The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East from the 12th to the 13th Century

• Applicant: Professor Peter Adamson, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy ; Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273594864

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

This project dealt with the reception of Avicenna’s philosophy in the Islamic East (from Syria to central Asia) in the 12th-13th centuries CE. There has been very little research into the large number of extant philosophical works from this period, yet it is becoming increasingly clear that it was a time of complex and sophisticated philosophical activity, during which ideas of traditional Islamic theology (kalām) were integrated into both defenses and criticisms of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d.1037). He was the dominant philosophical authority in later Islamic philosophy, much as Aristotle had been for earlier generations. To create a basis for further research and teaching on this period, we have selected themes that are central to his logic, physics, psychology, and metaphysics. We translated and analyzed passages from works of the 12th-13th centuries, in which a range of thinkers engage with Avicenna on these themes. We are publishing three sourcebooks of passages in English translation, complemented by a free online database of the same passages in the original language (mostly Arabic, some Persian and Syriac). The project will thereby make a wide range of texts available as never before, demonstrate the interest of this overlooked material for a broad philosophical audience, and lay groundwork for future research into still later periods of philosophy in the Islamic world.

Publications

• Eternity and Origination in the Works of Sayf al‐Dīn al‐Āmidī and Athīr al‐Dīn al‐Abharī: Two Discussions from the Seventh/Thirteenth Century. The Muslim World, 107(3), 432-481.
  Lammer, Andreas
  
• The Essence-Existence Distinction: Four Elements of the Post-Avicennian Metaphysical Dispute (11–13th Centuries). Oriens, 45(3-4), 203-258.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on Void. Islamic Philosophy from the 12th to the 14th Century, 307-324.
  Adamson, Peter
  
• The Metaphysics of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Šahrastānī (d. 1153):Aḥwāland Universals. Islamic Philosophy from the 12thto the 14thCentury, 327-356.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• The Reality of the Non-Existent Object of Thought. Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford University Press.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• THE SIMPLICITY OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE AFTER AVICENNA. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 28(2), 257-277.
  Adamson, Peter
  
• The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man Argument. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 4(2), 147-164.
  ADAMSON, PETER & BENEVICH, FEDOR
  
• Two Sixth/Twelfth-Century Hardliners on Creation and Divine Eternity: al-Šahrastānī and Abū l-Barakāt al-Baġdādī on God’s Priority over the World. Islamic Philosophy from the 12th to the 14th Century, 233-278.
  Lammer, Andreas
  
• Individuation and identity in Islamic philosophy after Avicenna: Bahmanyār and Suhrawardī. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 28(1), 4-28.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• “A Rebellion against Avicenna? Suhrawardī and Abū l-Barakāt on ‘Platonic Forms’ and ‘Lords of Species’.” Ishrāq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook (2019), 23–53
  F. Benevich
  
• “God’s Knowledge of Particulars: Avicenna, Kalām, and The Post-Avicennian Synthesis.” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 76:1 (2019), 1–47
  F. Benevich
  
• Meaning and Definition: Scepticism and Semantics in Twelfth‐Century Arabic Philosophy. Theoria, 88(1), 72-108.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• PERCEIVING THINGS IN THEMSELVES: ABŪ L-BARAKĀT AL-BAĠDĀDĪ’S CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATIONALISM. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 30(2), 229-264.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• The Necessary Existent (wājib al-wujūd). Philosophical Theology in Islam, 123-155.
  Benevich, Fedor
  
• “Representational Beings: Suhrawardī (d. 1191) and Avicenna’s Mental Existence.” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 87 :2 (2020), 289–317
  F. Benevich
  
• From Known to Knower. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind Volume 1, 373-396.
  Adamson, Peter
  
• “Bar Hebraeus on Evil: Christian Philosophy between Arabic Neoplatonism and Islamic Theology”, The Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 73:3-4 (2021), 191–218
  F. Benevich
  
• Intuition in the Avicennan tradition. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 31(4), 657-674.
  Adamson, Peter & Noble, Michael-Sebastian
  
• Natural, Artificial, and Organic Forms in Avicenna. The History of Hylomorphism, 280-302.
  Adamson, Peter
  
• “Fakhr al-Din al-Razi,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  Adamson & Benevich
  
• “Forms of Carroll’s Paradox in Post-Classical Arabic Logic,” History and Philosophy of Logic 44 (2023), 1-16
  KLINGER
  
• The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12-13th Centuries.
  Adamson, Peter & Benevich, Fedor
  
• The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12–13th Centuries.
  Adamson, Peter; Benevich, Fedor & Klinger, Dustin