al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq

(d. c. 252/866)

   Dubbed the ‘philosopher of the Arabs’, al-Kindi is the first major figure in the Islamic philosophical tradition. A polymath who wrote extensively on medicine, mathematics, music, astrology and optics as well as philosophy, al-Kindi lived in Baghdad during the great cultural and intellectual expansion of the ‘Abbasid caliphate and played a notable role in the Greco-Islamic translation movement that it sponsored through the ‘House of Wisdom’ (bayt al-hikma). He is believed to have encouraged and corrected the translation of Pseudo-Aristotle’s Theology, which was enormously influential among the falasifa and led many thinkers to interpret Aristotle in the light of Neoplatonic metaphysics.

   Of the 260 works al-Kindi is believed to have authored, only a small percentage survive. His key extant work is On First Philosophy (Fi al-falsafa al-ula), which appropriates numerous Aristotelian concepts, translating, refining and supplementing them to accommodate the new concerns of a world shaped by Islam. Particularly noteworthy is his defense of philosophy against those who attack it in the name of religion. Al-Kindi legitimizes the retrieval of Greek insights by arguing that we must pursue knowledge regardless of the source, and seize upon the truth wherever we find it. He goes on famously to argue for the compatibility of philosophy and religion. When the two do occasionally diverge, al-Kindi appears to privilege the latter over the former: for instance, he rejects Aristotle’s claims about the eternity of the world in favor of the Qur’anic creation ex nihilo model. However, his concerns are ultimately more explicitly philosophical than those of the theologians with whom he is sometimes affiliated (due to his rationalism, his conception of God as having no attributes, and his political affiliations, some scholars have cast him as a Mu‘tazilite). The aim of the philosopher, according to al-Kindi, is not only to attain the truth insofar as it is possible, but also to act in accordance with it. Accordingly, his philosophy has a strong practical dimension, and he espouses a form of ethical perfectionism that draws from Socrates and the Stoics, emphasizing control of the passions and the sufficiency of virtue for happiness. Al-Kindi’s importance in the Islamic philosophical tradition consists first and foremost in his ambitious retrieval of Greek learning, his defense of reason, and the formative role he played in forging a philosophical vocabulary in Arabic.

   See Aristotle; creation vs. eternity of the world; ethics; metaphysics; Neoplatonism; philosophy; Socrates

   Further reading: Adamson 2006; Atiyeh 1966/77; Druart 1993; al-Kindi 1974, 2002