al-Kindī

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Al-Kindī

Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī ( Arabic أبو يعقوب بن إسحاق الكندي, DMG Abū Yaʿqūb bin Isḥāq al-Kindī ), short al-Kindī , German also Alkendi , Latinized Alkindus (* around 800 in Kufa ; † 873 in Baghdad ), was an Arab philosopher , scientist , mathematician , doctor , musician and writer.

In terms of the history of philosophy, he is important - besides his own contributions - also because of his translation work. In Baghdad he had numerous writings a. a. by Aristotle , Plato , Alexander von Aphrodisias and Johannes Philoponos translate into Arabic. Aristotle's writings on natural philosophy in particular were received by him. His treatise On the Intellect was widely received by Arab and Latin intellectuals for centuries. Theological debates were also influenced by his concepts.

Life

Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī (from the Kinda tribe ) was of Arab descent and was therefore called "the Arab philosopher" by his many non-Arab comrades and colleagues (they were mostly Persians ). He himself traces his family tree back to the old Kinda princes, which cannot be proven, but suggests that he came from a wealthy family. He was born around 800 in Kufa , where his father was governor . The aforementioned wealth of his ancestors led on the one hand to a very educated and well-versed tribe, from which al-Kindī benefited in his training, and later to the opportunity to employ a large number of translators. He spent most of his life in Baghdad , which at that time was the ultimate cultural center of the Islamic world and enabled him to deal with a wide variety of cultures and teachings . He is also considered to be one of the first great "translators", as he had a large part of the work of Aristotle , Plato and Neoplatonism translated. al-Kindī himself built his own works on this. He had access to the court of the caliph , even if it is not recorded in what position. At times he may have fallen out of favor, his library was confiscated for a time and the lack of his exact birth and death years suggests that he may have died in a subordinate position.

He was known not only as a philosopher , but also as a doctor , medical writer and pharmacologist ( he thought little of alchemy, however), astrologer , mathematician , physicist , geographer and prince tutor at the court of al-Ma'mūn . For a long time he was also considered a theologian , primarily because of his attempts to unite philosophy and religion . In fact, he was very close to the mu'tazilist school - or rather this to him, as it is known as the rationalist Islamic school. Al-Kindī probably died around the year 870. In research, the corresponding assumptions vary from 866 to “after 870” to 873.

Works and Philosophy

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The philosophical work of al-Kindī was mainly shaped by his many translations, which he usually corrected himself. This is also followed by developments in his independent works. A proximity to Plato and texts in the tradition of Neoplatonism , but also to Aristotle , whose works occupy a strong position in Kindī's library , is increasingly recognizable .

About the first philosophy

In his main work "On the First Philosophy", the influences of Aristotle are particularly clear. It is divided into four sections:

  • In the first part he defines the framework of the investigation and explains that the task of the philosopher is the search for truth, i.e. the search for the causes of matter (al-'unsur) , form (al-sura) , genus (al-dzins) and type (al-nau'a) of things (based on Aristotle's " metaphysics ").
  • In the second part the perspective changes and Kindī explains that the world is finite and the infinity of the world is only a power . He shows that the dimensions of space are finite (based on Aristotle's "Above the Sky"), but also that time is finite (here he goes a step further) and must therefore have a beginning in time (based on John Philoponos ).
  • In the third part he explains the existence of God with the argument that the multiplicity of things that can be perceived by the senses is based on the existence of the original One (based on the Neo-Platonist Proclus ).
  • In the fourth part Kindī describes God and uses a negative theology in the sense of late Neoplatonism (based on Proclus); The text is again concluded with a phrase: The distant and unknown God did not effect our world from eternity , but rather in time from nothing (based on the religious dogma of creation from nothing).

His actual philosophy was initially based on mathematics ; there are number games in his writings. After him no one could become a “philosopher” without having studied mathematics or logic . Nevertheless, the world for him is a work of God, whose work is mediated from above downwards: everything higher affects the lower, but not what is caused on its cause (which is above him on the level of being). This creates a continuous causality in the world, the knowledge of which makes it possible to predict the future. The world consists of the (divine) spirit , the (material) body world and the soul that is in between. The human soul is an outflow of this world soul , therefore bound to the body in its effects , but independent in its spiritual nature. The soul has come down into the world of the senses with an inkling of its original state, and is therefore not at home here. She can only find redemption again in the ascent into the spiritual world , where all her needs are satisfied. To do this, however, she has to free herself from all material and physical desires - clear Islamic elements find their way here again.

About the intellect

The most essential own work (independent of the templates from Islam or Greek philosophy ) is likely to be “About the Intellect”, which has most of its own concepts, even if it is again based on Aristotle 's “About the Soul” and some late antique commentators ( Alexander von Aphrodisias , Themistios and Johannes Philoponos ) leans on. It is about Aristotle's distinction between active and passive intellect . If the commentators could not find out the reason for this, Kindî defined : the active intellect is the cause and the universal principle of all intellects and it is the spontaneity of thought and without rest. Thinking is built up in three stages:

  • The potential intellect (man's ability to think)
  • The acquired intellect (the ability of a person to be able to do something - for example, to write - but not to actually exercise it; also called updated intellect)
  • The visible intellect (the human ability to apply the knowledge acquired; also called demonstrative intellect)

These three levels are forms of the passive (receptive) intellect. So you can order the four intellects (i.e. the active and the passive with its three intermediate levels) chronologically. This is adopted by many other philosophers, including in Europe.

Definitions of Philosophical Terms

Another important work by Kindī is the definitions of the terms . As mentioned, he always corrected the translations he had commissioned himself. Among other things, a work on the definition of the term "philosophy" was created, which also characterizes his philosophy. It is a definition of six points of view:

  • Etymologically , philosophy is the "love of wisdom"
  • Philosophy is the endeavor to assimilate oneself to divine deeds according to the measure of human ability (what is philosophy about?)
  • Philosophy is concern about death, namely on the one hand concern about the exit of the soul from the body and on the other hand concern about killing desire (goals of philosophy)
  • Philosophy is the art of the arts and the wisdom of wisdom (origin of philosophy)
  • Things are either physical or incorporeal. The human being consists of body, soul and Akzidenzia ( attributes ) and the soul afterwards consists of substance . In order to know his substance, man must know himself. If man recognizes all of his three components, he recognizes the whole world (philosophy as self-knowledge of man)
  • Philosophy is the knowledge of the eternal universals , their essence and their causes, as far as this is possible for humans (philosophy from reading)

Kindī was considered the first Islamic Aristotelian , even if, in contrast to Aristotle, he assumed a finite world. But a big mistake happened with the translations under his direction. The Enneads of Plotinus (rather Platonic ) are erroneously attributed to Aristotle as “theology of Aristotle” and mistaken for “Neoplatonic Aristotelianism” in Islamic philosophy. This mistake will only be noticed much later and runs through the history of Islamic philosophy.

Cryptology

The first page of al-Kindī's manuscript on cryptanalysis

In addition, al-Kindī also dealt with cryptology . He is considered one of the pioneers in the field of cryptanalysis , that is the art of turning a ciphertext without knowledge of the encryption used key to the original plain text to win. He wrote the first known treatise on cryptanalysis, which was only rediscovered in 1987 in Istanbul's Süleiman-Osman Archives. It is entitled “Treatise on the deciphering of cryptographic messages”, in which Kindī showed how the monoalphabetic substitution , which was still considered “unbreakable” in Europe at the time , could be broken using the statistical method of frequency analysis. The crucial passage from Kindī's handwriting reads:

“One way to decipher an encrypted message, assuming we know its language, is to find some other plaintext in the same language, long enough to fill a sheet or two, and then count the number of times each Letter occurs. We call the most frequent letter the "first", the second most frequent the "second", the following the "third" and so on, until we have counted all letters in the plain text sample. Then we look at the ciphertext that we want to decipher and also order its symbols. We find the most common symbol and give it the shape of the "first" letter of the plaintext sample, the second most frequent symbol becomes the "second" letter, the third most common becomes the "third" letter, and so on, until we have all the symbols of the cryptogram we want to decipher assigned in this way. "

expenditure

  • About the first philosophy
    • AL Ivry: Al-Kindi's Metaphysics , State University of New York 1974, ISBN 0-87395-092-5 . In addition to the translation of al-falsafa al-ula (The First Philosophy) in the edition of AH Abû Rîdah, 2 vols., Cairo, 1950-53 into English, it contains a broad commentary with evidence of references to the metaphysics of Aristotle and a short historical one Introduction to this topic.
  • Peter E. Pormann, Peter Adamson: The Philosophical Works of al-Kindi . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-906280-5 .
  • Jean Jolivet, Roshdi Rashed : Oeuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d'al-Kindī, Leiden: Brill, 2 volumes 1997
  • Roshdi Rashed: L'Optique et la Catoptrique d'al-Kindi, Leiden: Brill 1997

literature

Web links

Works
Secondary literature
Different materials

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrun R. Hau: al-Kindī (Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 750.
  2. ↑ Alfred Siggel : Al-Kindī's paper on the compound remedies. In: Sudhoff's archive. Volume 37, 1953, pp. 389-393.
  3. ↑ Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq [digital edition].
  4. ↑ Simon Singh: Secret Messages . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 33. ISBN 3-446-19873-3
  5. ↑ Simon Singh: Secret Messages . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 35. ISBN 3-446-19873-3
personal data
SURNAME al-Kindī
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī; Alkindus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Arab scientist, mathematician, doctor and musician
DATE OF BIRTH around 800
PLACE OF BIRTH Kufa
DATE OF DEATH 873
Place of death Baghdad