Saturday 11 June 2011

[C766.Ebook] Free Ebook The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson

Free Ebook The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson

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The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson

The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson



The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson

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The Philosophy of the Kalam (Structure & Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza; 4), by Harry Austryn Wolfson

In this long-awaited volume, on which he worked for twenty years, Mr. Wolfson describes the body of doctrine known as the Kalam. Kalam, an Arabic term meaning "speech" and hence "discussion," was applied to early attempts in Islam to adduce philosophic proofs for religious beliefs. It later came to designate a system of religious philosophy which reached its highest point in the eleventh century; the masters of Kalam, known as Mutakallimun, were in many respects the Muslim equivalent of the Christian Church Fathers. Mr. Wolfson studies the Kalam systematically, unfolding its philosophic origins and implications and observing its repercussions in other religions. He scrutinizes the texts of Muslim writers for their treatment of such crucial problems as the attributes of God, the Creation, causality, predestination and free will. In the process he shows how the teachings of the Koran were constantly interwoven with ideas from Greek and Oriental philosophies, Judaism, and Christianity as Islamic thought developed.

As lucidly written and intellectually stimulating as all the author's earlier books, this volume is a fitting capstone to a notable career.

Harry Wolfson spent sixty-six years at Harvard University, as undergraduate, graduate student, teacher, and professor emeritus. From 1925 until his retirement in 1958 he was Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard. He died in September 1974 at the age of 86.

The Philosophy of the Kalam is the last major work of one of the great scholars of our age. Harry Wolfson was renowned throughout the world for the depth, scope, and wisdom of his monumental volumes on the structure and growth of philosophic systems from Plato to Spinoza. It was not only his extraordinary erudition that commanded respect, his awesome mastery of all the primary sources, Greek, Christian, Judaic, and Muslim; it was also his penetrating insight and his original and groundbreaking interpretations.

  • Sales Rank: #1233248 in Books
  • Published on: 1976-01-01
  • Released on: 1976-01-31
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 9.06" h x 1.68" w x 6.37" l, 2.64 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 810 pages

About the Author
Harry Austryn Wolfson was Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, Emeritus, Harvard University.

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Ian Myles Slater on: Philosophy in Early Islam
By Ian M. Slater
This volume is a massive (over 800 pages, including the index) study of selected teachings of early Muslim philosophers/theologians, known as the Mutakallimun, whose viewpoints are known collectively as "the Kalam." The basic material was originally intended as part of a more general study of medieval Islamic thought, to be based on the limited documentation available.

This turn in was to be part of a study of the relation between philosophy and scriptural religions from Plato through Spinoza (in the seventeenth century). Published portions of the project include the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo of Alexandria. Unfortunately, Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974) was unable to complete this ambitious undertaking, on which he had started work in the 1920s. Indeed, the second volume of his work on the Church Fathers, originally accepted for publication, was subjected to a thorough revision, and, in the end, never published. (For a short biography and select bibliography, see Wikipedia.)

However, as the author explains in his Preface, it had dawned on him that the methods he had used in his books on Philo and the Church Fathers could be applied to the Kalam literature already in print. He could "prepare a volume on the Kalam in which certain problems peculiar to the Kalam would be dealt with in their relation to similar problems dealt with by Philo and the Church Fathers in their common attempt to interpret Scripture in terms of philosophy and to revise philosophy in conformity with Scripture." (That is the second half of a sentence; Wolfson's style is elegant, but demands concentration from the reader.)

The problems which Wolfson chose to discuss are: (1) Attributes; (2) Koran; (3) Creation; (4) Atomism; (5) Causality; (6) Predestination and Free Will. (Those familiar with Wolfson's exposition of what Spinoza did with the ideas of earlier philosophers will recognize most of the topics.)

The book is in large part dedicated to digging out the conclusions and arguments of the Mutakallimun from the later, better-known, Arabic writings, Muslim and Jewish, in which they are embedded. This requires a consideration of how philosophical doctrines reached the early Muslim thinkers, and their early encounters with philosophical versions of Christian theology. Histories of philosophy tend to point to Greek sources; as Wolfson points out, much of the early transmission of ideas was probably through the medium of Syriac (Christian Aramaic), traceable in part in changing terminology in Arabic.

As an inevitable consequence of this "excavation" of ideas, Wolfson sometimes seem to present more argumentation than substance as he works backwards in time.

This sometimes has the advantage of revealing how much the Kalam influenced later thinkers, like Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides (whose own work was later taken up by the Scholastics of the Latin Church).

The Kalam represents an early stage of Muslim thought, but not its original form. For beginners in the study of Islam and its philosophical dimensions, I would suggest the comparatively brief 320 pages of A. J. Wensinck's "The Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development" (1932), which was well-received in the Muslim world on its first publication. Unhappily, the only in-print edition of the book is very expensive; fortunately, it is available in pdf formats (one with searchable text) from archive.org (a site hosted by the Library of Congress, with which every student should be familiar), free for the trouble of downloading.

"The Philosophy of the Kalam" really should be in print, in a less-expensive paperback edition, but in fact the pricey hardcover edition is available through third-party sellers only. Fortunately, archive.org offers two PDF versions of this book, as well. One, the larger file, is a straight scan of the 770-some pages of text and bibliography (not the index), and is more readable. The other features a machine-readable text, ideal for searching; but the resolution seems fuzzy to me, and it may be a strain on your eyes. I suggest downloading both PDFS, if your hard drive has room for them.

4 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating
By A Customer
Wolfson's book should intrigue knowledge lovers. It introduces its reader to a whole world neglected by Americans, among other westerners, who did not recieve enough education about the world of ideas.

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