The Sociology of Philosophies

The MuÀtazilites met opposition from the faction of Islamic scriptural literalists crystallizing at the same time, and were goad ...

(and the related issue of the createdness of the QurÁan), led to consideration of substance and attributes. The combination of t ...

to have developed a thoroughgoing atomism. Abu-Àl-Hudhayl, who success- fully systematized the MuÀtazilite theological position, ...

Al-Nazzam was among the most creative of these philosophers, and also the most extreme; on the issue of the createdness of the Q ...

was the Hanifites, followers of Abu Hanifa, who took a relatively soft position of political compromise on questions of legitima ...

for 20 years. Most of the Àulama gave in under political pressure from the caliphs; but opposition was tenaciously led by Ibn Ha ...

middle generation of the 800s—that a network of translators and commenta- tors sprang up in Baghdad. Sporadic translations of Gr ...

striking that the areas in which creativity occurred are not simply those in which prestigious Greek texts were introduced but r ...

usually become organized into a monastic life, although there were later a few approaches to it, such as the spiritual community ...

it was simply an organized flux of religious energy sweeping around Islamic society on the loose organizational pathways of popu ...

by formulating the doctrine of the hidden Imam, with its implication that an inner faith would substitute, during the indefinite ...

FIGURE 8.2. ASHÀARITES, GREEK FALASIFA, AND THE SYNTHESES OF IBN SINA AND AL-GHAZALI, 935–1100 Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism ...

Al-Farabi was one of the few Muslims in this group, and he made his mark by transmuting its cultural capital into Islamic terms. ...

Al-Farabi’s philosophy was an attempt to be politically safe, avoiding the dynastic partisanship inherent in the various Sunni a ...

porary of al-AshÀari. By the time of al-Baqillani, the AshÀarites were laying out time-atomism systematically as their own doctr ...

The mature MuÀtazilite and AshÀarite time-atomism foreshadows the occasionalist system of Malebranche. In the latter’s system t ...

direction of explicit proofs and conceptual analysis. More subtle arguments were added in the next centuries, especially in the ...

unified as well. The ShiÀites posed a danger not only of military uprisings on the periphery but also in the core of the empire; ...

reversals. From the short-run perspective of the late 1900s, we are used to seeing the ShiÀites as archconservatives. In medieva ...

The Culmination of the Philosophical Networks: Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali If the Brethren of Purity were an unsophisticated and pop ...