Falsafa: Philosophy among the Arabs
الفلسفة

              The reception of philosophy and science in the Greek language in the emerging Arab-Islamic world of the 8th century AD was part of a broader reception of knowledge, including learning originating from India, Persia, Egypt, China and all Mesopotamian civilizations. Arabic-speaking philosophers gave new contours to the interpretation of the philosophical systems of Antiquity, expanding them, developing them and establishing new paradigms in the evolution of the history of universal thought.

               The extensive production of the main Arabic-speaking philosophers between the 9th and 13th centuries AD gave philosophy a new shape, uniting, for example, the thought of Aristotle with that of Plato – apparently irreconcilable approaches – in large-scale systems. In the first period of translation and reception of Greek philosophy, the names of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi stood out. The second period reached its peak with the systematization of philosophy carried out by Avicenna (Ibn Sina), taking the falsafa to its most optimistic and comprehensive moment. After this period of construction of the main ideas, there followed a phase of criticism and revision through the works of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), completing the cycle of the production of the falsafa in its classical period.
         
            The impact of this movement in philosophy provoked epistemological revisions of all kinds. On the one hand, falsafa became one of the constitutive elements of medieval thought in the Latin West and, on the other hand, it was one of the foundations of the school of illumination thought in the easternmost parts of the Arab-Islamic world. In this sense, the presence of a vast corpus of Greco-Arabic texts in pre-Renaissance Europe opened up new avenues of investigation for 21st-century scholars seeking to understand the interconnection between East and West.

         The unfolding of the large production of books and writings related to the falsafa, both in the easternmost parts of the Arab-Islamic world and in Latin-speaking Medieval Europe, today allows us to return to the classical texts of the main authors: Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes. Nowadays, currents and schools of thought that seem so diverse between Europe and Asia may have common roots that can be found in the ideas of these thinkers. Philosophy and science are themes that permeate their works, helping to understand the evolution of the history of universal thought, going far beyond the distorted and narrow vision that attributes to thought a dichotomy between East and West.

      Knowing and studying philosophy among the Arabs dismantles dualistic paradigms, allowing for a unifying and integrated understanding of the history of universal thought. We hope that the information contained in this virtual space will help those who wish to reform their ideas and, consequently, reform the world in which we live and think.

                                                                                                                                Miguel Attie Filho
                                                                                                                                     June 2010