Abstract
The De Anima treatise (Kitāb al-nafs) of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037) has important implications for the disputes over the interpretation of Aristotle’s compelling work Πєρì \(\psi \upsilon \chi \hat \eta \varsigma \) (peri psuchēs, De Anima). It also has significant implications regarding the course of development of Modern European philosophy and the unfolding of contemporary debates of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology.
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Notes
After all, technē poiētikē reveals a capacity to bring something into being.
Franz Brentano, “Noûs Poiētikos: Survey of Earlier Interpretations,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 316.
Ibid., pp. 331–32.
Ibid., p. 330.
The reader may refer to: Aristotle, Metaphysics, W. D. Ross (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924.
Brentano, “Noûs Poiētikos: Survey of Earlier Interpretations,” pp. 326–28.
K. V. Wilkes, “Psuchē versus the Mind,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 115.
Ibid., pp. 115–16.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, “Changing Aristotle’s Mind,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 ), pp. 51–52.
Richard Sorabji, “Intentionality and Physiological Processes: Aristotle’s Theory of Sense-Perception,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 210.
Ibid., p. 211.
Aristotle, De Anima, D. W. Hamlyn (trans.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 104. For the Greek text refer to: Aristotle, Πєρì ψυχης,. W. D. Ross (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. Hereafter the translated text will be designated as De Anima and the Greek edition as Πєρì ψυχης. Also refer to: Aristotle, On the Soul Parva Naturalia on Breath, W. S. Hett, (trans.) Loeb Classical Library No. 288, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Aristotle, De Anima, p. 104.
Sorabji, “Intentionality and Physiological Processes,” p. 224.
Ibid., pp. 224–25.
Sorabji’s resistance of the theoretical inclinations that adopt the concept of intentionality in the interpretation of Aristotle’s Πєρì ψυχης is also vehemently revealed in: Richard Sorabji, “From Aristotle to Brentano: the Development of the Concept of Intentionality,” in Festschrift fur A. C. Lloyd: on the Aristotelian Tradition, H. Blumenthal and H. Robinson (eds.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Sorabji, “Intentionality and Physiological Processes,” p. 225.
Myles F. Bumyeat, “Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible?,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 1516.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., pp. 17–18.
Ibid., pp. 18–19.
Ibid., pp. 21–22.
Ibid., pp. 23–24. It is worthy to note herein that the difficulties facing Aristotle’s model of vision were transgressed by the Optics (Kitāb āb al-mānaẓir, De aspectibus) of Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, 965–1039) which led to the emergence of the perspectiva naturalis tradition in science and the perspectiva artiftcialis tradition in art. See: The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, Books I–III, On Direct Vision, 2 vols., A. I. Sabra (trans.), London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1989; Kitāb al-manāẓir, A. I. Sabra (ed.) Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts & Letters, 1983; Opticae thesaurus Alhazeni, Friedrich Risner (ed.), Basel, 1572.
Wilkes, “Psuchē versus the Mind,” pp. 111–12.
Ibid., p. 114.
Wilkes also holds that Descartes’ “I” describes a solipsistic passive mode of being in contrast with Aristotle’s psuchē which ethically seeks eudaimonia as its highest good, given that being good entails doing something good. Unlike the Cartesian mind which describes an “inner space” that is isolated somehow from the world which is open to destructibility, Aristotle’s “soul” is active from an ethical standpoint and involved in the affairs of the polis and the attends to the matters of philia. Ibid., p. 118–19.
Charles H. Khan, “Aristotle on Thinking,” in Essays on Aristotle ‘s De Anima, eds. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 363.
In an appeal to Martin Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle William McNeil holds that τò τί ήν єїναι is primary ousia, which is understood of being yet applied herein to the understanding of the soul. See: William McNeil, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, p. 69.
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–1300, London: The Warburg Institute, 2000, p. v.
Ibid., pp. v, 1. Of those deeply influenced by Avicenna’s De Anima, one could mention Dominicus Gundissalinus, John Blund, Michael Scot, Roland of Cremona, William of Auvergne, Jean de la Rochelle, Petrus Hispanus Portugalensis, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, Avicenna’s ontology attests to the rise of phenomenological dimensions in ontology, that are akin to what we find in Heidegger’s thought about being, which depart from the confines of Aristotle’s ousiology. Regarding our views viz. this issue, see: Nader El-Bizri, The Phenomenological Quest Between Avicenna and Heidegger Binghamton, N.Y.: Global Publications SUNY, 2000, Introduction and chapters 4 and 5; Nader El-Bizri, “Avicenna and Essentialism,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 54 (June 2001), pp. 533–58.
As Jean-Paul Sartre holds, the fundamental idea of Husserl is exemplified in accounting for the necessity of consciousness to exist as a consciousness of what is other than the self, a necessity that is given the name ‘intentionality.’ See: Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations Philosophiques, Paris: Gallimard, 1990, p. 11.
For some brief remarks on the influence of Brentano on Husserl, refer to: Joseph Kockelmans, Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994, pp. 2, 31–33, 40, 53–54, 92, 158.
Edmund Husserl, Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie, Ideen-I, Paul Ricoeur (trans.), Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1950.
Jaakko Hintikka, “The Phenomenological Dimension,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 89.
Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (trans.), 2nd ed., London: Sheed & Ward, 1989, p. 244.
In this sense, phenomenology would entail the showing of what self-shows itself in appearing, in so far that it self-shows itself as it is itself.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la Perception (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1945), p. iii; Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, § 7.
The Glance of the Eye, p. 336.
Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach (eds.), An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology Evanston IL: Northwestern university Press, 1993, p. 66 — Erste Philosophie, vol. 2, p. 4.
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, David Can (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Referred to in this chapter hereafter as Krisis.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, John Cottingham (trans.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Our approach to Avicenna’s De Anima belongs to a broad attempt to hermeneutically reconstruct what we take to be the occluded other tradition which is veiled within the multi-layered folds of the history of European philosophy in view of unconcealing its hidden philosophical possibilities. It is in this regard that we consider this chapter to be commensurate with other investigations we have conducted elsewhere: “Avicenna and Essentialism,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 54 (June 2001), pp. 533–58; The Phenomenological Quest Between Avicenna and Heidegger; “Reason and the ‘Critique of Arabic Heritage’,” in al-Hayat, Horizon Supplement, Issue 13497, (February 2000), p. 18; “Avicenna and Heidegger’s Critique of the History of Metaphysics,” in al-Hayat, Horizon Supplement, Issue 13134 (February 1999), p. E.
This argument appears in: Kitāb al-Shifā’, Tabīīyyāt, Kitāb al-Nafs (De Anima), I. Madkour, G. Anawati, S. Zayed (eds.) Cairo: al-hay’a al-mişriyya al= āmma lil-kitāb bnbn, 1975, p. 13, lines 9–20; Avicenna’s De Anima (Arabic Text), F. Rahman (ed.) London: Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 16; L. E. Goodman, Avicenna, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 155–56. This argument and the other passages that we have translated from Arabic do also partly appear in our book: The Phenomenological Quest Between Avicenna and Heidegger, Chapter 6.
Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, pp. 82–83.
Avicenna’s De Anima, F. Rahman (ed.) London: Oxford University Press, 1959, 1.1; afterwards as: De Anima.
Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, p. 89.
De Anima, preface p.1.
Kitāb al-Najāt, Majid Fakhry (ed.), Beirut: dār al-‘āfāq al jadīda, 1985, pp. 222–23.
Ibid., pp. 224, 226, 230.
De Anima V:7, pp. 250–252,253–254.
Ibid., p. 255.
Ibid, p. 256.
al-Najāt, pp. 330, 332.
Kitāb al-Ishārāt wal-Tanbīhāt (Livre des Directives et Remarques), A. -M. Goichon (trans.) Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1951, III:1.
For the mystic consideration of the nafs and its spiritual journeying see: Henri Corbin, Avicenne et Le Récit Visionnaire, Tehran: Société des Monuments Nationaux de l’Iran, 1954; August Mehren, Traités Mystiques d’Avicenne, Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1979; The Phenomenological Quest Between Avicenna and Heidegger, chapter 7.
Avicenna Latinus (Liber De Anima, I-V), Van Riet Simone (trans.) Leiden: Brill, 1972, pp. 32*-35*.
Ibid., pp.36*-37*.
Peter Heath. Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1992, p. 56; Michael Marmura, “Avicenna’s ‘Flying Man’ in Context,” The Monist 69, 3 (1986) pp. 383–95.
Avicenna Latinus, p.37*.
Ibid., pp. 46*-47*.
Ibid., pp. 72*-73*.
Refer to the allusion to the views of Herbert Spiegelberg, in “Intentionen und Intentionalität” (1936); Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, p. 127; Goodman, Avicenna, pp. 155–58.
al-Ishārāt wal-Tanbīhāt, pp. 317, 322, 323;, pp. 202, 206–07.
al-Najāt, pp. 197, 198.
Ibid., p. 200. One ought to add herein that the Latin terms, intentio and intentions, may not be respectively exclusive renditions for the Arabic terms: ma c nā (meaning) and ma c nāī (meanings). These Latin terms could also act as valid renderings of the Arabic term qaşd (“what is meant”: the sense that is sought), and more so for the terms nīyya (intention) and nīyyāt (intentions).
One could also say, like Hasse, that a third observer, a girl who accompanies the shepherd, may observe that the sheep trusts the shepherd, and the cause for this is the friendliness of the shepherd himself. Similarly, an opposite intention (by empathy) may be observed by the same third observer in the fear of the sheep from the wolf and the cause for this is the hostility of the predator wolf itself. Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, p. 136.
al-Najāt, p. 201. The faculty of wahm is also a faculty of judgment (hukm). As Hasse holds, the faculty of wahm does with intentions (or what he refers to as “connotational attributes”) what the external senses do with sense data: perceiving and passing judgment about them. See: Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, p. 133.
Hasse renders ma c ānī as “connotational attributes” instead of “intentions” in an attempt to polemically avoid in an appeal to intentionality. See: Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West, p. 132.
In a contemporary and model appeal to an example about the sheep and the wolf similar to what is attested in the Latin commentaries on Avicenna, one encounters a discussion of what appears as being Avicenna’s conceptions of intentionality in the works of Fernando Gil and Frederick Adams. See: Fernando Gil, La Conviction, Paris: Flammarion, 2000, pp. 76–81; Frederick Adams, “Causal Contents,” in Dretske and his Critics, B. McLaughlin (ed.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, p. 138.
al-Najāt, Met. I, p. 239–242.
Parviz Morewedge, Essays in Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Mysticism, Oneonta: SUNY, 1995, pp. 139–40.
Ibid., pp. 142–44, 150–53, 157–159, 169.
The expression “tawahhum” designates what has wahm. This term may be derived from the root terms “wahm” or “hamm” (a worry about a concrete practical situation). Al-wahm itself has the contemporary meaning of imaginative illusions or myths (khurāfāt). However, with Avicenna, “wahm” is not a myth or illusion, nor is it linked to the term “hamm” as concemful worry. The use of the term “wahm,” in the context of our discussion, is restricted to the classical Arabic philosophical usage, as an inner sense faculty. 73 After all, technē poiētikē reveals a capacity to bring something into being.
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El-Bizri, N. (2003). Avicenna’s de Anima: Between Aristotle and Husserl. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming. Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0229-4_6
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