“The ‘Ontologization’ of Logic. Metaphysical Themes in Avicenna’s Reworking of the Organon”, in Methods and Methodologies. Aristotelian Logic East and West 500-1500, ed. M. Cameron, J. Marenbon, Brill Leiden-Boston 2011, pp. 27-51 (original) (raw)

The philosophical masterpiece of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037), the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure), is an extensive summa with four main parts (logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics). The three first parts are further divided into distinct sections (nine sections of logic, eight of natural philosophy, and four of mathematics). The metaphysical part, despite consisting of a single section, includes at the end a succinct treatment of practical philosophy. One remarkable aspect of this massive work is the connection between the parts dealing with logic and natural philosophy, on the one hand, and the part devoted to metaphysics, on the other. Thus, some metaphysical doctrines are announced either in logic or in natural philosophy: Avicenna informs the reader that further developments of certain logical or physical issues will be found in metaphysics, since the scientific scope of logic and physics is limited. Conversely, many logical or physical doctrines are quoted in metaphysics: Avicenna summarizes these doctrines in order to use them in metaphysics, taking them as already sufficiently clarified in logic and physics. 1 A more peculiar -and, in my opinion, more interesting -type of 'interface' between logic and physics, on the one side, and metaphysics, on the other, is the case of logical or physical doctrines repeated in metaphysics: there are certain doctrines already developed in logic and physics which Avicenna expounds extensively in metaphysics for a second time. This third case