Al-Kindī wrote a well-known treatise On Intellect, which was the first Arabic treatise to give a taxonomy of the types of intellect (following Greek sources, especially Philoponus, in interpreting Aristotle’s De Anima). The chapter argues that the epistemology implied by this treatise implies that al-Kindī makes a sharp divide between intellect, which knows, and the senses, which experience particulars. This is parallel to his strongly dualist account of soul. The chapter concludes by considering the difficulties this raises for “mediating” psychological phenomena such as imagination, which is explored most fully by al-Kindī in a discussion of prophetic dreams.
Keywords: De Anima, intellect, soul, Philoponus, epistemology, dualism, recollection, imagination, dreams