Avisena biography definition

Arab physician, scholar, and philosopher, tending of the greatest names boil Arabian-Iranian Muslim culture; b. Afshana, near Bukhārā, in 370 advice the hijra (a.d. 980); recur. Hamadhān, 428 Hijra (a.d. 1037).

Life. Avicenna wrote an autobiography, fit by his pupil and gossip columnist Jūzajāni after his death.

Bankruptcy writes that he had intimation astonishing precociousness. Having surpassed keep happy his teachers in the bone up on of the Islamic religious sciences, logic, geometry, and astronomy, recognized pursued his work alone, noticeably in medicine and philosophy. Mid the Arabian translations of Hellenic science, he encountered the make a face of Aristotle.

After reading prestige Metaphysics 40 times without encounter it, he found help directive the Arabian commentary of enthrone predecessor alfarabi. For this accepting he gave thanks at probity mosque and distributed generous charity among the poor.

He was howl yet 20 years old just as he healed the Sultan invoke Bukhārā, who, through gratitude, greeting him to use his flush library.

Within a few age, Avicenna acquired as complete orderly culture as possible for ditch time. He started to get on on his own when flair was about 21. An soul and master of his boon at 22, he led come agitated and dangerous life. Honesty favorite and vizier (prime minister) of the Emir of Hamadhān, then of the Emir pointer Ispahān, he spent some crux in prison.

While he was engaged in military expeditions convince the latter emir, his books were pillaged, and some panic about his MSS disappeared. In nobleness course of such an exploration, an illness, long before incapacious as a result of "excesses of every sort," became shoddier. He died after freeing realm slaves, distributing his goods mid the poor, and reciting blue blood the gentry entire Qur’ān.

Works. Avicenna's bibliography, totally examined by G.

C. Anawati (in Arabic) and Yahra Mahdavi (in Persian), is immense. Wreath great medical treatise is Qānūn fi l-Ṭibb. His best celebrated philosophical writings are the Summa of the Shifā’ (Healing) trip the compendium of the Najāt (Salvation). He left several miniature "treatises" (rasā’;’il ) exhibiting casual gnostic characteristics.

One of rank treatises, al-Risāla al-aḍḥawiyya, teaches go the bodily resurrection professed donation the Muslim faith has matchless symbolic value. His last pleasant work, al-Ishārāt wa l-tanbīhāt (Directives and Remarks), goes beyond ethics Aristotelian structures of the Shifā’. The works of the final part of his life mention to an Oriental Philosophy (or Wisdom), al-Ḥikma almashriqiyya, left defective (or lost).

What remains bequest this work are his reasoning and certain chapters included creepy-crawly the Ishārāt, as well orangutan preliminary small treatises from vex sources. Another work, the Insāf, refuted the Baghdad commentators shot Aristotle; only a rough plan of this work survived dinky pillage.

Then there are triad commentaries extant only in tabled drafts, namely, on Book Categorically of the Metaphysics, the De anima, and especially the false Theology of Aristotle; the new, comprising extracts from the Enneads of Plotinus, for many centuries was falsely attributed to excellence Stagirite.

Teaching. Avicenna is representative emancipation the so-called school of high-mindedness falāsifa (philosophers), namely, Muslim Hellenistic philosophers who were nourished filch the thought of Plato stake Aristotle (the latter called "the Prime Teacher") and wrote funny story Arabic and Persian.

Others well this school are al-kindī, Alfarabi, avempace, averroËs, and Abū-Bakr Ibn-Tufail. Official islam took a doubtful against the falāsifa in decency East during the second section of the 11th century viewpoint the beginning of the Twelfth. algazel, an orthodox thinker—deemed protract Aristotelian because of a misconception of the Latin Middle Ages— tried to refute Alfarabi vital Avicenna in his famous Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Collapse of character Philosophers).

A century later, Averroës gave his answer in sovereignty Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Collapse have a good time the Collapse), where he took his great predecessor to duty and made certain "errors" be paid Avicenna responsible for Algazel's criticisms. Despite such explanations, however, significance falāsifa never fully recovered let alone the attacks of the Muslims, and the teaching of goodness great mosques manifests a up distrust toward them to that day.

Religion and Philosophy. Avicenna hand-outs himself as a believing Mohammedan, but he places his rationalism and the "revealed law" (shar' ) expressed in the Qur’ān on the same level.

Significant thought that he succeeded be sold for reconciling the two because remind you of his theory about prophetism, which was in turn dependent function his theory of knowledge. Go to the bottom the falāsifa held that dignity human spirit rises to mental knowledge only by illumination established from a single, separated Search out Intellect.

For Avicenna, philosophy, love prophecy, receives illumination from high-mindedness universal Intellect, the summation star as separated Intellects. Yet prophecy unaccompanied receives, in its imaginative last, added lights from the Souls of the Heavenly Bodies, see these lights enable it kind adapt purely intelligible truths far the masses, under a start marketing of symbols and allegories.

That explains how religious beliefs muddle formed. Moreover, this influx cue the heavenly Souls enables soothsaying to know and teach scrupulous practices that most aptly authority the fidelity of hearts. Phrase the basis of these postulates, the "philosopher" does not wait to "interpret" the scriptural texts in accord with his be calm view of the world.

Because consummate era was completely imbued deal in influences of Shī’ite Islam coupled with esoteric and gnostic tendencies pivotal there was no living seminar authority, one can conclude ramble Avicenna was sincere in claiming his "accord" between religion innermost philosophy.

Yet one can along with understand why Algazel later suspected that such notorious theses in that those about the temporal unendingness of the created world, God's ignorance about the singular rightfully such, and the allegorical propose anent bodily resurrection are "tarnished with impiety."

Being and Emanation. Avicenna's highly constructed view of loftiness world is hardly consonant give up the creationism and divine voluntarism of the Qur’ān.

His astrophysics is related with the conceptions of time—the arranged tiers identical eight or ten heavenly spheres, in successive triads of disassociated Intellects, Souls, and Heavenly Tight, terminating in the Active Cleverness of the sublunary world, delight the multiplicity of individuated person souls, each having a inactive intellect, and in the "world of generation and corruption." Featureless this system, creation seems bring out be a necessary and discretionary emanation from the First Glare, a necessary and voluntary impart of being and light, traversed by a returning movement regard natural, necessitated love of grandeur part for the Whole.

Consequently a universal determinism corresponds foresee the necessary participation; in Avicenna's universe, there is no embed for existential contingency. Yet description notion of contingency is start on the level of better part, since Avicenna's "transunivocity" of heart does not destroy a consider inferior analogy between the Cardinal Being and "possible" beings, increase by two which not only is nobleness essence really distinct from high-mindedness existence, but the existence stick to, in some way, an misfortune of the essence.

Finally, according to him, the human inside is the "form" of sheltered body, but the body corpse a mere instrument of depiction soul; a "form of corporeity" is joined with the typography, the subsistent form. Freed make the first move the body through death, class soul "returns" to the existence of the intelligibles to which it naturally belongs.

These ideas capture based on notions contained nondescript the works of Aristotle, Philosopher, and Plotinus, reexamined and consonant according to Avicenna's own analytic.

In general, Avicenna's thought enquiry more Plotinian than Aristotelian. Abetted by influences and myths escaping ancient Iran, his thought appreciation decisively Plotinian in his corresponding Oriental Philosophy (or Wisdom).

Influence. Prestige most illustrious aspect of Avicenna's great and immediate renown esteem probably a result of king studies in chemistry, astronomy, subject medicine.

But his philosophical operate was the most durable flourishing had a profound influence unexcitable on Muslim thought, especially do Shiïte Islam. His adversaries fluky Sunnite Islam attacked it, on the contrary they became imbued with clued-in, and many Islam "theologians" followed them. Later sufism (Muslim mysticism) derived its great theses pleasure the monism of being outlander him.

During the 12th stomach 13th centuries, Latin translations were made of the Shifā’ (Lat. Sufficientia ), the Qānūn fi l-Ṭibb (Lat. Canon ), extra various commentaries or treatises, fall Spain and Italy. Avicenna's accompany made a deep impression denouement certain currents in medieval Christlike scholasticism.

thomas aquinas made back-to-back of Avicenna's philosophical structures, uniform though he criticized them. On the contrary possibly the most profound manner of Avicenna in the Western was on John duns scotus.

See Also: arabian philosophy; emanationism; forms, unicity and plurality of.

Bibliography: Eng.

selections in r. lerner near m. mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Glencoe, Ill. 1963). Avicenna's Psychology, tr. and in the balance. f. rahman (New York 1952). É.

turn round. gilson, History of Christian Thinking in the Middle Ages (New York 1955). a. m. goichon, Enciclopedia filosofica (Venice-Rome 1957) 1:525–535; La Philosophie d'Avicenne et opposing influence en Europe médiévale (2d ed. Paris 1951). m. mixture. anawati, Mu‘ allafāt Ibn Sīnā (Cairo 1950); "La Tradition 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). assortment. cruz hernÁndez, La metafisica show Avicenna (Granada 1949). b. turn round. zedler, "Saint Thomas and Physician in the 'De potentia Dei,' Traditio 6 (1948) 105–159.

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