Table Of ContentThe Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics
Scientia Graeco-Arabica
herausgegeben von
Marwan Rashed
Band 7
De Gruyter
The Arabic, Hebrew and
Latin Reception of
Avicenna’s Metaphysics
edited by
Dag Nikolaus Hasse and Amos Bertolacci
De Gruyter
GedrucktmitfreundlicherUnterstützungderVolkswagenStiftung.
ISBN 978-3-11-021575-5
e-ISBN 978-3-11-021576-2
ISSN 1868-7172
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The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics /
editedbyDagNikolausHasseandAmosBertolacci.
p.cm.(cid:2)(Scientiagraeco-arabica)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-021575-5(hardcover:alk.paper)
1.Avicenna,980(cid:2)1037.Ilahiyat. 2.Metaphysics 3.Islamicphilo-
sophy. 4. Jewish philosophy. 5. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Hasse,
DagNikolaus. II.Bertolacci,Amos.
B751.I483A73 2011
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2011007822
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Preface
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6 The articles of this volume are presented by scholars who convened in 2008 to
7 discuss their research on the influence of Avicenna’s metaphysics in the Villa
8 Vigoni, Centro italo-tedesco, Menaggio, Italy. We are grateful to the participants
9 and chairs of the congress who do not contribute to this volume: R(cid:2)diger
10 Arnzen, Gad Freudenthal, Dimitri Gutas, Maarten Hoenen and Andreas Speer.
11 Special thanks go to two research assistants at the University of W(cid:2)rzburg:
12 Anna-Katharina Strohschneider, who prepared the papers for type-setting, and
13 Jon Bornholdt, who extinguished mistakes in the texts of contributors who are
14 not native speakers of English. We gratefully acknowledge the generous and
15 unbureaucratic funding of the conference by the VolkswagenFoundation, as
16 part of the Lichtenberg professorship grant to Dag Nikolaus Hasse. Finally, we
17 would like to thank Gregor Vogt-Spira and the staff of the Villa Vigoni who
18 createdanidealatmosphereforthediscussionofaresearchissueofconsiderable
19 complexity.
20
21 Dag Nikolaus Hasse Amos Bertolacci
22 Julius-Maximilians-Universit(cid:2)t Scuola Normale Superiore
23 W(cid:3)rzburg di Pisa
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Contents
Preface .................................................. V
Introduction ............................................. 1
Jules Janssens
Al-Lawkar¯ı’s Reception of Ibn S¯ına¯’s Ila¯hiyya¯t ................... 7
Robert Wisnovsky
Essence and Existence in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic
East (Maˇsriq): A Sketch .................................... 27
Stephen Menn
Fa¯ra¯b¯ı in the Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics: Averroes against
Avicenna on Being and Unity ................................ 51
Peter Adamson
Avicenna and his Commentators on Human and Divine Self-Intellection 97
Heidrun Eichner
Essence and Existence. Thirteenth-Century Perspectives in
Arabic-Islamic Philosophy and Theology ....................... 123
Mauro Zonta
Avicenna’sMetaphysicsintheMedievalHebrewPhilosophicalTradition 153
Resianne Fontaine
‘Happy is he whose children are boys’: Abraham Ibn Daud and
Avicenna on Evil .......................................... 159
Mauro Zonta
Possible Hebrew Quotations of the Metaphysical Section of Avicenna’s
Oriental Philosophy and Their Historical Meaning ................. 177
Amos Bertolacci
On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics before Albertus
Magnus: An Attempt at Periodization ......................... 197
Dag Nikolaus Hasse
Avicenna’s‘Giverof Forms’inLatinPhilosophy,EspeciallyintheWorks
of Albertus Magnus........................................ 225
Kara Richardson
Avicenna and Aquinas on Form and Generation ................. 251
VIII Contents
Pasquale Porro
Immateriality and Separation in Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas ..... 275
Gabriele Galluzzo
TwoSensesof‘Common’.Avicenna’sDoctrineof EssenceandAquinas’s
View on Individuation ..................................... 309
Martin Pickav(cid:2)
On the Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Theory of Individuation ..... 339
Giorgio Pini
Scotus and Avicenna on What it is to Be a Thing ................ 365
Index of Avicenna’s Works with Passages Cited .................. 389
Index of Names .......................................... 395
1
2
3
Introduction
4
5
6 Many centuries passed after the composition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics before a
7 metaphysical work of similar size and ambition was written in the Peripatetic
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8 tradition: Avicenna’s Ilahiyyat (Metaphysics, or: Divine Things), the fourth and
9 lastpartof thesummaKita-baˇs-Sˇifa-˘(Bookof theCure),datingto1020–27CE.
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10 TheIlahiyyatisonlyoneofmorethanadozenmetaphysicalworksbyAvicenna,
11 butintermsofcomprehensiveness,systematiceffortandinfluence,itishismost
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12 important metaphysical text. It is rivaled only by the Kitab al-Iˇsa¯ra¯t wa-l-
13 tanb¯ıha¯t (Book of Pointers and Reminders), a late summa dating to ca.1030–34
14 CE that contains a substantial metaphysical section of considerable influence in
15 the Arabic tradition.
16 The study of Avicenna’s metaphysics has made important progress in the
17 past few years, due in part to the appearance of studies in monograph format.1
18 Much, however, remains to be done. Above all, critical editions of Avicenna’s
19 metaphysicalworksarestilllacking,2andthestudyof theirmanuscripttradition
20 is still at a preliminary stage.3 The present book sheds light on Avicenna’s
21
metaphysics itself, but its proper theme is the reception of his metaphysics in
22
three different cultures: Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.
23
In the past few decades, it has increasingly become recognized that
24
Avicenna’s philosophy, and in particular his metaphysics, was of overwhelming
25
influence in the Arabic-speaking world from the eleventh to, at least, the
26
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28 1 Amongrecentstudies,particularlyimportantareR.Wisnovsky,Avicenna’sMetaphysicsin
Context, London: Duckworth, 2003, and A. Bertolacci, The Reception of Aristotle’s
29
‘Metaphysics’ in Avicenna’s ‘Kita¯b al-Shifa¯˘’, Leiden: Brill, 2006. A helpful tool is the
30
collection of articles by M.E. Marmura, Probing in Islamic Philosophy, Binghamton:
31 GlobalAcademicPub.,2005,aswellasrecenttranslationsof theIla-hiyya-tintoEnglish
32 by M.E. Marmura (Avicenna, The Metaphysics of ‘The Healing’, Provo, Utah: Brigham
33 Young University Press, 2005) and Italian by O. Lizzini with a preface by P. Porro
(Avicenna, Metafisica: la scienza delle cose divine, 2nd edn, Milan: Bompiani, 2006) and
34
A. Bertolacci (Avicenna, Il libro della guarigione: Le cose divine, Torino: Utet, 2008).
35 2 Seethelistof EmendandaofAnawati’sArabiceditionoftheIla-hiyya-t(Avicenna,al-Sˇifa¯’,
36 al-Ila¯hiyya¯t, Cairo: al-Hay’a al-‘a¯mma, 1960) in Bertolacci, The Reception (as in n. 1).
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37 3 On the Ilahiyyat, see A. Bertolacci, On the Manuscripts of the Ila¯hiyya¯t of Avicenna’s
38 Kita¯bal-Sˇifa-˘,inA.Akasoy,W.Raven,eds,IslamicThoughtintheMiddleAges.Studiesin
Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, Leiden: Brill, 2008,
39 pp.59–75, and on the Sˇifa-˘in general, the papers presented at the International
40 Colloquium The Manuscript Tradition of Avicenna’s Kita-b aˇs-Sˇifa-˘: The Current State of
41 ResearchandFutureProspects,ScuolaNormaleSuperiorediPisa,22–24September2010
42 (proceedings forthcoming in Oriens, 40, 2012).
2 Introduction
1 sixteenth century. Even those thinkers who fundamentally disagreed with
2 Avicennaoftendevelopedtheirintellectualstandpointinconfrontationwiththe
3 Avicennian tradition. Indications of the scope of Avicenna’s influence in Arabic
4 are the many extant commentaries on his works, the lively reception of his
5 metaphysical theories by Islamic theologians, and the reading of his philosophy
6 in the madrasa.4 Research on the later period of Arabic philosophy after
7 Avicennaisstillinitsinfancy.Thisisparticularlytrueof thecenturiesafterFahr
˘
8 al-D¯ınal-Ra¯z¯ı,whodied1210CE.Listshavebeendrawnupof theauthorsand
9 works that should be studied and researched, but since the details of the
10 intellectual history of the period are still unknown, the time has not yet come
11 forgeneralizations.Itisanopenquestion,forexample,whichof Avicenna’stexts
12 transmitted which theories. As in the case of al-Lawkar¯ı, it may well be that an
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13 author read several metaphysical texts by Avicenna: Ilahiyyat, al-Mabda’ wa-l-
14 ma‘a¯d, Iˇsa¯ra¯t, T˘al¯ıqa¯t, etc. (see the article by Janssens in this volume). Also, it
15 canbeshownthatinterpretationsof Avicennawereofteninfluencedbyprevious
16 readers (see the articles by Wisnovsky and Menn). Turning to thirteenth- and
17 fourteenth-century sources, one realizes that Avicennian theories were often
18 transmitted through intermediate sources, such as the influential works of Fahr
˘
19 al-D¯ın al-Ra¯z¯ı, or through philosophical handbooks (see the articles by Adamson
20 and Eichner). Despite the fact that so much remains unknown about this
21 period, it is already apparent that the reception of Avicenna’s metaphysical
22 theoriesinlaterArabicthoughtgaverisetoawealthofmetaphysicaldiscussions
23 of impressive intellectual quality.
24 The textual transmission of Avicenna’s metaphysics in the Latin speaking
25 world is better known. There are solid grounds for believing that Dominicus
26
Gundisalvi, also called Gundissalinus by the scholastics, an archdeacon and
27 - -
canonof thecathedralof Toledo,wasthetranslatorof Avicenna’sIlahiyyatfrom
28 Arabic into Latin between 1150 and 1180.5 The Latin title was Liber de
29
30
4 Recent studies: D. Gutas, The Heritage of Avicenna: The Golden Age of Arabic
31 Philosophy,1000–ca.1350,inJ.Janssens,D.deSmet,eds,AvicennaandHisHeritage,
32 Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002, pp.81–97; R. Wisnovsky, The Nature and
33 Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post-Classical (ca.1100–1900 AD)
Islamic IntellectualHistory: SomePreliminary Observations, in P.Adamsonet al.,eds,
34
Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, London:
35
InstituteofClassicalStudies,2004,vol.2,pp.149–91;G.Endreß,ReadingAvicennain
36 the Madrasa: Intellectual Genealogies and Chains of Transmission of Philosophy and
37 the Sciences in the Islamic East, in J.E. Montgomery, ed., Arabic Theology, Arabic
38 Philosophy.FromtheManytotheOne:EssaysinCelebrationof RichardM.Frank,Leuven:
Peeters, 2006, pp.371–422; H. Eichner, Dissolving the Unity of Metaphysics: From
39
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi to Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi, Medioevo, 32, 2007, pp.139–97.
40
5 Dominicus Gundisalviisidentifiedas thetranslator in thecolophon of three of the25
41 manuscripts. See Avicenna, Liber de philosophia prima sive Scientia divina, I–IV, ed.
42 S.Van Riet, Louvain/Leiden: Peeters/Brill, 1977, p. 123*, n. 2.
