In lieu of our annual international meeting, the AAIWG has arranged for 5 sessions of 3 speakers each at the SIEPM Congress meeting in Paris 22-26 August 2022. Below here in alphabetical order are the names of presenters and their titles and abstracts. This set of sessions has been organized by Professors López-Farjeat and Taylor.
15 presenters in 5 sessions.
Fouad Ben Ahmed
Al-Quarawiyine University-Rabat
“An Islam without Theology: Does Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198) Have a Radical Position towards Muslim Theologians?”
Abstract
Any reader of Ibn Rushd’s works, al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla fī ʿaqāid al-milla, Faṣl al-maqāl, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, as well as some of his other works, may be surprised by his drastic criticism of Muslim theology (kalām) and theologians (mutakallimūn). He does not recognize the authenticity of theology as a religious discipline alongside other disciplines, nor the scientific character of its discourse. Theologians in the writings mentioned above are neither among the elite (khawāṣ) and scholars (ʿulamāʾ), nor among the jumhūr and common people (ʿawām), but rather they are depicted as “parasites”, a source of the evils inflicted on the sharia. They are either diseased, their moods are not moderated, unlike the rest of the normal people, or they are false physicians and theology is more like the art of sophistry with which theologians try to impose their misguided interpretations on common people as being right. The result is that Ibn Rushd considers theology as a useless science. Even more, the harm it has caused to the sharia is far greater than its alleged benefit.
In this paper, I will discuss the details Ibn Rushd’s harsh position on theology and theologians and try to understand it in its context. Was this radical position of Ibn Rushd a decisive one? Did he really conceive an Islam without theology and theologians? This is what I will investigate.
Rosabel Ansari, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York
“An unreal world: al-Fārābī, radical Eleatic metaphysics, and ordinary people”
Abstract
Upon al-Fārābī’s reconstruction, Eleatic metaphysics consisted of the radical denial of the world as we perceive it. According to this view, which al-Fārābī ascribes to the Presocratics Parmenides of Elea and his student Zeno, there is no movement, change, differentiation or multiplicity in the world. This radical form of ontological monism is discussed across many of al-Fārābī’s logical, programmatic and metaphysical texts, including the Book of Dialectic (Kitāb al-Jadal), The Situations of Sophistry (Al-Amkinah al-Mughliṭah), Philosophy of Aristotle (Falsafat Arisṭūṭālīs), Book of Letters (Kitāb al-Ḥurūf), Book of One and oneness (Kitāb al-Wāḥid wa-l-waḥdah). Yet, as al-Fārābī tells us this, this view is both repulsive and contradicts what is manifest and selfevident. As such this paper will explore al-Fārābī’s explanation for how such a radical view can take hold among ordinary people.
Although al-Fārābī provides a significant philosophical refutation of Eleatic monism, his concern is not just with proving its falsity. Al-Fārābī also discusses how ordinary people might be misled into holding this position, thereby illustrating a concern for the broader socio-political implications of Eleatic monism in addition to its logical and metaphysical refutation. Al-Fārābī gives two reasons for why people are misled into holding the position of the Eleatics, both relating to psychology and politics. Firstly, he tells us that the fame (šuhrah) for proficiency in the sciences of those who uphold the Eleatic position causes the soul to doubt what is commonly accepted and believe that they must know something others do not. Secondly, Fārābī tells us that the arguments for Eleatic monism are based on doubt-inducing terms (asmāʾ mušakkikah), such as ‘being’ (mawǧūd). According to al-Fārābī such terms, developed from Aristotle’s pros hen homonymy, are equivocal but have related meanings and as a result they cause individuals to doubt whether they are used equivocally or univocally. Al-Fārābī tells us that the proponents of Eleatic monism exploit this ambiguity by using fallacious arguments that equivocate on ‘being’, while leading their interlocutors to understand the term univocally, and thereby construing the world as a single being in which there is no non-being.
These explanations for why ordinary people might accept the fallacy of Eleatic monism are primarily psychological. Both the fame of its proponents and the language of the argument cast doubt in the soul. As such, these explanations offer a reflection on the human psychology of doubting what al-Fārābī considers to be the manifest, self-evident fact of the world’s reality as we perceive it. These explanations are also political in so far as they give rise to questions concerning authority. Their fame for proficiency in the sciences endows the proponents of Eleatic monism with authority, and it is this authority that underlies the sowing of doubt.
David Bennett, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
“Zeal and the Limits of Reason”
Abstract
When has a would-be imam gone too far? For generations, heresiographers compulsively recorded aberrant sectarian movements from the first century of Islam. Many of these movements propounded radical political and theological agendas: Khārijites (so-called because they would “depart” from any group with whom they disagreed) enjoined particular strictures of piety to define their communities; Ghāliyya so-called because of their “extreme” claims) formed zealous bands around prophetic figures whose mysterious utterances thrilled or appalled their audiences. Most of these groups, however colourful, were historical curiosities at best: yet systematic, soberminded theologians continued to pass down their notorious beliefs. In this paper I argue that forensic analysis of theological innovation played a key role in the development of kalām, and that the heresiographers’ taxonomies exhibited a rationalistic approach to even the most deviant theological propositions. The radical trajectories taken by “departers” and “extremists” were not mere fodder for polemic, but fundamental for the establishment of the technical discursive methods for the articulation of kalām.
Elisa Coda, Centre Jean Pépin UMR8230 CNRS Paris (MASCA Fellow)
“A radical religious project. Isaac Abravanel and his Farabian Background”
Abstract:
Some of Isaac Abravanel’s political theories feature a striking political radicalism. For one, his unconditional opposition to monarchism as a principle of government, at variance with Maimonides and other Jewish authorities. The key to Abravanel’s powerful attack on monarchism lies in his ideas about the problem of government, as well as in his deterministic views on history. His political radicalism has been interpreted both as an heritage of Jewish-Christian medieval conceptions or either as an anticipation of modern political trends. Thus, in the late 1930s, his political models became the heart of a debate between Yitzhak Baer and Leo Strauss on the interpretation of Abravanel’s political contribution to Jewish history. This paper explores Abravanel’s views on a basic political problem, that of the ideal type of government, based on the relationship between what he calls the “human” government, and the divine government, called “spiritual”. It will inquire into some of Abravanel’s allegedly radical statements, paying attention to their intellectual background and focusing on the sources which inspired them. This will shed new light on Abravanel’s understandings of the Farabian and Maimonidean stands with regard to the political dimension of the Divine Law.
Thérese-Anne Druart, Catholic University of America, emerita, Washington, DC
“Al-Farabi’s ethics and how to make a science of ethics”
Abstract
The paper shows that for al-Farabi there are two types of ethics 1. a pre-philosophical one which uses non-demonstrative arguments, as in Directing Attention to the Way of Happiness and 2. a philosophical one which uses demonstrative arguments. We know of the philosophical one through ihe place of ethics in the Enumeration and the criteria for science expressed in The Book of Demonstration, plus statements known through a Hebrew translation of a passage.
Nadira Fedouache, Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abd Allah-Fès, Fes, Morocco
Nadera01@yahoo.fr
“Éléments de radicalité dans la philosophie «politique» d’Ibn Bājja (Avempace)”
Abstract
Le Tadbīr al-mutawahḥid (Le régime du solitaire) du philosophe Ibn Bājja (Avempace, m. 1138) est considéré comme l’une de ses œuvres authentiques, car il ne s’agit pas d’un commentaire d’un texte d’Aristote ou d’al-Fārābī, comme ce fut le cas pour ses autres écrits. En effet, Le régime du solitaire est un livre unique, dans lequel Ibn Bājja a présenté sa conception particulière de la position du philosophe dans la cité. La spécificité de cet ouvrage consiste, à notre avis, dans son approche radicale selon laquelle il a abordé la relation du philosophe avec sa communauté, à laquelle il doit faire une rupture surtout lorsque les deux parties ne partagent pas les mêmes valeurs ou les mêmes finalités. Quelles sont les circonstances qui ont permis à Ibn Bājja de développer cette nouvelle perception du philosophe au sein de la cité ? Et comment Ibn Bājja a-t-il réalisé un exploit intellectuel en rupture avec les perceptions philosophiques antérieures ?
Pour répondre à ces deux questions, nous proposons de faire le point sur les manifestations de cette perception radicale ; ce qui peut être délimité à trois niveaux :
- Sa vision de la cité : Selon la tradition aristotélicienne, les philosophes musulmans considéraient que la cité était nécessaire à l’homme, car il est un animal politique. Avec Ibn Bājja, nous nous trouvons dans une nouvelle conception selon laquelle la cité est surtout utile au commun car elle représente une des fins de ce dernier, alors qu’elle est nuisible au philosophe, et non nécessaire à sa perfection. Ainsi, le philosophe peut, et doit, s’isoler de la ville et de ses habitants si sa perfection l’exige.
- Son regard sur les autres : les gens ayant des opinions corrompues, le philosophe en diffère fondamentalement. Ainsi, il se retrouve isolé des autres qui vivent une sorte d’aliénation dans les affaires quotidiennes. Sa relation avec les autres dans ce contexte se distingue également par l’indépendance, puisqu’il déclare explicitement que sa présence n’est pas une présence au service des autres ; une telle interaction avec les autres sera un obstacle à la perfection de soi.
- En revanche, au troisième niveau, le philosophe ne trouve aucun mal à rencontrer un groupe qui lui ressemble et partage les mêmes intérêts et objectifs, c’est-à-dire l’intérêt des scientifiques ou des philosophes, car ce qui les unit est une opinion pure et désintéressé même s’ils ne se trouvent pas au même moment et dans le même espace.
David González Ginocchio, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
dgginocchio@gmail.com
“Scotus’s Radical Empiricism?”
Abstract
This paper tries to argue that the question of being is much more, within Scotistic philosophy, than just the subject Matter of metaphysics. I will try to reconstruct the discussions around Averroistic and Avicennan epistemology on the order and dependency of sciences, the Aristotelian justification of the perfect conditions of a demonstrative science, and the condemnations of Lincoln and París to show how Scotus’s cosmology makes way for both contingency and essentialism, radically reinterpreting, in a way, the import of perception on epistemology.
Yehuda Halper, Bar Ulan University, ——
“Dialectical Arguments and Radicalism: From Averroes to his Hebrew Interpreters”
Abstract
Averroes ends his Decisive Treatise by praising God for providing a middle way to attaining knowledge of Him that is more than simply accepting the simple meaning of the Quran, but less than the method of the Mutakallimūn which he says is a tashghīb, “overturning,” “inciting to discord,” “stirring up change,” or, in today’s terms, “radicalism.” Earlier in the work, Averroes identifies the Mutakallimūn with the use of dialectical arguments in interpreting the Quran and levies great criticism against using such arguments with the general public. Those unable to use dialectic arguments properly are apt to make mistakes in their understanding of God and be led to heresy (kufr). Since those who lead other to heresy are heretics, the radical Mutakallimūn can also be charged with heresy. This condemnation of radical dialectical arguments also extends to Averroes Commentary on Plato’s Republic, where Averroes portrays an ideal state that not only has no Mutakallimūn, but also has no place for dialectical arguments, even in support of propositions that can be demonstrated, except for training potential philosophers. Such philosophical training is kept among potential philosophers and attempted with caution. That is, Averroes’ ideal state is weary of and seeks to avoid the potential radicalism of dialectical arguments. Further, in his Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics, Averroes focuses primarily on using dialectic to train philosophers. While he notes that dialectical arguments can appear stronger in the eyes of the public than poetic or rhetorical arguments, he refers those seeking to understand the political uses of dialectic to his political work, i.e., to his Commentary on Plato’s Republic. Averroes, that is, considers dialectical arguments to be potentially radical if used among the public and seeks to avoid their political application.
Though otherwise faithful, Hebrew commentators on Averroes had an opposite view of dialectical arguments. While Averroes saw dialectical arguments as connected to radicalism and leading to heresy, his Hebrew commentators saw such arguments as conservative and useful for protecting traditional values against heresy. Such uses are manifest in Jacob Anatoli’s calls to learn dialectic to combat Christians and Jewish heretics and in Shem Tov Falaquera’s use of dialectic to promote philosophical inquiry among the Jewish public. Indeed, even Averroes’ reference to the tashghīb of the Mutakallimūn came into the anonymous Hebrew translation as rom hamedabrim, “the exalted state of the speakers.” Additionally, Joseph Ibn Kaspi does not include Averroes’ criticisms of dialectic in his summary of the Commentary on Plato’s Republic. Further, an anonymous super-commentary on Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics includes extensive discussions as to how to apply dialectical argumentation to the beliefs of the public. Indeed, the commentator is most concerned with preserving traditional beliefs against radicalism and sees dialectic as a means to do so.
Steven Harvey, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
“Herbert Davidson’s Contribution to the Study of Medieval Jewish Ethical Philosophy and His Unradical Take on Maimonides”
Abstract
Herbert A. Davidson (1932-2021) was Professor Emeritus of Hebrew, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, at UCLA. He was one of the outstanding students of Harry Austryn Wolfson at Harvard University in the fifties and became one of the best known and respected scholars of medieval Jewish and Islamic Philosophy. Davidson’s versatility as a scholar may be gauged from his most cited books: his edition of Jacob Anatoli’s early thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge and on Aristotle’s Categories (1969) and his annotated English translation of these two commentaries by Averroes (1969); his monograph on the views of the falāsifa on the Active Intellect and the human intellect (1992); his comparative examination of the proofs of the medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers for eternity, creation and the existence of God (1987); and, of course, his two major volumes on Maimonides (2005 and 2011). My remarks will not focus on Davidson’s important studies on medieval logic, physics, psychology, cosmogony, cosmology, or metaphysics, but rather on his lesser-known contribution to the study of medieval Jewish ethical philosophy as may be discerned from his various publications. Davidson was a meticulous and learned scholar who studied Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin texts, but he was, at times, also controversial, provoking healthy, intelligent, and stimulating debate with his colleagues. At times, his views were radical and, at times he opposed radical trends in the modern interpretation of the writings of the leading medieval thinkers, especially Maimonides. I will try to suggest how both these aspects come in to play in his approach to medieval Jewish ethical philosophy.
Katja Krause, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
“The Epistemic Roots of Experience according to Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and John Buridan”
Abstract
What are the epistemic roots of experience (experientia/experimentum) appealed to by some key medieval natural philosophers? Historians of science and philosophy have largely agreed in their investigations. They have searched for evidence of direct observation and experiment in the natural philosophical treatises of, for instance, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and John Buridan. But these searches have often resulted in conclusions of disappointment: there is no (single) empirical approach to be found in the natural philosophical treatises of Roger, Albert, and John. In my talk, I propose a complementary reading of the experience appealed to by these three medieval Latin natural philosophers. I suggest that the epistemic roots of experience in their natural philosophies resist any reduction to an empirical approach, and I explain why this is the case. In my conclusion, I propose a new framework of reference for thinking about the epistemic roots of experience in medieval Latin natural philosophy.
Luis Xavier López-Farjeat – Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City
“Revisiting the Sources or Radical Islamic Atomism”
Abstract
While radical atomism became the dominant physical theory among Islamic mutakallimūn, most philosophers adopted an Aristotelian view of nature, and were thus anti-atomists. To some extent, the discussion between atomist and anti-atomists within the Islamic context echoes the Greek controversy between atomists and Peripatetics. However, there is no clear evidence that the mutakallimūn were familiar with Greek atomism. The project of uncovering the Greek sources of Islamic atomism has been intriguing. While Islamic foundational sources do not refer to an atomist physical theory, it is reasonable to suspect that the mutakallimūn learned about atomism from a foreign source. In this presentation, I revisit the discussion on the possibility of attributing Greek sources to Islamic atomism. After discussing the work of some scholars who have suggested which Greek sources could have served to transmit some of the views of the Greek atomists into the Islamic context, I argue that our search for the sources of radical Islamic atomism should include texts and fragments containing implicit references to Greek atomism. I propose the inclusion of Alexander of Aphrodisias into this ongoing debate.
Josep Puig Montada, Universidad Complutenses, Madrid (emeritus)
“Herbert A. Davidson (1932-2021) and Maimonides, community of faith and intellectual endeavor.”
Abstract
After his retirement in 1994 at UCLA, Professor Davidson concentrated his research on Maimonides and almost ten years later, he published Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (Oxford University Press, 2005), a densely argued but eminently readable work of 567 pages. Professor Davidson describes in detail Maimonides’ life, education, and interests and he analyzes the whole intellectual production of the Rambam. In the course of his life Professor Davidson had authored additional articles on Maimonides and six of them were collected in the volume Maimonides the Rationalist, (Liverpool University Press, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011) together with three new chapters.
Through reading these as well as through learning the accounts that I am glad to have heard from Professor Davidson, I came to appreciated Maimonides’ effort to preserve traditional Jewish religious thought in conjunction with contemporary philosophy. At the same time, I admired how Professor Davidson himself joined the Rambam in this common endeavor.
Andrea A. Robiglio, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
“The Laugh of Truth: Reason, Folly, and the Laugher according to Thomas Aquinas”
Abstract
With the publication, ten years ago, of the academic collection edited by Albrecht Classen (Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, Berlin 2010) fresh scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of the Medieval laughter and the theological questions it can entail. Against the widespread condemnation of risus, seen as a provocation on the edge of blasphemy, some theologians made efforts to uncover the other, positive side of the phenomenon. In the Bible even God “smiles”, while Aristotle had taught that the human being is a rational animal, i.e., the animal who is “able to laugh”. In my contribution, the complex relation of Aquinas with the phenomenon of laughter is explored, both in theory and in practice: Thomas’s understanding of the interplay between rationality and humor and his analysis of the laughter are tested on Aquinas’s own radical use of irony and humor in his dialectical argumentations.
Richard C. Taylor, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
“Davidson’s Opening of the Door to Radical Interpretation of Ibn Rushd”
Abstract
The extraordinary contributions of the late Professor Herbert A. Davidson to the study of key figures of the Classical Rationalist Philosophical Tradition have long and widely been recognized as both insightful as well as foundational for the study of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). One important short study on the thought of Ibn Rushd in his book, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes On Intellect. Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford U.P., New York – Oxford 1992) that has seldom been highlighted opens the door to a very radical interpretation of the thought of the Cordoban. Davidson writes regarding the view of scripture implied in Ibn Rushd’s early Commentary on the Parva Naturalia, “The intent would be . . . that the human author of Scripture first acquired theoretical knowledge through proper scientific methods and then coolly and deliberately – not through an inspired imaginative faculty – recast his hard-won philosophic knowledge into language appropriate for his less enlightened brethren. The term prophet would, on this reading, mean nothing more than the human author of Scripture; and the term revelation would mean a high level of philosophical knowledge.” The present short paper links this to other passages in the work of Ibn Rushd and explores the question of whether this interpretation is itself too radical or may be a cogent account of the thinking of the great Aristotelian commentator.
Tracy Wietecha, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“Radical Thinking about Ethics? Albert the Great on the Relationship between Ethics and Metaphysics“
Abstract
Albert the Great is the only Dominican, that we know of, to have written two commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: the earlier Super Ethica (1250 – 1252) and the later Ethica (ca. 1262). The defining difference between these two commentaries lies, I argue, in how Albert envisions the place of ethics within his greater scientific corpus. Beginning in 1251 with his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Albert the Great began his project of commenting on the Aristotelian natural sciences of living beings. Through this commentary project, Albert set down – in both theory and practice – an ordered scientific program of study which would lead to the telos or end of the human being in the perfected intellect of acquired intellect. Thus, the natural sciences, which lead to the study of metaphysics, are directly conducive to the attainment of human happiness in this life. Further, the telos of the human being, from which happiness ensues, is a self-perfective telos. It is something human beings can reach through their own efforts. But, it is not only something human beings can do, but also something it seems that human beings ought to do. This ethical question, that arises from Albert’s ordered scientific program of study, is not a question of the division of the sciences. Albert made a clear three-fold division of the sciences in his Physica: the rational sciences (such as logic), the real sciences (mathematics, natural sciences, and metaphysics), and the practical sciences (ethics and politics). It is rather a question of relationship, a relationship which Albert made more evident throughout his commentary project. For instance, Albert connects ethics and noetics for the first time in his commentary on De anima (ca. 1254). By the time he writes Ethica, Albert identifies contemplative happiness with the acquired intellect, the self-perfective telos of his scientific program of study. As a practical science, ethics plays an instrumental role; it is an aide to proper character and moral formation needed to undergo the long and arduous path of scientific study. As such, it seems that ethics should be studied before metaphysics. In Ethica, however, Albert appears to embrace a kind of radical thinking about ethics. No longer concerned with establishing ethics as a doctrina, as he was in his earlier Super Ethica, Albert begins his second ethical commentary by following the lead of Avicenna. Albert reinterprets Avicenna’s description of ethics as the “last part of metaphysics,” in order to establish the relationship between ethics and metaphysics. In this paper I argue that the defining feature between Albert’s two ethical commentaries is how Albert views the relationship between ethics and metaphysics. In Ethica, Albert views ethics as about perfection – perfection of the human being in the acquired intellect. The science of ethics is to be studied after metaphysics.