East-Islamic philosophy

If the development of European medieval philosophy developed by Christianity and justifies its ideology, in another cultural region - the Middle East and Central Asian - becoming philosophy occurred in parallel with the emergence and development of Islam. The philosophy of the Muslim East has also been entirely focused on developing of Islam. The creators of the medieval muslim culture, along with the Arabs were Persians, Jews, Turks, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, that is, all the nations that were part of the Arab Caliphate. Therefore, medieval philosophy Eastern nations called the Arabic-speaking.

In the era of the Prophet Muhammad (570 - 632) scattered and conflicting Arab tribes were united under the banner of a new religion - Islam. By the beginning of VII century. A huge multinational state extending from Turkestan to Spain - the Arab Caliphate, in which the Arabs occupied a privileged position, and Islam has been the dominant state religion.

Muslim philosophy arose as a result of contact with Europe. In the IX century, it takes a broad acquaintance with Arab science and philosophical heritage of antiquity. The focus is the philosophy of Aristotle with its predominant interest and questions of natural science and logic. "Neoplatonic" Aristotelianism and formed the basis of the teachings that have developed in line with the leading trends in medieval muslim philosophy - Eastern peripatetism. There is no contradiction here was not. Islam is in many ways reminiscent of Christianity: it is a religion that prescribes belief in one God and deny the existence of other deities. For this reason, the contact between European philosophy and Arab philosophy was quite possible.

A distinctive feature of muslim philosophy is that it is less than the European philosophy, was interested in abstract questions. Thinking Arabs have always been more specific, while Europeans tend to abstract reasoning. But it is also not to say that the Arab world or the East have never sought to know the world through the construction of theories.Unlike Western Middle East, the Muslim world, especially in VII-X centuries. It is flourishing of philosophy and sciences such as algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, optics, chemistry, geography, zoology, botany, medicine, psychology, etc.

A great contribution to the development of special sciences have scholars such as Al-Khwarizmi, Al Biruni, Ibn Sina, Omar Hayami et al., For example, Biruni, one of the first to put forward the hypothesis of rotational motion of the Earth around its axis, to substantiate the idea of ​​the existence of many worlds, and so on etc.

Philosophers and scientists of the East influenced the formation of the ideology of Western philosophy and science. After the Muslim East and West became acquainted with the heritage of ancient culture; Western world learned obAl-Farabi, Balasaguni, Kashgar, and others.

Al-Farabi

Al-Farabi (870-950) owns about 100 works on philosophy and history of science. He proceeded from the fact that the means of knowledge is science, which is divided into theoretical (logic, philosophy and natural sciences) and practical (ethics and politics). Superiority in the sciences, he gives logic that allows a person to distinguish the true from the false knowledge. Hence the philosopher attaches great importance to the human mind.This philosophy allows a person to understand the essence of being. It is "one" and at the same time - "a lot." This state of being is the result of emanation, ie expiration of various "media of being" out "single." The world itself appears at the Al-Farabi in the form of nine prisoners in each other spheres, the celestial sphere, where the souls live acting cause the rotation of the spheres around the Earth. The movement of the sphere-firmaments received from first impulse.

Al-Farabi used the Aristotelian doctrine of form and matter to explain the diversity of the world. He did not agree with Plato on the issue of immortality of the soul, for he considered her appearance and death simultaneously with the appearance of the body and death. Hence the theory of knowledge at the Al-Farabi - is not a theory of memory, like Plato, and the theory of knowledge of the world in the unity of the senses and the mind, when the rational soul understands the nature of things, using the testimony of the senses. The essence of things the knowledge of the mind, which should primarily be based on logic, but use the material supplied by the senses.

Although Al-Farabi admits the existence of God as being the root cause and prime mover, his philosophy expresses the desire to understand the complex issues of knowledge and being. That is why the philosopher so thoroughly explores the state of being, its forms: simple elements - air, fire, earth, water; as well as minerals, plants, animals, humans and celestial bodies. Thus, it emphasizes the objective existence of the external world. His philosophical views had the strongest influence on the development of Arabic philosophy.

As a philosopher, Al-Farabi was a founder of his own school of early Islamic philosophy known as "Farabism" or "Alfarabism", though it was later overshadowed by Avicennism. Al-Farabi's school of philosophy "breaks with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle moves from metaphysics to methodology, a move that anticipates modernity", and "at the level of philosophy, Alfarabi unites theory and practice [... and] in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory". His Neoplatonic theology is also more than just metaphysics as rhetoric. In his attempt to think through the nature of a First Cause, Alfarabi discovers the limits of human knowledge".

Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries and was widely considered second only to Aristotle in knowledge (alluded to by his title of "the Second Teacher") in his time. His work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna).

Al-Farabi also wrote a commentary on Aristotle's work, and one of his most notable works is Al-Madina al-Fadila (اراء اهل المدينة الفاضلة و مضاداتها) where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato's The Republic. Al-Farabi represented religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. Al-Farabi incorporated the Platonic view, drawing a parallel from within the Islamic context, in that he regarded the ideal state to be ruled by the prophet-imam, instead of the philosopher-king envisaged by Plato. Al-Farabi argued that the ideal state was the city-state of Medina when it was governed by the prophet Muhammad as its head of state, as he was in direct communion with Allah whose law was revealed to him.