The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi.

• Author: Najjar, Fauzi M.

This volume consists of nine essays written in honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi, James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University, by his former students. It is a tribute to the "dean of Islamic Philosophy", a scholar who has created a school of thought, the central theme of which permeates the writings of his distinguished students. In the introduction, Charles E. Butterworth, the most illustrious of Mahdi's disciples, underscores the importance of this theme, the political aspects of Islamic philosophy, to the understanding of the proper relationship between religion and politics, an understanding "fundamental to our appreciation of the way Greek political philosophy was transmitted to the medieval Islamic world and, through it, to us" (p. 2). Butterworth concludes the introduction with a moving and highly merited tribute to the "teacher", by whom the authors of these essays have been schooled.

Strict space limitations preclude more than a very brief account of this original and important work of scholarship. In the first essay, "Al-Kindi and the Beginnings of Islamic Political Philosophy" Charles E. Butterworth examines al-Kindi's "practical" works, such as the Treatise on the Number of Aristotle's Books and What is Needed to Attain Philosophy, Treatise on the Device for Driving Away Sorrows, and Treatise on the Utterances of Socrates. In the first, Abu Yusuf Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. 866) concludes that Aristotle's philosophy "offers insufficient guidance for the attainment of man's goal, human virtue", (p. 34) Neither metaphysics nor divine science can offer such guidance, because they are accessible to only a few. Pointing to the "need for political philosophy" al-Kindi laid down the foundation upon which Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 950) later erected a full-fledged Islamic political philosophy. Butterworth's stimulating interpretation frees al-Kindi's work from its traditional Mu tazilite cast, placing him at the source of Islamic political philosophy.

Equally interesting is Paul E. Walker's "The Political Implications of al-Razi's Philosophy." Muhammad Ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (d. 925), the famous physician and most important representative of Natural Philosophy, did not, we are told, show any interest in politics or political philosophy as such. Yet, analysis of his philosophical and ethical doctrines reveals that they have serious political implications, in the sense that philosophers are just as good as, if not better than, prophets...