Suchergebnisse

Metaphysics as Rhetoric -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The uniqueness of the Summary of Plato's ""Laws"" -- 2. Alfarabi's unmethodical method of reading Plato -- 3. Alfarabi's access to the Laws -- 4. The Summary's textual tradition: The contemporary debate -- 5. This book's structure -- 6. This book's audience -- Part I. Metaphysics as Rhetorical Foundation of Law -- 1. The Roots of Laws -- 1. Jurisprudence and kalam -- 2. Why are the roots the theme of the Laws and the Summary ? -- 3. How philosophical kalam becomes misconstrued as metaphysical doctrine

Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy. Strauss recovered that great tradition of thought largely lost to the West by beginning his study of classical thought with its teaching on politics rather than its metaphysics. What brought Strauss to this way of reading the classics, however, was a discovery he made as a young political scientist studying the obscure texts of Islamic and Jewish medieval political thought. In this volume, Joshua Parens examines Strauss's investigations of medieval political philosophy, offering interpretations of his writings on the great thinkers of that tradition, including interpretations of his most difficult writings on Alfarabi and Maimonides. In addition Parens explicates Strauss's statements on Christian medieval thought and his argument for rejecting the Scholastic paradigm as a method for interpreting Islamic and Jewish thought. Contrasting Scholasticism with Islamic and Jewish medieval political philosophy, Parens clarifies the theme of Strauss's thought, what Strauss calls the "theologico-political problem," and reveals the significance of medieval political philosophy in the Western tradition. Joshua Parens is professor of philosophy and politics and dean of the Braniff Graduate School at the University of Dallas

Intro -- An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction -- ALFARABI'S LIFE AND HIS INFLUENCE -- ALFARABI'S MANNER OF WRITING -- OVERVIEW -- 2. The Impossibility of the City in the Republic -- KALLIPOLIS AS IDEAL STATE OR TOTALITARIAN NIGHTMARE? -- THE THREE WAVES AND THE PROBLEM OF POSSIBILITY -- The First Wave -- The Second Wave -- The Digression on War -- The Third Wave -- 3. The A Fortiori Argument -- ALFARABI ON THE REPUBLIC IN THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS: EDUCATING PHILOSOPHER-KINGS TO RULE THE INHABITED WORLD, THE CHALLENGE -- TENSION IN THE "UNITY OF THE VIRTUES": HARD VS. SOFT -- THE UNEASY PEACE BETWEEN PRUDENCE ANDWISDOM -- 4. Alfarabi on Jihâd -- FROM ÎMÂN VS. KUFR TO ISLÂM VS. HÓ ARB -- ALFARABI'S APHORISMS ON JIHÂD -- Aphorisms 67 and 79 -- Aphorisms 11-16 -- Aphorisms 68-76 -- ALFARABI'S ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS ON JIHÂD -- CHALLENGES TO COMPELLING GOOD CHARACTER -- 5. The Multiplicity Argument -- THE INCREASING TENDENCY TOWARD CONQUEST AND DOMINATION -- THE TASK OF DELIBERATION:SHAPING A MULTIPLICITY OF CHARACTERS -- THE TASK OF THEORETICAL VIRTUE: SHAPING A MULTIPLICITY OF OPINIONS -- RELIGION AS AN IMITATION OF PHILOSOPHY -- 6. The Limits of Knowledge and the Problem of Realization -- KNOWLEDGE AND EXPLOITATION -- Attainment of Happiness -- The Philosophy of Aristotle: The Limits of Our Knowledge of Final Causes -- CERTAINTY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSALS AND PARTICULARS -- THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE INHERENT MULTIPLICITY OF RELIGION -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Author/Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z -- Index of Passages from Alfawarabi's Attainment of Happiness.

For many students of contemporary Arab politics, the most pressing question is whether Islam will become democratic. One need only point to the case of Algeria to find ready evidence that Islamic movements have already become highly democratic, although frustrated in their electoral objective. Leonard Binder (1989), however, asks a far more pressing question: Will Islam become liberal?As Tocqueville shows, democracy or the love of equality comes easily to citizens of modernity. The love of liberty, however, is a far more difficult love to cultivate. Yet, without this love of liberty, modern democracy comes to embody arguably the most oppressive tyranny in the history of the human race, the tyranny of the majority. In the aristocratic past, such an extraordinarily powerful and omnipresent tyranny was not possible. Thus, it becomes apparent just how pressing is Binder's question about the prospects for Islamic liberalism.Although Binder's answer to this question could hardly be characterized as overly optimistic, Binder does harbor some hope for Islamic liberalism. He proposes a synthesis of Fazlur Rahman's Gadamerian version of Islam and the pragmatic liberalism of Richard Rorty. Although it is not difficult to show an affinity between Gadamer and Rorty, it is difficult to show that Islam is tending in the direction of acquiring Rahman's understanding of it. It is even more difficult to show that pragmatism is truly liberal. Although Binder points the way to an "Islamic pragmatism," I hope to show that he fails to point the way to an "Islamic liberalism." Binder's pragmatism cannot avoid the tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville warns us can be fought only with the love of liberty.

When Kant first used the term "culture," he referred to the human capacity to will universal moral laws. Multiculturalists object to the denial of "difference" implicit in Kantian as well as all other Enlightenment forms of universalism. Their objection stems from their more particularistic understanding of culture, which for the most part everyone shares today. Plato is frequently said to be the fount of (universal) natural law theory; yet a medieval Muslim philosopher, Alfarabi, presents a Plato who denies moral universalism but acknowledges the possibility of some form of universalism, at least in the realm of knowledge. Alfarabi's Plato thereby provides a corrective for both extreme contemporary particularism and extreme Kantian universalism.