The Philosophy of the Baghdad School

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The “Baghdad school” were a group of philosophers active in Baghdad from the 9th-11th centuries CE (3rd-5th centuries AH). Researchers have long seen this as a crucial time of collaboration between Muslim and Christian scholars, who came together to study and disseminate the ancient philosophical and scientific writings that passed from Greek into Syriac and Arabic, in part thanks to the translation activities of members of this very school. Drawing on Aristotelian and Neoplatonic sources, this ecumenical group of thinkers found that philosophy was a neutral terrain on which Christians, Jews, and Muslims could meet. The Christians, adapting to the increasing political dominance of Islam after the Arab conquests, used philosophical argumentation to expound and defend their religious doctrines. Thus the story of the Baghdad school shows us how philosophy could transcend religious boundaries in the pre-modern Islamic world. Despite the unparalleled status of the school as a case of interreligious philosophical activity in the Islamic world, and the philosophical originality found in the works produced by the school, there has as yet been no systematic effort to study the group as a whole. Research into the school has often presented its members more as translators and uncritical compilers than as independent thinkers, reducing their relevance to their role in ushering Greek thought into Arabic. Furthermore, the history of the Baghdad school has so far been investigated mostly on the basis of biographical and bibliographical sources, rather than by offering systematic and comparative analysis of the works produced by school members. In order to remedy these shortcomings in the existing literature, the cooperative project proposed here will pursue a comprehensive, and historically contextualized study of the philosophy of the Baghdad school. Particular attention will be paid to the premises and arguments shared by Christian and Muslim thinkers of the period, but also to the question of which commitments they do not share. The chief outputs of the project will be a general book on the school and reader of their works in English translation.