Dimitri Gutas

The volume brings together seventeen studies on Avicenna by Dimitri Gutas, written over the past twenty-five years. They aim to establish Avicenna's historical and philosophical context as a means to determining his philosophical project and the orientations of his thought. They deal with his life and works, his method, his epistemology, and his later reception in the Islamic world, ending with a programmatic essay on the state of the field of Avicennan studies and future agenda. Occasioned by issues raised in Gutas's monograph on Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (whose second edition has just appeared), they form a substantive complement to it. For this reprint, a number of the essays have been reset and accordingly revised and updated. Provided with exhaustive indexes of names, places, subjects, and technical terms, the volume constitutes a new and major research tool for the study of Avicenna and his heritage. (CS1050).

"... a critical edition based on the three known manuscripts, and translation of a gnomologium entitled Mukhtar min kalam al-hukama' al-arba`a, which contains sayings ascribed to Pythgagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Parallel versions from closely related gnomologia have been collated and noted in the apparatus. In the next section, a commentary on each individual saying and parallel versions in a large number of Arabic texts, both published and manuscript, are noted and discussed. [... ] The Greek originals are, as far as they could be found, quoted and discussed within the tradition of Greek gnomologia." (from a review in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 37, no.2) The book includes the Arabic text of the gnomologium, and an English translation, on facing pages. A paperback reprint of the original 1975 book, with a new Foreword, and with errata and corrections.

Through close study of Avicenna's statements and major works, Dimitri Gutas traces Avicenna's own sense of his place in the Aristotelian tradition and the history of philosophy in Islam, and provides an introduction to reading his philosophical works by delineating the approach most consistent with Avicenna's intention and purpose in philosophy. The second edition of this foundational work, which has quickened fruitful research into the philosopher in the last quarter century, is completely revised and updated, and adds a new final chapter summarizing Avicenna's philosophical project. It is also enlarged with the addition of a new appendix which offers a critical inventory of Avicenna's authentic works, updating the work of Mahdavi (1954) with additional information on all manuscripts and important editions and translations. Its usefulness enhanced, the book provides primary orientation to Avicenna's philosophy and works and constitutes an indispensable research tool for their study.

This volume, a major new research tool, brings together seventeen studies on Avicenna by Dimitri Gutas, written over the past twenty-five years. They aim to establish Avicenna's historical and philosophical context as a means to determining his philosophical project and the orientations of his thought. They deal with his life and works, his method, his epistemology, and his later reception in the Islamic world, ending with an essay on the state of the field of Avicennan studies and future agenda.

In my Oriens article on Avicenna's empiricism, I present what Avicenna calls the principles of syllogism, which are the different types of propositions that form the irreducible and axiomatic starting points of syllogisms and definitions. As Avicenna states both explicitly and implicitly in numerous passages that I cite, these are all based on experience. Two of these are the primary propositions and those with built-in syllogisms, literally, "premises of fiṭra syllogisms," fiṭra being the natural operation of the intellect—thus, "premises whose syllogisms are constructed by the natural operation of the intellect." In his "Note" on my article...