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Al-Kindī’s extant ethical corpus is relatively small, but sufficient to show that his ethics is an application of his Neoplatonic ideas about metaphysics and psychology. He provides the first Arabic account of Socrates, a philosophical hero who is presented as despising things of the physical world, or “external goods” — Socrates is here conflated with the Cynic philosopher Diogenes. In al-Kindī’s largest ethical treatise, On Dispelling Sorrows, al-Kindī provides a work of consolation which uses Platonist ideas to undergird a broadly Stoic or Cynic teaching on the value of external goods.

This chapter surveys the Greek background in Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s Physics and De Caelo, and the dispute between late Greek thinkers, especially Proclus and Philoponus. Against this background, al-Kindī’s arguments that only God can be eternal and that creation must be finite in time as well as space are explored. It is suggested that al-Kindī’s interest in this topic can be explained in terms of the contemporary ’Abbāsid dogma that the Koran is not eternal, but created.

Al-Kindī wrote a well-known treatise On Intellect, which was the first Arabic treatise to give a taxonomy of the types of intellect (following Greek sources, especially Philoponus, in interpreting Aristotle’s De Anima). The chapter argues that the epistemology implied by this treatise implies that al-Kindī makes a sharp divide between intellect, which knows, and the senses, which experience particulars. This is parallel to his strongly dualist account of soul. The chapter concludes by considering the difficulties this raises for “mediating” psychological phenomena such as imagination, which is explored most fully by al-Kindī in a discussion of prophetic dreams.

This chapter discusses al-Kindī’s main influences from Greek works produced by the translation movement, and how al-Kindī thought the ideas from these works should be put together into a coherent philosophical curriculum. In philosophy, al-Kindī was most influenced by Aristotle and by Neoplatonic works (such as the Liber de Causis and Theology of Aristotle, which are Arabic versions of works by Proclus and Plotinus). His vision of philosophical methodology follows a Greek tradition of dividing philosophy up in terms of the different objects studied in different sciences. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of the Arabic language and Islam in al-Kindī’s thought by surveying texts in which he engages in Koranic exegesis, and by explaining his project of developing a new Arabic terminology in philosophy.

This chapter is divided into three sections dealing with pharmacology, optics, and music, and emphasizes the issues of methodology, especially how al-Kindī thinks mathematics is used in science. In pharmacology, al-Kindī gives an arithmetical theory for calculating the effects of compound drugs. In optics, he expands on ideas inherited from Ptolemy to provide a novel theory of light and color. In music, he puts forward an ambitious theory, influenced by Pythagoreanism, which holds that all things are interconnected by relations of harmony.

This chapter deals with al-Kindī’s metaphysics, which in this context means theology and the idea that being is an emanation or creation from God. Depending on the Neoplatonists, especially Proclus, al-Kindī proves God’s existence by arguing for the need for a “true One”, whose absolute simplicity rules out a multiplicity of divine attributes.

This chapter provides an overview of the evidence regarding al-Kindī’s biography, and surveys what is known of his writings based on the account in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist. While most of his works are lost, there is a significant extant corpus which is also summarized here. The chapter discusses how al-Kindī’s writings relate to the translation movement under the ’Abbāsids, which produced Arabic versions of Greek philosophical and scientific works. It concludes by considering al-Kindī’s legacy, among Neoplatonic philosophers who followed his broad approach (such as al-’Āmirī and Miskawayh), contrasting this “Kindian tradition” to the more Aristotelian school in Baghdad, whose most famous representative was al-Fārābī.

This chapter shows how al-Kindī interweaves ideas from Greek cosmology to give a theory that can explain the efficacy of astrology and how God’s providence is dispersed by means of heavenly influence. A concrete example is found in al-Kindī’s works on meteorology, since he thinks that weather is produced by celestial causation. The mechanics of this causation are explained differently in different works, which leads to a consideration of the authenticity of On Rays, which is ascribed to al-Kindī, and its place in his corpus. Finally, the chapter considers whether al-Kindī’s account commits him to determinism, and whether he thinks universal causal determinism is compatible with human freedom.

This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.