Al-Kindi and the Rise of Falsafa

Abstract

In this chapter we introduce the thought of al-Kindi—almost unanimously taken to be the first of the great Falasifa—and present him as a successful salesperson for Falsafa in the Muslim world. Even if his arguments are not all entirely successful, they are all ingenious. We present his thought as unified under the banner of what we call Evidentialism—a thesis that later became an axiom of the Enlightenment and, which, along with his take on Greek philosophy set the rough contours of, and opened a fertile intellectual terrain to, the ensuing tradition of Falsafa.