Abstract
A current ideology has it that different cultural traditions have privileged sources of insight and ways of knowing. Prizing one tradition over another would reek of cultural imperialism. In this vein we have those pushing for a unique status for Islamic philosophy: it should have its rightful place alongside Western philosophy—and no doubt alongside Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, African philosophy…. I begin by examining what could be meant by ‘Islamic philosophy’. I argue that embracing a multiculturalism that makes the philosophic enterprise relative to particular cultural traditions ignores a quite important part of the Islamic philosophical tradition itself: the quest for a transcultural, universal objectivity. The major Islamic philosophers embraced this ideal: al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), for instance. They held that some cultures are better than others at attaining philosophical wisdom, and some languages better than others at expressing it. They advocated selecting critically features from the different cultures for constructing a general theory. I illustrate their method by considering their treatment of paronymy and the copula. I end by advocating a return to this Islamic tradition.
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Bäck, A. (2008). Islamic Logic?. In: Rahman, S., Street, T., Tahiri, H. (eds) The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition. Logic, Epistemology, and The Unity of Science, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8405-8_9
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