This lecture will discuss how developing themes found in the聽Qur鈥檃n聽and culled from Greek and Jewish, Indian and other sources, Muslim thinkers forged a compelling humanism, precious in the classical age and deserving recovery and reconstruction in our own. The literary form of the ris膩la聽(or essay), which developed from the letter writing familiar to the secretarial class, significantly contributed to Islamic humanism. For the informality of a letter overcomes the stiffness of a treatise, the intensity of oratory the and sidesteps the agonistic potential of many a dialogical exchange.
The intimacy of address to a friend establishes a sense of privacy and confidentiality even as it modestly vouches for the need that publication seeks to serve. So we readily appreciate the use of the ris膩la聽form in the philosophical essays of al-Kind墨 and in those of the Ikhw膩n al-峁f膩示From Arabic, lit. 鈥楤rethren of Purity鈥, a group of learned scholars who were based in Basra and Baghdad around the last quarter of the t10th century CE. It is more…, where Indian fables mingle with Greek philosophy and science, Arabic lore and poetry. Ibn ufayl and Maimonides in his wake adopt the ris膩la聽form for just these reasons. The intimacy of the ris膩la聽is a natural setting for the moral counsels of virtue ethics developed in more systematic form by Miskawayh on the model established by Yay膩 b. 鈥楢d墨 and naturalised in the context of Sufi pietism by al-Ghaz膩l墨. Virtue ethics softens the command ethics of scripture and thematizes ethical concerns in terms of the refinement of character, whose anatomy natural history of strengths and weaknesses Islamic moralists view with a hygienic eye. Ta鈥檇墨b, the Arabic counterpart of the Greek paideia relies on the pedagogical value of literature and history to convey lessons better learned from shared than from personal experience.
Beyond the intimacy of the ris膩la聽and the refinement of ta鈥檇墨b we should consider the commitment to evidence and argument that are the ideals of science and philosophy, part of the heritage of the great Islamic inquirers. Al-F膩r膩b墨 speaks for those commitments when he criticizes the mutakallim奴n for their invocation of ad hoc assumptions. But we can see the interplay of pre-philosophical with philosophical commitments when al-F膩r膩b墨 rejects Ash鈥榓rite determinism for its moral and theological deficits, just as we can see it in al-R膩z墨鈥檚 strenuous efforts to save (what he takes to be a Platonizing version of) divine creation 鈥 and again in Ibn S墨n膩鈥檚 doctrines of the world鈥檚 contingency and the individuation of disembodied souls. In all of these cases, and even in al-R膩z墨鈥檚 view that evils outweigh goods in this life, what drives the argument, even in the face of intellectualism is a humanism rooted in the affirmation of individual moral responsibility and accountability and the inestimable worth of the human person.
Speaker
Professor Lenn Goodman
Lenn E. Goodman, D. Phil., is a Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. His many books include聽Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere聽(Cambridge University Press, 2014);聽Coming to Mind: The Soul and its Body聽(with D. G. Caramenico, University of Chicago Press, 2013);聽Creation and Evolution聽(Routledge, 2010); his Gifford Lectures,聽Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself聽(Oxford University Press, 2008);聽In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach聽(Humanity Press, 2001);聽Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age聽(Edinburgh University Press Rutgers University Press, 1999);聽Avicenna聽(Cornell University Press, 2006),聽Ibn Tufayl鈥檚 Hayy Ibn Yaqzan聽(University of Chicago Press, 2009) 鈥 and of course聽Islamic Humanism聽(Oxford University Press, 2003); and (with Richard McGregor)聽The Case of the Animals vs Man Before the King of the Jinn, the 22nd of the Ras芒鈥檌l of the Ikhw芒n al-Saf芒鈥聽(Oxford University Press, 2009), the first volume to appear in the Institute鈥檚 multi-volume collection of complete Ras芒鈥檌l.
