Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays ed. by Peter Adamson (review)

Scholarly excitement over the philosophical work and legacy of Avicenna continues to build. Indeed, it appears that a kind of critical mass has been reached: new discoveries and connections are made at what seems like an ever-accelerating clip, as scholars coming to Avicenna from different angles see their own observations and interpretive intuitions reflected, but also challenged, in the works of their peers. The fertility of the current scholarly field testifies to the superlative fertility of the source material—the incredible philosophical oeuvre of Avicenna, developed and parceled out in a multitude of formats and across multiple works, many literally encyclopedic in character. It is high time we had a collaborative overview to match Jon McGinnis’s recent monograph; here is one, and it is a delight to report that it is altogether excellent.

The opening bio-bibliographical account amply demonstrates what we lost with the untimely passing of David Reisman, to whose memory the volume is dedicated. Not only does Reisman’s chapter compellingly interweave Avicenna’s life circumstances with his authorship, it also draws on a range of underappreciated sources to sketch out a portrait of a philosopher for whom issues of method and correct presentation were as important as content: Reisman expresses what was pedagogically distinctive about Avicenna’s Pointers and Reminders, for instance, in just two perfectly crafted sentences (22). Dimitri Gutas’s introductory chapter on “Avicenna’s Philosophical Project,” while shorter on detail, forms a suitably magisterial capstone to a career spent pondering what the title announces. The chapter effectively acts as a taster for the forthcoming reissue of Gutas’s 1988 monograph and his second Variorum collection, both announced in a footnote (28).

Elsewhere, the editor has had access to the cream of the crop when it comes to assigning contributors to particular aspects of Avicenna’s work. Tony Street, currently the leading scholar on Avicenna’s logic, gets to write on it; similarly with McGinnis and Avicenna’s natural philosophy, Peter Pormann and medicine, Robert Wisnovsky and Avicennian philosophy post-Avicenna, and so on. The results are all first-rate, with chapters that represent the true state of the art and bang-up-to-date bibliographies to help the reader delve below the surface. Scholars may quibble about some of the details, and likely they will, but I found the contributions to be judicious and balanced in their treatment even of hotly contested issues.

The editor has made some interesting choices in expanding on certain aspects of Avicenna’s legacy. The book’s treatment of Avicenna’s psychological works divides into a short chapter on abstraction and emanation (Dag Hasse) and a longer one that draws out the connections between Avicenna’s psychology and his broader epistemology (Deborah Black). Both chapters are perspicuous and perspicacious, but because neither author addresses the soul as such, such famous items as, for example, Avicenna’s arguments for the soul’s substantiality and immortality are entirely passed over. Avicenna’s metaphysics is similarly treated across two chapters; this division is well motivated and corresponds roughly to the distinction between metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis. Peculiarly, while Stephen Menn’s treatment of the former ably gathers threads from all over recent scholarship, Adamson’s chapter regarding the latter stands very nearly alone, with only a few references to Toby Mayer’s valuable work to keep it company (and some backward glances in Wisnovsky’s chapter to echo its contents). Is it possible that Avicenna’s philosophical theology is due for a reappraisal next? If so, here is one field where a reignited dialogue with scholars of Latin medieval philosophy may yet prove useful. Amos Bertolacci’s chapter provides valuable pointers to potentially interesting authors and issues.

Only rarely does the reviewer wish that she or he would have 200 more pages to read. This is one such instance. The essays are all compressed and terse, some to the detriment of their digestibility. A more basic point has to do with serious omissions. Why, beyond...