Avicenna

The concept of time, its existence, ontology, and epistemology are considered as a pivotal philosophical issue from the ancient Greek time up to now. Aristotle explicitly deals with this subject. His notion of time can be also seen in Avicenna’s writings. This point have arisen many questions and discussions concerning that whether Avicenna as a commentator of Aristotle simply narrates Aristotle’s view, or he elaborates and develops Aristotle’s idea and presents his own view. The aim of this paper is to study this issue and discuss about the viewpoints of some Muslim scholars who believe that Avicenna’s idea is not fundamentally different from that of Aristotle. In addition, we study the viewpoints of those who believe that although Avicenna uses the same structure as Aristotle did, his specific considerations make his theory of time distinctive. The paper elaborates that, in some senses, there are at least two differences between these two philosophers: regarding the derivative / non-derivative conceptions of time, and regarding the divisibility / indivisibility of time.

This article reviews the commentary tradition around the Metaphysicsof Avicenna’s Shifā’as it evolved in the lands that belonged to Avicenna’s own cultural horizon, most of all in Iran. From this overview it emerges that this tradition is characterized by a keen interest  in textual criticism and a solid philosophical grasp of Avicenna’s metaphysical doctrines. This interest is reflected in the variety of writings that this tradition produced. The scope and quality of the surviving material are such that any future edition of Avicenna’s opus majorwill have to give this tradition its fullest consideration.

According to Muslim logicians, the quantifier, in categorical logic, shows the quantity of the individuals of the subject in a statement; so its place is before the subject. Hence, if it comes before the predicate there arises some deviation in the main form of the statement, and such a statement is called a "deviant statement" (al-qaḍiyah al-munḥarifah). In modern logic, by contrast, the main characteristic of a predicate is being general or unsaturated and since a predicate has a propositional function, i.e. has free variables (or arguments), it can or should be quantified; hence, putting the quantifier before the predicate is consistent with the conditions and rules on constructing a well formed statement. Among contemporary logicians Hamilton is famous for his claim that predicates should also be quantified just like subjects. The viewpoints of Muslim and modern logicians, concerning the place of the quantifier in a statement, seems to be conflicted. Among Muslim logicians, Avicenna is the one who considers no problem in using such statements, although he calls them “deviant”, and gives an explanation and analysis for them. In this paper, I have examined these views and shown that the conflict may be superfluous if Muslim logicians’ approach to predicates is extensional, which, of course, can hardly be attributed to them<em>.</em>

In different parts of Metaphysics , Aristotle presents different (and apparently, conflicting) views on the nature and subject matter of the discipline in question. These different characterizations led to wide-ranging interpretations of the relation between metaphysics and philosophical theology. Muslim Philosophers adopted two different views. Al-Kindi and al-Farabi (in some of his works) endorsed the view that metaphysics is the same as theology as far as its subject matter is the First Cause (God) and it deals essentially with incorporeal entities. After Avicenna, however, a second view became dominant according to which metaphysics has a broader realm that embraces theology as its most noble part. The rationale behind this view is that the subject matter of metaphysics is “being qua being”, or unconditioned existent, in its broad sense so that philosophical theology can be taken as discussing some of the proper accidents of the unconditioned existent. This view requires that metaphysics cannot be a secular discipline and should be totally consistent with theology. It also provides us with a certain interpretation of what is usually called “Islamic philosophy.”

In Avicenna’s view, the practical intellect plays a basic and foundational role in producing moral action. By investigating this notion in the framework of Avicenna’s philosophy, we find that he regards perception and cognition as the main functions of the practical intellect. However, he considers this perception as particular, introducing it as different from the particularity of imaginary and estimative cognitions (animal perceptive faculties). This difference makes the action produced by an animal essentially different from the action produced by the practical intellect. This view, however, is contrary to the views of some other philosophers and theologians who disagree with him on the perceptive function of the practical intellect and maintain just a motivational function for it. In addition, Avicenna enumerates the following as other roles of the practical intellect in producing moral action: motivational and incentive function; dominance over motivational and inclinative (to or against) faculties, etc and being served by them; serving the speculative intellect and purifying, completing and refining the speculative intellect in the realm of the practical intellect. Many other points have also been mentioned in this regard within this article. Overall, the central role of the practical intellect in producing moral action in Avicenna’s view gives rise to other discussions regarding moral action as well, in a way that those discussions are based on, or lead to it directly or indirectly.

During the last centuries, great religious traditions as well as prominent philosophical and theological schools have been facing the so-called "problem of evil" and trying to solve it in a reasonable and convincing way. This paper seeks to explore Muslim philosophers' approach to the problem and examine their proposed solutions for it. After the main versions of the problem in Islamic philosophy are briefly sketched, the author explains its view about the non-existential nature of evil. At this stage, he discusses the challenge of "apprehensional evil" and three reactions to it. Then he turns to three main solutions proposed by Muslim philosophers in order to meet three versions of the problem of evil, i.e., the problem of evils and God's decree, the problem of creation-dualism and the problem of evils and Divine wisdom.

The nature and existence of time is a major issue in Islamic philosophy. Avicenna is a philosopher who presented various discussions of the problem in different works, trying to explain the problem of time and its relation with other things such as motion and distance ( masāfat ). In his major philosophical books, Remarks and Admonitions(al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt) , The Book of Healing (al-Shifāʾ) , and The Book of Salvation(al-Najāt) , Avicenna examines and explains the nature and manner of existence of time, but he does not isolate the theological consequences of his account. An account of such consequences can reveal his view of the matter. In fact, it is essential to see how definitions of time would affect views of theological problems, as it can clarify the intellectual-philosophical system of philosophers. In this article, I draw on the analytic-descriptive method to offer an accurate picture of the nature and existence of time in Avicenna’s view, and then explicate the consequences of that definition for theological problems. I argue that Avicenna’s account of time has four consequences: (1) time’s pre-eternity is evidence of God’s pre-eternity, (2) time’s post-eternity is evidence of the post-eternity of the necessary existence, (3) the relation between God and time is possible only through the existence of intermediaries, and (4) the essential incipience of time implies the eternality of God’s grace.

Subscribing to the principles of logically valid reasoning and parsimony of presuppositions in the framework of a religion that hinges on a revealed eschatological message, the medieval Islamic philosophers were bound to interpret the Qurʾānic account of the afterlife in ways that may have compromised at least some of its literal meanings. However, to what extent precisely do these interpretations go against the grain of Revelation has to be determined separately in each particular case. Wholesale statements regarding the alleged coherence or incoherence of general types of philosophical theories with Revelation risk neglecting important variations between theories, and thereby rendering us blind to the scope of possibilities in the concepts involved. From this perspective, I will consider the eschatological implications of the psychological theories of Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā, who both subscribe to a dualistic view of human being and consequently claim that the afterlife does not concern one's body. Two questions will then emerge as especially central to dualistic accounts of the afterlife. (1) How do we make sense of the kind of first-personality that must be an irreducible constituent of existence in the hereafter, provided that the latter fulfills the eschatological promise given in the Revelation? For in order to be a justified reward or punishment for my acts in this life, the afterlife must be in an equally strong sense mine. In the Arabic Peripatetic tradition, many of the central doctrines of which Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā subscribe to, individuality entails materiality, which seems to suggest that human being can have a distinctly first-personal existence only when some kind of connection is preserved to the body as the necessary condition of one's individuation. (2) How do we account for the emphatically sensual descriptions of the hereafter in the Revelation? Again, in the Peripatetic tradition all cognitive acts that involve objects with sensible characteristics require bodily instruments of cognition, in the absence of which the revealed account is in danger of becoming a mere metaphor. In the light of these two questions, I will argue that Avicenna's dualism ends up with a rather narrow conception of the afterlife. He does try to give an account of a genuinely first-personal afterlife, and thereby presents a carefully argued departure from the Peripatetic tradition. But because of the way in which Avicenna separates the soul from the body, Avicennian afterlife is bound to remain exclusively intellectual. Thus, with regard to the second question Avicenna seems forced to interpret the Revelation in almost exclusively metaphorical terms. On the other hand, while following Avicenna in the first question, Mullā Ṣadrā conceives of the separate existence of the human soul in much broader terms than his predecessor. By means of the concepts of mental existence ( wujud dhihniyy ) and the world of images ( 'ālam al-mithāl ), he ends up with a conception of human afterlife that is rich in terms of experiential content, and thereby potentially more coherent with the revealed account.

Continuing the path of Neo-Platonic philosophers and Farabi, while accepting the framework of the Greek thought in reaching the truth of the beings in the universe through the rational knowledge in the framework of Aristotelian logics, Avicenna has attempted to present a certain interpretation of some fundamental concepts of the Greek thought and offer a metaphysics with quite rational and argumentative results as well as a rational interpretation for some of the principal concepts of the Quranic thought in the Islamic world, a metaphysics that can be called the essential Greek-Islamic rational system. The present article attempts to use an analytical-explanatory method to prove that, firstly, Avicenna accepts the Greek rational thinking method in reaching the truth of the beings, calling it the certitude wisdom and knowledge. And – in line with Aristotle – he introduces the man’s sensory faculty as the starting point for the path of acquiring certitude knowledge, through which he reaches the rational knowledge of the beings. Secondly, it states the most important axes of Avicenna’s philosophy in his legal reasoning reading of principles of Aristotelian thought.

Predication is one of the significant issues in Islamic philosophical logic. “Essential Primary Predication” (al-ḥaml al-awwalī al-dhātī) is a new type of predication found mainly in late Islamic philosophers. The historical background of this predication is one of the controversial topics among post-Ṣadrīan thinkers, but it seems that it must be sought in Avicenna’s discussions on the meaning of predication. To show this, I will focus on two fragments in which Avicenna talks about the meaning of predication; one in al-Ishārāt wa al-Tanbīhāt (Pointers and Reminders) and the other in Manṭiq al-Mashriqīyyīn (The Logic of the Easterners). In Ishārāt, we read that in a proposition like “A is B”, what we mean is that “What is A is B”, not that “The ḥaqīqa of A is the ḥaqīqa of B”.

The principle of causality is one of the most fundamental principles that has been discovered in the history of philosophy and science. Several foundations revolve around this concept. The importance of this principle in classical physics lies in giving physicists the ability to predict phenomena. Furthermore, due to causality is recognized as a fundamental principle in classical physics. With the introduction of the principle of uncertainty, the principle of causality is empirically called into question. Because the claim of the principle of uncertainty in quantum mechanics is that the relationships between fundamental particles are not causally related to each other, and even the behavior of an electron or a subatomic particle is not based on the principle of causality. If we want to identify the speed of particles, we will not be able to identify their state, and if we want to determine their state, we will not be able to identify their speed. The best way to resolve this conflict is to bring the discussion into philosophy, which is exactly what has been done in Islamic philosophy. The concept of causality in Western philosophy seems to be based on Newtonian concepts. But what has been stated in Islamic philosophy is based on metaphysical concepts, and therefore the principle of uncertainty cannot contradict the concept of causality in Islamic philosophy, especially what has been discussed in the philosophy of Avicenna and Allameh Tabataba'i.