Commentary

This sentence is widely attributed to al-Kindi and captures a hierarchy of knowledge that is central to his philosophical programme. Its rough sense, that philosophy is the noblest of the arts and first philosophy its highest part, reflects the Aristotelian classification of sciences that al-Kindi inherited and adapted. Peter Adamson has argued that al-Kindi conceived of first philosophy as the study of the First Truth, a notion that allowed him to present metaphysics as compatible with the Qur'anic affirmation of divine unity. Alfred Ivry has shown how this framework shaped al-Kindi's treatment of the One as the ultimate source of being, and has observed that his terminology often stands at the boundary between Greek and Islamic concepts. Richard Walzer's historical survey of Arabic philosophy likewise treats al-Kindi as the first Muslim thinker to articulate a systematic account of the sciences in this manner. The wording given here is an approximation, and it should not be presented as a direct quotation. Its content is nevertheless a fair summary of al-Kindi's position, and it is best verified against the discussions in Adamson and Ivry, which quote the Arabic text in context.