Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAbdallāhIbn-Sīnā [Avicenna] (ca. 970–1037) was the preeminentphilosopher and physician of the Islamic world.^[1] In his work he combined the disparate strands of philosophical/scientific^[2] thinking in Greek late antiquity and early Islam into a rationallyrigorous and self-consistent scientific system that encompassed andexplained all reality, including the tenets of revealed religion andits theological and mystical elaborations. In its integral andcomprehensive articulation of science and philosophy, it representsthe culmination of the Hellenic tradition, defunct in Greek after thesixth century, reborn in Arabic in the 9^th (Gutas 2004a,2010). It dominated intellectual life in the Islamic world forcenturies to come, and the sundry reactions to it, ranging fromacceptance to revision to refutation and to substitution withparaphilosophical constructs (Gutas 2018, Kaukua 2020) determineddevelopments in philosophy, science, religion, theology, and mysticism(Langermann 2009, Eichner 2009, Gutas 2018). In Latin translation,beginning with the 12^th century, Avicenna’sphilosophy influenced mightily the medieval and Renaissancephilosophers and scholars (Janssens 2006), just as the Latintranslation of his medicalCanon (GMed 1), often revised,formed the basis of medical instruction in European universities untilthe 17^th century. The Arabophone Jewish and Christianscholars within Islam, to the extent that they were writing for theirrespective communities and not as members of the Islamic commonwealth,accepted most of his ideas (notably Maimonides in his ArabicGuideof the Perplexed and Barhebraeus in his SyriacCream ofWisdom). The Jewish communities in Europe used Hebrewtranslations of some of his works, though they were far less receptivethan their Roman Catholic counterparts, preferring Averroes instead.The Roman Orthodox in Constantinople were quite indifferent tophilosophical developments abroad (and inimical to those at home) andcame to know Avicenna’s name only through its occurrence in theGreek translations of the Latin scholastics that began after the4^th Crusade. In his influence on the intellectual historyof the world in the West (of India), he is second only to Aristotle,as it was intuitively acknowledged in the Islamic world where he iscalled “The Preeminent Master” (al-shaykhal-raʾīs), after Aristotle, whom Avicenna called“The First Teacher” (al-muʿallimal-awwal).

• 1. Life and Works
  • 1.1 Life
  • 1.2 Works
• 2. Philosophical Aims
• 3. Logic and Empiricism
• 4. The Metaphysics of the Rational Soul; Practical Philosophy
• 5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
  • Works by Ibn Sina
  • Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and Works

1.1 Life

At some point in his later years, Avicenna wrote for or dictated tohis student, companion, and amanuensis, Abū-ʿUbaydal-Jūzjānī, his Autobiography, reaching till the timein his middle years when they first met; al-Jūzjānīcontinued the biography after that point and completed it some timeafter the master’s death in 1037 AD. This auto-/biographicalcomplex, which also contains bibliographies and has been transmittedas a single document (Gohlman 1974), is an early representative of anArabic literary genre much cultivated by scientists and scholars inmedieval Islam (Gutas 2015). It is also our most extensive sourceabout Avicenna’s life and times. According to this document,Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village in the outskirts ofmetropolitan Bukhara, some time in the 70s of the tenth century,perhaps as early as 964; it has not been possible to determine theyear of his birth with greater precision.^[3] His father, originally from Balkh farther to the southeast who hadmoved north as a young man apparently in search of (better)employment, was a state functionary, a governor of the nearby districtKharmaythan. He was in the employ of the Persian Samanid dynasty thatruled Transoxania and Khurasan with Bukhara as its capital(819–1005), where the family moved when Avicenna was still aboy. Avicenna grew up and was educated there and began hisphilosophical career as a member of the educated elite in politicalcircles close to the Samanids.

Bukhara lies on one of the main trade routes of the Silk Road betweenSamarkand and Marw, and like these and other cities along the SilkRoad, had been economically and culturally active from pre-Islamictimes. Under the Samanids in the 9^th and 10^thcenturies, who followed a deliberate agenda of Persian linguisticrevival as well as promotion of the high Arabic-Islamic cultureradiating from the center of the Islamic world, Baghdad, it provided asophisticated and refined milieu for the cultivation of the arts andsciences. The palace library of the Samanids, where the teenagerAvicenna was allowed to visit and study following his successfultreatment of the ailing ruler, contained such books on all subjects,including books by the ancient Greeks in Arabic translation, as he hadnever seen before nor since (Gohlman 1974, 37). This was the result ofthe cultural, scientific, and philosophical effervescence taking placein Baghdad due to the rationalistic outlook in political and socialaffairs espoused by the ʿAbbāsid dynasty upon its accessionto power in 750 and the attendant Graeco-Arabic translation movement(Gutas 1998; Gutas 2014a, 359–62). Bukhara was no backwaterprovincial town, teeming as it was with scholars in residence andvisiting intellectuals.

Avicenna had an excellent education on all subjects, but he dwells atlength in the Autobiography on his study of the intellectual sciences,that is, the philosophical curriculum in practice in the Hellenicschools of higher education in late antiquity, notably in Alexandria.These consisted of logic as the instrument of philosophy (theOrganon), the theoretical sciences—physics (the naturalsciences), mathematics (thequadrivium: arithmetic, geometry,astronomy, and music), and metaphysics—, and the practicalsciences—ethics, oeconomics (household management), and politics.^[4] Avicenna makes a point to say that he studied these subjects all byhimself, in this order, at increasing levels of difficulty, and thathe achieved proficiency by the time he was eighteen. At about thattime he was allowed to visit the library of the Samanid ruler, justmentioned above, where, he says, he “read those books, masteredtheir teachings, and realized how far each man had advanced in hisscience” (Gohlman 1974, 36; transl. Gutas 2014a, 18). Shortlythereafter he wrote his first work,Compendium on the Soul(GP 10), dedicated to the ruler in apparent gratitude for thepermission to visit the library. His fame grew, and when he wastwenty-one he was asked by a neighbor namedʿArūḍī to write a “comprehensivework” on all philosophy, which he did (Philosophy forʿArūḍī, GS 2), treating all subjects listedabove except mathematics; another neighbor, Baraqī, asked forcommentaries on the books of philosophy on all thesesubjects—essentially the works of Aristotle—and he obligedwith a twenty-volume work he calledThe Available and theValid (i.e.,of Philosophy, GS 10) and a two-volume workon the practical sciences,Piety and Sin (GPP 1). His fatherhaving died in the meantime, he was forced to take up, but clearly hadno difficulty in finding, a post in the financial administration ofthe Samanids.

But history dealt its blows, ending Avicenna’s idyllic existenceof secure employment, intellectual renown, and the admiration of hiscompatriots. In 999 the Turkic Qarakhanids effectively put an end tothe Samanids and took over Bukhara. Avicenna, manifestly because ofhis close affiliation with the ruling dynasty and his high position inthe Samanid administration, saw fit to flee Bukhara. In theAutobiography he provides no political context for his decision butmerely says, “necessity led me to forsake Bukhara”(Gohlman 1974, 40–41), though the nature of this“necessity” could hardly be mistaken by his contemporariesand even by us. Thus began Avicenna’s lifelong itinerant careerand the attendant quest for patronage and employment (Reisman 2013).Initially he moved north to Gurganj in Khwarizm (999?–1012), buteventually he had to leave again and traveled westwards, staying for awhile (1012–1014?) first in Jurjan, off the southeasternCaspian, and then going on into the Iranian heartland, in Ray(1014?–1015), in Hamadhan (1015–1024?), and finally inIsfahan (1024?–1037), in the court ofʿAlāʾ-ad-Dawla, the Kakuyid ruler of the area (Gutas2014b-I, 6–9). Avicenna served the various local rulers in thesecities certainly in his dual capacity as physician and politicalcounselor, functions he had assumed already back home, but also asscientist-in-residence. Engaging in science and philosophy during thefirst three Abbasid centuries (750–1050) in Islam was donemostly under the political patronage of the rulers and the rulingelite who were the sponsors and also among the consumers of thescientific production. It was certainly a matter of prestige for aruler to be flanked by the top scientists of his day, but patronage ofthe sciences was also seen, politically more importantly, aslegitimizing his right to whatever throne he was occupying. As aresult, many a ruler evinced sheer interest in science itself out of adesire to appear knowledgeable and participated in scientific debates,usually conducted in political fora. It is for this reason that wefind Avicenna, involved in certain political/intellectualcontroversies in some of the cities in which he lived, addressing topolitical elites a scientific treatise instead of political oratory inhis defense (Michot 2000; Reisman 2013, 14–22; Gutas 2014a,personal writings listed on p. 503). Science was much more integrallyrelated to the social and political life and discourse during thisperiod, which is also a significant factor in its rapid spread anddevelopment in the Islamic world.

In the court of ʿAlāʾ-ad-Dawla in Isfahan where hespent his last thirteen years or so, Avicenna enjoyed the appreciationthat it was felt he deserved. His productivity never flagged, evenduring these years that were militarily and politically turbulent. Hecompleted there his major work,The Cure(al-Shifāʾ, GS 5), and four further summae ofphilosophy, along with shorter treatises, and conducted a vigorousphilosophical correspondence with students and followers in responseto questions they raised about sundry points in logic, physics, andmetaphysics. He died in 1037 in Hamadhan and was buried there. Amausoleum in that city today purports to be his.

1.2 Works

Despite his peregrinatory life spent in historically turbulent timesand areas, including the frequently unfavorable personal circumstancesin which he found himself (as recounted in the Autobiography andBiography, Gohlman 1974), Avicenna was terribly productive, even bythe standards of the highly prolific authors writing in Arabic inmedieval Islam. In the Autobiography he says that by the time he waseighteen he had mastered all subjects in philosophy without anythingnew having come to him since (Gohlman 1974, 30–39). Even thoughthe Autobiography has particular philosophical points to make(discussed in the next section), this is no mere boast. There arereports that he wrote major portions of his greatest work,TheCure, without any books to consult (Gohlman 1974, 58; transl. andanalysis Gutas 2014a, 109–115), that he composed in a singlenight, dusk to dawn, a treatise on logic in one hundred quarto (largesize) pages (Gohlman 1974, 76–81), and that he compiledTheSalvation (GS 6) “en route”—on horseback,manifestly, or during rests from riding—in the course of amilitary expedition in which he had accompanied his master,ʿAlāʾ-ad-Dawla (Gohlman 1974, 66–67). Exaggeratedand hagiographic as some of these reports might be, it is clear thatAvicenna had constructively internalized (not to say“memorized”) the philosophical curriculum and he couldreproduce it, properly assimilated and analytically reconstructed, atwill. This is also evident in his disregard (rather than neglect?) forkeeping copies of his works; as it must have happened ratherfrequently, when commissioned or asked to write about a subject thathe had treated earlier, it was apparently just as easy for him tocompose a treatise anew as it was to copy an earlier version of it.Avicenna could write fast and with great precision, sacrificingnothing in analytical depth. At the same time, however, given hisundisputed fame and immense intellectual authority that he exercisedsoon after his death, pseudepigraphy became a major factor multiplyingthe works attributed to him (Reisman 2004 and 2010). Accordingly, somemedieval bibliographies of his works (and some modern ones, based onthe former) list close to three hundred titles, though a recent sobertally of them brings the authentic writings down to fewer than onehundred, ranging from essays of a few pages to multi-volume sets, andflags the pseudepigraphs that need to be assessed and authenticated(Gutas 2014a, Appendix, 387–540; list of all works attributed tohim, Mahdavi 1954). Much work still remains to be done in thisregard.

Avicenna wrote in different genres, but his major innovation was thedevelopment of thesumma philosophiae, a comprehensive workthat included all parts of philosophy as classified in the lateantique Alexandrian and early Islamic tradition (cited above). Thiswas due as much to his own philosophical training, which followed thiscurriculum, as to the earliest commissions he received while still inBukhara for works that would encompass all philosophy; but then thesecommissions inevitably reflect the broad philosophical culture of theperiod that viewed science and philosophy as an integral whole.Already in his very first philosophical treatise,Compendium onthe Soul, which Avicenna dedicated to the Samanid ruler, as notedabove, he presented the theoretical knowledge (the intelligible forms)to be acquired by the rational soul precisely as classified in thephilosophical curriculum (Gutas 2014a, 6–8), and with his secondwork, thePhilosophy commissioned byʿArūḍī, he fleshed out this outline into thefirst scholastic philosophical compendium or summa. He went on towrite seven more such summae in his career, ranging in length from asixty-page booklet (Elements of Philosophy,ʿUyūn al-ḥikma, GS 3), written earlier in hiscareer, to the monumentalThe Cure(al-Shifāʾ), in his middle period. It runs totwenty-two large volumes in the Cairo edition (1952–83), and itscontents exhibit all the parts of philosophy in the Aristoteliantradition which they reproduce, revise, adjust, expand, andre-present, as follows (the most recent critical editions andtranslations for each title are added in parentheses):

1. Logic
   1. Eisagoge (Porphyry’sEisagoge (Di Vincenzo2021))
   2. Categories (Aristotle’sCategories)
   3. On interpretation (Aristotle’sDeinterpretatione)
   4. Syllogism (Aristotle’sPrior Analytics)
   5. Demonstration (Aristotle’sPosteriorAnalytics)
   6. Dialectic (Aristotle’sTopics)
   7. Sophistics (Aristotle’sSophisticalRefutations)
   8. Rhetoric (Aristotle’sRhetoric)
   9. Poetics (Aristotle’sPoetics).
2. Theoretical Philosophy
   1. Physics
      1. On nature (Aristotle’sPhysics (McGinnis2009))
      2. On the heavens (Aristotle’sDe caelo)
      3. On coming to be and passing away (Aristotle’sDegeneratione et corruptione)
      4. Mineralogy (Aristotle’sMeteorology IV)
      5. Meteorology (Aristotle’sMeteorologyI–III)
      6. On the soul (Aristotle’sDe anima (Alpina 2021, pp.190–238))
      7. Botany (De plantis by Nicolaus of Damascus)
      8. Zoology (Aristotle’sHistory, Parts, andGeneration of Animals)
   2. Mathematics
      1. Geometry (Euclid’sElements)
      2. Arithmetic (Nicomachus of Gerasa, Diophantus, Euclid, Thābitb. Qurra, and others)
      3. Music (mostly Ptolemy’sHarmonics with othermaterial)
      4. Astronomy (Ptolemy’sAlmagest, with an originaladdendum (Nikfahm-Khubravan 2025))
   3. Ilāhiyyāt / Metaphysics
      1. Universal Science: the study of being as being, first philosophy,natural theology (Aristotle’sMetaphysics (Bertolacci2006, 2007))
      2. Metaphysics of the Rational Soul (phenomena of religious andparanormal life studied as functions of the rational soul)
3. Practical Philosophy
   1. Prophetic legislation as the basis for the three parts ofpractical philosophy
   2. Politics (prescriptions by the prophet legislator for publicadministration and political ruler to succeed him; [Plato’s andAristotle’s books on politics])
   3. Household management (prescriptions of the prophet legislator forfamily law; [Bryson’sOikonomikos and related books byothers])
   4. Ethics (as legislated by a caliph; [Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics])^[5]

Avicenna did not treat all of these subjects in each one of hissummae, but he varied their contents and emphasis depending on thespecific purpose for which he composed them. He developed a style ofsupple Arabic expository prose, complete with technical philosophicalterminology, that remained standard thenceforth (his philosophicalvocabulary is collected in Goichon 1938, 1939). AfterTheCure, he was asked to write a brief exposition of thephilosophical subjects, which he did by collecting and puttingtogether—at times even splicing together—material from hisearlier writings and producedThe Salvation(al-Najāt, GS 6). He did the same, in Persian this time,for his patron the Kakuyid ʿAlāʾ-ad-Dawla, thePhilosophy for ʿAlāʾ(Dāneshnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī, GS 7).In both of these books he left out the mathematical sciences and thesubjects of practical philosophy, only the former of which was latersupplemented by Jūzjānī, first in Arabic and then inPersian, on the basis of earlier writings by Avicenna.

Toward the end of his life Avicenna wrote two more summae in slightlydivergent modes. In one of them, which he calledEasternPhilosophy (al-Mashriqiyyūn oral-Ḥikmaal-mashriqiyya, GS 8) to reflect his own locality in the East ofthe Islamic world, broader Khurasan (mashriq), heconcentrated on “matters about which researchers havedisagreed” in logic, physics, and metaphysics, but notmathematics or the subjects of practical philosophy (except forprophetic legislation which he introduced; see below) insofar as therewas little disagreement about them. His approach is doctrinal, nothistorical, presenting, as he says, “the fundamental elements oftrue philosophy which was discovered by someone who examined a lot,reflected long,” and had nearly perfect syllogistic prowess,namely, himself (GS 8, p. 2 and 4; transl. and analysis Gutas 2014a,35–40; Gutas 2000). In the second, also his very last summa, hediverged even more drastically from traditional modes of presentationand developed an allusive and suggestive style which he called“pointers and reminders” (al-Ishārātwa-l-tanbīhāt, GS 9). The purpose in this, for which heborrowed the topos of late antique Aristotelian commentarial traditionexplaining why Aristotle had developed a cryptic style of writing, wasto train the student by providing not whole arguments and fullyarticulated theories but only pointers and reminders to them which thestudent would complete himself. The book, in two parts, deals withlogic in the first and with physics, metaphysics, and metaphysics ofthe rational soul in the second. It proved hugely popular as asuccinct though frequently amphibolous statement of his maturephilosophy, open to interpretation, and it became the object ofrepeated commentaries throughout the centuries, apparently as Avicennamust have intended (Wisnovsky 2013). It is a difficult work, and itmust be understood always through constant reference to the moreexplicit expository statement of Avicenna’s theories inTheCure. Traditionally it has rarely been read except together witha commentary, notably those of Fakhr-ad-Dīn al-Rāzī andespecially Naṣīr-ad-Dīn al-Ṭūsī.^[6]

Other than in the summae, Avicenna wrote comprehensively on allphilosophy in two major and massive works, both in about twentyvolumes, both now lost. The first was his youthful commentary on theworks of Aristotle which he wrote upon commission by his neighborBaraqī, mentioned above,The Available and the Valid[of Philosophy]. The second,Fair Judgment (GS 11),composed in 1029, was a detailed commentary on the “difficultpassages” of the entire Aristotelian corpus, in which wasincluded even the suspectTheology of Aristotle (actuallyPlotinus’Enneads IV–VI). The title refers toAvicenna’s adjudication between traditional Aristotelianexegeses and Avicenna’s own views by presenting arguments insupport of the latter. As Avicenna explains his title, “Idivided [in the book] scholars into two groups, the Westerners [theGreek commentarial tradition and the Baghdad Aristotelians] and theEasterners [Avicenna’s positions], and I had the Easternersargue against the Westerners until I intervened to judge fairly whenthere was a real point of dispute between them” (GS 14, 375;transl. Gutas 2014a, 145). The book was unfortunately lost during somemilitary rout, and only the commentary on Book Lambda, 6–10, ofAristotle’sMetaphysics survives (GS 11a; Geoffroy etal. 2014), along with two incomplete recensions of his commentary ontheTheology of Aristotle (GS 11b; Vajda 1951). Some marginalnotes onDe anima, surviving independently as transcribed ina manuscript, have the same approach and manifestly belong to the sameperiod and project (GS 11c; Gutas 2004b).

Independent treatises on individual subjects written by Avicenna dealwith most subjects, but especially with those for which there wasgreater demand by his sponsors and in which he was particularlyinterested, notably logic, the soul, and the metaphysics of therational soul. In an effort to reach a wider audience, he expressedhis theories on the rational soul in two allegories,Alive, Son ofAwake (Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, GM 7; Goichon1959) andThe Bird (GM 8; Heath 1990), and he versified stillothers:The Divine Pearl (al-Jumānaal-ilāhiyya) on the oneness of God and the emanated creationin 334 verses (GM 9),The Science of Logic, in verse, in 290lines (GL 4), and a number of poems on medical subjects, notably hisMedicine, in verse, in 1326 lines (GMed 27), which wascommented upon by Averroes. In addition, he engaged in protractedcorrespondence with scholars who asked or questioned him aboutspecific problems; noteworthy are hisAnswers to Questions Posedby Bīrūnī [GP 8], the other scientific genius ofhis time, on Aristotelian physics and cosmology, and especially thetwo posthumous compilations of his responses and discussionscirculating under the titlesNotes (GS 12a) andDiscussions (GS 14). He also wrote what amounts to openletters depicting the controversies in which he was involved andseeking arbitration or repudiating calumniatory charges against him(GPW 1–3).

Avicenna lived his philosophy, and his desire to communicate it beyondwhat his personal circumstances required, as an intellectual in thepublic eye, is manifest in the various compositional styles anddifferent registers of language that he used. He wrote with thepurpose of reaching all layers of (literate) society, but also with aneye to posterity. His reach was as global in its aspirations as hissystem was all-encompassing in its comprehensiveness; and history borehim out.

2. Philosophical Aims

The Autobiography, written at a time when Avicenna had reached hisphilosophical maturity, touches upon a number of issues that he feltwere highly significant in his formation as a thinker and accordinglypoint the way to his approach to philosophy and his philosophical aimsand orientation. These were, first, his understanding of the structureof philosophical knowledge (all intellectual knowledge, that is) as aunified whole, which is reflected in the classification of thesciences he studied; second, his critical evaluation of all pastscience and philosophy, as represented in his assessment of theachievements and shortcomings of previous philosophers after he hadread their books in the Samanid library, which led to the realizationthat philosophy must be updated; and third, his emphasis on havingbeen an autodidact points to the human capability of acquiring thehighest knowledge rationally by oneself, and leads to a comprehensivestudy of all functions of the rational soul and how it acquiresknowledge (epistemology) as well as to an inquiry into its origins,destination, activities, and their consequences (eschatology).Accordingly Avicenna set himself the task of presenting and writingabout philosophy as an integral whole and not piecemeal andoccasionalistically; bringing philosophy up to date; and studying howthe human soul (intellect) knows as the foundation of his theory ofknowledge, logical methodology, and the relation between the celestialand terrestrial realms, or the divine and human.

The implementation of the first task, the treatment of all philosophyas a unified whole, though historically seemingly unachievable, wasaccomplished by Avicenna almost without effort. Aristotle himselfstands at the very beginning of this process. He clearly had aconception of the unity of all philosophy, which could besystematically presented on the basis of the logical structure setforth in thePosterior Analytics (Barnes 1994, p. xii), whilehis classification of the sciences inMetaphysics E1 and K7showed what the outline of such a systematic presentation would be. Inthe polyphony of philosophical voices and systems that followed hisdeath in 322 BC and throughout the Hellenistic period (336–31BC), his suggestions went mostly unheeded by the Peripatetics and wereonly followed, at the end of that period, by Andronicus of Rhodes ifonly for the purposes of the order in which he put Aristotle’sschool treatises (his extant corpus) in his first edition of them. Insubsequent centuries, when the polyphony subsided to just two voices,of the Platonists and the Aristotelians, which eventually had to bepresented as one for political reasons (to counter the one“divine” voice of the rapidly Christianizing Roman empire,east and west), the tendency to return to the texts of the two masters(ad fontes) for their defense, which had started even beforethe domination of Christianity, intensified. Accordingly, while theclassification of the different parts of philosophy continued to bepresented as a virtual blueprint for a potential philosophical summa,the main form of philosophical discourse was the individual treatiseon one or more of related themes and, predominantly, the commentary onthe works of “divine” Plato and, by the sixth century,also “divine” Aristotle. When philosophy was resuscitatedafter a hiatus of about two centuries (ca. 600–800) with thetranslation and paraphrase, in Arabic this time, of the canonicalsource texts (Gutas 2004a), these compositional practices reappeared.But the social context in which philosophy now found itself hadchanged. The literate population in the Islamic near and farther Eastduring the early Abbasid period was favorably disposed towardphilosophy as a rational scientific system, and with the differentparts of this system—the philosophical curriculum—broadlyknown in its range if not in detail, it was possible, indeed expected,that an educated layman like Avicenna’s neighbor in Bukhara,Abū-l-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn-ʿAbdallāhal-ʿArūḍī (I give his full name because hedeserves to be noted in a history of philosophy), would be interestedto have and read a comprehensive account of the entire discipline andto commission such a work from the youthful Avicenna. Avicennacomplied, and thus was born the first philosophical summa treating ina systematic and consistent fashion within the covers of a single bookall the branches of logic and theoretical philosophy as classified inthe Aristotelian tradition. That Avicenna was able to produce such awork (and repeat it seven more times thenceforth) is of course atribute to his genius (universally acknowledged both then and now),but that the request for it should have come from his society istelling evidence of its cultural attitude regarding science.

The creation of the philosophical summa—and not only thisparticular first one for ʿArūḍī but especiallythe major work,The Cure, and the alluring and allusivePointers and Reminders—had momentous consequences. Itpresented for the first time to the world a comprehensive, unified,and internally self-consistent account of reality, along with themethodological tools wherewith to validate it (logic)—itpresented a scientific system as a worldview, difficult to resist oreven refute, given its self-validating properties. This was good forstudying philosophy and disseminating it. But by the same token, andby its very nature, this worldview so clearly presented, documented,and validated, set itself up against other ideologies in the societywith contending worldviews. Up until that time, philosophicaltreatises on discrete subjects and abstruse commentaries, the twodominant forms of philosophical discourse, as just indicated, werematters for specialists that could not and did not claim endorsementor allegiance from society as a whole; the philosophical summa did.And Avicenna who wrote in different styles and genres to reach as manypeople as possible, as also noted above, clearly intended as much. Asa result, his philosophical system dominated intellectual history inboth Shi’ite and most of Sunni Islam (Gutas 2002), and throughthe sundry reactions it elicited, it determined, and can now explain,developments not only in philosophy but also in theology andmysticism, and it generated several fields of what can be calledpara-philosophy (Gutas 2018):^[7] theology using philosophical discourse to express (or hide) Islamiccontent (the tradition of al-Ghazālī and his followers andimitators (Treiger 2011)), “philosophical” mysticism (thetradition of Ibn al-ʿArabī, who was called “theGreatest Master” [al-Shaykh al-Akbar] to rivalAvicenna’s “The Preeminent Master” [al-Shaykhal-Raʾīs]), occultism, numerology, lettrism (Saif2020).

Performance of the first task, necessarily entailed the second,bringing philosophy up to date. The philosophical knowledge thatAvicenna received was neither complete nor homogeneous. He had noaccess to the entirety of even the very lacunose information that wenow have about the philosophical movements during the 1330 yearsseparating him from Aristotle (Avicenna gives this quite accuratenumber himself), but could view the entire tradition as essentiallyAristotelian. Plato was not available in Arabic other than in briefexcerpts, in Galen’s epitomes, in gnomologies, and insecond-hand reports in Aristotle and Galen (Gutas 2012a), andaccordingly Avicenna could dismiss him. The lesser philosophicalschools of antiquity—the Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, andPythagoreans, who had ceased to exist long before lateantiquity—he knew mostly as names with certain basic views orsayings affiliated with them. Those whom we call Neoplatonists he knewas commentators of Aristotle along with the rest, and even Plotinusand Proclus were available to him in translated excerpts under thename of Aristotle, as theTheology of Aristotle andThePure Good respectively. However, both the substantive andtemporal diversity of these sources in the tradition presented graveinconsistencies and divergent tendencies, to say nothing ofanachronisms, while the surviving work even of Aristotle himselfcontained discrepancies and incomplete treatments. Furthermore, theIslamic tradition before Avicenna was not any less unhomogeneous, asit was represented by the eclectic al-Kindī and his disciples,the Aristotelians of Baghdad, and the sui generis Rhazes (of whomAvicenna thought little even as a physician). To these philosophersshould be added the philosophically sophisticated theologians of thevarious Muʿtazilite branches (one of whose most prominentrepresentatives, the judge ʿAbd-al-Jabbār, Avicenna may havemet in Ray between 1013 and 1015). Faced with this situation, Avicennaset himself the task of revising and updating philosophy, as aninternally self-consistent and complete system that accounts for allreality and is logically verifiable, by correcting errors in thetradition, deleting unsustainable arguments and theses, sharpening thefocus of others, and expanding and adding to the subjects thatdemanded discussion. An area that needed to be added most urgently inboth the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy, if all realitywas to be covered by his system, was all manifestations of religiouslife and paranormal events. As he put it, “it behooves his[Aristotle’s] successors to gather the loose ends he left,repair any breach they find in what he constructed, and supplycorollaries to fundamental principles he presented” (GS 8,2–3; transl. Gutas 2014a, 36).

Performance of this second task, in turn, entailed the third, theaccuracy and verifiability of the knowledge which would constitute thecontents of his updated philosophy. Verifiability depends on twointerdependent factors for the person doing the verification:following a productive method and having the mental apparatus toemploy that method and understand its results. The method Avicennaadopted already at the start of his career was logic, and the mentalapparatus wherewith we know involved an understanding and study of thehuman, rational soul. Thus logic and the theory of the soul as thebasis for epistemology are the two motors driving Avicenna’sphilosophy. He wrote more, and more frequently, on these two subjectsthan on anything else.

3. Logic and Empiricism

The starting point of Avicenna’s logic is that all knowledge iseither forming concepts (taṣawwur) by means ofdefinitions—i.e. in good Aristotelian fashion, realizing thegenus and specific difference of something—or acknowledging thetruth (taṣdīq) of a categorical statement by meansof syllogisms. The inspiration here is clearly the beginning ofAristotle’sPosterior Analytics (cf. Lameer 2006).Avicenna took this book seriously, following both the curriculum, inwhich this book was made the center of logical practice, andespecially his two Peripatetic predecessors in Baghdad, Abū-BishrMattā and al-Fārābī, who made it the cornerstoneof their philosophy and advertised its virtues (cf. Marmura 1990).

Acknowledging the truth of a categorical statement meant verifying it,and this could only be done by taking that statement as the conclusionof a syllogism and then constructing the syllogism that would concludeit. There being three terms in a syllogism, two of which, the minorand the major, are present in the conclusion, the syllogism that leadsto that conclusion can be constructed only if one figures out orguesses correctly what the middle term is that explains the connectionbetween the two extreme terms. In other words, if we seek to verifythe statement “A isC,” we must look fora suitableB to construct a syllogism of the form,“A isB,B isC, thereforeA isC.” The significance of the middle termis discussed in thePosterior Analytics (I.34), whereAristotle further specifies, “Acumen is a talent for hittingupon (eustochia) the middle term in an imperceptibletime” (Barnes 1994 transl.). Avicenna picked up on the veryconcept of the talent for hitting upon the middle term, literallytranslated in the Arabic version asḥads (guessingcorrectly, hitting correctly upon the answer), and made it thecornerstone of his epistemology (Gutas 2001). This theory made thecore of syllogistic verification by means of hitting upon the middleterm the one indispensable element of all certain intellectualknowledge, and it explained why people differ in their ability toapply this syllogistic method by presupposing that they possess avarying talent for it, as with all human faculties.

In essence, following this method of logical verification meant forAvicenna examining the texts of Aristotle, read in the order in whichthey are presented in the curriculum, and testing the validity ofevery paragraph. How he did this in practice, teasing out the figuresand forms of syllogisms implied in Aristotle’s texts, can beseen in numerous passages in his works. By his eighteenth year, he hadinternalized the philosophical curriculum and verified it to his ownsatisfaction as a coherent system with a logical structure thatexplains all reality.

According to the scientific view of the universe in his day which hestudied in the curriculum—Aristotelian sublunar world withPtolemaic cosmology and Neoplatonic emanationism in thesupralunar—all intelligibles (all universal concepts and theprinciples of all particulars, or as Avicenna says, “the formsof things as they are in themselves”) were the eternal object ofthought by the First principle, and then, in descending hierarchicalorder, by the intellects of the celestial spheres emanating from theFirst and ending with the active intellect (al-ʿaqlal-faʿʿāl), the intellect of the terrestrialrealm. Avicenna’s identification of hitting upon the middle termas the central element in logical analysis on the one hand establishedthat the syllogistic structure of all knowledge is also as it isthought by the celestial intellects, and on the other enabled Avicennato unify and integrate the different levels of its acquisition by thehuman intellect within a single explanatory model. As a result, hesucceeded in de-mystifying concepts like inspiration, enthusiasm,mystical vision, and prophetic revelation, explaining all as naturalfunctions of the rational soul. At the basic level there is discursivethinking in which the intellect proceeds to construct syllogisms stepby step with the aid of the internal and external senses, and acquiresthe intelligibles by hitting upon the middle terms (something which inemanationist terms—but also, though less conspicuously,Aristotelian—is described as coming into “contact”with the active intellect, to be discussed further below, notes 8 and10). At a higher level, Avicenna analyzed non-discursive thinking,which takes no time and grasps its object in a single act ofintellection, though the knowledge acquired is still structuredsyllogistically, complete with middle terms (because in its locus, theactive intellect, it is so structured) (Adamson 2004, in McGinnis(Reisman) 2004). Avicenna also discussed a facility for or habituationwith intellection, which he called direct vision or experience(mushāhada) of the intelligibles. It comes about afterprolonged engagement with intellective techniques through syllogisticmeans until the human intellect is not obstructed by the internal orexternal senses and has acquired a certain familiarity or“intimacy” with its object, “without, however, themiddle term ceasing to be present.” This kind of intellection isaccompanied by an emotive state of joy and pleasure (Gutas 2006a,b).The highest level of intellection is that of the prophet, who, onaccount of his supremely developed ability to hit upon middle terms,acquires the intelligibles “either at once or nearly so …in an order which includes the middle terms” (GS 6,273–274; transl. Gutas 2014a, 184).

This knowledge, which represents and accounts for reality and the waythings are, also corresponds, Avicenna maintains, with what is foundin books, i.e. with philosophy, or more specifically, with thephilosophical sciences as classified and taught in the Aristoteliantradition. However, the identity between absolute knowledge, in theform of the intelligibles contained in the intellects of the celestialspheres, and philosophy, as recorded in the Aristotelian tradition, isnot complete. Though Aristotelianism is the philosophical traditionmost worthy of adherence, Avicenna says, it is nevertheless notperfect, and it is the task of philosophers to correct and amplify itthrough the acquisition of further intelligibles by syllogisticprocesses. It is this understanding that enabled Avicenna to have aprogressive view of the history of philosophy and set the frameworkfor his philosophical project. For although the knowledge to beacquired, in itself and on the transcendent plane of the eternalcelestial intellects, is a closed system and hence static, on a humanlevel and in history it is evolutionary. Each philosopher, through hisown syllogistic reasoning and ability to hit correctly upon the middleterms, modifies and completes the work of his predecessors, andreaches a level of knowledge that is an ever closer approximation ofthe intelligible world, of the intelligibles as contained in theintellects of the spheres, and hence of truth itself. Avicenna wasconscious of having attained a new level in the pursuit ofphilosophical truth and its verification, but he never claimed to haveexhausted it all; in his later works he bemoaned the limitations ofhuman knowledge and urged his readers to continue with the task ofimproving philosophy and adding to the store of knowledge.

The human intellect can engage in a syllogistic process in the orderwhich includes the middle terms and which is identical with that ofthe celestial intellects for the simple reason, as Avicenna repeatedlyinsists, that both human and celestial intellects are congeneric(mujānis), immaterial substances. However, theirrespective acquisition of knowledge is different because of theirdifferent circumstances: the human intellect comes into being in anabsolutely potential state and needs its association with theperishable body in order to actualize itself, whereas the celestialintellects are related to eternal bodies and are permanently actual.Thus unfettered, their knowledge can be completely intellectivebecause they perceive and know the intelligibles from what causesthem, while the human intellect is in need of the corporeal senses,both external and internal, in order to perceive the effect of anintelligible from which it can reason syllogistically back to itscause. This makes it necessary for Avicenna to have an empiricaltheory of knowledge, according to which “the senses are themeans by which the human soul acquires different kinds of knowledge(maʿārif ),” and man’s predispositionfor the primary notions and principles of knowledge, which come to himunawares, is itself actualized by the experience of particulars (GS12a, 23; transl. and analysis in Gutas 2014b-VII, esp. pp.25–27). For human knowledge, therefore, the intellect functionsas a processor of the information provided by the external andinternal senses. It is important to realize that this is not becausethe intellect does not have the constitution to have purelyintellective knowledge, like the celestial spheres, but because itsexistence in the sublunar world of time and perishable matterprecludes its understanding the intelligibles through their causes.Instead, it must proceed to them from their perceived effects.However, once the soul has been freed of the body after death, and if,while still with the body, it has acquired the predisposition toperceive the intelligibles through philosophical training, then it canbehold the intelligibles through their causes and become just like thecelestial spheres, a state which Avicenna describes as happiness inphilosophical terms and paradise in religious.

4. The Metaphysics of the Rational Soul; Practical Philosophy

Avicenna’s rationalist empiricism is the main reason why hestrove in his philosophy on the one hand to perfect and fine-tunelogical method and on the other to study, at an unprecedented level ofsophistication and precision, the human (rational) soul and cognitiveprocesses which provide knowledge through the application of rationalempirical methods. In section after section and chapter after chapterin numerous works he analyzes not only questions of formal logic butalso the mechanics through which the rational soul acquires knowledge,and in particular the conditions operative in the process of hittingupon the middle term: how one can work for it and where to look forit, and what the apparatus and operations of the soul are that bringit about (Gutas 2001). This entailed detailed study of the operationsof the soul in its totality and in all its functions, whetherrational, animal, or vegetative. He charts in great detail theoperations of all the senses, both the five external senses andespecially the five internal senses located in the brain—commonsense, imagery (where the forms of things are stored), imagination,estimation (judging the imperceptible significance or connotations forus of sensed objects, like friendship and enmity, which also includesinstinctive sensing), and memory—and how they can help or hinderthe intellect in hitting upon the middle term and perceivingintelligibles more generally. When, at the end of all these operationsjust described, the intellect hits upon a middle term or justperceives an intelligible that it had not been thinking about before,it acquires the intelligible in question (hence the appellation ofthis stage of intellection, “acquired intellect,”al-ʿaql al-mustafād ), or, otherwise expressed,acquires it from the active intellect which thinks it eternally andatemporally since the active intellect is, in effect, the locus of allintelligibles, there being no other place for them to be always inactual existence. The human intellect can think an intelligible forsome time, but then it disappears, it being impossible for theimmaterial intellect to “store” it, or have memory of it,as opposed to the two internal senses, imagery and memory, which havea storage function for their particular objects (forms andconnotational attributes) because they have a material base in thebrain. Avicenna calls this process of acquisition or apprehension ofthe intelligibles a “contact”(ittiṣāl) between the human and active intellects.^[8] In the emanative language which he inherited from the Neoplatonictradition, and which he incorporated in his own understanding of thecosmology of the concentric spheres of the universe with theirintercommunicating intellects and souls, he referred to the flow ofknowledge from the supernal world to the human intellect as“divine effluence” (al-fayḍal-ilāhī). The reason that this is possible at all isagain the consubstantiality and congeneric nature of all intellects,human and celestial alike. Only, as already mentioned, because oftheir varied circumstances, the latter think of the intelligiblesdirectly, permanently, and atemporally, while the human intellect hasto advance from potentiality to actuality in time by technical meansleading to the discovery of the middle term as it is assisted by allthe other faculties of the soul and body.

The wording itself of this acquisition of knowledge by the humanintellect—“contact with the active intellect,” orreceiving the “divine effluence”—has misled studentsof Avicenna into thinking that this “flow” of knowledgefrom the divine to the human intellect is automatic and due toGod’s grace, or it is ineffable and mystical. But this isgroundless; the “flow” has nothing mystical about it; itjust means that the intelligibles are permanently available to humanintellects who seek a middle term or other intelligibles at the end ofa thinking process by means of abstraction and syllogisms. Avicenna isquite explicit about the need for the human intellect to be preparedand to demand to hit upon a middle term, or actively to seek anintelligible, in order to receive it. He says specifically, “Theactive principle [i.e. the active intellect] lets flow upon the [humanrational] soul form after formin accordance with the demand bythe soul; and when the soul turns away from it [the activeintellect], then the effluence is broken off” (GS 5, De anima,245–246; transl. Gutas 2014a, 377; cf. Hasse 2013, 118).

The same applies to other forms of communication from the supernalworld. In the case of the prophet, he acquires all the intelligiblescomprising knowledge, complete with middle terms as already mentioned,because the intellective capacity of his rational soul to hit upon themiddle terms and acquire the intelligibles is extraordinarily high;this capacity is coupled with an equally highly developed internalsense of imagination that can translate this intellective knowledgeinto language and images (in the form of a revealed book) that thevast majority of humans can easily understand. But in addition tointelligible knowledge, the divine effluence from the intellects andthe souls of the celestial spheres also includes information aboutevents on earth, past, present, and future—what Avicenna calls“the unseen” (al-ghayb)—, for all of whichthe intellects and souls of the celestial spheres are directlyresponsible. This information can also be received by humans invarious forms—as waking or sleeping dreams, as visions, asmessages to soothsayers—depending on the level of the humoralequilibrium of the recipient, the proper functioning of his internaland external senses, and the readiness of his intellect. Somebodywhose internal sense of imagination or estimation is overactive, forexample, may be hindered thereby in the clear reception of dreamimages so that his dreams would require interpretation, while someoneelse not so afflicted may get clearer messages; or a soothsayer whowishes to receive information about the future has to run long andhard in order to bring about such a humoral equilibrium through theexertion, thereby preparing his intellect to receive the message.

The logistics of the reception of information from the supernal worldthus varies in accordance with what is being communicated and who isreceiving it, but in all cases the recipient has to be ready andpredisposed to receive it. All humans have both the physical andmental apparatus to acquire intelligible and supernal knowledge andthe means to do so, but they have to work for it, just as they have toprepare for their bliss in afterlife while their immortal rationalsouls are still affiliated with the body. There is no free emanationof the intelligibles on “couch-potato” humans, orafterlife contemplation for them of eternal realities in the companyof the celestial spheres (Avicenna’s paradise). To have thoughtso would have negated the entire philosophical project Avicenna sopainstakingly constructed.

This analysis and understanding of the rational soul, preciselyelaborated on the basis of the Aristotelian theory but also going muchbeyond it, enable Avicenna to engage systematically primarily with allaspects of religion, cognitive and social alike, and secondarily withwhat we would call paranormal phenomena (prognostication of thefuture, telekinesis, evil eye, etc.). All issues relating to thecognitive side of religion he added to the traditional contents ofmetaphysics, and those relating to the social side he added to thepractical sciences. In the former case he created a veritablemetaphysics of the rational soul (Gutas 2012b), which he added to thetraditional treatment of metaphysics (being as such, first philosophy,natural theology) as an additional subject, called“theological” (al-ʿilm al-ilāhī,al-ṣināʿa al-ilāhiyya). Its contents can beseen in his extensive treatment of it all at the end of themetaphysics part ofThe Cure, as follows.

Book 9, Chapter 7: Destination of the rational soul in the afterlifeand its bliss and misery; real happiness is the perfection of therational soul through knowledge.

Book 10, Chapter 1: Celestial effects on the world: inspiration,dreams, prayer, celestial punishment, prophecy, astrology.

On the social side of religion, he added a fourth subdivision topractical philosophy (in addition to ethics, household management, andpolitics) which he called “the discipline of legislating”(al-ṣināʿa al-shāriʿa, Kaya 2012;Kaya 2014; Gutas 2014a, 470–471, 497). As mentioned above, theprophet, through his supremely developed ability to hit upon themiddle of terms of syllogisms, acquires all knowledge (all theintelligibles actually thought by the active intellect) “eitherat once or nearly so.” This acquisition “is not anuncritical reception [of this knowledge] merely on authority, butrather occurs in an order which includes the middle terms: for beliefsaccepted on authority concerning those things which are known onlythrough their causes possess no intellectual certainty” (GS 5,De anima, 249–250; transl. Gutas 2014a, 183–184). Withthis secure and syllogistically verified knowledge, the prophet thenis in a position to legislate and regulate social life as well as havea legitimate ground for gaining consent. The subjects of all parts ofpractical philosophy are covered briefly also at the very end ofThe Cure, as follows:

Book 10, Chapter 2: Proof of prophecy on the basis of the need forlaws, to be enacted by the prophet legislator, in order to regulatesocial life which is necessary for human survival.

Chapter 3: Acts of worship as reminders of the afterlife and asexercises predisposing the rational soul to engage in intellection(cf. Gutas 2014a, 206–208).

Chapter 4: Household management.

Chapter 5: Politics (the caliphate and legislation); ethics.

For further reading, see the entries onIbn Sina’s metaphysics andIbn Sina’s natural philosophy.

5. Conclusion

Avicenna synthesized the various strands of philosophical thought heinherited—the surviving Hellenic traditions along with thedevelopments in philosophy and theology within Islam—into aself-consistent scientific system that explained all reality. Hisscientific edifice rested on Aristotelian physics and metaphysicscapped with Neoplatonic emanationism in the context of Ptolemaiccosmology, all revised, re-thought, and critically re-assessed by him.His achievement consisted in his harmonization of the disparate partsinto a rational whole, and particularly in bringing the sublunar andsupralunar worlds into an intelligible relation for which he arguedlogically. The system was therefore both a research program and aworldview.

Aristotelian ethics provided the foundation of the edifice. Theimperative to know, and to know rationally, which is the motivationbehind Avicenna’s conception and then realization of hisscientific system, is based on Aristotle’s concept of happinessas the activity of that which differentiates humans from all otherorganic life, of the mind (Nicomachean Ethics X.7,1177b19–25): “the activity of the intellect is thought tobe distinguished by hard work (spoudê, ijtihād),since it employs theory, and it does not desire to have any other endat all except itself; and it has its proper pleasure ….Complete happiness (eudaimonia, saʿāda) is this.”^[9] Avicenna subscribed fully to this view of human happiness in thisworld, and extended it to make it also the basis for happiness in thenext—as a matter of fact, he made it a prerequisite forhappiness in the next. Only the contemplative life while in the bodyprepares the intellect, which has to use the corporeal external andinternal senses to acquire knowledge and gain the predisposition forthinking the intelligibles, for the contemplative life after death. Inunderstanding the goal of human life in this manner Avicenna was againbeing true to the Aristotelian view of divine happiness as theidentity of thinker, thinking, and thought (MetaphysicsXII.7, 1072b18–26). Using the words of Aristotle, Avicennaparaphrases this passage as follows: “As for the foremost‘understanding (noêsis, fahm) in itself, it is ofwhat is best in itself;’ and as for ‘what understandsitself, it is’ the substance ‘of the intellect as itacquires the intelligible, because it becomes intelligible’right away just as if ‘it touches it,’ for example.‘And the intellect,’ that which intellects, ‘and theintelligible are one and the same’ with regard to the essence ofthe thing as it relates to itself…. ‘And if thedeity<’s state> is always like the state in which wesometimes are, then this is marvelous; and if it is more, then it iseven more marvelous’” (Geoffroy et al. 2014, 59).^[10]

There is thus a deeply ethical aspect to Avicenna’sphilosophical system. The core conception was the life of the rationalsoul: because our theoretical intellects—our selves—areconsubstantial with the celestial intellects, it is our cosmic duty toenable our intellects to reach their full potential and behave likethe celestial ones, that is, think the intelligibles (cf. Lizzini2009). And because we (i.e. our essential core which identifies us andsurvives, our rational souls) are given a body and our materialityhampers our unencumbered intellection like that enjoyed by the Firstand the other celestial beings, we have to tend to the body by allmeans, behavioral (religious practices, ethical conduct) andpharmacological, to bring its humoral temperament to a level ofequilibrium that will help the function of the intellect in this lifeand prepare it for unimpeded and continuous intellection, like that ofthe deity, in the next. This is humanist ethics dictated by ascientific view of the world.

Bibliography

Apart from the references in the text, the bibliography also listsseveral recent studies on Avicenna along with some reference works.For a full list of Avicenna’s works in Arabic and Persian, theireditions, translations, and studies, see the inventory in Gutas 2014a,also for further bibliography.

Works by Ibn Sina

Secondary Sources

• Adamson, P., 2004, “Non-Discursive Thought inAvicenna’s Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle,” inInterpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in MedievalIslam, J. McGinnis (ed.), Leiden: Brill, pp. 87–111.
• –––, (ed.), 2013,Interpreting Avicenna.Critical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2023,Ibn Sina (Avicenna): A Very ShortIntroduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Akasoy, A., and A. Fidora, 2005,The Arabic Version ofthe Nicomachean Ethics, Leiden: Brill.
• Alpina, T., 2021,Subject, Definition, Activity. FramingAvicenna’s Science of the Soul, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
• Badawī, ʿA., 1947,Arisṭū ʿindal-ʿArab, Cairo: Maktabat an-nahḍaal-miṣriyya.
• Barnes, J., 1994,Aristotle. Posterior Analytics, Oxford:Clarendon Press.
• Bertolacci, A., 2006,The Reception of Aristotle’sMetaphysicsin Avicenna’s Kitābal-Šifāʾ, Leiden: Brill.
• –––, 2007,Libro della Guarigione. Le cosedivine di Avicenna, Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese.
• Biesterfeldt, H.H., 2000. “Medieval Arabic Encyclopedias ofScience and Philosophy,” inThe Medieval HebrewEncyclopedias of Science and Philosophy, S. Harvey (ed.), Boston:Kluwer, pp. 77–98.
• –––, 2002, “Arabisch-islamischeEnzyklopädien: Formen und Funktionen,” inDieEnzyklopädie im Mittelalter vom Hochmittelalter bis zurfrühen Neuzeit, Ch. Meier (ed.), München: Wilhelm Fink,pp. 43–83.
• Eichner, H., 2009,The Post-Avicennian Philosophical Traditionand Islamic Orthodoxy: Philosophical and Theological Summae inContext, unpublished professorial dissertation(Habilitationsschrift), Halle.
• Geoffroy et al., 2014,Commentaire sur le Livre Lambda dela Métaphysiqued’Aristote (Chapitres6–10) par Ibn Sīnā (Avicenne), M. Geoffroy, J.Janssens, and M. Sebti (eds.), Paris: Vrin.
• Gohlman, W.E., 1974,The Life of Ibn Sina, Albany, NY:SUNY Press.
• Goichon, A.-M., 1938,Lexique de la langue philosophiqued’Ibn Sīnā, Paris: Desclée deBrouwer.
• –––, 1939,Vocabulaires comparésd’Aristote et d’Ibn Sīnā, Paris:Desclée de Brouwer.
• –––, 1951,Ibn Sīnā (Avicenne).Livre des directives et remarques, Paris: Vrin
• –––, 1959,Le récit de Ḥayy ibnYaqẓān commenté par des textesd’Avicenne. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.
• Gutas, D., 1987–88, “Avicenna’sMaḏhab, With an Appendix on the Question of His Date ofBirth,”Quaderni di Studi Arabi, 5–6:323–36; repr. in Gutas 2014b-II.
• –––, 1998,Greek Thought, ArabicCulture, London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2000, “Avicenna’s Eastern(‘Oriental’) Philosophy: Nature, Contents,Transmission,”Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 10:159‑180.
• –––, 2001, “Intuition and Thinking: TheEvolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology,”Princeton Papers. Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle EasternStudies, 9: 1‑38; repr. inAspects of Avicenna, R.Wisnovsky (ed.), Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2001, pp. 1‑38.
• –––, 2002, “The Heritage of Avicenna: TheGolden Age of Arabic Philosophy, 1000 ‑ ca. 1350,” inJanssens and De Smet 2002: 81–97.
• –––, 2004a, “Geometry and the Rebirth ofPhilosophy in Arabic with al‑Kindī,” inWords,Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, Studies …Dedicated to Gerhard Endress on his Sixty‑fifth Birthday,ed. R. Arnzen and J. Thielmann, 195–209. Leuven: Peeters.
• –––, 2004b, “Avicenna’s MarginalGlosses onDe anima and the Greek CommentatorialTradition,” inPhilosophy Science & Exegesis in Greek,Arabic & Latin Commentaries, ed. P. Adamson, H. Baltussen,and M.W.F. Stone, II,77–88, London: Bulletin of the Institute ofClassical Studies Supplement 83.2.
• –––, 2006a, “Intellect Without Limits: TheAbsence of Mysticism in Avicenna,” inIntellect etimagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale(Actes du XI^e Congrès International dePhilosophie Médiévale de la S.I.E.P.M., Porto, du26 au 31 août 2002), M. C. Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos (eds.),Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 351–372; repr. in Gutas 2014b, articleXII.
• –––, 2006b, “Imagination andTranscendental Knowledge in Avicenna,” inArabic Theology,Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration ofRichard M. Frank, J.E. Montgomery (ed.,), Leuven: Peters, pp.337–354; repr. in Gutas 2014b, article XI.
• –––, 2010, “Origins in Baghdad,” inThe Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, R. Pasnau(ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–25
• –––, 2012a, “Platon. TraditionArabe,” inDictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, R.Goulet (ed.), Paris: CNRS.
• –––, 2012b, “Avicenna: The Metaphysics ofthe Rational Soul,”Muslim World, 102:417–425.
• –––, 2014a,Avicenna and the AristotelianTradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s PhilosophicalWorks, second, revised and enlarged edition, Leiden: E.J.Brill.
• –––, 2014b,Orientations of Avicenna’sPhilosophy, Ashgate/Variorum: Surrey/Burlington.
• –––, 2014b-I, “Avicenna: Biography,”in Gutas 2014b, article I.
• –––, 2014b-VII, “The Empiricism ofAvicenna,” in Gutas 2014b, article VII.
• –––, 2015, “The Author as Pioneer[ingGenius]: Graeco-Arabic Philosophical Autobiographies and theParadigmatic Ego,” inConcepts of Authorship in Pre-ModernArabic Texts, L. Behzadi and J. Hameen-Anttila (eds.), Bamberg:University of Bamberg Press, pp. 47–62
• –––, 2018, “Avicenna and After: TheDevelopment of Paraphilosophy. A History of Science Approach,”in Abdelkader Al Ghouz (ed.),Islamic Philosophy from the 12th to the14th Century (Mamluk Studies 20), Bonn: Bonn University Press /Göttingen: V&R unipress, pp. 19–71.
• –––, 2022, “Ittiṣāl, Contact, of theHuman and Supernal Intellects in Avicenna: The Goal of Ethics, theFoundation of Epistemology,” in Daniel De Smet and Meryem Sebti(eds.),Penser avec Avicenne. De l’héritage grec à la réceptionlatine, en hommage à Jules Janssens, Leuven: Peeters, pp.169–178.
• Hasse, D.N., 2013, “Avicenna’s EpistemologicalOptimism,” in Adamson 2013, pp. 109–119.
• Hasse, D.N., and A. Bertolacci (eds.), 2012,The Arabic,Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics[Scientia Graeco-Arabica 7], Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Heath, P., 1990, “Disorientation and Reorientation in IbnSina’sEpistle of the Bird: A Reading,” inIntellectual Studies on Islam. Essays written in honor of MartinB. Dickson, Michel M. Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen, eds., SaltLake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, pp. 163–183.
• Inati, S.C., 1984,Ibn Sīnā,Remarks andAdmonitions. Part One: Logic,Toronto: Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies.
• –––, 1996,Ibn Sīnā and Mysticism.Remarks and Admonitions: Part Four, London and New York: KeganPaul International.
• –––, 2014,Ibn Sina’s Remarks andAdmonitions: Physics and Metaphysics, New York: Columbia UniversityPress.
• Janssens, J., 1991,An Annotated Bibliography on IbnSînâ (1970–1989), Leuven: Leuven UniversityPress.
• –––, 1999,An Annotated Bibliography on IbnSīnā: First Supplement (1990–1994),Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale desInstituts d’Études Médiévales.
• –––, 2006,Ibn Sīnā and HisInfluence on the Arabic and Latin World [Variorum CollectedStudies 843], Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate.
• Janssens, J., and D. De Smet (eds.), 2002,Avicenna and HisHeritage, Leuven: Leuven University Press.
• Kaya, M.C., 2012, “Prophetic Legislation: Avicenna’sView of Practical Philosophy Revisited,” inPhilosophy andthe Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics andEpistemology, T. Kirby, R. Acar, and B. Baş, eds., Newcastleupon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 205–223.
• –––, 2014, “In the Shadow of”Prophetic Legislation“: The Venture of PracticalPhilosophy after Avicenna,”Arabic Sciences andPhilosophy, 24: 269–296.
• Kaukua, J., 2020, “Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy –A Contradiction in Terms?”Nazariyat, 6(2): 1–21.doi:10.12658/Nazariyat.6.2.M0110en
• Lameer, J., 2006,Conception and Belief in Ṣadral-Dīn Shīrāzī (ca 1571–1635), Tehran:Iranian Institute of Philosophy.
• Langermann, T., 2009,Avicenna and His Legacy. A Golden Age ofScience and Philosophy, Turnhout: Brepols.
• Lizzini, O., 2009, “Vie active, vie contemplative etphilosophie chez Avicenne,” inVie active et viecontemplative au Moyen Âge et au seuil de la Renaissance,Ch. Trottmann (ed.), Rome: École Française de Rome, pp.207–239.
• Mahdavī, Y., 1954,Fehrest-e nosḫahā-yemoṣannafāt-e Ebn-e Sīnā, Tehran:Dānešgāh-e Tehrān, 1333Š.
• Marmura, M.E., 1990, “The Fortuna of thePosteriorAnalytics in the Arabic Middle Ages,” inKnowledge andthe Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, M. Asztalos, J.E. Murdoch,I. Niiniluoto (eds.), Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica, v. I, pp.85–103; repr. in Marmura 2005: 355–373.
• –––, 2005,Probing in IslamicPhilosophy, Binghamton, N.Y.: Global Academic Publishing.
• McGinnis, J., with the assistance of D.C. Reisman, 2004,Interpreting Avicenna:Science and Philosophy in MedievalIslam, Leiden: Brill.
• McGinnis, J., 2009,Avicenna. The Physics of The Healing,Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
• –––, 2010,Avicenna, Oxford, New York:Oxford University Press.
• Michot, Yahya (Jean R.), 1986,La destinée del’homme selon Avicenne. Le retour à Dieu(ma‘ād) et l’imagination, Leuven: Peeters.
• –––, 2000,Ibn Sînâ. Lettre auvizir Abû Sa‘d. Editio princeps d’après lemanuscrit de Bursa, traduction de l’arabe, introduction, noteset lexique [Sagesses musulmanes 4], Beirut/Paris: Al-Bouraq.
• Nikfahm-Khubravan, S., 2025, Avicenna’s Addendum to HisRecension of Ptolemy’s ›Almagest‹, Berlin, Boston: DeGruyter.
• Reisman, D.C., 2002,The Making of the Avicennan Tradition:The Transmission, Contents, and Structure of IbnSīnā’s al-Mubāḥaṯāt (TheDiscussions), Leiden: Brill.
• –––, 2004, “The Pseudo-Avicennan Corpus,I: Methodological Considerations,” in McGinnis with Reisman2004, pp. 3–21.
• –––, 2010, “The Ps.-Avicenna Corpus II:The Ṣūfistic Turn,” inDocumenti e Studi sullaTradizione Filosofica Medievale, 21: 243–258.
• –––, 2013, “The Life and Times ofAvicenna. Patronage and Learning in Medieval Islam,” in Adamson2013, pp. 7–27.
• Saif, L., F. Leoni, M. Melvin-Koushki, and F. Yahya (eds.), 2020,Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice, Leiden:Brill.
• Swain, S., 2013,Economy, Family, and Society from Rome toIslam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Treiger, A. 2011.Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought.Al-Ghazālī’s Theory of Mystical Cognition and ItsAvicennian Foundation, London: Routledge.
• Vajda, G., 1951, “Les notes d’Avicenne sur la«Théologie d’Aristote»,”RevueThomiste, 51: 346–406.
• Wisnovsky, R., 2013, “Avicenna’s IslamicReception,” in Adamson 2013, pp. 190–213.

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

[Please contact the author with suggestions.]

Related Entries

Arabic and Islamic Philosophy, historical and methodological topics in: Greek sources |Ibn Sina [Avicenna]: logic |Ibn Sina [Avicenna]: metaphysics |Ibn Sina [Avicenna]: natural philosophy