Conference entitled 'In the age of al-Farabi: Arabic thought in the 4th/10th Century'. (360G-Wellcome-079206_Z_06_Z)

In the Age of al-Farabi: Arabic Thought in the 4th/10th Century The proposed conference is one of a series of events focusing on philosophy in the Islamic world (we use the phrase "Arabic Philosophy" since some of the philosophers to be discussed were in fact Christian and Jewish). Previous events in this series have had a broader focus, dealing with a range of topics throughout the history of Arabic thought. But in order to produce as coherent an event as possible, this conference will focus more tightly on the most philosophically vibrant and historically important century in Arabic thought: the 10th century (the 4 century of the Islamic calendar). The purpose of this conference is to look at al-Farabi and other philosophers within the complex intellectual context of the 10th century itself. This involves two basic tasks: First, we will take account of the full range of philosophical schools and traditions of this time period. The most famous of these is the Aristotelian school in Baghdad; the Muslim al-Farabi was a member of this school, but most of these Aristotelians were in fact Christians. Several papers will be devoted to this school: those by Black, Eggert, Ferrari, Giannakis, Rashed, Reisman and Urvoy. A rival development were the more Platonist philosophers who lived and worked further east in the Islamic empire. The papers by Adamson, Biesterfeldt and Wakelnig will discuss these thinkers. Meanwhile, there are philosophical movements that are harder to classify - one of the goals of the conference will be to explore how other thinkers relate to the major trends of the period. Thus Fenton will speak on Jewish thinkers of the time, and there will be papers on the enigmatic "Brethren of Purity" and other authors with Shiite Ismaili leanings. Second, we will consider intellectual developments that were related to philosophy, without however involving thinkers who would necessarily have described themselves as "philosophers". There are three such developments to be explored: science, and especially medicine; the trend of refined literary authors who show knowledge of and interest in philosophical texts; and perhaps most importantly indigenous Islamic theology, or "kalam".