13.04.2010The Centrality of Philosophy in the Pre-Modern Islamic Intellectual Tradition

On Tuesday, 13 April 2010, 18:15 - 20:00, Prof. Dimitri Gutas will hold a lecture on "The Centrality of Philosophy in the Pre-Modern Islamic Intellectual Tradition".

The lecture will take place in KO2 F-152, Universität Zürich Zentrum, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich.

Dimitri Gutas, Professor of Arabic and Graeco-Arabic (Ph.D. Yale 1974), did his undergraduate and graduate work at Yale in classics, history of religions, and Arabic and Islamic studies. He studies and teaches medieval Arabic and the medieval intellectual tradition in Islamic civilization, focusing on the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical works into the Islamic world, and has published extensively on the subject: Greek Wisdom Literature in Arabic Translation. A Study of the Graeco-Arabic Gnomologia (New Haven 1975), A Greek and Arabic Lexicon, (with Gerhard Endress, Leiden 1992 and ff.), Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London and New York 1998), Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition (Aldershot, Hampshire 2000), and Theophrastus, On First Principles (transmitted as his Metaphysics) (Leiden 2009). His award-winning Greek Thought, Arabic Culture has been translated into seven languages: Italian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, and French. Within Arabic philosophy, Professor Gutas has concentrated in particular on its greatest exponent, Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the medieval Latin world), on whom he wrote Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works (Leiden 1988). Gutas has continued work on Ibn Sina in numerous articles and is currently engaged in the annotated translation of Ibn Sina's works on the soul. General work on the study of the Arabic philosophical tradition includes: “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy” (2002) and “The Heritage of Avicenna: The Golden Age of Arabic Philosophy, 1000 - ca. 1350” (2002). He is currently engaged as contributor in the new edition of the classic German history of philosophy (Ueberweg. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie), which will devote four volumes to Arabic philosophy: Philosophie in der islamischen Welt (Verlag Schwabe, Basel).