Frank Griffel
Frank Griffel studied philosophy, Arabic literature, and Islamic studies at universities in Göttingen (Germany), Damascus, Berlin, and London. He received his PhD in 1999 from the Free University in Berlin. In his thesis he researched about the development of the judgment of apostasy in classical Islam. After a short period as a research fellow at the Orient Institute of the German Oriental Society in Beirut, Lebanon, he came in 2000 to Yale where he teaches courses on the intellectual history of Islam, its theology (both classical and modern), and the way Islamic thinkers react to Western modernity.
Address: Lady Margaret Hall
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Address: Lady Margaret Hall
Norham Gardens
Oxford OX2 6QA
United Kingdom
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The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the twelfth century. Earlier Western scholars thought that Islam’s engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalām). Griffel argues that even this new view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kalām, Muslim theologians picked up the discourse of classical philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna—a new and oft-misunderstood genre they called “ḥikma"—in which they left aside theological concerns. They wrote in both genres, kalām and ḥikma, and the same writers argued for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world’s creation, and the afterlife depending on the genre in which they were writing. Griffel shows how careful attention to genre demonstrates both the coherence and ambiguity of this new philosophical approach.
A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam" offers a detailed, insightful history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the history of Islam.
Für eine Leseprobe, klicken Sie bitte auf den Link unter "Files" (siehe oben) und gehen Sie auf der Reclam-Webseite des Buches zu "Leseprobe."
Contributors are: Anna Ayşe Akasoy, Ahmed El Shamsy, Kenneth Garden, Frank Griffel, Jules Janssens, Damien Janos, Taneli Kukkonen, Stephen Ogden, M. Sait Özervarlı, Martin Riexinger, Ulrich Rudolph, and Ayman Shihadeh.
Al-Gazali (gest. 1111) gilt als einer der einflussreichsten und wirkmächtigsten unten den von der islamischen Wissenschaftstradition hervorgebrachten muslimischen Denkern und Gelehrten. Seine Forschungen umfassten weite Felder mit Bezügen zu einer Vielzahl von Disziplinen und den dazugehörigen Diskursen. Viele seiner Werke werden noch heute rezipiert und befassen sich mit Philosophie, spekulativer Theologie, kalam, dem fiqh und usul al-fiqh, bis hin zu Fragestellungen von Ethik, Logik und dem tasawwuf. Diese Mannigfaltigkeit spiegelt sich in der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung mit al-Gazali wider, wie der vorliegende Band aufzuzeigen vermag.
Here is the text of the Turkish blurb:
Gazâlî, İslâm düşünce tarihinin en dikkat çekici isimlerinden birisidir. Onun kelâm, felsefe, tasavvuf ve fıkıh gibi disiplinlerin tarihinde bir dönüm noktası teşkil ettiği, hatta eserleriyle İslam toplumlarının dini algılayış ve yaşayışlarında da derin izler bıraktığı, bilinen bir gerçektir. Etkileyici hayat hikâyesiyle o, zihinlere, ömrü boyunca hakikatin peşinde koşmaktan vazgeçmeyen bir entelektüel, tarih boyunca filozoflara yöneltilmiş en derinlikli eleştiriyi kaleme almış bir kelâmcı, dinî ilimlere diriltici bir ruh üflemek için uğraşan bir âlim ve tasavvufun sunduğu ilim-amel/bilgi-eylem birlikteliğinden derinden etkilenen bir sûfî olarak kazınmıştır.
Frank Griffel’ın Gazâlî’nin Felsefî Kelâmı adlı eseri, onun bu çok yönlü entelektüel birikimini, kozmolojiye dair öğretilerini merkeze alarak ustalıkla incelemekte. Griffel, Gazâlî’nin hayatı, ilmî mirası ve yorum yöntemi ile âlemin yaratılışı, ilahî, insanî ve tabiî nedensellik hakkındaki görüşlerini hayranlık uyandıracak bir titizlikte ele almakla kalmamakta, bu konularda Batılı ilim çevrelerinde hâkim olan yanlış anlamaları sorgulayarak Gazâlî gibi önemli ve etkileyici bir düşünüre dair tutarlı ve incelikli bir resim sunmayı da başarmaktadır.
--Jon Hoover, University of Nottingham, in Theological Review.
"[An] excellent new study on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's thought, easily the most comprehensive to date (...)."
-- Eric L. Ormsby, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, in Journal of Shia Islamic Studies.
"Fascinating (...) Griffel's book is provocative, comprehensive, and valuable."
--Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University, in Review of Middle East Studies.
"Masterly... I strongly recommend this book to every student of Arabic intellectual history."
--Damien Janos, Göttingen University, in Journal of the American Oriental Society.
"This work of historical theology is essential reading for those wanting to understand with new depth and clarity the life and teachings of al-Ghazali."
--Martin Whittingham, Regent's Park College, Oxford, in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.
"... a major contribution to the study of al-Ghazali, both his life and his thought. (...) It may be hoped that this book will receive the attention it deserves and may offer as well an opportunity to futher studies on one of the greatest thinkers of Islam."
-- Jules Jansses, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Muslim World.
"This work is a detailed examination of Al-Ghazali's position with respect to Greek science and philosophy as it was presented to the Muslim world in the works of Avicenna. In making this examination the author has been able to correct certain misconceptions about Al-Ghazali which have long been held by some Western scholars."
--Nicholas Heer, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington, Seattle.
"Frank Griffel's new book is a lucid synthesis of the latest scholarship on al-Ghazali's life and legacy, his interpretive method and his ideas about the world's creation and about divine, human and natural causality. Griffel succeeds in presenting a coherent and nuanced picture of the cosmology of this complex thinker, who was both a scholar of jurisprudence and a mystic, both a critic of philosophy and a philosophical theologian."
--Robert Wisnovsky, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University."
-- Christoph Auffarth, Professor für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bremen, on rpi-virtuell.net
-- Michael Schwarz, Tel Aviv University, in Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam (JSAI).
“… an important, most valuable book, a pioneering work that focuses attention on a very difficult issue—a considerable achievement of great value to the scholarly community.”
-- Jules Janssens, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Journal of Islamic Studies
“Il existe assez peu de travaux préliminaires sur l’appartenance à la communauté de foi en Islam en relation avec le développement des critères de l’apostasie, problèmes qui ne sont pas rapport avec la situation de la philosophie en Islam. Au centre du débat, se trouvent la position ou les positions d’Algazel face à la philosophie et les réactions des philosophes à son endroit, comme l’a bien compris F. Griffel dans un ouvrage qui ne passera pas inaperçu (…).”
-- Claude Gilliot, Université d’Aix-Marseille, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
-- Ludger Lütkehaus in der Neuen Züricher Zeitung
1) Introduction by Frank Griffel
2) Gudrun Krämer: Justice in Modern Islamic Thought
3) Frank Griffel: The Harmony of Natural Law and Shari’a in Islamist Theology
4) Felicitas Opwis: Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Concept of Maṣlaḥa in Classical and Contemporary Legal Theory
5) David L. Johnston: ʿAllāl al-Fāsī: Shari’a as Blueprint for Righteous Global Citizenship
6) Noah Feldman: Shari’a and Islamic Democracy in the Age of al-Jazeera
7) Abbas Amanat: From ijtihād to wilāyat al-faqīh : The Evolution of the Shi’ite Authority to Political Power
8) Shahrough Akhavi: Shi’ite Theories of Social Contract
9) Saïd Amir Arjomand: Shari’a and Constitution in Iran: A Historical Perspective
10) Anna Würth: The Normativity of the Factual On the Every Day Construction of Shari’a in a Yemeni Family Court
11) Roy Mottahedeh: Afterword
The article explains the distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical books in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and what it means for a book to belong to the former group. Al-Rāzī’s works in the theoretical fields of philosophy (logic, the natural sciences, metaphysics, and theology) do not use evidence derived from revelation and hardly ever refer to it. The relationship between revelation and the practical disciplines of philosophy (among them ethics), however, is different from the relation between revelation and theoretical philosophy. This difference leads in Avicenna to an almost complete abandonment of the practical disciplines. In authors who follow Avicenna in his Farabian approach to the relationship between philosophy and revelation it leads to hybrid works such as al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā that follow a philosophical agenda but employ means and strategies that mimic and imitate revelation.
With a view of the 1277 Paris condemnation of 219 teachings, I suggest that the double-truth theory that Bishop Tempier hints at in the introduction of that document describes the philosophy of Fakhr al-Din much more accurately than that of Averroes.
The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the twelfth century. Earlier Western scholars thought that Islam’s engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalām). Griffel argues that even this new view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kalām, Muslim theologians picked up the discourse of classical philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna—a new and oft-misunderstood genre they called “ḥikma"—in which they left aside theological concerns. They wrote in both genres, kalām and ḥikma, and the same writers argued for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world’s creation, and the afterlife depending on the genre in which they were writing. Griffel shows how careful attention to genre demonstrates both the coherence and ambiguity of this new philosophical approach.
A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam" offers a detailed, insightful history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the history of Islam.
Für eine Leseprobe, klicken Sie bitte auf den Link unter "Files" (siehe oben) und gehen Sie auf der Reclam-Webseite des Buches zu "Leseprobe."
Contributors are: Anna Ayşe Akasoy, Ahmed El Shamsy, Kenneth Garden, Frank Griffel, Jules Janssens, Damien Janos, Taneli Kukkonen, Stephen Ogden, M. Sait Özervarlı, Martin Riexinger, Ulrich Rudolph, and Ayman Shihadeh.
Al-Gazali (gest. 1111) gilt als einer der einflussreichsten und wirkmächtigsten unten den von der islamischen Wissenschaftstradition hervorgebrachten muslimischen Denkern und Gelehrten. Seine Forschungen umfassten weite Felder mit Bezügen zu einer Vielzahl von Disziplinen und den dazugehörigen Diskursen. Viele seiner Werke werden noch heute rezipiert und befassen sich mit Philosophie, spekulativer Theologie, kalam, dem fiqh und usul al-fiqh, bis hin zu Fragestellungen von Ethik, Logik und dem tasawwuf. Diese Mannigfaltigkeit spiegelt sich in der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung mit al-Gazali wider, wie der vorliegende Band aufzuzeigen vermag.
Here is the text of the Turkish blurb:
Gazâlî, İslâm düşünce tarihinin en dikkat çekici isimlerinden birisidir. Onun kelâm, felsefe, tasavvuf ve fıkıh gibi disiplinlerin tarihinde bir dönüm noktası teşkil ettiği, hatta eserleriyle İslam toplumlarının dini algılayış ve yaşayışlarında da derin izler bıraktığı, bilinen bir gerçektir. Etkileyici hayat hikâyesiyle o, zihinlere, ömrü boyunca hakikatin peşinde koşmaktan vazgeçmeyen bir entelektüel, tarih boyunca filozoflara yöneltilmiş en derinlikli eleştiriyi kaleme almış bir kelâmcı, dinî ilimlere diriltici bir ruh üflemek için uğraşan bir âlim ve tasavvufun sunduğu ilim-amel/bilgi-eylem birlikteliğinden derinden etkilenen bir sûfî olarak kazınmıştır.
Frank Griffel’ın Gazâlî’nin Felsefî Kelâmı adlı eseri, onun bu çok yönlü entelektüel birikimini, kozmolojiye dair öğretilerini merkeze alarak ustalıkla incelemekte. Griffel, Gazâlî’nin hayatı, ilmî mirası ve yorum yöntemi ile âlemin yaratılışı, ilahî, insanî ve tabiî nedensellik hakkındaki görüşlerini hayranlık uyandıracak bir titizlikte ele almakla kalmamakta, bu konularda Batılı ilim çevrelerinde hâkim olan yanlış anlamaları sorgulayarak Gazâlî gibi önemli ve etkileyici bir düşünüre dair tutarlı ve incelikli bir resim sunmayı da başarmaktadır.
--Jon Hoover, University of Nottingham, in Theological Review.
"[An] excellent new study on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's thought, easily the most comprehensive to date (...)."
-- Eric L. Ormsby, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, in Journal of Shia Islamic Studies.
"Fascinating (...) Griffel's book is provocative, comprehensive, and valuable."
--Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University, in Review of Middle East Studies.
"Masterly... I strongly recommend this book to every student of Arabic intellectual history."
--Damien Janos, Göttingen University, in Journal of the American Oriental Society.
"This work of historical theology is essential reading for those wanting to understand with new depth and clarity the life and teachings of al-Ghazali."
--Martin Whittingham, Regent's Park College, Oxford, in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.
"... a major contribution to the study of al-Ghazali, both his life and his thought. (...) It may be hoped that this book will receive the attention it deserves and may offer as well an opportunity to futher studies on one of the greatest thinkers of Islam."
-- Jules Jansses, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Muslim World.
"This work is a detailed examination of Al-Ghazali's position with respect to Greek science and philosophy as it was presented to the Muslim world in the works of Avicenna. In making this examination the author has been able to correct certain misconceptions about Al-Ghazali which have long been held by some Western scholars."
--Nicholas Heer, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington, Seattle.
"Frank Griffel's new book is a lucid synthesis of the latest scholarship on al-Ghazali's life and legacy, his interpretive method and his ideas about the world's creation and about divine, human and natural causality. Griffel succeeds in presenting a coherent and nuanced picture of the cosmology of this complex thinker, who was both a scholar of jurisprudence and a mystic, both a critic of philosophy and a philosophical theologian."
--Robert Wisnovsky, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University."
-- Christoph Auffarth, Professor für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bremen, on rpi-virtuell.net
-- Michael Schwarz, Tel Aviv University, in Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam (JSAI).
“… an important, most valuable book, a pioneering work that focuses attention on a very difficult issue—a considerable achievement of great value to the scholarly community.”
-- Jules Janssens, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Journal of Islamic Studies
“Il existe assez peu de travaux préliminaires sur l’appartenance à la communauté de foi en Islam en relation avec le développement des critères de l’apostasie, problèmes qui ne sont pas rapport avec la situation de la philosophie en Islam. Au centre du débat, se trouvent la position ou les positions d’Algazel face à la philosophie et les réactions des philosophes à son endroit, comme l’a bien compris F. Griffel dans un ouvrage qui ne passera pas inaperçu (…).”
-- Claude Gilliot, Université d’Aix-Marseille, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
-- Ludger Lütkehaus in der Neuen Züricher Zeitung
1) Introduction by Frank Griffel
2) Gudrun Krämer: Justice in Modern Islamic Thought
3) Frank Griffel: The Harmony of Natural Law and Shari’a in Islamist Theology
4) Felicitas Opwis: Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Concept of Maṣlaḥa in Classical and Contemporary Legal Theory
5) David L. Johnston: ʿAllāl al-Fāsī: Shari’a as Blueprint for Righteous Global Citizenship
6) Noah Feldman: Shari’a and Islamic Democracy in the Age of al-Jazeera
7) Abbas Amanat: From ijtihād to wilāyat al-faqīh : The Evolution of the Shi’ite Authority to Political Power
8) Shahrough Akhavi: Shi’ite Theories of Social Contract
9) Saïd Amir Arjomand: Shari’a and Constitution in Iran: A Historical Perspective
10) Anna Würth: The Normativity of the Factual On the Every Day Construction of Shari’a in a Yemeni Family Court
11) Roy Mottahedeh: Afterword
The article explains the distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical books in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and what it means for a book to belong to the former group. Al-Rāzī’s works in the theoretical fields of philosophy (logic, the natural sciences, metaphysics, and theology) do not use evidence derived from revelation and hardly ever refer to it. The relationship between revelation and the practical disciplines of philosophy (among them ethics), however, is different from the relation between revelation and theoretical philosophy. This difference leads in Avicenna to an almost complete abandonment of the practical disciplines. In authors who follow Avicenna in his Farabian approach to the relationship between philosophy and revelation it leads to hybrid works such as al-Nafs wa-l-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā that follow a philosophical agenda but employ means and strategies that mimic and imitate revelation.
With a view of the 1277 Paris condemnation of 219 teachings, I suggest that the double-truth theory that Bishop Tempier hints at in the introduction of that document describes the philosophy of Fakhr al-Din much more accurately than that of Averroes.
Taking as central to its methodology Bauer’s perspectives, along with the contextual ethics of casuistry put forward by Jonsin and Toulmin in The Abuse of Casuistry, the conference is intended to explore further and more widely the contingency of ethical discourses in Islam. More specifically, discussions will include articulations of moral discourse in legal reasoning and argumentation, theological discussions of theodicy and divine command theories, the epistemology behind collecting moral knowledge in hadith collections, adab, aphoristic literature, rhetorical speeches and sermons, epistemological and ontological claims on morality, the reception of Aristotelian corrective philosophy of ethics and discussion of virtues. The conference will also serve to identify new questions, answers to which could give substance to the notion of the flexibility of norms across Islamic ethical discourses. Questions are to be answered from the perspective of each discipline, and speakers will be asked to reflect on the philosophical and theological implications that can be drawn. Comparative perspectives across the various Islamic sciences are especially encouraged.