Avicennian Philosophy Journal
Year:2019 | Volume:22 | Issue:60 |Papers Count:7

In Aristotle’ s Contributions to Logic, the modal syllogistic has a special place and has been controversial from antiquity to the present. One of the most discussed problems of modal syllogistic is the result of a syllogism composed of an absolute minor and a necessary major. Meanwhile, Aristotle has regarded the result necessary, some of his successors have refuted this conclusion. A recent study to defend the consistency of Aristotle’ s modal theory as a whole shows that the proposed counterexamples are not acceptable, referring to the theory of predicable in Topics. Focusing on Avicenna’ s work, this study shows that in the logic of Islamic tradition, appealing to the distinction between essential (dhati) and description (wasfi) necessity, another solution has been proposed to this difficulty. A solution that can be used to explain the relation between the Book of Syllogism and the Book of Demonstration. Also, it would solve the ambiguity prevailing in Aristotle’ s thoughts.

Despite the importance of practical wisdom which has not developed in Islamic philosophy, today, society needs knowledge of ethics and house management and politics. Therefore, it is imperative to study of practical wisdom in the light of Muslim philosophers. Avicenna, the leading Muslim philosopher, classifies wisdom into theoretical and practical and considers the latter as being a part of philosophy. And he states its sources, ultimate aims, and relation with theoretical reason. Avicenna has addressed practical wisdom in some brief treatises but his works on practical wisdom are not considerable. The main causes of philosophers' failing in developing of practical wisdom are their inability to drive the Aristotelian practical wisdom from theoretical one and the focus of jurisprudence on practical wisdom as well as the importance of First Philosophy in comparing with the practical wisdom. However, according to the philosophical basis and method Avicenna provided to explain practical wisdom, it is fair to claim that Avicenna's practical wisdom contains enough capacity to be developed especially in the issues like ethics as well as his theoretical wisdom.

Regardless of the discussions over the attribution of Fusus ul-Hikam to Al-Farabi, one cannot ignore the richness and delicacy of its content dealing with various philosophical topics namely psychology, epistemology, theology, and theoretical mysticism. The illuminative factor has granted a special unity to the discussions of this treatise. Therefore, a relatively systematic explanation of the epistemological issues of this treatise can be presented, and this has not been done yet. The approach and method of "Illumination" in its exact sense is historically and traditionally associated with Al-Suhrawardi (Sheikh ul-Ishraq) in the Islamic world. Though, this association is absolutely accurate, however, in finding earlier roots of this philosophy and prior to Avicenna’ s illuminative texts and mystical stories, one will come across Fusus ul-Hikam, in case of the accuracy of the attribution of Fusus ul-Hikam to Al-Farabi. This treatise’ s largely illuminative content indicates its priority to other texts, a point that has not been sufficiently considered throughout the history of Islamic philosophy.

Ibn Sina holds two radically different views towards the possibility of knowing the essence of things; in some of his writings, he argues in a way that he believes the knowledge of the essence of the things is possible, though it contains difficulties. In some other, on the contrary, he states human knowledge is limited to the accidents and attributes of things. So there is no possibility of knowledge of the essence. In order to shed light on this controversial issue, one should focus on the ontological and epistemological basis of Ibn Sina philosophy. Thus, the findings of the research reveal, on one hand and based on Ibn Sina philosophy, the subjects are classified according to their achievement of the epistemological degree of the realms of sense, imagination, and intellect. And on the other, the ability of simplicity or composition of the subjects shows the number of people who succeed in knowing the essence of things or fail in it. In other words, the access to the higher degree of intellectual knowledge and the ability of composition lead to make the knowledge of essence possible, while remaining in the degree of the sense or imagination and simplicity of subject cause fail in knowing the essence.

The topic of goodness and badness in Avicenna’ s view has been studied recently in the articles of the researchers of Moral Philosophy. The major approach in these articles is the affirmation of “ moral realism” in Avicenna philosophy and rejecting “ moral non-realism” from his views. In other words, in these articles, goodness and badness in his thoughts have been studied from an ontological point of view, and the relation of Avicenna’ s view with “ intrinsic goodness and badness” has been investigated. However, an epistemological study has not been carried out in this case. According to the popular view about the epistemology of goodness and badness, the theory of “ religious goodness and badness” is related to Ash‘ ari scholars, and the theory of “ rational goodness and badness” is related to the Mu'tazila and Shi‘ i scholars. Rational goodness and badness are also attributed to the Islamic philosophers. But there are ideas against this view in Avicenna’ s works. Because although Avicenna, similar to the Mu‘ tazilites, considers moral knowledge, a rational and demonstrable knowledge, on the other hand, alike the Ash‘ arites, he accounts the religious law and the religious teachings, as the source of certain knowledge in practical philosophy and ethics. There are several pieces of evidence which show that Avicenna’ s ethical theory is actually a combined theory, regarding an epistemological viewpoint.

Avicenna's metaphysics is a coherent system, the elements of which is established in a universal proportion and takes their meaning alongside each other and gets meaning to others. This taking and getting the procedure of meaning presumes the assumption of hermeneutical writing and reading of Avicenna's work and allegory is the basis of such writing and reading. So Avicenna's metaphysics in its totality which can be named "allegorical metaphysics", affected by the Islamic esotericism, neo-Platonic reading of Aristotle and Al-Farbi's philosophy, founded an allegorical methodology, which gave meaning to all of his systems, from logical text to theology and allegorical stories, as a coherent system; so Avicenna's allegorical stories, is the continuation of his logical texts and his logical texts become meaningful in relationship to those allegorical ones; even if allegory of one is more than the other. So, in this paper, I aim to show the dimensions of this allegorical approach.

Ibn Sina Seddiqin argument (proof of the righteous) is one of the important arguments in proving the Necessary Being that, along with Ibn Sina's expositions, The later philosophers have quoted or criticized it; among the philosophers who have carefully considered the argument and presented a specific explanation, is Allameh Dawani. He also names his argument in proving the Necessary Being, the same as Ibn Sina Seddiqin argument, but states the principle in a way that differentiates it from other explanations. According to his argument, which he considers to be the strongest and most reliable way of proving the Necessary Being, he has conceived the possible beings as series Cause and effect, if there is no Necessary Being, none of them can be realized and as a result, they can be annihilated. Thus, this article aims to explain, analyze and criticize Dawani's view and compare it with Avicennian proof.