In this long-awaited volume, on which he worked for twenty years,
Mr. Wolfson describes the body of doctrine known as the Kalam.
Kalam, an Arabic term meaning "speech" and hence "discussion," was
applied to early attempts in Islam to adduce philosophic proofs for
religious beliefs. It later came to designate a system of religious
philosophy which reached its highest point in the eleventh century;
the masters of Kalam, known as Mutakallimun, were in many respects
the Muslim equivalent of the Christian Church Fathers. Mr. Wolfson
studies the Kalam systematically, unfolding its philosophic origins
and implications and observing its repercussions in other
religions. He scrutinizes the texts of Muslim writers for their
treatment of such crucial problems as the attributes of God, the
Creation, causality, predestination and free will. In the process
he shows how the teachings of the Koran were constantly interwoven
with ideas from Greek and Oriental philosophies, Judaism, and
Christianity as Islamic thought developed.
As lucidly written and intellectually stimulating as all the
author's earlier books, this volume is a fitting capstone to a
notable career.
Harry Wolfson spent sixty-six years at Harvard University, as
undergraduate, graduate student, teacher, and professor emeritus.
From 1925 until his retirement in 1958 he was Nathan Littauer
Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard. He died
in September 1974 at the age of 86.
The Philosophy of the Kalam is the last major work of one of
the great scholars of our age. Harry Wolfson was renowned
throughout the world for the depth, scope, and wisdom of his
monumental volumes on the structure and growth ofphilosophic
systems from Plato to Spinoza. It was not only his extraordinary
erudition that commanded respect, his awesome mastery of all the
primary sources, Greek, Christian, Judaic, and Muslim; it was also
his penetrating insight and his original and groundbreaking
interpretations.
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