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055 - 24 Arabic Philosophy · Short History of the Christian Church

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  Speaker 1: Part two, Chapter twenty four of Short History of the
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  Speaker 1: Christian Church by John Fletcher Hurst. This LibriVox recording is
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  Speaker 1: in the public domain, Chapter twenty four. Arabic philosophy. The
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  Speaker 1: literature of the Arabs developed in an extraordinary manner during
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  Speaker 1: the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With the thirteenth century it
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  Speaker 1: went into decline. There was a strong bond of unity
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  Speaker 1: between the jew and the Arab They were both alike
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  Speaker 1: hostile to Christianity, and the monotheism of the Jewish system
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  Speaker 1: was a fundamental factor in the Mohammedan creed. When the
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  Speaker 1: Arabs conquered Spain, they gave prompt attention to education. The
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  Speaker 1: universities of Cordova, Seville, Toledo and Salamanca became, through them
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  Speaker 1: centers of thought which affected not only the whole Iberian peninsula,
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  Speaker 1: but extended to the remotest learned circles of Europe. The
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  Speaker 1: Aristotelian philosophy was particularly attractive to them. The Arab scholars
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  Speaker 1: caught up its threads, interwove them with their own Oriental speculations,
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  Speaker 1: and produced a system of dialectics which Christian scholars were
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  Speaker 1: not slow to utilize. The Platonic system with its warmth,
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  Speaker 1: had also its charm, and was interpreted with great vigor
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  Speaker 1: and skill. Algazell, who died in eleven twenty seven in Baghdad,
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  Speaker 1: was a learned Arab who gave proof of the speculative
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  Speaker 1: power of the Arab mind even without the quickening influence
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  Speaker 1: of contact with European thought. In his Destruction of the Philosophers,
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  Speaker 1: he showed the glaring inconsistencies of philosophical systems, vindicated supernaturalism,
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  Speaker 1: and defended the inspiration of the Qur'an. His work was
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  Speaker 1: a skillful pudding of the Mohammedan case, perhaps as plausible
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  Speaker 1: a plea for it as has ever been made. The
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  Speaker 1: Spanish transplantation of Arab speculation is to be found in
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  Speaker 1: the work of top Hail, who died in Seville in
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  Speaker 1: eleven ninety In his Life of a Young yoke Dan,
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  Speaker 1: he undertakes to show that true philosophy is not the
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  Speaker 1: product of education, nor of any force from the external world,
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  Speaker 1: but of an effort of the mind from its own resources. Avarhoes,
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  Speaker 1: who died in eleven ninety eight, by some in twelve
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  Speaker 1: o six, was the most gifted of all the Arab
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  Speaker 1: thinkers resident in Spain. He wrote against Algazel's work, calling
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  Speaker 1: his own book the Destruction of the Destruction of the Philosophers.
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  Speaker 1: He brought the Arab speculation out of the narrow affiliations
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  Speaker 1: with the Mohammedan system and gave it a universal application.
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  Speaker 1: He held that true religion and a thoroughly logical speculation
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  Speaker 1: belonged together for the reason that the divine and human
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  Speaker 1: reason are naturally united. At the same time, he held
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  Speaker 1: that an affirmative might be theologically true and philosophically false,
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  Speaker 1: and vice versa. He was strongly opposed by Aquinas, and
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  Speaker 1: he was generally regarded with suspicion. His theories were provocative
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  Speaker 1: of skepticism. He expounded the philosophy of Aristotle and gave
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  Speaker 1: it a Neoplatonic coloring. His system was a grouping of
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  Speaker 1: the better elements in both Plato and Aristotle. The systems
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  Speaker 1: of Christian Scholasticism were based largely on his speculations. End
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  Speaker 1: of chapter twenty four