Subject, Definition, Activity. Framing Avicenna's Science of the Soul (original) (raw)
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Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook, 2019
This brief article is an attempt to answer the question of the epistemological status of Avicenna’s psychology: is the soul part of the subject-matter of physics or, instead, of metaphysics? A double answer seems to offer a solution: as Avicenna himself states in his De anima (I, 1), the study of the soul belongs to physics when we consider the soul in its role and functions (the soul as it governs and moves the body), but belongs to metaphysics when we examine the soul as a substance. As we try to clarify the reasons for this twofold answer, which requires both validation and interpretation, another explanation emerges. In fact, the twofold answer is by no means exhaustive. A more thorough analysis reveals that in Avicenna’s system, as in Neo-Platonic thought generally, the real founding principle is metaphysics. In this respect, the study of the soul, which is the principle of the body, cannot be other than metaphysical. The key concept is that of emanation, which explains both soul as substance and soul as governing principle of the body. The soul is determined by the very emanative process that explains reality. In that sense, the soul’s distinction cannot be horizontal (as if the soul could be divided into different parts, such as the physical ones—vegetable and animal—and the metaphysical ones—the rational souls of man and of celestial intelligences), but must be vertical. Soul as a substance has no real connection with either side (material or spiritual) of the world. Its connection with the physical reality is only operational. If a physical point of view exists (and psychology is to be considered a part of physics), a metaphysical point of view exists more truly: the principle of nature comes from above and physics is no more than a part of metaphysics. In Ishrāq 2019, pp. 132-150 (English revised and updated version of «L’âme chez Avicenne : quelques remarques autour de son statut épistémologique et de son fondement métaphysique», Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 21 (2010), pp. 223-242).
Self, Agent, Soul: Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī's Critical Reception of Avicennian Psychology
J. Kaukua & T. Ekenberg (eds.). Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, 2016
rhis paper investigates AbÌi al-Barakat al-Baghdadi's critical reception and development of an Avicennian argument that hinges on the intuitive evidence provided by our awareness of ourselves. According to the argument, each of us is indubitably aware of enduring as a single subject and agent behind the constantly varying stream of experience and action. On the basis of this intuitive certainty Avicenna concludes that the human soul is similarly one. By introducing problematic acts related to the Peripatetic concept of soul, such as digestion and growth, Abä al-Barakãt suggests that if we want to save the argumentative power of the relevant phenomena, we must revise the Avicennian conçept of self-awareness. This paper will review the Arabic emergence of a problem looming in the unreflective use of introspective experiential phenomena, such as our awareness of ourselves and our sense of our own agency, in psychological theorizing. As so much in the Arabic philosophy of the so called post-classical period,r the discussion takes its cue fiom a number of insights introduced or expanded upon by Avicenna (d. 1037 CE). The awareness of the relevant ploblems, however, fìrst emerges in an author who would prove fbrmative to much of the late twelfth century CE critical discussion of Avicenna's philosophy, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadr (d. 1164 CE)., Jewish by birth but a convert to Islam at a mature age, Abü al-Barakat made a career as a physician in the Baghdad courts, but his most lasting inheritance is a voluminous philosophical summa which he titled the Kitab al-mu'tabarfi at-þikma, or "The Book of What Has Been Considered (on Wisdom)", The seemingly innocent title is programmatic: instead of piously commentating on and refining the received tradition, Abü al-Barakãt demands that the philosopher must critically engage with and carefully consider all the available data, especially those derived iFor an overview of this relatively recent períodization, see Wisnovsky .
Avicenna's Mystical View of the Soul: His Responses to Aristotle and Plotinus
The Jahangirnagar Review, 1997
Islamic philosophers, such as Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rush'd attached great importance to the Greek and Hellenistic views of the soul, God, immortality, etc. Ibn Sina, following Platonic and neo-Platonic eschatological theses, holds a spiritualist view of man and the human soul as opposed to the Aristotelian tradition. Both Plotinus and Avicenna suggest that man is the highest being, a view which is reflected in the Qur´ãn and the Bible, and that man has an inclination to return to the Supreme Being, since God is the ultimate Source and the final Goal of all being. The One, which is God in Plotinus's thought, is that on which all depends and towards which all existences aspire as to their source (I.8.2). 1 So as there is a process of descent, so is there a process of ascent. This view is reflected in monotheistic religious traditions and Ibn Sina does not find any problem to endorse it. In this paper, we endeavour to show that although both Plotinus and Ibn Sina wear the mystic cloak and show sympathy towards the mystic way of life and view of the soul as being capable of returning to its origin, they differ on fundamental points. In offering his mystical experience Plotinus speaks of enjoying communion with the One, God, though through an intermediary stage of the nous or the Intellect while Ibn Sina confines himself within the conjunction (ittisaal) with, not communion (ittihaad) with, the Active Intellect, an intermediary heavenly body between God and man, involved in contemplative activity. We shall explore that Avicenna carefully rejects the Plotinian mystical 'union', which identifies the soul with God-an expression of radical or unitary mysticism-in order to safeguard the individual identity and personal immortality in his monistic system, and in so doing, Avicenna finds himself as neither a true Aristotelian, nor a true Plotinian.
The Self-Consciousness of the Soul in the Context of Avicenna’s Flying Man Theory
Eskiyeni, 2024
While the concepts of dhāt/self, shu’ūr/consciousness, and al-shuʿūr bi-l-dhāt/self-consciousness have gained prominence in recent philosophical discourse on the mind, particularly in the light of developments in neurobiology and neurophysiology. However, these concepts have a long history of usage in both Islamic and Western thought, dating back to the earliest periods. In his thought experiment, the Flying Man theorem, Avicenna (c. 980–1037 CE), one of the most influential philosophers of Islamic thought, addressed several key issues pertaining to the relationship between the soul and the body, the essence of the soul, the question of whether the soul has a separate and independent existence from the body, and the nature of consciousness. In his theory, which he discusses with partial differences in different works, Avicenna, initially posited that the soul has a separate and distinct existence from the body and that the soul has an immaterial essence. In the second stage, offering an indirect explanation of the existence of a single essence, namely the dhāt which prioritizes the functions of the different faculties of the immaterial, separate, and distinct realities of the soul and uniting these functions with the consciousness of ‘I’. Nevertheless, there have been numerous interpretations of the objective that Avicenna sought to establish with his theory. While some have argued that he dealt with the essence and existence of the soul in his theory, others have argued that he also grounded the self-consciousness of the soul in addition to this This study will examine Avicenna’s theory of the flying man, elucidating its principal objective through an analysis of the theory’s explanatory framework. Subsequently, an explanation will be provided regarding the notion of the soul being in the consciousness of its own dhāt. This study will evaluate Avicenna’s distinction between the consciousness of the self (al-shu’ūr bi-zāt) and the consciousness of consciousness (al-shu’ūr bi al-shu’ūr) will be evaluated. It demonstrates that although Avicenna’s theorising primarily concerns the soul as having an immaterial essence, separate and distinct from the body, at a secondary level he also seeks to prove that the soul is conscious of its own essence.
Nazariyat , 2021
Among the works in the monumental philosophical encyclopedia that is Avicenna's Shifā, his Kitāb al-Nafs [Book of the Soul] has an important place due to two endeavors: First, like the whole Avicennan corpus, Kitāb al-Nafs is an attempt to rewrite the Greek philosophical heritage in Arabic, synthesizing the tradition of Aristotelian and Greek commentaries. In this first retrospective sense, Avicenna's work appeared as the first summa to have rearranged knowledge in the domain of psychology up to his day. Secondly, Avicenna created an independent science of the soul in this work by way of rearranging this Greek philosophical-scientific knowledge and putting it in contact with other sciences within his own classification. In this second prospective sense, this text has had a massive effect both on Islamic and Christian philosophical traditions with its philosophical intension and theological extension. Avicenna's Kitāb al-Nafs was translated into Latin as early as the 12 th century and remained an efficient source for the Latin scholastics, along with his al-Ilāhiyyāt [Metaphysics]. The Arabic text as well as its Latin translation, Liber de Anima, received an enormous dissemination. While the critical edition of the Latin medieval translation of Kitāb al-Nafs was published by Simone van Riet (in 1968/1972), we are not that fortunate in regard to the critical edition of the Arabic text. Although edited many times (by Jan Bakoš in 1956, Fazlur Rahman in 1959, Anawati & Zayed in 1975, and al-Āmulī in 1996) a complete critical edition is still a long way away. As for the modern non-classical languages, today's scholar is surprisingly left only with the Persian translation by Akbar Dānāsarasht, which dates as old as 1929; the French translation published by Jan Bakoš in 1956, which unfortunately provides poor readability; and the Russian translation by L. Xromov from 1980. Compared dx.
A Discourse on the Soul in Later Islamic Philosophy
Synthesis philosophica, 2017
Despite the significance of later Islamic philosophical tradition, it has remained a neglected area of study. In this article, the evolution of the concept of the soul from its Avicennian context to post-Avicennian philosophical tradition is discussed. While the author knows of no Islamic philosopher who rejected the Peripatetic notion of the soul, post-Avicennian philosophers have added much to the discourse on the soul. Beginning with Al-Ghazzālī, we see a gradual gnosticization of the concept of the soul that reaches its zenith in the writings of Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī. Having traced Suhrawardī's illuminationist (ishrāqī) doctrine of the soul, we proceeded to discuss the views of some of the ishrāqī figures on the subject matter and then explored how the concept of the soul changed in Mullā Sadrā's School of Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikmat al-Mutiʻalliyah). The article ends with a general overview of the modern commentators of later philosophical tradition in Islam and those that have been influential in shaping the evolution of the concept of the soul in modern Islamic philosophical discourse.
Angelicum, Rome, Thomas Aquinas university, Dec. 23, 2020
I seek to explicate the ways in which the soul is deemed immaterial in two main strands of Islamic philosophy, and then consider some arguments for the immateriality of the soul. To do so, I will first overview Avicenna's theory of the spiritual incipience (al-ḥudūth al-rūḥānī) of the soul and his version of substance dualism. I will then discuss Mullā Ṣadrā's view of the physical incipience (al-ḥudūth al-jismānī) of the soul and how the soul emerges and develops towards immateriality on his account. I will then overview and discuss five of the most important arguments presented by these two great Muslim philosophers in favor of the immateriality of the soul. To do so, I will also point out some of the main contemporary physicalistic views of the nature of mind and mental states. I will then argue that arguments for the immateriality of the soul-dealt with here-do not indeed target or challenge any significant versions of contemporary physicalism. Moreover, these arguments involve conflations of epistemological or ontological issues.