Taneli Kukkonen's research while affiliated with New York University Abu Dhabi and other places
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Publications (38)
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al‐Ghazālī (1056–1111 ce ) stands as perhaps the single most impactful intellectual in Islamic history. Al‐Ghazālī contributed in decisive ways to discussions in Islamic theology, philosophy, legal theory, and practical spirituality; his work continues to be read to this day by scholars and laypeople alike. Overshadowing everythi...
Die arabische Rezeption des Aristoteles lässt sich grob in drei Stadien einteilen. Während ihrer Anfangs- und Endphase – in den ersten Anfängen der islamischen Zivilisation und in der nachklassischen Periode – war das Bild, das man in der islamischen Welt von Aristoteles hatte, ziemlich vage, um nicht zu sagen: nebulös. Aristoteles wurde als eine A...
A common thread runs through Descartes’ First Meditation, the opening part of Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle , and al-Ghazālī’s intellectual autobiography The Deliverer from Error . For spiritual and intellectual progress to occur, each of these authors concurs, one must first divest oneself of previously held certainties, even though evil decei...
Medieval Arabic discussions concerning potentiality drew from two starkly different, indeed opposing sources. Within the intellectual lineage of falsafa, which historically speaking forms a continuation of the project of Greek philosophy on Arabic soil, what we find are a series of elaborations on the Aristotelian theory of potentiality and actuali...
In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the science of ethics is supposed to have developed. Al-Ghazālī contends that the philosophical ethics taught by the Arabic Aristotelians necessarily depends upon prior revelations handed to religious aspirants of a vaguely Sufi stamp. Al-Ghazālī’s argument is re...
Within the long history of Aristotelian psychological theorization, Avicenna stands out for his tightly argued and conceptually rich understanding of self-awareness. For Avicenna, a primitive and immediate form of self-awareness is explanatory of a range of phenomena, from the unity of our psychic functions to our very existence as cognizing indivi...
The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, incl...
This chapter surveys the reception of Aristotle's Categories in the late ancient and Arabic traditions. There is a puzzle when it comes to philosophical encyclopedias and compendia in the later Islamic tradition: Aristotle's categories gradually recede in importance before disappearing from sight altogether. This chapter shows that Avicenna initiat...
Tyrannical governments posed an important problem for political philosophers throughout the Middle Ages. The concept of tyranny was an invention of ancient Greece, but the terminology was passed along via Roman sources and Latin translations to medieval thinkers, who developed an extensive analysis and critique of tyrannical rule. However, not all...
When describing the relationship between theology and philosophy in the medieval Islamic setting it is necessary to start with a few qualifications. First, and most importantly, theology and philosophy were never formally ranked as academic disciplines the way they were in the Catholic universities. Rather, kalām, or speculative theology, and falsa...
Averroes (1126–1198 CE) was the most famous and prolific commentator on Aristotle in all of medieval philosophy: 38 works are extant, at all levels of instruction. This concentration on Aristotle was not happenstance, instead, it reflects Averroes’ maturing philosophical outlook. For Averroes, Aristotle’s teaching came to represent the pinnacle of...
In both the Arabic and Latin traditions, medieval philosophers discussed time largely by responding to Aristotle’s Physics. Though there are exceptions, like Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, most medieval philosophers agree with Aristotle’s account and try to solve problems and objections that can be raised about it. Several such problems appear in both the Latin...
Best known for his theological works, the early fourteenth-century philosopher Carmelite Guido Terreni demonstrated considerable independence and originality in his philosophical views. A follower of Godfrey of Fontaines and Aquinas, his defense of Aristotelian positions sometimes took original turns, and he departed from Aristotle in important res...
There have long been two contending narratives when it comes to situating Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ġazālī (Algazel/Algazali) (1056–1111), Islam’s most renowned theologian, within the history of philosophy. According to one, Ġazālī proved the scourge of the Arabic philosophers when he pointed out their various pretensions and self-contradictions and wh...
The Greek philosophical heritage has been transmitted uninterruptedly from late Antiquity onward in languages other than Greek: first, into Latin (from the fourth century CE onward), then, into Syriac and Armenian (respectively, from the sixth century to the tenth, and from the sixth century to the seventh), then again into Arabic, from the eighth...
From the time of Aristotle until the time of the Enlightenment, intension and remission of forms was mostly considered as a problem of change of a specific type of accidental forms (qualities). The problem appeared in various disciplines such as theology (the infusion of charity), philosophy of nature (changes in qualities), medicine (the problem o...
Abū l-Faraj ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Ṭayyib’s life in Baghdad marked the end of an era in which he and his fellow scholars cultivated the heritage of ancient Greek philosophy, notably Aristotle’s philosophy. Thanks to Mattā b. Yūnus and Yaḥyā b. ‘Adī, there had arisen a scholarly tradition that flourished over several generations, and whose last representa...
Natürlich war Aristoteles der eigentliche Gründer der später ›Peripatos‹ genannten Schule. Diese Bezeichnung und diejenige ihrer Anhänger als ›Peripatetiker‹ kam vermutlich schon während des Scholarchats (Schulleitung) durch Aristoteles’ unmittelbaren Nachfolger Theophrast auf, der dann auch im materiellen und juristischen Sinne den Bestand der Sch...
Al-Ghazālī’s most detailed explanation of how signification works occurs in his treatise on The Beautiful Names of God. Al-Ghazālī builds squarely on the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias: words signify things by means of concepts and correspondingly, existence is laid out on three levels, linguistic, conceptual, and particular (i...
Medieval thinkers regarded it as a foundational tenet of faith that the world had come to be through divine agency. The three monotheist Scriptures testify to this in clear terms, and each of the attendant theologies also came to regard it as important that God be recognized as creator. But how is God’s creative act to be understood? does it corres...
In his introductory address to Hayy Ibn Yaqẓân (‘Living, Son of Wakeful’) Abû Bakr Ibn Ṭufayl (1116–85) indicates that the tale he is about to tell was occasioned by a request made upon the Andalusian philosopher-physician to relate what he can concerning the secrets of Ibn Sînâ’s Philosophy of the Easterners (ḥikma al-mashriqiyyîn). Those expectin...
Citations
... The wording suggests the text to be taken as a pointer (išāra) to the path to truth, rather than a communication about it, which the author implies to be impossible. The intelligent reader should follow this path by himself in order to apprehend a glimpse of the reality that exists beyond words (Conrad 1996, Bürgel 1996, Kukkonen 2009). 21 Ibn Ṭufayl understands the 'taste' of Avicennian epistemology as a personal process that cannot be properly "taught;" but, it appears, it may be "hinted at" in metaphor. ...
... Self-reflection or introspection is also considered necessary by Al-Ghazali to achieve inner peace. It encourages individuals to regularly reflect on their lives, actions, goals, and values (Kukkonen, 2016). This reflection allows a person to identify weaknesses and mistakes and make the necessary changes to improve oneself and achieve inner peace. ...
... Those frequently covered in the media often develop what can be identified as accidental identities (Kukkonen, 2011). Such roles are created by the coverage given to politicians, athletes, or other prominent figures (Carlson & Donavan, 2008). ...
... By itself, however, the faculty of reason is insufficient to conceptualize the metaphysical world, with Ghazzâlî stating that by only using reason to solve metaphysical issues, one reaches contradictory conclusions. (Bolay, 2013;Kukkonen, 2012). For healthy development, Ghazzâlî states that when the inner self (AR: rûḥ) within the heart is supported by reason, a dynamic relationship is created in which the two organs work together to direct the person. ...
... Al-Ghazālī's semantics is already discussed in his "Intentions of the Philosophers" (Maqāṣid al-falāsifa). Moreover, as Kukkonen has shown (Kukkonen 2010), the semantics in the Maqṣad bears traces of the Peri hermeneias and Organon tradition, mediated through al-Farābī (d. 339/950) and Avicenna's (d. ...
