Ibn Sina (Avicenna) - The Greatest Muslim Philosopher?

Imagine, for a moment, an adult man who just pops into existence. He is suspended in the air, and all of his sensory faculties are non-functional. He has no memory of any earlier, um, bodily experience, and he can't see anything. He can't hear, can't smell, or feel the touch of anything. He simply floats there in space with no sensory input of the outside world.

Now, ask yourself the question: Is this man aware of his own existence? This is a very famous thought experiment by the Persian Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina, more widely known in the West through the Latinized form of his name, Avicenna. This example, often known as the floating man thought experiment, was meant to explore the existence and nature of the human soul, and we will return to that topic later on in the episode.

Because, indeed, psychology is only one topic out of a whole ocean of subjects that Avicenna wrote about and studied. He was a polymath who tackled everything from logic, physics, metaphysics, medicine, mathematics, music, astronomy, and much else. He truly is one of the most brilliant minds that the world has ever produced, and his influence on the Islamic intellectual tradition, as well as the intellectual tradition of the world generally, cannot be overstated. His philosophical works served as the basis for basically all, or at least a very important aspect of all, future speculation, and his medical treatises served as standard textbooks in Europe all the way until the 18th century. He influenced thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and these Scholastics in Europe. Um, he, uh, presented precursors to the Newtonian laws of physics, uh, and he even also produced one of the most famous and celebrated proofs or arguments for the existence of God.

So, who was Ibn Sina? In this episode, we're going to explore the life and works of this great polymath and genius of the Islamic world, as well as to explore some of the key themes and characteristics of his thought that made him so influential and important.

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Avicenna's full name was Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina. He was born around 980 in a village called Afshana, close to Bukhara in modern Uzbekistan, and he would remain mostly in this wider Persianate cultural world for most of his life, where he would conduct his philosophical activities and eventually become known by titles like "Shaykh al-Rais," something like "the Leader of Wise Men."

His life is a fascinating story, and we're very lucky in that regard because Ibn Sina actually left an autobiography that retells his life story. Although the second half of this was actually filled in by his primary student, Abu Ubayd al-Juzjani. Now, this is great and all, but we very quickly realize when we read this autobiography that the, um, self-aggrandizement in this text is kind of over the top. Uh, he always presents himself as a total genius, unparalleled mind. He surpasses all his teachers, even as a teenager, and, yeah, he just describes himself as the most brilliant person who ever lived, basically. I'm, that's a bit of hyperbole. That's, that's kind of the impression that you get from this text. And so, while we can use that, it's a very useful source for the biography of Ibn Sina's life, we should, because of these reasons, use it carefully and read it with, with that in mind, with a sort of critical mind, and realize that Ibn Sina, as well as the second half, which is written by his student al-Juzjani, that they are presenting the great philosopher in the best of lights, and that maybe we don't know, but probably does not carry over like fully to how things actually happened in [Music] history.

"My father was a man from Balkh," this is how Ibn Sina begins his autobiography. He talks about his father moving from Balkh to Bukhara and later to the village of Afshana, where he was born. His father, and later his brother, were or became Isma'ilis, one of the major branches of Shi'a Islam that was always in deep conversation with Greek philosophical sources. He would have thus grown up in an intellectual environment in his home, and he tells us that he would listen to his father and his friends discuss matters of philosophy and other topics. But he is also pretty clear about the fact that he himself never accepted these Isma'ili doctrines himself, instead kind of paving a path of his own. And this theme really comes to dominate his biography.

Ibn Sina goes on to study with different teachers like Abu Abdullah al-Natili and Isma'il al-Zahid, with whom he studied law. But he quickly realized that he was smarter and more gifted than both of these scholars, so he basically struck out on his own and would dedicate most of his life as a youth to reading, studying, and writing. He had memorized the entire Quran by the time he was 10 years old, and as we said, he studied the classical religious sciences like law and Hadith. While there is some dispute over his adherence to one school of Islam over the other, the evidence seems clear, at least to me, that he must have adhered to some form of the Hanafi school of law, which we'll see examples of soon.

But as we know, his interest extended way beyond the traditional religious sciences. Ibn Sina devoured works of philosophy, geometry, logic, medicine, astronomy, and basically anything that he could get his hands on. Works that he mentions by name that he studied in the early days include Porphyry's *Isagoge*, the *Almagest*, which is a work by Ptolemy, and the famous work by Euclid, *The Elements*, but this list of course includes much else too. Apparently, he was especially gifted with logic and medicine, the latter of which he says is "not one of the difficult sciences." And by the age of 16, he was teaching others about medicine and essentially was working as a physician.

Very interestingly, Ibn Sina tells some of his study routines, which involves writing down logical problems and pondering over them, examining different opinions and claims in depth. Sometimes, when a problem was particularly difficult, he would, quote, "visit the mosque frequently in worship, praying humbly to the All-Creating until He opened the mystery of it to me and made the difficult seem easy." He then describes a standard cozy night of study in his house: "At night I would return home, set out a lamp before me, and devote myself to reading and writing. Whenever sleep overcame me or I became conscious of weakening, I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine so that my strength would return to me. Then I would return to reading."

Now, that last part might surprise you. Wasn't Ibn Sina Muslim? How come, then, that he drinks wine? Well, this has, in fact, been a point of controversy and is sometimes used to point to Ibn Sina's supposed lax attitude or commitment to religion. But the situation is a little more complicated than that. The word Avicenna uses in the Arabic original is *sharāb*. Now, technically, this can mean basically just a drink, grammatically, right? It means "that which one drinks." But in this context, especially in the Persian-speaking and Iranian environment that he lived in, the word *sharāb* basically denoted one specific thing, and that was wine. So, although it isn't 100% guaranteed, there is no reason to doubt that he would have been referring to actual wine, the intoxicating drink.

But in another account that basically comments on this statement by Ibn Sina and the well-known fact that he drank wine, the writer basically defends him by saying that he drank wine because he, quote, "belonged to the Hanafi school of law." Indeed, the Hanafi school, which is the largest school of law in Islam today, has an interesting history with alcohol. The founder of that school, Abu Hanifa, as well as most of the representatives of that, that school for the first few centuries, argue that some forms of alcohol are actually permitted to drink. Their argument rested on the fact that the Quran mentions wine and condemns its consumption, but to the Hanafis, it denoted specifically fermented grape wine. As for any other kind of wine or alcoholic drink which did not fall under this narrow category, this was allowed as long as one didn't get intoxicated by it. It was the intoxication itself that was *haram*, or forbidden. And the representatives of this school could differ on what counted as being intoxicated. Some arguing that intoxication meant that you couldn't tell heaven from earth or man from woman, so basically you're completely pissed. In other words, while others argued that just slurred speech was enough to count as being intoxicated. Regardless, this was the standard position of the Hanafi school for centuries, but started to slowly evolve until they also agreed with the other schools on a more general prohibition of all alcohol from probably, you could say, around the 12th century or so. Although that movement toward a more general prohibition had started a while earlier. So today, you'll be very hard-pressed to find any Islamic jurist, including in the Hanafi school, that will say that any form of alcohol is, is allowed. Basically, no one would argue this today.

And as we saw, most of the evidence points to the idea that Ibn Sina was indeed a Hanafi, and by the time that he lived, which was the 10th to 11th century, it would have still been a very common Hanafi position that some forms of alcohol were allowed, as long as he didn't drink fermented grape wine. And his use of the word *sharāb* makes this ambiguous. It was basically in the clear. To strengthen the argument, there is a contemporary source talking about another famous scholar at that time, Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani, which argues in a similar way: "Although drinking wine is a controversial subject, he would partake of it on the grounds that he belonged to the Hanafi school." Right? So this was basically what Ibn Sina used to do.

He spent all of his waking hours, except, I presume, you know, for prayers and other religious duties, in studying different texts, reading them, studying them, writing down arguments, and trying to figure things out, uh, to the point that he could master many of these philosophical subjects to a very impressive degree. And after this, and for the rest of his life, Ibn Sina would work as a scholar, physician, and often kind of vizier for several rulers around the Persianate world. He lived in Jurjan for a while, where he met his former student and later biographer, al-Juzjani. He worked in the service of the Buyid Amir Majd al-Dawla in Rayy, and later in Hamadan, where he would also participate in various public debates and discussions and composed some of his most major works, including *The Canon of Medicine*, or *Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb*.

His allegiance to different rulers would often change, and this kind of got him into trouble. After serving Shams al-Dawla in Hamadan, when the latter died, he refused to accept the role of vizier for his official successor. Instead, he went into hiding for a while, but also secretly corresponded with another ruler in Isfahan, Muhammad. Significantly, it was during this time of hiding, when he didn't have access to any of his books, that he wrote the majority of what is arguably his philosophical magnum opus, *Al-Shifa'*, or *The Book of Healing*, entirely from memory. This is just another example to showcase the incredible mind that this man had, and we'll return to this and other works soon.

Eventually, Ibn Sina would come out of hiding and actually went to Isfahan to serve under Ala al-Dawla, which would be his residence and job for the rest of his life. During this very eventful life, Ibn Sina was already recognized by his wider environment as a great genius and scholar, and he was to become one of the foremost representatives of the Peripatetic or Aristotelian school of Islamic philosophy.

Now, when we talk about philosophy in the Islamic world, the word used in Arabic is *falsafa*. This was a discipline that essentially developed during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, where texts from around the world were translated into Arabic in the so-called Bayt al-Hikma, or the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad. Particularly, Greek books by the old Greek philosophers were highly valued and studied, and the earliest representatives of *falsafa*, such as al-Kindi and al-Farabi, took inspiration from these Greek sources and tried to harmonize them with the Quran and the Islamic religion. And in all of this, it was Aristotle who became seen as the highest authority, as the philosopher par excellence.

Now, the philosophical tradition was seen as, in some ways, a Peripatetic tradition, but things aren't that simple. Because indeed, even though Aristotle was symbolically the most important philosopher, this doesn't necessarily mean that he was the most influential. Actually, for example, one of the most important texts that were translated into Arabic and which served as the basis for a lot of the *falsafa* tradition was a book called *The Theology of Aristotle*. As you can tell, this was attributed to Aristotle himself, and for a long time, this was seen as representing his philosophy. But when we actually look at that text, we realize that it isn't actually by Aristotle at all. Instead, it's a paraphrasing translation of the *Enneads* by the 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus, often seen as the founder of the school of Neoplatonism. And many other texts that were important at this time turn out, in fact, to be Neoplatonic texts, often misattributed to Aristotle. Plotinus's *Elements of Theology* had a similar story, for example. To the *falsafa* scholars, then, there wasn't really any discrepancy between Plato and Aristotle, an opinion that they also, basically, shared indeed with the Neoplatonists. But the point here is, even though Aristotle was seen as the philosopher, and we often refer to people like al-Farabi and Ibn Sina himself as Peripatetic philosophers, this was a Peripateticism that was heavily infused with Neoplatonic ideas and concepts, which also becomes very clear in the writings of Ibn Sina.

He was, of course, indebted to these earlier representatives of Islamic philosophy, and he indeed tells us that he had himself unsuccessfully tried to read and understand Aristotle's *Metaphysics* 40 times to no avail. But then, by a chance encounter, he gets his hands on al-Farabi's commentary on that work, which allows him to immediately be able to understand it. So, even though Ibn Sina is sometimes critical of the Baghdad School of philosophy, he did have a lot of respect for al-Farabi in particular.

Whatever the case, Ibn Sina wrote a lot of stuff, and his genius and brilliance really shine through in these texts. He wrote commentaries on the work of Aristotle, um, he wrote, like, epistles and poetic works, uh, and also very significantly, he wrote several summarizing works of philosophy. So, these large, uh, works of philosophy that summarized different subjects, in, in a sort of comprehensive way, that became very famous and very influential.

The book that's often considered his magnum opus, or the most major work of philosophy, is *Al-Shifa'* or *The Book of Healing*, sometimes *The Book of the Cure*, probably published in the year 1027. This is a massive summarizing work that in a modern edition comes out at around 22 volumes. The title, *The Healing* or *The Cure*, is an allusion to the aim of philosophy to heal the ignorance of the soul. The work is most broadly divided into four major parts: logic, natural science or physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. But within these wider categories, he tackles everything from God, the soul, epistemology, motion, music, and much else.

A second very significant work is his *Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb*, *The Canon of Medicine*. Unlike *The Healing*, which does not deal with medicine, as the titles seem to kind of suggest, *The Canon of Medicine* is a massive compendium of the medical sciences as they were known in the Islamic world during Ibn Sina's life. As we know, Ibn Sina was seen as one of the foremost physicians and authorities on medicine in his time, and in this work, he really gathers everything in one place. Much of this is based on Galenic medicine and the four humors, which we know today to not be true, of course. But he also lists many herbs and substances that can be used to heal certain illnesses and problems, how to diagnose and treat different ailments and sicknesses, and much more. This work was, was incredibly influential, and after being translated into Latin, it would remain one of the most authoritative and influential medical treatises in Europe all the way until the early modern age, so around the 18th century.

He also wrote a work called *Al-Najāt*, *The Salvation*, as a shorter summary of works like *Al-Shifa'* and similar works, but in Persian rather than Arabic, such as the famous *Danishnamah-yi Alai*, *A Philosophy for Ala' al-Dawla*, which was dedicated to his patron Ala' al-Dawla. At the end of his life, he also wrote another similar, although slightly shorter work, that has nonetheless become one of his most popular, called *Pointers and Reminders*, or sometimes *Remarks and Admonitions*. This is also a kind of summarizing work, but is written in a much more elusive way and can be very difficult to grasp. He tackles all kinds of topics, but covers each topic relatively shortly and elusively, seemingly pointing the reader to do much of the work themselves, by probably, for example, consulting his more elaborate works such as *Al-Shifa'*. But it would be a mistake to see this as simply a work of references to things he had already covered in earlier texts, because *Al-Ishārāt* also contains unique things that are only covered here, and many consider this to be Ibn Sina's most mature philosophical work. It is also divided into four categories: logic, physics, metaphysics, and Sufism. And that last part might catch your attention, and we will return to that topic later. But needless to say, *Al-Ishārāt*, despite its difficulty, and indeed perhaps because of it, is one of the most celebrated and popular of his works, and it's the work that has been commented on the most by later scholars, both critical and supportive. For example, there are two very famous commentaries on this work: one by al-Razi, which is more supportive, and one by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, which is more critical. And *Al-Ishārāt* has rarely been read historically without at the same time consulting one of these many commentaries.

There are, of course, many other significant works that we haven't mentioned here, but some of them will come up over the course of the discussion as they become relevant to what we're talking about. But with that said, because Ibn Sina covers such a vast array of topics, so basically any conceivable subject within the field of, of philosophy and science, at least as it stood in his day, um, it's going to be impossible to cover all of it. So we're going to have to pick and choose, um, some of the most, uh, perhaps important or significant of his ideas for the general context of, you know, the Islamic intellectual tradition, for example, as well as topics that I personally feel most comfortable talking about, so that I can present it in, in, in the best way possible, so to say. But, uh, with that said, I hope this following discussion will be an interesting introduction to some of the key concepts and ideas in the philosophy of Ibn Sina.

As we said, Ibn Sina firmly falls under the category of a philosopher, one who is greatly concerned with logical deduction to arrive at true conclusions about different aspects of reality, as well as the more experimental and empirical methods and aspects that we associate with the word "science" today. But it's also true that Ibn Sina was a Muslim, and there's little reason to doubt that he was a devout one. He had vices, of course. We've already talked about his wine consumption and possibly explained it. It's also widely agreed, even by his student and biographer, al-Juzjani, that Ibn Sina quite enjoyed the company of women and to have sex, and it seems that this wasn't always within the bounds of marriage, so to say. But regardless, he definitely considered himself a Muslim. He prayed regularly, as we have seen, and God and Islam play an important role in his wider philosophy.

Indeed, while he did see a difference between philosophy and the domain of "quote unquote religion," at least on the surface, he also has some really interesting insights into the relationship and the difference between these two, uh, aspects. It's clear that he considered Islam to be the true religion to be followed in society, and that its law was essential for social order. Just like many of his other fellow philosophers, he saw philosophy as a search for truth that was reserved only for the few who had the capacity to study it. But those truths didn't contradict the truths expressed in religion. The Quran is the word of God, and philosophy helps us actually come to know the realities and concepts that the Quran talks about as they truly are, rather than as they are described. Things like the nature of God and Oneness, Heaven and Hell, the resurrection of the dead, etc.

As a philosopher, Ibn Sina was concerned with rational proofs and logical interpretations. And this means that while he recognized that the Quran was the sacred word of God, certain things that it says run counter to reason if it is interpreted literally. In other words, while the true truths of philosophy and religion are the same truth, philosophers have access to truth in a pure or true form, whereas revelation expresses that truth in a way that speaks to the general masses in a way that they can understand. To him, religion was primarily practical, in a way of social order, and he expresses this rather clearly in *Al-Shifa'*, or *The Book of Healing*. Society needs to be ordered, and for that, it requires laws. Those laws need to be brought by a messenger who reminds the people of the divine, the rituals, and prayers of the religion. And law is a way for people to constantly remind themselves of the reality of the divine, thus grounding them and their behavior metaphysically in following the law and beliefs laid down in revelation. For example, the remembrance of the threat and promise of Hell and Paradise keeps people from behaving in evil ways.

This idea about the function of religion and its relationship to philosophy is pretty radically, or clearly, expressed in a shorter work where he says: "Concerning the law, one ought to know a single rule: that is, that what is wanted by the law and religion that have come to us through the tongue of any of the prophets is to address all the crowd, to address the crowd about things that they understand, bringing things that they do not understand closer to the imagination by striking likenesses and similitudes. If matters were otherwise, the law would be of no use at all." Revelation, the Quran, speaks to the masses about things that they can't really understand, so it resorts to likenesses, metaphors, and similes to make it easier for people. The philosophers, on the other hand, are the people who can, through their rational methods, actually reach and grasp the truth as it is, a truth that if expressed directly would only confuse the non-philosopher. Nonetheless, as we have seen, the two truths are really one and the same truth, but expressed in different ways. The job of the philosopher in dealing with revelation is to see the actual truth behind the metaphors.

In other words, Ibn Sina reads the Quran in very allegorical and metaphorical ways, which leads him to some really interesting conclusions. Indeed, in terms of theology and eschatology: "The outer meaning of the laws cannot be used as an argument; they must be interpreted metaphorically." This is maybe obvious and not that shocking when interpreting anthropomorphic statements about God metaphorically. But this metaphorical reading also extends to things like eschatology. For example, the idea of the resurrection of the dead on Judgment Day goes against reason to Ibn Sina. Paradise can't be something we experience with our body, because our bodies are, per definition, limited and bring pain in different ways, so that would be absurd. So, to him, these statements about the afterlife and the resurrection are rather allusions to the idea that the soul is immortal and lives on after death, not to be read literally. Heaven and Hell, thus, are not real places, but states that the soul goes through after death.

The rejection of the physical resurrection of the body by Ibn Sina became one of his most controversial points. In fact, al-Ghazali, who criticizes much of the philosophers in his work called *The Incoherence of the Philosophers*, picks this idea as one of the three doctrines of Ibn Sina that makes him an unbeliever, and we'll get to know the other two points during the course of this discussion, too.

There are many other similar interpretations that he gives for certain Quranic verses and concepts, but this was all necessitated, it was a necessary conclusion or or feature of his wider philosophical outlook. So, while Ibn Sina saw a difference in function between religion or revelation, which was meant for the general mass of people who didn't have the ability to study philosophy, on the one hand, and on the other hand, philosophy, which studied the truth as it is in an unfiltered way, so to say, which was only the, the, the privilege of those who had the ability to, to study those topics, uh, he still didn't see a discrepancy between the two, right? They were both exploring the same truths, but they were speaking about these truths often in different languages. Indeed, the truths reached through philosophy can help the individual worshipper, uh, understand and deepen his faith in the religion and thereby strengthen his religious devotions. So they were not in opposition to each other, rather quite the opposite. Ibn Sina thought that philosophy complemented religion in a very profound way.

At this time, among Muslim scholars, there was a general attitude that any knowledge or wisdom was good as long as it didn't contradict Islamic teachings. And a common opinion was that these old philosophers like Plato and Aristotle basically believed and taught the same thing as Islam, albeit imperfectly. And nowhere is this more visible, perhaps, than in Ibn Sina's idea about God. Indeed, a major part of his metaphysics talks precisely about the nature of God and how this first principle relates to all other things.

First of all, one of the most major contributions that Ibn Sina makes in metaphysics is his distinction between essence and existence. When we consider any object in the world, it will have an essence or quiddity, a *māhiyya* in Arabic, which literally means a "whatness," that that which makes it what it is. So, a table has "tableness" as its essence, right? The *māhiyya*, or "whatness," of something is that which makes it what it is as opposed to some other thing. Now, then we can say that some essences or objects have existence, or *wujūd* in Arabic. The two, essence and existence, are not necessarily always connected. We can think of the essence of a table without that table actually existing out there in the world. So, there must be a distinction between the "whatness" and the existence, the latter of which is present to the essence at sometimes, but at other times not. This is true for every essence; it either has or it doesn't have existence. That is, except for God. God, in fact, is an essence whose very thingness, his very essence, is existence. His essence is existence, and his existence is his essence. So that he must, per definition, exist. It is inconceivable that God doesn't exist, because that is the very nature of his essence. Whereas the essence of a table, for instance, is "tableness," which can have existence or not have existence. This distinction, while it may seem maybe obvious or simple, was to have major implications for later Islamic thought. It is because of this that major figures like Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi, and later Mulla Sadra were able to make some of their most profound statements and express their mystical and philosophical ideas.

This also brings us further into Ibn Sina's metaphysics and theology, especially as it pertains to God and what he is. How does Ibn Sina conceive of God? Well, in the broadest sense, God is referred to as the Necessary Existent. And in order to get to this conclusion, Ibn Sina uses what has become one of the most famous "quote unquote" proofs or arguments for the existence of God in history, what has become known as the Proof of the Truthful. This is an argument that still, at least in my opinion, is quite impressive and has been celebrated ever since then, even influencing figures like Thomas Aquinas and their very similar arguments. It is expressed in places like *Al-Shifa'*, but it finds perhaps its most mature and simple formulation in *Al-Ishārāt*. And it is an argument that is based essentially on contingency and necessity.

So, when you look around in the world, everything that you see is essentially contingent. Now, what does this mean to be contingent? Is to be dependent on or conditioned by something else. In Arabic, he uses the term *mumkin al-wujūd*, literally meaning "possible existent." A contingent or possible existent is something that could exist, but it might as well not exist. It is possible that it exists, and it is equally possible that it doesn't exist. And it is contingent, that is, it is conditioned or dependent on something else for its existence, which in this case would be its cause. Now, there are also impossible existents, to Ibn Sina, such as a round square, for instance, which can't exist because you can't even imagine such a thing. Uh, this would be a complete category error. Uh, but we don't have to think about these impossible existents anymore; that's not relevant to the argument.

Now, on the other hand, there could possibly be a necessary existent, something that, uh, has to exist, that per by itself, by its own nature, has to exist without being dependent on anything else for its existence, not being caused by something else in any case. It seems that at least most things in the world are contingent and caused. And when I say "caused," that does not simply mean that, for example, I exist because my parents decided to have a baby, or that the table exists because someone decided to make it. This is also true. But with contingency and cause, Ibn Sina means something more profound. I only exist because the parts that make me up exist and in this particular configuration. I only exist because the air that I breathe exists and gives me life, because of the just-right amount of heat on Earth so that I don't freeze to death or burn to death. And every part of me that makes me what I am is also, in turn, contingent, being dependent on and caused by its own parts and conditions. None of these things that we think of, and, you know, it's a thing, and then the thing that causes that thing, and then that thing, none of these things necessarily exist in themselves. There's nothing about their nature or essence that tells us that they have to exist.

"That to which possibility belongs in essence does not come into existence by its essence, for inasmuch as it is possible, existence by its essence is not more appropriate than non-existence. Thus, if its existence or non-existence becomes more appropriate than the other, that is because of the presence or absence of a certain thing, respectively. It follows that the existence of every possible thing is from another." So, all contingent things are contingent, right? They're all dependent and conditioned by something else. They're all caused by something else. So that begs the question: Are all things contingent, or is it possible that there is a necessary existent, something that necessarily exists by itself without depending on anything else? This is what Ibn Sina aims to investigate here.

A Madhyamaka Buddhist might simply say, "Yes, to the first question, all things are contingent and dependent." In fact, they would be saying that there aren't even things at all, but that's beside the point. Whatever contingent existent we take as our starting point, it is either dependent on or caused by a necessary existent, or by another contingent existence. I don't know if you say the first thing, that what we consider contingent is caused by a necessary existent, then the argument is done. But of course, since most of us are probably scientific, rational people, we would say that, "No, this microphone is contingent. It is dependent on or caused by other things, which are in themselves contingent and dependent on other things in turn, and so on." And again, I want to stress that when I say that something is caused by another thing here, I don't mean temporally, as we said, but, uh, cause, um, when we say "cause" here, it is those things that make something exist and be what it is at any given moment. And we quickly realize that we can do this at infinitum, an infinite stretch of contingent existence. Oh, but you might say, at the end, there must be something that stops that chain of dependence, which in itself isn't dependent on anything else before it. Well, then you have basically concluded that there is a necessary existence, and the argument is done.

But Ibn Sina isn't this lazy. Let's instead presume that all existence that we can know are indeed contingent. But perhaps we can consider that the whole chain, or the whole set of, of all contingent things, all things in the universe taken together as a whole, that that whole, maybe it's necessary, right? Everything we can know in the universe seems to be contingent because everything is dependent on something, you know, caused by something else. But that's unsatisfactory because then why are there things at all? If everything is dependent on something else, where is the sort of source of these things? What is, what is the first cause, as Aristotle would call it? Because no matter how far we push the argument, we always end up with more contingence and never reach a cause that stands on its own, in sort of independently, that starts the chain. So again, let's then presume that perhaps the totality of all contingent things, this, this whole, this whole set taken together, is necessary, while, you know, all the individual constituents of that whole are the contingent things, but that the whole itself is somehow necessary. This argument does not hold to Ibn Sina. Why? Because what is a totality? It is a collection or amalgamation of parts. But if that whole is dependent on parts to make it what it is, it's no longer necessary. It too is contingent because it is dependent on its contingent parts and has been caused by them.

"If that other," so one of the existents in this chain of contingent existence goes on to infinity, "every one of the units of the chain will be possible in essence, but the whole chain depends on these units. Thus, the chain too will not be necessary and becomes necessary through another." He further explicates on this point in *Al-Shifa'*: "Every totality having every one of its units as cause requires a cause external to its units. This is because either: one, it does not require a cause at all, hence it is necessary and not possible. But how could this be so when it is only necessitated by its units? Two, it requires a cause that is all its units, hence it is caused by itself, that totality and all its units are one thing. Further, cool, in the sense of everyone, is not something through which the totality is necessitated. Three, it requires a cause that is some of its units. But if every one of its units is caused, then some of its units are not more deserving of being the cause than some others. The reason is that the cause of the cause is more deserving of being the cause. Or number four, it requires a cause external to all units, that is, the remaining truth."

He's given us four options here. The first, we've already covered to some degree: maybe the whole set or chain taken as a whole doesn't need a cause. Well, we've already shown that it is caused because it is dependent on its constituent parts. As Ibn Sina said, it is "necessitated by its units." The second option is that perhaps all of the individual units are the cause of the whole set, but this obviously doesn't make sense because all the units are contingent, so they can't cause themselves, and therefore not the whole either. Thirdly, maybe one unit in the chain is the cause, but this is clearly not the case either, because again, each unit is contingent. Even if you would say that one of the units isn't contingent but necessary, then that unit wouldn't be part of the set anymore, because the set was a set of contingent things, so it would be outside the set, and again, our problems would be solved. So this doesn't really solve the issue either. We're only left with the fourth option, then, to Ibn Sina, that is, that the whole set of contingent things, this whole, this whole set taken together, must require a cause that is external to all its units.

"Every totality organized of causes and effects consecutively, including a non-caused cause, has this uncaused cause as an extremity. For if the cause were an intermediate, it would be caused." So, we have reached a kind of inevitable conclusion based on the logical experiment that Ibn Sina is taking us on. There must be a necessary existence that is external to the set of all contingent or possible existence, something that per definition has to exist and couldn't possibly not exist. It is the uncaused cause of all things, beyond time and space. And this necessary existent, is God.

"It has become clear that every chain organized of causes and effects, be it finite or infinite, is in need of a cause external to it. If it does not include anything save effects, it is necessary that this external cause be linked to it as an extremity. It has also become clear that if this chain includes an uncaused thing, then this thing is an extremity and a limit. Therefore, every chain terminates in that whose existence is necessary in itself." But this also makes certain things to be required for this necessary existence. It has to be beyond time and space, as we said, otherwise it would be bound by those things and thus contingent. It can't be made up of any parts; it must be simple and unified, a partless reality, because, like we said, if it was made up of parts, it would be dependent on those parts, thus caused by those parts, and suddenly it wouldn't be a necessary existent anymore.

"If the essence of that whose existence is necessary is composed of two or more things that unite, it becomes necessary by them. One of these things, or every one of them, will be prior to it and a constituent of it. Therefore, that whose existence is necessary is indivisible, whether in concept or in quantity. For the same reason, the necessary existence must be immaterial, incorporeal, so as to not be dependent on a body. It's also unlike anything in the world, not sharing in the quiddity or "whatness" of anything else in terms of genus or species. Remember that we said that the quiddity or essence of God is simply existence."

"The first has no alike, no contrary, no genus, and no difference. Thus, it has no definition and cannot be indicated except by pure intellectual knowledge." In this way, Ibn Sina also takes this argument further by also attempting to prove that this necessary existence, or God, aligns with the theological tenets of the Islamic religion. Most importantly for this, perhaps, is that the necessary existence is one, thus affirming the basic Islamic principle of *tawhid*, or monotheism. After all, why does there have to be only one necessary existence? Couldn't there be two or three or even 10? Well, let's suppose that there are two necessary beings. Because they are two, there must be something that separates them. So, within the reality of these two, there must be some things that make them similar, and thus necessary, but also other aspects that make them distinct from each other. Otherwise, they would be identical and not two different things. But if that is the case, then that means that they are made up of parts or aspects in which they are different from each other, and then they wouldn't be necessary anymore, but would be caused by those parts, and therefore both of them are now dependent on some other actually necessary existence. So, this is obviously absurd. There must, in other words, be only one necessary existent, or God, who shares all the characteristics, or perhaps non-characteristics, that we have just outlined.

So, in a nutshell, that is Ibn Sina's proof or argument for the existence of God, uh, argument that has become very influential throughout history. Now, if you want a more proper rundown of this argument, you should definitely check out Dr. Khani's channel called "Thinking Islam," where he presents this argument. He has a video dedicated to this argument, with visuals and graphs that really help, uh, explain it in an even better way. So he breaks it down more in a more detailed and, just, I think, in a better way than I do in that video. So go check that out if you're interested.

Thus, Ibn Sina believes that he has proven that there is a necessary existence, and that that necessary existence necessarily has certain features and qualities that align with the Islamic conception of God. Now, this isn't a very personal God, you might think, and a personal God that listens to and answers prayers seems kind of key to an Islamic theology. Well, Ibn Sina doesn't deny these factors, but his conception of God and the way that he reads the Quran is through this more philosophical framework, where God is the first principle of reality, which is one, and from which everything comes, and of course, upon which everything depends.

He summarizes in *The Book of Healing*: "It has become manifest to us that there is for the whole a principle whose existence is necessary, that is neither included in genus nor is subject to definition or demonstration, that he is free from quantity, quality, quiddity, place, time, and motion, that he has neither equal, companion, nor contrary, that he's one in all respects because he's not divisible, neither in terms of parts in actuality, nor in terms of parts by supposition and estimation, as with the continuous, nor in the mind, in that his essence is composed of varied intellectual ideas from which an aggregate becomes united, and that he's one inasmuch as he does not share at all with others the existence that belongs to him. He is thus by this unity single. He's one because he's perfect in existence, nothing in him awaits its completion, this being one of the aspects of the One."

But these features of God also have certain implications for his relationship with the world and its creation. Indeed, because the first principle is necessary, all aspects of it are necessary, including its creating or emanating creation. Since God is one, as in being perfect without need or completion, it seems wrong to Ibn Sina to say that God created the world at some specific point, because that would imply that God at some point hadn't created the world, and that would imply an imperfection in God that was then amended at some point by creation. If God didn't create and then later created, it means that there was a change in God, which is absurd. With all of these previous definitions in mind, God is beyond time and space and remains complete and perfect always. So, in other words, Ibn Sina argues that the creation of the cosmos is a necessary feature of God. God, God has to create, not because he is forced to, but because it is simply part of the nature of the necessary existence to create. That is what it does. And this also means that the universe is eternal; it has always existed rather than being created *ex nihilo* from nothing at some point.

He says in *Al-Shifa'*: "After this, it became evident to you that the existent necessary in himself is a necessary existent in all his aspects, and it is impossible for a state which did not exist previously to commence for him. With this, it became evident to you that the cause in terms of itself necessitates the effect, so that if it is permanent, it necessitates the effect permanently." This became quite a controversial point to other Muslim thinkers, and is indeed another one of the three doctrines for which al-Ghazali deems Ibn Sina an unbeliever. A century later, to him and many others, it seemed to rob God of his role as Creator. If he didn't choose to create or create at a specific point in time, that seems to put God and the universe on equal footing in some respects. But to Ibn Sina, this was the only logical conclusion based on the nature of God and the necessary existence.

And it's also easy to misunderstand what he's saying here. He affirms, of course, that God is the ultimate cause of the world, and that God is prior to the universe, but he is ontologically prior, rather than temporally prior, as in coming before in, in terms of time. Since God is beyond time and space and any such limits, God causes the world, but that cause is simultaneous with the effect. An example from the real world that he likes to employ here is a person that wants to unlock a door and puts the key in the lock. When he turns the key to unlock the door, his act of turning the key comes first, so to say, it is prior to the key itself turning. But at the same time, the man turning the key and the key itself turning happens at the same time. If I turn this microphone like this, um, my action of, of turning the microphone, technically at least, you could say happens prior to the microphone itself moving, because my, my sort of my muscles moving the microphone is the thing that causes that thing to happen. But at the same time, my moving the microphone and the microphone itself moving, so to say, my action and the movement of the microphone happens at the exact same time, right? So this is the argument that he's making with, with God and the world.

U God is prior to the world. The world can still be eternal while still being caused by God and preceded by God ontologically, but not temporally. They are both eternal, so to say. The world is eternal, uh, because it is eternally created by God. And this is the metaphor, the simile that he uses: the key and the door, or in this case, which we, my sim, which would be this microphone moving in this way.

And once the world is created, and Ibn Sina starts describing the process of creation itself in a cosmological way, we can also see how deeply he's indebted to earlier philosophical traditions, not just Aristotelianism, but especially in this case, Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism was a school of thought, a continuation of the teachings of Plato, or Platonism, uh, that is often considered to have been founded by the 3rd century philosopher Plotinus. You can check out previous episodes, several ones that I made on Neoplatonism for a deeper introduction to their general ideas.

But one of the key ways in which we see Ibn Sina adopting Neoplatonic ideas is that he conceived of God as creating the world through emanation. The first principle necessarily emanates or flows over and thus creates things other than him, so to say. And as we go down the chain of being, we see that he, much like the Neoplatonists, adopts the idea of emanation from the first principle, or the necessary existent, through the mediation of intellect to the material world, as well as the possibility of an ascent or return back up the ladder to the One.

According to Ibn Sina, from One, there can only appear one. And so the first thing that originates or emanates from God is the numerically singular first intellect, similar to the position of the Nous, or intellect, in Plotinus. This one intellect has a kind of multiplicity in it, though, as it contemplates both itself and its source, God. So this leads to the fact that it creates another second intellect, as well as the body and form of a celestial sphere.

So in Ibn Sina's system, unlike Plotinus, and more similar to his Islamic predecessor Al-Farabi, there follow nine intellects in a descending order from the first intellect, all associated with a particular planetary sphere, and sometimes also identified with the angels of religious language in the Quran. For example, at the bottom, we reach the 10th intellect, also called the active intellect, or sometimes the agent intellect, which rules over and emanates the sublunary material world that we live in.

Now, keep in mind that to Ibn Sina, all of this is controlled by God, of course. It's not that these intellects have creative agency or powers in themselves, per se. The active intellect doesn't create the material world; God creates the material world, but he does so through the active intellect. This active or agent intellect also has a very important role to play for the individual human soul and its capacity to know things, because our individual souls are always in contact with this active intellect, which is a key to how we can understand and know things in the world.

So now we have very conveniently entered into Ibn Sina's ideas of epistemology and psychology. He has an interesting perspective here, and it can even seem like he is contradicting himself. On the one hand, like a good Aristotelian, Ibn Sina argues that we come to know things, concepts, and universals through empiricism. We experience particular things in the world, and then we can deduce universal concepts and abstract forms based on that knowledge. So if I see a cat, for instance, and then I see another cat, and then another cat, eventually I'll be able to deduce that the universal concept of catness involves, for instance, having four legs. So this is the primary way that he thinks about epistemology, a down-up move, movement where we learn things through empirical experience and then conclude abstracts from that.

But on the other hand, he also seems to say that we receive knowledge from the active intellect in some way. And different scholars have interpreted this in different ways. It seems to me to be an idea that we indeed receive knowledge by our direct experience of particular things in a, um, in a sort of empirical way, but that knowledge is sort of confirmed in the active intellect with which we are in contact. So maybe we can think of it like, like we're playing a video game, for example. Um, there's often in video games, there's a map, uh, of the whole sort of world that you're playing in, and often when you start the game, that map is sort of, uh, veiled, or certain parts of the map is unavailable to you, you can't see it. So it might be clouded, or it might be just, you can't see what's there yet. Um, uh, it is there technically, right, but you can't see it. Um, so what happens is you have to walk around with your character in the game, in this world, and when you discover new play, that place on the map will sort of unveil itself, right? So this is, I might be misunderstanding it, but this is the way that I'm kind of conceiving of this idea of the active intellect, um, that all that knowledge is available in the intellect, and we can sort of receive that knowledge, but we need to sort of unlock that knowledge, um, empirically in this world first, like in a video game where we, uh, unveil parts of the world map.

This has very conveniently taken us all the way down from the abstract metaphysics of the necessary being to the individual human soul, the topic of psychology, or in Arabic, *nafs*, which literally means science of the soul. And Ibn Sina has some really fascinating things to say about this topic.

Finally, we can now return to that thought experiment with which we started the video, the so-called floating man. This thought experiment had as its purpose to basically prove not only that the soul existed, but that it was non-bodily, that it was distinct from the body. Remember what we said: a fully functioning adult person pops into existence right now, floating in mid-air with arms and legs stretched out. He has no memory of previous experience. He can't see, he can't hear, smell, taste, or feel anything, not even his own body, since his limbs are stretched out so that no part touches the other. So the question then goes, is he aware of his own existence? To Ibn Sina, the answer is clear. While he is not aware of any body or sense, the man is still aware of his own self. Self-awareness is fundamental, in other words, and precedes all other sensory or bodily experiences. Thus, there is a self, or soul, that is distinct from the body.

Now, you may or may not accept this argument. Many have had counterarguments against it. But the point to take from it is that Ibn Sina believed that there was such a soul, and that it had this particular nature. To Ibn Sina, the soul is born when the body is born, but it survives after the body's demise. And although the two are clearly distinct in one sense, they also complement each other. The body is responsible for taking in information through the five senses, but the soul takes that information and abstracts knowledge using what Ibn Sina refers to as the five internal senses, which are common sense, the representational power, and the imaginative or sensible memory, which is known as *al-khayal*. Then there is *al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila*. Then there is *al-quwwa al-wahmiyya*, or estimation, can also be translated as instinct, and many other words is a difficult word in Arabic. Then there is cognition, *al-ma'rifa*, and memory, *al-dhikra*. All of these are employed in different ways to reach knowledge of abstracts and universals.

Indeed, to Ibn Sina, an immaterial intellect can only know universals, not particulars, since particular things, such as a specific cat in the world, rather than the concept of a cat, exists in the outside world of senses. So again, the body takes these sensible particulars, gives that information to the intellect, which derives universal knowledge from it. And this is a significant point, because this is also what leads Ibn Sina to another one of his most controversial points, and another one of those three that Al-Ghazali deemed equivalent to unbelief, namely that God only has knowledge of universals and not particulars.

This follows pretty neatly from what we've just discussed. God is not a physical thing or a body with senses that is dependent on time and space. He is, if anything, an immaterial intellect that knows things through that intellect. But because immaterial intellects can never know particulars, this follows that God can only know universals, or rather, he knows particulars, but in a universal way. I'm really not doing justice to his argument here, but essentially what he's saying here is that an intellect that knows the principle of all things knows all things, including particulars, but he knows them in a universal and unified way.

In *Al-Shifa*, he uses the example of eclipses. One can know all the movements of the celestial spheres in principle, and as such, you would know all eclipses and what they are. But if that perfect intellect was to know particular eclipses that take place at a specific time, that would introduce difference in the divine intellect, which would be absurd. He says, quote, "If, however, you introduce time into this, whereby at a given time you know that that eclipse does not exist, and then at another time that it exists, then your former knowledge ceases when the eclipse exists, but a new knowledge comes to be. There will then be in you the change to which we have referred, and it would not be true that you are in the same state at the time of the clearing of the eclipse as you were before its clearing. This applies to you who are temporal and exist in moments of time. But the First, who does not enter time in its governance, is removed from making a judgment in terms of this time and that time by way of his being in it, and by way of this involving a new judgment on his part and a new knowledge."

God, who is beyond time and space, doesn't experience particulars because that would entail that he knows things at one moment, but not the next moment when that thing isn't there anymore, and this would be absurd for God. In other words, God knows particulars only in a universal way.

We've already gone on quite a journey here, from the metaphysics of the first principle of God to the individual soul in the world. When a person has this knowledge of the world as it truly is, they can live up to their full potential, to live a philosophical life and seek truth. And God means to turn away from our bodies and its many wants and needs, to focus our attention on the intellect, and through that, reach higher on our quests for illumination. Indeed, just like the Neoplatonists generally, Ibn Sina seems to include in his system an idea not just of the emanation of God downwards, but also the return back up the ladder of intellects and realities.

In other words, there are certain aspects of Ibn Sina's thought that are quite mystical in nature. So the question then becomes, was Ibn Sina a mystic? Underneath all the philosophical and logical rigor that he presents on the surface, scholars greatly disagree on this topic. Many, like Peter Adamson, see this as a mistaken view of Ibn Sina, whereas others, like Seyyed Hossein Nasr or the translator Shams Inati, have argued more in the opposite direction. So let's explore this topic for a few minutes.

It is no doubt that when we read the works of Ibn Sina, we are primarily met with a deeply philosophical mind, one that is concerned with logical deduction, syllogisms, and rigorous rational argument. This is the main thing that characterizes his output. But there are hints at something else, something that goes beyond the limits of the rational mind, or at least its expression in human language, especially in his later writings. We see expressions and descriptions of a much more mystical character, even particularly that of Sufism. Indeed, it is said that Ibn Sina was in contact with the famous Persian Sufi Abu Sa'id Abu al-Khayr.

But was he a mystic himself? As we saw in that last and perhaps most mature of his works, *Al-Isharat*, the last section is often called under the title "Sufism," and indeed, the ninth class deals particularly with the quote, "station of the knowers." He never uses the word Sufism or Sufis himself, but when we read this section, it becomes clear that he's describing the mystical path of the knower, the word in Arabic here is *'arif*, on the quest to conjunction and union with the truth. He begins by talking about the differences between knowers and non-knowers. Non-knowers perform acts of worship and sometimes even asceticism for transactional reasons, in other words, to, uh, get rewards in the next life. But the knowers do these things for the sake of the truth itself. Quote, "The name 'knower' is reserved for one who disposes one's thought toward the sanctity of the divine power, seeking the perpetual illumination of the light of the truth into one's innermost thought."

He then basically describes a mystical journey through nine different steps, from occasional moments of insight, *awqat*, to finally reaching the utmost heights of rapture and union with the truth. Quote, "The eighth step: if he crosses from spiritual exercise to attainment of the truth, his innermost thought will become a polished mirror with which he faces the side of the truth. The lofty pleasures are then poured on him, and he's pleased with himself due to the traces of the truth that these pleasures involve. To him belongs a glance at the truth and a glance at himself, for he is still reluctant. And then the ninth step: following this, he abandons himself. Thus, he notices the side of sanctity only if he notices his, he does so in as much as it notices the truth, and not in as much as it is ornamented with the pleasures of having the truth. At this point, the arrival is real. One has reached the ultimate truth, a truth which becomes all-encompassing and in which all things share. To know this ultimate truth is to know all things, because all things take part in this one truth. This is a kind of *unio mystica*, a mystical union, in other words, and the ultimate step on the path. It is the end of all knowledge and its confirmation."

Shams Inati describes it thus: "Salvation consists not of attaining knowledge of the truth, but of attaining the truth itself. The object of such knowledge, or truth, captures all there is to know. This is to say that it captures all that exists as well. The truth and the One, or Being, are the same." This perhaps isn't that surprising, and many philosophers, including Plato, Plotinus, and others, conceive of a kind of mystical ascent to the source of truth, or to the One. And Ibn Sina does have a slightly different language to talk about this than does many of the Sufis. Ibn Sina is very philosophical in his expressions, as you have probably noticed. The ascent is an ascent of the rational soul to the theoretical intellect, which can receive illumination from God. But the basic idea seems to be the same, and he thus shares in the Neoplatonic concept not only of procession out of the One, but the ability of the individual to return back to the One to achieve union with the truth itself.

But the question still remains: was Ibn Sina himself a mystic or a Sufi? These are clearly descriptions of a mystical journey to some kind of union, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he had these experiences himself. At the very least, we can say that he acknowledged the reality of the mystics and their experiences, and he described those experiences here. But what of his own personal involvement? I do think there are some clues to this in the text of *Al-Isharat* itself. Indeed, when he talks about the state of union, he states that there are steps and journeys even after this point of union. But then, very importantly, he says, quote, "We have preferred brevity concerning them, for conversation does not capture them, a phrase does not explicate them, and discourse does not reveal anything about them. No power responsive to language other than the imagination receives even a semblance of them. He who desires to know these steps must move gradually until he becomes one of the people of witnessing and not of speaking, one of those who arrive at truth itself and not those who hear the trace."

In other words, the truths experienced by the mystic, especially those on the highest stations of union, cannot be put into words or described in any way. Instead, they can only be known by the person who experiences them firsthand. This seems to indicate that Ibn Sina had such experiences himself, but which he cannot express verbally in the text. And we can see further such indications in some of his lesser-known and shorter works, such as *Al-Tayr*, or *The Epistle of the Bird*, which is a kind of mystical allegory about a bird captured by a snare that is able to escape this, um, prison with the help of noble companions, and then they all go on a journey across nine mountains, or eight mountains, depending on how you count, and eventually meet the great and beautiful King. This allegory is most likely a poetic retelling of that same kind of mystical path that he describes in *Al-Isharat*. The snare being the world and the body, and the journey representing the path to union itself, along with companions that are needed on this path.

I think it's also interesting that this story is very similar and reminiscent of the later, even more famous *Conference of the Birds* by Fariduddin Attar. Although I haven't seen many people talk about the possible connections between these two stories. There's also the famous short story which also has a quite mystical character, and whose title you probably heard this title about because it would inspire another even more famous work by the philosopher Ibn Rushd, who wrote a very famous novel also called *Hayy ibn Yaqzan*, that was inspired by this original work by Ibn Sina that has a definitely a kind of mystical character to it.

So, based on this evidence, it seems to many that Ibn Sina had a mystical side to him, at least later in his life, but that he often hides this underneath symbolic language, such as in *The Epistle of the Bird*, for instance, or through more difficult, obscure writings like in *Al-Isharat*. On the one hand, the reason why he didn't speak of these things could be because, what he stated in *Al-Isharat*, that it is simply beyond language and useless to try to put it into words. This is similar to what Rumi says in the beginning of the *Masnavi*, that he can't put what he's about to say into words, and then he spends six books talking about it anyway. Ibn Sina might be sort of, um, restricting himself even more than Rumi did in this case by actually not saying that much about it. But it also might have something to do with his reputation as a rational philosopher, and to be too much involved with Sufism might have hurt his reputation among some of his kin, perhaps. Who knows? The jury is still out on whether or not Ibn Sina was actually a mystic himself or not.

For my part, I certainly lean toward the idea that he, he seems to have had an interest in mysticism. He seems familiar with the concepts of mysticism, and, and even more so, I think I lean toward the idea that he might have had, uh, at least some kind of mystical experiences himself. Uh, this seems to be, uh, what I sort of glean from his writings, especially, uh, the section on Sufism in *Al-Isharat*, as well as like in *Al-Tayr*, for example. Um, but, you know, who knows? This might just be him writing about things that he had heard from other people. But this seems like a natural extension of his philosophy, too, right? So to him, the philosophical path, or the philosophical life, is one of turning away from the body, right, of of focusing inwardly on the, uh, the intellectual part of ourselves, right? And that, um, journey of ascent in the, in the intellectual world has a natural limit, you could say. And after that kind of limit, it seems that Ibn Sina affirms this idea, at least, you reach some sort of limit, and after that limit, the so-called mystical has to take over. And so when we read his philosophy, even his, um, philosophy, philosophy, right, the more rational aspect, he seems to allude to that idea, uh, and, and it becomes especially clear, I think, in, in *Al-Isharat*, in the chapter on Sufism.

Whatever the case, this is really a fascinating aspect of this very famous philosopher. He's known as one of the champions of, of rationalism and, and logic and, you know, reasoned philosophy. But it seems, just like in the case with Maimonides, that there might have been a mystical side to him. He might have been some kind of Sufi. We don't know. Again, we don't know for sure. But to me, the evidence seems to kind of point in that direction. And he did indeed talk about something he calls *Al-Hikma al-Mashriqiyya*, or the Eastern Philosophy, sometimes also translated as the Oriental Philosophy. He even named one of his treatises after this phrase and saw himself as a representative of this Eastern wisdom.

On the one hand, this Eastern philosophy seems to demarcate a difference between his own philosophy and those in the Eastern region in Greater Iran and Central Asia, on the one hand, compared to the "Western philosophy" associated with the Peripatetic school of Baghdad, whom he was critical of. But what made this Eastern philosophy different might be precisely this incorporation of mystical aspects and ideas into it. There's at least one way of looking at it. Many have also speculated that the slightly later Suhrawardi and his philosophy of Illumination might have some direct connections with Ibn Sina's Eastern philosophy, as indeed the wisdom of Illumination and is quite close etymologically. The word for East, *mashriq*, and illumination, *ishraq*, being strongly connected etymologically.

We also see the 12th century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl talk at length about Ibn Sina's so-called Eastern philosophy in *The Life of Hayy ibn Yaqzan*, and basically states that this story is a fictional exploration precisely of this Eastern philosophy. And when we read this novel, it very much expresses themes that we find in *Al-Isharat* and very importantly also incorporate Sufism or mystical practice and experience as central to the attainment of philosophical truth and union.

Whatever is the case with this particular topic, and it is one that scholars disagree on greatly still today, there is no doubt that Ibn Sina became one of the most, or perhaps the most, influential philosopher after this point in the history of the Islamic world and beyond. Whereas before Aristotle was seen as the philosopher *par excellence*, after Ibn Sina, it was him that everyone basically turned to, including as authority on Aristotle. Islamic philosophy is indeed often divided into pre-Ibn Sina and post-Ibn Sina, to highlight just how incredibly significant of an impact he had. And this is not just in the realm of *falsafa*, or philosophy more narrowly defined. Ibn Sina's influence can be felt in some of the mainstream Islamic theology from that time onward as well. Even though many Sunni theologians, such as Al-Ghazali, were highly critical of Ibn Sina and the philosophers, at least over certain points that he believed went against religion, at the same time, he and many others still employed certain other aspects, ideas, and arguments from Ibn Sina.

As a very famous and clear example, we can just look at Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, who is considered one of the greatest and most significant theologians and scholars in the whole Sunni tradition. He wrote, among other things, a very famous and massive commentary on the Quran called *Al-Tafsir al-Kabir*, or *The Keys to the Hidden*, that has become one of the standard works of Quranic exegesis, especially in the Ash'ari school that he belonged to. But he also wrote a commentary on *Al-Isharat al-Tusiya* by Ibn Sina, and even though he's very critical of many of Ibn Sina's ideas and conclusions, we can see that he also takes inspiration from him in many of his own formulations, including in his Quran commentary. So, all the controversial in some circles, Ibn Sina had a direct and indirect impact on mainstream Sunni and Shia theology.

The scholar Robert Wisnovsky wrote, quote, "Before Avicenna, *falsafa* and *kalam* were distinct strands of thought, even though, of course, a good deal of cross-fertilization took place between them. After Avicenna, by contrast, the two strands fused together, and post-Avicennian *kalam* emerged as a truly Islamic philosophy, a synthesis of *falsafa*'s metaphysics and Muslim doctrine." And in the realm of Sufism, the same is true. Regardless of Ibn Sina's own status as a mystic or not, there is no doubt that the philosophical mystics like Ibn Arabi and his Akbarian school took things from Ibn Sina, including his distinction between essence and existence, and used them as key aspects of their own thoughts and systems.

But as we said, his influence isn't limited to the Islamic world either. His works were translated into Latin and would come to influence the birth of scholasticism in Europe, playing a major role in the later developments there, indirectly, such as even things like the Renaissance. Some of the great Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas clearly took a few notes from Ibn Sina's works, and the former's own argument for God's existence seems to borrow quite directly from the Proof of the Truthful, for instance. We also saw that Ibn Sina's great work on medicine, *The Canon of Medicine*, became one of the main sources for medicine even in Europe, and remained so until the early modern period with the birth of modern medicine.

And in this episode, we have really only been able to tackle a few samples of the massive beast that is his thought. There is so much that we could have brought up, and ways in which his philosophical insights interest us historically. For example, in his work on physics, Ibn Sina basically presents an idea of motion that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, which is basically identical to Isaac Newton's first law of motion, but six centuries before Newton himself. And there's much other stuff similar to this. He was really ahead of his time in many different ways.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, is one of the most important, one of the most brilliant philosophical minds, not just in the history of the Islamic world, but in the history of the world generally. Um, his massive output is impressive in itself, but the ideas that he presents and how much those ideas were influential in later Islamic philosophy, as well as spreading all the way to Europe and being very significant for the development of scholasticism, uh, his influence on the, the medical, um, practices in Europe for centuries after, um, he truly is one of the most, one of the greatest luminaries in, in at least in philosophy and science in all of history. So it becomes obvious that his assigned title of *Al-Mu'allim al-Thani* and *Al-Shaykh al-Ra'is* is kind of accurate. It certainly has something to it.

Sadly, in 1037, Ibn Sina fell greatly ill while traveling with his patron Ala al-Dawla. He had been suffering from colic for much of his life, and it eventually caught up with him. He passed away that year in Hamadan at only about 57 years old, and his tomb remains in the city of Hamadan to this day. It's always sad when a genius like him passes away at such a relatively young age, and we can marvel and think about what he might have accomplished if he had lived longer. But at the same time, it is thought that Ibn Sina himself once said, quote, "I prefer a short life with to a narrow one with length." And if anything, it certainly seems like he achieved that goal.

Thank you all so much for watching. I want to thank my patrons for supporting this channel and for keeping, uh, all of this running monetarily. None of this would be possible without you, so I always, uh, want to make sure that I thank you properly at the end of each video. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, I really can't thank you enough. Uh, I would highly appreciate if anyone else wanted to support this channel, you can do that on Patreon, uh, with a monthly, uh, donation. You can find links to that in the description. You can also, uh, support the channel through a one-time donation on PayPal. Or, you know, it's always helpful if you just like, subscribe to the channel, or leave a comment and keep the discussion going there too. If you're interested in my work, either with religious studies or, uh, music, you can find me on my socials. I have Instagram and TikTok and all that stuff, and I post, uh, exclusive content that I don't post here sometimes. So, so check that out. I also have another channel that is specifically dedicated to my music and music content, similar to what I do here. It's called Philip Pal. You can find it also in, I'll link all this stuff in the description, probably in my Linktree, so follow that link and, and find all that stuff there. Thank you again so much for watching. I hope that this video has inspired you in some way. I think, given the topic, it's, it's, it's strange if it wouldn't inspire you because Ibn Sina is such a fascinating and important figure in history. Uh, look forward to more content like this in the future, where we can cover more similar figures from history and from different religious traditions and philosophical schools. So again, thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next time.

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