Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi
c.801–873 · Islamic Philosophy · Little-known
Kindi was a ninth-century Iraqi thinker who worked at the Abbasid court in Baghdad, where he had Greek books turned into Arabic and supervised the scholars who did the work. In his own On First Philosophy he argued that one First Cause made the world out of nothing. He is the first major philosopher in Islam, the man who carried Greek thought into it, and tradition calls him the Philosopher of the Arabs.
Signature
The position Kindi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable
- Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Kindi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Epistocracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Indirect Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Rational Expertise / Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?