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Middle Eastern Class
2017 Reprint of 1910 Edition. Al-Ghazzali, or, Al-Ghazali, the author of The Alchemy of Happiness, was a Persian theologian, philosopher, and prolific Sunni Muslim author, and is regarded as one of the great thinkers of Islam. The work emphasized the importance of observing the ritual requirements of Islam, the actions that would lead to salvation, and avoidance of sin. The factor that set the Alchemy apart from other theological works at the time was its mystical emphasis on self-discipline and asceticism. Sa'āda (happiness) is a central concept in Islamic philosophy used to describe the highest aim of human striving. Sa'āda is equated with "ultimate happiness", namely that of the hereafter. It is achieved only after a human being has liberated his/her soul completely from its corporal existence, achieving "active intellect". The teachings were to help man to live a life in accordance with the sacred law, and by doing so gain a deeper understanding of its meaning on the day of Judgement.
The Arabic philosophical fable Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a classic of medieval Islamic philosophy. Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), the Andalusian philosopher, tells of a child raised by a doe on an equatorial island who grows up to discover the truth about the world and his own place in it, unaided-but also unimpeded-by society, language, or tradition. Hayy's discoveries about God, nature, and man challenge the values of the culture in which the tale was written as well as those of every contemporary society.
Goodman's commentary places Hayy Ibn Yaqzan in its historical and philosophical context. The volume features a new preface and index, and an updated bibliography.
"One of the most remarkable books of the Middle Ages."-Times Literary Supplement
"An enchanting and puzzling story. . . . The book transcends all historical and cultural environments to settle upon the questions of human life that perpetually intrigue men."-Middle East Journal
"Goodman has done a service to the modern English reader by providing a readable translation of a philosophically significant allegory."-Philosophy East and West
"Add[s] bright new pieces to an Islamic mosaic whose general shape is already known."-American Historical Review
Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, has been a classroom favorite since its publication in 1963. When it first appeared, it was the only anthology of medieval political philosophy to contain major texts from all three Western monotheistic traditions--Christianity, Judaism, and Islam--and that claim remains true today. This new edition of this classic text of political philosophy--revised and enlarged by Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland--will make accessible to today's students the insights of these profound medieval thinkers.
Prior to the modern separation of religion from politics, these medieval thinkers explored a variety of approaches to the relation between religion and politics--approaches that prompted renewed interest in a world divided over how best to relate the two. For the authors gathered in this volume--including Alfarabi, Alghazali, Averroes, Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius of Dacia, and Dante Alighieri among many others--there was a greater uniformity of general intention than at any other period. All of these authors studied the works of classical political philosophy and considered in a variety of ways the implications of this political thought for their contemporary situation in a monotheistic religious community.
The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in the United States and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation first appeared in 1969.
This Princeton Classics edition of the abridged version includes Rosenthal's original introduction as well as a contemporary introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence. This volume makes available a seminal work of Islam and medieval and ancient history to twenty-first century audiences.
This long-awaited reissue of the 1969 Cornell edition of Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle contains Muhsin Mahdi's substantial original introduction and a new foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L. Pangle. The three parts of the book, "Attainment of Happiness," "Philosophy of Plato," and "Philosophy of Aristotle," provide a philosophical foundation for Alfarabi's political works.
Butterworth richly deserves to be congratulated for providing advanced students and scholars with authoritative, reliable, and readable translations of Alfarabi's important political writings. â- Choice
Alfarabi (ca. 870-950) founded the great tradition of Aristotelian/Platonic political philosophy in medieval Islamic and Arabic culture. In this second volume of political writings, Charles E. Butterworth presents translations of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Summary of Plato's Laws, accompanied by introductions that discuss the background for each work and explore its teaching.
In addition, the texts are carefully annotated to aid the reader in following Alfarabi's argument. An Arabic-English/English-Arabic glossary allows interested readers to verify the way particular words are translated. Throughout, Butterworth's method is to translate consistently the same Arabic word by the same English word, rendering Alfarabi's style in an unusually faithful and yet approachable manner.
Ibn Rushd, known to Christian Europe as Averroes, came from Córdoba in Spain and lived from 1126 to 1198. He is regarded as the last great Arab philosopher in the Classical tradition, and, under the patronage of the Almohad ruler Abu Ya'quib Yusuf, was a very prolific one. The Tahafut al-Tahafut, written not long after 1180, is his major work and the one in which his original philosophical doctrine is to be found. It takes the form of a refutation of Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), a work begun in 1095 which attacked philosophical speculation and declared some of the beliefs of the Philosophers to be contrary to Islam. Averroes sets his Aristotelian views in contrast with the Neo-Platonist ones attributed to the philosophers by Ghazali.
Published in the UNESCO Collection of Great Works under the auspices of the Gibb Memorial Trust and the International Commission for the Translation of Great Works.