The Origins of Arabic Philosophy

The transmission of the Greek legacy to the arab world: An outline. It is widely acknowledged that the origins of Arabic-Islamic philosophy are to be found in the transmission of a great amount of texts both from classical Greece - some Plato and virtually the whole of the Aristotelian corpus - and post-classical Greek thought, from Hellenism to late antiquity. In this chapter, we shall see that post-classical thought has been of momentous importance in the Arab interpretation of Plato's and Aristotle's doctrines. Predictably, the transmission of their works was made possible through the spread of classical Greek philosophy in the Mediterranean area during the Hellenistic and imperial ages, and then again through the scholastic tradition of late antiquity. However, post-classical thought was decisive for the rise of Islamic philosophy even from a more substantial point of view: the main problems dealt with by Muslim philosophers can be understood only against the background of the rethinking of Plato and Aristotle which took place in the imperial age, chiefly thanks to Alexander of Aphrodisias and Plotinus. Furthermore, the systematic structure into which Aristotle's doctrines were moulded in the curricular teaching in the schools of late antiquity paved the way for their transmission to Latin and Arabic thought. © Cambridge University Press 2010.