Abstract

The four books under review here are all very different, and yet they all set out to describe Islamic philosophy and they all succeed to a certain extent. Three of them are substantial texts, two by many authors, but actually the most interesting is the short book The Story of Reason in Islam by Sari Nusseibeh. It is a sustained discussion of the role of reason in Islamic culture, and actually constitutes an argument that extends from start to finish on the topic—and it is a very potent argument at that. Nusseibeh follows the familiar line that Islamic culture was in earlier times dynamic and flexible but in the last few centuries has become stultified and rigid. The book starts with some reflections on the role of...