Academic Research and Publications

In attempting to address the heideggerian Seinsfrage, by way of situating it between the platonic conception of Ôn in the Sophist and of cèra in the Timaeus, this paper investigates the ontological possibilities that are opened up in terms of rethinking space. Asserting the intrinsic connection between the question of being and that of space, we argue that the maturation of ontology as phenomenology would not unfold in its furthermost potential unless the being of space gets clarified. This state of affairs confronts us with the exacting ontological task to found a theory of space that contributes to an explication of the question of being beyond its associated temporocentric determinations. Consequently , our line of inquiry endeavours herein to constitute a prolegomenon to the elucidation of the question of the being of space as “ontokhorology.”

Nader El-Bizri, “Ibn al-Haytham et le problème de la couleur”, Oriens-Occidens: sciences, mathématiques et philosophie de l’antiquité à l’âge classique (Cahiers du Centre d’Histoire des Sciences et des Philosophies Arabes et Médiévales, CNRS).  Vol. 7 (2009), pp. 201-226

Nader El-Bizri, "Defining Place with or against Aristotle: The case of the Brethren of Purity and Alhazen”, in Labor limae. Atti in onore di Carmela Baffioni, with a preface by Wilferd Madelung, eds. Antonella Straface, Carlo De Angelo, and Andrea Manzo, in Studi Magribini Vols. XII-XIII (2014-2015)

This paper examines the theoretical underpinnings of methodologies that are used in studying falsafa (or what is commonly known as 'Arabic cum Islamic Philosophy'). The aim is to think about the prospects of renewing selected leitmotifs from the constellation of hybrid philosophical traditions in falsafa, while transcending the conventions of mainstream academia and scholarship, with their bent on documentation, archiving, and the composition of comparative studies and commentaries. The thematic orientation of this inquiry does not follow the directives of mediaevalists in historiography, philology, lexicography, codicology, and palaeography, along with their associated biographical/bibliographical instruments. We do not, therefore, focus on specific pre-modern authors or texts, or ponder over the techniques of establishing critical editions, annotated translations, or analytic, historical , and comparative commentaries. We also do not seek to situate a given philosophical legacy within its channels of textual transmission, or to explore its course of development within a particular intellectual lineage. Our inquiry is rather orientated within this specific conceptual exercise by phenomenological hermeneutics and critical analytics of the theoretical underpinnings of methodologies that aim at examining essential questions in onto-logy and epistemology in connection with falsafa. This points to transcending mere com-parativism through a radical form of questioning that refracts intellectual traditions with one another based on substantiated historical channels of transmission by inheriting past philosophical legacies within contemporary pathways in thinking. Such an undertaking addresses multifactorial hypotheses that emerge from the humanistic disciplines in terms of theoretical disputations and interrogations over the essence of modernity and of probing the hitherto locked possibilities of potentially rooting contemporary thought in inherited intellectual legacies, and also in benefiting from modern thinking in exploring the history of ideas in Islam as a living tradition.

Nader El-Bizri, “Grosseteste’s Meteorological Optics: Explications of the Phenomenon of the Rainbow after Ibn al-Haytham”, in Robert Grosseteste and the Pursuit of Religious and Scientific Knowledge in the Middle Ages, ed. Jack Cunningham, Mark Hocknull (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 21-39