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al-Kindi, Abu
Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq (d. c.866-73)
al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq (d.
c.866-73) Practically unknown in the
Western world, al-Kindi has an
honoured place in the Islamic world
as the ‘philosopher of the
Arabs’. Today he might be viewed
as a bridge between Greek
philosophers and Islamic philosophy.
Part of the brilliant ninth-century
‘Abbasid court at Baghdad,
composed of literati of all types,
he served as tutor for the
caliph’s son. He gained insights
into the thought of Greek
philosophers, especially Aristotle,
through the translation movement;
although he did not make
translations himself, he corrected
them and used them advantageously in
his own thought. Al-Kindi is notable
for his work on philosophical
terminology and for developing a
vocabulary for philosophical thought
in Arabic, although his ideas were
superseded by Ibn Sina in the
eleventh century. The debate about
the allowability of philosophy in
terms of orthodox Islam also began
with al-Kindi, a battle that is
usually considered to have been won
for religion by al-Ghazali. Like
other innovators, his ideas may no
longer appear revolutionary, but in
his own day, to push for the
supremacy of reason and for the
importance of a ‘foreign
science’ - philosophy - as opposed
to an ‘Arab science’ -grammar,
Qur’anic studies - was quite
astonishing. When the Khalif al-Mutawwakil
came to power and sought to restore
traditionalism, al-Kindi suffered a
reversal of fortunes. 1 Logic and
translation Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn
Ishaq al-Kindi was an ethnic Arab
(died in Baghdad between AH
252-60/AD 866-73), with an
illustrious lineage going back to
such near-mythic Arabian families as
Qays. Al-Kindi was known as ‘the
philosopher of the Arabs’ in
contrast to the later Islamic
philosophers who, though Muslim,
were not Arabs and often learned
Arabic as a second language. The
early bio-bibliographers gave his
ancestry and a long list of works,
many of which are no longer extant,
but his personal life remains
unknown. Although he is remembered
for introducing philosophy to the
‘Abbasid court, his skills covered
many fields including medicine,
mathematics, music, astrology and
optics. He also served as tutor to
the son of the Khalif al-Mu‘tasim.
Al-Qifti, one of the medieval
Islamic bio-bibliographers,
pointedly asserted that al-Kindi was
skilled in the arts of the Greeks,
the Persians and the Hindus. Al-Kindi
used early, Arabic-language
translations of Greek philosophy,
which enabled him to add part of the
Hellenistic tradition to his
programme. The founding of the bayt
al-hikma (house of wisdom), for the
large-scale translation of documents
from Greek, in the early ninth
century meant both that the
‘foreign sciences’ were
available wholesale to Arabophone
scholars and that there was serious
interest in the knowledge they
contained. Al-Kindi was occasionally
credited (in the title inscription)
with correcting the translation, but
it is generally accepted that he did
not read Greek himself. The pursuit
of ‘foreign sciences’ was also
politically acceptable at this
juncture, which ceased to be the
case later. A study of his
terminology shows that al-Kindi was
aware of particular terms used in
Hellenistic philosophy, and of which
Arabic word best expressed the same
idea. Al-Kindi may be thought of as
a stage-setter for philosophy in the
Islamic world, laying out terms qua
terms and redirecting the
metaphysical concerns suggested by
the mutakallimun (theologians) from
the realm of religion to that of
philosophy. His lack of interest in
religious argument can be seen in
the topics on which he wrote. These
topics were ontological, but he
generally refrained from
eschatological discussions on topics
such as the resurrection, the last
day and the last judgment. Even in
his ethical treatise he dealt with
the disciplined life in which a
person might find interior serenity
in their current life, rather than
an emphasis on reward in the
hereafter. Scholars have sometimes
thought of al-Kindi as a Mu‘tazili
sympathizer, but this has not been
proved; he appears rather to coexist
with the worldview of orthodox
Islam. Al-Kindi’s work on
definition is Fi hudud al-ashya’
wa-rusumiha (On the Definitions of
Things and their Descriptions).
Through the terms he chose to define
- finitude, creation, the first
cause - we can see where the
constructs of Islamic philosophy
diverged from their Greek
predecessors. In the eleventh
century the Kitab al-hudud
(Book of Definitions) of Ibn
Sina replaced al-Kindi’s work;
this was considerably more advanced,
both in its definitions and in its
organization of the world into a
concise ontological schema. 2
Metaphysics Al-Kindi’s best known
treatise is the metaphysical study,
Fi al-falsafa al-ula (On First
Philosophy). Aristotelian influence
can be seen in certain elements,
such as the four causes. However he
is Aristotelian only up to a point.
The point of divergence is reached
over the question of the origin of
the world. Aristotle teaches the
eternity of the world; Al-Kindi
propounds creation ex nihilo. The
later philosophers, such as al-Farabi,
are usually considered to understand
Aristotle more accurately; they had
the advantage of better translations
and a greater number of works. In Fi
al-falsafa al-ula, al-Kindi
described the first philosophy,
which is also the mostnoble and
highest philosophy, as the knowledge
of the first truth, including the
cause of every truth (the first
cause). The first cause is prior in
time because it is the cause of
time. By the study of philosophy,
people will learn the knowledge of
things in reality, and through this
the knowledge of the divinity of God
and his unity. They will also learn
human virtue. Throughout many of his
treatises, al-Kindi emphasizes the
importance of the intellect (‘aql)
and contrasts it with matter. He
also discusses the One Truth, which
is another name for God, and states
that it does not have any
attributes, predicates or
characteristics. This view is
consonant with the Mu‘tazili
declaration of the unity of God as
being strictly without attributes,
and consequently al-Kindi has
sometimes been deemed to be a
Mu‘tazili by scholars. Other
aspects of his position include
emphasis on the absolute unity of
God, his power -particularly as
creator - and creation ex nihilo.
The Eternal, that is God, is not due
to another; he has no cause and has
neither genus nor species. There is
no ‘before’ for the Eternal. The
Eternal is unchanging, immutable and
imperishable. In human terms, death
is the soul’s taking leave of the
body, which it employed during life.
For al-Kindi, the intellect
continues. Perhaps the soul is
primarily the locus of the
intellect. He reiterated in his
ethical treatise the idea that
humans must choose the world of the
intellect over the material world
(see §3). Al-Kindi differs from the
Hellenistic philosophical tradition
primarily in espousing the belief
that the world was created ex nihilo.
In Aristotelian metaphysics the
Prime Mover set the world in motion,
but in the Hellenistic tradition,
time and motion are intrinsically
linked. Matter set in motion is
eternally existing, since it exists
before motion (and therefore before
time). In this system, time is
defined as the extension of the
series of movements. Thus time
begins with movement. In al-Kindi’s
system, matter, time and movement
are all finite, with a beginning and
a cessation at some future point.
Other subjects that concern al-Kindi
can be seen from his titles,
including Fi wahdaniya Allah wa
tunahiy jirm al-‘alam (On the
Unity of God and the Limitation of
the Body of the World), and Fi
kammiya kutub Aristutalis wa ma
yahtaj ilahi fi tahsil al-falsafa
(The Quantity of the Books of
Aristotle and What is Required for
the Acquisition of Philosophy). In
his philosophical writings, al-Kindi
does not so much direct arguments to
the concerns of religion as avoid
them altogether, instead describing
a parallel universe of philosophy.
He consistently tries to show that
the pursuit of philosophy is
compatible with orthodox Islam. The
mutakallimun had previously
speculated on questions about
matter, atoms and substance, which
he also considers. Another reason
for the claim that he was a
Mu‘tazili was his persecution by
the Khalif al-Mutawwakil, who
instigated a reactionary policy
against the Mu‘tazili and a return
to traditionalism (see Ash‘ariyya
and Mu‘tazila). Al-Kindi was
caught in the general net of the
Khalif’s anti-intellectualism; the
Kindian emphasis is always on
rationalism, an attitude which the
orthodox establishment of a revealed
religion is bound to find inimical.
3 Ethics Al-Kindi’s ethics and
practical philosophy are most
discussed in a treatise Fi al-hila
li-daf‘ al-ahzan (On the Art of
Averting Sorrows), of questionable
authenticity. Fehmi Jadaane (1968)
argues that al-Kindi was strongly
influenced by the Stoic tradition,
particularly the thought of
Epictetus, which was known
throughout the Islamic world at the
time through contact with Syriac
Christian scholars, if not through
specific texts. Epictetus emphasized
the importance of freedom from the
world and human beings’ status as
agents, who through their ultimate
independence were responsible for
their own happiness and independent
of others. His last logical step,
however, was that suicide was
permissible if life was no longer
worth living. This last idea is not
repeated in al-Kindi. Like the
writings of the Stoics, al-Kindi’s
treatise, which is of the
‘consolation of philosophy’
type, exhorts readers to concentrate
on the life of the mind and the
soul, not of the body (see Stoicism
Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Version 1.0, London:
Routledge
List of works
al-Kindi (before 873) Rasa’il al-Kindi al-falsafiya
(Philosophical Treatises of al-Kindi),
ed.M.A. Abu Ridah, 2 vols in 1,
Cairo, 1953.(The standard collection
of al-Kindi’s treatises, with
introductory notes in Arabic. al-Kindi
(before 873) Fi al-falsafa al-ula
(On First Philosophy), ed. and
trans. A.L. Ivry, Al-Kindi’s
Metaphysics: A translation of
Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi’s
Treatise ‘On First Philosophy’,
Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1974.(A clear account of
al-Kindi’s metaphysics with
English translation.) al-Kindi
(before 873) Risalah fi al-hilah
li-daf‘ al-ahzan (On the Art of
Averting Sorrows), ed. and trans. H.
Ritter and R. Walzer, ‘Uno scritto
morale inedito di al-Kindi’,
Memorie della Reale Accademia
nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, Series
VI, 8 (1), 1938, 47-62.(Text and
Italian translation.) al-Kindi
(before 873) Fi hudud al-ashya’
wa-rusumiha (On the Definitions of
Things and their Descriptions), ed.
M.A. Abu Ridah in Rasa’il al-Kindi
al-falsafiya, Cairo, 1953; trans.
D. Gimaret in Cinq épîtres, Paris: Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, 1976.
(Al-Kindi’s treatise on
definitions.) al-Kindi (before 873)
Fi wahdaniya allah wa tunahiy jirm
al-‘alam (On the Unity of God and
the Limitation of the Body of the
World), ed. M.A. Abu Ridah in
Rasa’il al-Kindi al-falsafiya,
Cairo, 1953.(Al-Kindi on the nature
of God.) al-Kindi (before 873) Fi
kammiya kutub Aristutalis wa ma
yahtaj ilahi fi tahsil al-falsafa
(The Quantity of the Books of
Aristotle and What is Required for
the Acquisition of Philosophy), ed.
M.A. Abu Ridah in Rasa’il al-Kindi
al-falsafiya, Cairo, 1953.(Writings
on Aristotle.) References and
further reading Gimaret, D. (1976)
Cinq ةpîtres
(Five Treatises), Paris: Centre
National de la Recherche
Scientifique. (An excellent French
translation with commentary of five
treatises by al-Kindi. There are
unfortunately very few English
translations of al-Kindi’s works.)
Jadaane, F. (1968) L’Influence du
stoïcisme sur la pensée musulmane
(The Influence of Stoicism on Muslim
Thought), Beirut: Dar el-Machreq.(An
interesting argument for Stoic,
rather than merely Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic influence, on the
Islamic philosophers.) Jolivet, J.
(1971) L’Intellect selon Kindi,
Leiden: Brill.(A classic work:
extensive commentary and French
translation of al-Kindi’s treatise
on the intellect.) Klein-Franke, F.
(1996) ‘Al-Kindi’, in S.H. Nasr
and O. Leaman (eds) History of
Islamic Philosophy, London:
Routledge, ch. 11, 165-77.(Account
of the role of al-Kindi as the first
Muslim philosopher, and in
particular the links between his
philosophy and contemporary theology
and understanding of Greek thought.)
Moosa, M. (1967) ‘Al-Kindi’s
Role in the Transmission of Greek
Knowledge to the Arabs’, Journal
of the Pakistan Historical Society
15 (1): 3-18.(Good discussion of
‘The Quantity of the Books
of Aristotle’.) Rosenthal, F.
(1940) Review article of ‘Uno
scritto morale’, Orientalia IX:
182-91.(An interesting review of the
Ritter-Walzer treatise, still
important despite its age.) Stern,
S.M. (1959) ‘Notes on al-Kindi’s
Treatise on Definitions’, Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society parts 1
and 2: 32-43.(Considered a classic.)
Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Version 1.0, London:
Routledge
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