On a History of Islamic Philosophy

First of all, let me say that this is an excellent overview of Islamic philosophy written for novice readers (although I will qualify this a bit in a moment). Fakhry takes us from the emergence of Islam to the post-modern period, with special emphasis on the 9th and 10th centuries. In doing so, he gives basic biographies of major thinkers, as well as solid philosophical analysis that takes both advancements and critics into account.

That being said, I find it necessary that readers should have basic understandings of Platonic philosophy, Aristotelian philosophy, neo-Platonism, and Islam before diving into this work. I felt that my understanding of Islam was strong enough, but my knowledge of Platonic philosophy ends with the Republic, and my knowledge of Aristotle is limited to the Politics and Nicomachaean Ethics. I had no grounding at all in neo-Platonism, and the work of Plotinus and Poryphry are absolutely crucial to making sense of Islamic philosophy. Because of this, I’m going to work my way through a little bit of Classical and Hellenistic philosophy before revisiting this work in the future.

Nevertheless, this is a well-rounded piece. Even though it can be dense at times, Fakhry does his best to make this book accessible.