On studying medieval Arabic logic.

• Author: Street, Tony

This book was originally a doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1992. It is a very solid piece of scholarship, and does great credit to the author and to the University of Leiden. It has been included in the series Islamic Theology, Philosophy, and Science, edited by Hans Daiber, and it is the fourth book in that series to deal with medieval Arabic logic.(1) Because of its philological precision, logical insight, and exhaustive coverage of the secondary literature, it will prove a welcome vade mecum for future researchers in the field of syllogistics.

In the introduction to the book, Lameer shows how important Farabi thought logic to be, and how he divided the subject. Chapter one is devoted to an overview of the primary sources. In chapters two to four, Lameer outlines Farabi's assertoric syllogistic; in chapter five, his doctrines on induction; in chapter six, the paradigm; in chapter seven, the istidlal bi'l-shahid ala 'l-gha ib; and in chapter eight, the qiyas fiqhi. The final chapter looks at Farabi's political doctrines and the important place logic occupies in those doctrines. These last three chapters also examine how Farabi argued that juristic reasoning was theoretically justified by Aristotelian syllogistics. The study relates Farabi's writings to the Arabic translations of Aristotle, and to the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic traditions that grew up around the Aristotelian corpus; chapters two through six show how much Farabi drew on this tradition for his terms and doctrines, and which parts of the tradition were especially important for him.

Lameer sets out Farabi's doctrines very clearly, and gives accurate translations of the material. At the end of each chapter Lameer summarizes his major conclusions; these are numerous and important, not simply for a systematic understanding of Farabi's logic, but also for philological study of his writings. The three indices (primary sources, Arabic manuscripts, general) are helpful, and the bibliography pretty much sums up scholarship in the field at the moment (though Lameer has asked reviewers to note that two books referred to in the text are wrongly omitted from the bibliography, namely, M. Steinschneider's Die arabischen Ubersetzungen aus dem Griechischen (Graz, 1960), and B. Vandenhoff, "Die Zeit des Syrers Theodor bar Koni," Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 70 (1916): 126-32).

The book is important, as stated above, for the light it throws on philosophical and philological problems encountered in the study of Farabi. But there are broader claims to our interest. As the dust jacket of the book says, Farabi's logic is "required reading for historians of Islamic law, theology, and Islamic political philosophy." This is true, since logic was the cornerstone of the philosophical education and, ultimately, of the theological education. For general historians of logic, medieval Arabic logic offers an interesting example of how cultural context can influence practice and presentation of logic, given that logic was for many years cultivated in Islamic lands under inclement attitudes. Further, there is the historical interest of systematic insights made at a given time, their descent from intellectual forebears, and their ultimate impact on later logical systems. Most interesting of the subjects dealt with in Lameer's book, I think, is the way logic and political theory are integrated, so that different kinds of discourse are seen as being suited to a particular subject matter and a particular audience. Farabi believes, as does Sir Thomas Browne, that for the common people,

a piece of Rhetorick is a sufficient argument of Logick; an Apologue of Esop beyond a syllogysme in Barbara; parables than propositions, and proverbs more powerful than demonstrations.(2)

The difference is, of course, that Farabi is happy with this logical pluralism.

Lameer has mainly used Farabi's writings as his primary sources, though constant and wide reference is made to other primary sources. It is in the nature of the material that some sort of limitation must be introduced, and no one could argue with the sparse use Lameer makes of Avicenna (see page 326). What I want to do in this review is set down some material from Avicenna's Pointers and Reminders, and from Tusi's commentary on Pointers,(3) which I hope contributes to the careful, systematic analysis of the categorical syllogistic that Lameer has carried out.(4) Though this material finds its context in a division of the syllogistic very different from Farabi's, it does derive from the same tradition, and may suggest alternative approaches to the analysis of Farabi's logic. The material concerns, first, the division of syllogistic arguments and the per impossible; second, ecthesis; and third, e-conversion.

First, I deal with Lameer's treatment of Farabi's division of the syllogism. Farabi subsumes the "direct" (mustaqim) syllogisms and those involving a contradiction (qiyas al-khalf)(5) under simple predicative deductions (al-qiyasat al-hamliyya al-basita), as set out in the diagram on page 41. But Lameer calls this division into question, for the following reasons: Given that mustaqim...