Philosophical Foundations of Islamic Metaphysics, Session 1: Knowledge and Reality
Wardah Books
Omar Edward Moad
The Philosophical Foundations of Islamic Metaphysics is a seminar and discussion-circle series on the basic concepts and formative questions involved in the powerful intellectual encounter between Islamic peripatetic philosophy and Ashari kalam, represented for purposes of this series in the persons and ideas of ibn Sina on the one hand, and al-Ghazali on the other.
The objective of the series is twofold. The first is to clarify as much as possible, in the English language, certain basic philosophical terms and concepts which are essential for a full understanding of the nature of the discussions in which they are pivotal.
The second is to review some of these discussions, and to facilitate a greater sense of wonder at the analytic rigor and depth of inquiry demonstrated by some of the luminaries of the Islamic intellectual tradition. The material of this series is based largely on the Metaphysics of ibn Sina's al-Shifa and al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falsafah.
The material covered, however, is selected to enrich participants' further reading of other great thinkers in contemporary and later periods of Islamic history, insha'Allah.
Details
Schedule for the 2011 Series:
Session 1: Knowledge and Reality:
In this session we, we will learn about the faculties for gaining knowledge with which Allah has endowed the human being, according to the psychological and epistemological theories of ibn Sina and al-Ghazali. (A basic understanding of this topic will be essential in order to grasp the material of sessions 2 or 3.)
Session 2: Time and Creation:
In this session, we will explore al-Ghazali's subtle analysis of time, as it appears in part of the First Discussion of the Incoherence of the Philosophers, where he rebuts their argument for the pre-eternity of the world.
Session 3: The Soul and Its Mystery:
In this session, we will learn about one of several arguments by Ibn Sina that the soul is immaterial, along with al-Ghazali's rebuttal of that argument. And, we will learn why Ghazali rebuts the argument, even though he agrees that the soul is immaterial.
Omar Edward Moad, earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Missouri – Columbia in 2004. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore from 2005-2008, and is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities, Qatar University
To register, email: [email protected]
For more information: 1058-1111.blogspot.com
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