Mugen's Public Library
medieval Islamic philosophy
Aristotle's Infinite Regress & Medieval Islamic Cosmology
Imagine a clock that duplicates itself for every second that elapses, such that every three seconds, three new clocks appear. If we observe the presence of clock number 88 and we know the cause of a new clock is the passage of one second, we know that there must have been a first cause in the series whose effects we observe in the 88th member of the series. If we are to trust the time on the face of the 88th clock we must inquire into whether the first clock was wound up to the correct time. If we don’t know the time on the first clock, this renders the time on the 88th unintelligible. Now the question remains of how this first clock was brought into existence. It must have been the effect of a prior clock’s falling second, but if there was no clock prior to the first, then no second could have elapsed and the first clock couldn’t have come into being. What created the first clock and its principle of duplicative change had to have initiated the series from outside the system, a Mover that isn’t a clock, otherwise, the series of clocks would regress to infinity. This paper will examine the cosmological and theological implications of Aristotle’s infinite regress argument by first inquiring into the nature of the first mover, whether both per se causal series and per accidens series must necessitate such a mover, and how this shapes Aristotlean and Neo-Platonist cosmological accounts of the universe’s eternality or generation in time.
Space & Time and Time & Space
This paper investigates the necessity of a dialogue between both the idealist and materialist views in offering a well-rounded inquiry into the nature of space and time. Utilizing Ibn Sina’s floating person thought experiment, the paper isolates the person’s intelligible experience from their empirical intuitions in order to determine whether a recognizable presentation of S&T will arise. The paper draws on Kant’s transcendental aesthetic to provide an idealist’s response, as well as poses challenges to Kant’s view by drawing on materialist arguments. The first kind of challenge considers the dialectic between idealist and materialist views to be crucial in distinguishing the subject from nature in-itself. The second challenge proposes that if we can derive shared phenomenological conditions that all beings participating in the spatio-temporal Universe must accede to, then the material context of existence might also be responsible for structuring a-priori intuitions of S&T.
Al-Farabian Synthesis of Plato and Aristotle's Politics
Human beings have a tendency and an aspiration towards the harmony that comes from unity. We strive towards the unity of our souls, and the happiness that comes from it. We wish for the unity of our households so that we may flourish in harmonious circumstances (even when our siblings make that impossible!) Sooner than later we learn that peace of the household can only really be achieved when we've allowed ourselves the detachment necessary to first make peace with ourselves. The harmony of the city, the nation, or even the world work along similar lines.
We know that world peace, as fanciful a concept as it might sound, requires the unity of nations, and would ultimately be measured by how well each country revolves around a common clock [A Clock to Rule them ALLL - If Plato had his way]. Plato strives for this oneness through a notion which has historically seen problematic variations. That the health of our communities is measured by how well WE gyrate around an undisclosed elite that promises to bring us closer to unity. Be it the bourgeoisie or the capitalist complex, the president of the "free world" or even a disgruntled parent. We took these tainted lessons everywhere we went and yet we felt that there had to be a world of Oneness, where freedom is not commoditized but appears bountiful.
And so here is where we face our dilemma. We have a need to recalcitrate towards a collective harmonious One, but the world around us seemingly suggests that the only way to do so is by renouncing our individual freedoms in return for the thrill of chasing that very freedom we've renounced. The answer, quite poetically may I add, lies in the Al-Farabian synthesis of the Platonic and Aristotelean clash, it lies within rather than without.
In short, the mediation of this mysterious puzzle which has dawned the name of "the greater harmony" by Wiznovsky is as follows. It's in our detachment from the orbit of creation that we develop the authentic trust and self-assurance necessary to prioritize the health of the individual soul in adherence to the soul of the world. Whether that individual soul is that of a city, a nation, or even a single person, we all aim towards the same Good, if we find the courage to first aim towards the good within.
Freedom, Autonomy & Love in Ancient Greek, Medieval and Contemporary Political Thought
MY THESIS!!!
While the quest for freedom has not evaded any period of human intellectual history, the purported location of these keys has changed depending on the thinker, the period, and the form of freedom in question. Freedom from causal determinacy of the material world has often been interpreted as freedom from our own impulsive drives for pleasure and survival, or even from the ontological continuity of time and contiguity of space. Personal liberation of minds through a state-assisted rational investigation of the Good in the ancient Greek and medieval Arab worlds was prevalent in early political thought. Collective liberation of the disenfranchised from a tyrannical elite through civil disobedience or revolt on the other hand, with a few exceptions in early Greek and medieval thought, has largely gone unframed until the 18th century. It’s important to note that while philosophers will be developing their conceptual foundations of freedom in dialogue with the historical facts and ideological norms of their times, it is common for their views to diverge from the collective and epochal conscience. This work will explore the history of the philosophical concept of political freedom.
