Future research is still required to determine the relation between the fragmentary transmission of Platonic works and the doctrines ascribed to Plato in the Arabic tradition. However, there can be little doubt that even the most fundamental doctrines were taken into consideration not as coherent elements of a comprehensive systematic philosophy, but rather as disjecta membra which could be fitted together only by means of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, or genuinely Islamic conceptions. From the very beginning of the Arabic reception up to the seventeenth-century philosophical schools of Shiraz and Isfahan, the topos of the harmony between the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle formed a major motif of the varying forms of Arabic Platonism (cf. Endress 1991; D’Ancona 2006).
Al-Kindl, the first philosopher of the Arabic tradition, tried to reconcile various theories propounded by Plato and Aristotle, in particular their doctrines of the first cause as well as of the intellect and the soul (Endress 1991; Adamson 2007). Plato’s theory of the state, or what was known about it, heavily influenced the political theories of Abu Bakr al-RazI, al-FarabI, the Ikhwan al-Safi’, and others (cf. Walzer 1985:8-18, 424-490; Baffioni 1994, 2004; Daiber 1996). The Timaeus could be used to support the doctrines of the creation of the world in time and of divine providence, which appealed to many philosophers writing in Arabic (cf. D’Ancona 2003). Al-Kindl, al-Daylaml, Miskawayh, and others adopted and modified (by means of Neoplatonic concepts) Plato’s thoughts on love (cf. Rosenthal 1940; Walzer 1957). The theory of the tripartite soul expounded in Respublica and Timaeus, as well as the separation of body and soul in the Phaedo exerted an enormous influence on Islamic theories of the soul, its immortality, and its virtues (cf. Rosenthal 1940; Peeters 1979; for the Phaedo see especially Burgel 1971; Bielawski 1974; Biesterfeldt 1991). The philosophy of Shihab al-Din al-SuhrawardI initiated a long-lasting debate about Platonic Forms and Paradigms that were discussed in connection with various Two - or Three-World Theories (cf. Arnzen 2009a, 442f.).
World History
