Islamic Philosophy Updates

The Islamic philosophers meditated upon these definitions of falsafah which they inherited from ancient sources and which they identified with the Qur’anic term hikmah believing the origin of hikmahto be divine. The first of the Islamic philosophers, Abu Ya`qub al-Kindi wrote in his On First Philosophy, “Philosophy is the knowledge of the reality of things within people’s possibility, because the philosopher’s end in theoretical knowledge is to gain truth and in practical knowledge to behave in accordance with truth.” Al-Farabi, while accepting this definition, added the distinction between philosophy based on certainty (al-yaqiniyyah) hence demonstration and philosophy based on opinion (al-maznunah), hence dialectic and sophistry, and insisted that philosophy was the mother of the sciences and dealt with everything that exists.