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AVICENNA'S METAPHYSICS IN CONTEXT
Avicenna's Metaphysics
in Context
Robert Wisnovsky
Cornell University Press
Ithaca, New York
© 2003 by Robert Wisnovsky
All rights reserved. Except for brief
quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address Cornell University Press,
Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2003 by Cornell University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wisnovsky, Robert, 1964-
Avicenna's metaphysics in context/ Robert Wisnovsky.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 0-8014-4178-1 (cloth)
1. Avicenna, 980-1037-Contributions in metaphysics. 2. Metaphysics.
I. Title.
B751.Z7W57 2003
181' .5-dc2 l
2002041521
Printed in Great Britain
Contents
..
Acknowledgements
Vll
A Note on Transliteration and Citation
IX
Introduction 1
PART I. AVICENNA AND THE AMMONIAN SYNTHESIS
1. Aristotle
Perfection in the Definitions of the Soul and of Change 21
2. Alexander and Themistius
Attempts at Reconciliation 43
3. Proclus, Ammonius and Asclepius
The Neoplatonic Turn to Causation 61
4. Proclus, Ammonius and Philoponus
Neoplatonic Perfection and Aristotelian Soul 79
5. Greek into Arabic
The Greco-Arabic Translations and the Early Arabic Philosophers 99
6. Avicenna on Perfection and the Soul
The Issue of Separability 113
PART II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE A VICENNIAN SYNTHESIS
7. Essence and Existence (A)
Materials from the Kaliim and al-Fiiriibi 145
8. Essence and Existence (B)
Shay:Jiyya or Sababiyya? 161
9. Essence and Existence (C)
The Question of Evolution 173
10. Causal Self-Sufficiency vs. Causal Productivity 181
Contents
Vl
11. Necessity and Possibility (A)
Materials from the Arabic Aristotle 197
12. Necessity and Possibility (B)
Materials from al-Farabl 219
13. Necessity and Possibility (C)
Mate rials from the Kalam 227
14. Necessity and Possibility (D)
The Question of Evolution 245
Conclusion 265
Appendix I
Tables of Greco-Arabic Translation 269
Appendix II
Transcriptions of Lemmata fro,n MS Uppsala Or. 364 277
Bibliography 279
Index of Lemmata 293
General Index 297
Acknowledgements
So many people have helped me reach the stage of publishing a book about
Avicenna's metaphysics that it is difficult to know how to thank them all. I
suppose I should just describe my intellectual trajectory from its beginning.
Elizabeth Fine taught me Greek in high school, and introduced me to the
beautiful strangeness of ancient texts. When I was a sophomore at Yale, Dimitri
Gutas convinced me to enroll in first-year Arabic, and then, perhaps feeling
responsible, was kind enough not to fail me. At Yale Abbas Amanat introduced
me to Islamic history, and Gerhard Bowering supervised my senior thesis on the
Ikhwan a~-~ara0 A postgraduate year at Oxford studying with Fritz
•
Zimmermann showed me how serious medieval Arabic thought could be. Even
though this book preserves not a single sentence from my Princeton Ph.D.
dissertation, "Avicenna on final causality", I owe a great debt to my doctoral
supervisor, Hossein Modarressi: he guided me gently through the most difficult
A vicennian texts, corrected my translations with care and suggested further
avenues of inquiry. At Princeton Sarah Waterlow Broadie was the second reader
of my dissertation, and Fadlou Shehadi and Parviz Morewedge were my external
examiners. Also at Princeton, Stephen Menn introduced me to medieval
philosophy, Michael Cook introduced me to kalam, and Jim Morris introduced
me to Sufi thought; and courses on Aristotle's psychology and natural
philosophy with, respectively, Myles Burnyeat and Pierre Pellegrin showed me
the high level of philological and philosophical rigor which scholars of ancient
philosophy demand of themselves. The world of the late-antique commentators
on Aristotle opened up when Richard Sorabji hired me as his postdoctoral
research assistant at King's College London. Through my work there I was
introduced to Duckworth's editor, Deborah Blake, who has waited patiently for
this book to ripen.
Wolfhart Heinrichs, Bill Graham, Bill Granara, Roy Mottahedeh, Bashi Sabra,
Muhsin Mahdi, John Murdoch, Ayman El-Desouky and Wheeler Thackston have
all been supportive and stimulating colleagues here at Harvard. In particular, my
good friend and colleague Carl Pearson and I have had countless conversations
about the history of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy, and I learned
something important from every single one of them. Not only Carl but Sylvia
Berryman, Ian Crystal, Richard Sorabji, Victor Caston, Everett Rowson,
Therese-Anne Druart, Michael Marmura, Dimitri Gutas and Jules Janssens each
spent much of their precious time reading and criticizing earlier versions of this
work. Above all others, however, Stephen Menn has served as a paradigmatic
mentor: patient and generous, but also severe and exacting. He knows how much
I owe him.
