Thinker · TH-0005
Ibn Sina
Persian polymath born near Bukhara whose philosophical and medical works dominated scholarship in the Islamic world and, through Latin translations, in medieval Europe. He…
ابن سينا
Also known as Avicenna, Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina
980 – 1037 · Bukhara, Isfahan, Hamadan
Traditions: Islamic
Schools: Falsafa
Persian polymath born near Bukhara whose philosophical and medical works dominated scholarship in the Islamic world and, through Latin translations, in medieval Europe. He reworked Aristotelian philosophy into an original system centred on the distinction between essence and existence and on God as the Necessary Existent.
Key ideas
- The distinction between essence (mahiyya) and existence (wujud)
- God as the Necessary Existent through itself
- The 'floating man' thought experiment on self-awareness
- The internal senses and the immateriality of the rational soul
Major works
- The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, completed c. 1025)
- The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa, c. 1020–1027)
- The Book of Salvation (Kitab al-Najat)
- Remarks and Admonitions (al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat)
In the conversation
- Question Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
- Question What did Ibn Sina mean by the “internal senses”?
- Question How does Ibn Sina’s proof of the Necessary Existent avoid the infinite regress problem?
- Question I know the spider is harmless and I’m still terrified. Is my fear wrong, or just irrational?
- Discussion Essence and existence: why Ibn Sina’s distinction mattered to Aquinas
- Discussion The floating man is not the cogito: Ibn Sina and Descartes compared
- Discussion Udayana, Ibn Sina and Leibniz: three arguments for a first cause that do not need a beginning
- Question Did the Latin scholastics really receive Aristotle through Arabic?
- Reading group Reading group: Porphyry’s Isagoge and the three questions he refused to answer
- Discussion Gundissalinus didn’t read Arabic: philosophy translated through spoken Castilian
- Question Can someone explain Ibn Sina’s propositions that are necessary ‘as long as’?
- Discussion Knowledge by presence: does Suhrawardi show why experience resists description?
- Question If I know myself “by presence”, why am I so bad at knowing my own motives? Suhrawardi meets psychology
- Discussion Does a diagnosis name a real condition, or a useful bundle of symptoms?
- Debate Emanation cannot be squared with a God who freely creates, and al-Ghazālī saw exactly why
- Discussion The Cartesian circle: can clear and distinct perception vouch for itself?
- Debate The contingency argument fails because a collection of contingent things needs no explanation of its own
- Discussion Ibn Sina begins the Canon by defining medicine. What does that definition assume about health?
- Discussion Wujūd, brahman, dao: are these even answers to the same question?
- Reading group Reading group: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Gamma on the firmest principle
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Ibn Sina takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 1.1 Ontology What is there?
- 1.1.2 Universals and Particulars A tomato and a fire engine are both red. Is there something they share?
- 1.2 Cosmology (Philosophical) Why is there something rather than nothing?
- 1.3 Philosophy of Mind What is a mind, and how does it relate to the body and the world?
- 1.6 Modality What does it mean to say something could have been different?
- 1.8 Natural Theology Can argument alone settle whether God exists?
- 2.2.5 Revelation Can something be known because it was disclosed rather than discovered?
- 2.5 Truth What makes a statement true?
- 4.1.3 Syllogistic Logic What follows from two statements about classes of things?
- 4.3 Modal Logic How do you reason validly about what must be, and what merely might?
- 4.3.3 Temporal Logic Is it already true that it will rain tomorrow?
- 6.1 Philosophy of Religion What kind of claim is a religious claim?
- 6.13 Philosophy of Medicine What makes something a disease rather than a difference?
- 6.14 Philosophy of Psychology Can a science study something only one person can observe?
- 6.23 Philosophy of Emotion Can an emotion be wrong?