Open to Reason

Diagne's animated presentations of seminal Islamic philosophers range across centuries, continents, and languages as creative Muslim voices from Damascus, Baghdad, Spain, South Asia, and Mali reject 'closure' and 'literalism' and continue to offer the resources for a reconstructed Islamic intellectual tradition able to meet contemporary challenges of personal faith, ecological ethics, and political and social justice.--Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University Chicago He emphasizes that Islam itself has changed with the world around it, and argues that Muslims should be open to this change.--Los Angeles Review of Books This remarkable book asks questions that only a philosopher could ask: How does a religion yield a vast and long and rich philosophical tradition? How do its doctrines and practices come to require one to develop a philosophical temperament so as to ask rather than shun a wide range of philosophical queries? How does its language evolve to become the carrier of such a philosophical quest? With his immense learning, his wise judgment, and his probing analytical skills, Souleymane Bachir Diagne does not merely provide answers to these questions in relation to Islam, he--in doing so--also reveals something of the highest importance: that a proper pursuit of these questions can offer to us today critical possibilities in two opposing directions. On the one hand, to probe and question from the point of view of our modernity the fixities of our doctrinal past, but equally to present how Islam and the philosophy it has yielded over the centuries may offer critical resources by which to understand and criticize many aspects of our modernity.--Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University This elegant and enjoyable book neatly summarizes the importance of philosophy in Muslim civilization, both in medieval times and in the present. Vividly written and framed with illuminating encounters, Open to Reason is highly recommended for anyone interested in the intellectual history of Islam.--Carl W. Ernst, William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This is a remarkable and interesting book. Open to Reason is tremendously valuable on two levels: first, as an account of the place of philosophy in Muslim history; and, second, as a philosophical proposal of some depth and substance that could orient Muslims and others in understanding Islam today.--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age