The Metaphysics of the Healing (Ibn Sina, Avicenna): A Parallel English-Arabic text

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ISBN: 9780934893770
Author: Avicenna (Ibn Sina); Michael E. Marmura (translator)
Publisher: Brigham Young University Press (2005)
Pages: 441 Binding: Hardcover w/ Dust Jacket

Description from the publisher:

Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) was the most systematic, thorough, and influential of the Islamic philosophers. His Metaphysics (Alllahiyyat) is the climactic, concluding part of his magnum opus, The Healing (Al-Shifa).

As in his physics and mathematics, the existent is once again Avicenna’s main subject in the metaphysics. But while in the physics he examines the existent inasmuch as it is subject to motion and rest, and in the mathematics inasmuch as it is quantified or relates to measure and quantity, in his metaphysics Avicenna deals with the existent as such - not inasmuch as it is either in motion or quantified, but simply inasmuch as it is an existent, without qualification. In addition, Avicenna here seeks to understand the cause of all things, which leads him, as it lead Aristotle before him, to a discussion of God.

He develops an emanative theory of divine causation that represents a remarkable synthesis of Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and Islamic ideas. Within this emanative scheme we encounter some of the basic ideas of Avicenna's religious and political philosophy, including his discussion of the divine attributes, divine providence, the Hereafter, and the ideal, "virtuous" city with its philosopher-prophet as the recipient and conveyer of the revealed law, a human link between the celestial and the terrestrial worlds.