Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (c.

9801037)
Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina is better known in Europe by the Latinized name Avicenna.
He is probably the most significant philosopher in the Islamic tradition and arguably the most
influential philosopher of the pre-modern era. Born in Afshana near Bukhara in Central Asia
in about 980, he is best known as a polymath, as a physician whose major work the Canon
(al-Qanun fil-Tibb) continued to be taught as a medical textbook in Europe and in the Islamic
world until the early modern period, and as a philosopher whose major summa the Cure (al-
Shifa) had a decisive impact upon European scholasticism and especially upon Thomas
Aquinas (d. 1274).Primarily a metaphysical philosopher of being who was concerned with
understanding the selfs existence in this world in relation to its contingency, Ibn Sinas
philosophy is an attempt to construct a coherent and comprehensive system that accords with
the religious exigencies of Muslim culture. As such, he may be considered to be the first
major Islamic philosopher. The philosophical space that he articulates for God as the
Necessary Existence lays the foundation for his theories of the soul, intellect and cosmos.
Furthermore, he articulated a development in the philosophical enterprise in classical Islam
away from the apologetic concerns for establishing the relationship between religion and
philosophy towards an attempt to make philosophical sense of key religious doctrines and
even analyse and interpret the Quran. Recent studies have attempted to locate him within the
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. His relationship with the latter is ambivalent:
although accepting some keys aspects such as an emanationist cosmology, he rejected
Neoplatonic epistemology and the theory of the pre-existent soul. However, his metaphysics
owes much to the Amonnian synthesis of the later commentators on Aristotle and
discussions in legal theory and kalam on meaning, signification and being. Apart from
philosophy, Avicennas other contributions lie in the fields of medicine, the natural sciences,
musical theory, and mathematics. In the Islamic sciences (ulum), he wrote a series of short
commentaries on selected Quranic verses and chapters that reveal a trained philosophers
hermeneutical method and attempt to come to terms with revelation. He also wrote some
literary allegories about whose philosophical value recent scholarship is vehemently at odds.
His influence in medieval Europe spread through the translations of his works first undertaken
in Spain. In the Islamic world, his impact was immediate and led to what Michot has called
la pandmie avicennienne. When al-Ghazali led the theological attack upon the heresies of
the philosophers, he singled out Avicenna, and a generation later when the Shahrastani gave
an account of the doctrines of the philosophers of Islam, he relied upon the work of Avicenna,
whose metaphysics he later attempted to refute in his Struggling against the Philosophers
(Musariat al-falasifa). Avicennan metaphysics became the foundation for discussions of
Islamic philosophy and philosophical theology. In the early modern period in Iran, his
metaphysical positions began to be displayed by a creative modification that they underwent
due to the thinkers of the school of Isfahan, in particular Mulla Sadra (d. 1641).
Table of Contents
1. Life and Times
2. Works
3. Avicenna Latinus
4. Logic
5. Ontology
6. Epistemology
7. Psychology
8. Mysticism and Oriental Philosophy
9. The Avicennan Tradition and His Legacy
10. References and Further Reading
1. The Latin Avicenna (mainly sections of al-Shifa)
2. Studies in Avicenna Latinus
3. Selected Works of Avicenna Available in European Language Translation
4. General Introductions to Avicenna and His Thought
5. Collections and Bibliographies
6. Interpretations
7. Avicennas Oriental Philosophy
8. Metaphysics
9. On Pyschology
10. Existence-Essence

1. Life and Times
Sources on his life range from his autobiography, written at the behest of his disciple Abd al-
Wahid Juzjani, his private correspondence, including the collection of philosophical epistles
exchanged with his disciples and known as al-Mubahathat (The Discussions), to legends and
doxographical views embedded in the histories of philosophy of medieval Islam such as Ibn
al-Qiftis Tarikh al-hukama (History of the Philosophers) and Zahir al-Din Bayhaqis
Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma. However, much of this material ought to be carefully examined
and critically evaluated. Gutas has argued that the autobiography is a literary device to
represent Avicenna as a philosopher who acquired knowledge of all the philosophical
sciences through study and intuition (al-hads), a cornerstone of his epistemological theory.
Thus the autobiography is an attempt to demonstrate that humans can achieve the highest
knowledge through intuition. The text is a key to understanding Avicennas view of
philosophy: we are told that he only understood the purpose of Aristotles Metaphysics after
reading al-Farabis short treatise on it, and that often when he failed to understand a problem
or solve the syllogism, he would resort to prayer in the mosque (and drinking wine at times)
to receive the inspiration to understand the doctrine of intuition. We will return to his
epistemology later but first what can we say about his life?
Avicenna was born in around 980 in Afshana, a village near Bukhara in Transoxiana. His
father, who may have been Ismaili, was a local Samanid governor. At an early age, his family
moved to Bukhara where he studied Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh) with Ismail Zahid (d. 1012)
and medicine with a number of teachers. This training and the excellent library of the
physicians at the Samanid court assisted Avicenna in his philosophical self-education. Thus,
he claimed to have mastered all the sciences by the age of 18 and entered into the service of
the Samanid court of Nuh ibn Mansur (r. 976-997) as a physician. After the death of his
father, it seems that he was also given an administrative post. Around the turn of the
millennium, he moved to Gurganj in Khwarazm, partly no doubt to the eclipse of Samanid
rule after the Qarakhanids took Bukhara in 999. He then left again through necessity in 1012
for Jurjan in Khurasan to the south in search no doubt for a patron. There he first met his
disciple and scribe Juzjani. After a year, he entered Buyid service as a physician, first with
Majd al-Dawla in Rayy and then in 1015 in Hamadan where he became vizier of Shams al-
Dawla. After the death of the later in 1021, he once again sought a patron and became the
vizier of the Kakuyid Ala al-Dawla for whom he wrote an important Persian summa of
philosophy, the Danishnama-yi Alai (The Book of Knowledge for Ala al-Dawla). Based in
Isfahan, he was widely recognized as a philosopher and physician and often accompanied his
patron on campaign. It was during one of these to Hamadan in 1037 that he died of colic. An
arrogant thinker who did not suffer fools, he was fond of his slave-girls and wine, facts which
were ammunition for his later detractors.
2. Works
Avicenna wrote his two earliest works in Bukhara under the influence of al-Farabi. The first, a
Compendium on the Soul (Maqala fil-nafs), is a short treatise dedicated to the Samanid ruler
that establishes the incorporeality of the rational soul or intellect without resorting to
Neoplatonic insistence upon its pre-existence. The second is his first major work on
metaphysics, Philosophy for the Prosodist (al-Hikma al-Arudiya) penned for a local scholar
and his first systematic attempt at Aristotelian philosophy.
He later wrote three encyclopaediasencyclopedias of philosophy. The first of these is al-
Shifa (The Cure), a work modelled on the corpus of the philosopher, namely. Aristotle, that
covers the natural sciences, logic, mathematics, metaphysics and theology. It was this work
that through its Latin translation had a considerable impact on scholasticism. It was solicited
by Juzjani and his other students in Hamadan in 1016 and although he lost parts of it on a
military campaign, he completed it in Isfahan by 1027. The other two encyclopaedias were
written later for his patron the Buyid prince Ala al-Dawla in Isfahan. The first, in Persian
rather than Arabic is entitled Danishnama-yi Alai (The Book of Knowledge for Ala al-
Dawla) and is an introductory text designed for the layman. It closely follows his own Arabic
epitome of The Cure, namely al-Najat (The Salvation). The Book of Knowledge was the basis
of al-Ghazalis later Arabic work Maqasid al-falasifa (Goals of the Philosophers). The
second, whose dating and interpretation have inspired debates for centuries, is al-Isharat
wal-Tanbihat (Pointers and Reminders), a work that does not present completed proofs for
arguments and reflects his mature thinking on a variety of logical and metaphysical issues.
According to Gutas it was written in Isfahan in the early 1030s; according to Michot, it dates
from an earlier period in Hamadan and possibly Rayy. A further work entitled al-Insaf (The
Judgement) which purports to represent a philosophical position that is radical and transcends
AristotelianisingAristotles Neoplatonism is unfortunately not extant, and debates about its
contents are rather like the arguments that one encounters concerning Platos esoteric or
unwritten doctrines. One further work that has inspired much debate is The Easterners (al-
Mashriqiyun) or The Eastern Philosophy (al-Hikma al-Mashriqiya) which he wrote at the end
of the 1020s and is mostly lost.
3. Avicenna Latinus
Avicennas major work, The Cure, was translated into Latin in 12th and 13th century Spain
(Toledo and Burgos) and, although it was controversial, it had an important impact and raised
controversies inin medieval scholastic philosophy. In certain cases the Latin manuscripts of
the text predate the extant Arabic ones and ought to be considered more authoritative. The
main significance of the Latin corpus lies in the interpretation for Avicennism
andAvicennism, in particular forregarding his doctrines on the nature of the soul and his
famous existence-essence distinction (more about that below) andbelow), along with the
debates and censure that they raised in scholastic Europe, in particular in ParisEurope. This
was particularly the case in Paris, where Avicennism waslater proscribed in 1210. However,
the influence of his psychology and theory of knowledge upon William of Auvergne and
Albertus Magnus have been noted. More significant is the impact of his metaphysics upon the
work and thought of Thomas Aquinas. His other major work to be translated into Latin was
his medical treatise the Canon, which remained a text-book into the early modern period and
was studied in centrescenters of medical learning such as Padua.
4. Logic
Logic is a critical aspect of, and propaedeutic to, Avicennan philosophy. His logical works
follow the curriculum of late Neoplatonism and comprise nine books, beginning with his
version of Porphyrys Isagoge followed by his understanding and modification of the
Aristotelian Organon, which included the Poetics and the Rhetoric. On the age-old debate
whether logic is an instrument of philosophy (Peripatetic view) or a part of philosophy (Stoic
view), he argues that such a debate is futile and meaningless.
His views on logic represent a significant metaphysical approach, and it could be argued
generally that metaphysical concerns lead Avicennas arguments in a range of philosophical
and non-philosophical subjects. For example, he argues in The Cure that both logic and
metaphysics share a concern with the study of secondary intelligibles (maqulat thaniya),
abstract concepts such as existence and time that are derived from primary concepts such as
humanity and animality. Logic is the standard by which conceptsor the mental existence
that corresponds to things that occur in extra-mental realitycan be judged and hence has
both implications for what exists outside of the mind and how one may articulate those
concepts through language. More importantly, logic is a key instrument and standard for
judging the validity of arguments and hence acquiring knowledge. Salvation depends on the
purity of the soul and in particular the intellect that is trained and perfected through
knowledge. Of particular significance for later debates and refutations is his notion that
knowledge depends on the inquiry of essential definitions (hadd) through syllogistic
reasoning. The problem of course arises when one tries to make sense of an essential
definition in a real, particular world, and when ones attempts to complete the syllogism by
striking on the middle term is foiled because ones intuition fails to grasp the middle term.
5. Ontology
From al-Farabi, Avicenna inherited the Neoplatonic emanationist scheme of existence.
Contrary to the classical Muslim theologians, he rejected creation ex nihilo and argued that
cosmos has no beginning but is a natural logical product of the divine One. The super-
abundant, pure Good that is the One cannot fail to produce an ordered and good cosmos that
does not succeed him in time. The cosmos succeeds God merely in logical order and in
existence.
Consequently, Avicenna is well known as the author of one an important and influential proof
for the existence of God. This proof is a good example of a philosophers intellect being
deployed for a theological purpose, as was common in medieval philosophy. The argument
runs as follows: There is existence, or rather our phenomenal experience of the world
confirms that things exist, and that their existence is non-necessary because we notice that
things come into existence and pass out of it. Contingent existence cannot arise unless it is
made necessary by a cause. A causal chain in reality must culminate in one un-caused cause
because one cannot posit an actual infinite regress of causes (a basic axiom of Aristotelian
science). Therefore, the chain of contingent existents must culminate in and find its causal
principle in a sole, self-subsistent existent that is Necessary. This, of course, is the same as the
God of religion.
An important corollary of this argument is Avicennas famous distinction between existence
and essence in contingents, between the fact that something exists and what it is. It is a
distinction that is arguably latent in Aristotle although the roots of Avicennas doctrine are
best understood in classical Islamic theology or kalam. Avicennas theory of essence posits
three modalities: essences can exist in the external world associated with qualities and
features particular to that reality; they can exist in the mind as concepts associated with
qualities in mental existence; and they can exist in themselves devoid of any mode of
existence. This final mode of essence is quite distinct from existence. Essences are thus
existentially neutral in themselves. Existents in this world exist as something, whether human,
animal or inanimate object; they are dressed in the form of some essence that is a bundle of
properties that describes them as composites. God on the other hand is absolutely simple, and
cannot be divided into a bundle of distinct ontological properties that would violate his unity.
Contingents, as a mark of their contingency, are conceptual and ontological composites both
at the first level of existence and essence and at the second level of properties. Contingent
things in this world come to be as mentally distinct composites of existence and essence
bestowed by the Necessary.
This proof from contingency is also sometimes termed radical contingency. Later
arguments raged concerning whether the distinction was mental or real, whether the proof is
ontological or cosmological. The clearest problem with Avicennas proofs lies in the famous
Kantian objection to ontological arguments: is existence meaningful in itself? Further,
Cantors solution to the problem of infinity may also be seen as a setback to the argument
from the impossibility of actual infinites.
Avicennas metaphysics is generally expressed in Aristotelian terms. The quest to understand
being qua being subsumes the philosophical notion of God. Indeed, as we have seen divine
existence is a cornerstone of his metaphysics. Divine existence bestows existence and hence
meaning and value upon all that exists. Two questions that were current were resolved
through his theory of existence. First, theologians such as al-Ashari and his followers were
adamant in denying the possibility of secondary causality; for them, God was the sole agent
and actor in all that unfolded. Avicennas metaphysics, although being highly deterministic
because of his view of radical contingency, still insists of the importance of human and other
secondary causality. Second, the age-old problem was discussed: if God is good, how can evil
exist? Divine providence ensures that the world is the best of all possible worlds, arranged in
the rational order that one would expect of a creator akin to the demiurge of the Timaeus. But
while this does not deny the existence of evil in this world of generation and corruption, some
universal evil does not exist because of the famous Neoplatonic definition of evil as the
absence of good. Particular evils in this world are accidental consequences of good. Although
this deals with the problem of natural evils, the problem of moral evils and particularly
horrendous evils remains.
6. Epistemology
The second most influential idea of Avicenna is his theory of the knowledge. The human
intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through
education and comes to know. Knowledge is attained through empirical familiarity with
objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts. It is developed through a
syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to prepositional statements, which when
compounded lead to further abstract concepts. The intellect itself possesses levels of
development from the material intellect (al-aql al-hayulani), that potentiality that can acquire
knowledge to the active intellect (al-aql al-fail), the state of the human intellect at
conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge.
But the question arises: how can we verify if a proposition is true? How do we know that an
experience of ours is veridical? There are two methods to achieve this. First, there are the
standards of formal inference of arguments Is the argument logically sound? Second, and
most importantly, there is a transcendent intellect in which all the essences of things and all
knowledge resides. This intellect, known as the Active Intellect, illuminates the human
intellect through conjunction and bestows upon the human intellect true knowledge of things.
Conjunction, however, is episodic and only occurs to human intellects that have become
adequately trained and thereby actualized. The active intellect also intervenes in the
assessment of sound inferences through Avicennas theory of intuition. A syllogistic inference
draws a conclusion from two prepositional premises through their connection or their middle
term. It is sometimes rather difficult to see what the middle term is; thus when someone
reflecting upon an inferential problem suddenly hits upon the middle term, and thus
understands the correct result, she has been helped through intuition (hads) inspired by the
active intellect. There are various objections that can be raised against this theory, especially
because it is predicated upon a cosmology widely refuted in the post-Copernican world.
One of the most problematic implications of Avicennan epistemology relates to Gods
knowledge. The divine is pure, simple and immaterial and hence cannot have a direct
epistemic relation with the particular thing to be known. Thus Avicenna concluded while God
knows what unfolds in this world, he knows things in a universal manner through the
universal qualities of things. God only knows kinds of existents and not individuals. This
resulted in the famous condemnation by al-Ghazali who said that Avicennas theory amounts
to a heretical denial of Gods knowledge of particulars. particulars.
7. Psychology
Avicennas epistemology is predicated upon a theory of soul that is independent of the body
and capable of abstraction. This proof for the self in many ways prefigures by 600 years the
Cartesian cogito and the modern philosophical notion of the self. It demonstrates the
Aristotelian base and Neoplatonic structure of his psychology. This is the so-called flying
man argument or thought experiment found at the beginning of his Fi-Nafs/De Anima
(Treatise on the Soul). If a person were created in a perfect state, but blind and suspended in
the air but unable to perceive anything through his senses, would he be able to affirm the
existence of his self? Suspended in such a state, he cannot affirm the existence of his body
because he is not empirically aware of it, thus the argument may be seen as affirming the
independence of the soul from the body, a form of dualism. But in that state he cannot doubt
that his self exists because there is a subject that is thinking, thus the argument can be seen as
an affirmation of the self-awareness of the soul and its substantiality. This argument does
raise an objection, which may also be leveled at Descartes: how do we know that the knowing
subject is the self?
This rational self-possesses faculties or senses in a theory that begins with Aristotle and
develops through Neo-Platonism. The first sense is common sense (al-hiss al-mushtarak)
which fuses information from the physical senses into an epistemic object. The second sense
is imagination (al-khayal) which processes the image of the perceived epistemic object. The
third sense is the imaginative faculty (al-mutakhayyila) which combines images in memory,
separates them and produces new images. The fourth sense is estimation or prehension
(wahm) that translates the perceived image into its significance. The classic example for this
innovative sense is that of the sheep perceiving the wolf and understanding the implicit
danger. The final sense is where the ideas produced are stored and analyzed and ascribed
meanings based upon the production of the imaginative faculty and estimation. Different
faculties do not compromise the singular integrity of the rational soul. They merely provide an
explanation for the process of intellection.
8. Mysticism and Oriental Philosophy
Was Avicenna a mystic? Some of his interpreters in Iran have answered in the positive, citing
the lost work The Easterners that on the face of it has a superficial similarity to the notion of
Ishraqi or Illuminationist, intuitive philosophy expounded by Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and the
final section of Pointers that deal with the terminology of mysticism and Sufism. The
question does not directly impinge on his philosophy so much since The Easterners is mostly
non-extant. But it is an argument relating to ideology and the ways in which modern
commentators and scholars wish to study Islamic philosophy as a purely rational form of
inquiry or as a supra-rational method of understanding reality. Gutas has been most vehement
in his denial of any mysticism in Avicenna. For him, Avicennism is rooted in the rationalism
of the Aristotelian tradition. Intuition does not entail mystical disclosure but is a mental act of
conjunction with the active intellect. The notion of intuition is located itself by Gutas in
Aristotles Posterior Analytics 89b10-11. While some of the mystical commentators of
Avicenna have relied upon his pseudo-epigraphy (such as some sort of Persian Sufi treatises
and the Mirajnama), one ought not to throw the baby out with the bath water. The last
sections of Pointers are significant evidence of Avicennas acceptance of some key
epistemological possibilities that are present in mystical knowledge such as the possibility of
non-discursive reason and simple knowledge. Although one can categorically deny that he
was a Sufi (and indeed in his time the institutions of Sufism were not as established as they
were a century later) and even raise questions about his adherence to some form of mysticism,
it would be foolish to deny that he flirts with the possibilities of mystical knowledge in some
of his later authentic works.
9. The Avicennan Tradition and His Legacy
Avicennas major achievement was to propound a philosophically defensive system rooted in
the theological fact of Islam, and its success can be gauged by the recourse to Avicennan
ideas found in the subsequent history of philosophical theology in Islam. In the Latin West,
his metaphysics and theory of the soul had a profound influence on scholastic arguments, and
as in the Islamic East, was the basis for considerable debate and argument. Just two
generations after him, al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and al-Shahrastani (d. 1153) in their attacks testify
to the fact that no serious Muslim thinker could ignore him. They regarded Avicenna as the
principal representative of philosophy in Islam. In the later Iranian tradition, Avicennas
thought was critically distilled with mystical insight, and he became known as a mystical
thinker, a view much disputed in more recent scholarship. Nevertheless the major works of
Avicenna, The Cure and Pointers, became the basis for the philosophical curriculum in the
madrasa. Numerous commentaries, glosses and super-glosses were composed on them and
continued to be produced into the 20th century. While our current views on cosmology, the
nature of the self, and knowledge raise distinct problems for Avicennan ideas, they do not
address the important issue of why his thought remained so influential for such a long period
of time. In In recent times, Avicenna has been attacked by some contemporary Arab Muslim
thinkers in search of a new rationalism within Arab culture, one that champions Averroes
against Avicenna.
10. References and Further Reading
a. The Latin Avicenna (mainly sections of al-Shifa)
Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus I-III. ed. Simone van Riet, Leiden, 1972.
Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I-IV. ed. Simone van Riet, Leidin,
1977.
Liber de pilosophia prima sive scientia divina V-X. ed. Simone van Riet, Leiden,
1980.
Liber primus naturalium: Tractatus primus de causis et principiis naturalium. ed.
Simone van Riet, Leiden, 1992.
Liber quartus naturalium de actionibus et passionibus qualitatum primarum. ed.
Simone van Riet, Leiden, 1989.
b. Studies in Avicenna Latinus
(eds), Islam and the Italian Renaissance. eds. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini.
Warburg Institute, 1999.
N. G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in
Italian Universities after 1500, Princeton, 1987.
Dag Hasse, Avicennas De Anima in the Latin West, London, 2000.
o A study of the impact of Avicennan psychology upon the scholastics focusing
on five key issues
c. Selected Works of Avicenna Available in European Language Translation
Epistola sulla vita future (Risalat al-Adhawiyya fil-maad), tr. F. Luchetta, Padua,
1969.
o Compare it with this useful and critical commentary by the theologian Ibn
Taymiyya (d. 1328) Yahya Michot, A Mamluk theologians commentary on
Avicennas Risala Adhawiyya, Journal of Islamic Studies 14 (2003), 149-203,
309-63.
The Life of Ibn Sina, tr. William Gohlman, Albany, 1974.
Avicennas De Anima (Fil-Nafs), tr. F. Rahman, London, 1954.
Livre de directives et remarques (al-Isharat wal-Tanbihat), tr. Anne-Marie Goichon,
2 vols., Paris, 1951.
Remarks and Admonitions Part One: Logic (al-Isharat wal-Tanbihat: mantiq), tr.
Shams Inati, Toronto, 1984.
La Mtaphysique du Shifa I-IV et V-X, tr. G. Anawati, Paris, 1978-86.
Le livre de science (Danishnama-yi Alai) I: Logique, Mtaphysique II: science
naturelle, mathmatique, trs. M. Achena and Henri Mass, Paris, 1986.
Ibn Sina on Mysticism (al-Isharat wal-Tanbihat namat IX), tr. Shams Inati, London,
1998.
The Metaphysica of Avicenna (Ilahiyyat-i Danishnama-yi Alai), tr. Parviz
Morewedge, New York, 1972; rpt., Binghamton, 2003.
Lettre au Vizier Abu Sad, ed./tr. Yahya Michot, Paris, 2000.
The Metaphysics of Avicenna (al-Ilahiyyat min Kitab al-Shifa), ed./tr. Michael
Marmura, Provo, 2004.
d. General Introductions to Avicenna and His Thought
Cruz Hernndez, Miguel. La vida de Avicena. Salamanca, 1997.
o A short and accessible intellectual biography written by perhaps the foremost
Spanish historian of Islamic philosophy.
Goichon, Anne-Marie. Lexique de la langue philosophique dAvicenne. Paris, 1938.
o A pioneering work which remains a highly useful research tool.
Goodman, Lenn. Avicenna. London, 1992.
o Although an attempt by a contemporary philosopher to come to grips with the
enduring contributions of Avicenna to philosophy, it suffers from some serious
textual misreadings.
Gutas, Dimitri. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Leiden/Boston, 1988.
o A solid work of scholarship that discusses Avicennas corpus and thought
within a paradigm of Islamic Aristotelianism.
Nasr, Sayyed Hossein. Three Muslim Sages. Cambridge, 1966.
o An old and contentious presentation of Avicenna as a polymath rooted in the
mystical experience of God.
Sebti, Miriam. Avicenne. Paris, 2003.
o An interpretation from a continental philosophical approach.
Street, Tony. Avicenna. Cambridge, 2005.
o A solid presentation of the key ideas based on the most up-to-date research.
e. Collections and Bibliographies
Special Issue of Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. Padua, 8
(1997) on Avicenna.
Special Issue of Arabic Sciences and Philosophy. Cambridge, 10 (2000) on Avicenna.
Anawati, G. C. Essai de bibliographie avicennienne. Cairo, 1950.
Various Authors, Avicenna, Encyclopaedia Iranica. New York, II, 66-110.
Janssens, Jules. Bibliography of Works on Ibn Sina, 2 vols. Leiden, 1991-99.
Janssens, Jules and Daniel de Smet (ed). Avicenna and His Heritage. Leuven, 2001.
o Proceedings from a 1999 conference that brought together specialists on the
Arabic and the Latin Avicenna and their legacies.
Rashed, Roshdi and Jean Jolivet (eds), Etudes sur Avicenne, Paris, 1984.
o An excellent collection that includes insightful pieces on Avicennan physics
and metaphysics.
David Reisman and Ahmed al-Rahim (eds), Before and After Avicenna,
Leiden/Boston, 2003.
o The proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Research Group
(based at Yale).
Robert Wisnovsky (ed), Aspects of Avicenna (Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary
Journal of Middle East Studies, 9), Princeton, 2001.
o Includes two good pieces on Avicennan psychology.
f. Interpretations
Arberry, Arthur J. Avicenna on Theology. London, 1954.
o Includes translations of texts and raises the interesting question of what is
Islamic about Avicennas Islamic philosophy.
Corbin, Henry. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, Princeton, 1961.
o An influential and controversial interpretation of Avicenna through the lens of
the later Iranian tradition portraying him as a mystic.
Gardet, Louis. La pense religieuse dAvicenne, Paris, 1951.
Heath, Peter. Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna, Philadelphia, 1992.
o An interesting approach to allegory that draws on Corbin and suffers from the
assumption that the famous pseudo-Avicennan work the Mirajnama is
authentic.
Lling, G. Die anderer Avicenna, Zeitschrift der deutschen
MorganlndischenGesellschaft Suppl III.1 (1977), 496-513.
Marmura, Michael. Avicenna and the kalam, Zeitschrift fr arabisch-islamisch
Wissenschaft (Frankfurt) 7 (1991-2), 172-206.
o Considers Avicennas debt to the metaphysics of kalam.
Marmura, Michael. Plotting the course of Avicennas thought, Journal of the
American Oriental Society 111 (1991), 333-42.
o A critical assessment of Gutass 1988 work.
Michot, Yahya. La pandmie avicennienne, Arabica (Paris) 40 (1993), 287-344.
o On the widespread hegemony of Avicennan philosophy in Islamic thought
from the 12th Century.
Thom, Paul. Medieval Modal Systems, London, 2004.
o The best study of Avicennas modal logic and his contributions to the field.
g. Avicennas Oriental Philosophy
Cruz Hernndez, Miguel. El problema de la autntica filosofa de Avicena, Revista
de Filosofa 5 (1992), 235-56.
Gutas, Dimitri. Avicennas Eastern (Oriental) Philosophy, Arabic Sciences and
Philosophy 10 (2000), 159-80.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Ibn Sinas Oriental Philosophy, in S. H. Nasr and Oliver
Leaman (eds), History of Islamic Philosophy, London/New York, 1996, I, 247-51.
o A classic restatement of Nasrs mystical understanding of Avicenna.
Pines, Shlomo. La philosophie orientale dAvicenne, in The Collected Works of
Shlomo Pines Volume III, Jerusalem, 1996, 301-33.
o Interprets oriental to signify an Eastern alternative Peripatetism.
h. Metaphysics
Robert Wisnovsky, Avicennas Metaphysics in Context, London, 2003.
o An excellent study that locates the origins of Avicennan thought in what he
calls the Ammonian synthesis in Late Antiquity and then explains the
development of Avicennan metaphysics.
i. On Psychology
Helmut Gtje, Studien zur berlieferung der aristotelische Psychologie im Islam,
Heidelberg, 1971.
o A pioneering study of the key aspects of Aristotelian(ising) psychological
theories in Islamic philosophy focusing on Avicenna.
Dag Hasse, Avicennas De Anima in the Latin West, London, 2000.
o A study of the impact of Avicennan psychology upon the scholastics focusing
on five key issues.
Michot, Jean R. La destine de lhomme selon Avicenne, Brussels, 1986.
o A key investigation of Avicennan psychology as a quest for an Islamic answer
to the problem of the souls journey beyond this life and the persistence of
personal identity.
Rahman, Fazlur. Avicennas Psychology, London, 1952.
o A study that includes a translation of Avicennas De Anima.
j. Existence-Essence
Goichon, Anne-Maria. La distinction de lessence et lexistence daprs ibn Sina
(Avicenne), Paris, 1937.
Mayer, Toby. Ibn Sinas Burhan al-Siddiqin, Journal of Islamic Studies 12 (2001),
18-39.
Parviz Morewedge, Philosophical analysis of Ibn Sinas essence-existence
distinction, Journal of the American Oriental Society 92 (1972), 42-35.
Rahman, Fazlur. Essence and existence in Avicenna, Mediaeval Studies (Toronto) 4
(1958), 1-16.
Rahman, Fazlur. Essence and existence in Ibn Sina: the myth and the reality,
Hamdard Islamicus (Karachi) 4 (1981), 3-14.
Rizvi, Sajjad. Roots of an aporia in later Islamic philosophy: the existence-essence
distinction in the philosophies of Avicenna and Suhrawardi, Studia Iranica (Paris) 29
(2000), 61-108.
Author Information
Sajjad H. Rizvi
Email: Sajjad.Rizvi@bristol.ac.uk
University of Bristol
United Kingdom
Last updated: January 6, 2006 | Originally published: January/6/2006
Categories: Islamic Philosophy, Philosophers