Avicenna

-- jildi 13. Qonuni tib, kitobi duvvum, qismi 1-2. Andar shinokhtani doruḣoi soda.

There are a number of people in Islamic communities, including ours, who have a superficial judgment of current philosophical discussions in the world of Islam and consider them as having been originated from Greek philosophy. One of these discussions is related to the issue of emanation or effusion with which Farabi and Ibn Sina agreed. Unfortunately, in spite of all the innovations brought about by these two philosophers concerning the above issue, a great number of teachers of philosophy agree with (...) a Greek origin for the theory of emanation rather than an Islamic one.In this article, the writer firstly deals with the criticisms directed toward the Ibn Sinan theory of emanation, which the llluminationist school of philosophy considers as being justified from the two perspectives of religion and intellect. Secondly, he explores Suhrawardi's theory of emanation and the plan he presents for the spiritual world on the basis of this theory.The innovations of Ibn-Sina were not satisfactory and justified in Suhrawardi's eyes since he believed that the Ibn-Sinan model of emanation could not provide a comprehensive explanation for the world. He also emphasized that Ibn Sina's theory of emanation, in spite of its novelty, led to the spiritual world which possesses ten intellects, each having three intellectual modes. From the view point of Suhrawardi and his followers, the intellectual model designed by Ibn Sina for the spiritual world was not capable of justifying the revealed knowledge. Ibn Sina conjoined his model of the world of intellects in philosophy with the spiritual world in religion and the sacred law through conjoining the "intellect" with the "angel". Nevertheless, the llluminationists hold that there is no conformity or agreement between the picture of the world of invisible as presented by religion and the one presented by the simple Ibn-Sinan model which rightly suits his theory of emanation.Lastly, the writer expounds the llluminationists' theory of emanation, which is discussed at different levels as follows:1. The vertical emanation of lights2. Contemplation, bliss, and illumination3. The combination of accidental lights with directions4. The spiritual participations and new originations5. Suhrawardi's innovations concerning the theory of emanation. (shrink)

This article introduces one of Ibn-Sina's unpublished and handwritten manuscripts called "al-majalis al-saba'h". This treatise consists of fourty one questions and answers between Abulhasan Amiri and Ibn-Sina. The writer has extensively explored the content validity of this work and presented a rather comprehensive analysis of it.

The Present paper, in addition to discussing the indebtedness of Scholastic philosophy to Islamic thought in the 12th and 13th centuries, provides a short account of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd's metaphysics along with their influence over the medieval philosophy. When discussing Ibn Sina, the author explicitly emphasizes his originality of thoughts with reference to his philosophical sources, such as Aristotle, neo-Platonists, Kindi, and Farabi. The author believes that this originality lies in Ibn Sina's discussions of existence, the relation of (...) existence to reality and necessity, the distinction between existence and quiddity and its importance for the issue of creation in Scholasticism, as well as in posing Ibn Sina's argument for the demonstration of the Creator and explaining its difference from Arsitotle's argument of motion.Later, through referring to the issue of the soul and its argument of disengagement in the suspended man, and, finally, by resorting to the Avicennan-Augustinian school concerning the issue of knowledge, the writer discusses Ibn Rushd's ideas and his influence in the 13th and 14th centuries and even in the Renaissance period. He restates Ibn Rushd's view of the mission of religion and philosophy and their common ultimate end, poses the issue of the laymen, theologians, and philosophers and their various levels of perception in Ibn Rushd's eyes, and, finally, refers to his influence on his Latin followers, as well as to his opponents such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Some people consider Ibn-Sina a Peripatetic philosopher and merely a comentator of Aristotle's works.However even a facile study of the works of this eminent philosopher reveals that this is absolutely wrong.In fact, the differences between Ibn-Sina's theories and those of Aristotle are so great in number that we cannot even enumerate them in this paper.Nevertheless, it seems that towards the end of his short life, Ibn-Sina intended to found a new philosophical system, called "Oriental Wisdom", but he couldn't achieve this (...) purpose due to his untimely death. Today the only available part of the book of "Oriental Wisdom" is the chapter on oriental logic.Therefore, the purpose of the wirter in this paper is to explore those issues which play a central role in Ibn-Sina's oriental thought and stand in opposition to the views of the Peripatetic philosophers, particularly Aristotle. Such issues include:1. Ibn-Sina and Aristotle's disagreement concerming the relationship between the soul and the body.2. Ibn-Sina and Aristotle's disagreement concerning the active intellect.3. The conjectural intellect and the sacred intellect, which are among Ibn-Sina's innovations.4. Ibn-Sina's gnostic disposition which is based on emananation and illumination from the outside and is in contradiction Aristotle's intellectual and senseless paganism. (shrink)

Peripatetics use the terms "necessary existent" and "first principle" to define God on the basis of dividing existents into necessary and possible. They also state that the chain of the possible existents leads up to a non-caused cause. According to Peripatetics, there is no way to learn about the nature of God and the most which can be done is to perceive God via terms such as "necessary existent" and "first principle".Still, they emphasize, that this very perception cannot and should (...) not make us think of a quiddity in this connection for all quiddities need a cause.Avicenna says that existence in God cannot be the same as existence in other beings for the latter is much less in intensity; God's necessity of existence, he maintains, is the same as its intensity and that forms the reality of the Almighty's nature.On the use of demonstrations to prove God's existence, Avicenna believes that demonstrations as such are either a priori or a posteriori; since God has no cause, the a priori demon stration which begins with a cause to find an effect does not work here.As for the a posteriori demonstrations, he can be credited with one that expounds on essence to prove the existence of God.Based on Avicenna's demonstration, an existent if necessary is self subsistent and if possible ends up in the necessary existent, and any other option leads to a vicious circle which is out of the question. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

Shahāb ad-Dīn" Yahya ibn Habash ibn Amirak as-Suhrawardī, (also Shaikh al-Ishraq, Shaikh al-Maqtul) was founder of the illuminationist school (Ar. Hikmat al-ishraq; Pers. falsafaye ešrāqi ). Derived from “illumination,” a conventional translation of the Arabic term ishraq (lit. radiance, shining of the rising sun), “illuminationism” refers to the doctrine of the Ishraqiyyun, a school of philosophical and mystical thought of various Graeco-Oriental roots whose principles were propounded as an ancient “science of lights” (‘ilm al-anwar) . He chose this title to (...) distinguish his philosophical theory from mashshaī's philosophy; and he is one of the first philosophers to elaborate on an old tradition. His approach Adopted from Zoroastrian and Platonic ideas. In fact, he associates his science of lights principally with the names of Plato, Hermes, Empedokles, Pythagoras, and the ‘Oriental principle concerning light and darkness’ of the sages of ancient Iran. (shrink)

Although scholars acknowledged that Avicenna’s science of the soul stands at the crossroads between natural philosophy and metaphysics, thus combining an overall physical investigation of all sublunary souls with a trans-physical (or proto-metaphysical) inquiry into the human rational soul, this paper aims to show a further disciplinary entanglement within Avicenna’s science of the soul, which features in the aforementioned physical investigation and helps to frame it, that is, the interaction between natural philosophy and medicine. Despite the strict division between these (...) two disciplines in Avicenna’s system of science, medicine seems to decisively contribute to accounting for the bodily functions of living beings. For this reason, Avicenna refers to medicine several times in his exposition on the soul. This paper approaches the disciplinary entanglement between natural philosophy and medicine in psychology by focusing on the medical concept of pneuma (rūḥ), which prominently features in the exposition of three main issues in psychology, i.e., body ensoulment, powers differentiation, and emotions. (shrink)

Avicenna says that intellectual cognition involves the emanation of an intelligible form by the ‘agent intellect’ upon the human mind. This paper argues that in order to understand why he says this, we need to think of intellectual cognition as a special case of a much more general phenomenon. More specifically, Avicenna's introduction of an agent intellect will be shown to be a natural consequence of certain assumptions about the temporality, the completion, and the teleology of the causal processes by (...) which things acquire forms. (shrink)

This article presents a comparative analysis of the views on plants in Ps. Aristotle namely Nicolaos of Damascus and Avicenna, examining the distinct philosophical frameworks each thinker employs to understand the nature of plants. The representative work of the Aristotelian tradition, De Plantis, offers a naturalistic perspective, focusing on biological processes such as growth, nourishment, and reproduction. (T)his approach is empirical, categorizing plants as distinct from animals but still subject to similar material causes within the natural order. The Aristotelian framework, (...) emphasizing observable processes, laid the foundation for subsequent studies in plant biology. In contrast, Avicenna builds upon Aristotelian ideas, introducing a metaphysical dimension. In his Kitab al-Nabat, Avicenna posits the existence of the “vegetative soul” as a guiding principle that governs plant growth, while also reflecting divine intelligence and cosmic order. Avicenna’s metaphysical and theological insights distinguish his approach from Aristotelian naturalism, positioning plants as both biological entities and manifestations of divine wisdom. This article highlights how the intellectual development of botany and the history of philosophy has been shaped by the synthesis of Aristotelian empirical naturalism and Avicenna’s metaphysical synthesis. The comparison reveals the continued relevance of these two perspectives in contemporary debates in the philosophy of biology, particularly in reconciling material causality with higher principles of existence. (shrink)

Biology, or life science, has particularly marked the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a discipline. Due to its focus on the study of living entities, it distinguishes itself from other natural sciences in terms of subject matter, methods, and scope. The importance of biology is likely to continue growing in the coming years and centuries, leading to an increased interest in the history and philosophy of biology. Consequently, there is a need to illuminate methods that shed light on the history (...) and philosophy of biology. Drawing inspiration from Aristotle’s perspective on knowledge, this study proposes three distinct viewpoints in the history of biology. These perspectives are named the Nonteleological- Contingent View, Nominalistic-Terminologistic View, and Contentual-Contextual View. Accordingly, the roots of biology can be traced back to Aristotle. It is argued that biology can be considered a science initiated by Aristotle, and the extent of Aristotle’s contributions to the field of biology is indicated with references to the page count of his works in this domain. Furthermore, attention is drawn to the intellectual continuity between Aristotle and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), emphasizing Ibn Sina’s role as a scholar who produced original works through updates and syntheses. (shrink)

The first part of the essay examines the different premises, of Aristotelian and Galenic origin, for the idea of an inherent consumption of the natural heat of every living body, discussing the contributions of Isaac Israeli, Avicenna and Averroes to the reflection on the relationship between the secondary humours (or moistures) and the peculiar category of fevers called ‘hectic’. The second part of the article discusses how the link between moisture, heat and food was taken up and elaborated by Latin (...) Scholastic masters (in particular Thomas Aquinas), and considers the use of the notion of ‘radical moisture’ in the field of theology. Aquinas does not follow the previous theological tradition, originating with Peter Lombard, which denies the possibility that the matter assimilated through food is part of the bodily core that belongs to every human being from birth. The moisture provided by food is, in fact, inseparable from the (radical) moisture that originally belongs to each individual; as such, it is part of the ‘truth of human nature’ (veritas humanae naturae) that will be restored at the moment of the resurrection of the body. (shrink)

Avicenna was a physician and philosopher in an era known as the Islamic Golden Age. His early medical encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine, was a groundbreaking text that scholars and healers read for centuries afterward.

Qualifiers such as “insofar as” and “in itself” have always been important ingredients in key philosophical claims. Descartes, for instance, famously argues that insofar as he is a thinker, he is not made of matter, and Kant equally famously argues that we cannot know things in themselves. Neither of these claims is meant to be true without qualification. Descartes is not simply denying that humans consist of matter, and Kant is not simply denying that we know things. Therefore, we cannot (...) even begin to understand such claims without knowing how qualifiers work. Unlike the logic of quantification, however, the logic of qualification is rather underexplored. In this paper, I examine several instances of philosophical uses of qualifiers, taken from Aristotle, Avicenna, Descartes, Kant, and 20th c. action theory. In the light of these examples, I discuss several accounts of how such qualifiers work. (shrink)

In Latin Europe, the controversy over spontaneous generation of perfect animals – namely those whose breeding occurs through sexual reproduction – is received in different ways, varying from positions very close to Avicenna’s, as in the case of Pietro Pomponazzi, to interpretations that rather refer to Averroes’ perspective. To this ‘Averroist front’ undoubtedly belongs the figure of Urbano da Bologna, author of the Expositio commenti Averrois in VIII libros Physicorum – a work that can be defined a supercommentary to Averroes’ (...) Physica – composed in Bologna around 1334. The present study aims to provide the complete transcription of a quaestio that is present in the work – but which was disputed according to its author also in public – as an example of the elaboration of the theme of spontaneous generation in the early 14th century. The text deals with many aspects of the problem, especially elaborating on the correspondence between each specific form and its appropriate matter, in the light of the lively debates of the time, and reveals a mature understanding of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and its Averroist interpretation. (shrink)

A main function of common natures in Avicenna’s metaphysics is supposed to be providing an objective ground for the categories. Thus, it is commonly assumed that in his metaphysics things are objectively divided into the categories into which they are because members of each category share the same common nature. However, common natures cannot perform the function unless they are shared, in a real sense of the word, by the members of the respective categories, and it is not clear at (...) all in what real sense Avicenna took common natures to be shared by them. On the one hand, he rejected Platonic and Aristotelian realisms about common natures, the two standard accounts of how common natures are shared by their instances. On the other hand, it is unclear that his alternative account(s) of common natures renders them genuinely common. The primary goal of this paper is to examine whether Avicenna’s common natures can provide an objective ground for the categories. It considers various interpretations of Avicenna's account and argues that they are either incorrect interpretations of Avicenna or do not render common natures genuinely common. It concludes with proposing to look elsewhere in Avicenna’s system to find the objective ground. (shrink)

In Science of the Soul in Ibn Sina's Pointers and Reminders, Michael A. Rapoport provides a philological and interpretive guide for critically reading and interpreting Ibn Sina's (Avicenna, d. 1037) most challenging and influential text. Rapoport argues that chapters VII-X of the Pointers present scientific explanations for phenomena related to the human soul - from intellection to divination, magic, and marvels - within the framework of Ibn Sina's Metaphysics of the Rational Soul. This book dispels widespread notions that the Pointers (...) represents Ibn Sina's mystical or Sufi philosophy and therefore stands apart from the rest of his corpus. (shrink)

The book investigates how Avicenna's doctrine of efficient causality relates to his general ontology, as well as how the two are interpreted, defended, and challenged in the early phase of Avicenna's Islamic reception (the eleventh and twelfth centuries).

Western contemporary logic has been used to advance the field of Islamic philosophical theology, which historically utilised Aristotelian-Avicennian logic, on grounds of there being an inherent normativity in logic. This is in spite of the surrounding controversy on the status of logic in the Islamic theological tradition. The normative authority of logic means that it influences the content of what we ought to believe and how we ought to revise those beliefs. This paper seeks to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incompatible (...) differences between the two systems, the underlying feature of both Western contemporary logic and Aristotelian- Avicennian logic is logical normativity. It then argues that an inherent normativity of logic in the Islamic theological/philosophical tradition is unmotivated. Instead, it proposes to reinstate logic as anti-exceptional within the Islamic theological/philosophical tradition as a viable alternative. (shrink)

Ce traité de philosophie arabo-musulmane se propose d'extirper dans la philosophie d'Ibn Sina (Avicenne) toute substance de pensée qui fonde le retour prochain de l'âme vers son créateur. Ibn Sina est un pivot essentiel de la philosophie arabo-musulmane dont le jeu fécond de la raison dans le cours de l'histoire de la foi a permis de mieux faire saisir le divin. Par voie, j'entends l'acte de présence au moyen duquel le pèlerin aurait la possibilité de grandir et d'amplifier son être (...) pour accéder au monde imaginal. Cette voie du retour qui s'éclaire sous la phénoménologie entendue comme dévoilement est, en réalité, le chemin princier qui ramène l'âme à la source de son jaillissement. Et, tel est l'un des aspects les plus marquants de l'indéniable originalité d'Ibn Sina. Son adhésion au Coran est donc une adhésion rationnelle. Ibn Sina est d'abord philosophe avant d'être religieux. Alors, il reste un aristotélicien et un néoplatonicien qui se sert de l'Islam comme credo religieux. C'est pourquoi il est souvent dit que son système se construit sur deux axes: le monothéisme de l'Islam et la pensée grecque. (shrink)

In his magnum opus, The Healing, Avicenna took four Aristotelian arguments and used them to prove a very un-Aristotelian conclusion: that the cosmos is both created and eternal. This book explains how Avicenna used his distinctive understanding of possibility and necessity to do so.

I argue that a tripartite analysis of simple statements such as “Bucephalus is a horse”, according to which they divide into two terms and a copula, requires the notion of a repeatable: something such that more than one particular can literally be it. I pose a familiar dilemma with respect to repeatables, and turn to Avicenna for a solution, who discusses a similar dilemma concerning quiddities. I conclude by describing how Avicenna’s quiddities relate to repeatables, and how both quiddities and (...) repeatables may contribute to a tripartite analysis of predication. (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiens qu'Avicenne admet au moins un cas où il est possible pour notre intellect de saisir un individu particulier en soi : chaque intellect humain peut s'appréhender comme étant numériquement lui-même sans avoir recours à une notion ou un concept général. Car l’être humain préserve son identité lorsqu'il est séparé de son corps. Nous discutons des textes où Avicenne semble affirmer et nier qu'un être humain peut s'appréhender lui-même. Nous concluons que, contrairement à la conscience de soi qu'invoque Avicenne (...) dans l'expérience de pensée de « l'homme volant», l'auto-intellection humaine est une réalisation rare et nous expliquons ce qui la distingue de l'auto-intellection plus complète de l'intellect divin. (shrink)

Jules Janssens a construit une œuvre importante, qui, pour de nombreux chercheurs, a ouvert des perspectives de recherches nouvelles et fécondes. Ses travaux ont fait date. Ils portent principalement sur la philosophie d'Avicenne, ses sources, ses rapports avec la pensée musulmane, son influence sur la théologie ash'arite (al-Ghazālī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī) et sa réception dans le monde latin. Pour lui rendre hommage, quatorze collègues et amis de renommée internationale se sont réunis pour poursuivre ses réflexions sur ces thèmes. L'ouvrage qui (...) en est issu offre un état des lieux de la recherche contemporaine sur Avicenne et sa postérité arabo-latine. (shrink)

Art among Iranian and Islamic philosophers has always been associated with moral, so that many philosophers have considered art to be synonymous with virtue. By examining Farabi's opinions, it is possible to extract his special ideas about art and artist. In Farabi's theory of Virtuous Art, the artist is on the second floor of utopia and carries religious truths and reasonable happiness. Also, the theory of Virtuous Art has all the aesthetic features and artistic creativity, and in fact, all artistic (...) values are the presupposition of being an art of Virtuous Art. By reflecting on Suhrawardi’s numerous works and intellectual foundations, we can also see that he also paid special attention to the virtuous art and the supreme aspects of art; although he did not directly theorize about the basics of art, but by examining his theories, we can infer the basics of Ishraghi's Virtuous Art. Moreover, Suhrawardi has written some of his works in allegorical and artistic language, and this is a manifestation of Suhrawardi’s Illuminating Art. Among contemporary thinkers, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Titus Burckhardt have presented an approach with the title of Sacred Art, considering the sacred foundations of art and Traditionalism. (shrink)

Why would God create a world at all? Further, why would God create a world like this one? The Neoplatonic framework of classical philosophical theology answers that God’s willing is an affirmation of God’s own goodness, and God creates to show forth God’s glory. Mark Johnston has recently argued that, in addition to explaining why God would create at all, this framework gives extremely wide scope to divine freedom. Timothy O’Connor objects that divine freedom, on this view, cannot be so (...) wide as Johnston supposes: the creation of a fundamentally unjust world, for instance, could not be a way of affirming the divine goodness. I argue that O’Connor does not go far enough. While the Neoplatonic framework helps to explain why God would create at all, it does nothing to secure God’s freedom to create less than the best. (shrink)

A pesar de los reparos de algunos especialistas, Avicena es un punto de referencia insoslayable en la historia de la intencionalidad. Este trabajo se propone determinar la manera en que el intelecto toma posición con respecto a la realidad de los objetos con los que se relaciona. Abordamos la relación intencional centrando nuestra atención en el nexo entre lógica y ontología y enfatizando el papel que juegan la conceptualización y la estimación en la determinación de lo que es real y (...) existente efectivamente. La exploración de la estructura intencional nos lleva a identificar la relevancia de la doctrina de las esencias como presupuesto fundamental para la conceptualización y la verdad. La importancia de la teoría de la intencionalidad de Avicena radica en la descripción tanto de la referencia al objeto de conocimiento, como un proceso que avanza de lo conocido a lo desconocido, cuyas diversas fases conforman el itinerario de las esencias. Desde este punto de vista, la realidad y la existencia son accidentes que le acaecen a las esencias. Las capacidades del alma que hacen posible la referencia intencional son la estimativa, la conceptualización y el asentimiento. Asimismo, identificamos algunos puntos de convergencia entre las doctrinas de las esencias de Avicena y de Husserl. (shrink)

There is a remarkable coincidence in Augustine and Avicenna’s investigations into the nature of time. Despite the fact that Avicenna wrote in Arabic and Persian, was born in Central Asia more than five hundred years after the death of Augustine, and had no access to Augustine’s philosophical works, both consider a strikingly similar objection to the ontological dependence of time on the motion of the heavens.

Avicenna on the Ontology of Pure Quiddity. By Janos Damien.

Even well after his lifetime, Ibn Sina was renowned, not just in medicine or philosophy, but in other areas, especially in the Islamic world. In brief, he was an authority in the Islamic East, or an “auctoritas”. However, in the west, his work was massively influential in not only the medical education curricula, but also in the important, innovative doctrines in philosophy. The most fundamental sections of his major encyclopedia, al-Shifâ being translated into Latin as early as the 12th and (...) 13th centuries and spreading throughout universities dispersed this impact rapidly. Known as "the prince of physicians", Ibn Sina is the writer of the Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fi 'al-Tibb), which became a medical standard in the Christian west as well as the Islamic world. (shrink)

Even well after his lifetime, Ibn Sina was renowned, not just in medicine or philosophy, but in other areas, especially in the Islamic world. In brief, he was an authority in the Islamic East, or an “auctoritas”. However, in the west, his work was massively influential in not only the medical education curricula, but also in the important, innovative doctrines in philosophy. The most fundamental sections of his major encyclopedia, al-Shifâ being translated into Latin as early as the 12th and (...) 13th centuries and spreading throughout universities dispersed this impact rapidly. Known as "the prince of physicians", Ibn Sina is the writer of the Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fi 'al-Tibb), which became a medical standard in the Christian west as well as the Islamic world. (shrink)

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies (...) this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice. (shrink)

This study is the first part of an attempt to settle a vigorous debate among historians of medieval philosophy by harnessing the resources of analytic philosophy. The debate is about whether Avicenna's epistemology is rationalist or empirical. To settle the debate, I first articulate in this article the three core theses of rationalism and one core thesis of empiricism. Then, I probe Avicenna's epistemology in his major works according to the first core thesis of rationalism (the intuition thesis). In the (...) end, I find Avicenna committed to this thesis in at least one substantive way, namely, in his claim to intuit the intelligible forms or essences. This suffices to count Avicenna as rationalist. In a subsequent article, I shall probe Avicenna's epistemology according to the other two core theses of rationalism, presenting further evidence that he was a rationalist, not an empiricist. (shrink)

This paper aims to deal with the disputes on transferring demonstration between the various sciences in the context of the medicine-geometry relationship. According to Aristotle’s metabasis-prohibition, these two sciences should be located in separate compartments due to the characteristics of their subject-matter. However, a thorough analysis of the critical passage in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics on circular wounds forces a revision of the boundaries of the interactions between sciences, since subsequently Avicenna, on the grounds of this passage, would widen the area (...) of the transference of demonstration. Furthermore, the fact that Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafīs continued to use geometrical demonstrations in their anatomical investigations shows the need to understand kind-crossing prohibition as a reminder to take into account the present scientific infrastructure and logical rules before proceeding onto a scientific investigation instead of accepting it as a mere nominal doctrine. Therefore, whether kind-crossing was possible or not depended on the extent to which the conclusion derived at the end of the scientific investigation, using a different method after taking into account all these reminders, had contributed to the solution of a particular proposition or the achievement of an approximate truth. (shrink)

al-juzʼ al-awwal. Fī al-manṭiq.-- al-juzʼ al-thānī wa-al-thālith. Fī al-ṭabīʻīyāt wa-al-ilāhīyāt.

L'histoire de la pensée occidentale est incompréhensible sans la contribution du philosophe arabo-musulman Ibn Sina, dit Avicenne. Mais on oublie trop souvent que ce penseur majeur fut d'abord un croyant et un théologien. Voici enfin l'étude qui rend justice à la fois à son œuvre et à sa biographie. Si l'apport d'Avicenne à la pensée occidentale est incontesté, on connaît moins le théologien et sa prophétologie.0La doctrine de la prophétie d'Avicenne (980-1037), bien connue, a néanmoins fait l'objet de peu d'études. (...) C'est cette lacune que l'ouvrage de Meryem Sebti se propose de combler. En s'appuyant sur une analyse rigoureuse du système métaphysique d'Avicenne, l'auteure dévoile l'essence du prophète, dont la présence dans le monde sensible manifeste pleinement la continuité ininterrompue qui le relie au monde céleste.0A travers Avicenne, c'est aussi une vision de Dieu qui se dessine : loin d'être une figure abstraite retirée du monde et indifférente à sa souffrance, il est une source d'amour provident qui veille sur le monde sensible en y faisant advenir le prophète, qui est porteur de la Loi. Comme un maillon de la chaîne reliant le monde terrestre et le monde céleste, le prophète sait aussi illuminer les hommes de la lumière de l'intellect.0Gardien de la vérité révélée, il cultive sa prérogative. Il est aussi le fondateur de la cité juste. L'étude pionnière sur Avicenne comme homme de Dieu et sur la doctrine de sa prophétie, dont l'originalité est surtout de montrer une proximité doctrinale entre des courants de pensée habituellement opposés. (shrink)

al-Mujallad al-awwal. Fī al-manṭiq -- al-mujallad al-thānī. Fī al-ṭabīʻīyāt -- al-mujallad al-thālith. Fī al-Ilāhīyāt.

The series is devoted to the study of scientific and philosophical texts from the Classical and the Islamic world handed down in Arabic. Through critical text editions and monographs, it provides access to ancient scientific inquiry as it developed in a continuous tradition from Antiquity to the modern period. All editions are accompanied by translations and philological and explanatory notes.