Ibn Sina's Remarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics

An Analysis and Annotated Translation

Shams Inati

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780231537421
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

Al-Isharat wal-Tanbihat ( Remarks and Admonitions ) is one of the most mature and comprehensive philosophical works by Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037). Grounded in an exploration of logic (which Ibn Sina described as the gate to knowledge) and happiness (the ultimate human goal), the text illuminates the divine, the human being, and the nature of things through a wide-ranging discussion of topics. The sections of Physics and Metaphysics deal with the nature of bodies and souls as well as existence, creation, and knowledge. Especially important are Ibn Sina's views of God's knowledge of particulars, which generated much controversy in medieval Islamic and Christian philosophical and theological circles and provoked a strong rejection by eleventh-century philosopher al-Ghazali.

This book provides the first annotated English translation of Physics and Metaphysics and edits the original Arabic text on which the translation is based. It begins with a detailed analysis of the text, followed by a translation of the three classes or groups of ideas in the Physics (On the Substance of Bodies, On the Directions and Their Primary and Secondary Bodies, and On the Terrestrial and Celestial Souls) and the four in the Metaphysics (On Existence and Its Causes, Creation Ex Nihilo and Immediate Creation, On Ends, on Their Principles, and on the Arrangement [of Existence], and On Abstraction. The Metaphysics closes with a significant discussion of the concepts of providence, good, and evil, which Ibn Sina uses to introduce a theodicy.

Researchers, faculty, and students in philosophy, theology, religion, and intellectual history will find in this work a useful and necessary source for understanding Ibn Sina's philosophical thought and, more generally, the medieval Islamic and Christian study of nature, the world beyond, psychology, God, and the concept of evil.

Notes

ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT

1. Remarks and Admonitions: Part One, p. 46.

2. Ibid.

3. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 147.

4. Ibn Sina and Mysticism, p. 107.

5. Al-Shifāʾ, al-Manṭiq, al-Madkhal, pp. 12, 14.

6. Ibid., p. 14. For the division of the sciences, see also al-Shifāʾ, al-Ilāhiyyāt, bk. 1, ch. 1, pp. 3–4; Manṭiq al-Mashriqiyyīn, pp. 6–7; and ʿUyūn al-Ḥikma, p. 17.

7. Al-Shifāʾ, al-Manṭiq, al-Madkhal, p. 14.

8. Al-Ishārāt, pp. 192–93.

9. Ibid., pp. 208–9.

10. Ibid., pp. 212–13. Similitude in quantity and shape would be necessary as a result of the similitude found in pure matter, if pure matter were the only determining factor. But similitude in quantity and shape is not necessary. The conclusion to be drawn is that there are other factors in addition to matter responsible for the lack of similitude or the presence of difference in quantity and shape.

11. Ibid., p. 213.

12. Compare with al-Farabi, Arāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila, pp. 76, 79.

13. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 229.

14. The idea of the relation of body to surface and surface to line minus line to point is basically Aristotelian, used to demonstrate the unique completeness of body among magnitudes. See Aristotle, On the Heavens, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, bk. 1, ch. 1: “A magnitude if divisible one way is a line, if two ways a surface, and if three a body. Beyond these there is no other magnitude, because the three dimensions are all that there are, and that which is divisible in three directions is divisible in all. For, as the Pythagoreans say, the universe and all that is in it is determined by the number three, since beginning and middle and end give the number of the universe, and the number they give is the triad” (268 a 8–13). “Therefore, since ‘every’ and ‘all’ and ‘complete’ do not differ from one another in respect of form, but only, if at all, in their matter and in that to which they are applied, body alone among magnitudes can be complete. for it alone is determined by the three dimensions, that is, is an ‘all’” (268 a 20–23).

15. See Aristotle, Physics, in On the Heavens, bk. 4.

16. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 250.

17. For a discussion of Ibn Sina’s view on directions, see al-Tusi, Commentary (published with the edition of al-Ishārāt, Part Two used here), pp. 257–59.

18. For further information about the enveloping sphere, see Second Class, chs. 12–17.

19. Al-Tusi, Commentary, p. 262.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., pp. 262–63.

22. Ibid., p. 270.

23. For Ibn Sina’s detailed discussion of directions, see al-Shifāʾ, aṭ-Ṭabīʿīyyāt, bk. 3, chs. 13–14, pp. 246–58.

24. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 278.

25. By “essential” is meant a universal element which is a constituent of the essence and without which the essence cannot be conceived and cannot be what it is. In other words, removing an essential element of an essence is removing the essence as it is. See Remarks and Admonitions: Part One, pp. 16–17, 53–55.

26. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 322.

27. Compare with Plato, Timaeus, in The Collected Dialogues, 29e.1–30a. 1–3, 30a.3–6. See also Plato’s theory of creation in Shams Inati, The Problem of Evil: Ibn Sina’s Theodicy (Binghamton: Global, 2000), pp. 18–20.

28. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, pp. 340–42.

29. Al-Farabi, Arāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila, p. 78.

30. By “intuition” is meant immediate knowledge, as chapter 11 of the Third Class asserts.

31. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, pp. 344–45. For the soul’s apprehension of itself independently of any bodily organs, see also al-Shifāʾal-Ṭabīʿīyyāt, Part Two, bk. 6, I, ch. 1, p. 13 and bk. 6, V, ch. 7, pp. 225–27.

32. Al-Ishārāt, Part Two, p. 356.

33. Ibid., p. 358.

34. Ibid., p. 359.

35. See, for example, al-Farabi, Arāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila, where the only internal sense discussed is the imagination (al-mutakhayyila). This faculty is said to preserve the objects represented in the external senses after these senses no longer experience them. It is also described as a faculty that combines sensible objects with each other or separates them from each other (pp. 87, 100). What Ibn Sina calls the estimative faculty is briefly hinted at in Arāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila ...