How do you define the western world?

[Richo83]

I had this argument with this friend of mine what defined the "west". He said all countries that abide by democracy, capitalism and all their values. I said that there are some democratic and capitalistic nations that aren't what you would define as western (India and the Philippines for example).

The friend then went on to say that western nations have five main characteristics, democracy and capitalism, christianity, 1st world living, european roots of culture and an alliance to the US. I found exeptions to all those rules, for example Spain and Turkey are seen by some as "western nations" but don't have a high standard of living. Japan and SK are defined as western nations, yet don't share european cultural roots. Whereas the western NATO alliance has changed, with western nations such as France and Germany not alligning themselves with other sectors of the west in the war in Iraq and other apsects of the war on terror, which is led by the US, the epitome of the west my friend states.

I know this topic has been discussed before but I was wondering since there is so much discussion on the war on terror mainly led by the west, what are western nations, and more-over, what are western vaules?

 

[stompie]

I had this argument with this friend of mine what defined the "west". He said all countries that abide by democracy, capitalism and all their values. I said that there are some democratic and capitalistic nations that aren't what you would define as western (India and the Philippines for example).

The friend then went on to say that western nations have five main characteristics, democracy and capitalism, christianity, 1st world living, european roots of culture and an alliance to the US. I found exeptions to all those rules, for example Spain and Turkey are seen by some as "western nations" but don't have a high standard of living. Japan and SK are defined as western nations, yet don't share european cultural roots. Whereas the western NATO alliance has changed, with western nations such as France and Germany not alligning themselves with other sectors of the west in the war in Iraq and other apsects of the war on terror, which is led by the US, the epitome of the west my friend states.

I know this topic has been discussed before but I was wondering since there is so much discussion on the war on terror mainly led by the west, what are western nations, and more-over, what are western vaules?

Most Japanese don't define themselves as western. Koreans don't either.

I think there are two commonalities:

1) Built on a Christian value system - For a number of reasons, Christianity tends to create a divided, self-flagellating, activist, forgive and forget culture.

2) Has received a lot of immigrants - The immigrants strengthen ties to an international community. Furthermore, to prevent multiculturalism tearing a country apart, the government must promote values of tolerance and/or implement tough policies on racial or cultural villification.

 

[Frodo]

Nations that are directly related to 17th century Europe. ie Germanics, Hispanics, British, french, Italian, Greek.

Can't agree on Turkey or any Serbian country being truly western and Asian countries just like India have adopted western values due to war and occupation.

 

[Contra Mundum]

The ridiculous thing is that the West was founded in the Middle East. Arabic translations of Hellenic philosophy built the foundation of Western Culture in the Late Middle Ages

 

[Contra Mundum]

Nations that are directly related to 17th century Europe. ie Germanics, Hispanics, British, french, Italian, Greek.

Can't agree on Turkey or any Serbian country being truly western and Asian countries just like India have adopted western values due to war and occupation.

Ignorant about the Yugoslav nations are you.? How many "Serbian Countries" are there outside of Serbia? IS Croatia too tar brush for you or because they where [by no more than happy accident] part of the Austro-Hungarian empire during the period you artificially nominate

 

[Richo83]

Good points everyone. My friend stated that he thinks that the solution to the world's problems is to introduce "western" democracy and capitalism. I use quotation marks because are these values exclusive to western nations?

 

[JavaBlue]

The ridiculous thing is that the West was founded in the Middle East. Arabic translations of Hellenic philosophy built the foundation of Western Culture in the Late Middle Ages

And the Arabic translations were from what language to what language?

 

[Contra Mundum]

And the Arabic translations were from what language to what language?

If I may predict were you are going with this - the glories of Hellenic Philosopy and Culture would have been lost to the West BUT FOR the fact that Islamic scholars regarded them as important to preserve

 

[MightyFighting]

If I may predict were you are going with this - the glories of Hellenic Philosopy and Culture would have been lost to the West BUT FOR the fact that Islamic scholars regarded them as important to preserve

Somebody recently told me I had no idea what I was talking about when I posted something along those lines.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Somebody recently told me I had no idea what I was talking about when I posted something along those lines.

These posters know nothing of the history of ideas in the West. yup all towel heads are backward!!!:

the previous part, in discussing Dominic Gundisallinus, mention was made of the translation into Latin of the works of Greek and Islamic authors. Toledo in Spain was one of the centers of this effort. In that city Muslim, Jew, and Christian were in contact with one another, and under the patronage of Archbishop Raymond (1126-1151) the task of the translators was given impetus. Among those engaged in this work in the twelfth century, besides Gundisallinus, were John of Spain, Gerard of Cremona, Michael the Scot, and Herman the German. Already in the twelfth century efforts at commentary and assimilation are apparent, and, once more, Gundisallinus is a major example.


Naples was another scene of translation work; the Emperor Frederick II (1197-1250) invited Islamic and Jewish philosophers to his court. The Emperor also founded the University of Naples, where Aquinas was to attend the faculty of arts and where Peter the Irishman commented on Aristotle and Porphyry. Michael the Scot came to Naples and with a team of translators rendered Averroes into Latin about 1230. The papal court was also the locus of translating, notably by William of Moerbeke; during his sojourn in the papal court Aquinas urged William on. Thus, translations into Latin were being made from the original Greek as well as through the medium of Arabic.

Almost the entire Aristotelian corpus was available in the West when the thirteenth century began, but the versions of the Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics were partial ones. Of Plato, part of the Timaeus was translated; the Phaedo and Meno were translated into Latin about the middle of the twelfth century. The Neoplatonism which was part of the patrimony of the West was augmented by translations of Neoplatonist commentaries of Aristotle, the Liber de causis, and the so-called Theology of Aristotle, derivative from Proclus and Plotinus, respectively. In the thirteenth century the spate of translations increased, and largely through the efforts of William of Moerbeke the complete Aristotle together with the Greek commentaries on him were turned into Latin. William also translated a number of works of Proclus as well as his commentaries on the Timaeus and Parmenides. The result of his labor was an Aristotle who had been freed from the interpretation of the Islamic commentators.
C. Islamic Philosophy


Now that we have some notion of the academic setting in which the men we are soon to consider lived their lives, we must say something about the impact of the Islamic philosophers on the thought of the thirteenth century. It is only under this aspect that we propose to say a few things about a number of thinkers, for the most part Arabs, who lived prior to the thirteenth century but who exercised a considerable influence on the masters of the universities. Our knowledge of these men is in a considerable state of flux, and it increases almost daily. For this and other reasons the following sketch is attempted with more than the usual trepidation.

We are already aware of the fragmentary way in which Greek thought came into the Latin West. Of Plato little was known directly, apart from the Timaeus; for a long time Aristotle was represented only by portions of his Organon, then by all of it as well as by the first three books of the Nicomachean Ethics. Meanwhile, Greek thought was traveling a circuitous route that would eventually bring it into contact with the Christian West in Spain, a route through Syria and Persia and Arabia. As it traveled this route, Greek thought underwent translation from one language into the next with all the dangers that are involved with respect to fidelity to the original Greek. Furthermore, there was not simply transmission but interpretation, and the thinkers of Islam, like their Christian counterparts, were bent on establishing a harmony between pagan philosophy and their religious beliefs. When Aristotle finally came into the West, he came together with the writings of his Arabian interpreters. This had consequences of an interesting kind.

Al-Kindi (c.801-873). The first Muslim philosopher was al-Kindi. He is said to have written 270 works, but most of them are lost, and it is probable that sections of works have been counted as whole works. His writings, as they are described, are encyclopedic in scope, ranging from logic through medicine and science to theology. Some of al-Kindi's works were translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona, and, until recently, he was known only through these Latin translations. He revised the Arabic version of Plotinus' Enneads, a work he thought to be one of Aristotle's.
It was owing to al-Kindi that philosophy became part of Islamic culture; he became known as the "philosopher of the Arabs," and his task as he saw it was to reconcile the wisdom of the Koran with Greek philosophy. This will be the continuing task of al-Farabi, ibn-Sina (Avicenna), and ibn-Rushd (Averroes). Philosophy, al-Kindi observed, depends upon reason, religion upon revelation; logic is the method of the former, faith of the latter. Al-Kindi's view of philosophy is quite comprehensive; it embraces the whole of human science. The divisions of it that he offers are Aristotelian, distinguishing speculative and practical philosophy and subdividing the former into physics, mathematics, and divine science, the latter into ethics, economics, and politics. The fact that divine science, or theology, is a part of speculative philosophy provided al-Kindi with one of his reasons for the compatibility of philosophy and religion, though this reason led to an ambiguity. He also suggests a common source, ultimately, of the prophet's revelation and philosophical truth and goes on to speak of religion as the ultimate ordination of philosophizing.

Al-Kindi's use of the term "theologian" varies. Sometimes he uses it to describe those who opposed the study of philosophy and argues against them in a manner reminiscent of Aristotle's Protrepticus. Either the study of philosophy is necessary or it is not. If it is necessary, it should be pursued; if it is said to be unnecessary, one must show why this is the case, and to do this he must engage in philosophy. Thus, willy-nilly, philosophy is necessary. Further, although he sometimes seems to identify Aristotle's metaphysics and divine science without qualification, al-Kindi makes the following contrast between the divine science of the Koran and that of the philosophers. That of the Koran is strictly a divine science, while that of the philosophers is finally a human science. The knowledge of the prophet is immediate and inspired, whereas that of the philosophers is reached by way of logic and demonstration. Confronted with Aristotle's view that the world is eternal, al-Kindi will deny this because of his faith. Only God is eternal; everything else is created and finite. The denial of infinitude of anything other than God is found in the De quinque essentiis, a work which holds that matter, form, space, movement, and time attach to every physical body. Holding that any body must be finite, al-Kindi argues that the sum of finite magnitudes must be itself finite. In his De intellectu al-Kindi argues that man has four intellects: the agent intellect, the passive intellect, the latter as actuated, and the use of knowledge already had. We can take it that he is distinguishing four senses of "intellect."
Al-Farabi (c.870-c.950). Al-Farabi was a Turk by birth and of the Islamic faith. He came to the study of philosophy late in life, perhaps at fifty years of age, and half of his writings deal with logic and consist of commentaries on the works of Aristotle's Organon. One of the striking things about al-Farabi's conception of philosophy is that he holds that the various philosophical schools teach, not many philosophies, but different aspects of the one philosophy. He shares the Neoplatonic hope, expressed by Porphyry, that the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle can be reconciled and shown to be complementary. The fact that Porphyry, Plotinus, and Proclus, together with Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ammonius, and Themistius, had been translated into Arabic doubtless gave fuel to this hope of synthesizing the great philosophers of antiquity.

In al-Farabi we find a picture of the universe which is quite clearly Neoplatonic, one relying on a doctrine of emanation and insisting on a hierarchy such that God acts on lesser orders only through the medium of intervening orders. The picture of the universe is contained in al- Farabi's theory of the ten intelligences. First, there is God, the One, who in thinking of himself produces a first intelligence which emanates from him. God is necessary, but the first intelligence is possible in itself, though necessary with respect to another, that is, to God. When the first intelligence thinks about God, this is productive of another intelligence, and the chain of emanations continues, reaching the tenth intelligence, called the "agent intellect," which directs the sublunary world. As with Neoplatonism, esse est percipi, in the sense that to be thought is to be created; the first nine intelligences hierarchically ordered are productive of the souls of the nine celestial spheres of the astronomy of Ptolemy. Prime matter issues in some way from the tenth intelligence, and prime matter underlies the four elements out of which all physical things are ultimately made; the forms of bodies also emanate from the tenth intelligence, and it is here that room is found for Aristotle's teaching on the hylomorphic composition of physical bodies. Al-Farabi's writings on the intellect were translated into Latin and are influential in the West; his interpretation of Aristotle's agent intellect, an interpretation reflecting the influence of the school of Alexandria, will have an impact on the University of Paris in the thirteenth century. The various senses of intellect we have seen distinguished by al-Kindi have their counterpart in al-Farabi, but there is the further note of illumination from superior intelligences, a kind of infused knowledge, which enabled al-Farabi to make a rather smooth transition from philosophy to religion. The counterpart of the Neoplatonic emanation is the theory of return to the One, and al-Farabi, like Plotinus, speaks of this return as it is effected by the human intellect in religious and even mystical terms.

Avicenna (980-1037). Perhaps the greatest of the Islamic philosophers, ibn-Sina, or Avicenna, was known by the men of the thirteenth century chiefly through his Sufficientiae, whose parts are devoted to the principal divisions of philosophy -- logic, physics, mathematics, psychology, and metaphysics. Avicenna's vision of the world is essentially that we find in al-Farabi, and his procedure in treating of God is reminiscent of the ontological argument, as Faziur Rahman has pointed out. God is a necessary being and cannot not exist; from him, considered as premise, creation emanates as if it were a conclusion. In knowing himself, God effects the first intelligence, which is not a necessary being considered in itself but only possible. Any being other than God is not necessary of itself, in its nature, but receives its necessity from God. It is here that Avicenna develops a thought of al-Farabi, who, taking up a distinction Aristotle had made in the Posterior Analytics between knowing what a thing is and knowing that it is, had maintained in creatures a difference between essence and existence. Essence here stands for nature, which is possibility, which does not include existence. If a nature exists, this must be explained by something other than itself. In short, existence is accidental to essence or nature. By accident Avicenna did not mean what would be meant if red were said to be an accident of a thing, for the thing might continue to be while ceasing to be red. His point is simply that if existence is not part of what a thing is, part of its essence, when it exists existence befalls it; it happens to exist. Existence seems to identify the created nature's dependence on God and would be, if Rahman is right, a relational notion. God is existence, is necessary existence. Avicenna intends to say, not that in God essence and existence are the same, but that God has no essence or nature. This denial can doubtless be explained in terms of the Neoplatonic notion that nature or essence is a limitation or restriction on existence.
The difference between essence and existence in creatures provides Avicenna with the great ontological difference between creatures and God. Like al-Farabi, Avicenna interpreted a remark of Aristotle's in the Metaphysics to mean that God is wholly aloof from the world, neither knowing things other than himself nor caring about them, and perhaps not the cause of other things either. No doubt inspired by his religious beliefs here, Avicenna wants both to insist on the ontological difference between God and creature and to put God into contact with the world. This contact or relation introduces the problem of the one and the many, and the doctrine of emanation commends itself to those who feel that by placing God at the top of a hierarchy, the first of whose constitutive members he accounts for directly, God's immediate influence can be kept to a minimum, while his mediated influence has total scope. Just as with al-Farabi's theory of the ten intelligences, Avicenna's theory of emanations is productive of angels and of celestial spheres, to the tenth intelligence, the agent intellect, whose name is the angel Gabriel.
The agent intellect is the giver of forms (dator formarum), responsible for forms not only in the sense of the substantial forms of physical bodies but also in the sense of man's mental concepts. Our glance at al-Farabi has already acquainted us with this projection of a faculty of the human soul into the status of a separate entity, an angel. As for man himself, Avicenna denies that the human soul is the form of the body. Rather the union of soul and body is the union of two substances. This doctrine is based on Avicenna's reflections on the difference between mental and corporeal activities, which he sees to be heterogeneous and which he then concludes cannot pertain to one and the same substance. However, if soul and body are two substances, their link is something so intimate that the soul retains after its separation from the body in death a relation to the matter which entered into its body. For this and other reasons Avicenna will deny that souls coalesce into one in their separated state; a fortiori he rejects the Necplatonic conception that the ultimate goal of the return to God which complements emanation will be the fusion of the soul with God. Unlike al-Farabi, who had made immortality an achievement of good men, Avicenna maintains that every human soul is immortal.
A matter that elicited criticism within Islam was Avicenna's inability to account for creation in time. The emanation from God of creatures cannot be understood as something willed by God in the sense that this is a process which takes place but might not have taken place. When Avicenna speaks of God willing the emanation of creatures, he means little more than that God consents to its necessity. Rahman's image of premise and consequence is helpful here: creatures are thought of as emanating from God with a kind of logical necessity such that their not emanating would be unthinkable and contradictory.
In speaking of God's "nature" and attributes Avicenna will use terms like "will" and "knowledge" and "power," but it is his opinion that all such terms are either negative or relational and finally coincide with existence, which is what God is. He will speak of all things preexisting in God as Ideas or forms, but this is not taken to be a denial of his basic claim that God knows only himself; it is in knowing himself that God knows whatever emanates from him. Avicenna wants to say that God knows individuals as individuals, not merely types or universals, but his way of maintaining this left him open to the criticism of al-Ghazzali. It must be said that Avicenna's teaching on universal nature is a difficult one in itself and has been the topic of much comment. Avicenna can speak of a threefold existence of a nature: in God's knowledge, in the created mind, and as it exists. The first two differ for reasons already hinted at, but further because human knowledge, indeed created knowledge, is discussed in terms of an illumination from above. In the case of man the proximate illumination comes from the agent intellect, that is, the angel Gabriel. As for the difference between the nature as known (by man) and as it exists in nature, Avicenna will say it is universal in the former, singular in the latter, and he goes on to say that neither mode of existence pertains to the nature in itself. This is the natura absolute considerata that we encounter in Aquinas' De ente et essentia. Some present-day critics of this doctrine have seen in it a claim that a nature exists absolutely apart from the various kinds of existence it can enjoy, which would of course be an absurd claim. But it is not what Avicenna is trying to say. We must no doubt return to his position that in creatures essence and existence are distinct; when we do this, the present point is little more than a corollary. When we consider a nature, a whatness, we need make no reference to its status as being thought by us nor to the accidents which attend it in an individual, and even when such references are made, we are adverting to what is accidental to, not a part of, the nature in question. A consideration of manness, for example, need not advert to accidents which accrue to that nature insofar as we think of it (for example, universality) nor of accidents which accrue to it because of Socrates who is a man (for example, being bald). Aquinas quite rightly sees this Avicennian doctrine as part and parcel of his distinction between essence and existence; it is highly surprising, therefore, to find Thomists criticizing Avicenna on this point with no apparent awareness that their criticism, if valid, would undermine their confidence in what Aquinas has had to say about esse and essentia.
Averroes (1126-1198). Averroes was born in Cordova and, unlike Avicenna whose works had a more independent cast, expressed himself most influentially through commentaries on Aristotle. For the medievals of the West he became simply the Commentator, and his direct association with the writings of Aristotle make his influence more palpable than that of Avicenna and a good deal more controversial. There are three sorts of commentary Averroes wrote on a given work of Aristotle, for example, the Metaphysics, but they seem to differ largely in terms of quantity and detail.
The closeness to the text of Aristotle that his role as commentator demanded of Averroes led him to separate himself from the more Neoplatonic views of al-Farabi and Avicenna. Thus, he will deny the theory of emanation, though he retains the notion of a hierarchy of intelligences. Furthermore, he will accept as true Aristotle's doctrine that the world is eternal. His treatment of the human soul is also markedly different from that of Avicenna. For Averroes the human soul is the substantial form of the body, and as the form of a body it has whatever existence it has as a bodily form. This was taken to mean that the soul of Socrates does not survive the death of Socrates in any meaningful way.
An attitude characteristic of Averroes' procedure, fidelity to the text of Aristotle despite the apparent conflict between his understanding of it and his religious faith, got Averroes into trouble in Islam. Al-Ghazzali was highly critical of him (as well as of philosophers generally), and Averroes attempted to reply to this criticism in Destructio destructionis. What emerges from his attempts to explain the relation between philosophy and faith becomes definitive of Latin Averroism as well, the so-called two-truth theory. By this Averroes seems to mean that the statement of truths in the Koran is not as exact and accurate as might be, and this is only fitting since the Koran addresses itself to all, not merely to the learned, For a clear and distinct statement of a truth we must turn to philosophy. Philosophy thus becomes the measure of faith, and revealed statements are considered not to be in straight conflict with philosophical ones (they are, again, couched in a different, more symbolic language), but to be inadequate as they stand. As adequately expressed, revealed truths come to say something apparently different from what they are taken to mean in their original habitat, and it is not surprising to learn that Averroes was sent into exile and his books proscribed and even burnt.
* * *
There were other Islamic philosophers whose works became known to the medievals and were influential on their thinking. What is generally important about all these men, for our purposes, is that they modified the appearance that Greek thought had for the men of the medieval universities. Among the Arabs there was an unfortunate confusion of Plotinus and Aristotle; a portion of the Enneads came to be known as The Theology of Aristotle, and the Liber de causis, which consists of borrowings from Proclus, was not associated with its true author. Al-Farabi and Avicenna gave a version of Greek philosophy which appeared to be a restatement of what Aristotle had taught, and Averroes as the commentator on Aristotle was taken to be unpacking the text and revealing what Aristotle had really taught. Sometimes this is what he was doing; on other occasions his and other Islamic versions of Aristotle's doctrine were wide of the mark. In many cases the Aristotle they presented to the Christian West was a teacher whose tenets were in sharp contrast to revealed truths. Thus, the first reaction is one of caution. Aristotle's writings were proscribed at Paris in 1210, but later a commission was set up to study and evaluate the Aristotelian corpus. This was in 1231, and from that time the earlier prohibition seems largely to have been ignored. Along with the translations which had been made in Spain newer translations, made directly from the Greek, were becoming available. Resistance continued to this influx of a strange and different Aristotle, a thinker whose range, like that of the Islamic philosophers, was significantly greater than that of anyone in the West. Aristotle was thought to be a threat to the great tradition of Western theology, to he inimical to the faith, to be wrong on significant points. The assessment of Aristotle was surely in large part an assessment of the Aristotle interpreted by the Arabs, particularly by Averroes, but even the unadorned text of Aristotle presented massive difficulties for the Christian thinker. Fortunately there were some, most notably Aquinas, who held themselves to the task of getting at what Aristotle really meant and assessing the result of that inquiry in terms of both natural and supernatural criteria of judgment.

Besides Islamic philosophy, brief mention must be made of the influence of Jewish thought on the thirteenth century. Avicebron, mistakenly thought to be an Arab, lived from 1021 to about 1070; his work The Origin of Life (Fons vitae) is often cited. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was born in Spain and died in Egypt. His Guide for the Perplexed is an attempt to make use of the philosophy of Aristotle to interpret Scripture. Rabbi Moses, as Aquinas refers to him, was well acquainted with Islamic philosophy, and we may surmise that his effort to effect a concordance of philosophy and faith was influenced by their similar effort. Whatever the principles that guided his interpretation, Maimonides comes up with rational defenses of items of religious faith which his Islamic counterparts tended to call into question on the basis of philosophy. For example, since it is clearly revealed that the world has not always existed and the philosophical arguments for its eternity are inconclusive, Maimonides concluded that we must accept the position of Scripture. Maimonides stands ready to abandon an item of belief if it can he disproved by philosophy, but this led to no wholesale housecleaning of religious tenets.
* * *
Intellectual culture reached a crest in Islam long before it did in the Christian West. The medicine, the mathematics, the science of the Arabs surpassed what was known in the West; more importantly for our immediate purposes, there was in Islam a long tradition of study of the Greek philosophers, a study which led to assimilation, interpretation, appropriation. The finest fruits of two intellectual cultures, the Greek and Islamic, entered Europe with what can only be described as suddenness and at roughly the moment when the universities were assuming the shape that would define them for centuries. The diet was extremely rich against the background of the Western tradition, and it is not surprising that caution was exercised by some, while adulation of an uncritical kind was displayed by others, and that only gradually the medievals became equipped to assimilate and appropriate in their turn.

 

[The Dice Man]

Contra... dude!

 

[Lionel Lyon]

If I may predict were you are going with this - the glories of Hellenic Philosopy and Culture would have been lost to the West BUT FOR the fact that Islamic scholars regarded them as important to preserve

Untrue. The Islamic scholars had but a section of the corpus of the ancients. The Corpus was preserved by the Christians of the East, the Greeks of Byzantium. It was from them that the Arabs would get their copies, which they then had their Christian subjects translate into Arabic.

What you say above is part of the typically anti-Christian Leftist view of "history," in which the backward Christians supposedly burned all the books and dragged their women around by the hair while the enlightened Moslems preserved everything. False. All the works were preserved by the Christians of Byzantium--they were part of their own heritage. You can't possibly believe that the Greek versions of all the philosophers' works that we have were gotten from the Arabs?

 

[Lestat]

Untrue. The Islamic scholars had but a section of the corpus of the ancients. The Corpus was preserved by the Christians of the East, the Greeks of Byzantium. It was from them that the Arabs would get their copies, which they then had their Christian subjects translate into Arabic.

And how did the arabs get them? Was it not Christian scholars who travelled to arab lands and centres of learning in order to learn, develop and trade ideas?

Why didn't they stay in Constantinople. Why didn't the arab scholars travel to them? If it was preserved by Eastern Christians as you say....they whey didn't the scholars of the world all head towards Constantinople, and create a great centre of learning there, instead of Baghdad and Cordoba?

Besides, it was not only Helenistic philosophies which were translated and studied in these centres of knowledge. Greek, as well as Persian, Hindu, Chinese, Jewish and African idea's and philosphies poured into Baghdad and the Andulas, with scholars from all reaches of the Islamic empire, as well as outside of (Christian/Chinese scholars) poured into Baghdad and Cordoba.

So yes, no doubt Christian scholars played a part, but the fact is Lionell all of this occurred under Islamic rule, in cities ruled by the Caliphate....and not in any Byzantium lands, under any Byzantium emperor.

What you say above is part of the typically anti-Christian Leftist view of "history," in which the backward Christians supposedly burned all the books and dragged their women around by the hair while the enlightened Moslems preserved everything. False. All the works were preserved by the Christians of Byzantium--they were part of their own heritage. You can't possibly believe that the Greek versions of all the philosophers' works that we have were gotten from the Arabs?

On the contrary, most people acknowledge the input of the Christian world in todays world and society. It is the Islamic contribution which is continously denied and belittled, you yourself have almost made it a personal crusade to belittle the Islamic contribution to the world today. It is the anti-Islamic conservative rightist view of history that continously attempts to downgrade the influence of Islam on the world today.

Besides, you seem to imply that the 'Greek Translations' were the only good thing to come out of the Islamic world.

As mentioned earlier, the achievements of the Islamic/Christian/Jewish/Persian scholars in Baghdad/Cordoba was much more then just the translations of 'lost' Greek philosphies, and it European arrogance to suggest otherwise.

Arabic and Persian numerical systems, great advances in medicine and system of governance. Hospitals first appeared under Islamic rule, and astronomy moved forward in leaps and bounds. Arabic scientists in the early 8th century had calculated the circumferance of the earth, had developed complex water sewerage systems and Baghdad had street lights. Not only did they 'translate' Greek knowledge, they added to it. (Once again, it was not only muslims....jews, christians also played a part, I do not deny that).

They were far in advance of all European cities, including Constantanople. There is plenty of historical evidence, letters from Christian scholars and Nuns, who after travelling to Cordoba and Baghdad, wrote letters describing wonders of the Orient.

But ofcourse, if we are to believe your versions of events, it was the smart and enlightened Christians who came to the middle east, to guide and educate the ignorant arabs.

 

[Lionel Lyon]

And how did the arabs get them? Was it not Christian scholars who travelled to arab lands and centres of learning in order to learn, develop and trade ideas?

Lestat, I am not trying to belittle Islamic learning, but I refuse to raise it to the heights, and simultaneously lower Christianity to the depths, that some in the Left wish to do. Saying that if it weren't for the Arabs the today's Christians would not even have these works is patently false. If the Byzantines and everybody else were culturally subservient to the Muslims, ask yourself also why when the Muslims brought in Byzantines to build the Dome on the Rock and the Ummayad Mosque. Even at Cordoba Byzantines did work. Why so?

Do a bit of research and you will find that the Arabs routinely would send delegates to Constantinople to get copies of these texts. Overwise they wouldn't have had them. And they had the Christians that were in their realm do the translation because the Christians knew Greek. Muslim Arabs knew nothing of Greek. In this way, they got a section of the corpus, but not all of it. That was had by the Christians in Constantinople, who were the organic connection with tradition of the ancient world, not the Muslims. The Muslims got some texts, they contributed to the debates here and there, but ultimately it was not their tradition. Baghdad had a moment of glory, but it did not last that long--it collapsed before Constantinople did--and Islam turned against philosophy (was it not al-Gazali who heralded the new direction?)

It was in the years before and during the Muslim Turks' overthrow of Constantinople, when refugees were leaving westward, that the West got its hands on the Greek texts they didn't already have and access to living knowers of the Greek language. This refamiliarization with Greek was a key factor in the period of revival of Classical forms known as the Renaissance.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Untrue. The Islamic scholars had but a section of the corpus of the ancients. The Corpus was preserved by the Christians of the East, the Greeks of Byzantium. It was from them that the Arabs would get their copies, which they then had their Christian subjects translate into Arabic.

What you say above is part of the typically anti-Christian Leftist view of "history," in which the backward Christians supposedly burned all the books and dragged their women around by the hair while the enlightened Moslems preserved everything. False. All the works were preserved by the Christians of Byzantium--they were part of their own heritage. You can't possibly believe that the Greek versions of all the philosophers' works that we have were gotten from the Arabs?

Ever read the Summa Theologica? throughout it Aquinas seeks to refute propositions from Arab Philosophy.

Aquinas was influenced by the writings of Aristotle, the Muslim Aristotelians Averroës and Avicenna, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Unlike many theologians, he welcomed the Latin translation of Aristotle's complete writings. Aquinas meant to take Aristotle's philosophical arguments to their deepest level, not just to fit them into the existing theological framework. He pressed the distinction between potentiality and actuality and defended immortality without diminishing the doctrine that the soul is embodied.



Read the text in my earlier post the West had fragments which were greatly supplemented by the work of Islamic Scholars. The above text is from a text I wrote for the Jacques Maritian Centre - I can give the footnotes should you require them

How can you say I thought that the West were cavemen based on the above thread!!!!!

But wait there's more:

Beginning in the late twelfth century, the natural philosophy of classical scholars such as Galen of Pergamon exerted an influence. Galen's ideas and those of Hippocrates were accompanied by the COMMENTARIES of Islamic scholars in the Articella, a twelfth-century text. Islamic philosophical texts containing medical data, such as those of Avicenna (eleventh century) and Averroës (twelfth century), also influenced the West during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Practical treatises were composed in the high Middle Ages, including Roger Frugardi's Chirurgia (1180) and John Arderne's Fistula in ano (1376), along with manuals on health such as that by Aldobrandino da Siena of the thirteenth century.


Is it black arm band to have the audacity to suggest that Arabic Culture aided the developments that lead to the Enlightenment?

You are a revisionist - only a Western Chauvinist of the blindest hue would deny the role of the translations in the 12-14th century. Also your theory goes against all the scholarship in the area over the last 200 years - believe it or there was history before September 11!!!!

 

[evo]

Ever read the Summa Theologica? throughout it Aquinas seeks to refute propositions from Arab Philosophy.

Aquinas was influenced by the writings of Aristotle, the Muslim Aristotelians Averroës and Avicenna, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Unlike many theologians, he welcomed the Latin translation of Aristotle's complete writings. Aquinas meant to take Aristotle's philosophical arguments to their deepest level, not just to fit them into the existing theological framework. He pressed the distinction between potentiality and actuality and defended immortality without diminishing the doctrine that the soul is embodied.

I know this guy who's pretty fun to to drink with,old school catholic,big philosphy fan, Neitzsche etc.After a few the subject invariably turns to the exhistence of god,me being an atheist an all.He's a bit of expert on Aquinas and swears the Summa is the closest thing to proof that god exists.After a few more beers,he also frequently uses it to deride the Moslems.Again we argue.

Anyway,just thought it interesting the way people read text differnently in light of what you say here.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Still more - where did maths come from [from Encarta for convenience sake]:

Few advances in mathematics took place in Europe during the early Middle Ages, before about 1100. Most learning was concentrated in monasteries and focused on questions of theology. A most important application of mathematics during the Middle Ages was in astrology; astrologers were called mathematici. Inasmuch as the practice of medicine was based largely on astrological determination of the proper treatment, physicians had to become mathematicians.

The introduction of Greek and Arabic works starting about 1100 played a major role in the rebirth of secular (worldly) learning in Europe. The translation of these works into Latin led to an upsurge in mathematical study in the West. English philosopher Adelard translated al-Khwārizmī’s astronomical tables and an Arabic version of Euclid’s Elements into Latin in the 12th century. Italian mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonnaci and Luca Pacioli depended heavily on Arabic sources in improving business mathematics used for accounting and trade. Fibonnaci’s Liber abaci (1202, Book of the Abacus) introduced Arabic numbers, the Hindu-Arabic place-value decimal system, and Arabic algebra to Europe

 

[MightyFighting]

Still more - where did maths come from [from Encarta for convenience sake]:

Few advances in mathematics took place in Europe during the early Middle Ages, before about 1100. Most learning was concentrated in monasteries and focused on questions of theology. A most important application of mathematics during the Middle Ages was in astrology; astrologers were called mathematici. Inasmuch as the practice of medicine was based largely on astrological determination of the proper treatment, physicians had to become mathematicians.

The introduction of Greek and Arabic works starting about 1100 played a major role in the rebirth of secular (worldly) learning in Europe. The translation of these works into Latin led to an upsurge in mathematical study in the West. English philosopher Adelard translated al-Khwārizmī’s astronomical tables and an Arabic version of Euclid’s Elements into Latin in the 12th century. Italian mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonnaci and Luca Pacioli depended heavily on Arabic sources in improving business mathematics used for accounting and trade. Fibonnaci’s Liber abaci (1202, Book of the Abacus) introduced Arabic numbers, the Hindu-Arabic place-value decimal system, and Arabic algebra to Europe

I think a lot of those things were developed in India, and reached Europe through the Arabs. I'm not sure how much new mathematics was actually developed by Arabs.

 

[evo]

I think a lot of those things were developed in India, and reached Europe through the Arabs.

Fibonacci was a great man.I used his numbers not 10 minutes ago.

I know how to party eh.

 

[MightyFighting]

Fibonacci was a great man.I used his numbers not 10 minutes ago.

I know how to party eh.

You're telling me.

I'm perturbating with a matched asymptotic expansion as we speak!

 

[Contra Mundum]

I think a lot of those things were developed in India, and reached Europe through the Arabs. I'm not sure how much new mathematics was actually developed by Arabs.

Our intellectual supremacist friend Lionel Lion is denying Arab Intellectuals had anything to do with the West coming out of the Middle Ages - I am merely trying to show the miriad of ways he is incorrect

 

[MightyFighting]

Our intellectual supremacist friend Lionel Lion is denying Arab Intellectuals had anything to do with the West coming out of the Middle Ages - I am merely trying to show the miriad of ways he is incorrect

Well, either way, it is not exactly an arguement for western exceptionalism.

 

[Lionel Lyon]

Ever read the Summa Theologica? throughout it Aquinas seeks to refute propositions from Arab Philosophy.

Actually, I have. Not in its entirety, but parts of it. Yes, I've seen where he cites the Arabs and Maimonides, and others like John of Damascus etc.

You are a revisionist - only a Western Chauvinist of the blindest hue would deny the role of the translations in the 12-14th century. Also your theory goes against all the scholarship in the area over the last 200 years - believe it or there was history before September 11!!!!

Ahem, it was you who made the fantastic claim that "the glories of Hellenic Philosopy and Culture would have been lost to the West BUT FOR the fact that Islamic scholars regarded them as important to preserve."

I dispute that claim simply based on the fact that we have all these texts in Greek, not just in Latin translations from the Arabic translations.

We did not get those Greek texts from the Arabs, but from elsewhere. So it is clear that someone else, not the Arabs, had preserved them all along--not in translation, but in their original tongue. How so, if they should have already been lost to the West?

All your impressive pastings aside, you did not even address that point, but twisted it into me somehow having denied the "role of the translations in the 12-14th century." Different question.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Actually, I have. Not in its entirety, but parts of it. Yes, I've seen where he cites the Arabs and Maimonides, and others like John of Damascus etc.



Ahem, it was you who made the fantastic claim that "the glories of Hellenic Philosopy and Culture would have been lost to the West BUT FOR the fact that Islamic scholars regarded them as important to preserve."

I dispute that claim simply based on the fact that we have all these texts in Greek, not just in Latin translations from the Arabic translations.

We did not get those Greek texts from the Arabs, but from elsewhere. So it is clear that someone else, not the Arabs, had preserved them all along--not in translation, but in their original tongue. How so, if they should have already been lost to the West?

All your impressive pastings aside, you did not even address that point, but twisted it into me somehow having denied the "role of the translations in the 12-14th century." Different question.

I hate to churlish Lionel but that is evasive sophistry - the corpus of Hellenic texts or translations in the West was extremely limited - we inherited the rest dare I say the majority through the accomodation of Islamic Scholars at the first Western University and through access of Arabic Translations in Monastaries and in Universities. They where foundational in the development of secular knowege in the West - Keep ignoring the scholarship on the issue my dear boy

 

[Lionel Lyon]

I hate to churlish Lionel but that is evasive sophistry - the corpus of Hellenic texts or translations in the West was extremely limited - we inherited the rest dare I say the majority through the accomodation of Islamic Scholars at the first Western University and through access of Arabic Translations in Monastaries and in Universities. They where foundational in the development of secular knowege in the West - Keep ignoring the scholarship on the issue my dear boy

So you're insisting we have inherited the original Greek Texts from the Arabs, and invoking "the scholarship on the issue" to boot? Bekker's Greek Corpus of Aristotle's Works is from the Arabs? What, they reconstructed the Greek from the Arabic? Unbelievable.