Origins Of Arab-Muslim Philosophy And Eastern Peripateticism

Abstract

This article examines the earliest stages in the formation of Arab-Muslim philosophy and the Eastern Peripatetic tradition. It analyses how the rise of Islam, early theological debates in kalām and the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific works created the intellectual conditions for a specifically Arab-Muslim form of rational inquiry. Special attention is given to the role of al-Kindī and al-Fārābī in adapting Aristotelian ideas to Islamic doctrines of divine unity, creation and human responsibility, thereby laying the foundations for later developments in Eastern Peripateticism