http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-greek/
Greek Sources in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy
First published Mon Feb 23, 2009; substantive revision Fri Oct 7, 2011
To some extent, scholars disagree about the role of the Greek
sources in Arabic and Islamic philosophy (henceforth
falsafa,
the Arabic loan word
for
φιλοσοφία).
[1]
While acknowledging
the existence of a Greek heritage, those who consider the Qur’an
and the Islamic tradition as the main source of inspiration for
falsafa claim that the latter did not arise from the encounter
of learned Muslims with the Greek philosophical heritage: instead,
according to them
falsafa stemmed from the Qur’anic
hikma (“wisdom”). As a consequence, the Greek
texts in translation are conceived of as instruments for the
philosophers to perform the task of seeking for such
wisdom.
[2]
However, most
frequently scholars side with the opinion that what gave rise to the
intellectual tradition of
falsafa was the so-called movement
of translation from
Greek.
[3]
This entry will not discuss the issue, let
alone try to settle it: it will limit itself to present the
philosophical Greek sources made available from the beginnings of the
translations into Arabic to the end of the 10th century. The reason for
focusing on the various stages of the assimilation of the Greek
heritage, instead of taking into account one by one all the works by
Plato, Aristotle etc. known to Arabic
readers,
[4]
is that it is useful to get an
idea of what was translated at different times. As a matter of fact, a
living interplay took place, especially in the formative period of
falsafa, between the doctrines of the philosophers and the
Greek sources made available. Of momentous importance for the
development of
falsafa was the simultaneous translation of
Aristotle's
Metaphysics, Plotinus'
Enneads IV-VI and the
Elements of Theology by
Proclus. Al-Kindi, the first
faylasuf, instigated the
intermingling of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines; at one and
the same time, he reproduced it in his philosophical works. Later on,
the knowledge of the complete Aristotelian corpus provided by another
generation of translators, without altering substantially this picture,
produced a different approach. The Aristotelian science as a systematic
whole ruled by demonstration, made available together with Euclid,
Ptolemy, Hippocrates and Galen, paved the way for al-Farabi to build up
the project of a curriculum of higher education, which was meant to
subsume the native Islamic sciences in the broader system of the
liberal and philosophical sciences. Both the cross-pollination of the
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions of the Kindian age, and the
rise of a complete system of rational sciences in the light of
Farabi's educational syllabus of the philosopher-king, lie in the
background of Avicenna's program to provide the
summa of
demonstrative science—from logic to philosophical theology—as
a necessary step for soul to return to its origin, the
intelligible realm (Endress 2006). When Averroes, two centuries after
the end of the age of the translations, resumed the project of building
up the demonstrative science as a systematic whole, he had recourse to
the Greek sources in Arabic translation which were available in the
Muslim West, mostly Aristotle and his
commentators.
[5]
