Avicennian Philosophy Journal
Year:2018 | Volume:21 | Issue:58 |Papers Count:7

We can explain “knowing” in Avicenna's thought through higher-order consciousness. He admits unconscious perception both in innate human knowledge namely self-awareness and self-evident concepts and propositions and in sense perceptions, imaginary perceptions, and intellectual perceptions. The difference between conscious and unconscious perceptions is due to the presence of self as the spectator of perception in the earlier and the absence of that in the later. So acquiring knowledge is possible only through presence, attention, and intention of self, hence one knows that she knows. So “knowing” requires higher-order consciousness.

According to Avicenna’s anthropology, soul reaches the intellectual pleasure through perception and achieves sensory pleasure through concupiscence, indignation, illusion, and imagination. On one hand, human’s happiness intrinsically finds its expression in having intellectual knowledge. On the other hand and according to earthly existence, happiness is portrayed as a sort of self-controlling. Human achieves happiness partially in earthly life, but the true and perfect happiness would be achieved in his life after death. Based on intellectual perfection, Avicenna classified people in various groups; First, the ones who are men of knowledge. They are happy in their earthly life and would obtain the highest levels of happiness in the hereafter. The second group, the average souls who complete the grades of perfection in intellectual aspect and practically have some deficiencies, would survive from misery by Allah’s mercy. However, the third group, those who neglect knowledge wouldn’t achieve happiness and would suffer from eternal misery. Avicenna is of the opinion that ignorance is an obstacle in the path of achieving the true happiness. Those who have knowledge but no virtue would achieve some levels of happiness in their earthly life and in hereafter would survive from eternal misery by purifying the effects of their bad deeds. Speaking of this group, Avicenna held that because they have the knowledge, the key to happiness, they would have a chance to compensation. Comparing the two later groups reveals that Avicenna considered intellectual perfection as the main reason for happiness.

The Purpose of God is an important subject in Islamic thought. Does God follow a purpose in His acts or is He free from any purposes? Based on various theologies, each school of Islamic Theology put forward different views; Mutazilites emphasized on the purpose of God but Asharites rejected it. On one hand, Avicenna agreed with Mutazilites upon the issue and admitted the purpose of God, because without it every act is absurd. On the other, he agreed with Asharites too, because having the purpose is opposed to the idea of Divine unity. Avicenna believed God's foreknowledge is the sufficient cause for the creation and His self-knowledge is the source of emanation. Therefore, Avicenna's opinion isn't similar to either Mutazilites or Asharites. In fact, he developed a new approach and revised their theories based on his philosophy.

The essence and causes of occultism have always mattered for human beings. Each of the scholars has examined these astonishing phenomena in different ways. Avicenna is one of the first Muslim philosophers who explained occultism in a rational way. Despite the fact that this explanation is an important basis for discussion on miracles and its distinction from other occult things, it has been less addressed by researchers. He suggests in his works, according to various discussions, different divisions for Occultism. In this article, we offer a comprehensive categorization of these divisions, and then investigate each kind of occult things. Avicenna first observed the realization of these affairs in the world and then examined their essence and causes through an aposteriori approach. In the first step, he removes the improbability of these in an empirical or rational way and then explains how they are realized based on his foundations. This article shows that many of occult things can be explained by Avicenna’s system.

Divine knowledge is a very precise and difficult issue in Islamic philosophy, and the first Islamic philosopher who has seriously studied the issue is Farabi. He has discussed in detail all three types of divine knowledge. According to him, the God's knowledge to himself is a presential knowledge, not a formal representative one. God's knowledge to contingents, as being in his essence or before creation (essential knowledge or pre-knowledge) is through his knowledge of the rational forms of things in his essence, and thus it is a formal representative and a non-detailed one. He has responded to the paradox of pre-knowledge and human free will under this type of knowledge. God's knowledge to contingents, as being in his action or after creation (active knowledge), through his knowledge of superior causes of contingents, includes individual and contingent things, and somehow is a formal representative knowledge and a non-detailed knowledge with details. But in Fusus al-Hekam, if it is considered as one of Farabi's works, another explanation of divine knowledge is presented. Farabi's theory of divine knowledge has exerted a great influence on the later Islamic philosophers, especially Ibn Sina, but others, such as Suhrawardi (Sheikh al- Ishraq) and some contemporary researchers, have criticized it. In the present article, some of the most important of these critiques are explained and evaluated from the perspective of the writer. In general, Farabi's view on divine knowledge and its types has the important strengths and weaknesses that will be addressed in this article.

Human existence from the view of philosophy is a connection between self and body, and both of them build human identity. The place of the self is upper than the place of the body. So the majority of Muslim sages like Avicenna tried to introduce the self as the basis of human being in their anthropological topics and attempted to explain it in their ontological system. The main question of this article is: How much it deserves to pay attention to the knowledge of body and its effects in order to know the self from the view of Avicenna? The brief answer is that the knowledge of self is impossible without knowing body and its specifications in Avicenna's medical and philosophical views. The claim of this article is that many topics are related to the knowledge of body and its’ characteristics such as the introduction of self, proving the existence of self, self-immateriality, its substantive being, the difference between self and body, self cognition and proving vaporous spirit.

Avicenna suggests an argument about immaterial soul which was based on intellectual concepts. Gazzali criticized the argument and then restudied it. After that he developed it by another method. The first proposition of Gazzali's argument is different from Avicenna's. In fact, Avicenna's argument is based on intellectual concepts and includes all the universal concepts. While Gazzali's argument is based on the concept of God and the divine knowledge. Both arguments, however, have the same second proposition that is "every intellectual concept is indivisible". Avicenna believed that intellectual concept is divisible in mind. While Gazzali held divine knowledge isn't divisible neither regard to quantity nor regard to conceptuality .Both thinkers have the same problem about the second proposition of the argument, Gazzali criticizes the second proposition but he couldn't solve it and again used  it as the second proposition of the argument. This argument obtains a method which consists of reason and gnosis.