Abstract
One of the most significant philosophers of the Arabic and Persian East, Avicenna (c. 980–1037) also had an enormous influence upon the Latin West. He combined the various philosophical traditions of his time – ranging from Aristotle and his commentators, through Neoplatonic writings deriving from Plotinus and Proclus, to his immediate Arabic predecessors (particularly al-Fārābī) – and developed his own philosophy. His writings stand out for their originality and comprehensiveness, covering nearly all scientific fields, including logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and medicine. In current research, Avicenna is primarily appreciated for a number of theories, which were specifically influential upon later intellectual history. In the field of logic, they include his considerations regarding the subject matter of logic (second intentions) and his distinction between “conception” (taṣawwur) and “assent” (taṣdīq), which brings logic considerably closer to epistemology. In the field of psychology, he is renowned for his theories of abstraction and intellectual intuition, as well as for his doctrine of the five internal senses. And lastly, in the field of metaphysics, he is known both for his cosmology, which (by means of his theory of separate intellects) bridges the gap between ontology and noetics, and his famous distinction of essence and existence, which underlies many of his arguments and theories, such as his proof of the existence of God, and theory of universals.
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Germann, N. (2020). Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī (Avicenna). In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1665-7_231
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