Current project
“FALSAFA”
The Intellectual History of Arabic and Islamic Thought in Europe
Online Symposium
Friday 10th May 2024
This one-day symposium is the launch event for the ‘Falsafa’ project that constitutes one of the leading research streams in philosophy of the Knapp Foundation.
The ‘Falsafa’ project brings to far greater visibility the Arabic and Islamic intellectual contribution to history in Europe, critically questioning the suggestion that Islam should be explained as an Eastern ‘outsider’ to the West. From Islam’s beginnings, Muslim scholars, with Christian and Jewish interlocutors in the classical Arabic milieu, preserved and reworked Greek philosophical and scientific ideas that were already developed, not only in mainland Greece, but also in the local adaptations of the Greco-Roman cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean, in Byzantium, the Levant, northern Mesopotamia, and Egypt. It was this preserved tradition that formed the backbone of what was received in West, especially in centres like Paris, Oxford and Bologna, when these centres took up an engagement with antiquity.
The maturation of the Arabic and Islamic civilisations resulted in the development of novel branches of scientific knowledge and systems of philosophical and theological thought that eventually impacted the European milieu through Latin translations from the High Middle ages, shaping the Italian Renaissance and what developed from it up to the early-modern period.
The history of the critical assimilation and radical expansion of the Greek corpus within the Arabic and Islamic classical milieu is well documented. This is a burgeoning area of scholarship. Similar developments show the development and adaptation of Arabic sciences and philosophy within Medieval and Renaissance circles of knowledge. Here the extent of the presence and impact of Arabs and Muslims in laying the grounds for the philosophical, theological, and scientific traditions in Europe remains still veiled for many audiences. The indebtedness of Europe, and through it, the wider cultures of ‘Western Christianity’, to this decisive interchange of ideas with Islam, still impacting our modern world, is yet still too much concealed and needs to be brought to light.
This enquiry has the power to shed new light on the difference in the ways ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Christianity developed, in part because of the different ways they related to Islam. Christian theologians of Byzantium, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, along with Jewish scholars interacted with Muslims in direct lived experience. This contributed to reciprocal intellectual exchanges. Even though some of this history is documented, it remains the case that the discussion has been obscured or falls into the background when set against the more pressing concerns of interreligious dialogue. This enquiry will take intellectual history and its impact on our current lifeworld as its primary emphasis, opening the path for a much-needed new dialogue.
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PROGRAMME
(All times are UK time (BST))
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SESSION ONE – Introducing the “Falsafa” Project
13:00-13:45 Laurence Hemming (University of Lancaster & Knapp Foundation) – The Question of Truth: The “Falsafa” Project and the Research of the Knapp Foundation
13:45-14:30 Nader El-Bizri (University of Sharjah & Knapp Foundation) – The “Falsafa” Project and Modern Scholarship in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
14:30-15:00 Break
SESSION TWO – Respondents to the “Falsafa” Project
15:00-15:15 Oliver Leaman (University of Kentucky) – The “Falsafa” Project in-between Islamic Philosophy and Jewish Philosophy?
15:15-15:30 Faisal Devji (St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford) – The “Falsafa” Project and Research in Islamic Intellectual History
15:30-15:45 Georges Tamer (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) – The “Falsafa” Project in-between Jewish-Christian-Islamic Discourses
15:45-16:00 Kata Moser (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) – The “Falsafa” Project and Contemporary Arabic Philosophy with its Modern European Sources
16:00-16:45 Group Discussion with Q&A
16:45 Close
If you would like to register for the symposium, please get in touch with Nader El-Bizri at falsafa@knappfoundation.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. The Zoom link will be sent out a few days before the symposium.