Al-Kindī, honoured as the 'philosopher of the Arabs', was the first philosopher of Islam. His pioneer philosophical writings engage with ideas that became available through the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. This volume makes his entire philosophical output-some two dozen works-available in English, most of them for the first time. An overall introduction, introductions to each work and extensive notes explain al-Kindī's ideas, sources, and influence.

Al-Kindi emerges as a philosopher who attempted to present, interpret, and supplement past philosophies as parts of an essentially unified tradition that would make for a viable philosophy in Islamic society. He assumes a place at or near the beginning of a philosophical current—based on transmission of studies from late Greek thought—that remained vital in the Islamic world for several centuries. Alfred L. Ivry presents a reevaluation of al-Kindi's relationships with the powerful group of theologians, Muʿtazilah. The commentary defines and interprets terms used by al-Kindi, identifies original Arabic and Greek sources, and analyzes the most recent critical research related to each allusion. Complete bibliography and index of Aristotelian sources.

Al-Kindi was the first philosopher of the Islamic world. He lived in Iraq and studied in Baghdad, where he became attached to the caliphal court. In due course he would become an important figure at court: a tutor to the caliph's son, and a central figure in the translation movement of the ninth century, which rendered much of Greek philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic. Al-Kindi's wide-ranging intellectual interests included not only philosophy but also music, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Through deep engagement with Greek tradition al-Kindi developed original theories on key issues in the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, physical science, and ethics. He is especially known for his arguments against the world's eternity, and his innovative use of Greek ideas to explore the idea of God's unity and transcendence. Despite al-Kindi's historical and philosophical importance no book has presented a complete, in-depth look at his thought until now. In this accessible introduction to al-Kindi's works, Peter Adamson surveys what is known of his life and examines his method and his attitude towards the Greek tradition, as well as his subtle relationship with the Muslim intellectual culture of his day. Above all the book focuses on explaining and evaluating the ideas found in al-Kindi's wide-ranging philosophical corpus, including works devoted to science and mathematics. Throughout, Adamson writes in language that is both serious and engaging, academic and approachable. This book will be of interest to experts in the field, but it requires no knowledge of Greek or Arabic, and is also aimed at non-experts who are simply interested in one of the greatest of Islamic philosophers.

This volume introduces the major classical Arabic philosophers through substantial selections from the key works (many of which appear in translation for the first time here) in each of the fields--including logic, philosophy of science, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and politics--to which they made significant contributions. An extensive Introduction situating the works within their historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts offers support to students approaching the subject for the first time, as well as to instructors with little or no formal training in Arabic thought. A glossary, select bibliography, and index are also included.

Attempts to present the author's philosophy in a comprehensive way for the general readers and the students of Arabic-Muslim thought.

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that, unlike other reference works, the Oxford Handbook has striven to give roughly equal weight to every century, from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook is also unique in that its 30 chapters are work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered, in particular taking advantage of recent new editions and translations that have renewed interest and debate around the Islamic philosophical canon. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy gives both the advanced student and active scholar in Islamic philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, a strong sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like and a deep view of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at stake. Most importantly, it provides an up-to-date portrait of contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy.

This book is an introduction to Islamic Philosophy, beginning with its Medieval inception, right through to its more contemporary incarnations. Using the language and conceptual apparatus of contemporary Anglo-American ‘Analytic’ philosophy, this book represents a novel and creative attempt to rejuvenate Islamic Philosophy for a modern audience. It adopts a ‘rational reconstructive’ approach to the history of philosophy by affording maximum hermeneutical priority to the strongest possible interpretation of a philosopher’s arguments while also paying attention to the historical context in which they worked. The central canonical figures of Medieval Islamic Philosophy – al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Averroes – are presented chronologically along with an introduction to the central themes of Islamic theology and the Greek philosophical tradition they inherited. The book then briefly introduces what the author collectively refers to as the ‘Pre-Modern’ figures including Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, and Ibn Taymiyyah, and presents all of these thinkers, along with their Medieval predecessors, as forerunners to the more modern incarnation of Islamic Philosophy: Political Islam.