Aristotle’s Journey to Europe: A Synthetic History of the Role Played by the Islamic Empire in the Transmission of Western Educational Philosophy Sources from the Fall of Rome through the Medieval Period By Randall R. Cloud B.A., Point Loma Nazarene University, 1977 M.A., Point Loma University, 1979 M. Div., Nazarene Theological Seminary, 1982 Submitted to the: School of Education Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Program: Educational Policy and Leadership Concentration: Foundations of Education and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Committee: _______________________________________ Suzanne Rice, Chairperson _______________________________________ Ray Hiner _______________________________________ Jim Hillesheim _______________________________________ Marc Mahlios _______________________________________ Sally Roberts Dissertation Defended: November 6, 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Randall R. Cloud certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Aristotle’s Journey to Europe: A Synthetic History of the Role Played by the Islamic Empire in the Transmission of Western Educational Philosophy Sources from the Fall of Rome through the Medieval Period Dissertation Committee: _______________________________________ Suzanne Rice, Chairperson _______________________________________ Ray Hiner _______________________________________ Jim Hillesheim _______________________________________ Marc Mahlios _______________________________________ Sally Roberts Approved: _____________________________ ii Table of Contents Abstract vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 The Research Question 2 1.2 The Interplay between Philosophy and Education 10 1.3 Sources of Influence for this Dissertation 27 1.31 Philosophy of Education Textbooks 28 1.32 Ancient and Medieval History of the Christian Church 31 1.33 Thomas Cahill’s “Hinges of History” 47 1.4 Research Methodology 52 Chapter 2: The Greek Foundation 62 2.1 The Context of Plato and Aristotle’s Work 66 2.2 Non-Western Influences on Greek Thought 73 2.21 Mesopotamian 79 2.22 Egyptian 80 2.23 Hebrew 82 2.3 The Philosophical Priorities of Platonic and Aristotelian Thought 90 2.31 Plato 93 2.32 Aristotle 97 2.4 List of Works by Plato 108 2.5 List of Works by Aristotle 111 2.6 What Do We Mean by “Western” Tradition? 116 Chapter 3: Hellenism, the Roman Empire, and the Propagation of Christianity 124 3.1 Definition of Hellenism 126 3.2 Competing Schools of Philosophy 131 3.3 The Roman Period 138 3.4 The Rise of Christianity 143 3.5 Plato and the Academy through the Later Hellenistic Period 151 3.6 Aristotle and the Lyceum through the Later Hellenistic Period 157 3.7 Ancient Textual Transmission and Early Greek Commentators 161 iii Chapter 4: The Fall of Rome and the Byzantine Era 170 4.1 The Roman Empire Divided 172 4.2 The Fall of Rome and the Barbarian Invasion of the West 177 4.3 The Fate of Greek Philosophy after the Demise of the Western Roman Empire 180 4.31 Augustine 186 4.32 Boethius 189 4.33 Western Monasteries 192 4.34 Irish Centers of Learning 194 4.35 The Carolingian Renaissance 196 4.4 The Fate of Greek Philosophy after the Rise of the Eastern Byzantine Empire 200 4.41 The Effects of Christianity on Philosophy in the Byzantine Empire 201 4.42 The East-West Schism 222 Chapter 5: The Connection between Greek Philosophy and the Islamic Empire 229 5.1 The Origin and Expansion of Islam 229 5.2 Greek Philosophy: From Syriac to Arabic 238 5.3 The Abbasid Dynasty Translation Movement 243 5.4 Philosophical Genres used in Islam Culture 253 5.5 Arabic-Speaking Philosophers in the Islamic Empire 258 5.51 Al-Kindi 262 5.52 The Peripatetics of Baghdad 265 5.53 Al-Rhazi 266 5.54 Al-Farabi 266 5.55 Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 268 5.56 Al-Ghazali 271 5.57 Islamic Philosophers in Andalusia 274 5.58 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 275 5.59 Ibn Maimun (Maimonides) 281 5.6 The Fate of Philosophy within Islam 282 Chapter 6: Greek Philosophy Revived in Medieval Europe: Aquinas and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance 291 6.1 Reconquista and Convivencia : Christians and Muslims in Spain 292 6.2 Greek Philosophy: Arabic into Latin 298 6.3 The Twelfth-Century Renaissance 307 6.31 Scholasticism and the Rise of Universities 314 iv 6.32 Averroism 323 6.4 Aquinas 329 6.5 Renaissance 337 Chapter 7: Conclusion 343 7.1 The Greek Path to Europe 343 7.2 The Myth of Westerness 347 7.3 Directions for Further Research 355 7.4 Hesperos is Phosphoros 358 Appendices Appendix A The Philosophical/Educational “Hole in History” 360 Appendix B Averroes in “The School of Athens” 361 Appendix C Map: The Hellenistic World 362 Appendix D Map: The Extent of the Roman Empire 363 Appendix E Chart: Reason vs. Faith 364 Appendix F Map: The Extent of the Islamic Empire 365 Appendix G Map: The Reconquest of Spain 366 Appendix H Arabic-Latin Translations 367 Appendix I Map: Pre-Renaissance Europe 368 Appendix J Chart: The Journey of Greek Philosophy to the West 369 Bibliography 371 v Abstract After the fall of Rome, how did the work and words of the ancient Greek philosophers make their way, textually and intellectually, into later European thought? There were two primary and obvious paths that this Greek literature could have taken to reach medieval Europe after the split of the Roman Empire into east and west sectors, but these two potential paths functionally became, instead, dual roadblocks to its transmission. In the western portion of the former Roman Empire, there was an overwhelming passive indifference to Greek philosophy coupled with a decline of culture generally in Western Europe during the so-called Dark Ages. In the eastern portion of the former Roman Empire, the attitude toward Greek philosophy was tempered by the imperial authority of Constantinople and eastern Christianity, and ranged from cautious acceptance to occasionally active censorship. In response to the research question, here is my thesis: The Islamic Empire of the Middle Ages was the primary and indispensable force behind the preservation, transmission and acceptance of the Greek philosophical tradition to later European thinking. I will contend that without the influence of Muslim scholars during the medieval period, the foundational impact of Greek philosophy on later Western philosophy (including specifically, Western sources of educational philosophy) may have been greatly reduced (or potentially lost), used differently, and/or forced to find other sources of transmittal. vi My research will pursue the historical connections between classical Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe on three interrelated levels—textual, philosophical, and cultural. First, I will examine the textual transmission of specific works by Plato and Aristotle, looking at the translation and transmission work done over time and through several language and cultural groups. Second, I will seek to find how the ideas of Plato and Aristotle were used and transmitted, moving from text to philosophical patterns of thinking. Third, I will look more broadly at the acceptance of philosophical inquiry and the development of critical thinking within culture itself, in Greek, Arabic, and Latin settings, to see how the often competing ideas of faith and reason play out over the course of our historical framework. vii Chapter 1 Introduction This research project begins with an important philosophical and educational assertion: We who claim lineage in the Western philosophical tradition have one common and indisputable foundation from which we view ourselves and our ideas, namely, that of the early Greek thinkers. Alfred North Whitehead, the noted twentieth-century philosopher, made the now famous comment, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”1 Certainly, Whitehead is not proposing that everyone in the West agrees with Plato’s scheme of thought, or that we all are in some fashion idealists. But he does mean to say that Western philosophy and education are indebted to the ancient Greeks for their wealth of ideas and for their disciplined inquiry into these ideas, particularly Plato and his able student Aristotle. Charles Freeman restates Whitehead’s basic thesis by asserting that, “the Greeks provided the chromosomes of Western civilization.”2 He goes on to state that “Greek ways of exploring the cosmos , defining the problems of knowledge . creating the language in which such problems are explored, representing the physical world and human society in the arts, defining the nature of value, describing the past, still underlie the 1 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28, Corrected Edition ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 39. 2 Charles Freeman, The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 435. 1 Western cultural tradition.” 3 More to the point of this dissertation, Sheila Dunn observes, “It was during this early period . that Western educational thought and theory had its beginnings . Fundamental issues between these two Greek philosophers have continued to shape contemporary education throughout the centuries.”4 From this shared starting point of the ancient Greeks, Western thought, along with its most common mode of transmission—education—has evolved into the many modern philosophical branches that are known and studied today. Indeed, Bernard Williams clearly states, “the legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.” 5 1.1 The Research Question To simply state that the Greeks supply the cornerstone to Western thinking is certainly to state the obvious. So I will move on to state what is not obvious: The path that the early Greek writings and ideas took in finding their way into later European thought is far more complicated and far less direct than many sources on the history of philosophy describe.