The philosophers

The imitators of the philosophers (*ḥukamāʼ*) have said — and it is the view their chief adopted — that the Creator's knowledge, exalted be He, of universals (*kulliyyāt*) is by the impression of forms (*irtisām al-ṣuwar*) in His essence.

— And how astonishing are the mutakallimūn and the imitative philosophers:

The imitators of the philosophers have said that He knows particulars in a universal manner — that is, in the manner already set out in the second branch of the disjunction concerning al-Ashʻarī's statement.

and a group said that it is something other than these things, following upon the balanced temperament, coming to be when the temperament is firmly established, making use of the faculties and the instruments, and acquiring objects of desire and perfections — and this is the doctrine of the philosophers.

As for the spirit, what is understood by it among them is that it is a substance which is neither a body nor bodily, so that the intellects (ʿuqūl) and the souls both fall under it;

For this reason they said that souls do not create bodies but only move them:

"For philosophic men must be inquirers into very many things," according to Heraclitus;

And yet the philosophers too hold the virtues to be habits and dispositions and sciences.

For this reason he endures toils and tortures and afflictions—not, as the courageous among the philosophers do, in hope that present pains will cease and that he will again partake of pleasures, but because knowledge has begotten in him a most firm conviction of the attainment of the things to come.

The philosophers know of demons, Socrates himself awaiting the judgment of his demon.

Among your own sages too it is agreed that the Logos — that is, the Word and Reason — is seen to be the artificer of the universe.

whereas those philosophers, with such deeds upon them, persevere in the name and honour of wisdom.

For should you excel in the principles and their appendages — logic, philosophy (*al-ḥikmah*), the philosophers, the opinions of the ancients and the perplexities of intellects — and should you together with that hold fast to the Book and the Sunnah and the principles of the forebears, and stitch reason and transmitted authority (*al-ʻaql wa-al-naql*) together, I do not think you will in this reac …

If those who were deputed to refute the philosophers have themselves been left bewildered, and an eclipse has overtaken them, then what is to be thought of the men they were refuting!

” And much talk without proof hardens the heart when it is about the lawful and the forbidden — so what when it is about the formulations of the Yūnusīyah and the philosophers, and those blasphemies that blind hearts!

I mean the philosopher, the truest and perhaps most perfect expositor and prophet, by reason, of the immortal nature.

And this perhaps is not your fault — you will show whether it is, if you bear with me today — but rather the fault of the so-called philosophers.

but if as philosophers they do this for the sake of gain and their own reputation, not of your benefit, this is now dreadful.

And this is the meaning of the saying of the ancient pillars among the philosophers, ‘Number is a moving intellect.

it has become widely held among the schools that the quiddities are not made, so he anticipated the objection that what he has said runs counter to what is established among the philosophers, nay among rational men altogether.

And it is for this reason that the philosophers denied His knowledge, exalted be He, of particulars in their particularity.

The philosophers said that those things are neither letters nor sounds, but are only imaginings (takhayyulāt) of letters and sounds;

Have not the philosophers said that the fire which is released from thunderbolts penetrates in a subtle instant into the interiors of stones and iron and comes out the other side?

) The generality of the masters of the religious communities (milal) who credit the prophets have acknowledged its existence, and a great company of the ancient philosophers acknowledged it as well.

We say that the human soul can in no way be transferred into beasts, even if, according to the philosophers, it were reckoned from elemental substances.

But more, both philosophers — against Dicaearchus, Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle — and physicians against Andreas and Asclepiades, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself;

but according to the common opinion, the fate of providence too, and necessity, and the free arbitration of fortune.

For surely you did not believe a poetic myth that records Minos the Cretan as the familiar of Zeus, and yet will disbelieve us, who have become disciples of God, having taken up the truly true wisdom, which the topmost of the philosophers only hinted at, but the disciples of Christ both grasped and proclaimed.

Since, then, Helen has power to punish as well as to reward, it is the duty of those who have great wealth to propitiate and to honor her with thank-offerings, sacrifices, and processions, and philosophers should endeavour to speak of her in a manner worthy of her merits;

I set apart and distinguish those of whom you were just speaking, the lovers of spectacles and the arts, and men of action, and separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of wisdom.

Then to those who in each and every kind welcome the true being, lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion is the name we must give.

Unless, said I, either philosophers become kings in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessa …

nor does anyone stir up hatred against them, though against your manners, rites, worship, and way of life they openly and publicly bark out all the bitterness of their eloquence, with contempt of the laws, without respect of persons, so that some even hurl their freedom of speech against the emperors themselves with impunity.

To be sure, Matter conferred something on itself too, that it might be acknowledged together with God — coequal with God, nay, even his helper — except that Hermogenes alone has acknowledged it, and the philosophers, those patriarchs of the heretics.

For, turned from the Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he took from there, from the Stoics, the notion of setting Matter alongside the Lord — Matter which, on his view, has itself always existed, neither born nor made, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which the Lord afterwards made all things.

We are taught God by the prophets and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus.

But even if in the brain, or in the midpoint between the brows, or wheresoever it pleases the philosophers, the principality of the senses has been consecrated — what is called the HEGEMONIKON — the whole place of the soul's thinking will be flesh.

The philosophers indeed, who are reckoned creatures of some wisdom, ascribe so much to it that, although among themselves they are at variance through the various passions of their sects and the rivalries of their opinions, yet, mindful in common of patience alone, to this one thing they have entrusted the peace of their pursuits.

and that the restoration of the flesh be denied is taken from the one common school of all the philosophers;

Those wise philosophers, blushing before their own disciples burning together with them, to whom they used to persuade that nothing pertains to God, to whom they affirmed that souls were either nothing or would not return into their former bodies?

Certain philosophers gave this name to quiet and tranquillity;

Great curiosity, and a far greater memory, is needed for the study, if anyone should wish to excerpt, from any of the most approved writings of the philosophers, or of the poets, or of any masters whatsoever of secular learning and wisdom, testimonies to Christian truth, so that its rivals and persecutors may be convicted out of their own document — guilty both of error in themselves and of injustice toward us.

Certainly the soul is prior to literature, and discourse prior to the book, and sense prior to the pen, and man himself prior to the philosopher and poet.