THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN ISLAMIC PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY AND ENGLISH ENLIGHTENMENT LITERATURE

Abstract

This article examines the intellectual connections between the Eastern Peripatetic philosophical tradition—rooted in Islamic Aristotelianism—and English literature of the Enlightenment. The study argues that the European Enlightenment, commonly regarded as an autonomous movement of Western rationalism and empiricism, was in fact partly shaped by philosophical ideas transmitted from the Islamic world over centuries of translation, adaptation, and intercultural exchange. Drawing on the philosophical romance Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān by Ibn Tufayl and English texts such as Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World, the paper explores how notions of rational self-education, harmony between reason and faith, and moral contemplation of nature migrated into English intellectual and literary discourse. Through comparative textual analysis, it demonstrates that the Enlightenment was not an isolated European awakening but rather a culmination of global philosophical dialogue. The study thereby challenges the binary opposition of a “rational West” and a “mystical East,” revealing instead a shared peripatetic spirit that viewed thought as both a journey and a way of life.