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Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (c. 980—1037)
Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina is better known in
Europe by the Latinized name “Avicenna.” He is
probably the most significant philosopher in
the Islamic tradition and arguably the most
influential philosopher of the pre-modern era.
Born in Afshana near Bukhara in Central Asia in
about 980, he is best known as a polymath, as
a physician whose major work the Canon (al-
Qanun fi’l-Tibb) continued to be taught as a medical textbook in
Europe and in the Islamic world until the early modern period, and as
a philosopher whose major summa the Cure (al-Shifa’) had a
decisive impact upon European scholasticism and especially upon
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Primarily a metaphysical philosopher of
being who was concerned with understanding the self’s existence in
this world in relation to its contingency, Ibn Sina’s philosophy is an
attempt to construct a coherent and comprehensive system that
accords with the religious exigencies of Muslim culture. As such, he
may be considered to be the first major Islamic philosopher. The
philosophical space that he articulates for God as the Necessary
Existence lays the foundation for his theories of the soul, intellect
and cosmos. Furthermore, he articulated a development in the
philosophical enterprise in classical Islam away from the apologetic
concerns for establishing the relationship between religion and
philosophy towards an attempt to make philosophical sense of key
religious doctrines and even analyse and interpret the Qur’an. Late
20th century studies have attempted to locate him within the
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 Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. His relationship with the
latter is ambivalent: although accepting some keys aspects such as
an emanationist cosmology, he rejected Neoplatonic epistemology
and the theory of the pre-existent soul. However, his metaphysics
owes much to the “Amonnian” synthesis of the later commentators
on Aristotle and discussions in legal theory and kalam on meaning,
signification and being. Apart from philosophy, Avicenna’s other
contributions lie in the fields of medicine, the natural sciences,
musical theory, and mathematics. In the Islamic sciences (‘ulum), he
wrote a series of short commentaries on selected Qur’anic verses
and chapters that reveal a trained philosopher’s hermeneutical
method and attempt to come to terms with revelation. He also wrote
some literary allegories about whose philosophical value 20th and
21st century scholarship is vehemently at odds.

His influence in medieval Europe spread through the translations of

his works first undertaken in Spain. In the Islamic world, his impact
was immediate and led to what Michot has called “la pandémie
avicennienne.” When al-Ghazali led the theological attack upon the
heresies of the philosophers, he singled out Avicenna, and a
generation later when the Shahrastani gave an account of the
doctrines of the philosophers of Islam, he relied upon the work of
Avicenna, whose metaphysics he later attempted to refute in his
Struggling against the Philosophers (Musari‘at al-falasifa). Avicennan
metaphysics became the foundation for discussions of Islamic
philosophy and philosophical theology. In the early modern period in
Iran, his metaphysical positions began to be displayed by a creative
modification that they underwent due to the thinkers of the school of
Isfahan, in particular Mulla Sadra (d. 1641).

Table of Contents

1. Life and Times

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 2. Works
3. Avicenna Latinus
4. Logic
5. Ontology
6. Epistemology
7. Psychology
8. Mysticism and Oriental Philosophy
9. The Avicennan Tradition and His Legacy
10. References and Further Reading
1. The Latin Avicenna (mainly sections of al-Shifa’)
2. Studies in Avicenna Latinus
3. Selected Works of Avicenna Available in European
Language Translation
4. General Introductions to Avicenna and His Thought
5. Collections and Bibliographies
6. Interpretations
7. Avicenna’s Oriental Philosophy
8. Metaphysics
9. On Pyschology
10. Existence-Essence

1. Life and Times

Sources on his life range from his autobiography, written at the
behest of his disciple ‘Abd al-Wahid Juzjani, his private
correspondence, including the collection of philosophical epistles
exchanged with his disciples and known as al-Mubahathat (The
Discussions), to legends and doxographical views embedded in the
‘histories of philosophy’ of medieval Islam such as Ibn al-Qifti’s
Ta’rikh al-hukama (History of the Philosophers) and Zahir al-Din
Bayhaqi’s Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma. However, much of this material
ought to be carefully examined and critically evaluated. Gutas has
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 argued that the autobiography is a literary device to represent
Avicenna as a philosopher who acquired knowledge of all the
philosophical sciences through study and intuition (al-hads), a
cornerstone of his epistemological theory. Thus the autobiography is
an attempt to demonstrate that humans can achieve the highest
knowledge through intuition. The text is a key to understanding
Avicenna’s view of philosophy: we are told that he only understood
the purpose of Aristotle’s Metaphysics after reading al-Farabi’s short
treatise on it, and that often when he failed to understand a problem
or solve the syllogism, he would resort to prayer in the mosque (and
drinking wine at times) to receive the inspiration to understand – the
doctrine of intuition. We will return to his epistemology later but first
what can we say about his life?

Avicenna was born in around 980 in Afshana, a village near Bukhara

in Transoxiana. His father, who may have been Ismaili, was a local
Samanid governor. At an early age, his family moved to Bukhara
where he studied Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh) with Isma‘il Zahid (d.
1012) and medicine with a number of teachers. This training and the
excellent library of the physicians at the Samanid court assisted
Avicenna in his philosophical self-education. Thus, he claimed to
have mastered all the sciences by the age of 18 and entered into the
service of the Samanid court of Nuh ibn Mansur (r. 976-997) as a
physician. After the death of his father, it seems that he was also
given an administrative post. Around the turn of the millennium, he
moved to Gurganj in Khwarazm, partly no doubt to the eclipse of
Samanid rule after the Qarakhanids took Bukhara in 999. He then left
again ‘through necessity’ in 1012 for Jurjan in Khurasan to the south
in search no doubt for a patron. There he first met his disciple and
scribe Juzjani. After a year, he entered Buyid service as a physician,
first with Majd al-Dawla in Rayy and then in 1015 in Hamadan where
he became vizier of Shams al-Dawla. After the death of the later in
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 1021, he once again sought a patron and became the vizier of the
Kakuyid ‘Ala’ al-Dawla for whom he wrote an important Persian
summa of philosophy, the Danishnama-yi ‘Ala’i (The Book of
Knowledge for ‘Ala’ al-Dawla). Based in Isfahan, he was widely
recognized as a philosopher and physician and often accompanied
his patron on campaign. It was during one of these to Hamadan in
1037 that he died of colic. An arrogant thinker who did not suffer
fools, he was fond of his slave-girls and wine, facts which were
ammunition for his later detractors.

2. Works
Avicenna wrote his two earliest works in Bukhara under the influence
of al-Farabi. The first, a Compendium on the Soul (Maqala fi’l-nafs),
is a short treatise dedicated to the Samanid ruler that establishes the
incorporeality of the rational soul or intellect without resorting to
Neoplatonic insistence upon its pre-existence. The second is his first
major work on metaphysics, Philosophy for the Prosodist (al-Hikma
al-‘Arudiya) penned for a local scholar and his first systematic
attempt at Aristotelian philosophy.

He later wrote three ‘encyclopaedias’encyclopedias of philosophy.

The first of these is al-Shifa’ (The Cure), a work modelled on the
corpus of the philosopher, namely. Aristotle, that covers the natural
sciences, logic, mathematics, metaphysics and theology. It was this
work that through its Latin translation had a considerable impact on
scholasticism. It was solicited by Juzjani and his other students in
Hamadan in 1016 and although he lost parts of it on a military
campaign, he completed it in Isfahan by 1027. The other two
encyclopaedias were written later for his patron the Buyid prince ‘Ala’
al-Dawla in Isfahan. The first, in Persian rather than Arabic is entitled
Danishnama-yi ‘Ala’i (The Book of Knowledge for ‘Ala’ al-Dawla) and
is an introductory text designed for the layman. It closely follows his
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 own Arabic epitome of The Cure, namely al-Najat (The Salvation).
The Book of Knowledge was the basis of al-Ghazali’s later Arabic
work Maqasid al-falasifa (Goals of the Philosophers). The second,
whose dating and interpretation have inspired debates for centuries,
is al-Isharat wa’l-Tanbihat (Pointers and Reminders), a work that
does not present completed proofs for arguments and reflects his
mature thinking on a variety of logical and metaphysical issues.
According to Gutas it was written in Isfahan in the early 1030s;
according to Michot, it dates from an earlier period in Hamadan and
possibly Rayy. A further work entitled al-Insaf (The Judgement)
which purports to represent a philosophical position that is radical
and transcends AristotelianisingAristotle’s Neoplatonism is
unfortunately not extant, and debates about its contents are rather
like the arguments that one encounters concerning Plato’s esoteric
or unwritten doctrines. One further work that has inspired much
debate is The Easterners (al-Mashriqiyun) or The Eastern Philosophy
(al-Hikma al-Mashriqiya) which he wrote at the end of the 1020s and
is mostly lost.

3. Avicenna Latinus
Avicenna’s major work, The Cure, was translated into Latin in 12th
and 13th century Spain (Toledo and Burgos) and, although it was
controversial, it had an important impact and raised controversies
inin medieval scholastic philosophy. In certain cases the Latin
manuscripts of the text predate the extant Arabic ones and ought to
be considered more authoritative. The main significance of the Latin
corpus lies in the interpretation for Avicennism andAvicennism, in
particular forregarding his doctrines on the nature of the soul and his
famous existence-essence distinction (more about that below)
andbelow), along with the debates and censure that they raised in
scholastic Europe, in particular in ParisEurope. This was particularly
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 the case in Paris, where Avicennism waslater proscribed in 1210.
However, the influence of his psychology and theory of knowledge
upon William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus have been noted.
More significant is the impact of his metaphysics upon the work and
thought of Thomas Aquinas. His other major work to be translated
into Latin was his medical treatise the Canon, which remained a text-
book into the early modern period and was studied in centrescenters
of medical learning such as Padua.

4. Logic
Logic is a critical aspect of, and propaedeutic to, Avicennan
philosophy. His logical works follow the curriculum of late
Neoplatonism and comprise nine books, beginning with his version
of Porphyry’s Isagoge followed by his understanding and
modification of the Aristotelian Organon, which included the Poetics
and the Rhetoric. On the age-old debate whether logic is an
instrument of philosophy (Peripatetic view) or a part of philosophy
(Stoic view), he argues that such a debate is futile and meaningless.

His views on logic represent a significant metaphysical approach,

and it could be argued generally that metaphysical concerns lead
Avicenna’s arguments in a range of philosophical and non-
philosophical subjects. For example, he argues in The Cure that both
logic and metaphysics share a concern with the study of secondary
intelligibles (ma‘qulat thaniya), abstract concepts such as existence
and time that are derived from primary concepts such as humanity
and animality. Logic is the standard by which concepts—or the
mental “existence” that corresponds to things that occur in extra-
mental reality—can be judged and hence has both implications for
what exists outside of the mind and how one may articulate those
concepts through language. More importantly, logic is a key
instrument and standard for judging the validity of arguments and
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 hence acquiring knowledge. Salvation depends on the purity of the
soul and in particular the intellect that is trained and perfected
through knowledge. Of particular significance for later debates and
refutations is his notion that knowledge depends on the inquiry of
essential definitions (hadd) through syllogistic reasoning. The
problem of course arises when one tries to make sense of an
essential definition in a real, particular world, and when one’s
attempts to complete the syllogism by striking on the middle term is
foiled because one’s ‘intuition’ fails to grasp the middle term.

5. Ontology
From al-Farabi, Avicenna inherited the Neoplatonic emanationist
scheme of existence. Contrary to the classical Muslim theologians,
he rejected creation ex nihilo and argued that cosmos has no
beginning but is a natural logical product of the divine One. The
super-abundant, pure Good that is the One cannot fail to produce an
ordered and good cosmos that does not succeed him in time. The
cosmos succeeds God merely in logical order and in existence.

Consequently, Avicenna is well known as the author of one an

important and influential proof for the existence of God. This proof is
a good example of a philosopher’s intellect being deployed for a
theological purpose, as was common in medieval philosophy. The
argument runs as follows: There is existence, or rather our
phenomenal experience of the world confirms that things exist, and
that their existence is non-necessary because we notice that things
come into existence and pass out of it. Contingent existence cannot
arise unless it is made necessary by a cause. A causal chain in reality
must culminate in one un-caused cause because one cannot posit
an actual infinite regress of causes (a basic axiom of Aristotelian
science). Therefore, the chain of contingent existents must
culminate in and find its causal principle in a sole, self-subsistent
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 existent that is Necessary. This, of course, is the same as the God of
religion.

An important corollary of this argument is Avicenna’s famous

distinction between existence and essence in contingents, between
the fact that something exists and what it is. It is a distinction that is
arguably latent in Aristotle although the roots of Avicenna’s doctrine
are best understood in classical Islamic theology or kalam.
Avicenna’s theory of essence posits three modalities: essences can
exist in the external world associated with qualities and features
particular to that reality; they can exist in the mind as concepts
associated with qualities in mental existence; and they can exist in
themselves devoid of any mode of existence. This final mode of
essence is quite distinct from existence. Essences are thus
existentially neutral in themselves. Existents in this world exist as
something, whether human, animal or inanimate object; they are
‘dressed’ in the form of some essence that is a bundle of properties
that describes them as composites. God on the other hand is
absolutely simple, and cannot be divided into a bundle of distinct
ontological properties that would violate his unity. Contingents, as a
mark of their contingency, are conceptual and ontological
composites both at the first level of existence and essence and at
the second level of properties. Contingent things in this world come
to be as mentally distinct composites of existence and essence
bestowed by the Necessary.

This proof from contingency is also sometimes termed “radical

contingency.” Later arguments raged concerning whether the
distinction was mental or real, whether the proof is ontological or
cosmological. The clearest problem with Avicenna’s proofs lies in the
famous Kantian objection to ontological arguments: is existence
meaningful in itself? Further, Cantor’s solution to the problem of
infinity may also be seen as a setback to the argument from the
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 impossibility of actual infinites.

Avicenna’s metaphysics is generally expressed in Aristotelian terms.

The quest to understand being qua being subsumes the
philosophical notion of God. Indeed, as we have seen divine
existence is a cornerstone of his metaphysics. Divine existence
bestows existence and hence meaning and value upon all that exists.
Two questions that were current were resolved through his theory of
existence. First, theologians such as al-Ash‘ari and his followers were
adamant in denying the possibility of secondary causality; for them,
God was the sole agent and actor in all that unfolded. Avicenna’s
metaphysics, although being highly deterministic because of his
view of radical contingency, still insists of the importance of human
and other secondary causality. Second, the age-old problem was
discussed: if God is good, how can evil exist? Divine providence
ensures that the world is the best of all possible worlds, arranged in
the rational order that one would expect of a creator akin to the
demiurge of the Timaeus. But while this does not deny the existence
of evil in this world of generation and corruption, some universal evil
does not exist because of the famous Neoplatonic definition of evil
as the absence of good. Particular evils in this world are accidental
consequences of good. Although this deals with the problem of
natural evils, the problem of moral evils and particularly ‘horrendous’
evils remains.

6. Epistemology
The second most influential idea of Avicenna is his theory of the
knowledge. The human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a
pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to
know. Knowledge is attained through empirical familiarity with
objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts. It
is developed through a syllogistic method of reasoning; observations
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 lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to
further abstract concepts. The intellect itself possesses levels of
development from the material intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulani), that
potentiality that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-‘aql
al-fa‘il), the state of the human intellect at conjunction with the
perfect source of knowledge.

But the question arises: how can we verify if a proposition is true?

How do we know that an experience of ours is veridical? There are
two methods to achieve this. First, there are the standards of formal
inference of arguments —Is the argument logically sound? Second,
and most importantly, there is a transcendent intellect in which all
the essences of things and all knowledge resides. This intellect,
known as the Active Intellect, illuminates the human intellect through
conjunction and bestows upon the human intellect true knowledge of
things. Conjunction, however, is episodic and only occurs to human
intellects that have become adequately trained and thereby
actualized. The active intellect also intervenes in the assessment of
sound inferences through Avicenna’s theory of intuition. A syllogistic
inference draws a conclusion from two prepositional premises
through their connection or their middle term. It is sometimes rather
difficult to see what the middle term is; thus when someone
reflecting upon an inferential problem suddenly hits upon the middle
term, and thus understands the correct result, she has been helped
through intuition (hads) inspired by the active intellect. There are
various objections that can be raised against this theory, especially
because it is predicated upon a cosmology widely refuted in the
post-Copernican world.

One of the most problematic implications of Avicennan epistemology

relates to God’s knowledge. The divine is pure, simple and immaterial
and hence cannot have a direct epistemic relation with the particular
thing to be known. Thus Avicenna concluded while God knows what
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 unfolds in this world, he knows things in a ‘universal manner’ through
the universal qualities of things. God only knows kinds of existents
and not individuals. This resulted in the famous condemnation by al-
Ghazali who said that Avicenna’s theory amounts to a heretical denial
of God’s knowledge of particulars. particulars.

7. Psychology
Avicenna’s epistemology is predicated upon a theory of soul that is
independent of the body and capable of abstraction. This proof for
the self in many ways prefigures by 600 years the Cartesian cogito
and the modern philosophical notion of the self. It demonstrates the
Aristotelian base and Neoplatonic structure of his psychology. This is
the so-called ‘flying man’ argument or thought experiment found at
the beginning of his Fi’-Nafs/De Anima (Treatise on the Soul). If a
person were created in a perfect state, but blind and suspended in
the air but unable to perceive anything through his senses, would he
be able to affirm the existence of his self? Suspended in such a
state, he cannot affirm the existence of his body because he is not
empirically aware of it, thus the argument may be seen as affirming
the independence of the soul from the body, a form of dualism. But
in that state he cannot doubt that his self exists because there is a
subject that is thinking, thus the argument can be seen as an
affirmation of the self-awareness of the soul and its substantiality.
This argument does raise an objection, which may also be levelled at
Descartes: how do we know that the knowing subject is the self?

This rational self possesses faculties or senses in a theory that

begins with Aristotle and develops through Neoplatonism. The first
sense is common sense (al-hiss al-mushtarak) which fuses
information from the physical senses into an epistemic object. The
second sense is imagination (al-khayal) which processes the image
of the perceived epistemic object. The third sense is the imaginative
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 faculty (al-mutakhayyila) which combines images in memory,
separates them and produces new images. The fourth sense is
estimation or prehension (wahm) that translates the perceived image
into its significance. The classic example for this innovative sense is
that of the sheep perceiving the wolf and understanding the implicit
danger. The final sense is where the ideas produced are stored and
analyzed and ascribed meanings based upon the production of the
imaginative faculty and estimation. Different faculties do not
compromise the singular integrity of the rational soul. They merely
provide an explanation for the process of intellection.

8. Mysticism and Oriental Philosophy

Was Avicenna a mystic? Some of his interpreters in Iran have
answered in the positive, citing the lost work The Easterners that on
the face of it has a superficial similarity to the notion of Ishraqi or
Illuminationist, intuitive philosophy expounded by Suhrawardi (d.
1191) and the final section of Pointers that deal with the terminology
of mysticism and Sufism. The question does not directly impinge on
his philosophy so much since The Easterners is mostly non-extant.
But it is an argument relating to ideology and the ways in which
modern commentators and scholars wish to study Islamic
philosophy as a purely rational form of inquiry or as a supra-rational
method of understanding reality. Gutas has been most vehement in
his denial of any mysticism in Avicenna. For him, Avicennism is
rooted in the rationalism of the Aristotelian tradition. Intuition does
not entail mystical disclosure but is a mental act of conjunction with
the active intellect. The notion of intuition is located itself by Gutas in
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 89b10-11. While some of the mystical
commentators of Avicenna have relied upon his pseudo-epigraphy
(such as some sort of Persian Sufi treatises and the Mi‘rajnama), one
ought not to throw the baby out with the bath water. The last
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 sections of Pointers are significant evidence of Avicenna’s
acceptance of some key epistemological possibilities that are
present in mystical knowledge such as the possibility of non-
discursive reason and simple knowledge. Although one can
categorically deny that he was a Sufi (and indeed in his time the
institutions of Sufism were not as established as they were a century
later) and even raise questions about his adherence to some form of
mysticism, it would be foolish to deny that he flirts with the
possibilities of mystical knowledge in some of his later authentic
works.

9. The Avicennan Tradition and His Legacy

Avicenna’s major achievement was to propound a philosophically
defensive system rooted in the theological fact of Islam, and its
success can be gauged by the recourse to Avicennan ideas found in
the subsequent history of philosophical theology in Islam. In the Latin
West, his metaphysics and theory of the soul had a profound
influence on scholastic arguments, and as in the Islamic East, was
the basis for considerable debate and argument. Just two
generations after him, al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and al-Shahrastani (d.
1153) in their attacks testify to the fact that no serious Muslim thinker
could ignore him. They regarded Avicenna as the principal
representative of philosophy in Islam. In the later Iranian tradition,
Avicenna’s thought was critically distilled with mystical insight, and
he became known as a mystical thinker, a view much disputed in late
20th and early 21st century scholarship. Nevertheless the major
works of Avicenna, especially The Cure and Pointers, became the
basis for the philosophical curriculum in the madrasa. Numerous
commentaries, glosses and super-glosses were composed on them
and continued to be produced into the 20th century. While our
current views on cosmology, on the nature of the self, and on
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 knowledge raise distinct problems for Avicennan ideas, they do not
address the important issue of why his thought remained so
influential for such a long period of time. In the 20th and 21st
centuries, Avicenna has been attacked by some contemporary Arab
Muslim thinkers in search of a new rationalism within Arab culture,
one that champions Averroes against Avicenna.

10. References and Further Reading

a. The Latin Avicenna (mainly sections of al-Shifa’)

Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus I-III. ed. Simone van

Riet, Leiden, 1972.
Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I-IV. ed. Simone
van Riet, Leidin, 1977.
Liber de pilosophia prima sive scientia divina V-X. ed. Simone
van Riet, Leiden, 1980.
Liber primus naturalium: Tractatus primus de causis et principiis
naturalium. ed. Simone van Riet, Leiden, 1992.
Liber quartus naturalium de actionibus et passionibus
qualitatum primarum. ed. Simone van Riet, Leiden, 1989.

b. Studies in Avicenna Latinus

(eds), Islam and the Italian Renaissance. eds. Charles Burnett

and Anna Contadini. Warburg Institute, 1999.
N. G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and
Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500, Princeton,
1987.
Dag Hasse, Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, London,
2000.
A study of the impact of Avicennan psychology upon the
scholastics focusing on five key issues
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 c. Selected Works of Avicenna Available in European
Language Translation

Epistola sulla vita future (Risalat al-Adhawiyya fi’l-ma’ad), tr. F.

Luchetta, Padua, 1969.
Compare it with this useful and critical commentary by the
theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) – Yahya Michot, ‘A
Mamluk theologian’s commentary on Avicenna’s Risala
Adhawiyya’, Journal of Islamic Studies 14 (2003), 149-203,
309-63.
The Life of Ibn Sina, tr. William Gohlman, Albany, 1974.
Avicenna’s De Anima (Fi’l-Nafs), tr. F. Rahman, London, 1954.
Livre de directives et remarques (al-Isharat wa’l-Tanbihat), tr.
Anne-Marie Goichon, 2 vols., Paris, 1951.
Remarks and Admonitions Part One: Logic (al-Isharat wa’l-
Tanbihat: mantiq), tr. Shams Inati, Toronto, 1984.
La Métaphysique du Shifa’ I-IV et V-X, tr. G. Anawati, Paris,
1978-86.
Le livre de science (Danishnama-yi ‘Ala’i) I: Logique,
Métaphysique II: science naturelle, mathématique, trs. M.
Achena and Henri Massé, Paris, 1986.
Ibn Sina on Mysticism (al-Isharat wa’l-Tanbihat namat IX), tr.
Shams Inati, London, 1998.
The Metaphysica of Avicenna (Ilahiyyat-i Danishnama-yi ‘Ala’i),
tr. Parviz Morewedge, New York, 1972; rpt., Binghamton, 2003.
Lettre au Vizier Abu Sa’d, ed./tr. Yahya Michot, Paris, 2000.
The Metaphysics of Avicenna (al-Ilahiyyat min Kitab al-Shifa’),
ed./tr. Michael Marmura, Provo, 2004.

d. General Introductions to Avicenna and His

Thought
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 Cruz Hernández, Miguel. La vida de Avicena. Salamanca, 1997.
A short and accessible intellectual biography written by
perhaps the foremost Spanish historian of Islamic
philosophy.
Goichon, Anne-Marie. Lexique de la langue philosophique
d’Avicenne. Paris, 1938.
A pioneering work which remains a highly useful research
tool.
Goodman, Lenn. Avicenna. London, 1992.
Although an attempt by a contemporary philosopher to
come to grips with the enduring contributions of Avicenna
to philosophy, it suffers from some serious textual
misreadings.
Gutas, Dimitri. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition.
Leiden/Boston, 1988.
A solid work of scholarship that discusses Avicenna’s
corpus and thought within a paradigm of Islamic
Aristotelianism.
Nasr, Sayyed Hossein. Three Muslim Sages. Cambridge, 1966.
An old and contentious presentation of Avicenna as a
polymath rooted in the mystical experience of God.
Sebti, Miriam. Avicenne. Paris, 2003.
An interpretation from a continental philosophical
approach.
Street, Tony. Avicenna. Cambridge, 2005.
A solid presentation of the key ideas based on the most up-
to-date research.

e. Collections and Bibliographies

Special Issue of Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica

medievale. Padua, 8 (1997) on Avicenna.
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 Special Issue of Arabic Sciences and Philosophy. Cambridge, 10
(2000) on Avicenna.
Anawati, G. C. Essai de bibliographie avicennienne. Cairo, 1950.
Various Authors, ‘Avicenna’, Encyclopaedia Iranica. New York, II,
66-110.
Janssens, Jules. Bibliography of Works on Ibn Sina, 2 vols.
Leiden, 1991-99.
Janssens, Jules and Daniel de Smet (ed). Avicenna and His
Heritage. Leuven, 2001.
Proceedings from a 1999 conference that brought together
specialists on the Arabic and the Latin Avicenna and their
legacies.
Rashed, Roshdi and Jean Jolivet (eds), Etudes sur Avicenne,
Paris, 1984.
An excellent collection that includes insightful pieces on
Avicennan physics and metaphysics.
David Reisman and Ahmed al-Rahim (eds), Before and After
Avicenna, Leiden/Boston, 2003.
The proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna
Research Group (based at Yale).
Robert Wisnovsky (ed), Aspects of Avicenna (Princeton Papers:
Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle East Studies, 9), Princeton,
2001.
Includes two good pieces on Avicennan psychology.

f. Interpretations

Arberry, Arthur J. Avicenna on Theology. London, 1954.

Includes translations of texts and raises the interesting
question of what is ‘Islamic’ about Avicenna’s ‘Islamic
philosophy’.
Corbin, Henry. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, Princeton,
:
 1961.
An influential and controversial interpretation of Avicenna
through the lens of the later Iranian tradition portraying him
as a mystic.
Gardet, Louis. La pensée religieuse d’Avicenne, Paris, 1951.
Heath, Peter. Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna, Philadelphia,
1992.
An interesting approach to allegory that draws on Corbin
and suffers from the assumption that the famous pseudo-
Avicennan work the Mi’rajnama is authentic.
Lüling, G. ‘Die anderer Avicenna’, Zeitschrift der deutschen
MorganländischenGesellschaft Suppl III.1 (1977), 496-513.
Marmura, Michael. ‘Avicenna and the kalam’, Zeitschrift für
arabisch-islamisch Wissenschaft (Frankfurt) 7 (1991-2), 172-
206.
Considers Avicenna’s debt to the metaphysics of kalam.
Marmura, Michael. ‘Plotting the course of Avicenna’s thought’,
Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991), 333-42.
A critical assessment of Gutas’s 1988 work.
Michot, Yahya. ‘La pandémie avicennienne’, Arabica (Paris) 40
(1993), 287-344.
On the widespread hegemony of Avicennan philosophy in
Islamic thought from the 12th Century.
Thom, Paul. Medieval Modal Systems, London, 2004.
The best study of Avicenna’s modal logic and his
contributions to the field.

g. Avicenna’s Oriental Philosophy

Cruz Hernández, Miguel. ‘El problema de la “auténtica” filosofía

de Avicena’, Revista de Filosofía 5 (1992), 235-56.
Gutas, Dimitri. ‘Avicenna’s Eastern (“Oriental”) Philosophy’,
:
 Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10 (2000), 159-80.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. ‘Ibn Sina’s Oriental Philosophy’, in S. H.
Nasr and Oliver Leaman (eds), History of Islamic Philosophy,
London/New York, 1996, I, 247-51.
A classic restatement of Nasr’s mystical understanding of
Avicenna.
Pines, Shlomo. ‘La philosophie orientale d’Avicenne’, in The
Collected Works of Shlomo Pines Volume III, Jerusalem, 1996,
301-33.
Interprets ‘oriental’ to signify an Eastern alternative
Peripatetism.

h. Metaphysics

Robert Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context, London,

2003.
An excellent study that locates the origins of Avicennan
thought in what he calls the ‘Ammonian synthesis’ in Late
Antiquity and then explains the development of Avicennan
metaphysics.

i. On Psychology

Helmut Gätje, Studien zur Überlieferung der aristotelische

Psychologie im Islam, Heidelberg, 1971.
A pioneering study of the key aspects of Aristotelian(ising)
psychological theories in Islamic philosophy focusing on
Avicenna.
Dag Hasse, Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, London,
2000.
A study of the impact of Avicennan psychology upon the
scholastics focusing on five key issues.
Michot, Jean R. La destinée de l’homme selon Avicenne,
:
 Brussels, 1986.
A key investigation of Avicennan psychology as a quest for
an Islamic answer to the problem of the soul’s journey
beyond this life and the persistence of personal identity.
Rahman, Fazlur. Avicenna’s Psychology, London, 1952.
A study that includes a translation of Avicenna’s De Anima.

j. Existence-Essence

Goichon, Anne-Maria. La distinction de l’essence et l’existence

d’après ibn Sina (Avicenne), Paris, 1937.
Mayer, Toby. ‘Ibn Sina’s Burhan al-Siddiqin’, Journal of Islamic
Studies 12 (2001), 18-39.
Parviz Morewedge, ‘Philosophical analysis of Ibn Sina’s
essence-existence distinction’, Journal of the American Oriental
Society 92 (1972), 42-35.
Rahman, Fazlur. ‘Essence and existence in Avicenna’, Mediaeval
Studies (Toronto) 4 (1958), 1-16.
Rahman, Fazlur. ‘Essence and existence in Ibn Sina: the myth
and the reality’, Hamdard Islamicus (Karachi) 4 (1981), 3-14.
Rizvi, Sajjad. ‘Roots of an aporia in later Islamic philosophy: the
existence-essence distinction in the philosophies of Avicenna
and Suhrawardi’, Studia Iranica (Paris) 29 (2000), 61-108.

Author Information

Sajjad H. Rizvi
Email: Sajjad.Rizvi@bristol.ac.uk
University of Bristol
United Kingdom
: