An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The use of the immediate and common point of view (bādi' al-ra'y al-muštarak) is presented, in Arab philosophy, as characteristic of the rhetorical method. We will endeavour, in this article, to determine the importance, the significance and the origins of this concept in the works of Fārābī. The first part examines the concept's position in the structure ofKitābwhere Fārābī, while followingRhet. I 2 (a veritable introduction to the discipline of oratory) tries to improve the structure of Aristotle's chapter around this concept, which is not in Aristotle. The concept is then defined in the second part. What is at issue is not the immediate point of view of an individual who might think of certain propositions as being universally accepted, when in fact they are not, but rather the point of view which is accepted without question by the majority. It relies on a kind of testimony (šahāda) rather than on the personal judgement of the auditor. It differs nevertheless from propositions which are really universally accepted because these can only be invalidated by an elite and not by any ordinary examination. In the third part, we will review those doctrines ofKitābwhich depend on the concept of the immediate and common point of view, focusing in particular on the definition of enthymema. In the last part, we will investigate some philological and philosophical difficulties, such as the difference between rhetorical and dialectical premises, which constitute the background to the development of the concept.

This paper surveys the results established so far by the on-going research on the planetary theories in Arabic astronomy. The most important results of the Maragha astronomers are gathered here for the first time, and new areas for future research are delineated. The conclusions reached demonstrate that the Arabic astronomical works mentioned here not only elaborate the connection between Arabic astronomy and Copernicus, but also that such activities, namely the continuous reformulation of Greek astronomy, were not limited to a specific group of astronomers or to a specific geographical area. It is shown that such activities were spread over a period of more than seven hundred years, from the early eleventh till the sixteenth century, and over an area stretching from the Andalusian peninsula in the west to the farthest reaches of Central Asia in the east.

Starting from the Greek definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom, and from the semantic richness of the Arabic wordḥikma, several fourth- and fifth-century writers tried to establish the position of philosophy in the Islamic cultural system by identifying it with wisdom. For them this wisdom is tantamount to the ‘eternal wisdom’ recorded in the ancient books and taught by the prophets. Philosophers are described as the prophets' disciples or witnesses. However, depicting philosophy as eternal wisdom only gives the discipline an illusory advantage. Ultimately it reduces it to pure repetition and therefore precludes any change.