158 | CHAPTER 5
pursuit of philosophy in its own right as well as in relation to theolog y.^148 In
addition to coordinating translation projects, especially on Aristotle, and
writing commentaries on the Organon, Kindī immersed himself in the Aris-
totelian sciences, especially in the certainty provided by mathematical and
geometrical rather than logical proofs of cosmological and metaphysical
propositions.^149 Kindī’s metaphysics also helps us locate him within the
broader tendencies of early Islamic thought.^150 He read Aristotle’s Metaphys-
ics not so much as a philosophical approach to being- as- such, but for the
light it threw on the central doctrines of Muslim theolog y (kalām): God’s
unicity, attributes and “beautiful names”! Kindī’s conviction that obscurities
in the Qurʾān could be resolved by resort to reasoning provided common
ground between him and the Muʿtazilites.
During the 830s a member of Kindī’s circle, a Christian from Homs in
Syria named Ibn Nāʿima al- Himsī, produced a paraphrastic and expanded
version of extracts from Plotinus’s fourth to sixth Enneads and Proclus’s Ele-
ments of theolog y, under the title The theolog y of Aristotle.^151 An introduction
explains that the work supplements Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It conveys what is
best described as a scripture- compatible late Platonism, ascribing to the ut-
terly transcendent, obliviously emanating Plotinian One a creative and provi-
dential activity often expressed in language Plotinus himself had used only of
the next (lower) level of being, namely Mind or Intellect. It seems, moreover,
that the Theolog y’s compiler concurred with the Muʿtazilites’ denial that the
Qurʾanic names of God correspond to actual attributes, since attributes
might be seen as separate from God, who is entirely simple. God must not be
made multiple by predication.^152
Through the Theolog y, Platonism made its debut in Arabic under the
name of Aristotle. This was an extreme manifestation of late Greek harmoni-
zation of Plato and Aristotle even as regards the One,^153 and is all the more
important because the translators neglected Plato and the Platonist tradi-
tion.^154 From the tenth century onward the Theolog y of Aristotle deeply influ-
enced Muslim theolog y, at least in philosophical circles.^155 It attests with
148 C. D’Ancona, “Al- Kindī e la sua eredità,” SFIM 282–351; P. Adamson, Al- Kindī (New york
2007); G. Endress and P. Adamson, “Abū yūsuf al- Kindī,” PIW 92–147.
149 Gutas, in Arnzen and Thielmann (eds), Words, texts and concepts [5:124] 195–209.
150 D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian tradition (Leiden 1988) 243–49.
151 C. D’Ancona, “La teologia neoplatonica di “Aristotele” e gli inizi della filosofia arabo- musulmana,”
in Entre Orient et Occident: La philosophie et la science gréco- romaines dans le monde arabe (Geneva 2011)
135–95.
152 P. Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus (London 2002) 165–70.
153 I. Hadot, “Aristote dans l’enseignement philosophique néoplatonicien,” Revue de théologie et de
philosophie 124 (1992) 414–16.
154 D. De Smet, “L’héritage de Platon et de Pythagore: La “voie diffuse” de sa transmission en terre
d’Islam,” in Entre Orient et Occident [5:151] 87–126.
155 M. Aouad, “La Théologie d’Aristote et autres textes du Plotinus arabus,” D PA 1.541–90.