The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna’s Metaphysics ed. by Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Amos Bertolacci (review)

In the history of Western metaphysics, Avicenna’s efforts come second only to Aristotle’s in terms of overall importance and influence. To ascertain the truth of this statement, one need only recognize that the history of Western metaphysical inquiry extends beyond the Euro-American tradition and that Avicenna is the last prominent author closely read on both sides of the Mediterranean divide. But the claim can be made on grounds better than the quantitative of geographic. Over the past three decades, studies in both Latin and Arabic philosophy have all pointed toward one inescapable conclusion: Avicenna’s comprehensive reworking of Aristotle’s “first philosophy” constitutes the exact point at which this set of texts and theoretical concerns coheres into a single, well-defined philosophical discipline. Modern scholars, then, fundamentally agree with Avicenna’s immodest self-assessment: it was he who fulfilled Aristotle’s promise of a science of being qua being.

Especially important is Avicenna’s mid-period encyclopedia, The Healing. It is no coincidence that it is the Metaphysics of the Healing that was translated into Latin in the mid-twelfth century; nor that this work has been retranslated into several European languages in the 21st, including Michael Marmura’s splendid English rendition; nor again that the majority of the studies contained in Hasse’s and Bertolacci’s collection focus on the legacy of the Healing. Although Avicenna’s late Pointers and Reminders had a more immediate impact on the Arabic philosophical scene, the Healing remains paramount for understanding his full intentions (as indeed Muslim thinkers recognized when they increasingly returned to the Healing beginning in the sixteenth century).

Commensurate with the magnitude of Avicenna’s original achievement, it is impossible to convey accurately the riches contained in these essays. This is because Avicenna is one of those authors who, while being a true philosophical original, benefits from the added light cast by precedents as well as later elaborations and criticisms. The latter the book under review provides by the score: second-generation students, kalām theologians, Illuminationist philosophers, Muslim Peripatetic critics, Jewish echoes, early Scholastics, Albert and Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Duns Scotus, all are brought to bear on the intricate complex of ideas presented by Avicenna. The results testify to the power of the Avicennian synthesis, while at the same time speaking to the extraordinary philosophical fecundity of even such seemingly simple innovations as the essence-existence distinction. As with all true philosophical giants, Avicenna’s legacy was forged in equal measures through exegesis and critique.

The results are revealing when it comes to the state of the art. Suddenly and perhaps surprisingly, it is the study of Arabic philosophy post-Avicenna where the greatest philosophical heat lies; and if the figures being discussed in, say, Jules Janssens’s, Rob Wisnovsky’s, Peter Adamson’s, and Heidrun Eichner’s contributions are not yet household names, this is only because it is only now that the combined will and sophistication exist to examine in detail the many links that connect Avicenna with the later Islamic philosophical mainstream. As we become more familiar with this story, it is the blossoming of Avicennism within mature kalām that captures the eye and demands our attention. The towering figure here is Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who looks set to emerge as a thinker on a par with Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, someone who successfully brought Peripatetic/Avicennian philosophy into the theological mainstream. Outsiders, meanwhile, may be surprised to find, say, ‘Umar Khayyām (d. 1123), who today is better known for his poetry, astutely criticizes minute aspects of Avicenna’s ontology. But this is only one of many surprises in store for future historiographers.

This is not to downplay the quality of the other contributions. From Bertolacci’s overview of the Healing’s earliest Latin reception to Giorgio Pini’s careful analysis of...