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April 15-16, 2005
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April 15-16, 2005
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Shall All Reason, or Shall One Reason for All? Communities of Inquiry in Islamic PhilosophyTamara Albertini
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Tamara Albertini
Professor Albertini in Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Dr. Tamara Albertini is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, specializing in Renaissance and Islamic thought . She was raised in Tunisia where she learned Arabic and attended koranic classes. She has a Lic.phil. from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and a Dr.phil. from the Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich (Germany). Before joining the University of Hawaii in 1995 she taught at the universities of Munich, Zurich (Switzerland), and at the UCLA. Professor Albertini has published two books in the field of Renaissance philosophy and numerous articles and reviews. She has been awarded a number of national and international fellowships and grants, including a travel grant for Iran and Central Asia from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union Professor Albertini developed a special interest in Central Asia where she travels frequently to teach and do research. Her publications in Islamic philosophy aim at reintroducing the vigor and vision of Muslim medieval intellectual contributions. Since the September 11th attacks she has been lecturing on and off the islands of Hawaii on Islamic Fundamentalism, Women and Islam, and Islamic Law. She has made many appearances on Hawaii's Channel 2 and Channel 4, and on TV stations in Switzerland. She was also interviewed extensively by Mark Coleman for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin .
Within Islamic Philosophy her publications include: The Blackwell Source Book in Islamic Philosophy, Blackwell (in preparation); "Crisis and Certainty of Knowledge in al-Ghazzali and Descartes" in Philosophy East and West (2005) [Persian version published in Teheran, 2002]; "The Seductiveness of Certainty. Fundamentalists' Destruction of Islam's Intellectual Legacy" in Philosophy East and West (2003); "Islamic Philosophy: An Overview" in The Companion to World Philosophies (Blackwell, 1997).
-- Abstract -- Shall All Reason, or Shall One Reason for All?
Communities of Inquiry in Islamic Philosophy
Most texts of Islamic philosophy exhibit a pronounced intellectual elitism justified by the understanding that few individuals are able to use demonstrative reasoning and thus arrive at original conclusions. The rest of society is divided into dialecticians who are trained to debate arguments within a predefined (theological) frame and the masses whom philosophers need to feed images and allegories to convey new content. The great al-Farabi (9th/10th c.) thought it an obligation for the philosopher to produce images in the souls of the multitude and to make them assent to them. Ibn Bajja (Avempace, 11th/12th c.) pictured the philosopher as one who travels in his mind to his true homeland and who is, therefore, a stranger in his own city In my talk I examine whether the elitism reflected in Islamic philosophy and particularly in the work of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 12th c.) can be interpreted as a philosophy in which all societal groups contribute to the quest for certainty in one's beliefs. Reasoning then is not the sole privilege of the philosopher but a space accessible to all communities of inquiry.
Website constructed and maintained by Douglas Shrader / Department Chair Philosc@Oneonta.edu February 9, 2005
Updated April 8, 2005
