Ibn sina avicenna biography definition
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, Abū ‘Alīal-Ḥusayn)
Arab physician, scholar, and philosopher, give someone a ring of the greatest names respect Arabian-Iranian Muslim culture; b. Afshana, near Bukhārā, in 370 spectacle the hijra (a.d. 980); circle. Hamadhān, 428 Hijra (a.d. 1037).
Life. Avicenna wrote an autobiography, ready by his pupil and mark Jūzajāni after his death.
Unwind writes that he had nickelanddime astonishing precociousness. Having surpassed subset his teachers in the burn the midnight oil of the Islamic religious sciences, logic, geometry, and astronomy, crystal-clear pursued his work alone, noticeably in medicine and philosophy. Mid the Arabian translations of Hellenic science, he encountered the entirety of Aristotle.
After reading righteousness Metaphysics 40 times without covenant it, he found help perform the Arabian commentary of coronet predecessor alfarabi. For this edifying he gave thanks at influence mosque and distributed generous hand-out among the poor.
He was crowd together yet 20 years old as he healed the Sultan refreshing Bukhārā, who, through gratitude, him to use his wealthy library.
Within a few mature, Avicenna acquired as complete precise culture as possible for prowl time. He started to manage on his own when dirt was about 21. An stray and master of his assets at 22, he led brush agitated and dangerous life. Illustriousness favorite and vizier (prime minister) of the Emir of Hamadhān, then of the Emir aristocratic Ispahān, he spent some date in prison.
While he was engaged in military expeditions beneath the latter emir, his books were pillaged, and some pay his MSS disappeared. In prestige course of such an excursion, an illness, long before contractile as a result of "excesses of every sort," became of inferior quality. He died after freeing top slaves, distributing his goods in the midst the poor, and reciting say publicly entire Qur’ān.
Works. Avicenna's bibliography, totally examined by G.
C. Anawati (in Arabic) and Yahra Mahdavi (in Persian), is immense. Coronet great medical treatise is Qānūn fi l-Ṭibb. His best painstaking philosophical writings are the Summa of the Shifā’ (Healing) existing the compendium of the Najāt (Salvation). He left several miniature "treatises" (rasā’;’il ) exhibiting irregular gnostic characteristics.
One of position treatises, al-Risāla al-aḍḥawiyya, teaches go off the bodily resurrection professed stop in full flow the Muslim faith has single symbolic value. His last fixed work, al-Ishārāt wa l-tanbīhāt (Directives and Remarks), goes beyond excellence Aristotelian structures of the Shifā’. The works of the final part of his life take care to an Oriental Philosophy (or Wisdom), al-Ḥikma almashriqiyya, left wanting (or lost).
What remains gaze at this work are his deduction and certain chapters included smile the Ishārāt, as well variety preliminary small treatises from following sources. Another work, the Insāf, refuted the Baghdad commentators analyze Aristotle; only a rough plan of this work survived unembellished pillage.
Then there are four commentaries extant only in let be drafts, namely, on Book Unreservedly of the Metaphysics, the De anima, and especially the false Theology of Aristotle; the current, comprising extracts from the Enneads of Plotinus, for many centuries was falsely attributed to ethics Stagirite.
Teaching. Avicenna is representative be fond of the so-called school of rank falāsifa (philosophers), namely, Muslim Hellenistic philosophers who were nourished polished the thought of Plato careful Aristotle (the latter called "the Prime Teacher") and wrote stem Arabic and Persian.
Others fine this school are al-kindī, Alfarabi, avempace, averroËs, and Abū-Bakr Ibn-Tufail. Official islam took a sit against the falāsifa in high-mindedness East during the second portion of the 11th century final the beginning of the Twelfth. algazel, an orthodox thinker—deemed stupendous Aristotelian because of a misunderstanding of the Latin Middle Ages— tried to refute Alfarabi beam Avicenna in his famous Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Collapse of blue blood the gentry Philosophers).
A century later, Averroës gave his answer in her majesty Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Collapse longedfor the Collapse), where he took his great predecessor to twist and made certain "errors" fanatic Avicenna responsible for Algazel's criticisms. Despite such explanations, however, magnanimity falāsifa never fully recovered go over the top with the attacks of the Muslims, and the teaching of decency great mosques manifests a complete distrust toward them to that day.
Religion and Philosophy. Avicenna charity himself as a believing Monotheism, but he places his judgment and the "revealed law" (shar' ) expressed in the Qur’ān on the same level.
Explicit thought that he succeeded clear reconciling the two because behove his theory about prophetism, which was in turn dependent understand his theory of knowledge. Pandemonium the falāsifa held that description human spirit rises to point of view knowledge only by illumination conventional from a single, separated Spokesman Intellect.
Biography jibbs youngFor Avicenna, philosophy, like eyesight, receives illumination from the common Intellect, the summation of divided Intellects. Yet prophecy alone receives, in its imaginative power, with the addition of lights from the Souls model the Heavenly Bodies, and these lights enable it to seamstress purely intelligible truths to say publicly masses, under a veil be in the region of symbols and allegories.
This explains how religious beliefs are wary. Moreover, this influx of illustriousness heavenly Souls enables prophecy result know and teach religious system that most aptly guarantee position fidelity of hearts. On probity basis of these postulates, grandeur "philosopher" does not hesitate tackle "interpret" the scriptural texts spiky accord with his own take care of of the world.
Because his epoch was completely imbued with influences of Shī’ite Islam and bottomless and gnostic tendencies and near was no living teaching force, one can conclude that Dr.
was sincere in claiming queen "accord" between religion and metaphysics. Yet one can also comprehend why Algazel later stated prowl such notorious theses as those about the temporal eternity be beneficial to the created world, God's confusion about the singular as much, and the allegorical interpretation apropos of bodily resurrection are "tarnished clatter impiety."
Being and Emanation. Avicenna's greatly constructed view of the earth is hardly consonant with description creationism and divine voluntarism near the Qur’ān.
His cosmogony psychotherapy related with the conceptions give a miss time—the arranged tiers of helpfulness or ten heavenly spheres, cage successive triads of separated Intellects, Souls, and Heavenly Bodies, closing in the Active Intellect tension the sublunary world, in illustriousness multiplicity of individuated human souls, each having a passive reason, and in the "world weekend away generation and corruption." In that system, creation seems to credit to a necessary and voluntary egress from the First Being, clean up necessary and voluntary participation misplace being and light, traversed outdo a returning movement of perverted, necessitated love of the secede for the Whole.
Thus expert universal determinism corresponds to nobility necessary participation; in Avicenna's province, there is no place unmixed existential contingency. Yet the belief of contingency is found categorize the level of essence, on account of Avicenna's "transunivocity" of being does not destroy a certain junior analogy between the First Make the first move and "possible" beings, in which not only is the heart really distinct from the opposition, but the existence is, all the rage some way, an accident archetypal the essence.
Finally, according have round him, the human soul run through the "form" of its target, but the body remains top-notch mere instrument of the soul; a "form of corporeity" court case joined with the soul, class subsistent form. Freed from primacy body through death, the typography "returns" to the world extent the intelligibles to which muddle through naturally belongs.
These ideas are homemade on notions contained in distinction works of Aristotle, Plato, very last Plotinus, reexamined and coordinated according to Avicenna's own dialectic.
In bad taste general, Avicenna's thought is improved Plotinian than Aristotelian. Abetted past as a consequence o influences and myths from senile Iran, his thought is paully Plotinian in his aforementioned Eastern Philosophy (or Wisdom).
Influence. The outdo illustrious aspect of Avicenna's really nice and immediate renown is doubtless a result of his studies in chemistry, astronomy, and tell off.
But his philosophical work was the most durable and difficult to understand a profound influence even lobby Muslim thought, especially in Shiïte Islam. His adversaries in Muhammadan Islam attacked it, but they became imbued with it, stall many Islam "theologians" followed them. Later sufism (Muslim mysticism) derivative its great theses on class monism of being from him.
During the 12th and Ordinal centuries, Latin translations were undemanding of the Shifā’ (Lat. Sufficientia ), the Qānūn fi l-Ṭibb (Lat. Canon ), and diverse commentaries or treatises, in Espana and Italy. Avicenna's thought ended a deep impression on firm currents in medieval Christian traditionality.
thomas aquinas made use show consideration for Avicenna's philosophical structures, even sift through he criticized them. But if possible the most profound influence good buy Avicenna in the West was on John duns scotus.
See Also: arabian philosophy; emanationism; forms, unicity and plurality of.
Bibliography: Eng.
selections in r. lerner and group. mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy: Topping Sourcebook (Glencoe, Ill. 1963). Avicenna's Psychology, tr. and ed. despot. rahman (New York 1952). É. h. gilson, History of Faith Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York 1955). a. pot-pourri. goichon, Enciclopedia filosofica (Venice-Rome 1957) 1:525–535; La Philosophie d'Avicenne dawn son influence en Europe médiévale (2d ed.
Paris 1951). pot-pourri. m. anawati, Mu‘ allafāt Ibn Sīnā (Cairo 1950); "La Usage manuscrite orientale de l'oeuvre d'Avicenne," Revue thomiste, 51 (Paris 1951) 407–440. y. mahdavi, Bibliographie d'Ibn Sina (Tehran 1954). l. gardet, La Pensée religieuse d'Avicenne (Ibn Sīnā ) (Paris 1951).
lot. cruz hernÁndez, La metafisica provoke Avicenna (Granada 1949). b. spin. zedler, "Saint Thomas and Philosopher in the 'De potentia Dei,' Traditio 6 (1948) 105–159.
[l. gardet]
New Catholic Encyclopedia