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History
of Science & Medicine | Affiliated Faculty |
Dimitri Gutas
Education:
- Yale University, Ph.D.: 1974
Selected Publications:
- Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition
Variorum, January 2001
- Greek thought, Arab culture : the Graeco-Arabic
translation movement in Baghdad and early Abbasid
society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). Routledge,
1998.
- Theophrastus : his psychological, doxographical,
and scientific writings. Transaction, 1992.
(edited with William W. Fortenbaugh)
- Avicenna and the Aristotelian tradition:
introduction to reading Avicenna's philosophical
works E.J. Brill, 1988.
- Greek wisdom literature in Arabic translation:
a study of the Graeco-Arabic gnomologia American
Oriental Society, 1975.
Dimitri Gutas studies and teaches medieval
Arabic and the medieval intellectual tradition in
Islamic civilization from different aspects. At
the center of his concerns lies the study and understanding
of classical Arabic in its many forms as a prerequisite
for the proper appreciation of the written sources
which inform us about the history and culture of
Islamic societies. He also has an abiding interest
in the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical
works into the Islamic world through the momentous
Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad during
the 8th-10th centuries AD (2nd-4th Hijri). Out of
these two interests grew the longstanding project
to compile, in collaboration with Professor Gerhard
Endress of Bochum University, Germany, A Greek
and Arabic Lexicon, which provides “materials
for a dictionary of the medieval translations from
Greek into Arabic” (Leiden 1992 and ff.).
The Lexicon is compiled in fascicles that appear
in regular intervals, and interested graduate students
in the Department have the opportunity to participate
in the continuing project and sharpen their linguistic
skills in both classical Arabic and classical Greek.
In addition to his lexicographical interests in
Graeco-Arabic studies, Dimitri Gutas has devoted
a large part of his scholarly career to the study
of the transmission of Greek philosophical texts
into Arabic and their influence in the Islamic world.
In this field he has published Greek Wisdom
Literature in Arabic Translation. A Study
of the Graeco-Arabic Gnomologia (New Haven
1975), Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition
(Aldershot, Hampshire 2000), and has been involved
from the beginning as co-editor in Project Theophrastus.
This project has so far published Theophrastus
of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought
& Influence, 2 volumes edited by W.W. Fortenbaugh,
P.M. Huby, R.W. Sharples, and D. Gutas (Leiden 1992),
containing all the extant fragments of Theophrastus
in Greek, Arabic, and Latin, and three volumes of
commentaries. It is to be noted that this is the
first edition of the works of a classical Greek
author in which the Arabic evidence for the transmission
of his text is taken into consideration. In conjunction
with this project, Gutas is currently working on
a simultaneous edition of the Metaphysics
of Theophrastus in both the original Greek and its
medieval Arabic translation. The methodology and
technique of Graeco-Arabic studies is also a main
area of concern and it is regularly taught in his
graduate seminars.
The significance of the Graeco-Arabic translation
movement for Arabic letters and Islamic civilization
in general led Dimitri Gutas also to investigate
its position in the social history of the early
`Abbasid caliphate in which it took place. This
study led to the publication of Greek Thought,
Arabic Culture (London and New York 1998),
which looked into the major social, political, and
ideological factors that occasioned the translation
movement. The social history of intellectual currents
in early Islamic civilization, which includes an
investigation of the multicultural elements that
constituted it, is increasingly becoming the focus
of contemporary research worldwide. Greek Thought,
Arabic Culture has been translated into seven
languages: Italian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Persian,
Japanese, and French. The Greek translation won
the 2002 Special Honorary Award for the Study of
Civilization, awarded by the Greek Society of Letters.
The Greek philosophical texts that were translated
into Arabic upon demand by interested scholars during
the translation movement led to the development
of a strong and long-lived philosophical tradition
in Arabic. A considerable amount of the teaching
and research effort of Dimitri Gutas has been spent
on the study of the Arabic philosophical tradition.
General assessments of the state of research are
presented in the following articles: “The
Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.
An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy,”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29
(2002) 5-25, and “The Heritage of Avicenna:
The Golden Age of Arabic Philosophy, 1000 - ca.
1350,” in Avicenna and His Heritage,
ed. by J. Janssens and D. De Smet (Leuven 2002),
81-97. Dimitri Gutas is on the editorial board of
numerous scholarly periodicals publishing on Arabic
philosophy, and he is also the chairman of the advisory
board of the series Graeco-Arabic Sciences and
Philosophy, published by the Middle Eastern
Texts Initiative through Brigham Young University
Press. He is currently engaged as co-editor and
contributor in the new edition of the classic German
history of philosophy (Ueberweg. Grundriss der
Geschichte der Philosophie) which will now
devote three volumes to Arabic philosophy: Philosophie
in der islamischen Welt (Verlag Schwabe, Basel).
Within Arabic philosophy, Gutas has concentrated
in particular on its greatest exponent, Ibn Sina
(known as Avicenna in the medieval Latin world),
on whom he wrote the fundamental Avicenna and
the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading
Avicenna's Philosophical Works (Leiden 1988).
Gutas has continued work on Ibn Sina in numerous
articles and is currently engaged in the annotated
translation of Ibn Sina's works on the soul. The
study of Ibn Sina and other Arabic philosophical
texts forms a regular subject of his graduate seminars.
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