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Interview

Peter Adamson

Peter Adamson is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at the LMU in Munich, and a Philosophy Now columnist too. Amirali Maleki talks with him about Islamic philosophy.

Was your main goal in explaining Islamic philosophy in simple language in Philosophy in the Islamic World [A history of philosophy without any gaps, Vol 3] to popularise it? Or do you want to reach academics, too?

The book was largely written for the general public, though I think the comprehensive approach I take means it should also be informative for specialists. In particular I would like other academics to take on board some aspects of what I do in the book, like for instance integrating the study of Jewish philosophy into the conception of philosophy in the Islamic world, and paying more attention to ‘post-classical’ thought – basically, everything that happened after the twelfth century CE.

Why do you think Islamic philosophy has been neglected throughout recent history?

Of course it has not been neglected everywhere: in Muslim countries there has always been interest in the earlier philosophical tradition. But in Europe there was a tendency to value only the figures who were translated into Latin in the medieval period, such as Ibn S ī n ā [Avicenna] and Ibn Rushd [Averroes], because of their impact on European philosophy.

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