Between Aristotle and Revelation: A Narrative Review of Classical Islamic Philosophy's Literature, from Al-Kindi to Averroes
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: Islamic philosophy's classical age built a bridge and then fought over it: Greek reasoning translated into Arabic and deployed within a revealed law --- the bridge Al-Kindi founded, Al-Farabi systematized, Avicenna perfected, Al-Ghazali attacked, and Averroes defended. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature of that century-long argument. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the founding and systematization, in which Al-Kindi's philosophical works, Al-Farabi's Perfect State, and Adamson and Taylor's Cambridge companion fixed the method --- Greek logic and Neoplatonic emanation disciplined to revelation's terms; the perfection of the system, in which Avicenna's Healing metaphysics, Isharat, and Goodman's study built the distinction between essence and existence --- the emanationist cosmos whose necessity argument became the tradition's battlefield; and the attack and defense, in which Al-Ghazali's Incoherence, Averroes's Incoherence of the Incoherence and Decisive Treatise, with Corbin's, Fakhry's, and Leaman's histories, defined the century's verdict --- causality questioned, philosophers answered, and the relation of philosophy to law settled as interpretation rather than submission. It is concluded that the literature's unity is dialectical: the tradition's instruments (translation, emanation, the essence-existence distinction, and the incoherence genre) are one argument's successive moves, and the argument's stakes --- the eternity of the world, the knowledge of particulars, the philosopher's role in the polity --- remain philosophy's questions in Arabic dress.
Authors: Revista, Zen, PHILOSOPHY, 10
Institution: Faculdades Guarulhos
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204796387