Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context by Robert Wisnovsky (review)

326 BOOK REVIEWS the ethical is not grounded in a hope for death (necessary for the purest form of self-sacrifice), but in hope for community (because every true gift presupposes a mutual exchange ofgifts), as well as in hope for the Resurrection (where giving and receiving coincide in a perpetual and ecstatic feast of love). Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pennsylvania MICHAEL L. RAPoSA Avicenna'sMetapbysics in Context. ByROBERTWISNOVSKY. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress, 2003 Pp. xii+ 305. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8()14-41781 . As Whitehead claimed that all philosophies are footnotes to Plato, too many histories of philosophy reduce Avicenna's metaphysics to a summary of and commentaryonAristotle, withsome footnotes and adaptations. In fact, Avicenna offers a powerful new synthesis, which critically assesses the work of previous philosophers and theologians and courageously rethinks many issues. Its originality and the interest of its philosophical moves can only be understood in context. For Wisnovsky the context has to do with (1) the Greek and early Arabic commentators' efforts to reconcile Aristotle not onlywith himself but also with Neoplatonism and (2) the works and discussions of the "Mutakallimfm," the practitioners of Kalam or Islamic theology. Beginningwith thefirstcontext, thatofthe various commentators, Wisnovsky shows how Alexander of Aphrodisias and others tried to reconcile Aristotle's texts, in particular the view of "entelechia" in the definition of the soul in De anima 2.1 and in the definition of change in Pbysics 3.1. In order to do so they introduced various distinctions which affected the way these Aristotelian passages were translated and understood in the Arabic tradition. The Ammonian synthesis went further and attempted to reconcile Aristotle with Neoplatonism. Wisnovsky contends that Avicenna follows the Ammonian synthesis in shifting the focus from the question of the relation of soul to body to the question of how the soul causes the body. Such a shift, which makes the soul the final cause of the body, allows commentators to find a way to argue for the immortality of the soul, which many passages in Aristotle seem to exclude. Wisnovsky shows, by going painstakingly through various commentators and their terminological shifts, that Avicenna mainly inherits the Ammonian synthesis on this issue. His originality shines in other purely metaphysical themes. Asecond issue, which in fact is a double one, that ofthe distinction of essence and existence and of necessity and possibility, then takes center stage. This BOOK REVIEWS 327 double issue likewise takes its origin in the commentators and the terminological choices of the Arabic translators but leads to a new synthesis, which displaces that ofAmmonius, thanks to an integration of sophisticated Kalam notions. The clear distinction between essence and existence takes its origin in an integration of the Kalam concept of "shay," that is, "thing" or "res" in Latin, as a concomitantof"being," the primarymetaphysicalconcept. This also ensures that no multiplicity ensues from considering God as both an efficient and a final cause. As for the famous development of a matrix of distinctions based on "necessary in itself" and "possible in itself," the latter being equated with the "necessarythroughanother," we have to consider Kalam discussions about God's attributes and the need for Avicenna to find a way to distinguish God from any other eternal realities, such as Intelligences, Heavenly Spheres, and their Souls. For each of these issues Wisnovsky indicates various stages of development in Avicenna's own works, though he considers them more as determined by the specific readership and the length of the various works than by what one could call a distinctive evolution. Wisnovsky also alludes to how much these two elaborations of distinctions influenced the Latin West (a fact very well known, though not always much explored) as well as post-Avicennian philosophy (as illustrated in the Philosophy of Illumination), and also Kalam, a discovery Richard Frank already adumbrated with his emphasis on the way Avicenna influenced al-Ghazali. Wisnovsky is now working on a systematic exploration of Arabic postclassical philosophical commentaries in order to develop and ground this claim (see, for instance, his essay "The Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post-classical [ca. 1100-1900 AD] Islamic IntellectualHistory: Some PreliminaryObservations," inPhilosophy, Scienceand Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and...