AL-MADKHAL
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) was and remains the pre-eminent Islamic philosopher. AL-MADKHAL, the first part of the logic of his masterwork AŠ-ŠHIFĀ, is a commentary of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) on Porphyry’s ISAGOGE. AL-MADKHAL is the only part of Avicenna’s logic included in the Medieval Latin translation of Avicenna’s works. There, known as the LOGICA, it had wide influence, especially in the thirteenth century. In addition to remarking on the text of the ISAGOGE in a very critical way, Avicenna gives an overview of his entire work. While Porphyry says that he will avoid difficult questions about universals, in contrast Avicenna considers their status. AL-MADKHAL contains a major discussion of Avicenna’s theory of the threefold distinction of quiddity, said by De Wulf to be the main medieval solution to the problem of universals. The translation comes with Notes and an Introduction, placing AL-MADKHAL in context.
Avicenna gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Ärzte, Astronomen, Denker und Schriftsteller des Islamischen Goldenen Zeitalters Er wurde als Vater der frühen modernen Medizin beschrieben. Von den 450 Werken, die bekannt sind, sind rund 240 erhalten geblieben, davon 150 zur Philosophie und 40 zur Medizin. (Wikipedia)
Allan Bäck, a professor of philosophy at Kutztown University, has written many articles and books on a variety of topics in the history and philosophy of logic, including ancient and Islamic philosophy. He has been awarded a Forschungspreis from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Senior Humboldt Research Prize) as well as an American Philosophical Association Fellowship for the Institute for Advanced Studies at Edinburgh University in recognition of his scholarly work. He has won the Wiesenberger award for teaching and the Chambliss prize for research at Kutztown University. Also by Allan Bäck: Avicenna / Ibn Sīnā AL-‘IBĀRĀ Avicenna’s Commentary on Aristotle’s de Interpretatione Part One and Part Two ISBN Print: 978-3-88405-110-8 ISBN EBook: 978-3-88405-728-5 Avicenna / Ibn Sīnā AL-MAQULAT Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories ISBN Print: 978-3-88405-106-1 ISBN EBook: 978-3-88405-720-9
Table of Contents
Introductionxi
The First Treatise of the First Section of
the First Collection, which is on the Science of Logic1
Chapter One
Indicating what the Book is Concerned with3
Chapter Two
On Instruction about the Sciences and Logic9
Chapter Three
On the Utility of Logic18
Chapter Four
On the Subject of Logic24
Chapter Five
On Instruction about the Simple and Compound Expres-sion29
Chapter Six
On the Investigation of what Men Say about the Essential and the Accidental42
Chapter Seven
On the Investigation of what People Say about (what is) Significative
of the Quiddity48
Chapter Eight
Of the Division of the Universal Simple Expression into its Five Divisions54
Chapter Nine
On the Genus62
Chapter Ten
On the Species and the Mode of the Divisions of the Uni-versal Relative to it72
Chapter Eleven
On the Investigation of the Descriptions of the Species79
Chapter Twelve
On the Natural and the Intellectual and the Logical.
And what is Prior to the Many
and in the Many and Posterior to the Many in these Five Senses87
Chapter Thirteen
On the Differentia97
Chapter Fourteen
The Difference of the Property and the Common
Accident112
The Second Treatise of the First Section of the First Col-lection,
which is on the Science of Logic119
Chapter One
On the Shared [Features] and Differences between these Five [Predicables],
and the First of them, after the Com-monality between the Genus and the Differentia121
Chapter Two
On the Shared [Features] and Difference between the Ge-nus and the Species132
Chapter Three
On the Remaining Shared [Features] and Differences139
Chapter Four
On the Relationship of Some of these Five
[Predicables] with Others148
Index153
Introduction There are some semblances of scholarly and philological scholasticism, with regard to Aristotelian studies [in Is-lam]…but the hurricane of Avicenna’s philosophy quickly swept such tendencies away. I offer here a translation of a “commentary” of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) on Porphyry’s ISAGOGE: AL-MADKHAL (ISAGOGE), the first part of the logic of AŠ-ŠHIFĀ, THE HEALING. I am using the version edited by M. el-Khodeiri, G. Anawati, F. el-Ahwani (Cairo: Organisation Générale des Imprimeries Gouvernementales (al-Matba’ah al-Amiriyah), 1952). This edition purports to be a critical edition but needs correction as it contains some mistakes. Still, we must make a start sometime in bringing into wider circulation more of the work of Avicenna, the pre-eminent Islamic philosopher. I am translating this edition. Currently, Silvia Di Vincenzo, with Amos Bertolacci, is working on a critical edition of the Arabic text for her dissertation. There may also appear in the future a translation based on that edition. In any case, I offer this translation now, as my contribution to the ongoing scholarship. The MADKHAL has been translated into Latin, by Avendauth (Abraham Ibn Daud or Abraham Ben David Halevi) from the Arabic, with Dominicus Gundassalinus as editor, in the second half of the twelfth century. This translation appears as the LOGICA of the AVICENNA LATINUS in the Venice 1508 edition. There it is also called “the first part of the logic” (PRIMA PARS LOGICAE), which is indeed accurate, as Avicenna also has works on all the other parts of Aristotle’s ORGANON in his KITÂB AS-SHIFÂ’ [BOOK OF THE HEALING], his encyclopedic Summa commenting on Aristotle’s works. Françoise Hudry (Avicenne, LOGICA, intr. A. de Libera (Paris: Vrin 2018)) has a critical edition of this Latin translation. It has considerable differences from the Arabic text which I am translating. There may have also been different versions of the Arabic MADKHAL, with more than one translated into Latin at different times. The Arabic text (1952) has a concordance of the Arabic with the Latin terms in the 1506 translation. Some passages of AL-MADKHAL have been translated into English or French. These include some by Ibrahim Madkour (in French), in the “Introduction Générale” in the MADKHAL volume, pp. 11 & 15-7 & 20-2, 9,7-10,13; Anne-Marie Goichon has translated various short passages (into French) in many works, especially in her LEXIQUE; Marc Geoffrey has a French translation of parts of MADKHAL I.12, in Alain de Libera, L’ART DES GÉNÉRALITÉS (Paris, 1999), Appendix; I. Mandosio, “Logique et language,” in AD NOTITIAM IGNOTI, ed. J. Brumberg-Chaumont (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 316-7, has a French translation of parts of I.2; Alain de Libera, “Introduction,” to Françoise Hudry (Avicenne, LOGICA, (Paris: Vrin 2018) has translated various short pasages (into French), e.g., pp. 33; 72-3; Michael Marmura, “Avicernna’s Chapter on Universals in the ISAGOGE,” in ISLAM: PAST INFLUENCE AND PRESENT CHALLENGE, ed. A. Welch and P. Cachia (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 47-52, has an English translation of I.12 and one of I.2 in “”Avicenna on the Division of the Sciences in the ISAGOGE of his ŠHIFĀ,” JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF ARABIC SCIENCE, Vol. 4 (1980), pp. 139-51; Dimitri Gutas, AVICENNA AND THE ARISTOTELIAN TRADITION, Second Edition (Leiden, 2014), p. 42 9,7-11,16; p. 317 15,19-16,5; Jon McGinnis, in AVICENNA, (Oxford, 2010): p. 29: 17,7-17; pp. 31-2 15,1-16,11; p. 38 48,13-49,2; pp. 39-40: 74,11-75,9; Wilfrid Hodges (2013) has a translation of I.6 [http://wilfridhodges.co.uk/arabic32.pdf]; Silvia Di Vincenzo, “Is there a Versio Vulgata of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifā,” some short passages, like p. 40 93,1-5; p. 41 99,3-7; p. 43 91,8-12; and a few by me incorporated and revised in this volume. Also of note is M. E. Marmura, “Avicenna’s Chapter on Universals in the ISAGOGE of his SHIFA’,” in ISLAM: PAST INFLUENCE AND PRESENT CHALLENGE, ed. By A. T. Welch & P. Cachia (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 34-56. The standard Greek edition of the ISAGOGE of Porphyry is PORPHYRII ISAGOGE ET IN ARISTOTELIS CATEGORIAS COMMEN-TARIUM, ed. A. Busse (Berlin, 1887). Jonathan Barnes, PORPHYRY: INTRODUCTION (Oxford, 2003), has an English translation of this edition and an elaborate commentary on the relevant Greek materials. Riccardo Chiaradonna, “Porphyry and the Aristotelian Tradition,” in BRILL’S COMPANION TO THE RECEPTION OF ARISTOTLE IN ANTIQUITY, ed. A. Falcon (Leiden/Boston, 2016), pp. 321-340, has a good overview of the secondary literature. On the various Arabic translations of the ISAGOGE, see Gyeke, ARABIC LOGIC (Buffalo, 1979), pp. 133-9. (The ISAGOGE also had some Syriac translations. ) Avicenna seems to have been using the translation of the ISAGOGE by Abū ‘Uthmān al-Dimashqī. The title, ‘Eisagoge’ (‘Isagoge’), like ‘Madkhal’, itself means ‘introduction’. Porphyry writes I shall attempt, in making you a concise introduction, to rehearse briefly and in the manner of an introduction, what the older masters say, avoiding deeper inquiries and aiming suitably at the more simple. For example, about genera and species—whether they subsist, whether they actually depend on bare thoughts alone, whether if they actually subsist they are bodies or incorporeal and whether they are separable or are in perceptible items and subsist about them—these matters I shall decline to discuss. [1,7-13 (trans. Barnes)] Porphyry’s ISAGOGE has two parts: one on the signification of the five predicables, and then one on their similarities and differences. Avicenna has those in the MADKHAL. But before those its first eight chapters do something more general and ambitious. In effect, Avicenna tackles precisely those difficult questions that Porphyry puts aside, in terms of his own philosophy. As Abelard does later, in his GLOSSES ON PORPHYRY—hardly glosses!—Avicenna sees Porphyry’s refusal as a challenge. Although Avicenna too says that he is writing only for the beginner—a claim which I leave to the reader to judge—his discussion has much more complexity. The first eight chapters of the MADKHAL discuss these very issues. In the rest, Avicenna does comment upon the ISAGOGE, mostly in sequence (with the main exception being Chapter I.12). Yet even there his discussions have much more length and complexity than the ISAGOGE. Scholars dispute over what the ISAGOGE is an introduction to. De Libera says that it is nothing but an introduction to the CATEGORIES of Aristotle, and then later says that it is an introduction both to logic and to philosophy in general Barnes says that it is an introduction to logic in general. In any case, it was used at a beginning level for students of Platonist philosophy in the late Greek period, where it had many fairly literal commentaries. Porphyry’s introduction of the five predicables has as its root Aristotle’s discussion in TOPICS I.5 of four such terms: definition, property, genus, and accident. Later on in the TOPICS Aristotle brings in species and differentia as well in many topoi. The Latin translation differs a lot from the Arabic text. Perhaps it is using a different manuscript. In any case, it omits some lines of this Arabic text. It also often gives quite free translations, while also substituting examples or just making mistakes. Like the other parts of AŠ-ŠHIFĀ, AL-MADKHAL is difficult to comprehend in its details and in its scope. Avicenna claims to have written in his youth literal commentaries explicating Aristotle’s thought. These were apparently lost. Much later, in Hammadān around 1016, Avicenna’s students asked for him to replace them: The hope of ever obtaining his lost works having dimmed, we asked him to write them and he said, “I have neither the time nor the inclination to occupy myself with close textual analysis and commentary. But if you would be content with whatever I have readily in mind [which I have thought] on my own, then I could write for you a comprehensive work arranged in the order which will occur to me.” We readily offered our consent to this and urged that he start with physics. Here Avicenna states clearly that he shall not be explicating Aristotle’s thought. Rather, he shall be giving his own thoughts and theories on the topics and positions brought up by Aristotle: But if you would like me to compose a book in which I will set forth what, in my opinion, is sound in these philosophical (sciences), without debating with those who disagree or occupying myself with their refutation, then I will do that. Accordingly, Avicenna set out to comment upon a great portion of Aristotle’s works, including the whole of the logic, much of the works on the natural sciences, and the METAPHYSICS. He completed this massive undertaking in but a few years, from 1016-27, if we are to believe the historical testimony - although it is likely that he used some earlier writings as some parts of AŠ-ŠHIFĀ. The commentary on the ISAGOGE was probably written in 1022-4 in Hammadān. Avicenna’s cavalier attitude towards his own writings does not help the quality of the text that we have. Generally he would write extremely quickly. His own account has him writing fifty pages per day of the metaphysics and physics of AŠ-ŠHIFĀ. After writing something, he would give the copy to whom it was promised, or put it away for showing to the worthy few. Often, due to his frequent moves and the religious and political turmoil, his writings were lost or damaged. Consequently, we have the situation that Avicenna probably proofread little, and what copies there were were made haphazardly under hasty circumstances. Aside from the contingencies of the political turmoil, we can see here echoes of Plato’s attitude toward written philosophy as expressed in his “Seventh Letter.” Written philosophy is dead philosophy, relics to be discarded as trinkets for those allowed to be souvenir hunters. Avicenna has Plato’s elitist attitude as well. The common people should not read philosophy. Like Plato, Avicenna wanted only the philosophers, and the worthy ones at that, to read his work. Avicenna believed Aristotle to hold the same view, due to a letter ascribed to Aristotle and written to Alexander. According to it, Aristotle was deliberately obscure in order to ward off the common people. Likewise, al-Fārābī, whom Avicenna admired greatly, says: Our style used an obscure way of expression for three reasons: First, to test the nature of the student in order to find out whether he is suitable to be educated and not; second, to avoid lavishing philosophy on all people but only on those who were worthy of it; and third, to train the mind through the exertion of research. Religious traditions in Islam too had the custom of withholding knowledge from the hoi polloi and reserving it for the select few. The text translated below certainly falls into this tradition. Like Maimonides, Avicenna writes only for those who deserve to read. Also Avicenna deliberately takes on an oracular style. We can see this just from titles of his works: THE HEALING, THE SALVATION etc. He does so for various reasons: 1) on his own view, he has achieved an enlightenment stemming from the activation of his active intellect and its permanent, actual connection to the intelligibles 2) what he is doing is better than the popular, vulgar prophecy of religion anyway 3) he is an elitist. Apart from these reasons - the haste of composition, the state of the manuscript, and these elitist tendencies - there are other reasons why this text is difficult. To be sure, Avicenna can write clearly, as parts of this very commentary attest. Yet some other parts are quite obscure, regardless of the language in which the text is read. Perhaps this obscurity comes in part from Avicenna’s trying to say something new, for which there would not naturally not lie readily to hand extant phrasing. We can see similar obscurities in many original works: Abelard - or Aristotle himself - is a good example. Again, Avicenna was a Persian, and not a native Arabic speaker or writer. At any rate, let me say that he is quite careless about the antecedents for his pronouns! Above all, in reading works like AL-MADKHAL, we have the problem of context. Avicenna is reacting not only to the ISAGOGE but also to the other writings on it - commentaries, notes, marginalia, some of which surrounded the Arabic text of the ISAGOGE that he was using. Avicenna was probably using some revised version of Ḥunayn Isḥāq’s translation, the standard Arabic one of the time, with lots of marginalia. There is still extant such a version of glosses in the famous manuscript Paris BNF, Arabe 2346. Avicenna himself says about his studies in his youth that resulted in the more textual commentaries, now lost: Then I began to read the books [of the ORGANON] by myself and consult the commentaries until I had mastered logic. So he had read some ISAGOGE commentaries, more than marginal notes. At this point, we can make only educated guesses about what commentaries Avicenna used. For Avicenna hardly ever cites others by name. Moreover, he need not have read those whom he cites. As for the ISAGOGE, the Greek commentaries, insofar as they were translated into Arabic, on the ISAGOGE by David, Elias, Ammonius, Philoponus, and likewise Plotinus (especially ENNEADS VI) are plausible candidates for Avicenna’s sources, at least indirectly. There were also some Syriac glosses. By the time of Avicenna, there were also very many Islamic commentators and glossers, most of which have not been studied carefully yet. By his own testimony, Avicenna considered the commentary of al-Fārābī on the logic, including the ISAGOGE the most important of these. In sum, on current estimates, the commentaries that Avicenna used most are those by Ammonius and al-Fārābī. Consequently, the text of AL-MADKHAL is not self-contained. Avicenna is often replying to arguments and doc-trines that he does not state fully. Many of these arguments can be found in the Greek commentaries. In particular, a lot of the people whose views Avicenna cites and contests without naming are those mentioned, often in a similar fashion, in the Greek commentaries. Most of the Greek commentaries that Aristotle had are available to us today: in the COMMENTARIA IN ARISTOTELEM GRAECA, many of which have been now translated into English and to which I shall refer in the notes. It would also help the reader, of course, to be quite familiar with Porphyry’s ISAGOGE AND Aristotle’s works - as well as with the Islamic sources. However, we do not yet have accessible translations or even editions of the commentaries written in Arabic even by such as those by al-Fārābī. There were particularly many works on the ISAGOGE in the Islamic culture of Avicenna, because, just as in the Latin medieval West, the ISAGOGE formed part of the scholastic curriculum in Muslim circles in places like Avicenna’s Baghdad. Just what did Avicenna get from al-Fārābī’s discussions of the ISAGOGE? If we look at his works extant today we do not find much original doctrine. Perhaps what he found important in al-Fārābī’s work was his method. For Fārābī does not follow order of the text of Aristotle, even in his so-called PARAPHRASE. Instead, he gathers Aristotle’s doctrines and writes a treatise with a clear organization. So perhaps Avicenna got from al-Fārābī a new approach. This would fit with his remark that he did not understand Aristotle’s METAPHYSICS until he had read al-Fārābī’s work on it: that is, the overall plan and structure of the METAPHYSICS. Again he calls al-Fārābī “the second teacher”. Along these lines, Avicenna begins his commentary on the text of the ISAGOGE first by giving a general plan for logic and philosophy. Then he has a general discussion of logic and metaphysics based on his own theory, before proceeding to comment upon Porphyry’s text. Avicenna uses a technical vocabulary, inherited from the Greek traditions and his Islamic predecessors. This appears most clearly at first glance in his use of various prepositions which seems to flout or at least stretch ordinary Arabic usage. Aristotle himself does likewise with the Greek. Avicenna continues this tradition by making up terms or transforming the meaning of existing terms in order to express his own theory. For Avicenna also is engaged in constructing his own technical vocabulary for Greek technical expressions in Arabic. He uses some already made up, say by al-Fārābī. Still, he seems to be making up more himself especially as his theory differs from earlier ones. Avicenna has a dyadic style: a rather cryptic, oracular, enigmatic utterance followed by some more mundane explanation. The Greek commentators, like Alexander, Ammonius and Themistius, have similar styles. Or, perhaps better, we may compare the writing style of Avicenna to that of Plotinus’. In both cases too we might wonder how well, or even whether, the text was corrected and proofed. Likewise, in both cases it is hard to distinguish when the author is presenting a position given by somebody else and its implications from when he is giving his own position; to determine when a question ends and its answer begins. An exegesis of Avicenna’s commentary so as to understand his points, often expressed in summary, thus becomes quite lengthy. Some have given exegeses of some of the passages in AL-MADKHAL as I indicate in the notes. Avicenna has respect but not reverence for Aristotle. On some topics, Avicenna thinks that Aristotle has the whole truth. For instance, concerning Aristotle’s classification of the fallacies, Avicenna says: …after almost one thousand three hundred and thirty years, was this goal reached by anyone who blamed Aristotle for being deficient, and who was right in identifying a defect in him because Aristotle was in fact deficient in such and such a matter? And did there appear after him anybody who added anything at all to this art [sophistics] beyond what Aristotle said? Certainly not; for what Aristotle did is complete and perfect. Yet, even when Avicenna thinks that Aristotle has the right theory, he proceeds to a critical discussion of it. We may in general agree with Gutas: Avicenna presents himself in the prologue to the CURE not as an anti-Aristotelian despite himself, as al-Jūzānī would have it, but as a conscious reformer of the Aristotelian tradition, an attitude which is also apparent in the Introduction to THE EASTERNERS and shared by other disciples of his... Avicenna is no naïve reader, misled by having received neo-Platonist works by Proclus and Plotinus as written by Aristotle. Avicenna expresses doubts also about the authenticity of the so-called THEOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE, known now to be spurious. Avicenna even goes so far as to hint at his doubts of the authenticity of the CATEGORIES. Likewise he is quite critical at spots about the author of the ISAGOGE. Like Porphyry, he considers the discussion only suitable for a beginner, even when he has inserted a lot of doctrine, mostly by allusion, from his own theory. Why then bother to read this commentary? For in it Avicenna then often adds or indicates what he thinks is right. Thus, as Avicenna does present his own views there often in considerable detail, we can say that, even if AL-MADKHAL had little use as an explication de texte of the ISAGOGE, it has great use for understanding Avicenna’s own views. To repeat, Avicenna is not writing a commentary of the usual sort. Like his later works, we can say of those in the ŠHIFĀ that they contain many “Doubts about the received doctrines” - although, to be sure, Avicenna also accepts much of what Aristotle and earlier Aristotelians said. He is writing a commentary in the sense of following the order of Aristotle’s texts and commenting on what is being discussed. Yet he often does not bother to explicate Aristotle’s text. Rather, he presents what he thinks on these topics. Although he does often agree with Aristotle, often he does not: for instance, on quiddity, on homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy, on the antepredicamental rule. Still, many of the doctrines used by Avicenna to correct the doctrine of the ISAGOGE can indeed be found in Aristotle’s works. For instance, Avicenna gives two respectable modes of predication, by synonymy and by paronymy, where he is using materials from CATEGORIES 1-2. [MADKHAL 28,5; MĀQŪLĀT 28,5-9] He then gives an account of the universal, which imports much of the material found in Aristotle’s METAPHYSICS VII as well as in his own ILĀHIYYĀT. [CF. MADKHAL I.6] Indeed AL-MADKHAL gives a general overview of Avicenna’s metaphysics of quiddity, incorporating much material from his metaphysics, psychology, and physics, perhaps in a clearer version than those more elaborate works have. In short, if you are looking for a good overview of Avicenna’s philosophy, this is the place to start. We can find analogous “commentaries” in Abelard. His GLOSSES ON PORPHYRY are hardly glosses; his commentaries on Boethius stray so far from the texts that we look in vain in Boethius for most of the doctrines that Abelard puts forward. Like Abelard, Avicenna uses the text as a source of questions, topics, and problems that he then investigates and for which he provides the answers. Avicenna does indeed seem to have a style much like Abelard’s: always looking for alternatives, contemptuously dismissing views that he finds silly (here more with the verve of Roger Bacon). Avicenna differs from Abelard perhaps in having his own, final definite position on most issues. AL-MADKHAL, like the rest of the ŠHIFĀ, is sometimes considered to belong to Avicenna’s Aristotelian, Western writing, as opposed to his intuitive, mystical, Eastern writing. Yet as Gutas et al. have shown clearly, Avicenna’s writings have far greater continuity. For instance, he will often write a part of a later writing simply by inserting something that he had already written, like some chapters of the parts on DE ANIMA and the metaphysics in the ŠHIFĀ. In logical works like AL-MADKHAL the continuity of his thought is quite strong. We need only compare the relevant parts of the ŠHIFĀ to those in the works written later, including the IŠĀRĀT and the LOGIC OF THE ORIENTALS. The main difference that I can see in comparing these parts is that the discussions in the ŠHIFĀ tend to be longer, more complex, and more apt to discuss the views of others. After all, Avicenna himself insists, perhaps protesting too much, that his thought never changed. The ŠHIFĀ is often taken to be an “encyclopedia”, but it is better to adopt Dimitri Gutas’ suggestion and view it as a compendium or a Summa Philosophiae, indeed perhaps the first one ever; those written by Western Latin medieval philosophers later, thirteenth century on, were perhaps using the ŠHIFĀ as a paradigm. What influence did AL-MADKHAL have on later Western philosophy? Some think that those like Roger Bacon read Avicenna’s Arabic texts. The medieval Latin translation arrived in the mid-thirteenth century. It seemed to have a great impact, not only with the modists with their stress on intentiones, both primary and secondary [see 15,1-15], but also with the mainstream philosophers, of the likes of Albert the Great, Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Duns Scotus. What Gilson calls the “augustinisme avicennant” came to dominate that period. In large, AL-MADKHAL [LOGICA] gave the logical side, the ILĀHIYYĀT {METAPHYSICA} the metaphysical side, the NAFS [DE ANIMA] the psychological side: Avicenna himself often makes the cross-references. The publication of the AVICENNA LATINUS at Venice in 1508 attests to a continued influence in the Renaissance and beyond. My translation attempts to preserve the technical side of Avicenna’s writing, even at the expense of literary elegance. For many passages have little elegance anyway. So far as possible, I have used a single English term to translate the same Arabic term at least within a passage or chapter. In short, translating Avicenna has many of the same problems with translating the Greek commentators on Aristotle, and I have adopted many of the same methods. Of course, I have additional problems, as Arabic differs greatly from Greek philologically, and Avicenna was working much later, in a non-Greek culture. Also I have tried to steer between the Scylla of the current fashion in ancient philosophy of translating as literally as possible (as in the Oxford Clarendon Series and the translation project for the Greek commentators) and the Charybdis of keeping to the traditional scholastic names used in Latin medieval philosophy and its translations, in order to show the continuity of Avicenna with later medieval thought. Doubtless, on account of that, I have hit yet other obstacles. Accordingly, in translating I have sought to find expressions that will make it easy to find antecedents of Avicenna’s views as well as to locate later views and compare them with his. Unfortunately, this desire puts me somewhat between the two groups of translators just mentioned, especially in the eyes of those relying on translations. The current fashion in translating Aristotle and Greek Aristotelian commentators is to eschew later Aristotelian neologisms and scholastic terms and give literal translations. On the other hand, translations of the Latin medieval materials, as well as those of the Islamic materials, tend to use such a vocabulary. I have tried to steer a middle path. This involves my not following either group completely. I try to explain the terms somewhat in the Notes, and to use the same translation for the same term whenever possible to do so without becoming utterly barbarous in style - although, frankly, the text is often thus. I have kept in many of the connectives at the beginning of sentences and clauses (‘fa’; ‘wa’) because 1) they are there 2) it is not clear often when one sentence ends and another begins. In this way, a reader using the translation will be able to see some of the possibilities. I use parentheses to indicate additions not explicitly stated but reasonably implicit in the Arabic text itself; square brackets to indicated additions of words or explications that I have inserted; pointed brackets indicate words appearing in the Arabic edition that I have excised: [,] Added by translator. (,) parenthetical remark or directly suggested by Arabic text. <,> In the Arabic edition; perhaps should be deleted. I use single quotes to mention an expression, and double quotes for direct quotation or to indicate that the expression is being talked about and used (for instance: “Where” is the category of time; ‘where’ is an adverb.). However, to avoid confusion with the Arabic letters, I generally use italics and not quote marks around Arabic words. Arabic lexical items and orthography conform to Hans Wehr, A DICTIONARY OF MODERN WRITTEN ARABIC, Third Edition, ed. J. M. Cowan (New York, 1971); Fourth Edition (New York, 1993). I have also used Gerhard Endress and Dmitri Gutas, A GREEK AND ARABIC LEXICON, Vol. 1ff. (Leiden, 1992ff.) as far as it has gone; E. W. Lane-Poole’s ARABIC-ENGLISH LEXICON [CD-Rom ed. Omnia]; A.-M. Goichon, LEXIQUE DE LA LANGUE PHILOSOPHIQUE D’IBN SĪNĀ (Paris, 1938); A.-M. Goichon, VOCABULAIRES COMPARÉS D’ARISTOTE ET D’IBN SĪNĀ (Paris, 1939) [with caution]; Soheil Afnan, PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY IN ARABIC AND PERSIAN (Leiden, 1964); M. Steinschneider, DIE ARABISCHE ÜBERSETZUNGEN AUS DEM GREICHISCHEN (Graz, 1960); F. E. Peters, ARISTOTELES ARABUS (Leiden, 1968); DICTIONNAIRE DE PHILOSOPHES ANTIQUES, ed. R. Goulet, 2+ Vols. (Paris, 1989-); Shukri Abed, ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC AND THE ARABIC LANGUAGE (Albany, 1991). For grammar I have relied chiefly on W. Fischer, A GRAMMAR OF CLASSICAL ARABIC, trans. J. Rodgers (New Haven, 2001) and W. Wright, A GRAMMAR OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE (translation of Caspari), Third Edition, rev. W. Robertson Smith & M. J. de Goeje (Cambridge, 1967). ‘LSJ’ stands for H. Liddell, and R. Scott, rev. H. Jones, A GREEK LEXICON (Oxford, l968). As noted above, I am using PORPHYRII ISAGOGE ET IN ARISTO-TELIS CATEGORIAS COMMEN-TARIUM, ed. A. Busse (Berlin, 1887). for the standard Greek edition of the ISAGOGE. I have consulted the English translation of Jonathan Barnes, PORPHYRY: INTRODUCTION (Oxford, 2003), For the Arabic translation of the ISAGOGE, I have used ‘A. Badawī, ed., MANŢIQ ARISTṬŪ, Vol. 1 (Cairo, 1948). References to the Greek commentators are to the line numbers in COMMENTARIA IN ARISTOTELIS GRAECA, ed. A. Busse et al. (Berlin, 1882ff.); ‘IN CAT.’ abbreviates some version of ‘IN ARISTOTELIS CATEGORIAS COMMENTARIUM’, with some additional citations of the translations in the series, THE ANCIENT COMMENTATORS ON ARISTOTLE, ed. R. Sorabji. …philosophy was only part of a larger Greek “explosion” that in the course of three or four generations whirled the ninth-century Muslim through all the painful intellectual experiences that the Greeks had undergone in the time between Homer and Paul of Angina. Both the novelty and the vigor of this unparalleled assault on the intellectual life of Islam attracted some of its greatest talents.
| Erscheinungsdatum | 23.04.2019 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Liber Conversus |
| Verlagsort | München |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 140 x 210 mm |
| Gewicht | 300 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie des Mittelalters |
| Schlagworte | Arisoteles • Logik • Mittelalter • persische Philosophie |
| ISBN-10 | 3-88405-125-3 / 3884051253 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-3-88405-125-2 / 9783884051252 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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