Islamic Humanism

by Goodman, Lenn E.

• ISBN13: 9780195189148
• ISBN10: 0195189140
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book is an attempt to explain how, in the face of increasing religious authoritarianism in medieval Islamic civilization, some Muslim thinkers continued to pursue essentially humanistic, rational, and scientific discourses in the quest for knowledge, meaning, and values. Drawing on a widerange of Islamic writings, from love poetry to history to philosophical theology, Goodman shows that medieval Islam was open to individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism, even liberalism.

Author Biography

Lenn E. Goodman is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Among his many publications are In Defense of Truth (2001), Jewish and Islamic Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age (1999), Judaism, Human Rights, and Human Values (OUP, 1998), and God of Abraham (OUP, 1996).

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Short Titles	xiii
Introduction	3	(27)
The Sacred and the Secular	30	(52)
Focus and Distraction	33	(1)
Poetry and Music	34	(9)
Dress and Display	43	(4)
Dunya and Din---in Wine, War, and Love	47	(20)
Play, the Hunt, and the Freedom of the Dandy	67	(15)
Humanism and Islamic Ethics	82	(40)
Islamic Ethics in Theory and Practice	88	(13)
Miskawayh's Courtly Humanism	101	(11)
Ghazali's Appropriation	112	(10)
Being and Knowing	122	(39)
Being and Becoming	122	(21)
Knowledge as a Value	143	(18)
The Rise of Universal Historiography	161	(52)
The Birth of Arabic Historiography	164	(7)
The Roots of Annalistic	171	(3)
Baladhuri's Narrative Strategy	174	(2)
Greek and Biblical Models	176	(4)
Universal History	180	(2)
Tabari's Synthesis	182	(4)
Saadiah's Historical Orientation	186	(3)
Mas'udi	189	(6)
The Triumph of Synthetic History	195	(4)
Miskawayh's Historiography	199	(2)
Local Chronicles and Biographical Dictionaries	201	(1)
Rashid al-Din's Universal History	202	(2)
Ibn Khaldun	204	(9)
Notes	213	(38)
Bibliography	251	(10)
Index	261