While the etymology of the word philosophy provides some...

While the etymology of the word philosophy provides some clue to its proper meaning, this meaning has become rather more specific than that suggested by the simple love of wisdom. Ancient Greek philosophy is the foundation upon which the history of Western philosophy, the sciences and the humanities all rest.

Because of its foundational position for Western thought, some writers define philosophy as that chain of ideas which includes the giants of modern European thought, such as Descartes, Hume and Kant, and which can be traced back through the Christian medieval period to Greece, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, or Thales, one of whom is to be designated as the originator of genuine philosophical thought.

But if we begin to wonder about the origins of Greek philosophy, and if we try to find some reason for choosing one of the above figures above the others as the true father of philosophy, then the definition of philosophy as the chain of thought including the well known greats will not be satisfactory. The earliest links of the chain seem so different from the later links that it seems impossible to say whether any particular ancient Greek thinker should be included or not.

In order to answer the question of which Greek should be considered the first philosopher we must abandon the definition of philosophy solely in terms of the chain of teachers and pupils and turn instead to the question of what characterizes philosophical thought. Finding the essential character of philosophical thought is no easy matter. Certainly it should not be characterized as any particular set of doctrines, although there have been periods in which such an identification was popular.

Thus, when Ghazali wrote his Tahdfut al-Falasifah he was not attempting to refute philosophy as a topic or set of topics for reflection and investigation, but to refute specific doctrines associated with the mix of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought whose major champion was Ibn Sina. As far as method and subject matter are concerned, Ghazali was no less a philosopher than Ibn Sina or Ibn Rushd.

It would have been more precise if Ghazali had titled his book Tahafut al-Falsafah Ibn Sina, but the thought of Ibn Sina had so come to dominate the philosophical thought of the Islamic world that philosophy itself was identified with the doctrines taught by Ibn Sina and his followers.