History of Philosophy in Islam: IV. The Neo-Platonic Aristotelians of the East: 1. Kindi

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IV. THE NEO-PLATONIC ARISTOTELIANS OF THE EAST.

1. KINDI. 1

1. Kindi is related in various ways to the Mutazilite Dialecticians and the Neo-Pythagorean Natural-Philosophers of his time, and we might therefore have dealt with him among the latter, even before Razi (v. III, 1, § 5). But yet tradition with one accord represents him as the first Peripatetic in Islam. What justification exists for this traditionary view will be seen in what follows, so far as an inference can be drawn from the few and imperfectly-preserved writings of this philosopher which have come down to us.

Abu Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (i.e. of the tribe of Kinda) was of Arabian origin, and therefore was called the "Arabian" philosopher, to distinguish him from the numerous non-Arab associates of his, who had taken to the study of secular wisdom. He traced his genealogy to the old Kinda princes, although whether he was entitled to do so we need not seek to decide. The South-Arabian tribe of Kinda was

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2. Kindi was a man of extraordinary erudition, a Polyhistor: he had absorbed the whole learning and culture of his time. But although he may have set down and communicated observations of his own as a geographer, a historian of civilization and a physician, he was in no respect a creative genius. His theological views bear a Mutazilite stamp. He wrote specially on Man's power of action, and the time of its appearance, i.e. whether it was before the act or whether it was synchronous with the act. The righteousness and the unity of God he expressly emphasized. In opposition

1: first the Spirit which is ever real,--the Cause and the Essence of all that is spiritual in the world,--thus without doubt God or the First Spirit produced; second, Spirit as the Reasoning capacity or Potentiality of the human soul; third, as the Habit or actual possession of the soul, which it can make use of at any moment, just as, for example, the writer can make use of his art; fourth and last, as Activity, by which a reality within the soul may be carried over to the reality that is without. The Activity last named appears, according to Kindi, to be the act of Man himself, while to the First Cause,--to the ever-existing Spirit,--he ascribes the carrying of Potentiality into Habit, or the realisation of the Possible. The real Spirit or Mind we have thus received from above, and the third ‘aql is therefore called ‘aql mustafad, (Lat. intellectus adeptus sive adquisitus). The fundamental view of antiquity,--that all our knowledge about things must come from a source outside of us--, runs, in the form of this doctrine of the ‘aql mustafad or Spirit which we receive from above, through the whole of Arabian Philosophy, and thence passes into Christian Philosophy. Unfortunately the theory is nearly correct, as far as this philosophy is itself concerned, for the

6. Let us now sum up: Kindi is a Mutazilite theologian and Neo-Platonic philosopher with Neo-Pythagorean additions. Socrates, the martyr of Athenian heathenism, is his ideal: on him, his fate and his teaching he has composed several works; and he seeks to combine Plato and Aristotle in Neo-Platonic fashion.

Tradition nevertheless calls him the first who followed Aristotle in his writings; and assuredly this representation is not altogether unfounded. In the long list of his works Aristotle takes a prominent place. He was not satisfied with merely translating him, but he studied his translated works and endeavoured to improve and explain them. At

Footnotes

97:1 Cf. my Article "On Kindi and his School" in Stein's 'Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie XIII', p. 153 sqq., from which I have taken over, without much alteration, not a little that appears in this chapter.

99:1 [Translator's note.--The Bagdad Caliphate lasted up to the death of Mustassim (A.H. 656 or A.D. 1258), i.e. for 400 Mohammedan years after A.H. 256 or A.D. 870].

103:1 The Arabic ‘aql (νοῦς) is usually translated by Reason and Intelligence (Lat. intellectus and intelligentia). I prefer however the rendering, Geist, Spirit or Mind, because the expression includes God and the pure (separate) spirits of the spheres. Moreover it is hard to decide how far the personification of Reason was carried by individual thinkers.