IBN
SINA, Abu 'Ali al-Husayn b. 'Abd Allah b. Sina, known in the West as Avicenna. He followed the encyclopedic
conception of the sciences that had been traditional since the time of the
Greek Sages in uniting philosophy with the study of nature and in seeing the
perfection of man as lying in both knowledge and action. He was also as
illustrious a physician as he was a philosopher [see Hikma].
His
life is known to us from authoritative sources. An autobiography covers his
first thirty years, and the rest are documented by his disciple al-Juzajani,
who was also his secretary and his friend.
He
was born in 370/980 in Afshana, his mother's home, near Bukhara. His native
language was Persian. His father, an official of the Samanid administration,
had him very carefully educated at Bukhara. His father and his brother were
influenced by Isma'ili propaganda; he was certainly acquainted with its tenets,
but refused to adopt them. His intellectual independence was served by an
extraordinary intelligence and memory, which allowed him to overtake his
teachers at the age of fourteen.
It
was he, we are told, who explained logic to his master al-Natili. He had no
teacher in the
natural sciences or in
medicine; in fact, famous physicians were working under his direction when he was only sixteen. He did,
however, find difficulty in understanding Aristotle's Metaphysics, which he grasped only with the help of
al-Farabi's commentary. Having cured the amir of Khurasan of a severe illness, he was allowed to
make use of the splendid library of the Samanid princes. At the age of eighteen he had mastered
all the then known sciences. His subsequent
progress was due only to his personal judgment.
His
training through contact with life was at least equal to his development in
intellectual
speculation. At the age of
twenty-one he wrote his first philosophical book. The following year, however, the death of his father forced
him to enter the administration in order to earn his living. His judgment was swiftly appreciated. Having consulted
him on medical matters, the princes
had recourse to him also in matters of politics. He was a minister several
times, his
advice being always
listened to; but he became an object of envy, sometimes persecuted by his enemies and sometimes coveted by princes
opposing those to whom he wished to remain loyal. He took flight and was obliged to hide on several
occasions, earning his living by medical consultations. He was imprisoned, escaped, lived for
fourteen years in relative peace at the court of Isfahan and died at Hamadan, during an expedition of
the prince 'Ala’ al-Dawla, in 428/1037. He was buried there; and a monument was erected to him to
celebrate the (hijri) millenary of his birth.
If
his works are to be understood, they should not be thought of as those of a
philosopher who
lived in his books. He was
occupied all day by affairs of state, and he laboured by night on his great works, which were written with
astonishing rapidity. He was never safe, and was frequently compelled to move; he would write on horseback,
and sometimes in prison, his only resource
for reference being his memory. It has been found surprising that he differs
from
Aristotle in his works:
but he quoted him without re-reading him, and, above all, his independence of mind inclined him to
present his own personally worked out thought, rather than to repeat the works of another. Besides, his personal
training was different. He was a man who lived
in touch with the concrete, constantly faced with difficulties, and a great
physician
who dealt with specific
cases. Aristotle's Logic seemed to him insufficient, because it could not be applied in a way that was sufficiently
close to life. Many recent controversies have been aroused since the study of his works has increased, especially at
the time of his millenary, but the most plausible view of his personality is still the following:
he is a scientific man, who attempts to bring the Greek theories to the level of that which needs
to be expressed by the study of the concrete,
when apprehended by a great mind.
The
secret of his evolution, however, will remain concealed from us as long as we
do not possess
such important works as
the Kitab al-Insaf, the ‘Book of Impartial Judgment’, which investigated 28,000
questions, and his ‘Eastern Philosophy’, of which we have only a fragment.
The
corpus of Ibn Sina's works that has come down to us is considerable, but
incomplete. To the
many questions that were
put to him he replied hastily, without always taking care to keep his texts. Al-Juzajani has preserved
several of these; others have been transmitted with different titles, others lost. The manuscript of
the Insaf disappeared at the sack of Isfahan, in his own lifetime. The fundamental bibliography is that which
al-Juzajani included in his biography, but it is not exhaustive. G. C. Anawati lists a total of
276 works, including texts noted as doubtful
and some apocryphal works, in his bibliography of 1950. Mahdavi, in 1954, lists
131 authentic, and 110 doubtful works. Ibn
Sina was known primarily as a philosopher and a physician, but he contributed also to the advancement of
all the sciences that were accessible in his day: natural history, physics, chemistry, astronomy,
mathematics, music. Economics and politics
benefited from his experience as a statesman. Moral and religious questions
(not necessarily pertaining to mysticism), Qur’anic exegesis, statements on
‘ufi doctrine and
behaviour produced minor
writings. He wrote poetry for instructional purposes, for he versified epitomes
of logic and medicine, but he had also the abilitiesQof a true poet, clothing
his philosophical doctrine in images, both in verse (as in his poem on the
soul) and in prose, in symbolic narratives whose meaning has given rise to
controversy [see Hayy b. yaqzan].
Medicine
is the subject of separate works; but natural history and mathematics are
thought of as parts of philosophy. Thus, his principal treatise on these
sciences is included in the great Kitab al-Shifa’, ‘Book of Healing [of the
Soul]’, in the same way as that on Metaphysics, while the famous Qanun fi
'l-tibb, ‘Canon of Medicine’, is a separate work.
The
Qanun appears to have formed a more consciously coherent whole than the
philosophical works. Because it constituted a monumental unity, which
maintained its authority until modern times when experimental science began,
and because it still remained more accessible than Hippocrates and Galen, it
served as a basis for seven centuries of medical teaching and practice. Even
today it is still possible to derive useful information from it, for Dr. 'Abd
Allah Ahmadieh, a clinician of Tehran, has studied the therapeutics of Avicenna
and is said to use them with good results, particularly in treating rheumatism.
The
Qanun is the clear and ordered ‘Summa’ of all the medical knowledge of Ibn
Sina's time, augmented from his own observations. It is divided into five
books. The first contains generalities concerning the human body, sickness,
health and general treatment and therapeutics (French translation of the
treatise on Anatomy by P. de Koning, 1905; adaptation giving an incomplete
resume of the first book, in English, by Cameron Grüner, 1930). The second
contains the Materia Medica and the Pharmacology of herbs; the page on
experimentation in medicine (115, of the Rome 1593 edition) quoted in the
Introduction to the French translation of the Isharat, 58, is to be found
there. This passage sets out the three methods-agreement, difference and
concomitant variations-that are usually regarded as characteristic of modern
science. The third book deals with special pathology, studied by organs, or
rather by systems (German translation of the treatise on diseases of the eyes,
by Hirschberg and Lippert, 1902). The fourth book opens with the famous
treatise on fevers; then follow the treatise on signs, symptoms, diagnostics
and prognostics, minor surgery, tumours, wounds, fractures and bites, and that
on poisons. The fifth book contains the pharmacopoeia.
Several
treatises take up in isolation a number of the data in the Qanun and deal with
particular points. Some are very well-known: their smaller size assured them of
a wide circulation. Among the most widely diffused are treatises on the pulse,
the medical pharmacopoeia, advice for the conservation of health and the study
of diarrhoea; in addition, monographs on various remedies, chicory, oxymel,
balsam, bleeding. The virtues of wine are not neglected.
Physicians
were offered a mnemonic in the form of a poem which established the essentials
of Avicenna's theory and practice: principles, observations, advice on
therapeutics and dietetics, simple surgical techniques. This is the famous
Urjuza fi 'l-tibb, which was translated into Latin several times from the 13th
to the 17th century, under the title Cantica Avicennae (ed. with French trans.
by H. Jahier and A. Noureddine, Paris 1956, Poeme de la Medecine, together with
Armengaud de Blaise's Latin translation).
Ibn
Sina's philosophical works have come down to us in a mutilated condition. The
important Kitab al-Shifa’ is complete (critical text in process of publication,
Cairo 1952-). Extracts chosen by the author himself as being the most
characteristic make up the Kitab al-Najat, ‘The Book of Salvation [from
Error]’, which is not an independent redaction, as was thought until 1937
(table of concordances established by A.-M. Goichon in La distinction de
l'essence et de l'existence d'apres Ibn Sina, 499-503). The Kitab al-Isharat wa
'l-tanbihat, ‘Book of directives and remarks’, is complete (trans. into Persian
and French), as is the Danishnama-i 'Ala’i, ‘The Book of Knowledge for
'Ala’”, a resume of his doctrine written at the request of the prince
'Ala’ al-Dawla. We have only fragments of the Kitab al-Insaf, ‘Book of
Impartial Judgment between the Easterners and the Westerners’, which have been
published by A. Badawi, and a small part of the Mantiq al-mashriqiyyin, ‘Logic
of the Easterners’, which is the logic of his ‘Eastern Philosophy’, the rest of
it being lost. A fairly large number of minor writings are preserved; they
illuminate points of detail which are often important, but are far from
completing the lacunas.
Ibn
Sina's was too penetrating a mind, and one too concerned with the absolute, not
to venture outside the individual sciences. He looked for the principle and the
guarantee of these, and this led him to set above them, on the one hand, the
science of being, Metaphysics, and, on the other, the universal tool of truth,
Logic, or ‘the instrumental science’, as the falasifa termed it.
As
far as one can tell in the absence of several of his fundamental works, he
seems to have been an innovator particularly in logic, correcting the excess of
abstraction which does not permit Aristotle to take sufficient account of
change, which is present everywhere and at all times in the terrestrial world;
and, thus, of the difference between strict (mutlaq) meaning, and concrete
meaning, specified by the particular ‘conditions’ in which a thing is
actualized. As a physician, he enters into logic when he admits a sign as the
middle term of a syllogism. He gives it the force of a proof, as the latter is
recognized in a symptom in medical diagnosis (see Introduction to the French
trans. of the Isharat).
In
Metaphysics the doctrine of Ibn Sina is most individual, and is also
illuminated by his personal antecedents. On the other hand, his thought was
fashioned by three teachers, of whom, however, he knew only two by name:
Aristotle and al-Farabi, who introduced several of
the
great concepts subsequently developed by Ibn Sina. The third was Plotinus, who
came down to him under the name of Aristotle, in the so-called ‘Theology of
Aristotle’ [see aristutalis], which was composed of extracts from Plotinus's
Enneads, and presented as the culmination of Aristotle's Metaphysics. This
error of attribution dogs the whole of Avicenna's work. As a born metaphysician
he earned the title of ‘Philosopher of being’ but as a realist he wished to
understand essences in their actualized state, so that he is just as much the
‘Philosopher of essence’. The whole of his metaphysics is ordered round the
double problem of the origin of being and its transmission to essence, but to
individually actualized essence (cf. Goichon, La distinction de l'essence et de
l'existence d'apres Ibn Sina, Paris 1937).
It
is at this point that a free interpretation of Aristotle and Plotinus gives him
his theory of the creation of forms by emanation. This is linked with a
cosmogony taken from the apocryphal Theology, but is also inspired by
hylemorphism and Aristotelian data on the soul. The extensive place occupied in
his thought by the intelligence prompts him to this startling view: the gift of
being is linked with the light of the intelligence. Moreover, Ibn Sina is a
believer; in accordance with Islam he believes in God as the Creator. None of
the philosophies handed down from pagan antiquity takes account of this. He
attempts to integrate dogma with his philosophical formulation. In fact, he
does not succeed very well, but he continually works in this direction.
The
first certitude apprehended by the human mind, he says, is that of being, which
is apprehended by means of sense-perceptions. The idea of being, however, is so
deep-rooted in man that it could be perceived outside of the sensible. This
prefiguration of the Cartesian ‘Cogito ergo sum’ appears to have two causes:
intuition (Hads) is so powerful in Ibn Sina (see in the Physics of the
Danishnama the part that it played for him) that he bases himself here on a
metaphysical apprehension of being; in addition, since the human soul, according
to him, is a separate intelligence, which leads its own spiritual existence
while being united with the body, it is capable of apprehending itself
directly.
The
second certitude is that the being thus apprehended in man, and in every
existing thing, is not present there of necessity. The essence of ‘man’,
‘horse’ or ‘stone’ does not imply the necessity of the existence of a
particular man or horse. Existence is given to actualized, concrete beings by a
Being that differs from all of them: it is not one of the essences that have no
existence in themselves, but its essence is its very being. The Creator is the
First Cause; as a consequence of this theory the proof of the existence of God
is restricted to Metaphysics, and not to Physics, as happens when God is proved
to be the prime mover.
A
Western controversy enters here: did Avicenna really believe in the analogy of
being? It is true that he does not place the uncreated Being in the genus
Substance or in a genus Being; but if he proceeds from knowledge of created
beings to that of the uncreated Being, is not this a proof that he considers
their natures to be allied? He certainly apprehends an analogy between the
being of substance and that of accident, as he states explicitly, but did he go
further? (see M. Cruz Hernandez, passim).
Ibn
Sina did not formulate the distinction between the uncreated Being and created
beings as clearly as did Thomas Aquinas, but the latter does base himself on
Ibn Sina's doctrine; only being is in God, God is in no genus and being is not
a genus. He then sets out his thought precisely (cf. Vasteenkiste,
Avicenna-Citaten bij S. Thomas, in Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, September
1953, citations nos. 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 148, 330, pp. 460-1, 473 and 491).
With
the principles established, two reasons for the omission of the conclusion are
plausible, but neither involves the distinction not being made. Either, having
set it out and admitted it, he withdrew it with difficulty because of the
confusion between the data of Aristotle and Plotinus, or, as G. M. Wickens
(Avicenna, scientist and philosopher, 52) suggests, he does not speak of it as
a discovery because the celebrated distinction was then generally admitted-as
Abu Hayyan al-TawHidi says. But Ibn Sina maintains that God, as he conceives
Him, is ‘the first with respect to the being of the Universe, anterior to that
being, and also, consequently, outside it’ (E. Gilson, L'esprit de la
philosophie medievale2, 80-1).
However,
this apparent impetus of Ibn Sina is interrupted by the data of Plotinus, for
they inspire the emanatist theory of creation. The Qur’an, like the Old and New
Testaments, explains creation by a freeQact of will on the part of God. For Ibn
Sina, by way of Plotinus, the necessary Being is such in all its modes-and thus
as creator-and being overflows from it. (Here the reader will ask himself the
question: ‘Is it an analogous being? is it not rather the same being?’)
Moreover, this emanation does not occur freely, and creation involves
intermediaries, which are also creators. From the One can come only one. The
necessary Being thus produces a single Intelligence. This, having a cause,
necessarily possesses a duality of being and knowledge. It introduces
multiplicity into the world; from it can derive another Intelligence, a
celestial Soul and a celestial body. Ptolemy's system becomes the framework of
creative emanation; emanation descends from sphere to sphere as far as a tenth
pure Intelligence, which governs, not a sphere, but our terrestrial world,
which is made, unlike the others, of corruptible matter. This brings with it a
multiplicity which surpasses human knowledge but is perfectly possessed and
dominated by the active Intellect, the tenth Intelligence. Its role is
demonstrated in a poetic and symbolic form in the ‘Tale of Hayy b. Yaqzan;, a
name that refers to the active Intellect itself.
The
philosophical origin of this active Intellect is the passage in the De Anima in
which Aristotle refers by this name to the active part of the human soul. Ibn
Sina irremediably mutilates the latter by taking away from it this active part,
and with it its most noble action and its highest intellectual function:
abstraction of intelligibles. This active Intellect, which, according to
Aristotle, produces all intelligibles, is now a separate Intelligence. Thus the
human soul receives them passively, and so cannot think except by leave of the
Intellect; comprehension, knowledge and the sciences are now no longer its
affair. It can elaborate only that which is given to it by the active
Intellect. The latter produces not only these intelligibles but also all the
substantial forms that are created in accordance with the models that it has
conceived in conformity with the potentialities of matter. It is in this way,
Ibn Sina replies to Plato's anxious question (Parmenides, 131 a-b), that the
concrete being can share in the Idea. The active Intellect has an ability which
Plato sought for in vain: it apprehends the two series of relative perceptions,
both the forms with their mutual relationships and the concrete beings with
their mutual relationships; in addition, it apprehends their common repository,
which is its own essence (cf. Goichon, La theorie des formes chez Avicenne, in
Atti XII congr. intern. de filosofia, ix, at 137-8). A reply is also given to
the question of Aristotle as to the provenance of form and the contribution of
the Ideas to sensible beings (Metaph., Z 8 and M 5).
The
human soul by itself can attain only the first three degrees of abstraction:
sensation, imagination and the action of estimation that extracts individual
non-sensible ideas. It then apprehends the intelligible that is given to it
from outside. Intuition is due to its joining with the active Intellect.
Being
and intelligence overflow like a river from the necessary Being and descend to
the extreme limits of the created. There is an equally full re-ascent, produced
by creatures' love and desire for their creators, as far as the supreme
Principle, which corresponds to the abundance of this gift. This beautiful
concept, which could derive only from a soul inclined towards religion, has
been thought of as mystical. The Risala fi 'l-'ishq, ‘The Epistle on Love’,
however, is primarily a metaphysical explanation of the tendency of every being
towards its good, and a physical explanation of the motion of the stars; they
imitate in their fashion, which is material, the unceasing action of the pure
Act. The spheres, in fact, thus imitate the unceasing desire of the celestial
Souls which correspond to each one of them. The rational soul of man tends
towards its good with a conscious motion of apprehension of, and love for, the
active Intellect, and, through it, for the necessary Being, which is pure Good.
In the highest states, however, it can tend directly towards the latter.
Ibn
Sina believed firmly in the immortality of the soul. Corruption cannot touch
it, for it is immaterial. The proof of this immateriality lies in its
capability of apprehending the intelligibles, which are in no way material. He
is much more hesitant on the question of the resurrection of the body, which he
at first admits in the Shifa’ and the Najat, and then denies in the epistle
A·Hawiyya, after indicating in the ‘Tale of Hayy b. Yaqzan’; that this dogma is
often an object of temptations. He appears finally to have decided to
understand it in a symbolic sense.
Among
the fierce controversies to which Avicenna's thought has given rise is the
discussion as to whether or not he should be considered a mystic. At first
sight, the whole range of expressions that he uses to speak of love's
re-ascending as far as to the Creator leads one to an affirmative
interpretation-not in an esoteric way [see Hayy b. yaqzan], but in the positive
sense of the love of God. The more one studies his philosophical doctrine, the
more one finds that it illuminates these expressions. The stages of the Sufis,
studied in the Isharat, leave rather the impression of experiences observed by
a great, curious and respectful mind, which, however, does not participate. Ibn
Sina is a believer, and this fact should be maintained in opposition to those
who have made of him a lover of pleasure who narrowly escapes being a
hypocrite, although there is so much seriousness in his life and such efforts
to reconcile his philosophy with his faith-even if he is not always successful.
He is far above the gnosis impregnated with occultism and paganism to which
some would reduce him. Is he a mystic in the exact sense that the word has in
Catholic theology? It reserves the word for one whose whole life is a great
love of God, in a kind of intimacy of heart and thought with Him, so that God
holds the first place in all things and everything is apprehended as related to
Him.
Had
it been thus with Ibn Sina, his writings would give a totally different impression.
Nevertheless, at bottom he did perhaps apprehend God. It is in the simple
expression of apprehension through the heart, in the secret of the heart
(sirr), in flashes, however short and infrequent, that we are led to see in him
a beginning of true mystic apprehension, in opposition to the gnosis and its
symbols, for at this depth of the heart there is no longer any need for words.
One
doubt, however, still enters in: his general doctrine of apprehension, and some
of the terms that he uses, in fact, in texts on sirr, could be applied at least
as well to a privileged connexion with the active Intellect, and not with God
Himself (cf. Goichon, Le ‘sirr’ (l'intime du coeur) dans la doctrine
avicennienne de la connaissance). Again, on this question, the absence of his
last great work, the ‘Eastern Philosophy’, precludes a definite answer.
This
irreparable lacuna in the transmission of his works does not allow us to
understand in what respects he wished to complete, and even to correct,
Aristotle, as he states in the prologue. As a hypothesis, suggested by his
constant efforts to express the concrete and by his biography, we may suppose
that he wished to make room for the oriental scientific tradition, which was
more experimental than Greek science. The small alterations made to
Aristotelian logic are slanted in this direction. In metaphysics, it is
probable that he was shocked by the contradictions between Plotinus and
Aristotle that were evident in the texts which the knowledge of the time
attributed to one single author, and that he wished to resolve these anomalies
by giving new explanations.
The
transmission of Greek science by the Arabs, and the translation of the works of
the Arabs into Latin, produced the first Renaissance in Southern Europe, which
began in the 10th century in Sicily, flourished in the 12th round Toledo, and
soon afterwards in France. The two principal works of Ibn Sina, the Shifa’ and
the Qanun, made him an undisputed master in medicine, natural sciences and philosophy.
From
the 12th to the 16th century the teaching and practice of medicine were based
on him. The works of Abu Bakr MuHammad b. Zakariyya’ al-Razi were also known,
and he was considered to be a better clinician; but the Qanun provided an
irreplaceable didactic corpus, for the Kitab al-Kulliyyat fi 'l-tibb of Ibn
Rushd corresponded only with the first part of the Qanun. The latter was
translated in its entirety between 1150 and 1187 by Gerard of Cremona, and, in
all, eighty-seven translations of it were made, some of which were only
partial. The majority were into Latin, but several Hebrew translations were
also made, in Spain, Italy and the south of France. The medical translations
are less good than those of the philosophical works; some words transcribed in
Arabic from Greek were not understood or identified, and some Arabic technical
terms were more or less transcribed in Latin, and remain incomprehensible. The
Qanun formed the basis of teaching at all the universities. It appears in the
oldest known syllabus of teaching given to the School of Medicine at
Montpellier, a bull of Clement V, dating from 1309, and in all subsequent ones
until 1557. Ten years later Galen was preferred to Ibn Sina, but the latter
continued to be taught until the 17th century. The editing of the Arabic text,
at Rome in 1593, demonstrates the esteem in which he was still held. (On the
teaching of the works of Avicenna in the universities, see A. Germain, L'Ecole
de medecine de Montpellier ..., Montpellier 1880, 71; Stephen d'Irsay, Histoire
des universites franaises et etrangeres des origines a nos jours, Paris 1933,
i, 119; C. Elgood, A medical history of Persia ... until the year 1932,
Cambridge 1951, 205-9). Chaucer reminds us in the Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales that no doctor should be ignorant of him. Almost all, in fact, possessed
either fragments of the Qanun, especially the ‘Fevers’ and the ‘Diseases of the
eyes’, or shorter writings, the treatise on the pulse or that on ‘Diseases of
the heart’. All Arab authors, from the 7th/13th to the 10th/16th century, are
dependent on Ibn Sina, even though they question him, like the father of Ibn
Zuhr (Avenzoar), or augment and correct him, like Ibn al-Nafis, who recorded
his discovery of pulmonary circulation in his commentary on the Qanun; he wrote
a summary of the Qanun which any physician could obtain more easily than he
could the original text.
In
the West several physicians learned Arabic for the sake of the works of Ibn
Sina. The first known influence appears in the works of a Dane, Henrik
Harpestraeng, a royal physician who died in 1244. Arnold of Villeneuve, born at
Valence, translated the treatise on the diseases of the heart, as well as some of the books of al-Kindi and other
Arab authors. Some surgeons also quoted him as their authority: William of
Saliceto in Italy, and his disciple Lanfranc, the founder of surgery in France;
Guy of Chauliac, who died in 1368, and whose teaching employed Arabic terms and
doctrines. At the University of Bologna, anatomy was still being taught in
Arabic terms in the 14th century.
The
Renaissance brought a violent reaction; Leonardo da Vinci rejected Ibn Sina's
anatomy, but, for want of another vocabulary, used the Arabic terms. Paracelsus
burned the Qanun at Basle. Harvey dealt him a severe blow by publishing his
discovery of the major circulation in 1628.
The
natural sciences presented in the Shifa’ were much used by the mediaeval
encyclopaedists, as were the treatises of al-Razi and apocryphal treatises. The
‘Treatise on Animals’ was translated by Michael Scot; Albertus Magnus employed
the mineralogy (on Ibn Sina's scientific influence, see G. Sarton, Introduction
to the history of science, ii, passim.). In physics, Ibn Sina was an
Aristotelian, and as such inferior to al-Razi, who had discovered the existence
of the vacuum, which he himself denied. However, he opposed the theory of the
transmutation of metals, and hence alchemy (for citations to this effect from
several Arab authors, see the introduction by Holmyard and Mandeville to their
translation of Avicennae De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, Paris
1927, 6-7).
Ibn
Sina's influence in philosophy was less absolute and more disputed, but more
lasting, for the use made of him by St Thomas Aquinas embodied certain of his
proofs in Catholic theology (cf. Goichon, La philosophie d'Avicenne et son
influence en Europe medievale, Paris 1944, ch. III).
The
translation of the Shifa’ came at a moment when Aristotle was scarcely known,
and that
only through the
‘Posterior Analytics’, the ‘Topics’ and the ‘Refutation of the Sophists’. The corpus that presented a ‘Metaphysics’,
the ‘Treatise on the Soul’ and that on the ‘Heavens’, etc. seemed to hold another significance. It was, however,
thought to be a simple commentary on
Aristotle. For a century it received unreserved admiration; when Aristotle was
better known,
it was still thought that
the Shifa’ augmented his work on the subject of the origin of the world, on God, the soul, the intelligence and
angels. He was placed in the Neoplatonist and Augustinian traditions; his attempts to reconcile
philosophy and faith corresponded with the ardent desires of the Schoolmen. He was forbidden by the
decrees of 1210 and 1215, referring to
‘Aristoteles et sequaces ejus’, which banned Ibn Sina from the Sorbonne. But
his role
remained undiminished in
private discussions.
After
acclaim for his similarities with Christian thought came criticism of his
divergences from
it, violently initiated by
William of Auvergne in 1230. Nevertheless, a pontifical decree of Gregory IX, in 1231, once more
permitted the study of Ibn Sina's philosophy. The lacunas, however, were now apparent. Nonetheless, the thought of
all philosophers was nourished by his, to such a degree that it is impossible to tell what it
would have been like without him. Latin scholasticism owes to his opponent, William of Auvergne,
the fact that it received from him the distinction between essence and existence, which William
considered that he had found in him.
Another
current of thought, stemming from English centres of study, developed
particularly in
the Franciscan order. It
saw Ibn Sina as more of a philosopher, augmenting Saint Augustine: the active Intellect was like the sun of minds and the
internal Master. They believed that he opened up a whole mystic world. Roger Bacon and Duns
Scotus were influenced by him. The latter,
however, based his doctrine of the univocity of being on the same text that
Thomas
Aquinas had used to
support the opposite doctrine.
Selection
was gradually practised in the corpus of Ibn Sina. He took his definitive
place, together
with Saint Thomas Aquinas.
The distinction between essence and existence became one of the fundamentals of Thomist philosophy. It
gave an explanation for the immateriality of angels; Saint Thomas's De Ente et Essentia is imbued with
Avicennism. The better the theologian masters his own thought, the less he cites Ibn Sina (see the
quotations in Vansteenkiste, op. cit.), but he still respects him. Saint Thomas's commentators, Cajetan
and Jean de Saint-Thomas, writing respectively
at the end of the 15th century and during the 17th, still allotted to Ibn Sina
the place that he had taken in Thomism, the
place that is definitely his.
(A.-M.
Goichon)
I.
Works
of Ibn Sina: Brockelmann, I, 452-8, S I, 812-29
C.
A. Nallino, art. Avicenna, in Enciclop. Italiana, v, 638-9, up to 1930
O.
Ergin, I. S. bibliografyasi, in Büyük Türk filosof ve tib ustadi Ibni Sina
‘ahsiyeti ve eserleri hakkinda tetkikler,
Istanbul 1937, in Turkish
G.
C. Anawati, Mu'allafat I. S. Essai de bibliographie avicennienne, Cairo 1950,
in Arabic,
manuscripts and published
works
resume
in French, La tradition manuscrite orientale de l'oeuvre d'Avicenne. Essai de
bibliographie
avicennienne, in Rev.
thomiste, 1951, 407-40
A.
A. Hekmat, Les oeuvres persanes d'A., in Ligue des Etats arabes, Millenaire
d'A., Congres de Baghdad, Cairo
1952, 84-97
S.
Naficy, Pur-e Sina (A., his life, works, thought and time), Tehran 1954, bibl.
9-53
S.
M. Afnan, A., his life and works, London 1958
Yahya
Mahdavi, Bibliographie d'I. S., Tehran 1954 (critical notes in Persian,
signalizing
manuscripts, editions,
translations and numerous studies on each work). All the Persian works of Ibn Sina were published at Tehran on
the occasion of his millenary, as well as some of the Arabic works lists of
these works and of some Persian translations of Arabic works published in this collection by E. Rossi, Il millenario
di A. a Teheran e Hamadan, in OM, 1954, 214-24. For the medical and scientific works, both texts and translations
into Latin, Hebrew, Persian and modern
European languages, published since 1497, the date of the publication of Gerard
of Cremona's translation of the Qanun, see
Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-general's Office, U. S. Army, Washington, including works
on I. S., i, 1880, 712-3, 2nd series, i, 1896, 819-21, 3rd series, ii,
1920, 230-1 (s.v. Avicenna), 4th series, viii, 1943, 2-3 (s.v. Ibn Sina), then
Armed forces
medical library catalog,
i, 1955, 112 (s.v. Avicenna). Philosophical
works: Except for the Najat, printed after the Qanun, Rome 1593, all editions
of texts are recent
al-Qasida
fi 'ilm al-Mantiq, ed. Schmoelders, 1836
Politics,
ed. Margoliouth, 1887
al-Shifa',
lithographed at Tehran 1303/1886
the
opuscula edited by Mehren under the title Traites mystiques, Leiden 1889-94,
and al-Isharat,
ed. Forget, Leiden 1892,
are among the oldest (see Goichon, Distinction de l'essence et de l'existence ...,
XIII-XV, 506-7, and bibliographies cited). Later publications: complete
critical text of
al-Shifa', Cairo 1952-in
the collection MemorialQd'Avicenne, IFAO, Cairo 1952-63: fasc. IV,
al-Akhlaqwa-'l-infi'alat al-nafsaniyya,
text established and translated by D. Remondon fasc. V, 'Uyun al-Hikma, text
established by A. Badawi, and Introd., 1954 fasc. VI, Kitab al-Hudud, Livre des
Definitions, text established, translated and annotated by A.-M. Goichon, 1963, augmenting by study of the Greek
sources the Introduction a A., son Epitre des Definitions, trans. from the printed editions, and
illuminated by numerous texts taken from the works of Ibn Sina (Paris 1933)
Ibn
Sina risaleleri, several opuscula, ed. with French trans. by H. Z. Ülken, A.
Ates, Istanbul
1953
al-Burhan
min al-Shifa', ed. by A. Badawi, Cairo 1954 the same edited several texts, entire
or fragmentary, in the collection Aristu 'ind al-'Arab, Cairo 1948
Qissat
Hayy b. Yaqzan, text established and French trans. by H. Corbin, in A. et le
Recit visionnaire, ii, Tehran 1954
Asbab
Hudud al-Huruf [phonetics], Cairo 1332, less correctly known as Makharij
al-Huruf, text
ed. with Persian tr. by
Parviz Natil Khanlari, Publ. Fac. Tehran 1955, no. 207, Eng. tr. by Khalil I. Semaan, Lahore 1963
al-Fann
al-sadis min al-Tabi'iyyat ('ilm al-nafs) min Kitab al-Shifa', Psychologie d'I.
S. d'apres son oeuvre Ash-Shifa',
ed. with French trans. by Jan Bakos, Prague 1956
Urjuza
fi 'l-tibb (ed. Jahier-Noureddine, see above)
Kitab
al-Isharat wa 'l-tanbihat, with the commentary of Nasir al-Din Tusi, ed. by S.
Dunia, Cairo
1957-8
Anthologie
de textes poetiques attribues a A., published, translated and annotated by H.
Jahier and
A. Noureddine, Algiers
1379/1960.
Translations only:
Medical, see Index Catalogue
Philosophical,
printed in Latin, ibid. and Goichon, Distinction ..., 507-8 (note: De Anima,
1485
Metaphysica
..., ex Dominici Gundisalvi transl., 1495
De
animalibus, per Michaelem Scotum trans., 1500. Avicenne opera [...] Logyca.
Sufficientia
[...]
De anima, ex transl. Joannis Hispalensis et D. Gundisalvi
De
animalibus ex transl. Michaelis Scoti [...] Philosophia prima, ex transl. D.
Gundisalvi, 1508
Avicennae
[...] Compendium de anima. De mahad [...] Aphorismi de anima. De
diffinitionibus [...]. De divisione
scientiarum, ab Andrea Alpago [...] versa [...] 1546)
P.
Vattier, La logique du fils de Sina, Paris 1659, etc.). Since 1930: Ch. 12 of the Mathematics of the Shifa', tr.
R. d'Erlanger, in La musique arabe, Paris 1935, ii, 103-245,
with notes and appendix, 251-306
Livre
des Directives et remarques (Kitab al-Isharat wa-'l-Tanbihat), French trans.
with introduction
and notes by A.-M.
Goichon, Beirut-Paris 1951
Le
poeme de l'Ame, French trans. by H. Masse, in Revue du Caire, June 1951, 7-9
Le
Livre de science (Danishnama), trans. M. Achena and H. Masse, 2 vols., Paris
1955-7
A.-M.
Goichon, Le recit de Hayy ibn Yaqzan commente par des textes d'A., Paris, 1959
Haven
C. Krueger, A.'s poem on medicine, Springfield 1963, following the trans. of
Opitz and
Jahier
Avicenna
latinus. Liber de Anima seu Sextus de Naturalibus, critical edition of the
medieval Latin
translation, by S. Van
Riet (with an introduction on Avicenna's psychological teaching by G. Verbeke), Louvain-Leiden 1968.
Autobiography
of I. S. completed by al-Juzajani, preserved by Ibn al-Qifti, Ta'rikh al-Hukama', ed. Lippert, 413
(German trans. by P. Kraus in Klinische Wochenschrift, 1932, 1880-4
English
trans. by A. J. Arberry, in Avicenna on theology, London 1951, 9-24
French
trans. by H. Masse, in Introd. to Livre de science, 6-11)
biography
by Zabidollah Safa, Persian text, French adapt. by S. Naficy, in Collection du Millenaire d'A., no 27, Teheran 1953,
iv, 1-53
Y.
A. Kashi, Apercu sur la biographie d'A., in Memorial Avicenne, iii.
Innumerable,
particularly since the millenary see the bibliographies cited, Nallino up to
1930, Ergin, Anawati, Mahdavi, A.-M. Goichon, Distinction ..., bibliogr. 504-20, up to 1937, and the
collection A., scientist and philosopher, a millenary symposium, London 1952, bibliography after each
chapter some information in Islamologie, Pareja et al., bibliography to ch.
XXII, 1012-14
see
also A. -M. Goichon, Avicenna e Avicennismo, in Enciclopedia filosofica,
Venice-Rome 1957, i,
525-35, and 2nd ed., 1968, i, coll. 666-78 (German trans.
Lexicon der Philosophie, Munich 1968, i)
S.
Naficy, Bibliographie des principaux travaux europeens sur A., Tehran 1953 (63
eds. of Latin
translations from 1472 to
1639). For the scientific section, see the numerous articles and books in the Library of Congress, for
1880-1943, Index Catalogue, Washington since 1879, running bibliography, Quarterly cumulative
Index Medicus, Chicago
G.
Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimore 1927-50, especially
vol. i.
Principal studies after
1930: see text, and M. El-Hefny, Ibn Sina's Musiklehre hauptsaechlich an seinem 'Nagat' erlaeutert. Nebst
Uebersetzung und Herausgabe des Musikabschnittes des 'Nagat', Berlin 1930
I.
Madkour, L'Organon d'Aristote dans le monde arabe [...]. Analyse puisee [...] a
un commentaire inedit d'I. S.,
Paris 1934
A.
Birkenmajer, A.'s Vorrede zum 'Liber Sufficentiae' und Roger Bacon, in Rev.
Neo-scolastique de
Philosophie, 1934, 308-20
C.
Fabro, A. e la conoscenza divina dei particolari, in Boll. Filosofico, i
(1935), 45-54
A.-M.
Goichon, Distinction de l'essence et de l'existence d'apres I. S., Paris 1937
eadem,
Lexique de la langue philosophique d'I. S., Paris 1938
eadem,
Vocabulaires compares d' Aristote et d'I. S., Paris 1939
M.
Amid, Essai sur la psychologie d'A., Geneva 1940
M.
Cruz Hernandez, La metafisica de A., Granada 1949
A.
Ahmadieh, Raze darman, Tehran 1950
idem,
Darman Rumatism [...] I. S., n.d.
Avicenne,
Lectures on Radiodiffusion Francaise, 1951
Millenaire
d'A., in Rev. du Caire, special number, June 1951
Congres
de Baghdad, Ligue des Etats arabes, Cairo 1952
L.
Gardet, La pensee religieuse d'A., Paris 1951
idem,
La connaissance mystique chez I. S. et ses presupposes philosophiques, Paris
1952
A.
A. Siassi, La psychologie d'A. et ses analogues dans la psychologie moderne,
Teheran 1954
Livre
du millenaire d'A. (Congress 1954), Tehran 1956
E.
Troilo, Lineamento e interpretazione del sistema filosofico di A., Rome 1956,
in Atti d. Accad. Dei Lincei,
Memorie, Cl. di scienze morali storiche e filologiche, Sc. 8, 397-446
M.
Cruz Hernandez, La distincion aviceniana de la esencia y la existencia y su
interpretacion en filosofia occidental,
in Homenaje a Millas Vallicrosa, 1956, ii, 351-74
idem,
La nocion de 'ser' en A., in Pensamiento, 1959, 83-98
A.-A.
Wolfson, Avicenna, Algazali and Averroes on divine attributes, in Homenaje a
Millas Vallicrosa, ii, 545-71
O.
E. Chahine, Ontologie et theologie chez A., typescript thesis, Paris 1956
A.
Lobato, A. y santo Tomas en la teoria del conocimiento, Granada 1957
M.
Tabit al-Fandi, Dieu et le monde: leurs rapports d'apres I. S., in BFA, xi
(1958), Arabic sect., 159-80
M.
A. Abu Rayyan, La critique de la philosophie d'A. par Abu 'l-Barakat
al-BaÇdadi,Qin BFA., xii (1958), 17-60
I.
Madkour, Le traite des Categories du Shifa', in MIDEO, v (1958), 253-78
M.
Alonso Alonso, La 'al-anniya' de A. y el problema de la esencia y existencia,
in Pensamiento, 1958, 311-46
G.
C. Anawati, La destinee de l'homme dans la philosophie d'A., in L'homme et son
destin. Actes du Ier
Congres international de
philosophie medievale, Louvain 1958, 257-66
A.
M. Goichon, Selon A., l'ame humaine est-elle creatrice de son corps?, ibid.,
267-76
M.-Th.
d'Alverny, Andrea Alpago interprete et commentateur d'A., in Atti del XII
Congresso internat. di filosofia,
ix, 1958, 1-6
A.-M.
Goichon, La theorie des formes chez A., ibid., 131-8
E.
Galindo Aguilar, Anthropologie et cosmogonie chez A., in IBLA, 1959, no. 87,
287-323
M.-Th.
d'Alverny, Anniyya-Anitas, in Melanges Etienne Gilson, Paris 1959, 59-91
'Ali
NasuH al-Tahir, al-RuH al-khalida, nazarat fi 'ayniyyat al-Hakim al-faylasuf
al-ra'is I. S., Amman 1960 (on the poem on the soul)
A.
M. Goichon, La demonstration de l'existence dans la logique d'A., in Melanges
H. Masse, Tehran 1963, 165-84
eadem,
L'exegese coranique d'A. jugee par Averroes, in Actas del primer Congreso de estudios
arabes e islamicos, 1964, 89-99
eadem,
Le 'sirr', l'intime du coeur dans la doctrine avicennienne de la connaissance,
in Studia semitica Ioanni Bakoá dicata, Bratislava 1965, 119-26 [see also Hayy
b. yaqzan].
B.
Haneberg, Zur Erkenntnisslehre des I. S. und Albertus Magnus, in Abhandl. d.
philos.-philolog. Klasse d. KKnigl. bayer. Akad. d. Wissensch., xii (1868),
191-249
J.
Forget, L'influence de la philosophie arabe sur la philosophie scolastique, in
Rev. neo-scolastique, 1894, 385-410
C.
Baeumker, Witelo ..., Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Phil. d. Mittelalters, iii/2, Münster
1908
P.
Mandonnet, Les premieres disputes sur la distinction reelle entre l'essence et
l'existence, in Rev. thomiste, 1910, 741-65
M.-D.
Roland-Gosselin, De distinctione inter essentiam et esse apud A. et D. Thomam,
in Xenia thomistica, iii (1925), 281-8
idem,
Le 'De ente et essentia' de S. Thomas d'Aquin, Le Saulchoir 1926 (numerous
references to A.)
E.
Gilson, several articles in Arch. d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du M. A.
(Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin, i (1926-7), 5-127
A.
et le point de depart de Duns Scot, ii, (1927), 89-149
Les
sources greco-arabes de l'augustinisme avicennisant, iv (1929-30), 5-107
Roger
Marston, un cas d'augustinisme avicennisant, viii (1933), 37-42
L'etude
des philosophies arabes et son role dans l'interpretation de la scolastique, in
Proc. of the sixth internat. Congress of phil., 1927, 592-6)
G.
Sarton, op. cit., with numerous references
J.
Rohmer, Sur la doctrine franciscaine des deux faces de l'ame, in Arch. d'hist.
doctr. et litt. du M. A., 1927, 73-7
L.
Gauthier, Scolastique musulmane et scolastique chretienne, in Rev. d'Hist. de
la philos., 1928, 221-53 and 333-55 (on the real distinction between essence
and existence according to A. see 246-7 and 356)
A.
Forest, La structure metaphysique du concret selon saint Thomas d'Aquin, Paris
1931 (table of citations of A.)
M.
de Wulf, L'Augustinisme avicennisant, in Rev. Neoscol., 1931, 11-39
W.
Kleine, Die Substanzlehre Avicennas bei Thomas von Aquin, Freiburg im Breisgau
1933
Cajetan,
In 'De Ente et essentia' ... Commentaria, Turin 1934
R.
de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'avicennisme latin ..., Paris 1934
J.
Teicher, Gundissalino e l'agostinismo avicennizante, in Riv. Filos.
Neoscolastica, 1934, no. 3
A.-M.
Goichon, La philosophie d'A. et son influence enQOccident (see text)
eadem,
Influence d'A. en Occident, in Encycl. mensuelle de la France d'Outre-Mer,
Sept. 1952, 257-61
A.
C. Crombie, A.'s influence on the medieval scientific tradition, in A.,
scientist Vansteenkiste (see text)
A.-M.
Goichon, Un chapitre de l'influence d'I. S. en Occident: le 'De Ente et
essentia' de S. Thomas d'Aquin, in Livre du Millenaire d'A., iv, 118-31
A.
nella storia d. cultura medievale, Accad. dei Lincei, Rome 1957
G.
Giacon, A. e Tommaso, Messina 1958
E.
Gilson, A. et les origines de la notion de cause efficiente, in Atti del XII
Congresso intern. di filosofia, 11958, ix, 121-30
E.
Cerulli, A. et Laurent de Medicis a propos d'un passage de l' 'Altercazione',
in St. Isl., xi (1959), 5-27
Th.
Litt, Les corps celestes dans l'univers de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Louvain 1963,
see index For medical influence see Index Catalogue, loc. cit.
Source: Encyclopedia of Islam: © 1999
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands