Al-Razi's conception of the soul: Psychological background to his ethics

Medieval Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 245-263

  Druart, Thérèse Anne ^a  

^a CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61949231847     PISSN: 10570608     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/medievalpt19965210     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. On al-Razi's life, see Paul E. Walker, The Political Implications of al-Razi s Philosophy," in The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Muhsin Mahdi, ed. Charles E. Butterworth, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 27 (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 1992), pp. 61-65
2. On his life and works, see Abdurrahman Badawi, "Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi," in A History of Muslim Philosophy, vol. I, ed M. M. Sharif (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963), pp. 434-39
3. and Lenn E. Goodman, "Muhammad ibn Zakari-yyā' al-Rāzī," in History of Islamic Philosophy, part I, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, Routledge History of World Philosophies, I (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 198-215. Paul Kraus edited most of al-Razi's philosophical works: al-Razi, Opera philosophica (Cairo: Imprimerie Paul Barbey, 1939). References are to this edition
4. See Walker, "Political Implication," pp. 65-74
5. Kraus edition, referred to in note 1, pp. 99-111. Previous editions of The Philosophic Life with an introduction and excellent French translation, also by Paul Kraus: "Raziana I. La Conduite du Philosophe. Traité d'éthique d'Abu Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Razi," Orientalia N.S. 4 (1935): 300-34. English translation by Charles E. Butterworth, "The Book of the Philosophic Life," Interpretation 20 (1993): 227-36. I refer to this translation and its numbered sections
6. On Galen's influence on al-Razi's ethics, see Meir M. Bar-Asher, "A propos de l'infiuence de Galien sur l'éthique d'Al-Razi," Studia Islamica 70 (1989): 130-47
7. "Er-Razi philosophe d'après des ouvrages récents, " Revue de l'Histoire des Religions 62 (1941): 169, 189
8. See Badawi, "Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi," p. 448
9. Kraus published part of this controversy in Opera philosophica, pp. 291-316. It comes from Abu Hatim al-Razi's 'A'lâm al-nubuwwah' Fabienne Brion has translated some of the relevant sections of Abu Hatim's book in "Philosophic et révélation: Traduction annotée de six extraits du Kitâb A'lâm al-nubuwwa d'Abû Hâtim al-Râzî," Bulletin de Philosophic médiévale 28 (1986): 134-62, and in "Le temps, l'espace et la genèse du monde selon Abû Bakr al-Râzî. Présentation et traduction des chapitres I, 3-4 du "Kitâb a'lâm al-nubuwwa" d'Abû Hâtim al-Râzî," Revue philosophique de Louvain 87 (1989): 139-64. Alessandro Bausani offers a more partial translation in Un Filosofo "Laico" del Medioevo Musulmano. Abu Bakr Muhammad Ben Zakariyya Razi (Rome: Istituto di Studi Islamici, 1981), pp. 47-59
10. Arabic text, pp. 15-96. Dimitri Gutas provided some corrections for this edition in "Notes and Texts from Cairo Mss. I: Addenda to P. Kraus's Edition of Abu Bakr al-Razi's Al-Tibb al-Ruhani," Arabica 24 (1977): 91-93. English translation by Arthur J. Arberry, The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes (London: John Murray, 1950). As the Arabic edition and the English translation follow the same division into brief chapters, I simply indicate the chapter and the page of the Arabic edition
11. Animal Minds & Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993)
12. Arabic text, p. 28, 1. 11-p. 29, 1. 1. The close connection between the brain and the rational soul explains why what affects the cerebral humors can be an obstacle to the intellect's activity
13. On this see Lenn E. Goodman, "Razi's Myth of the Fall of the Soul: Its Function in His Philosophy," in Essays in Islamic Philosophy and Science, ed. George F. Hourani (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), pp. 25-40
14. and Fritz Meier, "Der "Urknall" eine Idee des Abū Bakr ar-Rāzī," Oriens 33 (1992): 1-21
15. Arabic text, and Pines, "Razi critique de Galien," p. 484
16. On al-Razi's conception of the soul, see Lenn Evan Goodman, "Razi's Psychology," The Philosophical Forum 4 (Fall 1972): 26-48
17. Arabic text, Vasquez pp. 73-74, n. 6; Spanish, p. 84
18. Arabic text, Vasquez pp. 80-85, particularly n. 4; Spanish, pp. 91-95
19. Italian translation in Lucchetta's La Natura e la Sfera, p. 365
20. See Kraus, "La conduite du philosophe," p. 308, and Sorabji, Animal Minds & Human Morals
21. See Kraus, "La Conduite du Philosophe," p. 328, n. 1
22. See The Spiritual Medicine, chap. VIII, on anger, p. 56, ll. 4-9
23. For Abu Hatim's text, see Kraus's Arabic text, pp. 295-313
24. For al-Razi's metaphysics and cosmology, see Salomon Pines, Beilräge zur islamischen Atomenlehre (Berlin, 1936), pp. 34-93
25. Majid Fakhry, "A Tenth Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology, "Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968): 15-22
26. The exact meaning of the verb tajabbala (Arabic text, p. 308, ll.9-10) is rather obscure. Brion in "Le temps, l'espace," translates as "l'âme a désiré informer ce monde" (p. 156)
27. Alessandro Bausani, in Filosofo "Laico, "adopts "L'anima bramo im-pastarsi col mono" (p. 55)
28. Meier in "'Urknall,'" wavers and finally selects "Die Seele (Urseele) hatte Lust in diese Welt einzugehen" (pp. 16-17, n.45)
29. This version can be found in the original Persian, as well as in Arabic translation, in Kraus's Arabic text, pp. 284-86
30. The Philosophic Life, p. 102, 11. 3-4; Butterworth, n. 9
31. Since only God could organize this world, one can understand that al-Razi objected strenuously to attributing to nature itself the organization God granted to it. See his criticisms of Aristotle's notion of nature in Metaphysics, Kraus's Arabic text, pp. 116-24
32. On this issue of taqlīd and its complexity, see Richard M. Frank, "Al-Ghazali on Taqiid, Scholars, Theologians, and Philosophers," Zeitschrifl für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschafien 7 (1991-92): 207-52
33. On al-Razi's ethics, see Thérèse-Anne Druart, "Al-Razi (Rhazes) and Normative Ethics," in Tradition and Renewal, vol. 2, ed. David A. Boileau and John A. Dick, Louvain Philosophical Studies, 6 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1993), pp. 167-81