Walking an alley of Islamic Philosophy in company of Pierre Hadot –
Abū’l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī and philosophical texts as training device
This presentation aims at testing the pertinence and fruitfulness of Pierre Hadot’s hermeneutical approach developed in contact of Ancient philosophical texts within the context of Islamic philosophy. The reflection will focus on a particular case study, Abū’l-Barakāt al-Baghdadī’s opus magnum – al-Muʿtabar fī’l-ḥikmah – and will emphasize on an aspect from Hadot’s textual method slightly overshadowed by the catchword “philosophy as way of life”: the importance to read philosophical texts firstly as training device (aiming “formation rather than information”).
I will adopt an exploratory mode with regard of the two sides put into dialogue: Pierre Hadot had voluntarily restricted his hermeneutical conclusions to Ancient philosophical texts with which he was the most familiar, issuing only very shy remarks concerning later traditions. Only few researchers on the history of medieval texts have tried to widen or challenge his approach until now. Concerning Abū’l-Barkakāt al-Baghdādī, despite his seminal impact on later major thinkers in Islamic intellectual history, in-depth questioning on the textual approach to privilege when plunging in his main philosophical work – which seems to constitute, to a large extent, a species sui generis – has not been led yet.
In spite of the scarcity of my starting point, I will address the issue whether or not Hadot’s conclusions about Ancient philosophical texts can be extended to medieval texts, and more specifically to Islamic medieval texts and if well, to which extent. Through a reading of parts of Abū’l-Barakāt’s Muʿtabar, I will give a gist of which new perspective(s) such an extension can open.