Some borrowed remarks...

Leo Strauss (Born 1899)

(Image from Harper's Magazine)

My online buddy Bill Vallicella, who blogs copiously with great vigor and rigor over at his blog Maverick Philosopher, has posted a very interesting quote from the classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss:

For the Jew and the Moslem, religion is primarily not, as it is for the Christian, a faith formulated in dogmas, but a law, a code of divine origin. Accordingly, the religious science, the sacra doctrina, is not dogmatic theology, theologia revelata, but the science of the law, halaka or fiqh. The science of the law, thus understood has much less in common with philosophy than has dogmatic theology. Hence the status of philosophy is, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in the Islamic-Jewish world than it is in the Christian world. No one could become a competent Christian theologian without having studied at least a substantial part of philosophy; philosophy was an integral part of the officially authorized and even required training. On the other hand, one could become an absolutely competent halakist or faqih without having the slightest knowledge of philosophy. This fundamental difference doubtless explains the possibility of the later complete collapse of philosophical studies in the Islamic world, a collapse which has no parallel in the West in spite of Luther.

Bill takes this quote from pages 221-222 of Strauss's essay "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy," The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, edited by Thomas L. Pangle (University of Chicago Press, 1989). For those who like this sort of thing, the same quote (minus its last two sentences) can be found as one of the two prefatory quotes to James V. Schall's article "On the Point of Medieval Political Philosophy," published in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, 23 (Winter, 2000), 7-14.

I don't know much about this, but I recall from my history-of-science studies reading about the collapse of Islamic philosophy in the High Middle Ages as the Muslim religious establishment rejected such rationalist thinkers as the philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd). Based on that and my impression from a wider reading of books, articles, and other sources, I posted a response to the quote from Strauss:

This is an interesting point, but I have a question -- or a series of them.

I can see that the study of law might crowd out philosophy, but why would philosophy collapse in the Islamic world? Why wouldn't it survive as at least a fringe activity? I have the impression that something else is going on in the Islamic world, and that the problem is not just benign neglect -- nor even malign neglect -- but an active hostility to philosophy.

If Pope Benedict is right, then the Islamic conception of God as pure, arbitrary will (a purely voluntarist conception of God) implicitly posits irrationality at the very essence of things -- which might mean that no essence exists. But anyway, if God is irrational, and yet the all-powerful ground(lessness) of existence, then what place is there for philosophy?

I'm not sure if I've expressed this rigorously, but perhaps you get my point.

Interestingly, a Muslim philosopher, Derrick Abdul-Hakim, posted his response by quoting a sentence from my comment, agreeing with it, and describing his own experience:

"I have the impression that something else is going on in the Islamic world, and that the problem is not just benign neglect -- nor even malign neglect -- but an active hostility to philosophy."

I agree. If one were so inclined, one could claim that in the Islamic world philosophy is tantamount to non-belief. I can recall several instances being dubbed a 'heretic' for merely studying philosophy; in fact, one individual had the audacity to instruct me to do psychology instead of philosophy. The enigma is that philosophical theology in the Islamic world fell to the clutches of dogmatic theologians who, having gained the upper hand politically, banished philosophy from the domain of theology. Unfortunately, there is no contemporary Averroes to save the day.

I refer you to Bill's blog for the rest of Abdul-Hakim's interesting personal experiences as a Muslim philosopher.