Review article
Reception of Arabic Thought in the Philosophy of Herman Dalmatin
Ivana Skuhala Karasman
; Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Arabic thinkers had an enormous influence on the development of Western philosophy. The initial transition of the Arabic philosophy to the West was enabled by the first translators from the Arabic. Among those first translators there was also a Croatian medieval philosopher Herman Dalmatin. His activity of a translator also influenced his philosophy: he accepted and/or refuted many ideas that he found in texts he translated from the Arabic. In this article I analyze astrology as the focal point of the reception of the Arabic thought in Herman Dalmatin. With his own development of a philosophically astrological system Herman Dalmatin played a crucial role in making astrology popular in the West again. Although in the time of Herman Dalmatin (11th century) astrology was not completely unknown in the West (there is an unbroken tradition of astrology from the Ancient Greeks and Romans till European Middle Ages), it was Herman Dalmatin’s translation of key Arabic works on astrology that put astrology in focus again. Herman Dalmatin first translates the 6th book of Sahl Ibn Bishra’s astronomical work by the name of Prognostica. But more than Ibn Bishra, Herman Dalmatin was influenced by Abu- Ma’shar. Herman Dalmatin’s completely preserved text De essentiis summarizes his independent attempt to connect astrological explanations, Plato’s philosophy and Aristotle’s natural philosophy.
Keywords
Herman Dalmatin; Platonism; Aristotelianism; Arabic philosophical thought; astrology
Hrčak ID:
51749
URI
Publication date:
30.3.2010.
Visits: 1.945 *