L'année 2006 coïncide avec le sixième centenaire de la mort d'Ibn Khaldûn. Figure marquante et attachante de la culture arabe classique, ce philosophe de l'histoire fut principalement le lecteur critique de phénomènes socio-économiques récurrents et endémiques, qui sont encore, même sous de nouvelles formes, parmi les causes de notre retard historique : segmentarisme et esprit de corps tribal, despotisme, pauvreté et corruption, etc. En tirant les conséquences de son analyse de l'œuvre khaldûnienne, l'auteur pense que le désir de modernité dans (...) le monde arabe d'aujourd'hui a besoin, pour s'exprimer et se réaliser, de la médiation démocratique, entendue dans sa double articulation politico-économique. Cette médiation ne permet pas seulement de faire l'histoire de l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme, de ses effets et ses retombées, mais aussi de penser sa fin. Par le seul fait que l'œuvre khaldûniennne balise de bout en bout le parcours du Maghreb précolonial, elle mérite notre sollicitation et notre attention. Et même si par bonheur cette région parvenait à rompre effectivement avec sa genèse médiévale, ladite œuvre restera pour les historiens et les penseurs une source d'information et de méditation intarissable de premier plan. (shrink)

Islam and society; religious life; Islam.

_Surprisingly modern essays on the unity of all monotheistic regimens by a medieval philosopher_ Written in the mid‑thirteenth century for the newly appointed governor of Isfahan, this compact treatise and philosophical guidebook includes a wide‑ranging and accessible set of essays on ethics, psychology, political philosophy, and the unity of God. Ibn Kammūna,a Jewish scholar writing in Baghdad during a time of Mongol occupation, was a controversial figure whose writings sometimes incited riots. He argued, among other things, the commonality of all (...) monotheisms, both prophetic and philosophical. Here, for the first time in English, is a surprisingly modern work on the unity of all monotheistic regimes from a key medieval philosopher. (shrink)

Muslims; Conduct of life; Quotations, maxims, etc.

The question of providence and contingency in contemporary Western thought: a critical study from an Islamic perspective.

Islamic philosophy; God (Islam); religious life, Islam, customs and practices; Islam and science.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari pose the question, ‘What is a collective body?’ This leads them to differentiate between bodies and organisms, attributing esprit de corps to bodies and âme d’organisme to organisms. Deleuze and Guattari oppose esprit de corps to âme d’organisme as nomadic to sedentary, the war machine to the State apparatus, and the smooth to the striated. Their point of entry to the notion of esprit de corps is a discussion of Ibn Khaldûn’s fourteenth-century Muqaddimah (...) and his concept of ‘asabiyya, which is often rendered as ‘esprit de corps’ or ‘group feeling’. They argue that Ibn Khaldûn associates ‘asabiyya with nomadism and contrasts it with the sedentary, but Ibn Khaldûn’s primary distinction is not between the nomadic and the sedentary but between rural life and urban life, and ‘asabiyya is an essential component of both forms of life. Deleuze and Guattari also claim that ‘asabiyya is secret rather than public; that it involves lineages that are pure and mobile, as opposed to impure and rigid; and that it is opposed to autocratic values. All of these claims are problematic. Ultimately, Deleuze and Guattari creatively appropriate Ibn Khaldûn for their own purposes, and though they distort his thought, they do illuminate it by isolating unresolved issues in Ibn Khaldûn’s understanding of the dynamics of leadership among nomads and the origins of state power. (shrink)

al-Ḥifnī's Muqaddimah fī al-ādāb followed by al-Bishrī's commentary.

The historian Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) is most often treated by historians of philosophy as part of the story of political philosophy in the Islamic world. While this is perfectly legitimate, it may be misleading when it comes to the question of the method he proposes for the historian. This paper argues that that method is in fact based on a different branch of (Aristotelian) science: natural philosophy. After rendering this proposition initially plausible by noting frequent references to "nature" in (...) the _Muqaddima_, the paper discusses a number of parallels between natural philosophy and history as Ibn Khaldūn conceives it. Ultimately it is suggested that this method is legitimated insofar as history is for Ibn Khaldūn a study of human nature. (shrink)