Olga L. Lizzini

One finds different expressions of divine omnipresence in the Arabic-Islamic tradition. In the Qur’an, the suggestion of a superior divine world is counterbalanced by the notion of God as continuously active and omnipresent, and Kalām, mysticism, and philosophy interpret this idea in various ways. The Absolute is both present and transcendent. Omnipresence, in so far as it is presence, must necessarily be thought ‘in’ or ‘in relation to’ something and transcendence necessarily refers to the divine presence in the world. The major difficulty that authors (e.g. Avicenna and Ibn ‘Arabī) have to face is then reconciling the otherness of the Principle with Its (omni-)presence in the world: the thought of God is about continuity, and includes mediation, but also about the caesura between God and the created world.

This chapter looks at Avicenna’s definition of truth or, more precisely, some aspects of it related to the theme of analysis or resolutio. Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) tends to rework elements of the two traditions that constitute the history of analysis (and more generally the alphabet of Arabic philosophy), that is, in a very broad sense, the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. The doctrine of truth, in which logic and metaphysics are closely intertwined, clearly exemplifies this. Both senses of truth—the logical and the ontological—are based on the idea of permanence and primacy. A distinction is made between what is true or real in a proper (or absolute) sense and what is true or real in a derived (and relation-dependent) sense. As a foundation, truth is the truth of being and coincides with reality that cannot be analyzed further. At this level, being true comprehends the Necessarily Existent, the proposition expressing the existence of necessity, the principle of non-contradiction, and the quiddity or reality of the thing as such. Everything else—both at the level of truth or truthfulness and at the level of existing reality—is true because it is derived from some other thing and thus in itself is false, and is true only in virtue of its relation to some other thing.

The general issue of the relationship between Representation and Reality—how, and to what extent, representations stand for and correspond to reality—has a privileged position in Arabic-Islamic philosophy: that of prophecy and of the veridical dream, which is both a sign and a mode of prophecy. It is in this respect that some remarks are offered here about visions and the doctrine of prophecy. After presenting the main elements of intellectual prophecy I discuss imaginative prophecy: this is related to something that is not universal and corresponds either to the knowledge or just to the expression of a particular reality. Indeed, Avicenna uses imaginative prophecy to explain the prophet’s knowledge and representation of particular events—a knowledge which is possible because of a sort of conjunction between the prophet’s soul and the celestial spheres—but also the translation or conversion—into concrete and imaginative terms—of the intellectual truth the prophet’s intellect is capable of attaining. Thus visions in which imaginative prophecy is realized involve not only the first mode of imaginative prophecy, but also its second mode. In discussing this issue, I propose to interpret visions or prophetic representations as the result of the prophet’s capacity to receive and at the same time transform what is received. Finally, I briefly discuss the issue of visions and symbols: dream and prophecy imply a process of translation and interpretation, and then a transposition of sense. In fact, the ultimate meaning of prophetic representation resides in intelligible reality. The prophet, in his vision, is not dominated by his imagination ; his communication with the celestial, divine world is essentially intellectual, but his language, the “symbols and indications” he uses in representing his knowledge of the truth are those that are familiar to human beings, on whom the imaginative world exercises its suggestive power.

Où en est l'étude de la philosophie arabe? Ce livre propose un état des lieux. Il s'agit de dresser un premier bilan des travaux menés dans ce vaste champ. On examine l'historiographie, les dénominations employées; on s'interroge sur les thématiques, les objets retenus et les méthodes d'analyse mises en oeuvre ; on y présente aussi des études sur des auteurs, des traditions ou des concepts, qui montrent comment le travail progresse, quelles tensions perdurent, quelles sont les perspectives."--Page 4 of cover.

The idea that defines quiddity – independence or neutrality in relation to the modalities of existence – allows Avicenna not only to speak of a duality in the being of existing things, but also to use apparently logically incompatible notions to qualify quiddity: that of reality, on the one hand, and that of possibility, on the other. The very conception of the independence of quiddity – which lets us consider quiddity as a separate element in the existing thing – can be recognized in the resolution of the doubt that concludes the Maqāla fī l‑tawḥīd of Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī. A comparison between Avicenna’s discussion of quiddity in his Metaphysics and the discourse of Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī confirms the idea that this Christian philosopher and theologian who was active in Baghdad in the tenth century could have played an important formative role in the ontology of the great Persian philosopher.

Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence was—and sometimes still is—read in the sense of a priority of essence. My analysis will focus on an important example of such a reading: Beatrice Zedler’s interpretation of one of the most important texts for Thomas’s discussion of Avicenna’s philosophy, the Quaestiones de Potentia. Independently of its consistency, Zedler’s interpretation gives me the opportunity to discuss Avicenna’s supposed “essentialism”. My aim is to show that Avicenna is very well aware of the aporia that an essence existing independently of existence would represent. If essentialism is a risk of Avicenna’s metaphysics, this is not because of the essence-existence distinction. It is because of the ethical dimension that creation perforce implies, that Avicenna seems in fact to posit an “independent order of possibles” before God’s creative action.

In his Metaphysics of the Healing, Avicenna presents his ideas about the destiny of the human soul in the afterlife. Considered philosophically, the afterlife is intellectual. The human soul achieves perfection by becoming an intellectual world in which the whole of reality may be reflected. Analysing the meaning of this statement helps to elucidate not only how Avicenna conceives intellectual pleasure in the afterlife, but also how he characterizes the very process of knowledge. Intertwined therewith are at least two important subjects, richly illuminated by recent medieval historiographical research: ‘intellectual’ or ‘mental felicity’ and knowledge as conjunction with the agent intellect.

The idea of totality is linked with various themes in the section on Metaphysics in The Book of Healing by Avicenna (Ilāhiyyāt in Kitāb al-Šifā'). This paper will first analyse the conception of creation and then the conception of evil. In both cases, totality is conceived in relation to terms and ideas of the absolute and non-existence. The study of Avicenna’s concept of totality reveals the fundamental traits of his conception of the First Principle: the Principle is not composed and one, because it is only being or existence without the “essential” limitation depending on essence. Therefore, everything that is caused and thus is not the Principle, must be double and composed.

the philosophers in the West, none, perhaps, is better known by name and less familiar in actual content of his ideas than the medieval Muslim philosopher, physician, minister and naturalist Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known since the days of the scholastics as Avicenna. In this book the author, himself a philosopher, and long known for his studies of Arabic thought, presents a factual account of Avicenna's philosophy. Setting the thinker in the context of his often turbulent times and tracing the roots and influences of Avicenna's ideas, this book offers a factual philosophical portrait. It details Avicenna's account of being as a synthesis between the seemingly irreconcilable extremes of Aristotelian eternalism and the creationism of monotheistic scripture. It examines Avicenna's distinctive theory of knowledge, his ideas about immortality and individuality, including the famous "floating man argument", his contributions to logic, and his probing thoughts on rhetoric and poetics.