A history of god, ch 6: The god of the philosophers

9th century Arab came to contact with Greek science and philosophy

Nestorian Christians translated Greek text to Arabic

More scientific discoveries in abbaside empire

Falsfah - broader and richer meaning than philosophy

-god of Greek philosophers identical to Allah

-rationalism advanced form of religion

faylasufs, good Muslims, believed in god, wanted to prove rationally

-wanted a universal religion, where god itself was reason

-scientific revolution demands rational explanation in everything including god

-wanted to find general laws than based on concrete events in history

Prophetic philosophy - based on revelation and science

Had influence from Persian, Indian and Gnostic - not just Greek and Arab

Al-kindi(died 870) - inspired knowledge of prophets superior to human insights of philosophers, unmoved mover doing ex-nihilo

Abubakr ar-Razi(died 930) - creatio by demiurge and beleived in emanation

ar-Razi-2, what abt common people, hard to understand philosophy, against egalitarian spirit

Al-Farabi(died 980) - Turkish - dealt with problem uneducated mass - Renaissance man - like in Plato's Republic Prophet was kind of ruler he envisaged and expressed timeless truth - Shia carry out this with wise imam

-10 successive emanation - last has man body from earth and soul and intellect partakes divine reason

-esoteric tradition similar ro dogma

Ismaili,fatimides or seveners vs twelvers

- imams, light of muhammed

Batinis - 10 emanation, each sphere presided by starting from 1 muhammed, Ali, 7 imams and fatimah

Tawil - inner meaning of Koran

al-Sijistani(died.971) - ismaili - talk abt god in negative - eg: not ignorant

Brethren of purity - offshoot of ismaili - 'he who knows himself, knows his god' - unity of truth - emanation - return to the One by purifying rational powers

Ibn-Sina(d.1037) - decline of caliphate - neoplatonism - belief of ordinary people - demonstratio of God's proof - primal unity - necessary being - emation 10 phases - 10th Gabriel - oriental philosophy

Jew philosophers

-Saadia ben Joseph 942

-Solomon ibn Gabriol 1070

-Bahya ibn Pakudah 1080

Al-Ghazzali(1111) - the incoherence of philosophers - distress - Sufism

His influence

-Joseph ibn sadiq(1143)

-Halevi(1141)

Ibn-Rushd(1198) - truths essential to salvation

Maimonides(1294) - disciple of Rushd

Crusading religion of western chistendom

Christian theology in this period

Thomas Aquinas(1274) - uses Aristotle and Ibn-Sina