Avicenna
Distinguish what a thing is from the fact that it exists.
Avicenna, Ibn Sina in Arabic, was a physician, court official and philosopher born near Bukhara into a Persian-speaking family, who spent his life moving between the princely courts of Central Asia and Iran. Writing mostly in Arabic, he recast Aristotle’s philosophy as a single system built on the distinction between essence and existence and on a Necessary Existent, while his Canon of Medicine became a standard medical textbook for centuries.
If anything exists at all, what must exist necessarily, and what is the self that knows it?
The essentials
A life in dates
Biography- 980Birth near Bukhara
- 997The royal library
- 1015–1024Vizier at Hamadan
- 1024Flight to Isfahan
- 1037Death at Hamadan
Biography
Avicenna, Ibn Sina in Arabic, was a physician, court official and philosopher born near Bukhara into a Persian-speaking family, who spent his life moving between the princely courts of Central Asia and Iran. Writing mostly in Arabic, he recast Aristotle’s philosophy as a single system built on the distinction between essence and existence and on a Necessary Existent, while his Canon of Medicine became a standard medical textbook for centuries.
Philosophy
An essence considered in itself is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular; existence does not follow from it, so every caused being receives its existence from something other than itself.
Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
Who came before, who came after.
Above the timeline, each solid arc marks a documented reading, back in time or forward; dotted arcs pair kindred questions.
Read and answered1
Kindred questions1
A first reading.
Essence, existence and the Necessary
Follow how the Book of Healing separates what a thing is from its existence and climbs from possible beings to a single Necessary Existent.
The Book of HealingMedicine as a science
Examine how the Canon defines medicine, orders knowledge of the body from principles to particular cases, and sets rules for testing remedies.
The Canon of MedicineThe way of the knowers
Read the late and allusive Remarks and Admonitions, from its proof of the Necessary Existent to its portrait of the knowers and their joy.
Remarks and AdmonitionsLinked thinkers
- Read and answered
- Kindred questions