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Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays
Avicenna is the greatest philosopher of the Islamic world. His immense impact on Christian and Jewish medieval thought, as well as on the subsequent Islamic tradition, is charted in this volume alongside studies which provide a comprehensive introduction to and analysis of his philosophy. Contributions from leading scholars address a wide range of topics including Avicenna's life and works, conception of philosophy and achievement in logic and medicine. His ideas in the main areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, philosophy of religion and physics, are also analyzed. While serving as a general introduction to Avicenna's thought, this collection of critical essays also represents the cutting edge of scholarship on this most influential philosopher of the medieval era.
- GenresPhilosophyIslamEssays
314 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
Peter S. Adamson
30 books124 followersPeter Scott Adamson is an American academic who is professor of philosophy in late antiquity and in the Islamic world at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as professor of ancient and medieval philosophy at Kings College London.
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January 6, 2021
The Arabic philosophers regarded themselves at the inheritors of the legacy of the prophets. They genuinely believed that their superior knowledge of natural sciences, logic, and mathematics enabled them alone to perceive the hidden mysteries of the Quran. They regarded people who were not as erudite as akin to sheep in need of guidance.
Of these philosophers, Avicenna can be regarded as the most original and influential thinker of his generation. Avicenna’s great achievement was to expand upon the ideas of the Kalamiites. One of the many debates of that time was that of divine essence and divine attributes and how to account for them in a manner that did not compromise the centrality of the ideas of divine transcendence and unity.
Avicenna’s philosophy focussed as did many of the thinkers of that time on the soul. He went to great lengths to prove through thought experiments that it is conceptually possible to show that self-awareness is not rooted in the body. Notions that presaged the ideas of Descartes.
Avicenna was motivated more by ontology than epistemology. He sought to derive the Divine attributes from the idea of necessity. Through his famous flying man thought experiment he sought to converge the affirmation of man’s existence and man’s essence. The flying man is able to affirm that there is something as opposed to nothing and ultimately this connects with Avicenna’s reflections on existence derived from necessity and contingency. The flying man argument is not sufficient to prove the immateriality of the soul – but it does provide an insight into the different types of cognition. And the conclusion reached by Avicenna is solid; if you were in the state of the flying man you would continue to experience your own individual self or existence. This shows that self-awareness is an innate primary cognition.
Avicenna faced a conflict in his studies of Aristotle: how can we have a body of knowledge that is universal? One that accounts for the ultimate principles of reality and how can ontology uncover the secrets of God’s divinity. A conflict as it were between ontology and theology. Al-Farabi’s commentary on Aristotle opened up the possibility for him to reconcile the two. The tension however still remained due to his theories of God’s being. To resolve this debate he came up with a term: ‘Necessary existent due to itself’, a First Cause, which culminated in the concept of God.
Avicenna’s idea is very intuitive. He posits there are three kinds of essences; one that are impossible for example round squares, ones that are possible or contingent in themselves for example a radio. The idea being that anything contingent or possible in itself doesn’t deserve to exist anymore than it deserves not to exist. So if it exists or does not exist there has to be an explanation. As such he asks the following question; suppose that all existents were merely contingent? How would you prove they exist? You couldn’t. But if you hypothesise a necessary existent then you consequently ideate something that needs no cause: a First cause. So if you take all contingencies as one set such as the cosmos then you would have to accept a cause for it all: God. Thus eliminating the disarray caused by the concept of infinite regression which would add causes ad infinitum.
It can be argued that Avicenna was overly influenced by Neoplatonism. The Neoplatonists sought to establish the primacy of Greek philosophy over Christian theology and this weakened many of their arguments. Avicenna had to use the tools of his time to crack the mystery of God and some of them he preferred over others to the detriment of his arguments. One such being his use of syllogisms; for all his intellectual prowess, he failed to realise that a first figure syllogism that has a possibility as a proposition in unprovable.
Islamic philosophy can be regarded as having two epochs; post and prior Avicenna. The challenge of God being the necessary existent proved to be a daunting and threatening prospect for later philosophers such as Ghazali and Averroes. Even the genius Ghazali felt compelled to offer a counter argument; asserting that everything about God is necessary as such there is nothing gratuitous in Divine action. Averroes devoted a lot of time and effort in debunking Avicenna’s ideas which he felt were polluted by Neoplatonism. The controversy of his ideas notwithstanding; no other philosopher can be said to have his impact on all three Abrahamic theologies.
Of these philosophers, Avicenna can be regarded as the most original and influential thinker of his generation. Avicenna’s great achievement was to expand upon the ideas of the Kalamiites. One of the many debates of that time was that of divine essence and divine attributes and how to account for them in a manner that did not compromise the centrality of the ideas of divine transcendence and unity.
Avicenna’s philosophy focussed as did many of the thinkers of that time on the soul. He went to great lengths to prove through thought experiments that it is conceptually possible to show that self-awareness is not rooted in the body. Notions that presaged the ideas of Descartes.
Avicenna was motivated more by ontology than epistemology. He sought to derive the Divine attributes from the idea of necessity. Through his famous flying man thought experiment he sought to converge the affirmation of man’s existence and man’s essence. The flying man is able to affirm that there is something as opposed to nothing and ultimately this connects with Avicenna’s reflections on existence derived from necessity and contingency. The flying man argument is not sufficient to prove the immateriality of the soul – but it does provide an insight into the different types of cognition. And the conclusion reached by Avicenna is solid; if you were in the state of the flying man you would continue to experience your own individual self or existence. This shows that self-awareness is an innate primary cognition.
Avicenna faced a conflict in his studies of Aristotle: how can we have a body of knowledge that is universal? One that accounts for the ultimate principles of reality and how can ontology uncover the secrets of God’s divinity. A conflict as it were between ontology and theology. Al-Farabi’s commentary on Aristotle opened up the possibility for him to reconcile the two. The tension however still remained due to his theories of God’s being. To resolve this debate he came up with a term: ‘Necessary existent due to itself’, a First Cause, which culminated in the concept of God.
Avicenna’s idea is very intuitive. He posits there are three kinds of essences; one that are impossible for example round squares, ones that are possible or contingent in themselves for example a radio. The idea being that anything contingent or possible in itself doesn’t deserve to exist anymore than it deserves not to exist. So if it exists or does not exist there has to be an explanation. As such he asks the following question; suppose that all existents were merely contingent? How would you prove they exist? You couldn’t. But if you hypothesise a necessary existent then you consequently ideate something that needs no cause: a First cause. So if you take all contingencies as one set such as the cosmos then you would have to accept a cause for it all: God. Thus eliminating the disarray caused by the concept of infinite regression which would add causes ad infinitum.
It can be argued that Avicenna was overly influenced by Neoplatonism. The Neoplatonists sought to establish the primacy of Greek philosophy over Christian theology and this weakened many of their arguments. Avicenna had to use the tools of his time to crack the mystery of God and some of them he preferred over others to the detriment of his arguments. One such being his use of syllogisms; for all his intellectual prowess, he failed to realise that a first figure syllogism that has a possibility as a proposition in unprovable.
Islamic philosophy can be regarded as having two epochs; post and prior Avicenna. The challenge of God being the necessary existent proved to be a daunting and threatening prospect for later philosophers such as Ghazali and Averroes. Even the genius Ghazali felt compelled to offer a counter argument; asserting that everything about God is necessary as such there is nothing gratuitous in Divine action. Averroes devoted a lot of time and effort in debunking Avicenna’s ideas which he felt were polluted by Neoplatonism. The controversy of his ideas notwithstanding; no other philosopher can be said to have his impact on all three Abrahamic theologies.
June 26, 2021
I routinely return to my favorite ontological hobby horse, the ideas surrounding Idealism, specifically Subjective Idealism, and reading round again landed me on Persian philosopher, scientist, and physician Ibn Sina (aka Avicenna), a philosophical giant of the Middle Ages. The essays in this collection cover many of his core ideas concerning the necessity of being and chains of causation, those big philosophical trends of medievalism, Thomas Aquinas type discussions (a lot of Aquinas’s stuff was borrowed from Ibn Sina). I’m less interested in these thoroughly drubbed and insanely complicated ideas, but I am intrigued by the differences in Ibn Sina’s thoughts concerning the ultimate rational consequences of medieval style idealism - mainly his reaching toward Occasionalism. Landing here seems to me a much more elegant and intellectually honest enterprise, and like George Berkely’s Immaterialism, I find Ibn Sina’s full commitment to the natural consequences of a belief in Idealism to be simultaneously reassuring and overwhelming in its implications. Another sublime idea explored here is the importance of learning as nourishment for the soul. An oversimplification: Ibn Sina posits that the purpose of our earthly lives, which are temporary instruments of our immaterial (yet rational and thinking) souls, is active learning and intellectual growth. The purpose of life is to learn to think better, a challenging charge. Earthly life is school for the soul, what you learn before your death is all you’ll have to work with for eternity. Will you walk the stage with just enough credits, or graduate summa cum laude?
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