Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Philosophy Around the World

It Was Islam That Did It

Edward Ingram explains the West’s debt to the Islamic philosophers.

Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire was not a happy place to be – at least for scholars. For the most part, the aristocracy, including kings, were illiterate and, to all intents and purposes, innumerate – applied mathematics in the West involved little more than tallying, which is a sophisticated form of counting on one’s fingers. The clergy, with few exceptions, were likewise poorly educated – most could neither read nor speak Latin, and even among those that could, abilities were generally low.

These mediocre standards were demonstrated with shocking clarity by the wide acceptance of the Donation of Constantine. This was a forged document produced by Pope Stephen III in 752 in order to impose papal authority over kings and bishops.

…