Repositioning 'Philosophy in the Islamic World'

Recent scholarship has increasingly questioned inherited taxonomies for classifying intellectual traditions associated with Islamicate societies. One particularly influential intervention is Peter Adamson’s coinage of the phrase “Philosophy in the Islamic World”. This formulation that has shaped major research projects, teaching curricula, and public-facing scholarship. Rather than presenting the term as a direct substitute for premodern classificatory schemes, this paper situates it alongside the long-standing designation of the so-called “rational sciences” (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya) in order to examine how different modes of naming delineate the scope of inquiry. The paper opens by laying out the conceptual problem of naming this field of research and briefly introducing the category al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya as a historically operative umbrella for a range of disciplines. It then turns to Adamson’s formulation to reconstruct the intellectual motivations behind its coinage and the kinds of figures, texts, and traditions it is intended to bring into view. The subsequent section raises a set of critical questions about the phrase “Philosophy in the Islamic World”. Does it risk reifying geographic or cultural containers even as it seeks to avoid them? How does it negotiate the relationship between philosophical practice, religious identity, and institutional context? What kinds of inclusions or exclusions does it generate? Particularly with regard to theology (Kalām), mysticism/sufism, and scientific disciplines? In response, the paper proposes an alternative terminological framework designed to better capture the plurality and methodological diversity of these traditions without reinscribing civilizational boundaries or modern disciplinary projections. It concludes by reflecting on the broader scholarly significance of acts of naming: how terminological choices shape academic projects, pedagogical approaches, and the self-conception of individual researchers, and how a recalibrated vocabulary might open new horizons for comparative philosophy and global intellectual history.