Talk:Early Islamic philosophy

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Would the author(s) of this page take a look at the already existing article on Islamic philosophy? These articles should be merged together.

• No they shouldn't! Explained below. There is a long period 15th to 20th century where totally different assumptions - fiqh and taqlid - ruled

Unless, of course, one wishes to create a detailed article only on early forms of Islamic philosophy, and a separate article on later forms of Islamic philosophy.

• Already done, though this one isn't detailed enough yet.

In that case having two separate entries would be appropriate. However, this does not currently seem to be the case. Any thoughts? RK

• The main reason to keep them split is because people consult them for very different reasons. People consult the early history for methods and origins of social customs, and the medieval history for legal decisions, and the modern philosophy to compare to other modern religiously rooted philosophy as in Catholicism.

I think we have some terminology confusion here. In this article Early means "not-contemopary" ie. Classical and pre-classical (As we can see from last paragraph "Rise of the Asharite school", that goes well into the late Classical period). I would suggest to merge this article with Islamic philosophy (as three of four sections totaly overlap) and later - when Islamic Philosophy article reaches some stage of maturity - develope an article dedicated to pre-Clasical muslim philosophy and thought. User:abdullah_mk User talk:abdullah_mk

Contents 1 a good start 2 Achievement? 3 Move 4 Condescending bias?

[edit] a good start

I do not have any background in this area, other than some superficial readings. These comments may look like a teacher's marginal comments on a homework assignment, but they are actually a reader's request for more information or clarification.

First paragraph: is “influences” the right word? Looks more like phases to me.

• They overlap too much to be "phases", these schools really debated for a long time and the tailoff period was usually a century.

Second paragraph: I cannot make sense out of the last sentence. In addition, is “literally millions” accurate for each of these scholars?

• Apparently it is quite accurate for all of the well-respected books of fiqh. Up to seven million, reputedly, but "millions" can be interpreted as "at least two million but maybe three or four times that" which is fair. Someone who knows which sources to trust can find the actually citations.

As for them, while links allow the reader to learn more about them, it would be good if someone could say more about each of them, putting them in both chronological order and order of importance and tracing their inflluences on each other, in this article.

• That is actually better done in Islamic philosophy and fiqh - or better classical fiqh - because this was how that field originated and grew out of the early Muslim philosophy described here. Even though it happened at the same time.

Third paragraph: this is a good place to explain ijtihad and fiqh; links are good but not enough. Some chronology would be good here, as well as at least identification of the key writers and thinkers, even if we do not develop new pages for each of them.

• But these things do not mean the same thing today as they meant in this period and it gets confusing to present only the old meanings. I agree more Mulsim scholars need to be listed, see list of Muslims for others who deserve mention.

Fourth paragraph: where is Avicenna [sorry for the bastardized Western version]? Averroes [same apology]? What do we mean “the procedural traditions of Islam”?

• procedural = ijtihad, isnad, training of ulema, sharia court procedures, means of compiling ilm in ethics or sociology, many things - a whole civilization. And the consensus democracy model that still prevails in many mosques.

More details please. A link to the longer article on Islamic philosophy is a start, but some sort of merger/reorganization/editing as proposed by the earlier poster may also be necessary if this page is to survive in anything like its current form.

• This period is distinct from the Islamic philosophy period and had had more influence on modern Islamic philosophy than that interim Ottoman period, so I don't think the structure should be changed - see below regarding the Move:

Fifth paragraph: the word “had” in the second sentence confuses me. In addition, I cannot tell whether the peak occurred just as the Asharite school entered the stage or thereafter and whether we are giving any credit to the Asharite school for that peak. While the content suggests we are not, the organization of the sentence suggests that we are. More detail, particularly on the political influence of the new Ottoman Empire on the new orthodoxy, would also be welcome here.

• It was ambiguous mostly because this is a value judgement. Make up your own mind. It's a good question but probably needs an article in itself. And the way the Ottoman Empire used religion as a control tool needs to be in that article, as it is not about a genuine philosophical movement among the scholars.

Sixth paragraph: much more can and should be said here about the influence of Averroes and Avicenna on Western philosophy and the transmission of earlier texts. But are we treating Islamic philosophy as a closed book after the 14th Century?

• Yes, more or less, a very few closed books called fiqh and an imitative process called taqlid. It is more or less that from the 15th to the mid 20th.

More detail on this is needed; a link to the article on modern Islamic philosophy is a first step, but not sufficient. Also, someone needs to elaborate on the subject of "Muslim works taken in Spain" and contrast this phenomenon with earlier transmissions.

• This is a vast historical subject best covered in History of Spain re the period around 1492.

And that leads to another question: is “early” a misnomer for the title of this work, considering that it covers nearly 800 years of development?

• Not at all, it is certainly the earliest Muslim philosophy, and it isn't easy to differentiate any clear periods within it until you get to the final fiqh of the Ottomans.

Perhaps this page should be used as the first draft of an opening overview to the longer article on Islamic philosophy and this page and name saved for a more detailed discussion of the development of kalam, ijtihad and fiqh. In that case the larger article will also have to incorporate modern Islamic philosophy, but that is a subject for a different talk page.

• That is possible, but, not desirable because people who wish to study history do not want to read 1500 years of philosophy at once, and those who wish to study philosophy do not care about the historical context as much. This early period is interesting to us mostly for its history and the methods that originated, not so much its philosophical or legal conclusions, so the two subjects (early and modern) are just not the same subject.

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[edit] Achievement?

• recognition that science and philosophy are both subordinate to morality, and that moral choices are prior to any investigation or concern with either.

I'm not sure if this would be an achievement or if rather this concept is the one which "closed the door on ijtihad".

• Power "closed the door" in part through fear of new interpretations of laws that could disadvantage rulers. It is certainly an "achievement" in that no prior society had done this so explicitly, and today we see that dangerous scientific advances have profound effects, e.g. weapon of mass destruction, and must necessarily be subordinate to morality, else we are all quite dead.

That and current day islamic type people have a differnt impression of ijtihad than the one I seem to be getting. Hmph.

• quite right, liberal movements within Islam prefer something like the old definition, whereas conservatives like the Ottoman concept of taqlid and keep calling it ijtihad or narrowing it. Islam as a political movement is mostly a struggle around this question of how much ijtihad is allowed and who can do it and how far it can go. For instance, can you use ijtihad to argue that homosexuality is OK based on various precedents found in the hadith ? This is totally political obviously. Like any movement there's conservative and reforming forces.

I'll ask around.

80.126.238.189 15:56, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Move

I moved this from Early Muslim philosophy to match Modern Islamic philosophy -- they should both have the same naming scheme. gren グレン 01:55, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

There's an argument to retain "Muslim" because the early movement included many influences that were clearly not "Islamic" and included for instance many Greeks like Aristotle. Also there was no consensus on what constituted "Islamic", this did take 800 years to evolve. It is quite reasonable though to use a redirect and simply make sure that you link "early Muslim philosophy" if you are referring to an influence or situation where non-Islamic work was being scrutinized or integrated. That is very obvious then in what links here so that those who wish to study interaction between cultures can see what is linked to "Muslim" and those who wish to trace Islam's development can see what is linked to "Islamic". The article itself does a fairly good job now of sorting this out, but it really helps if linking to the right name differentiates the usage (a sort of typed link scheme that Wikipedia:itself could use more of!).

However there are now more parallels between this early period and the modern work, than there are in the interim period which focused on theology and during which fiqh was frozen under the Ottomans. So parallel names aren't bad, but, it might actually be better to say modern Muslim philosphy since there are starting to be very strong non-Islamic influences on Muslims again. Only the interim 15th-to-19th century period was strictly speaking "Islamic" in terms of ignoring all other inputs from other civilizations. The early and the modern Muslims are very much more similar to each other in thinking that either are to the late medieval Ottomans, who were obsessed with taqlid and gave the modern period the frozen fiqh that now most modern scholars want to see abandoned or reformed very deeply. But that too could be in a single unified article. The main reason NOT to do that is because the history of these three periods is radically different and you want people to be able to refer only to the history of the period in question. This is what was done with Christian philosophy as well.

[edit] Condescending bias?

The outstanding achievements of early Muslims are:

Doesn't that strike you as a bit condescending? A bit like how Alan Hansen talks about the African teams in the World Cup?

Agreed. Anyone mind if I remove this?Sludgehaichoi 18:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC) it could easily be seen in this way, as opposed to simply highlighting the greteast of the achievements.... Sludgehaichoi 13:25, 16 June 2006 (UTC)