Philosopher and physician whose al-Madkhal, the first book of the logic of al-Shifāʾ, reworked Porphyry’s Isagoge and whose logic became the basis of later handbooks such as al-Abharī’s.
Life
Ibn Sīnā was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara. TDV dates his birth to about 370/980; the Stanford Encyclopedia says only that he was born in the 970s, perhaps as early as 964. As a young man he read Porphyry’s Isagoge with his teacher al-Nātilī (TDV).
He served the Samanids and later several local rulers as physician and counsellor, ending his career at the court of ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla in Isfahan. He died in 428/1037 at Hamadan, where he is buried. Later scholars called him al-Shaykh al-Raʾīs.
His encyclopaedia al-Shifāʾ (‘The Cure’) opens with , and its logic opens with al-Madkhal, ‘the Introduction’, his reworking of the Isagoge. He also wrote the shorter al-Najāt and, late in life, al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, whose new arrangement of logic shaped the later tradition. Logic, in his view, is organised around (taṣawwur) and (taṣdīq).
Uncertain or disputed
- Birth year: about 370/980 in TDV and the traditional account; the Stanford Encyclopedia gives the 970s, perhaps as early as 964.
Works
- al-Madkhal (Kitāb al-Shifāʾ, Logic I) المَدْخَلُ مِنْ كِتَابِ الشِّفَاءِ — on PorphyryAn independent reworking of the Isagoge from the 1020s. It treats the five universals as necessary features of the subject of logic (second intelligibles), rejects Porphyry’s third definition of common accident, and distinguishes the accident (ʿaraḍ) from the accidental (ʿaraḍī). Printed in the Cairo edition of al-Shifāʾ (from 1952); new critical edition with English translation by Silvia Di Vincenzo (De Gruyter, 2021). Also translated into Latin in the twelfth century.work
- al-Najāt النَّجَاةُA much abridged summa; its logic largely reflects his views of around 1014 (SEP).work
- al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt الإِشَارَاتُ وَالتَّنْبِيهَاتُHis last summa (1030s), which organises logic in an original way and was very widely commented on.work
Reception
Later Arabic worked mostly from Ibn Sīnā rather than from Aristotle and Porphyry; in Tony Street’s words, his work ‘made the Organon irrelevant’ for most of them (SEP).
Thirteenth-century handbooks, including al-Abharī’s and al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, belong to this post-Avicennan tradition.
Sources (7)
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, ‘İBN SÎNÂ’
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Ibn Sina [Avicenna]’
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Ibn Sina [Avicenna]: Logic’
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic’ (Tony Street)
- Silvia Di Vincenzo, Avicenna, The Healing, Logic: Isagoge. A New Edition, English Translation and Commentary of the Kitāb al-Madḫal (De Gruyter, 2021)
- Silvia Di Vincenzo, ‘Avicenna’s reworking of Porphyry’s “common accident” in the light of Aristotle’s Categories’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 27 (2016)
- Silvia Di Vincenzo, doctoral thesis on Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Madkhal (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)