Islamic Philosophy and the Ethics of Belief [electronic resource] /

Abstract

In this book the author argues that the Falasifa, the Philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age, are usefully interpreted through the prism of the contemporary, western ethics of belief. He contends that their position amounts to what he calls ‘Moderate Evidentialism’ – that only for the epistemic elite what one ought to believe is determined by one’s evidence. The author makes the case that the Falasifa’s position is well argued, ingeniously circumvents issues in the epistemology of testimony, and is well worth taking seriously in the contemporary debate. He reasons that this is especially the case since the position has salutary consequences for how to respond to the sceptic, and for how we are to conceive of extremist belief. Anthony Robert Booth is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex, UK. He also works for Trusting Banks, a NWO (Dutch Science Foundation) funded collaboration between the Universities of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Cambridge, UK. He has worked mainly on issues at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, and has published articles appearing in such journals as Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and Synthese. He also co-edited Intuitions (2014).

Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Falsafa as Ethics of Belief -- 1.1: Knowledge in Islam -- 1.2: The Ethics of Belief in the West -- 1.3: The Ethics of Belief in Islam -- 1.3.1: Imān vs Islam -- 1.3.2: Islamic Evidentialism -- 1.3.3: Moderate Evidentialism -- 1.3.4: Islamic Anti-Evidentialism -- 1.3.5: Moderate Anti-Evidentialism -- 1.4: Concluding Remarks -- Chapter 2: Certainty & Prophecy -- 2.1: The Question of the Epistemic Elite -- 2.2: The Conditions of Certainty -- 2.3: The Active Intellect and the Prophetic Imagination -- 2.4: Moderate Evidentialism vs. Moderate Anti-Evidentialism -- 2.5: Concluding Remarks -- Chapter 3: Prophecy & Politics -- 3.1: Human perfection -- 3.2: The Utopian City State -- 3.3: The Imperfect Cities, Liberalism and Democracy -- 3.4: Conclusion: Towards a Neo-Pyhrronism? -- References.

In this book the author argues that the Falasifa, the Philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age, are usefully interpreted through the prism of the contemporary, western ethics of belief. He contends that their position amounts to what he calls ‘Moderate Evidentialism’ – that only for the epistemic elite what one ought to believe is determined by one’s evidence. The author makes the case that the Falasifa’s position is well argued, ingeniously circumvents issues in the epistemology of testimony, and is well worth taking seriously in the contemporary debate. He reasons that this is especially the case since the position has salutary consequences for how to respond to the sceptic, and for how we are to conceive of extremist belief. Anthony Robert Booth is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex, UK. He also works for Trusting Banks, a NWO (Dutch Science Foundation) funded collaboration between the Universities of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Cambridge, UK. He has worked mainly on issues at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, and has published articles appearing in such journals as Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and Synthese. He also co-edited Intuitions (2014).