The Metaphysica of Avicenna (ibn Sīnā) (review)

392 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY have a deeper insight into ends and saw things with an extraordinarily illuminating unity. This ought not to be surprising since modern society is more complicated and specialized, so that one can hardly see the forest for the trees. Von Fritz's message is that history can help us to once again regain that integrating insight. The ancients did not, as do moderns, think originality and newness more important than knowledge and truth. This reviewer can only agree, as would Marcuse, whose views are even closer to those of yon Fritz and Aristotle than yon Fritz seems to think, that we must seek to regain that integrating insight so admirably attempted by the author in this work; for even the "originality" which would represent the free creation of Man by men must be founded upon the self-knowledge so notably lacking today. DONALDC. LEE University o/New Mexico The Metaphysica o/Avicenna (ibn S~n~).By Parviz Morewedge. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Pp. xxvii + 336. $15) This text is a translation, as well as a critical commentary and exposition of some of the most significant philosophic themes in Avicenna's Metaphysica in the Danish Narna-i 'ala'i ("The Book of Scientific Knowledge"). Furthermore, one finds numerous notes and references to other texts of Avicenna such as Kitab al-Shi/a' ("The Book of Healing"), KitSb al-NS]at("The Book of Salvation"), and Kitab al-lshftrat-wa'l-Tanbihat ("The Book of the Indication and Remarks"), as well as a detailed display of points of encounter between Avicenna and his predecessors--such as Aristotle and Plotinus. There is too an excellent glossary of the key philosophic terms used in the text with their Persian, Arabic, Greek and Latin equivalents. In this present volume, Professor Morewedge has rendered the philosophic community an excellent translation of the text. Some of the interesting translated sections of the book deal with (a) metaphysics as first philosophy (pp. 11-15), (b) Being and categorical concepts (pp. 15-36), (c) metaphysical concepts (pp. 36--48), and (d) the theory of the necessary existent and contingent being (pp. 48-108). In his commentary, Professor Morewedge focuses his attention on the elucidation of some controversial points inherent in the text. Above all he strives to dispel some of the standard misconceptions about Avicenna. I shall limit myself only to four issues that Morewedge discusses in his commentary. 1. Is the Avicennian metaphysics a duplication of Aristotle? Of Neoplatonism? To Morewedge Avicenna's metaphysics is neither Aristotelian nor Neoplatonic in content, though admitting the influence of both on Avicenna. Morewedge brings out many salient differences between Aristotle and Avicenna. Some of these differences focused on the following: (a) Whereas Aristotle in his Metaphysics states that God is a substance (cf. 1072b25), Avicenna claims that God (or Necessary Being, as he so often refers to it) is not a substance. Necessary Being, to Avicenna, does not fall under the category of substance . Furthermore (b) Avicenna's Necessary Being is not equivalent to Aristotle's God; for the God of Aristotle is defined as a substance co-existing with matter. On the other hand, Avicenna's treatment of the Necessary Being is in sharp contrast to that of Aristotle, for "whereas Ibn Sina uses only privation in his discussion of the Necessary Existent, Aristotle speaks of his God affirmatively when he states that God is a substance" (pp. 212213 ). (c) Whereas Avicenna subscribed to the emanationist theory, Aristotle subscribed to the co-eternity theory of the universe. There are telling differences between the two theories: (i) In the scheme of the emanationist theory of Avicenna, the Necessary Being, and not God, is the ultimate being; (ii) Aristotle contended that matter is eternal, rather than an overflow, as Avicenna believed, from the ultimate being; (iii) substances in the BOOK REVIEWS 393 Aristotelian scheme are generated out of the same substances. To Avicenna an intellect, which emanates from the Necessary Being, generates a heavenly sphere. Hence that which generates another thing is not like that which is generated (cf. pp. 141-143; 236-242; 265-268). In the light of the above noted differences, one finds...