Abstract
Avicenna’s doctrine of knowledge is known for its complexity, and modern scholars have offered different if not contradictory interpretations of its features. Avicenna’s doctrine of imagination is particularly difficult to apprehend. Is the work of imagination, as some texts suggest, a necessary step in the process that leads to intellection, or is imagination, as other texts suggest, a power that frees man from adequacy with reality?
I warmly thank Jonathan Dubé, who revised the English.
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Notes
- 1.
Avicenna’s theory of knowledge has been the subject of numerous studies. My aim in this paper is not to enter into controversy with some eminent colleagues. Avicenna’s thought is complex enough to nourish various and sometimes divergent interpretations. The bibliography on this subject is rich and I will here cite some important papers that helped me construct my own interpretation: D. Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental knowledge in Avicenna”, in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, J.E. Montgomery (ed.,), Leuven: Peters, 2006 pp. 337–354 and “Intellect without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna”, in: Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy, ed. M.C.Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos, I, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006, p. 351–372; P. Adamson, “Non-Discursive Thought in Avicenna’s Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle,” in J. McGinnis (ed.), Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Leiden: Brill, 2004, 87–111. Dag Hasse, Avicenna on Abstraction, in Aspects of Avicenna, ed. Robert Wisnovsky, Princeton, 2001, pp. 39–82. Cristina d’Ancona, “Degrees of Abstraction in Avicenna. How to combine Aristotle’s De Anima and the Enneads”, in Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. S. Knuuttila and P. Kärkkäinen, Springer Science, 2008, p. 47–71.
- 2.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, I, 5, p. 41.
- 3.
In her remarkable study on the Kitāb al-ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs, Rotraud Hansberger shows that Avicenna knew a close version (if not the same) to the Rampur ms. of the kitāb al-ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs and that his own conception of the internal senses is influenced by this text, specifically, as we will see, his doctrine of dreams and prophecy. See The Transmission of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia in Arabic, PhD Thesis, 2006, p. 221 and f.
- 4.
I will explain later in the course of my argumentation why I translate this notion by power of re-presentation.
- 5.
“In our nature we combine [synthesize] some perceptible things with others, and we differentiate [analyze] some from others, not according to their form as found externally, nor with the belief in the existence of one of those, nor in its non-existence. So it is necessary that there should be in us a power by which we perform that act. And this is what is called reflective [or: cogitative] when the intellect uses it, and imaginative when the imagining power uses it.” Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 1, p. 147, l. 14–18.
- 6.
I will examine below if this power can be regarded as a kind of imagination, given its ability to freely compose forms and intentions.
- 7.
For an analysis of this passage, see p. XX.
- 8.
This second aspect explains why, in order to fully develop the intuition that allowed Avicenna to conceive imagination as a creative power, ishrāqī philosophers had to completely reconsider his theory of knowledge.
- 9.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, V, p. 36, the distinction between the inscription in the memory and the wave transmitting the representation is of Stoic origin, as is the example of water. Chrysippus criticizes Cleanthus, who considers that the psychic breath can receive an impression similar to that of the seal in wax. He objects that even a body like water, which is denser than breath, cannot preserve the shape of the seal; cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, VII, 374. This question is treated by J. B. Gourinat, Les stoïciens et l’âme, Paris, 1996, p. 39.
- 10.
The idea of a center from which derives branches could be an influence of Alexander of Aphrodisias who compares the common sense to the center of a circle unifying in itself what comes from different sources. Plotinus also uses the same analogy. For the references, see C. d’Ancona, “Degrees of Abstraction in Avicenna. How to combine Aristotle’s De Anima and the Enneads”, in Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. S. Knuuttila and P. Kärkkäinen, Springer Science, 2008, p. 47–71, p. 53.
- 11.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 1, p. 147.
- 12.
In his edition of the Kitāb al-nafs of the Shifāʾ, Amolī notes the presence of the word “rasm” (trace) instead of “raqm” (inscription) in one of the mss. he had at his disposal; Al-nafs min kitāb al-Shifāʾ, H.Z. Amolī, Maṭba῾a maktab al-i῾lām al-islāmī, Qum, 1417 H/1997, p. 61. In the Arabic Kitāb al-ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs, we find rasm for the imprint left in the mind by the sensibles. For example: “inn al-dhikr ḥifẓ rusūm al-ashyāʾ”, Rotraud Hansberger, The Transmission of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia in Arabic, PhD Thesis, 2006, Appendix, p. 8.
- 13.
The image of the block of wax is used by Aristotle in De Memoria et Reminiscentia, where he explains that memory is the capacity to receive the impression of the sensible thing and to preserve it, just as the wax retains the imprint of the seal (450a31-b5). Interestingly, in his commentary on De anima, Themistius uses the image of the block of wax to describe the activity of the imagination. Here is the English translation of this passage—not preserved in the Arabic manuscript—which lacks a large part of the paraphrase of the third section of the De anima: “It is the nature [of imagination] to retain in itself, and be stamped with, the imprints that sense perception hands over to it from the objects of perception, after it [itself] has received the imprint; and also [its nature] to be capable of preserving the traces [from sense perception] for some time, even though the objects of perception have gone away”; Themistius, On Aristotle on the soul, trad. R. B. Todd., London, 1996, p. 115. Plotinus also develops the thesis according to which it is the imagination which has the memory of sensible things, cf. Enn. IV, 3 29.
- 14.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid andI. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 2, p. 151.
- 15.
The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fī ṭibb, S. al-Laḥām (ed.), Dār al-fikr, Beyrouth, 1994, I, p. 137.
- 16.
I will return to this distinction later in my paper, while focusing on the epistemological aspect of the question.
- 17.
“[Aristotle] wants us to know the imagination (al-takhayyul) and to explain the modality of operation (kayfiyya) of its act and how it follows the sensation (al-ḥiss). [Avicenna] says that when a thing is supposed to be in motion, its motion is (fully) realized in something else. It is as if the act of the imagination is regarded as a certain movement, and thus it is a movement which takes place only after a movement of the senses. This means that if a sense is moved by a sensible and abstracts its image (mithālahu) from it, then the imagination is moved by this sensible and abstracts an image in a different manner than the first abstraction (akhdhan ākhar), and preserves it. You know that the sensation is followed by an internal movement which is imagination. It necessarily resembles sensation since it follows it; it preserves [the sensation] according to the modality of reception of the sense [of perception]. It cannot take place without [sensation] and does not exist in what is deprived of sensation. The subject (al-shayʾ) in which the imagination’s movement follows the sensation (al-ḥiss) realizes (yafʿal) various things by means of these movements and is also affected by them. His actions and passions are either true or false. By action, [Aristotle] means the composition (al-tarkīb) and the separation (al-tafṣīl) that the imagination performs depending on whether it acts alone or in association with sensation. When sensation brings about something, the imagination causes it to correspond to something else. By passion, he means the impression of these compositions and separations in the imagination. What he has gathered here under the name of “imagination” is divided into various active faculties, such as “estimation” (al-wahm) and “the cogitative faculty” (al-fikr), and “conservative powers” (wa-ḥāfiẓa), such as the “retentive imagination” (or: formative power) (al-muṣawwira) and “remembrance” (al-mudhakkira), Al-Taʿlīqāt ῾alā ḥawāshī kitāb al-nafs li-Arisṭāṭālīs, in Arisṭu ʿinda l-ʿArab, p. 75–116, ed. A. Badawi, Koweit, 2nd ed., 1978, p. 97–98. It is interesting to note that in the preserved Arabic translation of Aristotle’s De anima by Isḥāq Ibn Ḥunayn, the word used to designate “imagination” is “tawahhum”, Arisṭūṭālīs fī-l-nafs, A. Badawī (ed.), Wikāla al-maṭbū῾āt, Beirut, 2nd edition, 1980, p. 71.
- 18.
This aspect of the distinction between Aristotle’s and Avicenna’s doctrine of imagination has been stressed by Portelli in “The ‘Myth’ that Avicenna reproduced Aristotle’s ‘concept of imagination’ in De Anima”, op. cit., p. 125. Avicenna states in the Kitāb al-Nafs of the Shifāʾ: “When the intellectual power consults the particular things which are in the formative power, and the light of the active intellect illuminates them in us, they are then abstracted from matter and its consequents and imprinted in the rational soul; not because these forms themselves pass from the formative power to the intellect nor insofar as the abstract notion obscured by material bonds is intelligible in itself and in relation to its own essence as it is, but in the sense that the consultation of particular things leads the soul to receive the abstract form by emanation from the agent intellect. Thoughts and reflections are movements that prepare the soul to receive the effusion [...]; then the images which are intelligible in power become intelligible in act. Not themselves, but what is gathered from them”, [my translation], al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, V, 5, p. 208–209.
- 19.
It remains unclear why Avicenna qualifies the mutakhayyila as “cogitative” in man. It is may be because the capacity of creating new psychical contents is specific to man.
- 20.
It is important to stress here that for Avicenna the common sense operates a synthesis on the objects apprehended by the senses. It is at the level of the common sense that sensation becomes perception. On this point, see Meryem Sebti, Avicenne. L’âme humaine, Paris 2000, p. 59 ff.
- 21.
This part of the sentence is difficult to understand. The tree editors (Amoli, Rahman and Anawati/Zāyid/ Madhkūr) give the same reading and do not report any variant. The Latin translation have “non permittit imaginativam cogitare”, see Avicenna Latinus, Liber De anima, IV-V, S. Van Riet (ed.), Louvain-Leiden, 1968, p. 16. In the ms of the Kitāb al-Nafs kept in Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, folio 335, line 19 we read: “ḥata lā taslimu al-mutakhayyila li-l fikra” (so that the mutakhayyila does not submit to the cogitative power)which makes more sense.
- 22.
I renounce translating the second part of the sentence (wa yakūnu mā tuḥtajān ilayhi min al-ḥissi al-mushtaraki thābitan wāqi῾an fī shuġli al-ḥawāsi al-ẓāhiratiwhich) which is obviously corrupted. In his edition, Rahman mentions that there are some other lessons for thābitan and wāqi῾an, but none of them is conclusive; see Rahman, Al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs, ed. F. Raḥmān. Oxford University Press, 1959, p.172. In her footnotes of the Latin Edition, S. Van Riet provides a translation of this sentence which is not really comprehensible (“ce dont ces deux facultés ont besoin et qui vient du sens commun, est stable et est entraîné à s’occuper des sens externes”), see Avicenna Latinus, Liber de Anima IV-V, Leuven-Leyden, 1968, p. 16, note 13–14.
- 23.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 2, p. 153, (emphasis mine).
- 24.
In a yet unpublished study devoted to Farabi’s noetic, Philippe Vallat shows very clearly how Farabi considers that intellection necessitates the mediation of a form which is a simile of the original intelligible form: “L’intellection, en somme, actualise et réalise l’intellect en même temps qu’elle actualise et réalise les formes. De l’ensemble des formes devenues immatérielles par son actualisation, l’intellect en acte passe à l’intellection de ces mêmes formes telles qu’elles ont toujours été dans l’Intellect agent: indivisibles, toujours déjà en acte et immatérielles. L’intellect en acte est alors devenu divin, « acquis », intelligible et intellect par soi, car, en s’intelligeant comme ensemble des formes de toujours déjà immatérielles, l’intellect se pense et devient immatériel en acte, de simple disposition quasi matérielle qu’il était pour commencer. Il ne devient pas pour autant identique à l’Intellect agent. Il est tentant, ne serait-ce qu’à des fins de clarté, de supposer que c’est une fois arrivé au terme du processus décrit que Farabi s’est avisé que la portée onto-noétique de l’état atteint par l’intellect acquis, à savoir sa subsistance dans l’être, nécessitait d’en mieux distinguer l’état de l’intellect en acte en introduisant entre les formes devenues immatérielles et les formes de toujours déjà immatérielles, un terme médian, la semblance de la forme ante rem, faisant ainsi de l’identification « formes/intellect » au stade de l’intellect en acte un état seulement conceptuel, spéculaire et transitoire et non, comme au stade de l’intellect acquis, un état essentiel de similitude proche (qarīb al-shibh) ou de quasi identité”, in “L’intellect selon Farabi. La transformation du connaître en être”, in Noétique et théorie de la connaissance dans la philosophie arabe des ix e-xvii e siècles, Meryem Sebti and Daniel de Smet (eds), Vrin, forthcoming.
- 25.
The doctrine according to which theoretical thinking is a reversion to the origin is Neoplatonic and was spread in Arabic through the Plotiniana Arabica (Aristotle’s Theology -which is in fact a reelaboration of Plotinus’ last three Enneads - and the Proclus Arabus). However, for Avicenna there is no reminiscence, because the soul does not exist until a specific body is disposed to receive it. For the question of the co-origination of the soul and the body in Avicenna’s philosophy, see, Seyed N. Mousavian and Seyed Hasan Saadat Mostafavi, “Avicenna on the Origination of the Human Soul”, in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 5, Robert Pasnau (ed.), 2017, p. 41–86.
- 26.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 2, p. 160.
- 27.
The notion is also important in Fārābī’s doctrine of imagination. In chap. 24 of the Kitāb Arāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila, entitled “Al-qawl fī sabab al-manāmāt”, Fārābī explains that the function of the imagination (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila) has three specific activities: to retain the imprints of the sensible (ḥafḍuhā rusūm al-maḥsūsāt), the composition of these imprints (tarkīb baʿḍuhā ilā baʿḍ), and imitation (al-muḥāka). The chapter is almost entirely devoted to explaining the dynamics of this activity of mimesis. Nevertheless, Avicenna will later develop a significantly different doctrine: for Fārābī, the activity of mimesis is also the prerogative of the intellect; this has important consequences, since for him the imagination is not—as in Avicenna’s theory—the only psychic power of the soul endowed with a creative function; for Fārābī, the imagination imitates what comes from the sensible and what comes from the active intellect. It neither imitates what comes from the celestial souls, nor has the privilege to be the only psychic power to have access to the realm of these specific celestial beings. We find in Fārābī’s Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-madaniyya, a passage that is very close to what Avicenna will affirm later: “wa-mabādī’u l-mawğūdāti wa-marātibuhā wa-l-sa῾ādatu wa-ri’āsatu l-muduni l-fāḍilati immā an yataṣawwarahā al-insānu wa-ya῾qiluhā wa-immā an yataḫayyalahā. Wa-taṣawwaruhā huwa an tartasima fī nafsi l-insān, ḏawātuhā kamā hiya mawğūdatun fī-l-ḥaqīqa. Wa-taḫayyuluhā huwa an tartasimma fī nafsi l-insān ḫayālātuhā wa-miṯālātuhā wa-umūrun tuḥākihā”, Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-madaniyya, Fauzi M. Najjar, Dar El-Mashreq Publisher, Beyrouth, 1993, p. 85. Here is Fauzi Najjar’s translation of this passage: “The principles of the beings, their ranks of order, happiness and the rulership of the virtuous cities, are either cognized and intellected by man, or he imagines them. To cognize them is to have imprinted in man’s soul their images, representations of them, or matters that are imitations of them”; in Medieval Political Philosophy, Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (eds), Cornell University Press, Ithaca-New York, p. 40. In the same book, however, Fārābī rejects the idea that the celestial spheres are endowed with imagination: “wa- laysa fī-l-ağsāmi al-samāwiyyati min al-anfusi, lā l-ḥāssasatu wa-lā l-mutaḫayyilatu bal innamā lahā l-nafsu allatī ta῾qilu faqaṭ” (Arabic edition, p. 34 – this part of the text is not translated by Najjar): “the celestial bodies do not have souls nor do they have perception or imagination, they only have a soul which is capable of intellection”. In his French translation, Philippe Vallat rightly states: “l’imagination est ici refusée aux corps célestes”, see Ph. Vallat, Al-Fārābī, Le livre du Régime politique, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2012, p. 16, note 42. This essential difference between Fārābī’s and Avicenna’s cosmology has a decisive consequence on their doctrine of imagination. For Fārābī, imitation is reserved for non-philosophers, those who do not have the capacity to grasp intelligibles. Avicenna confers on imitation, and therefore imagination, a positive function which is not found in the doctrine of his predecessor.
- 28.
“Therefore, each of the spheres would have a soul imparting motion that intellectually apprehends the good. It would, by reason of its body, have imagination – that is, an imaged representation of particulars and a willing of particular [things]”, The Metaphysics of the Healing [Al-Shifāʾ: Al-Ilāhiyyāt], ed. and trans. M. Marmura. Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2005, IX, 3, p. 325.
- 29.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 2, p. 158. In the Kitāb al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-Maʿād, which is considered to be an earlier work of Avicenna, he is still under Fārābī’s influence, since he states that, in the case of the prophet, the imagination imitates the intelligibles that are given to man’s intellect by the active intellect (Kitāb al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-Maʿād, ed. A. Nūrānī, Mc Gill University-Tehran University, Tehran, 1984, p. 119).
- 30.
In his paper devoted to astral imagination, Marwan Rashed considers that the function of the imagination of the celestial spheres is to know and to control the trajectory of the celestial movement; see Marwan Rashed, “Imagination astrale et physique supralunaire selon Avicenne”, in Corpo e anima, sensi interni e intelletto dai secoli XIII-XV ai post-cartesiani e spinoziani, a cura di G. Federici-Vescoviniet al., Brepols, 2005, pp. 103–117.
- 31.
Ibn Sīnā, Sharḥ Kitāb Uthūlūjiyyā al-mansūb ilā arisṭū, in Aristū ῾inda-l-῾arab, ed. A. Badawi, Koweit, 2nd ed., 1978, p. 35–74, pp. 45–46. Despite intensive research through Avicenna’s corpus, I did not find any other characterization of the link between the world of the intellects and the world of the souls. It is worth noting that in Aristotle’s Theology, we find the word ḥikāya twice. The first occurrence is in the Prologue, which does not belong to the Ennead. The second one is to be found on page 62 (Badawi’s edition). This passage corresponds to Enn. V, 8.3, (I warmly thank Cristina d’Ancona for giving me a table of correspondence between the Theology and the Enneads). In Plotinus’ text we do not find the Greek equivalent to the Arabic word ḥikāya: “νοῦς δὲ οὗτος, ὁ ἀεὶ νοῦς καὶ οὐ ποτὲ νοῦς, ὅτι μὴ ἐπακτὸς αὐτῷ.Τίνα ἂν οὖν εἰκόνα τις αὐτοῦ λάβοι; Πᾶσα γὰρ ἔσται ἐκ χείρονος. Ἀλλὰ γὰρ δεῖ τὴν εἰκόνα ἐκ νοῦ γενέσθαι, ὥστε μὴ δι᾽ εἰκόνος”; “But this [primary principle of beauty] is Intellect, always and not just sometimes Intellect, because it does not come to itself from outside. What image of it, then, could one take? For every image will be drawn from something worse. But the image must be taken from Intellect, so that one is not really apprehending it through an image” (Trans. and Greek text, A Armstrong, Plotinus, vol. V, Enn. V, Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 246–247). It thus seems that this notion was added to the Greek original by the Arabic translators. I found this notion neither in the Arabic Parva Naturalia, nor in al-Kindī’s corpus. The root ḥky and its derivatives is used to translate the Greek μίμησις in the Arabic translations of Aristotle’s Poetics. What is interesting here is its use outside the poetic context and its inclusion in the metaphysical and epistemological frame.
- 32.
According to Dimitri Gutas, the imagination, as an internal sense, i.e. as a corporeal power of the soul, cannot receive any emanated form from the celestial spheres; only the rational soul, being immaterial, can receive an emanated form from an immaterial substance, D. Gutas, “Imagination and Transcendental knowledge in Avicenna”, in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, J.E. Montgomery (ed.,), Leuven: Peters, pp. 337–354. He notes that this paper “is a companion piece” to his “Intellect without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna”, in: Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy, ed. M.C. Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos, I, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006, p. 351–372. In both articles, he rejects the possibility of what he calls “mysticism” in Avicenna. Mousavian and Seyed Mostafavi convincingly show that Gutas’ reading is based on false assumptions regarding Avicenna’s ontology of the human soul, see “Avicenna on the Origination of the Human Soul”, in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 5, Robert Pasnau (ed.), 2017, p. 41–86 and especially, p. 73–75.
- 33.
This is a Quranic expression (12:44). We also find it in Kindī’s fī māhiyyat al-nawm wa l-ru’yā, Abu Rida, (ed.), 1950/1953, Al-Kindi, Rasāʾil al-Kindi al-Falsafiyya, 2 volumes, Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 295.
- 34.
Interestingly, in the Arabic version of De Somno, we find a similar doctrine. First, we find the idea that the vision in man’s dream has an underlying reality above it and that it is never completely identical with that reality. Here is what Rotraud Hansberger says in her analysis of Fī bāb al-nawm: “The maʿnā here presents the dreamer’s objective, true significance and meaning which sometimes the dreamer himself is not even able to obtain and which dream interpreters may know without having access to the corresponding spiritual (and corporeal) forms. The objectivity is guaranteed by the metaphysical framework within which this theory of veridical dreams is set”, vol. 1, p. 87–88. And also: “with regard to the theory of veridical dreams, it is a critical aspect of the metaphysical framework that it allows a hierarchy of forms to be associated with its cosmic hierarchy, a hierarchy of forms that can then be linked to the psychological component of the theory: the three-faculty theory. The hierarchy consists of corporeal, spiritual and intellectual forms: everything that exists in corporeal forms in the world exists in intellectual form in the (universal) intellect. And if the intellect conveys something to the human soul, it will be received as a spiritual form. This is made explicit in the following passage, where the text endeavors to explain why even in a veridical dream things may not look exactly as they do when the prophesied event takes place in the physical world: dream and event are two different representations of the one and the same thing, the underlying intellectual form”, The Transmission of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia in Arabic, PhD Thesis, 2006, p. 147.
- 35.
Following Jean François Pradeau’s convincing analyze about Plotinus’ metaphysical system, imitation is a kind of participation: “La μέθεζις platonicienne, telle que Plotin la conçoit, ne peut donc être comprise à la manière d’une production d’images successives qui aurait pour auteur le Premier principe lui-même, voué ainsi à produire autant d’images de lui-même qu’il y a de réalités; elle est bien en revanche une part prise à la puissance du Premier par ce qui est issu de lui, et c’est en l’imitation de cette puissance que procède la participation”, J. F. Pradeau, L’imitation du principe. Plotin et la participation, Vrin, Paris, 2003, p. 82.
- 36.
This has tremendous importance for the doctrine of prophecy. Being (sometimes) the result of the mimetic activity of the prophet’s imagination, revelation needs to be submitted to exegesis. This excludes the literal interpretation of the Quranic text. As Avicenna explains in his Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya fī amr al-maʿād, some Quranic verses have to be interpreted literally while some others need exegesis, Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya fī amr al-maʿād, S. Dunyā (ed.), Dār al-fikr al-ʿarabī, Cairo, 1949, p. 46. I am currently working on Avicenna’s doctrine of prophecy and will examine this question in a specific study.
- 37.
Al-Shifā’: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Le Caire: al-Hayʾa al- ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 2, p. 156.
- 38.
At another level, it is not surprising that poetics is based on the ability to perform mimesis. See, Avicenna’s Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: a critical study with an annotated translation of the text, I. Dahiyat, Brill, 1974. Here is another important passage from Avicenna’s epistle On the division of the rational sciences (Risāla fī aqsām al-῾ulūm al-῾aqliyya): “Among [these sciences] is the science of interpretation (῾ilm al-ta῾bīr). Its goal is to infer through the oniric (al-ḥulmiyya) re-presentations what the soul has contemplated from the invisible world (῾alam al-ghayb) and that the re-presentative power has re-presented by means of a symbol which is different from [the original vision]”, Risāla fī aqsām al-῾ulūm al-῾aqliyya, in Tis῾ Rasā’il fī-l-ḥikma wa-ṭabi῾iyyāt, Cairo, dār al-῾arab, (anonym), second edition, 1926, p. 104–118, 110. (I follow here Jean Michot in his emendation of the text al-ḥulmiyya instead of al-ḥikmiyya, see, Jean Michot, “Les sciences physiques et métaphysiques selon la Risāla fī aqsām al-῾ulūm d’Avicenne. Essai de traduction critique”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale, 22, 1980, p. 62–73, p. 67, note 45.
- 39.
Ṭabīʿīyāt. Dānesh-nāma-ye ʿalāʾī, ed. M. Meshkāt, Tehran, 1353/1974, p. 134.
- 40.
In several of his works, Avicenna evokes—this is well-known since the work of Yahya Michot—the thesis of “certain scholars” who consider that after the separation from the body, the souls which have not reached full intellectual perfection, whether they have been morally vicious or virtuous, are endowed with an imaginal survival. The fire of hell that consumes them or the coolness of the streams that quench their thirst are images that their imagination represents to them. These souls that keep their power of imagination even after the death of the body need to “borrow” a body so that their imagination—which is a bodily power—can continue to exist. Avicenna hypothesizes that this substitute function could be performed by the body of a celestial sphere (cf. Y. Michot, La destinée de l’âme selon Avicenne. Le retour à Dieu (Ma῾ād) et l’imagination, Leuven, Peeters, 1986. Avicenna envisions this hypothesis in The Book of Genesis and Return (Kitāb al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād), the Immolation Destination (Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya fī amr al-ma῾ād), and the Metaphysics of Shifāʾ (al-Shifāʾ, al-Ilāhiyyāt), see Michot’s book, p. 23, where he gives the references to Avicenna’s texts. Within Avicenna’s eschatological framework, the most valuable pleasure is the one of the species and not the one of the individuals. As Olga Lizzini states it: “according to Avicenna, the question of the pleasure of knowing has a meaning that cannot be restricted to human life and its attendant pleasures, but must be directly connected not only to the question of ethics – specifically the relationship between the soul and the body – but also to that of the eternal destiny of the human soul. Intellectual pleasure belongs to the human being not as regards individuals, but as regards the species (or the individuum vagum)”, Olga Lizzini, “Avicenna: the Pleasure of Knowledge and the Quietude of the Soul”, in Quaestio, 15 (2015), pp. 265–273, 271.
- 41.
Risālat al-Ṭayr, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, Ṣalmān wa-Abṣal, see M. A. F. Mehren, Traités mystiques d’Abou Alî al-Hosain b. Abdallah b. Sînâ ou d’Avicenne, 4 fasicules, Leiden, Brill, 1889–1899 repr. Frankfurt: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1999.
- 42.
Sarah Stroumsa, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Stories: Aristotle’s Poetics Reinterpreted”, Arabica T. 39, Fasc. 2 (Jul., 1992), pp. 183–206 and A.-M. Goichon, Le récit de Hayy Ibn Yaqzân commenté par des textes d’Avicenne, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1959. H. Corbin’s interpretation goes a little too far, conceiving imagination as a psychic power capable of grasping knowledge of the unseen world (ʿalam al-ghayb) without taking into account the epistemological limitations inherent to Avicenna’s theory of knowledge, as I will do later in my paper. See H. Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire, Verdier, Paris, 1999.
- 43.
See J. F. Pradeau’s book on Plotinus’ notion of mimesis: “Selon qu’elle est qualifiée d’image ou d’imitation, le statut de la réalité n’est plus le même. Dans le premier cas, elle est décrite comme un effet, comme le produit ou la projection d’un modèle; dans le second, elle l’est comme un agent, comme le sujet d’une activité. Cette distinction est étiologique: l’image a pour cause le principe, son modèle, alors que l’imitation a pour cause le principé, qui imite son modèle”, J. F. Pradeau, L’imitation du principe. Plotin et la participation, Vrin, Paris, 2003, p. 82.
- 44.
On this question, see C. Jambet, “Imagination noétique et imagination créatrice”, Cahiers de l’Université Saint-Jean de Jérusalem 5, Paris, Berg International, 1979, pp. 187–206.
- 45.
F. Rahman considers that each of the five internal senses listed by Avicenna is a differentiation of Aristotle’s phantasia: “We conclude then that wahm in Avicenna is an operation subsidiary to imagination and that it is therefore a differentiation of Aristotle’s phantasia like the rest of the internal senses”; F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, op. cit., p. 83.
- 46.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 1, p. 150.
- 47.
“Wa-l-thalitha al-wahm wa ālatuhā al-dimāghu kuluhu, lakinna al-akhassu bi-hā huwwa al-tajwīf al-awsaṭ”, Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa l-tanbīhat, S. Dunyā (ed.), Dār al-Ma῾ārif fī Maṣr, Cairo, 1957, II, p. 357.
- 48.
D. Black; cf. “Estimation (wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions”, in Dialogue, 32 (1993), 219–58.
- 49.
This account may seem to contradict the conception of the acquisition of knowledge which I described in the first part of this paper, namely that the intelligibles are received when the mind of man turns toward the Agent intellect. The work of the inner senses disposes man’s intellect to turn towards the Agent intellect; it constitutes a necessary preparatory work of polishing. The middle term of the syllogism is received after that work of preparation for most men (except the prophets and some outstanding minds).
- 50.
al-Risāla l-Aḍḥawiyya fī amr al-maʿād, S. Dunyā (ed.), Dār al-fikr al-ʿArabī, Cairo, 1949, p. 94–95.
- 51.
Al-Shifā: Vol. I, al-Madkhal (Isagoge), edited by G. Anawati, M. El-Khodeiri, F. Al-Ahwani and I. Madkour, Cairo: Al-Matbaʿah al-ʿAmiriyah, 1952, p. 12–13. This passage is quoted by D. Black; cf. “Estimation (wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions”, op. cit., p. 235.
- 52.
Averroes criticized Avicenna on this issue, arguing that the estimative power and the mutakhayyila feature the same function. In his analysis, the addition of the estimative power in the classification of internal senses is therefore unnecessary, since the two powers come with the same ability to combine forms in order to produce mental images or phantasma. Deborah Black, in her paper: “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions” (published in Dialogue XXXII (1993), 219–58) has examined Averroes’ objections at length, as well as al-Ghazali’s attacks against the Avicennian division of the internal senses. While defending Avicenna against al-Ghazālī’s criticism that he considers unjustified, Averroes criticizes Avicenna on another point. As D. Black stresses in the aforementioned paper, the target of al-Ghazālī’s criticism in Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) is not primarily the notion of the estimative, but Avicenna’s demonstration of the rationality and eternity of the intellect. Al-Ghazālī believes that if the estimative power, while being in a bodily substrate (i.e. a cavity of the brain), can apprehend indivisible and immaterial concepts such as enmity, then it must also be logically possible for that power to apprehend intelligible forms. If a material power can apprehend something immaterial, al-Ghazālī concludes, then Avicenna’s demonstration of the immateriality of the intellect is not valid. D. Black rightly stresses that this criticism is based on the metaphysical and psychological aspects that underlie Avicenna’s conception of the estimative and ignores its epistemological implications. Moreover, Avicenna did not characterize the estimative power on the ground that its specific objects—the intentiones (al-maʿānī)—are immaterial, as al-Ghazālī suggested. Avicenna established that, since intentiones (al-maʿānī) are essentially different from sensible forms (al-ṣuwār), and since the specific objects of the senses and the imagination are the forms (al-ṣuwār), then another power must be required to apprehend the intentions. Al-Ghazālī’s criticism is thus irrelevant since it fails to address the central point of Avicenna’s argument. In The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahāfut al-tahāfut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1987, p. 547), Averroes focuses his criticism on the fact that the imagination and the estimative power perform the same function. D. Black shows that Averroes’ criticism ignores the importance of the function of the estimative power in Avicenna’s theory of knowledge. She states that when the full range of the estimative power’s activities are recognized within Avicenna’s system, the criticisms raised about its usefulness in al-Ghazālī or Averroes then prove unfounded.
- 53.
This does not mean that the prophet is a poet or that the Qur’an is the product of poetic activity. This means that the prophet’s power of re-presentation is active when he receives revelations and that it sometimes imitates the received visions and replaces it with symbols. That is precisely why waḥī (divine inspiration) sometimes requires exegesis, as I previously noted.
- 54.
Deborah Black gives the following explanation for the need of the estimative in Avicenna’s epistemological system: “...even if the activities that Avicenna assigns to the estimative faculty in animals could be accounted for by other sense faculties, such as the imagination, it is clear that Avicenna views the interplay between the sensible and the intelligible in actual human cognition to be sufficiently intricate to demand the positing of a power like estimation, which is poised on the threshold between the two realms”. In my analysis, the need for the estimative power is due to the fact that mediating between the sensible and intelligible realms is not the function of the re-presentative power, but that of the estimative.
- 55.
For a description of intuition (ḥads) as a capacity of the human intellect to hit spontaneously upon the middle term, see D. Gutas, Intuition and Thinking: The Evolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology, in M. C.Pacheco and J.F. Meirinhos (eds), Intellect et Imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale (Turnhout: 2006), vol.1, 351–72.
- 56.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 3, p. 167, Translated by Rahman, Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 41.
- 57.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 3, p. 167, Translation (slightly revised) by Rahman, Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 41.
- 58.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 3, p. 167, Translation (slightly revised) by Rahman, Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 41.
- 59.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, IV, 3, p. 167, Translation (slightly revised) by Rahman, Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 41.
- 60.
The example of the squares is also found in the Mubāhathāt but in a summarized form. There, Avicenna also uses the word khayāl; Al-Mubāḥathāt, M. Bīdārfar (ed), Intishārāt Baydār, Qum. 1992, n° 1145, p. 367–368.
- 61.
Here, Avicenna means the universal concept of a square, which can only be conceived by the intellect.
- 62.
Rahman, p. 43–44. Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, Cairo,1975, IV, 3, p. 169, translation slightly revised.
- 63.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, V, 2, p. 189.
- 64.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al-Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, V, 2, p. 191–192.
- 65.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt 6: al-Nafs, ed., G.C. Anawati, S. Zāyid and I. Madhkūr, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-ʿāmma li-Shuʾūn al Maṭābiʿ al-Amiriyya, 1975, V, 2, p. 187. I summarize here the long argument (p. 187–192) used by Avicenna (chap. 2, book V) to prove that an intelligible form cannot inhere in a matter and cannot therefore be apprehended by a physical power.
- 66.
Olivier Boulnois, Être et représentation, Paris, 1999, p. 96. “Il ne s’agit plus de la présentation synthétique de la chose même dans l’imagination [...], mais de la production d’une présentation tenant lieu d’une chose absente [...]. La représentation n’est plus apprésentation, mais reproduction.”
- 67.
On this, see Meryem Sebti, “Intellection, imagination et aperception de soi dans le Livre du Résultat (Kitâb al-Tahṣīl) de Bahmanyâr Ibn al-Marzûbân”, in Chôra, 2006, pp. 189–210.
- 68.
The synthetic demonstration begins with simple elements to arrive at the most complex. The syllogistic demonstration is a synthetic demonstration. A demonstrative process which, starting from an abstract geometric figure, manages to reveal the solution of a given problem is an analytical process.
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Sebti, M. (2020). Re-presentation in Avicenna’s Doctrine of Knowledge. In: Mousavian, S., Fink, J. (eds) The Internal Senses in the Aristotelian Tradition. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33408-6_6
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