The story of reason in Islam / Sari Nusseibeh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nusseibeh, Sari, author.

Series:

Cultural memory in the present

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Faith and reason--Islam--History.

Faith and reason.

Islamic philosophy--History.

Islamic philosophy.

History.

Faith and reason--Islam.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 260 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2017]

Summary:

Sari Nusseibeh narrates his sweeping intellectual history as a quest for knowledge inspired by the Qu'ran (the "poem of the universe") and its language, a quest that employed reason in the service of faith. Eschewing the conventional separation of faith and reason, he takes a fresh look at why and how Islamic reasoning evolved over time. Surveying the different schools of thought that arose in Islam and how they dealt with major philosophical issues, he shows that reason pervaded all disciplines, from philosophy and science, to language, poetry, and law. Along the way, the best-known Muslim philosophers are introduced in a new light. Countering received chronologies, reason, in this story, reaches its zenith in the early seventeenth century; it then trails off, its demise as sudden as its appearance. Thereafter, reason loses out to passive belief, lifeless logic, and a self-contained legalism-in other words, to a less flexible Islam. Nusseibeh's speculations as to why this occurred focus on the fortunes and misfortunes of classical Arabic in the Islamic world. Change, he suggests, may only come from the revivification of language itself. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

The Arabian desert

The daunting idea of God

Free will and determinism

The Qur'an : created or eternal?

From Wasil to Ibn Hanbal

Early Islam : literacy, conflict, and expansion

Speculative discourse : a style

Discourse : in pursuit of the ultimate answers

Law and morality

Al-Ma'mun and the devils' banquets

The language-logic debate

Back to the human will, and language

Expanding the view

An interlude : caliph, imam and philosopher-king

Philosophy and politics

The philosophers' "frenzy"

Back to wine and logic

Motion and light

The nature of truth

Fardajan and beyond

The cosmos

Cosmic lights

Fast forward

Language and reason : the dilemma.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Nusseibeh, Sari, author. Story of reason in Islam

ISBN:

9780804794619

0804794618

9781503600577

1503600572

OCLC:

963343640