Avicenna on Existence

Avicenna on Existence ALLAN BACK I AM GOING TO PRESENT an Aristotelian view of predication at odds with many current interpretations of Aristotle and views of predication, xYet the advantage of this view is that it vindicates, or at least renders intelligible, certain doctrines and texts in Aristotle that appear baffling or careless from a modern standpoint. One such case is the fact that Aristotle seems to use an existential import assumption in his syllogistic without formulating that assumption and using it as a premise. Thus, his proof that a particular affirmative (I) proposition follows from a universal affirmative (A) proposition seems to be invalid. Again, Aristotle claims that, although there are ten categories for all the things "that there are," there still is a science of being qua being, that transcends all these categories. On the face of it, what is real about being qua being should be in one of the categories. Aristotle's discovery of a focal meaning (to pros hen) of being, beyond the categories, seems a bit forced. ~ I shall show how such problems are resolved, on the basis of a certain view about predication. That view appears in full force in works of Ibn Sina (Avicenna); there are traces of it earlier, back to Aristotle himself. I am going to sketch out that view, and show its merits as an interpretation of Those who hold such an interpretation of Aristotle's views on predication include: William and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford, 1962), 58-59, 64-66; J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, 1963), a23; Manley Thompson, "On Aristotle 's Square of Opposition", in Aristotle, ed. J. Moravcsik (Garden City, 1967), 52-53, 7o; Jan Lukasiewicz, Aristotle's Syllogistic (Oxford, 195 0, 13o. All these hold the view, which I also attribute to al-Farabi in section 2, that, although 'is' in 'S is' makes an existence claim, 'is' in 'S is P' indicates only the relation of predication, between subject and predicate. ! shall discuss below some of the modern interpretations that partly agree with the view that I shall be discussing. On this view of Aristotle's metaphysical enterprise, cf. G. E. L. Owen, "Logic and Metaphysics in some Earlier Works of Aristotle", in Aristotle and Plato in Mid-Fourth Century, ed. Diiring & Owen (C~teborg, a96o), 185, where Owen claims that Aristotle in his early works, including On Interpretation, holds that "to be is to be either a substance of some sort or a relation or a quality or a member of some other category. There is no sense to the claim that something exists over and above one of the particular senses." Owen thinks that Aristotle had changed his mind when he proposed a science of being qua being. [351] 35 ~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 1987 Aristotelian doctrine. I shall not be primarily concerned here with the question , whether or not Aristotle himself held this view.3 1. Before relating this Aristotelian view of predication to the works of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, I would like to sketch its basic outline. In brief, it claims that the structure of a simple categorical proposition, 'S is P' or 'S P's', is: 'S is (existent) as a P'. To a certain point, this view is clearly Aristotle's: sentences like 'Socrates walks' or 'Socrates is walking' are composed of a subject term, a predicate term, and a copula, be it explicit or implicit.4 One perhaps novel feature is how the syntax of such a proposition is to be structured: with the usual subject term ('S'), the copula ('is') is taken as the verb, and the predicate ('P') is taken as a determination of the copula, in an accusative of respect or in some other grammatical construction; S is, in respect of being P. Here the copula always makes the existence claim, that the subject S exists, regardless of whether or not there is a predicate besides the copula. On this view, then, 'S is P', as it means 'S is existent as a P', implies 'S is', that is, 'S exists'. The predicate, if used, gives a determination of the...