The Philosophy of the Baghdad School

“巴格达学派”是公元9 - 11世纪（伊斯兰历3 - 5世纪）活跃在巴格达的一群哲学家。研究人员长期以来一直认为这是穆斯林和基督教学者之间合作的关键时刻，他们聚集在一起研究和传播从希腊语到叙利亚语和阿拉伯语的古代哲学和科学著作，部分归功于这一学派成员的翻译活动。这群合一的思想家从亚里士多德和新柏拉图的资料中发现，哲学是一个中立的领域，基督徒、犹太人和穆斯林都可以在这里相遇。在阿拉伯人征服之后，基督徒适应了伊斯兰教日益增长的政治统治地位，使用哲学论证来阐述和捍卫他们的宗教教义。因此，巴格达学派的故事向我们展示了在前现代伊斯兰世界中，哲学是如何超越宗教界限的。尽管该学派作为伊斯兰世界宗教间哲学活动的一个案例具有无与伦比的地位，而且在该学派的著作中发现了哲学上的独创性，但迄今为止还没有系统地研究该群体的努力。对该学派的研究往往将其成员更多地视为翻译和不加批判的编译者，而不是独立的思想家，这降低了他们在将希腊思想引入阿拉伯语中的作用的相关性。此外，迄今为止，对巴格达学派历史的调查主要是根据传记和书目资料，而不是对学派成员的作品进行系统和比较分析。为了弥补现有文献中的这些缺陷，这里提议的合作项目将对巴格达学派的哲学进行全面的、历史背景化的研究。将特别注意的前提和论点，由基督教和穆斯林思想家共享的时期，但也对他们不共享的承诺的问题。该项目的主要产出将是一本关于学校和读者的英文翻译作品的一般书籍。

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.