Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
On First Philosophy
The first treatise of Arabic metaphysics: philosophy as the search for truth from whatever source, arguments that the world cannot be eternal, and God as the True One beyond all description.
Introduction
Al-Kindi dedicated this Arabic treatise (Fi l-falsafa al-ula) to the caliph al-Mutasim, who reigned from 833 to 842; only its first part survives, in a single manuscript in Istanbul. The opening chapter defends philosophy against religious critics: first philosophy is knowledge of the First Truth, the cause of all truth, and we should not be ashamed to take truth from whatever source it comes, even from distant peoples. The second chapter argues that body, motion and time cannot be infinite, so the world has a beginning – arguments related to those of the Christian commentator John Philoponus. The last two chapters show that nothing we call one is one in the true sense, and that the True One, the cause of unity in all things, can only be described by negation. Al-Kindi drew on Arabic versions of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and of Neoplatonic texts made in his circle, among them the paraphrase of Plotinus known as the “Theology of Aristotle”.
Connections
Builds on
- Metaphysicsc. 340 BCE · Aristotle
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