Abstract
Within the long history of Aristotelian psychological theorization, Avicenna stands out for his tightly argued and conceptually rich understanding of self-awareness. For Avicenna, a primitive and immediate form of self-awareness is explanatory of a range of phenomena, from the unity of our psychic functions to our very existence as cognizing individuals. The extent of Avicenna’s influence is beginning to be recognized in the scholarship: it remains an open question what, if anything, might have influenced him. In this essay I point to Islamic theological discussions regarding immediate self-knowledge as a possible relevant parallel. The Muslim theologians’ interests lay elsewhere, however, and their ontology of the soul diverged sharply from the Aristotelian, being atomist and occasionalist. Through evoking earlier Sufi attempts to flesh out a formal presentation of the soul to match their commitment to character reformation, I suggest that the Avicennan presentation of self-awareness provided an access point for religious writers to begin employing an Aristotelian psychology, given that it responded to existing theoretical concerns.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Note that the psychological part of the Healing was available since the late twelfth century in Gundissalinus’s Latin translation, but that the Latin scholastic authors knew neither about Avicenna’s remarks on the “Flying man” in the late Pointers and Reminders nor – crucially – his comments in the Glosses regarding our self-awareness as the grounds of our very existence.
- 3.
- 4.
Muehlethaler (2009) sketches out some of the earlier history leading up to Ibn Kammūna, while Kaukua (2014) canvasses the major figures of Avicenna, al-Suhrawardī, and Mullā Ṣadrā. See also Marcotte (2006) for al-Suhrawardī and Kaukua (2010) for the somewhat anomalous place occupied by the enormously influential Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240) in the discussions.
- 5.
Shihadeh (2012), 475–476.
- 6.
See note 1 for references.
- 7.
For a careful comparison of non-human and human forms of self-awareness in Avicenna’s works see López-Farjeat (2012).
- 8.
As has been noted by commentators from Druart (1988, 34) onwards, there is a crucial terminological elision here, inasmuch as the Arabic dhāt which is recognized and whose existence is affirmed can denote either a thing’s essence or its ‘self’ in the indexical sense of that term.
- 9.
The last term is khulq kāmil, which I take to refer to the putative test subject’s capacity for passing sound judgement; Al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs I.1, 15–16 Rahman.
- 10.
On this title and its dating and positioning within Avicenna’s authorship see Gutas (2014), 472–477.
- 11.
Risāla aḍḥawiyya, 141–145. Presumably, the point made in evoking the special status of the heart and the brain is that a philosophical examination of the essence (dhāt) of one’s soul or self (nafs – another inherently polyvalent term, see section “Sufi Self-Examination” below) does not reduce to mere physiological facts, regardless of whether those are construed in accordance with Aristotelian or Galenic principles.
- 12.
- 13.
See, e.g., al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs V.7 and Ishārāt, 119. The primary importance of psychic unity is stressed especially by Deborah Black (2008).
- 14.
Kaukua (2007), 79–80, referring to Al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs V.3, 226–227 Rahman.
- 15.
Taʿlīqāt, 161.
- 16.
This is to say that the dhāt in Avicenna’s sentence construction is to be understood in the reflexive sense: in every perception and thought, and even in the absence of either, is carried the affirmation of ourselves as the subject of this presence or absence.
- 17.
Sebti (2000), 117–120 points to a passage in the Plotinian Theology of Aristotle (mīmar 1, paraphrasing Plotinus, Enneads IV.8.1) and another in the Hermetic Kitāb muʿādhala al-nafs, each of which is interesting in the present context. I would contend, however, that the Theology’s description of casting the body aside only shares surface similarities with Avicenna’s Flying Man, while the Hermetic treatise is of marginal importance historically. Sebti further mentions Jāḥiẓ’s brief report on the Muʿtazilite theologian Muʿammar Ibn ʿAbbād al-Sulamī (d. 830 CE): this seems to me more apposite, as it connects up with the narrative I sketch out below.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
Kaukua and Kukkonen (2007), 101.
- 21.
Kitāb al-irshād, 14.
- 22.
It is not impossible that al-Juwaynī would have drawn inspiration from Avicenna – he certainly did so in the domain of metaphysics – but as we shall see, the Ashʿarite line about necessary self-knowledge predates Avicenna, and the evidence points to al-Juwaynī operating within the kalām tradition of psychology, not the Avicennan one.
- 23.
Kitāb uṢūl al-dīn, 8.
- 24.
One should not mistake what is being said here: al-Bāqillānī claims that sensory knowledge, too, is necessary. This breaches the conventional requirement that necessary knowledge be immediate rather than arrived at through an intermediary (here, sensation); it appears, therefore, that for al-Bāqillānī, as opposed to many of his theologian colleagues, the criterion of indubitability is the overriding concern when it comes to determining what is necessary knowledge and what is not.
- 25.
Kitāb al-tamhīd, 29–30. Al-Bāqillānī follows up these psychological examples by other standard examples of a priori knowledge such as the knowledge that every predicative proposition is either true or false, and that two diametrically opposed statements cannot both be true simultaneously (or for that matter false).
- 26.
For the kalām doctrine of acquisition see Wolfson (1976), 663–719.
- 27.
Tamhīd, 30–31.
- 28.
See Vasalou (2009).
- 29.
A Rāfiḍite theologian by the name of Ṣāliḥ al-Ṣāliḥī draws the obvious epistemological conclusion that all knowledge is necessary knowledge in the final analysis, given how created beings have no capacity for doubting it when it is created in them. See Abrahamov (1993), 24.
- 30.
- 31.
Kitāb al-lumaʿ, section 92, 41.16–17 McCarthy.
- 32.
This difficult aspect of Ashʿarite ontology – that is, a double agency of sorts combined with a single author of all acts – is discussed in Frank (1966), with the emphasis precisely on al-Ashʿarī’s treatise cited.
- 33.
In terms of grammar, as the mutakallimūn analyzed it, such acts are typically those assigned to the whole human being, meaning the whole composite body, rather than some part of it.
- 34.
Vasalou (2008), 132–148.
- 35.
Vasalou (2008), 136.
- 36.
See Peters (1976), 159.
- 37.
Vasalou (2008), 157.
- 38.
Vasalou (2008), 133.
- 39.
There is an immense body of literature on the Sufi tradition, much of which also addresses Sufi treatments of the soul and the ideal of self-mortification in some way. Knysh (2000) presents a comprehensive overview; for the early period and al-Muḥāsibī (d. 857) in particular, see Picken (2011), Chaps. 4–5; for Qurʾānic uses of nafs, Picken (2011), 129–139.
- 40.
Al-Tustarī, Tafsīr, 91.
- 41.
On al-Tustarī’s complex theory of the soul and self, see Böwering (1980), 185–261.
- 42.
Al-Qushayrī, Risāla, 86–87.
- 43.
On Ashʿarite atomist premises, there may be a discrete number of atoms corresponding to each evocation of nafs, rūḥ, etc., but we remain ignorant of the number.
- 44.
Al-Qushayrī, Risāla, 88.
- 45.
See Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 5:13–20 (XXI, bayān 1).
- 46.
- 47.
See Iḥyāʾ, 5:199–207 (XXII, bayān 3).
- 48.
- 49.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs I.5, 47 Rahman.
- 50.
See Kukkonen (2008).
- 51.
Al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs I.5, 46–47 Rahman and V.1, 207–209 Rahman. Avicenna’s weightiest contribution on ethics, a short treatise On Governance, is translated in McGinnis and Reisman (2007), 224–237, but even here it is remarkable how little space is given over to introspection.
- 52.
See Tahāfut XVIII. 11–12 Marmura; Marmura (1988).
- 53.
Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat, 1:16.
- 54.
I make the case for why Peripatetic faculty psychology in general proved attractive to later kalām authors in Kukkonen (2015b).
- 55.
Ishārāt, 56; I owe the reference to Jari Kaukua.
- 56.
Rāzī (1968).
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Kukkonen, T. (2016). Sources of the Self in the Arabic Tradition: Remarks on the Avicennan Turn. In: Kaukua, J., Ekenberg, T. (eds) Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26914-6_4
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