Modern Islamic Philosophy

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The beginning of Islamic modernism is generally on the invasion of Napoleon in Egypt moored 1798th The beginning of modern Islamic philosophy is identified in the 18th century . Within modern Islamic philosophy, three main currents can be distinguished:

  1. the philosophical reactions to western influences,
  2. the rediscovery of mystical and illuminationist philosophical concepts and
  3. the connection of non-Islamic and Islamic approaches.

Historical context

The Persian region experienced a heyday of Islamic philosophy in the 15th and 16th centuries with the Isfahan school . In the Arab world in the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophy was mainly taught as part of theological lessons, but it broke away from theology in 1867, when philosophy was introduced as an independent subject at the Azhar University in Cairo . In the 20th century philosophy became an academic discipline in its own right, and European philosophy was also included. However, its influence on the development of modern Islamic philosophy is difficult to assess. At the beginning of the century there were only a few translations by European philosophers and the choice of reading also depended heavily on the philosophy of the colonial powers, which was perceived as contemporary .

The Egyptian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte of 1798/99 marked the first direct clash of the Islamic world with western military superiority, colonial goals and western thinking of superiority (the "mission civilatrice" ). The political and economic dominance of Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to a self-interested policy of colonialism towards the countries of the Islamic world and their division into spheres of interest of the respective colonial powers, which the countries concerned had nothing to oppose. Overall, the far-reaching changes brought about by the European occupation and colonization also led modern thinkers to increasingly grapple with their own philosophical legacy.

Currents

Three main currents can be identified within modern Islamic philosophy. The first tendency is characterized by an examination of the Islamic philosophers with Western influences. Thinkers of this trend tried since the middle of the 19th century to differentiate and redefine Islamic philosophy from other influences. Representatives of the movement, for example, Hassan Hanafi and Muhammad al-Djabiri .

The second trend is the continuation and revival of the mystical and illuminationist philosophy tradition that goes back to the 12th century in Persia. The modern thinkers like Henry Corbin , Seyyed Hossein Nasr or Mehdi Hairi Yazdi stand in the illuminationist tradition, as it was founded by Schihab ad-Din Yahya Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra .

The third stream includes philosophers who explicitly include non-Islamic thoughts in their work, such as existentialist or Hegelian ideas.

Overall, it should be noted that there is also contemporary non-Islamic philosophy in this room, which is not dealt with here.

First Current: Reactions to the Challenges of the West

During the Christian Middle Ages , the Islamic world was much more advanced and modern in scientific, cultural and political issues. From the end of the 19th century it became increasingly clear that this relationship had been reversed. The search for the reasons for the obvious backwardness and for possibilities of modernization under the given political framework conditions of the Islamic world preoccupied the reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Turath Discourse

The approaches to deal more closely with one's own Islamic tradition and above all with the tradition of philosophy are summarized as the Turath discourse. The Arabic term "turath" ( al-Turath  /الــتـراث / 'Heritage') means (cultural) heritage. It was important to the thinkers of this debate to work up their own tradition themselves and not to use concepts brought up by the West. The discussion also dealt with the question of how one's own modernity should be designed.

Closely related to the concept of heritage is the search for authenticity or originality. The modern Arabic language has the term "asala" ( al-Asala  /اصالا / 'Authenticity, originality'). Asala, the assertion of identity, is a key concept in intellectual discussion, and the question of its realization is widely discussed. It arises from concern about a possible loss of culture through social change and the assertion of Islamic, especially Arab, identity in modern times.

Within this modern discourse, two movements can be identified that are concerned with reviving one's own religious heritage: the more liberal Nahda movement and the more conservative Salafist movement.

The Nahda movement (renaissance, rebirth) emerged in Greater Syria between 1850 and 1914 . The movement, which besides Syria mainly extended to Egypt , tried to unite the modern achievements of European culture with the principles of classical Islamic culture. The boom was not only related to philosophy, but to all areas of culture.

The position of the Salafiyya is based on the "ancestors" ( Arabic سلف Salaf's  ancestor; Predecessor'). The concept of ancestors, whose behavior should become the guideline for the modern Islamic world, is defined differently. In the strictest interpretation, the role model function is limited to the "Salaf aṣ-Ṣāliḥ" , the first three Muslim generations from Mohammed on, corresponding to the era of the "rightly guided" caliphs. Alternatively, the period of “Arab rationalism” up to the 13th century is used for orientation, which is associated with the names of the philosophers Ibn Sina and Ibn Ruschd , whose application or further development could lead to the connection to the scientific age. In addition to ibn Sina and ibn Ruschd, the rationalist school of Muʿtazila and the sociological and historical-philosophical approach of Ibn Chaldūn were rediscovered.

al-Afghani and the importance of religion

Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838–1897) was particularly concerned with the question of why the Islamic world had relatively fallen behind the West. In addition, in a historical-philosophical study , he developed his own idea of ​​what an Islamic modern concept might look like.

In al-Afghani's philosophy, Islam and religion in general occupy a central position. He criticized modern Western philosophy, especially the naturalistic and materialistic approaches that partially reject the existence of God . For him, religion is the driving force behind the human process of civilization and progress. The religion stimulates people to be peaceful and to suppress bad tendencies. This happens e.g. B. through the prospect of a higher, divine world. For al-Afghani, religion promotes progress as it leads to competition between different religious groups. According to al-Afghani, religious belief strengthens people's moral qualities, such as honesty and humility. Using selected cases from world history, he argues that great civilizations fell into disrepair whenever their moral and religious foundations eroded. For example, he explains the success of the Mongols in the Islamic world. He prophesied a similar end to the socialist and nihilistic movements, which give religion no place in their ideology .

Al-Afghani saw the relative backwardness of the Islamic world compared to western modernity as being due to the overwhelming power of the contemporary Islamic educated elite. He accused them of restricting the freedom of thought in Islam.

He saw the solution in a return to the roots of Islam. Al-Afghani argued that Islam has a rational basis and that this connection between rationality and religiosity is the solution for accessing modernity.

With his views, Al-Afghani initiated a branch of modernity, namely the “re-Islamization movement”. His students were Muhammad Abduh and Raschid Rida .

Al-Djabiri and the Critique of Arab Reason

The Moroccan philosopher Muhmamad abid al-Djabiri (* 1936) seeks access to modernity through deconstructivist methods. He sees the reason for the backwardness in the buried Arab identity . According to Djabiri, there is a tradition of rationalist thinking in Islam, but it is currently overlaid by other approaches. He would like to expose this Arab “ reason ” with the method of criticizing his own Islamic history. Here he orientates himself on the postmodern approaches like the criticism of Foucault or Derrida . For him the rational is the essential element of the Islamic heritage (turath) to which one should turn.

Djabiri argues that the eastern (mashriq) and western areas (maghrib) of the Islamic world have conceptually diverged. In the eastern world, in the further development of Avicenna, an irrational philosophy has developed that contains mystical, esoteric and spiritual elements such as the illuminationist philosophy of Suhrawardi or Mulla Sadras . In the western areas Djabiri describes a tradition of critical rationalism and culminated in the philosophy of Ibn Ruschd (Latinized Averroes ).

After Djabiri, irrational philosophical directions prevailed in the Islamic world and prevented an upswing in the sciences. The rational philosophy of Ibn Ruschd, on the other hand, had spread in Europe and encouraged a rational way of thinking there.

Djabiri sees in Ibn Ruschd's philosophy a connection between rationality and Islam, which for him is groundbreaking for modernity. For Djabiri, the result is an approach to modernity that is specifically Islamic and not overlaid by Western concepts of rationality. Djabiri's philosophy is quite popular in the Arab world.

Hasan Hanafi's "Occidental Studies"

The Egyptian philosophy professor Hasan Hanafi (* 1935) criticizes Djabiri's negative attitude towards mystical , illuminationist and spiritual philosophy. Hanafi also advocates the thesis of a buried, Islamic identity. However, unlike Djabiri, he does not want to rediscover the cultural heritage through postmodern methods, but rather through a critique of European culture. He chooses a hermeneutical - phenomenological approach. Hanafi does not favor a pure return to the traditional legacy of Islam, instead he would like to examine the path to modernity. In his opinion, there is no longer any need for the Islamic world to find access to modernity, because modernity is already universal and all societies participate in it.

However, he criticizes that the existing concept of modernity has failed because it is based solely on European foundations. He therefore made it his goal to analyze these fundamentals and use the results to develop an Islamic modern concept. He ironically describes his work as "Occidental Studies " (as opposed to Oriental Studies ).

Hanafi criticizes the Western-dominated concept of modernism for the fact that there are certain central cultures that have colonized and suppressed peripheral cultures such as the Islamic one. These peripheral cultures are deformed and distorted by Western influence. Hanafi describes that the peripheral cultures can develop an independent, new conception of modernism through the development of the scientific methods of the central cultures and an analysis of the previous modern development.

Such a new concept should, according to Hanafi, realize the principles of equality and unity for all people. For the central cultures he describes a phase of decadence and postulates for it the necessity to get new ideas from the peripheral cultures. Hanafi's interpretation of "turath" means the connection between one's own cultural roots and the pursuit of a new, better concept of modernity.

Fouad Zakariya: Secularism

The Egyptian philosopher Fouad Zakariya expresses polemical criticism of the concepts mentioned . He rejects the idea that Islam can do more than be a guideline for the lives of Muslims. Above all, it cannot guide secular life in all its aspects or solve the problems of underdevelopment that Islamic societies are confronted with everywhere today. The desire to use the teachings of the Koran or the rules of the city-state of Medina as a model for modern social systems is a sign of an alienation that is just as dangerous as the "occidentalization" it claims to remedy. For Zakariya, secularism , the separation of religion and politics, is not a synonym for atheism , but an ideal that applies wherever a society is threatened by “medieval authoritarian thinking”. Authenticity does not come about by clinging to Turath , but by growing out of it and reaching a new level that enriches the heritage and further develops its values.

The second current: the revival of mysticism and illumination

The tradition of illuminationist philosophy has dominated the Persian region since the 12th century . The modern Islamic thinkers such as Henry Corbin , Seyyed Hossein Nasr or Mehdi Hairi Yazdi resorted in their own philosophical approaches to the foundations of the illuminationist tradition established by Suhrawardi . The center of the newer approaches is Iran.

Henry Corbin

The French philosopher Henry Corbin (1903–1978), who lived and worked in Iran, is also known as a neo-illuminist. He developed his teachings on the basis of Suhrawardi's ideas. For Corbin there is an eternal wisdom of philosophy that should be recognized with the help of illuminationist philosophy. Both Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr aim in their theories on the mystical dimension of the philosophy of illumination.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (born 1933) is one of the most famous contemporary Islamic philosophers. Nasr refers in his philosophy to Sufi , mystical and illuminationist principles. He is interested in the question of how different religions can get along in the modern world. The connection he sees between all people is spiritual in nature. In the area of mysticism , Nasr sees the various faiths as being linked. In his view, the modern world demands that these different faiths enter into dialogue with one another.

Nasr sees approaches in Islam that could improve the modern world. For example, Nasr criticizes the rapid technological progress that is taking place independently of humans, environmental pollution and overpopulation. For Nasr, the Islamic, Eastern philosophy offers a solution to these problems, because it emphasizes the unity between nature and humans and the spiritual unity of humanity as a whole.

Mehdi Hairi Yazdi

The Iranian Mehdi Hairi Yazdi (1923–1999) had a comprehensive knowledge of Islamic as well as European and American philosophy. After studying and teaching for many years in the USA and Canada, Yazdi returned to Iran. In his publications, Yazdi dealt extensively with illuminationist doctrine and developed his thoughts by dealing with the terms, methods and positions of analytic philosophy .

The third current: connection with non-Islamic philosophy

The third stream of modern Islamic philosophy includes approaches that originally connect non-Islamic concepts with Islamic concepts. The Greek tradition of philosophy deserves special mention here.

This current also includes Islamic thinkers who explicitly apply modern Western concepts of philosophy to solve philosophical problems in the Islamic world. The most prominent representatives are, for example, the Pakistani philosopher Chauldhry A. Qadir , who tries to combine Islamic philosophy with logical positivism in his work . Abd al-Rahman Badawi dealt with the transfer of existentialist ideas to Arab society. Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi developed its own ontological theory by the merging of traditional Islamic and Hegelian ontology . The Afghan philosopher in Germany, Ahmad Milad Karimi, speaks of falsafa ("philosophy") as an Islamic religious philosophy and sees Hegel and Heidegger as approaches for religious thinking in Islam.

See also

literature

German
  • Hendrich, Geert (2004): Islam and Enlightenment: The Modern Discourse in Arabic Philosophy. Darmstadt
  • Hendrich, Geert (2005): Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. Past and present, Frankfurt
  • Rudolf, Ulrich (2004): Islamic Philosophy. From the beginning to the present, Munich
English
  • Arkoun, M. (1994): Rethinking Islam, San Francisco - Oxford
  • Arkoun, M. (2002): The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, London
  • Corbin, Henry (1993): History of Islamic philosophy, London
  • Fakhry, Majid (2004): A History of Islamic Philosophy, London and New York, 3rd Edition, New York: Columbia University Press, esp. 345-398
  • Fakhry, Majid (2000): Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism, 2nd edition, Oxford
  • Hanafi, H. (1996): Islam in the Modern World, Cairo
  • Hourani, G. (1961): Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Cambridge 1998
  • Leaman Oliver (1985): Illuminationism, in Leaman, Oliver (1985): An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge, 199-205
  • Leaman, Oliver (1998). Islamic philosophy. In: Craig, Edward (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge
  • Leaman, Oliver and Morewedge, Parviz (1998): Islamic Philosophy, Modern, in: Craig, Edward (Eds.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London
  • Leaman, Oliver and Omran, Elsayed MH (1998): al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din (1838-1897), in: Craig, Edward (Eds.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London
  • Leaman, Oliver (1999): A brief introduction to Islamic Philosophy, Massachusetts
  • Watt, William Montgomery (1985): Islamic Philosophy and Theology: an extended survey. Edinburgh
  • Ziat, Hossein and Leaman, Oliver (1998): Illuminationst Philosophy, in: Craig, Edward (Eds.): Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hendrich 2004: p. 41
  2. ↑ Rudolph 106-109
  3. ↑ Hendrich 2004: 84-93
  4. ↑ Hendrich 2004: 41-46; Rudolph 2004: 105-111
  5. ↑ Leaman and Morewedge 1998
  6. ^ Albert Hourani: Arabic thought in the liberal age, 1798-1939 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1997, ISBN 978-0-521-27423-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ↑ Hendrich 2005: 154
  8. ↑ Issa J. Boullata: trends and issues in contemporary Arab thought. (SUNY Series in Middle Eastern Studies) . State Univ. of New York Press, New York 1990, ISBN 978-0-7914-0194-1 , pp. 14 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ Morewedge and Leaman 1998
  10. ↑ Issa J. Boullata: trends and issues in contemporary Arab thought. (SUNY Series in Middle Eastern Studies) . State Univ. of New York Press, New York 1990, ISBN 978-0-7914-0194-1 , pp. 14 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  11. ↑ Anke von Kügelgen: Averroes and Arab Modernism. Approaches to a new foundation of rationalism in Islam . Brill, Leiden 1994, ISBN 978-90-04-09955-5 .
  12. ↑ Thomas Hildebrandt: Neo-Mu ʿ tazilismus? Intention and context in the modern Arab handling of the rationalist legacy of Islam . Brill, Leiden 2007, ISBN 978-90-04-15099-7 .
  13. ↑ Morewedge and Leaman 1998
  14. ↑ Fakhry 2000: 129-130
  15. ↑ Omran / Leaman 1998, Hendrich 2005: 154–155
  16. ^ Albert Hourani: Arabic thought in the liberal age, 1798-1939 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1997, ISBN 978-0-521-27423-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  17. ↑ Hendrich 2004: 283-299
  18. ↑ Mohammed Abed Al Jabri: Critque de la raison Arabe (French) online (PDF) , accessed on June 12, 2016.
  19. ↑ Rudolph 109-110
  20. ↑ Hendrich 2005: 162-163
  21. ↑ Hendrich 2004: 266-283; Leaman and Morewedge 1998
  22. ↑ Fouad Zakariya: Laïcité ou islamisme - les Arabes à l'heure du choix. [Secularism or Islamism - the Arabs at the crossroads] . La Découverte, Paris 1991, ISBN 978-2-7071-1999-5 .
  23. ↑ Leaman and Morewedge 1998; Leaman and Ziai 1998; Fakhry 2000
  24. ↑ Morewedge and Leaman 1998
  25. ↑ Leaman and More Wedge 1998
  26. ↑ Rudolph 2004
  27. ↑ Fakhry 2000: 127-129
  28. ↑ Leaman and Morewedge 1998