By: A.C. Grayling
Al-Kindi was born in Kufa, the son of its Emir. He was reputed to be a descendant of the kings of Kinda, one of whom was a companion of Muhammad. He had the patronage of both Caliph al-Ma’mun and Caliph al-Mu‘tasim; he dedicated his major work On First Philosophy to the latter’s son Ahmad, whom he tutored. The caliphs appointed him to oversee the translation projects at the Bayt al-Hikma, which gave him complete access to the collections. Among his achievements is the introduction of the Indian system of numerals (0, 1, 2, 3 …) now universally in use.
Al-Kindi was eager to establish that ‘the philosophy of the ancients’, as it was called, is consistent with Muslim teaching, and is consistent within itself. His main focus was geometry, logic and physics, and here the problem of compatibility was not serious. The next challenge was to justify the claims of reason against unquestioning acceptance of tradition or dogma. He therefore argued that ‘For the seeker after truth nothing takes precedence over truth, and there is no disparagement of the truth or of him who speaks it … no one is diminished by the truth; rather, the truth ennobles all.’ Using the only version of Aristotle’s De Anima then available, which was a paraphrase, al-Kindi was able to claim that the Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul, and therefore a dualistic ontology in which the perishable body and imperishable soul are distinct existences. This further involved establishing that the soul is substantial, which he did by invoking the Aristotelian notion of essence to argue as follows: ‘Since bodies can perish, “being alive” is not an essential property of them. Being alive is, however, an essential property of being a person. Therefore a person is not identical with his body. Living things are substances. Persons are living things. Therefore persons (souls, the essentially “being alive” aspect of us) are substances.’ One problem with this is that for Aristotle a substance is a combination of form and matter, which requires a substantial soul to consist of some kind of non-bodily matter. How is it to be understood? Al-Kindi did not offer a solution.
For Muslim theology, kalam, the oneness of God is a key commitment, since unity and singularity are properties of perfection, and the greatest degree of reality attaches to the greatest degree of unity. Christian Trinitarian theology was anathema to Islam, so Plotinus’ doctrine of the primordial One was highly attractive to al-Kindi, and reinforced his claim that falsafa and kalam are consistent. If a thing is one, without parts, it is not subject to change and decay, and is therefore eternal. This incidentally gave al-Kindi ammunition against the Hanbalist fundamentalists, who were committed by their literalism to saying that God does things, as reported in the Qu’ran, like sit on a throne, which entails that he undergoes change and is therefore not eternal. Moreover the plenitude of reality that is constituted by the oneness of God explains creation: God emanates the universe from the plenitude of his reality – it issues from his overflowing abundance of reality like water spilling from an over-full tank.
