Special topics in Near Eastern Studies. Topics vary and are announced at the beginning of each semester.

This course takes as its focus the theories that structure the epistemological system formed through the classical Islamic philosophical tradition (falsafa), and explores the critiques subsequently posited by eminent philosophers and theologians. We will ground ourselves particularly in the theories of universals, Aristotelian definitions, emanation and the Active Intellect, and the abstraction of form, making forays into psychology and logic insofar as they relate to epistemology. In this first half of the course, we will encounter these foundational theories first through the translations of Classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy into Arabic, and subsequently through key excerpts from the works of al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā as they formed innovative theories of epistemology. After grounding ourselves both in scholarly debates on these theories and the primary sources, we will read key thinkers who critiqued these classical theories of epistemology and posited new systems of knowing, including Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl, and Ibn Taymiyya. Students who enroll in the course should be prepared to approach the primary sources in their original languages (Arabic and Persian). We will, however, supplement our original source readings with longer excerpts of translated texts as well as secondary sources that serve both to provide background and highlight scholarly debates.

Repeat Rules