The World of Islam is rightly proud of the great achievements in the field of spiritual culture that distinguished it in the history of the mankind and gave it a well-deserved place in the global civilizing process. The broad spread and centuries-old development of Islamic spirituality, fixed and expressed in the Moslem holy book – the Koran – enriched many states and regions of the world. Kazakhstan is no exception; It is an area of traditional Islamic expansion with a long history of Islamic values and the spatial expansion of its spiritual influence. Though Kazakhstan, due to geopolitical conditions, is to some extent "peripheral" to epicenters of Islam, one should emphasize that Islam in its essential, human features holds a strong position in Kazakhstan as well. However, it has undergone a certain transformation related, first of all, to the features of management and way of life of the nomadic Kazakh society. Therefore a peculiar syncretism, a synthesis with local traditions of tengryian and other religious beliefs, has become a specific trait of Islam in Kazakhstan. Having expanded into the Kazakh steppe, Islam has not become the leading principle of state life and policy, but is a strong part of the global orientation of the society, and an important part of the religious-cult and the public practice of religion. Proceeding from primacy of human rights, in particular the right on choose or not to choose one’s religion, in the civil society being formed in our Republic a person must have the right to use freely the achievements of both secular and religious culture.

The universal outlook of Islam, especially in the sphere of morality, from the time of the expansion of Islam into the Kazakh steppe and later, has been reflected both in the practical experience of everyday life of the people and in the philosophical thoughts of the great thinkers of the Steppe.

How is this amazing vitality of Islam and its growing influence upon the spiritual climate of the millennium to be explained? In my opinion, it answers the cardinal principles of the modern epoch, being oriented upon polycentrism and democracy. Islam is open to the constructive dialogue, partnership, co-operation of the East and the West, of religion and science; it is capable of ethical contacts and cultural-historical interaction with the other cultures and religious beliefs. Islam is devoid of a spirit of intolerance and fanaticism – that is why many people in all parts of the globe accepted it, and why it spread overtime, while at the same time remaining loyal to the unique and peculiar postulates of its theology. The amazing cultural productivity of Islam and its abilities for dialogue and mutual understanding can be comprehended if we turn to the creative activity of such leaders of world culture as our famous ancestor Abu Nasr al-Farabi who has been praised through the ages for his wisdom; his follower, encyclopedically educated Ibn Sina, who opened the Gates of science; the prophet and sage of the Kazakh lands, mentor and Teacher of many and many generations, Hodja Akhmed Yassavi; and the great thinker and genius of the global culture Abay and his associate Shakarim. This cultural philosophical approach remains productive in XXI century. First of all we turn to the creative work of al-Farabi.

The development of philosophy on the territory of former USSR proceeded under banner of a militant atheism. Whereas a typical feature of most studies was a logical-gnoseological direction, which stipulated the primary development of the cognitive aspect of the philosophical outlook, yet philosophy in its essence is an overall reflective outlook, synthesizing the results of both the cognitive and the moral, the aesthetic and the religious attitude toward the world.

Modern practice of the independent development of Kazakhstan and Kazakhstani philosophy has shown that the primary orientation of a person to cognitive culture and the cultivation of rationality in the form of scientific knowledge is an important component of personal development, but not the only one. Moreover, without being complemented by other important components of personal development, including, first of all, morality and spirituality, this can lead to a deformation in education. Consciously rejecting every hypostasis of a personal culture, scientifically oriented philosophy has lost in its content since its studies have mostly become lacking in spirituality and personal meaning. Therefore the philosophy of al-Farabi is actual today as an enduring historio-philosophical conquest; it enables one to compensate for the significant gap in the former ideological and dogmatic Soviet philosophy and culture.

Presently we have an opportunity to read works in a totally new way, through the prism of his religious Islamic outlook. It is no use to present him as a materialist and atheist; rather, his key ideas: reason, science and philosophy are ways of understanding the One who is First, namely, Allah. Al-Farabi’s creative activity reveals that Islam promoted the development and flowering of philosophy, in ways which from the beginning were tolerant and democratic.

Research in many Europe-oriented sources and publications, as a rule, see the merit of Islamic philosophers in Middle Ages primarily in the transmission of the Greek heritage to European Middle Age. It is not correct to see the achievements of medieval Islamic philosophy, including al-Farabi, only in terms of the transmission and comprehension of the Greek heritage. That is a prominent page of Islamic culture, but it is more wholistic to see the achievements of Islamic philosophy of the classical period not in the translation of the Greek heritage, but rather as an attempt to comprehend its own epoch. This was a new spiritual reality, declared by the mouth of the Prophet, in search for the truth of man’s existence in this world, and the solution of the problem of the correlation of faith and knowledge. Notions, broadly used by Islam, crop up as a peculiar method of historical-philosophical research, and as a form of dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures. This was possible as the language of philosophy was determined by the system of discussions and proofs contained in the works of Plato, Aristotle and their followers. The depth of al-Farabi’s early philosophical scholarship gave the encyclopaedic character to his outlook. Logic and grammar, poetry and music, mathematics, ethics and other sciences were included in his scientific studies.

With deep respect for his contribution to these scientific disciplines, we would yet emphasize that the research of the "utmost foundations": issues of being, sense of life, happiness, search to create a society that meets the principles of Good, Reason, Beauty and Love. All these should be acknowledged as the centre of his creative search, the utmost goal of his philosophy.

Al-Farabi, who was much concerned about his socio-political and spiritual-moral issues, in his concept of the ideal state developed such deep ideas as human harmony and perfection, enlightenment, moral purification and achievement of happiness, rationalism, reason, humanism, the triumph of the knowledge, etc. These produced a great effect on the subsequent development of the philosophical and public thought of Kazakhstan, on the activity of politicians and prominent men of culture and state, amongst whom we can name Mustafa Chokay, Magzhan Zhumabaev and many others.

The ideas of al-Farabi continue to live today. They are very actual now that Kazakhstan enters the system of market relations and is in a very complex situation of finding its own way of spiritual and cultural development in the world community.

It was not a choice between philosophy and religion. Both are equivalent and have the same rights in the society. For al-Farabi the differences between philosophy and religion did not lead to the approval of one and the negation of the other, though he did not identify them completely. He supposed only that, having different addressees - social circles enlightened in science and philosophy, on the one hand, and the broad layer of Moslem believers, on the other, philosophy and religion used different sign systems or "languages". But both are the ways to understand the same truths about God, human being and the world. Al-Farabi’s "Virtuous City" is a model of good order and harmoniously structured organization. This is common to the entire Universe as the creation of the "Necessarily Existing".

Al-Farabi’s Pantheism expressed his concept of this unity in the language of philosophy. The world is holistic only in so far as it depends on the Creator, since it is His creation. Taken outside of God, the world disintegrates into an ensemble of objects. Only in respect to the Creator is it possible to speak about the good order of the world and about the world as whole, since this wholeness is defined by the degree of proximity or remoteness from the Creator. The hierarchy of the subject world, stipulated by dependence on the Prime cause, becomes a harmonizing principle. Therefore Al-Farabi’s theory of emanation enabled him to express this fundamental dependence of the subject world on the Creator. There was only a relative connectedness of objects in the system of the world, as it was built within the framework of his ontological concept of Universe, where their subordination and interdependence on each other was derived from subordination to God. The philosophy of Neoplatonism was able to express the concept of world unity in this content; it developed the ontological doctrine of the origin of universum from the very beginning as forming it unity. Such interpretation of the universe in many respects approached the religious ideas of Judaism and Islam. It was included in the system of al-Farabi as a theoretical source; whereas the attempts in modern literature to explain it without this source are unconvincing. God is united and his creations can be comprehended and expressed by allegorical, symbolic interpretations, and by means of logically proven truths.

In the practical order for al-Farabi it is important to establish the divine order in the state. The thinker makes an ideal governor who is responsible for this. In his work "On the achievement of Happiness" al-Farabi writes that the art of ruling, the ruler’s vurtue, his thoughts and knowledge are all the greatest powers. The notions of "philosopher", "first leader", "ruler", "lawmaker" and "imam" are the same. Consequently, the ideal ruler, according to al-Farabi, was personified in Muhammad He was an ideal both as ruler and imam, full of care as about the moral and the spiritual welfare of his citizens. Practically he performed the will of the "Necessary Existing" in the state. In the whole ideological order of ideas he trained the people in high morality. He was the incarnation of "clean reason" in flesh and blood.

The human race is united by its origin from the same root, common to the varied and many-faceted cultures, nationalities, civilizations, languages and races. This judgment is confirmed by paleoanthropology, modern genetics and various religious doctrines despite the fact that their opinions may be totally different on other essential positions regarding the world. In other words, we may believe that people originate from Adam, but we may also think that their genesis is from the population of natural hominids. But a monocentrism in beliefs about origin of human beings and the start of their pre-history and history is too strongly embedded in common consciousness to be accidental.

Considering this from the viewpoint of cognitive methodology, al-Farabi highly estimated that position whereby very different knowledge, opinions and beliefs become convergent. It is a significant sign of authenticity of knowledge if in the process of disputes, debates and discussions people with different outlooks, knowledge and interests develop a common understanding of this or that subject. He found this integrated understanding closest to the truth, while recognizing that the truth is being formed in the process of cognitive communication, scientific dialogue. In this way he foresaw the importance of debates and discussion as modern (and lasting) ways of reliable comprehension in science, politics, culture, legal relations, and pointed out their high cognitive value. He understood well that scientific debates are unable to change experience or empirical knowledge, especially in the natural sciences. However, as far as comprehensive metaphysical subjects are concerned, he thought theoretical dispute-dialogue, profound theses and theories, their analytical comparison with other contrasting concepts and defense against the arguments of opponents to be an indispensable method of cognition. Since the founder of peripatetism - Aristotle - concordant general outlooks and common viewpoints have been essential to reaching valid knowledge. Thus, in the epoch of Arabic caliphate and eastern peripatetism al-Farabi stated an extremely fair and productive view of the meaning and functions of dialogue. In Hegel’s profound judgment "the truth is not the past". Thus, the ideas of al-Farabi and of the other thinkers of various epochs are able to continue their active involvement in contemporary philosophical dialogue without loosing their significance.

Al-Farabi’s opinion on the unity of the human race remains reliable. This is mentioned here not only to relate the Second Teacher’s opinions to the contemporary context, but also in order to provide a general and obvious starting point for the topic of cultural dialogue between East and West and the meaning of eastern peripatetism. The general thesis determines the original terms regarding the possibility of unlimited mental communication and dialogical relationships within the human race, whether it is the dialogue between West and East or North and South. Coincidence in religious viewpoints and scientific theory prove that different outlooks contain and express in their languages the idea of human community. This entails some archetypical understanding of the possibility and even willingness for mutual communication. In its diversity a form of a cultural dialogue begins to play an important role.

The issue of the cultural dialogue of the West and Orient is complex and immense. But let us consider one aspect, namely, its historical direction from antiquity to Arabic-Moslem Middle Age. We shall consider this from the following viewpoint: what provides the very possibility of cultural dialogue itself, what is the principle basis for such communication, what is the integrating factor linking what in many respects are contradictory social-historical formations? Aside from civilizational-historical geography, of which we shall talk later, first of all, we shall look at the ethical field of science and philosophy. The civilizations of the Eastern Renaissance and Greek antiquity were separated by more than a thousand years of economic, social, political and spiritual developments. The productive structures were replaced, economic links were developed, and there was progress in the natural and human sciences. Small autonomous towns, democratic management, individualism, pluralism, pagan mythic religious beliefs, etc., were replaced by large "world" empires, autocratic and theocratic management, communal consolidation, growth of stability. In the ideological-philosophical field those processes were accompanied by a renunciation of pagan polytheism and the development of decisively monotheistic religion. These fundamental cultural divergences gave great urgency to the following issues: how is the dialogue possible between such divergent and even contradictory ways of life, thinking and belief possible? As a preliminary answer, under all the differences the role of at least one essential connecting link is played by philosophical tradition.

The historical fact of the eastern peripatetic phenomenon confirms that such dialogue is possible and has been realized. However that historical-philosophical context contains this precise issue: how could a certain outlook (philosophy), developed on certain historical conditions, organically enter a system of redically different cultural relations and, moreover, be combined with the religious outlook of Islam, thus developing the most obvious spiritual communication between such different societies?

However, one cannot help noticing the fact that Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy contained the potential for spiritual versatility, taking it far beyond framework of Athenian cultural chronotop.

The possibility of spiritual-philosophical communication in the subject area under consideration requires meeting on the same basic bilateral terms. In order to overcome the tendency to discrete cultural-historical processes, antique philosophy must not have been completely and totally involved in the local cultural configurations of the classic Greek tradition. Only a certain disharmony with its common setting, a certain contradiction between classical philosophy and the spiritual context of its development could enable its universalization. In other words, a philosophical understanding of the world, having cropped up in a certain social-historical situation and belonging to it, should have traits of universality. On the other hand, eastern peripatetism as an understanding of the world was not fully identified with the conditions of its existence. This suggestion can be confirmed. The outlook of al-Farabi and eastern peripatetism has an internal ambiguity, which made him stand out in the environment he belonged to, namely, that of Islamic religious spirituality. Thus, one of the main motives of the Koran and the impulse of Moslem outlook was the requirement of categorical renunciation of polytheism and, thus, of the many things that sprouted from the cultural ground of paganism. In spite of the fact that the breakup presupposed, first of all, religious beliefs and spiritual studies, the latter could hardly be discharged without touching upon other philosophical grounds. However, the scientists and thinkers of early Islam were able successfully to solve this issue and introduce the most valuable scientific and philosophical achievements of pagan history into their civilization. This was the merit of Eastern peripatetism which gradually and invariably affirmed its involvement in classical philosophy (and science) as its main theoretical basis and its adherence to Islam as its sole religious-spiritual source. However, we should emphasize the fact that the possibility and reality of such unification were to a considerable degree present in the very antique philosophy, which from the day its origin and up to Neoplatonism was moving towards a monotheistic religiosity.

The rebellious spirit of the Greeks noted by Ortega-y-Gasset, the absence of an influential priestly class in the cities and the related absence of a stable system of religious postulates in the philosophical mythic religious consciousness enhanced the development of a secularized pluralistic understanding of the world, one of whose manifestations was philosophy. This did not interfere with the traditional and wide-spread mentality of pagan polytheism. Yet, the first studies of Ionic nature-philosophers raised the issue of first origins and though it tried to present this as something natural rather than divine, it made an important step toward the negation of mass polytheistic beliefs. In this way of rational and natural explanation of space pagan polytheism quickly dissolved not in the general consciousness, but in the philosophical environment under the pressure of critical reasoning.

The creative side was the search in the direction of the idea of God, in particular, such notions as Fate and Logos of Heraclitus, understood in general as regularity, managing the cosmic order and harmony. The thoughts of Anaxagoras, whose theological thought was highly valued and developed by Aristotle, became an essential milestone in the development of the philosophical study of God. In Anaxagoras’ ontology things are developed from homeomeasures under the influence of the cosmic Mind (reason), which is independent, unlimited and not mixed with anything. It has full knowledge and unlimited power over the nature.

Plato, whose system was one of the sources of Neoplatonism and Arabic-speaking philosophy, unlike "physical" studies, develops his ontology from a different context issue. Like his teacher Socrates, he sees one of his main tasks as opposition to the subjective concepts of sophistry, which he considered as antisocial. He sought a philosophy based upon something objective, and understood as something stable, significant, beyond a person and therefore independent of the individual’s disassociated interests and goals. The result of the search for objective common bases for thinking was the ontological first principle as an ideally grasped essence or idea. Thereby, intelligible ideas that are independent of human subjectivity, eternal and unchangeable turn out to be the original reason of physical things, ethics, aesthetics, law and others norms and values. They form a special, hierarchically built world, where they are subordinated to each other and in regard to the supreme idea of the Good, also understood as the One since it is source of sequencing, formation and harmonization of the variety of things and, consequently, a principal formal term for its reasonable understanding.

According to Plato, the connecting link between the world of ideas and a formless changeable matter is the Demiurge (God - the creator), who, like a builder or craftsman, forms and regularizes matter, thus it introduces the system of ideas in perceptible reality, even though he does not reach full correspondence to the idea as the perfect prototype of things. Thus in Plato’s theory of cognition man, knowing by means of sensible perception, experience and reason, attains an imperfect knowledge about changeable and secondary reality. This reality though a weak copy has a certain resemblance to original ideal essence. Thus the reasoning part of the soul, which is capable of comprehending the mind has the ability to cognize the system of ideas in its pure form by means of anamnesis, that is, by recollection. Plato supposes that before joining the body the soul was an ideal form implicated with pure ideas and directly contemplating them by mind. In physical life this knowledge is kept in the soul potentially and can be actualized under anamnesis, the external impulse for which would be perception and experience.

In Aristotle’s metaphysics the intelligible first origin or absolute cause of the Cosmos appeared as eternal, unchangeable and pure agency. This divine Reason is absolute thinking and form of all forms, generating everything, including forms and ideas, regulating like Anaxagoras’ Nous and managing everything. The differences between Plato’s and Aristotle’s outlooks show the degree to which classical ontology moved toward theological contemplation. In Aristotle’s understanding, God is no longer a Demiurge, i.e. not a craftsman, cosmic builder, realizing and personifying idea-projects external to him and dominating him in material matters. In Aristotle, unlike Plato, God is no longer a secondary and subordinated essence. To be a reason, contemplating himself, and the form of all forms meant, first of all, to contain in himself the whole system of ideal essences as the project of the Cosmos and all things existing in it. This recalls the activity not of a Demiurge or builder, but of an intellect and the strict calculation of an architect at work on the project of a temple whose ideal form is a target of reason. Remaining identical to himself, unchangeable, he moves the skills and knowledge of stone-cutters, engineers, mathematicians, builders, so that the project is materialized in a physical construction, marked by the principles of reason, harmony and beauty. As far as the human intellect is concerned, it is important to understand that his ability to know physical and metaphysical subjects is stipulated, first of all, by the presence of absolute Reason, which first grasps material things as identical to it. But most of all the relational human intellect is a divine trace with which man is most implicated and indeed identical.

It is obvious that such philosophical contemplations on ontology, bringing it closer to rational theology, had nothing in common with the traditional Greek mythology and theogony. The philosophical elements were much closer to the monotheistic understanding of the world of the future than to pagan polytheism. However, before they were united with a religious spirituality, they had to undergo a considerable process of formation in this direction. The subsequent Hellenistic and Greek-roman philosophy in many aspects can be characterized as further developments of the ideas and issues of classical systems, including that of God.

Hellenism was the historical period when socio-political organization came to an end and was replaced by large monarch states. This also meant the reduction of individualized human manifestations in public and in the spiritual sphere, and, thus, change in the functions of philosophy. It now expressed less the individual personal originality of a man and was more related to public integration processes. In this regard the period of Hellenism and its philosophy had obvious resemblances with the period of Arabic conquests, the development of the Arabic caliphate and of eastern Aristotleism. The fact that at different historical times the Mediterranean civilized area was covered both by Hellinistic and Arabic-speaking cultures was a convergent sign as well.

The reduction of individual meaning and the growth the role of universally significant meaning in philosophy was one of the reasons why it now was being developed not principally through the creation of new outlooks, but through the development and filling of already existing paradigmatic systems, especially Pythagorism, Platonism, Aristotleism. That is why a false reproach to al-Farabi for "repeating" ancient studies can be extended to the entire post-Aristotelian philosophy. But it is important to note that such a way of development of philosophy was not spontaneous and unconscious. Rather, it was like a ripening of philosophical receivership and inheritance, that for some time had been absent and were being put into action by Aristotle and developed by al-Farabi, who devoted to this issue a special treatise on the resemblance of Plato and Aristotle. However, such understanding of philosophical receivership and inheritance in philosophy was actually a reflection of the development of dialogical relations between the preceding and the succeeding systems or outlooks. Such understanding manifests a new aspect if we consider the relationships between classical antiquity and medieval Arabic-speaking civilization. It then becomes the deeply understood core of a cultural dialogue between the East and West, which was being developed in that historical epoch.

Philosophical-theological contemplation obtained a new impulse in Neoplatonism as one of the early religious-philosophical systems, uniting Pythagorean, Platonic and Aristotelism studies. Through Neoplatonism Islamic philosophers became acquainted with classical outlooks. The religious and philosophical meaning of Neoplatonism, together with its theological interpretation of the ontology of Plato and Aristotle were deeply perceived and comprehended by al-Farabi. Here, first of all, it is necessary to note that one of the founders and outstanding representatives of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, in his studies emphasized the meaning of universal and general first origination from One as an absolute and good source of everything existing in the universe. No doubt such a concept was rather similar to the religious outlook of Islam with its categorical statement of monotheism. Neoplatonism was the philosophical system, which has enabled al-Farabi and other Arabic-speaking peripatetics to combine the edges of their Moslem religious faith with the philosophical and scientific rationality of classical cognition.

Analysis of the ancient philosophy of God and theological subjects shows that its development has far overtaken the traditional polytheistic mythological thought and very closely approached the creation of a rational monotheistic concept. This enabled philosophy to become a connecting-link, a language of dialogue between Hellenistic and Arabic-speaking cultures.

Apart from these internal philosophical conditions of dialogue between these cultures there existed its historical circumstances. Both the classical Greek epoch and Judaism and the medieval Arabic-speaking and European cultural tradition were to a considerable degree united by a common civilizational-geographical space, spread in various Mediterranean areas and the territories bordering thereupon. Therefore, one cannot help agreeing with Karl Jaspers on the fact that a historical-civilisational division into the West and the East, referring only India and China to the latter, in many aspects fairly considers the Mediterranean orbit as a united "western" cultural-historical community, sometimes spread as far as Gang. In this, however, there are enough essential differences in the "western" cultural-historical community. This, however, contains rather significant differences enabling the "western" community from within to delimit western from eastern components. But what is of interest here is what united the various Mediterranean cultures. Islam and Christianity had common religious roots in Judaism, and they had a general historio-philosophical foundation in classical Greek philosophy and Neoplatonism. European culture originates from the ancient Greek and ancient Roman traditions, but equally medieval Europe originally became acquainted and perceived the philosophy and science of the Greeks from Arabic-speaking thinkers and scientists.

We may say that the multiform and peculiar "Mediterranean" cultural traditions had a certain spiritual identity. The question is in what exactly was this identity expressed. This question is too based for the present, but we cannot help paying attention to the interesting fact that it is philosophy that turns out to be the most constant element, being present in all the enumerated cultural formations.

Such a statement is not the true answer, for it describes only an obvious empirical reality whose meaning cannot be explained in a simple way. Therefore, without claiming a sufficient understanding of this phenomenon, we can suppose that the philosophy and science being formed in its depth were to say the least, one of integrating spiritual factors. It was a universal language of cultural and cognitive communication with the potential to transmit the intellectual heritage in historical time and civilizational space. But in order to execute such functions, it had to occupy also an opposite position in each of certain cultural-historical formations, being at the same time comprehensible, justified and necessary in any of them.

Thus, in his creative activity al-Farabi expressed for the third millennium an actual idea of hermeneutic cultural dialogue, presupposing both unity of positions and their principle differences. Al-Farabi already belongs to an epoch different from antiquity, being the brightest representative of the splendid and inimitably beautiful Arabic-speaking Moslem civilization. The dialogue expresses both a receivership of traditions and their delimitation, revealing both the conservation of cultural heritage and the appearance of something new and unexplored. A hermeneutic dialogue between the ancient and Moslem traditions implemented by eastern peripatetism, can serve as example to establish creative contacts in the cultural megapolis of the present millennium.

One can develop the idea that Islam is vital and crucial nowadays due to the fact that it is extremely modern, meeting the defining principles of tolerance with an ability to take up a dialogue, if one turns to works of Ibn Sina, a faithful follower of al-Farabi who achieved scientific insights on the basis of an Islamic outlook.

European historio-philosophical science long ago came to recognize that the West first got to know the works of Aristotle and Plato thanks to eastern peripatetism, namely, to the works of the prominent Central-Asian philosopher, physician and scientist Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Many studies, including contemporary ones, consider Ibn Sina to be the most prominent and almost the only thinker of the East to introduce to Europe a systematized form of Aristotleism as early as the XI century, i. e., actually, he became popular in the West while alive.

However, the Arab-Islamic unification of the heritage of ancient cultures had an important positive side. Islam as a world religion did not acknowledge the ethnocultural delimitation and therefore became a powerful stimulus of syntheses of rather diverse traditions. The general world outlook and Arabic language became the important terms for rapid rise in civilization in their field of expansion. The other term, not less essential, was the high level of development of pre-Islamic cultures.

The Islamization for non-Arabic people was not univocous, as each of them for a certain period inevitably retained elements of former beliefs and spiritual values. All these within the framework of Islam left a certain space for one or another choice of outlook, including choice of philosophy, which not accidentally outlived its first flowering.

Even though Ibn Sina acknowledged the role of al-Farabi as a mentor in his philosophical development, certainly he was a too prominent and independent a thinker and scientist for his outlooks to absolutely follow the views of his predecessor. In this regard his position is defined by two facts. The first and external is related to the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy, certainly in its Neoplatonic interpretation, was originally perceived by him according to al-Farabi’s comprehension and with his comments. There the principle experience was one of unification of the ancient ideas with the Arabic-speaking tradition, mainly with the Islamic religious outlook.

A second, deeper reason was the predominance of such an understanding of the philosophical process, whose beginning is found in Aristotle and is retained in Hellenistic and east-peripatetic studies. This understanding sets the principle of unity as a foundation of the diversity of the historio-philosophical process and, thus, concentrates attention rather on what unites the philosophical systems than on what separates them. Herewith philosophy is considered as united knowledge, which becomes clear and grows from one generation of philosophers to the other. From such a position philosophy appears to be not an ensemble of mutually discordant systems or outlooks, but essentially one and same system which gradually improves from teacher to follower. Al-Farabi developed a consequent and holistic understanding of historio-philosophical receivership and inheritance in his own work "On the Identity of Views of Two Philosophers, Divine Plato and Aristotle", "Dialectics" and others. The gnoseological imperative of this paradigm required Ibn Sina to consider his studies, first of all, as inheritance and continuation of Aristotle’s and al-Farabi’s philosophy, in spite of significant differences between predecessors and his own outlooks.

Actually his philosophical outlook probably represents a rather visible digression from the classical form of Aristotleism, caused by the active development of natural scientific knowledge in the Arab-Moslem society and by the fact that concentration on medical theory and practice imposed a certain imprint on the direction and way of thinking of Ibn Sina.

The cultural-historical situation of the epoch of Eastern Renaissance forced Ibn Sina to face a tense collision of two different directions. On the one hand, the development of natural and special sciences and research in the field of medicine, drew him toward natural reality and the scientific methodology characteristic of medical science since Hypocrites and Koss’s schools. On the other, historical recognition of the authority and theoretical importance of philosophy, in combination with the inseparable interest in subjects that were supersensible, comprehensible to the mind and of apodictic validity held him firmly within the boundaries of philosophical rationalism. The contradiction internal to the situation concluded in the fact that the future separation of the natural sciences from philosophy, though not yet realized, was already dramatically marked in the theoretical consciousness of this Eastern encyclopaedist, philosopher and physician.

Explanation of enlightenment as a key issue of medieval Arabic-speaking peripatetism was stipulated, on the one hand, by the development of special natural, exact and humanitarian sciences in combination with the aspiration to use them in practice, and on the other hand, by the influence of the ideas of Islam and Neoplatonic philosophy. As I see it, the former was not that far from the latter.

The basic principle of Moslem dogma stipulated the following major Islamic attitudes to scientific knowledge. First, there are the theistic positions of Orthodox theology, mutakallims and asharits. Since their outlooks were founded on the statement of omnipotence of Allah’s will in regard to the world he created, the latter appeared to be deprived of its own permanent objects and strong relationships, existing only according to the inscrutable plan of the Creator as an ensemble of casual forms and properties. It is obvious that from such a viewpoint the sciences of nature and even their simple recognition is extremely difficult. As far as the understanding of supersensible objects is concerned, it can be based only on belief in the infallibility of true postulates. Secondly, from the position of Sufism, cognition of God can occur in the way of love through being enlightened by mystic intuition and dissolution in God. Since Sufism taught one to neglect the multiplicity and variability of the material world, it detracted from the sciences of nature and on the whole denied the possibility of rational cognition of both perceptive data and supersensible objects.

Thus, both orthodox theology and Sufi mysticism fell into contradiction with briskly developing natural and humanitarian sciences. They did not intend to solve the issues of the creation of a rational theology, understanding and motivation of principles of science and scientific thinking. Such a position was unacceptable for Ibn Sina as a scientist, philosopher, theorist and practicing medical worker.

A more balanced and realistic position on the issue of studies on science, enabling one to combine the principles of Islamic religion and to motivate scientific knowledge, was taken by eastern peripatetism, based on the physical and metaphysical research of Plato’s-Aristotle’s (Athenian) school and Neoplatonism, which, according to the correct opinion of S.S. Averincev, was not only the largest philosophical system of late antiquity, but also a refined religious doctrine.

Aristotelianism was important to its Arab-Moslem followers not only because it laid the foundation for teaching science, justifying the need for both philosophy and the development of the private sciences necessary for the Arabic caliphate, but also because this very justification was based on an explanation of the empirical way of cognition in the philosophy of Aristotle. His approval of reason, i.e. of the "form of the forms" as the cosmic origin meant that natural and social reality begin to exist as a result of the structuring of matter (potential originality) by a formal cause, thus, resembling a reasonable first cause. Thus, a synthesis of transcendental being and immanent reality was being realized in a relationship that allowed the empirical world to be considered an expression, literally a personification, of formal reason.

That led to a rather important conclusion which had not previously been paid sufficient attention. This is because in pre-Aristotelian philosophy discrepancies between thinkers on the question of what is exactly the first cause of the world (apeiron, being, atom, idea, etc.) led to doubts regarding each of the postulated beginnings and thus generated a fundamental gnoseological issue: how is it possible to cognize subjects comprehended by mind. If in pre-peripatetic philosophy the most ingenious decision was provided by Plato in his theories of anamnesis (recollection), Aristotleism opened the way to a principally different methodology of cognition of such subjects. From his time the study of empirical reality could be considered not only as cognition of a single and volatile phenomenon, but also from the point of their formal resemblance to the first cause, as cognition of universal reason. In other words, "the imprint" of the form of the forms on the empirical subject could at the same time transform its study into a study able to provide a certain understanding of essences comprehended by the mind, that is, to transfer them from the empirical to a transcendental world.

While highly valuing this concept of Aristotleism, Hegel emphasized that completion of empirical knowledge results in the understanding of a speculative notion. In other words, the development of research in the private sciences, comprehended in their unity and interaction, brings philosophy closer to understanding the reasonable first cause. Proceeding from this fact, the obligatory encyclopaedism of the eastern peripatetics is seen both as a result of subjective-personal aspiration to master all the available knowledge and as deep understanding of the fundamental principle of Aristotle’s philosophy.

However, in the medieval Near and Middle East Aristotelianism found itself in quite other conditions than those in which it was originally formed. The main spiritual-religious difference was the fact that, having appeared in the atmosphere of pagan pantheism, it could be perceived and developed in the environment dominated by the monotheistic religion of Islam only if it had certain premises for such an adaptation. Here it is appropriate to note that the Platonic-Aristotelian tendency in philosophy was recognized not only by the Arab-Islamic peripatetics, but also by Christian scholasticism since it included an intellectual potential for anticipation of the cultural-historical development of both the East and the West. This was due to the fact that from its very origin philosophy moved aside the polytheism of mythic-religious consciousness with its immanent pantheon. Its idea of a united cosmic first origination - as this was becoming more and more intelligible and transcendental with Plato’s idea of the good, reason, Aristotle’s form of forms, or Plotinus’ One - increasingly approached the idea of the one creating God of the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was in such an evolution of philosophical outlooks that the premises of the spiritual-cultural juncture of the Moslem religious tradition was being developed. Rapprochement of philosophical and religious positions with the keen interest of Arabic-speaking civilizations in the natural science resulted in the fact that the Eastern peripatetics carried out, probably, the first experience in history of joining a philosophical tradition to the outlook of a global monotheistic religion. Here al-Farabi and Ibn Sina had to provide such an interpretation of the Islamic ideology without breaking with orthodox views, but bringing certain corrections in them. These were the principles of priority of reason over faith and of philosophy over theology with an accent on wisdom, high reason and the omniscience of God, the Creator.

In its turn, the combination of eastern peripatetism with the Islamic theism, though not leading to their identification, meant that the notion of the form of forms or of the one of peripateism must be replaced by the notion of God, the Creator. This was an essential difference since creationism as a doctrine of absolute creation of the world by God out of nothing was not present in classical philosophy. With such a replacement, the study of sensible-exact things by particular sciences and the comprehension of the received knowledge by philosophy seemed to be a direct study of the results of divine creative activity, but also a mediated cognition of the First Being. For most interpretations such notions as education and enlightenment are relations between people who are, on the one hand, teachers and, on the other, learners, that is instructors and students. For the eastern peripatetics enlightenment (education) seems to be a universal ontological relation, linking the whole structure of being, in which God-the-Creator emerges as the absolute teacher for the follower-man, whether it is his mystic understanding or the study of a subject of nature.

That is why in doctrines of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina philosophy is clearly understood as a doctrine about science, education and enlightenment, mastering the whole complex of human knowledge from the particular sciences to the divine metaphysical essences. Such enlightenment serves not only, and not as much for the solution of practical issues. Rather, it is directed as its main purpose at a reasonable understanding of the First Being and, consequently, at the improvement of a person by joining the one divine source of wisdom, good and harmony.

Islam has shown its inherent proximity to the modern requirements of polycentrism and polyphonism since ancient times, being capable of rapprochement and interaction with the public beliefs of those nations to whose Land it came. To examine these ideas we shall turn to the creative activity of a prominent thinker and prophet of the Kazakh lands - Hodja Akhmed Yassavi. Within the formation and development of the Islamic philosophy in Kazakhstan his spiritual activity left a deep trace. What defined his special "status" in the development of philosophical and public thought was his transfer of the Sufi-Islamic concept of God to ground the traditional outlook of the Kazakh nation.

Before we begin to talk of our great ancestor, Hodja Akhmed Yassavi, whose wise khikmets for the entire millennium have been a strong basis for our nation’s understanding of the world, we need to understand a number of important issues that modern Yassavi researchers are facing.

First, we, present-day scientist-researchers for 70 years have been educated on the postulate: "Religion – is an opium for people". With this previous outlook we will not be able to learn the secrets of the wisdom and the rich spiritual world of Yassavi or his place and role in the history of the culture of Kazakhstan. Simple people, despite a severe ban under ideological propaganda, honored the spirit of this great person, respectfully calling him Azret Sultan, and worshipped his ashes with trembling souls, considering this as their "second hadj". However, some of our scientists still see him as a representative of "Moslem mysticism", a preacher of the "missionary Sufis literature". With such a dogmatic rational approach, proceeding from the materialistic one-track Eurocentric understanding, we shall not be able even to approach the secrets of Yassavi’s wisdom.

Secondly, in historiographic science, including the works of domestic scientists, there is one trend: any time they turn to a historical personality, they firstly find his genealogy and, based on this, proceed to determine his spiritual world. Of course, I do not doubt the importance of genealogical science, the elements of hereditary transition of talents and gifts from generation to generation.

However, the talents and gifts of a person not only are innate and absorbed with the milk of their mother, but also gradually develop as a result of influence of the native cultural-historical environment, traditional culture, education and knowledge.

From this point of view, when some researcher is digging into Yassavi’s pedigree: we start to think: here we go, his father was Hadji Ibragim, he is a descendant of the fourteenth generation of Azret Ali. Possibly, his pedigree is really like that. But this information does not in the least disprove that Hodja Akhmed Yassavi was a representative of the traditional Turk cultural environment. For his outlook was developed within the framework of the traditional Turk understanding of the world, and his genial poems absorbed his sincere feeling for his native people and Fatherland.

Thirdly, it is impossible to consider the outlook of Hodja Akhmed Yassavi separately, beyond the historian-cultural and spiritual context. For he is not only a historical personality, born into traditional Turk culture; he also lived the ideas of preceding thinkers and enormously influenced the formation of the understanding of the world by following generations of genii. Thus, before we understand the meaning of Yassavi’s act, who, being 63, "having suffered my soul leaving me before death", as he said, voluntarily leaves for the underground, we need to investigate the meaning of sufferings of the other thinker of the Turk world, Korkyt, who, in search of immortality, was travelling all over the world, chasing death away by the power of his musical instrument.

If we compare them, we can find great resemblance in the actions and understanding of the world of the two Turk thinkers who were separated in time by almost 300 years. Both Korkyt and Yassavi wandered like dervishes in search of the meaning of human life and the truth of the universe. But, not having found the truth, the old man Korkyt returns to the native place on the bank of Syrdarya and, lying on the waves, for the entire century plays "hymn to life" on his kobyz and does not let death approach him. But Yassavi, also tired of wanderings, returns to his native Turkestan. He dreams of living as long as he lived before and of devoting prayers to the Creator, of meeting the Creator in his soul and thus learning the Truth of the universe, of becoming a linking bridge between his contemporaries and God.

One who did not get to know the particulars of the traditional Turk understanding of the world, who did not live on the vital juice of Korkyt’s thoughts, will not know the secrets of Yassavi’s feeling of the world, his religious-philosophical work of "Risala". In other words, the key to understanding the essence of Yassavi’s khikmets is deep appreciation of the ancient Turk mythology and legends about Korkyt.

Contemporary Yassavi’s researchers consider the spiritual heritage of the great saint, who left an indelible trace in the consciousness of the Turk world, beginning from XII century, in such an isolated way that it seems that there were no historical ties between his views and doctrines of his predecessors Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Abu Ali Ibn Sina. Moreover, we still have not tried to trace the links connecting Yassavi with his contemporaries: Yusuf Balasaguni and Mahmud Kashgari. The role of Yassavi’s hikmets in the development of the outlook of Kazakh poets - from Asan Kaygy to Abay - has not been discussed at all.

Certainly, under former ideological dictation we could not study in full the issue of Sufism, its ontology and gnoseology. But over 10 years have passed since those ideological chains were cast off. Why then would we conceal that al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Yusuf Balasaguni and Mahmud Kashgari were active representatives of Sufism (leaving aside Yassavi’s direct follower - Suleymen Bakyrgani).

Thus, the spiritual heritage of Hodja Akhmed Yassavi should be researched in the complex of the entire Turk civilization and in the process of continuous socio-cultural development. Contemporary researchers should see Hodja Akhmed Yassavi not as a lonely tree in the deserted steppe, but as one of the thinkers of the Kazakh land - from Korkyt to Abay - and try to recognize peculiarities of his perception of the world.

Fourthly, Hodja Akhmed Yassavi is a scientist who holds a special place in the ranks of great thinkers of the human civilization. Therefore, firstly, we should get to know his holy image and only afterwards provide him his due in the history of the world civilization.

Europeans, who decided to write the history of world civilizations, starting with the new era of development of the mankind, also pay attention to the Eastern Renaissance. They cannot help paying attention, since today it is obvious that the foundation for modern western civilization was laid in the works of eastern thinkers. But the centuries-old ice of the Eurocentric views has not yet melted . We are also guilty of that since, instead of a thorough study of the deep cultural and civilizational roots and philosophical universals of own traditional culture, we prefer to perceive ready stereotypes of the West. As a result, we honour Schopenhauer more than Yassavi, and Thomas Moore more than Asan Kaygy. And if we hear the historical justice, we shall see that Schopenhauer’s philosophy of cognition based on irrational intuition is founded on the idea of Sufism of "understanding the radiant casual truth by means of sufferings, on coming to the Highest and merging with His spirit". Our ancestor, Asan Kaygy, projected the social utopia in his search for "a Promised" land for human beings long before Thomas Moore.

The issue is not who first stated one or another social idea, but about the synthesis of our traditional outlooks, through which we can enter the course of the world civilization with all our peculiarities. At present, when the chain of rigid ideological dogmas has been broken and thought has become free, some of our intellectuals, including young people, zealously turn to Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, Nikolai Berdyaev and Jean-Paul Sartre, often without understanding the essence of the issue. Such servile imitation of western thinkers can give us nothing but artificiality. But if we study their heritage in terms of our own traditional outlook, in combination with our own notions, we shall enter world civilization with more certainty.

I emphasize this because the above-mentioned thinkers - Schopenhauer, Berdyaev and Jaspers - openly confessed absorbing their ideas from the East and from Sufism. We rashly admire the latest western trends before thoroughly studying the values of our traditional outlook, including our spiritual heritage from the most prominent thinker, Hodja Akhmed Yassavi.

In this regard it is impossible to silence a related aspect of another burning issue of our life. Nowadays there are many religious sects. Accordingly, there is much talk of some young people leaving the righteous way of their parents and being under the influence of other beliefs. Who is guilty in this: the parents who have allowed their own children to become undisciplined; or our clergy which cannot find the way to the hearts and souls of the young? Maybe, the government which in such delicate issue cannot conduct a flexible confessional policy? In my opinion, we, representatives of the social and humanitarian sciences who were not able to transfer our rich traditional outlook and spiritual heritage to the consciousness of the young should take most of the blame.

We rejected the Communist ideology which, though poorly, united the society. Komsomol with its own noisy political actions has departed the stage. We decided to develop a national ideology and to bring up the youth in its spirit. But how can this be implemented? First of all, by developing spirituality, morality and understanding of the world. The optimal way is a new approach to the popularization of the previously forbidden heritage of such a great thinker as Hodja Akhmed Yassavi. Then the young would understand that the ideas of humanity, tolerance, morality, honesty, nobility, aspiration to understand the truth are contained not only in the doctrine of Krishna. That is the fourth aspect of the new socio-cultural approach to the study of the rich spiritual heritage of Yassavi.

I have intentionally devoted my present discussion to the determination of our direction in the deep study of the heritage of Hodja Akhmed Yassavi with the purpose from the very beginning of recommending as the correct course the study of Yassavi, to form a new attitude to the issue of his place and role in our traditional outlook. To do this, first of all, we need to find answers to the following questions: "What is the doctrine of Sufism that H.A.Yassavi followed and how did it expand amongst the Turk-speaking people of Central Asia?"

The main core of Sufi doctrine is a question that always worried a human being to whom the Highest gave the ability consciously to handle his environment. From the eastern thinkers of antiquity to the followers of contemporary existentialism, humankind has tried to find the meaning of human life, the truth of being? The figure of our ancestor Hodja Akhmed Yassavi who synthesized Sufism and Tengryanism rises on the way to understanding this truth, in the centre of world history, as a powerful giant amongst those who search.

In modern literature on Kazakh philosophy we hear many disputable opinions on Tengryanism as a religious system, which divide according as Tengryanism is understood as a polytheistic or a monotheistic religion. Without entering the debates and evaluating the correctness of this or that researcher, we emphasize only that Tengryanism expressed a trend to monotheism and that this, to a certain extent, prepared the ground for joining Islamic monotheism. Yassavi’s missionary activity was in many respects dedicated to this. The expansion of Islam in the pagan environment, where not only views of Tengryanism were popular but also ideas of zoroastrism and manyheism, rudiments of the Moon religion, etc., could not be rectilinear and unambiguous. Its "adaptation" passed along the original way promoted by the Sufist direction of Yassavi’s views. Sufism was "simplified" in its ritual and religious ceremonies and this played an important role in the nomadic culture and even to a certain extent met the requirements of nomadic lifestyle. This was spread by dervishes and murids on the boundless expanses of steppe. In its most secluded places, it synthesized the main postulates of Islam with the traditions of public beliefs.

Moreover, this process was not unilateral, but really bi-lateral: the moral-spiritual essence of Islam found its response in the hearts and souls of nomads and was accepted by them; but, in its turn, the concrete historical entrance of Islam was complemented by elements of pre-Islamic religious practices: the cult of the ancestors spirit, the worship of graves and "holy places", etc., that were very stable in the steppes of Central Asia.

The "Hikmets" of Hodja Akhmed Yassavi became "a textbook" for the spiritual-moral ascent of a human being to God since, according to him, each person in his development can reach internal perfection. Conditions for this have been predestined by divine foresight; moreover, this includes the divine predetermination of the human race. The core of the ascent to perfection is the love of God, and through it love of human beings. That is the direction of a spiritual-moral movement. Therefore, Yassavi’s religious concept was based upon the human values of Good, Humanity, Justice, therefore the synthesized form of the religious attitude to the world that he expressed was understood and supported in the Turk environment. Thus, the humanistic ideals of Yassavi have found their continuation in the creative activity of prominent Kazakh akyns Asan Kaygy, Shalkiiz, Buhar-zhyrau. Moreover, due to the influence of Yassavi on the richest verbally-poetic heritage of The Kazakh people, a tradition of religious-moral genre comprising poems, legends, dastans, among which are poets Zar-zaman "Girl Dariga", "Zarkum", "Muhammad Hanafiya" and others, was created and further developed. It will be interesting to trace the Sufi traditions in the Kazakh poetry.

Sufism has also influenced the classical poetry of the East. In many poetical works of Firdousi, Nizami, Saadi, Navoi it can be traced to one or another degree as close to Sufi ideas. They played an important role in the philosophical formation and development of the spiritual world of Abay – a recognized genius of the Kazakh nation – who personified its wisdom.

Abay is many-sided, versatile and ambiguous figure in the history of Kazakh philosophy. This can be proved by the fact that each generation reads and comprehends him in a new way, each time opening new aspects and nuances of his creative activity. Every new generation of philosophers finds special nuances and "turns" in his creative activity. Abay is interpreted in different ways both in the East and in the West. Sometimes he becomes close to eastern Sufism, later to western rationalism, sometimes he is a theist and later a deist with an obviously expressed materialistic trend.

This happens because Abay’s philosophy is a concentrated expression of the spirituality of the Kazakh nation. His creative activity is the soul of the entire nation, groaning and suffering for the present and future, and in a frantic blast painfully looking for an answer to existential questions.

There are three sources of Abay’s outlook: the classical poetry of the East, European (Russian) culture, and ancient Kazakh culture. The influence by the East was basically developed in literature, with an emphasis upon the other two sources. As there are different versions of the Eastern influence on Abay, ranging from full negation to the leading role, consideration of the philosophical issues of Abay’s philosophy through the problematics of Islamic philosophy remains an issue nowadays.

Characterizing Abay’s philosophical views from the position of their philosophical foundations, various authors see them in different ways as pantheism, theism, deism, or sometimes even materialism. The latter viewpoint, in my opinion, demonstrates a class approach, dominant within the Soviet totalitarian period. It is difficult to speak of Abay’s materialism, especially if one reads the following lines:

Abay is not an atheist. His "inconsistent judgments" served as a "basis" for an atheistic interpretation of the direction of his philosophy in Marxist philosophical literature founded especially on Abay’s critique of the activity of Moslem mullahs and ishans in the Kazakh steppe. However, it is obvious that this or other degrees of unorthodox, free thoughts or anticlericalism, inherent in many outstanding individuals, has nothing in common with godlessness, but only expresses personal nuances of religious belief.

It seems quite obvious that Abay acknowledges Allah and believes in his omnipotence, mercy, love and power. He writes about it in detail in the thirty eighth word which is the core and focus of his religious-philosophical concept, where he unfolds the principle of the unity of Creator and the created.

In Abay’s concept it is necessary clearly and distinctly to separate two layers or approaches to the Creator and to serving him. First when Islam is adopted with clear understanding of why there is belief and its principles are defended, based on the power of reason, and second when they are based on blind faith. This is, to speak in modern terms, the issue of the internal content of religious attitude to the world and its external manifestation, the profound formal aspect of religiosity and religious practice.

The concept of reason gained Abay fame as the great Kazakh educator who devoted himself to the issue of overcoming the ignorance of the Kazakh people. However, reason is not identical with science. Just as erudition differs from real knowledge, so science differs from its external manifestations where oratory can be said to be wisdom. Thus, there is a difference between reason and science, identical to intellect. The concept of Abay’s reason is closely connected with the concept of God. Reason is an objective universality which if followed makes one reasonable. Reason acts as a universal principle of consciousness which is necessarily connected with the principle of humanity. This is forcefully proclaimed by Abay.

The Principle "Adam bol!" ("Be a man!"), linking the East and West into a united whole, expresses the thrust of his philosophy on the fundamental bases of human being. Humanity ("be a man") is the form of universality that expresses the essence of the traditional Kazakh society as a wholeness to which forms of the people’s contact with one another were leading, where it was human relations rather than the economic and a political that defined moral norms and traditions, thus stipulating the peculiarities of traditional Kazakh society and its special spirituality.

The principle of "Adam bol!" enables us to understand the meaning of bringing reason into the sphere of moral relations for it fixes and characterizes the human contact both from the position of external directivity from person to person and from the position of internal directivity of a person to oneself, a voice of consciousness inside each individual person. Moral behaviour, according to Abay, always makes us act in accord not only with external circumstances, norms, traditions, but also with the internal will, consciously subordinated to one’s own reason. Reasonable behaviour, therefore, is really human behaviour, moral behaviour is reasonable behaviour.

Abay’s views are characterized by the statement that reason is able to control the feelings, emotions, and will of a person Thus, a person cannot and must not remain in captivity to one’s "nature", but must transcend its limits and tower over his nature. Due to education, culture and enrichment by knowledge, a person must improve his or her own natural talents. This is the main direction of Abay’s enlightening concept.

It is necessary to emphasize another important aspect concerning Abay’s personality, the fact that his thoughts on morality did not differ from the practical position of his life, they were his belief. The voice of his conscience, which required that he truthfully comprehend the fate of his own Kazakh nation, required that he speak the truth to his people about himself, even an unpleasant one, for, according to him, people, who do not have a great purpose or general truth, are spiritually dead. And where there is no life, there can be no perfection. This is Abay’s life credo that brought to life a moral requirement of his philosophy "Adam bol!" that became an inexhaustible source of spiritual power for the Kazakh people, its accent on the great way of spiritual perfection. We should develop the human skill to think by heart and not by mind.

Like no one else, Abay, was deeply concerned about the issues of self-determination of the Kazakh people, which explains his thorough critique of the vices of those days. But this was a creative, rather than a destructive critique, needed to move toward future perfection on the way of Reason, Good, Humanity and Justice.

Shakarim Kudayberdiev continued and further developed the ideas of Islamic philosophy in his creative activity. He wrote that after Abay, who has always served as an example for him, died, he chose the way of purity and honesty as the only possible and acceptable way for humanity. This brought him to contemplate on the issues of the meaning of life and to search for the truth which can "be seen by the eyes of the reason", for, as he pointed out, our wit cannot comprehend the reasons of being.

To him the search was identical with the choice of a philosophical position, without which it was impossible to define and develop his practical moral life activity. The choice of the way, with existential tension, was considered by him to be an issue that could be solved either by recognition of the Creator and the eternal life of the soul, or by affirming that everything in the world appears spontaneously, without interference of the Creator and the soul dies with the body.

The methodology of the philosophical research which Shakarim studied in full and demonstrated in his famous "Three Truths" was of special interest to researchers of Islamic philosophy, culture and the spirituality of the people. This was the method Aristotle used in his "Metaphysics" and "Politics"; it is what Francis Bacon speaks about in his critique of "idols" of cognition, and what Shakarim writes about as follows:

A researcher should be educated in various religions and sciences, should know what this or that scientist said about an issue. Herewith, it is rather necessary to beware of the fact that the faith he professes, the things he has read and studied, his habits, certain passions did not all of a sudden get to depend on someone’s outlooks only because they come from some remarkable person. If you believe the words of an authoritative personality, you can’t remain irrevocably attached to his words and ideas. You should set your mind free and dispassionately, not with a painfully-fevered but a sane reason to study and critically to value the books, utterances, judgments on practical matters as they conflict in their contents, and contradict in their positions and conclusions.

 

This methodological approach became a guiding one in modern philosophical literature, particularly the historico-philosophical. Thus, we may state that Shakarim Kudayberdiev was at the sources of the historio-philosophical conception in Kazakhstan.

His creative activity, where the issue of the choice of the "true way" is resolved on the basis of certain methodological principles, demonstrates the power of spiritual inspiration of modern cognition rooted in a constant dialogue of opposite positions. Different judgments and views constantly face each other, contend and reject, complement or deepen – and on the whole, develop Shakarim’s position. His thinking is internally dialogical: the "Three truths" is a constant collision of "pros" and "cons".

Subjecting to analysis and critique the materialistic direction in philosophy, Shakarim proclaims and defends the main positions of Islamic philosophy, which can be stated as follows:

1) the causal sources of all that exists are in the immensity of the cognition, might and skills of the Creator;

2) the soul exists from the very beginning and always; and within each successive rotation it rises to a new qualitative level; and

3) conscience is an integral characteristic of the soul. "I name human modesty, justice, kindness in their unity, - Shakarim wrote, - by the Moslem word of "uzhdan", and by the Russian "conscience". Conscience lifts the human soul and is needed in one’s earthly life and in the posthumous life of the soul. Conscience is a crucial category in Shakarim’s philosophy.

To follow these three positions is a true path for human spiritual perfection. When every person, according to Shakarim, comes to believe in the Creator and the posthumous life of the soul and in the fact that conscience is his primary need, then his heart will never be hard and he will remainon the sole correct life path. That is the highest of Shakarim’s precepts to his descendants.

Through successive but related prominent thinkers like al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, H.A.Yasavi, Abay and Shakarim we have traced the main stages of formation and development of the Islamic philosophy, culture and spirituality in Central Asian countries. In conclusion we need to emphasize that this is not the end of the development of Islamic philosophy: rather, the process of its systematic study is only beginning. Sovereign Central Asian states are gradually getting free from the spiritual chains of totalitarianism which imposed a taboo on the study of the Islamic philosophy, culture and spirituality of people. Practically, all literature of the Soviet period is full of negative attitudes to Islam, which used to be called only reactionary in its essence and manifestations. For this reason many issues and aspects of the Islamic outlook and Islamic philosophy practically remained unexplored and, thus, forbidden, not only for the broad public, but also for scientists and intellectuals. Ideological stamps and labels were undeservedly put on the best representatives of the Islamic philosophical and public thought, including those we have just considered. And not only ideological stamps: many politicians of the Islamic orientation, priests and common people sacrificed their lives for their religious beliefs and views.

We have not yet considered the poets of the "Zar-Zaman" epoch, Muhammad Salim Kashimov and other figures of the so-called movement of pan Islamism. However, this does not mean that their ideas and outlooks are not of interest for modern philosophy and culture. It is just that this is a large new page of future studies, requiring special study and a separate discussion.

We have addressed the creative activity of the greatest representatives of Islamic culture of the peoples of Central Asia in the socio-cultural context and have carried out our analysis from the position of the XXIst century. We have found the many-sidedness and spiritual tolerance of Islam, its ability and readiness for dialogue, co-operation and mutual understanding that allows it to attract the minds and hearts of the people living in a plastic polycentric contemporary world, oriented toward conflicting positions, opinions and life practices. The fate of Islam is determined by its linkage with the spiritual requirements of the contemporary multi-polar world.

1. Abu Ali Ibn Sina. Selected Works. Dushanbe, 1980. V.1.

2. Whitehead A.I. Selected Works in Philosophy. M., 1990. p. 200, 2004.

3. Al-Farabi. Philosophical Works. Almaty. 1970. p. 44.

4. Ibid. p. 45.

5. Al-Farabi. Historical-philosophical Works. Almaty, 1985. p. 392.

6. Hadamer G.-G. Actuality of the Fine. M., 1991. p. 12.

7. A.Koyre. Works on the History of Philosophical Idea. M., 1985. p. 58.

8. Abu Ali Ibn Sina. Selected Works. Dushanbe, 1980. Volume 1, p. 58.

9. Ibid.

10. Burabaev M.S., Kenisarin A.M., Kurmangalieva G.K. The Issue of Being and Cognition in the Philosophy of al-Farabi. Almaty, 1988. pp. 112-113.

11. Biruni. Monuments of the past generation. Selected Works. Tashkent. 1957. Volume 1.

12. Abu Ali Ibn Sina. Selected Works. pp. 69-70.

13. Ibid. p. 69.

14. Collingwood, P.J. The Idea of History. Autobiography. M., 1980. p. 23.

15. Abay. The Book of Words. Almaty, 1982. p. 123.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid. p. 131.