophers than their fellow theologians.
Download or read book The Heirs of Avicenna Philosophy in the Islamic East 12 13th Centuries written by Peter Adamson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-20 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in a series of sourcebooks charting the reception of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d.1037) in the Islamic East (from Syria to central Asia) in the 12th-13th centuries CE. Avicenna was the dominant philosophical authority in this period, who provoked generations of thinkers to subtle critique, defense, and development of his ideas. The series will translate and analyze hundreds of passages from works by such figures as al-Ghazālī, al-Suhrawardī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, and many more. This volume focuses especially on issues in metaphysics, dealing with topics like the essence-existence distinction, the problem of universals, free will and determinism, Platonic Forms, good and evil, proofs of God’s existence, and the relationship between philosophy and theology.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology written by Sabine Schmidtke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the field of Islamic Studies, scientific research of Muslim theology is a comparatively young discipline. Much progress has been achieved over the past decades with respect both to discoveries of new materials and to scholarly approaches to the field. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology provides a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the current state of the field. It provides a variegated picture of the state of the art and at the same time suggests new directions for future research. Part One covers the various strands of Islamic theology during the formative and early middle periods, rational as well as scripturalist. To demonstrate the continuous interaction among the various theological strands and its repercussions (during the formative and early middle period and beyond), Part Two offers a number of case studies. These focus on specific theological issues that have developed through the dilemmatic and often polemical interactions between the different theological schools and thinkers. Part Three covers Islamic theology during the later middle and early modern periods. One of the characteristics of this period is the growing amalgamation of theology with philosophy (Peripatetic and Illuminationist) and mysticism. Part Four addresses the impact of political and social developments on theology through a number of case studies: the famous mi?na instituted by al-Ma'mun (r. 189/813-218/833) as well as the mihna to which Ibn 'Aqil (d. 769/1367) was subjected; the religious policy of the Almohads; as well as the shifting interpretations throughout history (particularly during Mamluk and Ottoman times) of the relation between Ash'arism and Maturidism that were often motivated by political motives. Part Five considers Islamic theological thought from the end of the early modern and during the modern period.
Download or read book Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Index written by Edward Craig and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1998 with total page 914 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a full index of all the topics covered in the first nine volumes of the set.
