al-Ġazālīʾs Maqāṣid al-Falāsifa, Latin Translation of

Abstract

al-Ġazālī's Maqā ṣid was translated at the end of the twelfth century into Latin in Toledo, and in all likelihood without the introduction (which in the Arabic tradition might well have been added at a later time). The Latin Scholastics were not completely wrong in considering it a philosophical compendium largely inspired by Avicennian ideas, insofar as the text is indeed largely based on Avicenna's Dānesh-Nāmeh. In this sense, it is understandable that they used it only as a secondary rather than as a primary source.

Translation

In Toledo, toward the end of the twelfth century, Dominicus Gundissalinus together with the still enigmatic "Magister John (of Spain)" (Burnett 2002), translated al-Ġazālī's work known as Maqāṣid al-falāsifa (The Intentions of the Philosophers). However, the title of the work given by the Latin translators was not Intentiones philosophorum, but Summa theoreticae philosophiae - the former title