PHIL 890 Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing

An introduction to and a close reading of the text. The Healing is a philosophical encyclopediae written by Avicenna at the end of his career. As an encyclopediae, The Healing treats of every major field of philosophical research: logic, physics, psychology, and metaphysics. In The Metaphysics of The Healing, Avicenna attempts to present a reorganization of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The Metaphysics of the Healing had a significant impact on the preceding Arabic and Latin philosophical traditions. Historians of Arabic philosophy refer to the philosophers after the time of Avicenna as "post-Avicennian" philosophers because they were the first generation of philosophers who wrote commentaries not on Aristotle, but on Avicenna. As for the impact of this text in the Latin philosophical tradition, it is important to remember that the entirety of Aristotle's Metaphysics was not available to the Latin world until Michael Scot translated it from Arabic in the 1220's. Once they had it, the Latins were not sure how to read it. Thus, along with Averroes's commentary, Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing was read by the Latins as an indispensable guide to Aristotle's Metaphysics. Along with Latin metaphysics, the Metaphysics of the Healing served as an important source for the semantic and cognitive theories constitutive of the via antiqua prior to Ockham's revolutionary nominalism. Any study of medieval semantics and the metaphysics of William of Auvergne, St. Albert, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus (to name a few) requires a good foundation in this most important work of metaphysics. Topics include: the science of metaphysics; essence and existence; necessary and possible being; the problem of universals; the existence and attributes of God; emanation and return to God