Avicennan Heritage

The Avicennan Heritage

earthly world reside as paradigms and from which they come to inform the sensible objects here on Earth.

While this parallel has been noticed, it has also been claimed that as- Suhrawardī’s position differed from Avicenna’s in that the latter only accepted ten such immaterial intellects.7 In fact, Avicenna only conceded that there are ten immaterial intellects in the simplest cosmological model and that actually there are as many as required by one’s best astronomy. Where in fact the two thinkers differ is simply that as-Suhrawardī allows for there to be different immaterial substances of the same species only accidentally differing, a status that Avicenna reserves for immaterial human intellects alone, whereas all other immaterial Intelligences, he maintains, differ only according to species.

None of my comments here are intended to suggest that Avicenna and as- Suhrawardī’s philosophical systems are the same. They are not. I merely want to emphasize as-Suhrawardī’s debt to Avicenna. In fact, Avicenna also owes a debt of sorts to as-Suhrawardī, for as-Suhrawardī, analogous to al-Ghazālī before him, recast many of Avicenna’s philosophical concepts and terminology into light metaphors and the mystical language of the Sufis. The result was that Avicenna’s philosophy could be incorporated into another aspect of Islamic spiritualism, namely, Sufi mysticism. In fact, the incorporation was so complete that certain twentieth-century scholars, such as Henri Corbin and his school, have argued that there was already a mystical element in Avicenna’s thought, albeit only explicitly presented in Avicenna’s work The Easterners, which is no longer extant in full.8 Whatever the case, there can be little doubt that Avicenna’s philosophy duly modified became ever more engrained in the philosophical framework of Muslim intellectual and spiritual thought.

Avicenna likewise influenced the articulation of Jewish philosophical theology. While arguably the most important philosophical element in (p.249) Avicenna’s thought among later Muslim theologians was the distinction between essence and existence, a theme that runs throughout the Cure, among medieval Jewish theologians it appears to be Avicenna’s distinction between necessary existence and possible existence, which features prominently within the Salvation. The distinction was in fact taken over by no less a Jewish luminary than Moses ben Maimon, that is, Maimonides (ca. 1135–1204).9 So, for example, Maimonides’ third proof for the existence of God in the Guide for the Perplexed (II 1), which he erroneously attributes to Aristotle, is in fact a variation of Avicenna’s proof from possible and necessary existence. Moreover, in that same proof Maimonides, using the same distinction, rehearses Avicenna’s own arguments for the uniqueness of the divinity and for God’s incorporeality and simplicity.

More important, and in certain respects more interesting, is Maimonides’ use of Avicenna’s distinction in articulating to what extent God can be said to have attributes beyond necessary existence (Guide for the Perplexed, I 52). Avicenna’s

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own position, one may recall, was that one could positively affirm that God was the Necessary Existent. Other than this single positive attribute, all other attributes, maintained Avicenna, have to be either negative, such as “incorporeal,” or relational, such as “(ontologically or temporally) prior to.” Maimonides’ own distinctive negative theology is best seen as a give and take between himself and Avicenna, agreeing that, with the exception of the attribute of being God (that is, the Necessary Existent), one should attribute negative attributes of the divinity, while disagreeing with Avicenna that one could attribute relational ones to the divinity.

Thus, according to Maimonides, other than the attributes of action—which in fact flow from and are identical with God’s necessary existence—the divinity can be described only in negative terms. In contrast with Avicenna, however, Maimonides disagreed that relational attributes should be ascribed to God, and does so, ironically, for purely Avicennan reasons. For Avicenna, there is no single category “existence,” of which necessary existence and possible existence are its species; rather, both are categorically different, only sharing the name “existence” in an equivocal sense. Maimonides merely observed that in order for two things to stand in any meaningful relation they need to be at least categorically alike. To say of a lime, for instance, that the green (category of quality) is brighter, or sourer, or larger, or the like than its size (category of quantity) is just nonsense. The nonsense becomes even more exacerbated the further (p.250) removed the categories involved in the purported relation are; however, between necessary existence and possible existence not even existence is shared in common but is said equivocally. Thus, nothing of the created order, according to Maimonides, can stand in any relation to God such as to give rise to a relational attribute: Strictly speaking, for Maimonides, God is not before us, in us, with us, nor can any other relational attribute be assigned to God.

In addition to drawing upon and adapting Avicenna’s necessary-possible existence distinction, Maimonides also took over, albeit in a qualified way, Avicenna’s account of prophecy. According to Avicenna, as noted, prophecy is not a supernatural phenomenon but a natural one, and as such is in need of a natural explanation. Within the framework of his psychology and particularly his accounts of insight (ḥads) and the internal sense faculty of the compositive imagination, Avicenna found just such an explanation. Avicenna’s prophet far from being individually chosen by God to be a vehicle of divine inspiration is merely a human who has insight to the superlative degree so as to be able fully and properly to grasp the inherent causal structure and order of the good found in the world. The prophet in turn can then imagine and explain this order in ways that capture the imagination of others. Maimonides, in fact, accepted this natural explanation of prophecy, while also finding a place in it for God (Guide for the Perplexed, I 32). For, according to Maimonides, God can prevent one whose psychological disposition is otherwise of such an excellent degree so as to qualify to be a prophet from in fact becoming a prophet. Again, let me repeat,

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my claim is not that Maimonides’ views are just those of Avicenna’s—they are not—rather, I merely want to emphasize the influence that Avicenna had on the formation of Maimonides’ own unique thought.

Avicenna’s Heritage in the Christian World As with the Arabic East, so with the Latin West, Avicenna’s thought was a source of inspiration, particularly at the onset of the High Middle Ages. At that time there began a movement to translate Greek and Arabic scientific works into Latin that equaled the earlier Arabic translation movement in its breadth.10 At least one indication of the high regard in which early philosophers and translators in Europe, such as Dominicus Gundissalinus (p.251) (fl. 1150–1190) and his Jewish collaborator Ibn Daud (ca. 1110–1180), held Avicenna is seen in that his works were some of the first translated into Latin.

Among the works of Avicenna translated were a fair bit of the Cure—including a little of the logic, about two-thirds of the general physics, and complete translations of other more specific works on natural philosophy, as well as the whole of the psychology and the metaphysics—the metaphysics of the Salvation, and, of course, The Canon.11 Avicenna’s Canon, with its handy compendium format, proved to be immensely popular in Europe, and continued to be a medical textbook at universities into the eighteenth century. It was his philosophy, however, that would have the most enduring effect, for it would influence (sometimes negatively, other times positively) some of the great Catholic theologians and philosophers of that time, such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.

So, for example, the foremost issue in scholastic natural philosophy involved the concept of motion, concerning which the question of in which Aristotelian category does it belong was of first most importance. Albert the Great (c. 1200– 1280) gave the question the form in which it was most frequently dealt throughout medieval Europe: Is motion a flowing form (forma fluens) or the form of a flow (fluxus formae)? While the language is Albert’s own, he found the statement of the problem, as he himself says, in the Physics of Avicenna’s Cure. Unfortunately, owing to a faulty Latin translation of a key passage—where Avicenna in fact articulated his theory of motion at an instant and then went on and developed his notion of a limit—and Albert’s own commentary on that passage, Avicenna’s own contribution to this issue was not appreciated at least in the Latin West.12 Still, it was Avicenna who raised the question that would stimulate so much discussion among Latin natural philosophers about the proper way to characterize motion.

Moreover, the psychological work of Avicenna’s Cure, was second only to Aristotle’s in influencing Albert’s own psychological works. Thus, as a notable example, in Albert’s De homine, he cited Aristotle 280 times with Avicenna coming in close behind with some 230 citations.13 In fact, it would seem that

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Albert preferred the way that Avicenna structured the science of psychology over that of Aristotle, as well as giving Avicenna pride of place when discussing the vegetative soul—that is, the principle associated with the functions of self- nourishment, growth, and reproduction—as well as the internal senses, such as imagination and memory.

(p.252) Perhaps of more importance in the long run was Avicenna’s influence on Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), whose system of thought still makes up much of the philosophical theology of the Catholic Church and Christian apologetics more generally. Here it is important to note that in Thomas’s earlier works, he is much more willing to reference Avicenna by name in a positive way, whereas in his more mature works, such as the Summa Theologiae and commentaries on Aristotle, he prefers to mention Avicenna by name only when he is in disagreement with him. Such a seeming turn of opinion, I believe, is not so much because, as Thomas grew older, he came to reject the Avicennan elements that impressed him in his youth, but because by then he had so thoroughly incorporated those elements into his own system of thought that they genuinely became his own.

The most obvious case of such an appropriation is the real distinction between being (ens)—Avicenna would say existence—and essence (essentia). In fact, Thomas names one of his earlier opuscula, On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia), after the famous Avicennan distinction. In this work, if one sets aside the final chapter that discusses accidents, Avicenna is positively referenced more than any other philosopher, including Aristotle. Even if one includes the final chapter, where nearly half of the Aristotle references occur, Avicenna still ties Aristotle for the overall number of explicit positive references, thirteen in all. Even in Thomas’s later works where the Aristotelian actuality-potentiality distinction comes to predominate, he never fully discards Avicenna’s essence- existence distinction, as is clearly witnessed in Thomas’s account of divine simplicity and divine perfection at Summa Theologiae, part I, question 3 and 4, respectively.

Even when Thomas is clearly at odds with Avicenna, such as on the subject of the cosmos’ past eternity, the former very much respects and even positively draws on his Muslim predecessor. Avicenna’s own position on this ever so delicate issue was that one can, in fact, demonstrate that God has been eternally creating the universe. Consequently, Avicenna believes that one can demonstrate that the world was not created at some first moment in the finite past. In contrast, Thomas denied that the cosmos’ eternity could be demonstrated, but he equally denied that its temporal creation could be demonstrated. According to Thomas, one knows that the cosmos has existed for a finite period of time solely on the basis of revelation. Thus, Thomas’s project was to show that

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purported demonstrations—whether for the eternal or temporal creation of the world—were not in fact demonstrative.

(p.253) Thus, on the one hand, in a very positive way, Thomas consistently draws upon Avicenna when considering so-called demonstrations for the world’s temporal createdness in order to criticize those proofs.14 On the other hand, when he considered the arguments for the world’s eternity, Avicenna’s proof from necessity and possibility always appeared in Thomas’s catalogue of arguments. In fact, Avicenna’s proof is the premier argument for that thesis considered by Thomas in the Summa Theologiae (part I, question 46), as well as framing the topic in his On the Eternity of the World (De Aeternitate mundi), which, as the title indicates is dedicated to this issue. While further examples of Avicennan influence on Thomas could certainly be multiplied, these instances at least suggest the role that Avicenna played in the development of two of the more distinctive doctrines in Aquinas’s thought.

Similarly, the place of Avicenna in the thought of that most subtle of scholastic thinkers, John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308), is also beyond question. As early as 1927, the great historian of medieval philosophy, Étienne Gilson, recognized Scotus’s predilection for Avicenna, and enumerated three points where Duns Scotus takes Avicenna as his point of departure: (1) his understanding of what the proper object of the science of metaphysics is; (2) his conception of being; and (3) his closely related theory of common natures.15 Concerning the first issue, as discussed in some detail, historically there was a problem of identifying the proper object of metaphysics: is it being qua being or God (or immaterial beings more generally)? I have already noted that for Avicenna it is existence as such; however, the thesis that God or immaterial beings represent the proper object of metaphysical inquiry was defended by the Muslim philosopher, Averroes (1126–1198), whose influence on Latin scholasticism through his Aristotelian commentaries was no less, and perhaps greater, than Avicenna’s own. Again Scotus followed Avicenna on this point, and indeed on this point Avicenna’s understanding came to be the predominate one among most metaphysicians up until today.

Gilson’s points (2) and (3) can be treated together, given the close connection between essences and existence in Avicenna’s system and being and common natures in Scotus’s. Here at least one point of influence is Avicenna’s insistence that a proper understanding of God can only be attained though a careful analysis of existence itself, and, in like fashion, as Gilson notes, the whole of Scotus’s metaphysics is centered on the idea of being, since there is no other idea by which one could reach God.16 Even more evidence of the (p.254) place of Avicenna in Scotus’s thought is the latter’s conception of common natures, where he explicitly and approvingly appeals to Avicenna’s remarks about essences in book V of the metaphysics of the Cure, namely, they simply are what they are. In other words, for example, the essence of a horse is just horse-ness,

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