The eleventh-century philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina was known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna. An analysis of the sources and evolution of Avicenna's metaphysics, this book focuses on the answers he and his predecessors gave to two fundamental pairs of questions: what is the soul and how does it cause the body; and what is God and how does He cause the world? To respond to these challenges, Avicenna invented new concepts and distinctions and reinterpreted (...) old ones. The author concludes that Avicenna's innovations are a turning point in the history of metaphysics. Avicenna's metaphysics is the culmination of a period of synthesis during which philosophers fused together a Neoplatonic project with a Peripatetic project. Avicenna also stands at the beginning of a period during which philosophers sought to integrate the Arabic version of the earlier synthesis with Islamic doctrinal theology. Avicenna's metaphysics significantly influenced European scholastic thought, but it had an even more profound impact on Islamic intellectual history—the philosophical problems and opportunities associated with the Avicennian synthesis continued to be debated up to the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Most scholars of Islamic intellectual history now agree on the distortedness of the traditional Western portrayal of al-Ġazālī as the defender of Muslim orthodoxy whose Incoherence of the Philosophers was such a powerful critique that it caused the annihilation of philosophical activity in Islamic civilization. Some in fact are coming to the conclusion that al-Ġazālī's importance in the history of Islamic philosophy and theology derives as much from his assiduous incorporation of basic metaphysical ideas into central doctrines of Sunnī kalām, (...) as from his far more celebrated bashing of the falāsifa. What is less well known is that al-Ġazālī's role in the ‘‘philosophizing” of Sunnī theology was not a lonely struggle by a single genius, but part of a broader trend that seems to have begun during Avicenna’s lifetime and that picked up speed in the first and second generations after Avicenna's death in 1037, with the work of al-Ġazālī's teacher, the Aš‘arite al-Gˇuwaynī, as well as of the Māturīdite al-Bazdawī, work that was carried forward by dozens of subsequent members of those two major Sunnī theological schools. It is clear, in fact, that the dividing line between the Sunnī theologians commonly referred to in the later Islamic tradition as mutaqaddimūn, and those referred to as muta’aḫhḫirūn, lies not with al-Ġazālī but with Avicenna himself, and that the turn in Sunnī kalām was therefore Avicennian, not Ġazālian. (shrink)

Did classical kalām debates about how thing and existent relate to each other pave the way for Avicenna's distinction between essence and existence? There are some indications that the concept of thingness may have played a bridging role between the mutakallimūn's discussions and those of Avicenna. Nevertheless, Avicenna's appeals to thingness occur most densely in passages devoted to analyzing the relationship between efficient and final causes, an entirely Aristotelian topic. A philological question arises: should these passages be emended to read (...) causality in place of thingness? I argue that the balance of evidence compels us to retain thingness. For Avicenna, thingness is the respect in which the final cause is prior to the efficient cause ; existence, by contrast, is the respect in which the efficient cause is prior to the final cause. In fact, over the course of Avicenna's career a progression from the kalām problematic of šay' v. maw[gcaron]ūd to his own problematic of māhiyya v. wu[gcaron]ūd can be detected in his discussions of efficient and final causation. (shrink)

The “lost” Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī treatises recently discovered in the Tehran codex Marwī 19 include a record of a philosophical debate instigated by the Ḥamdānid prince Sayf-al-Dawla. More precisely, Marwī 19 contains Yaḥyā’s adjudication of a dispute between an unnamed Opponent and Yaḥyā’s younger relative Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAdī (who also served as al-Fārābī’s assistant), along with Ibrāhīm's response to Yaḥyā’s adjudication, and Yaḥyā’s final word. At issue was a problem of Aristotelian exegesis: should “body” be understood as falling under the (...) category of substance or under the category of quantity? The unnamed Opponent argues that body is a species of substance; Ibrāhīm argues that technically speaking, body is a species of quantity, and hence an accident; and Yaḥyā judges that body is a species of substance, though for very different reasons than the Opponent gives. For the first time, the Arabic text of this exchange is edited and translated into English. Also provided is an Introduction that sets the debate in historical context, and discusses in particular the possible influence of John Philoponus. The debate is interesting and important not only because of the philosophical ramifications of the issues under discussion, but because it constitutes evidence of dialectical practice among Arabic-speaking philosophers from the middle of the 10th century. (shrink)

This piece offers an edition, translation, and analysis of a newly discovered text by Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī, a leading Aristotelian of the Baghdad school in the tenth century. It briefly discusses what Aristotle meant, at the end of the Physics, by saying that the Prime Mover is “in” the outermost heaven. Ibn ʿAdī argues, in part through an exhaustive discussion of the senses of the word “in,” that God is in the sphere only in the sense that an object of (...) intellection is in an intellect. This solution is discussed against the background of ancient commentaries on the same passage. (shrink)

Most scholars of Islamic intellectual history now agree on the distortedness of the traditional Western portrayal of al-Ġazālī as the defender of Muslim orthodoxy whose Incoherence of the Philosophers was such a powerful critique that it caused the annihilation of philosophical activity in Islamic civilization. Some in fact are coming to the conclusion that al-Ġazālī's importance in the history of Islamic philosophy and theology derives as much from his assiduous incorporation of basic metaphysical ideas into central doctrines of Sunnī kalām (...) , as from his far more celebrated bashing of the falāsifa . What is less well known is that al-Ġazālī's role in the ‘‘philosophizing” of Sunnī theology was not a lonely struggle by a single genius, but part of a broader trend that seems to have begun during Avicenna’s lifetime and that picked up speed in the first and second generations after Avicenna's death in 1037, with the work of al-Ġazālī's teacher, the Aš‘arite al-Gˇuwaynī , as well as of the Māturīdite al-Bazdawī , work that was carried forward by dozens of subsequent members of those two major Sunnī theological schools. It is clear, in fact, that the dividing line between the Sunnī theologians commonly referred to in the later Islamic tradition as mutaqaddimūn , and those referred to as muta’a&hbrevu;h&hbrevu;irūn , lies not with al-Ġazālī but with Avicenna himself, and that the turn in Sunnī kalām was therefore Avicennian, not Ġazālian. (shrink)

The philosopher and physician Abû 'Alî al-Husayn ibn 'Abdallâh ibn Sînâ, known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna, was one of the most influential thinkers of the Islamic and European Middle Ages. Yet for a great number of scholars today Avicenna's thought remains inaccessible. Because he wrote almost all his works in Arabic, Avicenna seems remote to historians of medieval European philosophy who are able to read only the Latin translations of those works. And because he expresses his (...) subtle and complex ideas in the technical terminology of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, Avicenna seems remote to Islamicists who have little or no background in the history of ancient and late-antique philosophy. By addressing some of the most fundamental issues in Avicenna's psychology, epistemology, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, the contributors to this book hope to make Avicenna's thought more accessible to Latinists and Islamicists alike. After a brief preface, there are sections on Avicenna's theories of intuition and abstraction, and on his ideas about bodies and matter. Also catalogued in this volume for the first time is a large hoard of photostats of Avicenna manuscripts recently uncovered at the American Research Center in Egypt. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis, translation, and edition of a brief, recently uncovered Arabic text by the tenth-century CE Christian Aristotelian thinker Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī. Ibn ʿAdī here takes issue with an argument for the existence of God, widely used in kalām. According to this argument, bodies cannot exist without being either in motion or at rest; motion and rest must begin; therefore all bodies and hence the universe as a whole must have begun. Ibn ʿAdī diagnoses various flaws in (...) this reasoning, including a supposed part–whole fallacy. The analysis of the text shows how it fits into Ibn ʿAdī’s intellectual profile and the project of the Baghdad Aristotelian school. (shrink)

Avicenna's theory of final causality stands out as one of the most profound and original achievements of Islamic philosophy. Writing mainly in Arabic in various cities of Persia from the end of the 4th/10th to the beginning of the 5th/11th centuries AH/AD, Avicenna extended the range of Aristotelian teleology to encompass not only motion but also existence; he did so by dividing the final cause into an extrinsic, kinetic end , and an intrinsic, static perfection . ;My dissertation is organized (...) to test Avicenna's hypothesis that the final cause thus extended was applicable to every subject of every science. I begin by examining how the final cause behaves in the relations between logical entities--terms, premises, definitions, quiddities--and then argue that Avicenna saw the final cause as a bridge between that world of logical entities and the sensible world, whose own relations logic is supposed to systematize. I go on to explain how Avicenna used the twin aspects of Aristotle's notion of nature--one an extrinsic agent keeping the world of natural things in order, the other an intrinsic form serving as the natural thing's source of motion--as a basis for his division of final causes into ends and perfections; I also examine how this division helped Avicenna attempt a reconciliation of chance and natural necessity. I then assess how Avicenna's medical experience--specifically his close observation of the complex teleological processes that cause an organism to exist and function--provided empirical support for his distinction between ends and perfections. Finally I argue that Avicenna viewed the relation between final and efficient causes as one of reciprocal necessitation, based on the premise that each was both cause and effect of the other; here Aristotle's notions of limit and actuality provide some of the metaphysical background to Avicenna's teleology. ;Previous studies of Avicenna's theory of causality have focused almost entirely on the efficient cause; my intention here is to prove that an understanding of Avicenna's teleology should be a prerequisite to any future such study. (shrink)