Against the Philosophers: Writing and Identity in Medieval Mediterranean Rhetoric

This article explores antiphilosophical polemics written by Muslim and Jewish thinkers in the medieval Mediterranean world. These writings demonstrate, in both traditions, a struggle with the incorporation of nontraditional texts and interpretations of theology and textuality. My examination of these writings “against the philosophers” suggests that, far from constituting the reflexive, antiphilosophical fundamentalism that typically characterizes assessments of these texts, authors like al-Ghazali, Halevi, and Ibn Arabi were concerned with what they believed to be the subordination of Jewish and Islamic tradition to Greek philosophy—a rhetoric that, for them, undermined the “conditions of identification” for Muslims and Jews. I argue that these antiphilosophical texts highlight the extent to which these thinkers believed that writing was the battleground for identity in the medieval Middle East.