In Our Time - Avicenna

Episode Date: November 8, 2007

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Persian Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. In the city of Hamadan in Iran, right in the centre, there is a vast mausoleum dedicated to an Iranian national hero. Built in 1952, exactly 915 years after his death, it’s a great conical tower with twelve supporting columns. It’s dedicated not to a warrior or a king but to a philosopher and physician. His name is Ali Al Husayn Ibn-Sina, but he is also known as Avicenna and he is arguably the most important philosopher in the history of Islam.  In a colourful career Avicenna proved the existence of god, amalgamated all known medical knowledge into one big book and established a mind body dualism 600 years before Descartes and still found time to overindulge in wine and sex. With Peter Adamson, Reader in Philosophy at King's College London; Amira Bennison, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge; Nader El-Bizri, Affiliated Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. We're here. Luotan myontas O.P. Vahittesasiaccaught OYJ. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program.

Hello. In the city of Hamadan in Iran, right in the center, there's a vast mausoleum dedicated to an Iranian national hero. Built in 1952, exactly 915 years after his death, it's a high conical tower with 12 supporting... It's dedicated not to a warrior or a king, but to a philosopher and physician. His name is Abu Ali al-Husain, even Sina, but is also known as Avicenna, and is arguably the most important philosopher in the history of Islam. With me to discuss Avicenna, his world, his ideas and his influence on the way both Muslims and Christians think,

an influence which continued for centuries, a Peter Adamson, reader in philosophy at King's College London, Amira Benison, Senior Lecture in Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Nader El Bissary, affiliated lecturer in the history and philosophy of science, also at the University of Cambridge. Peter Adamson, we know a great deal about Avicenna's life from his autobiography. It was, it seems finished by his pupil. He was born in 1980 in Central Asia, and can you go on from there?

Yeah, so the biography and autobiography is a very useful text for Avicenna. So not only did we learn a lot about his life from that, but we learn a lot about what he was like as a person, partially because we have his own words telling us what he was like. So I think that there are two things that really come out of that autobiography. One is that he was immensely pleased with himself. And the other, which is rather connected to this, is his kind of independence and originality with respect to the tradition that came down to him.

So first of all, why was he so pleased with himself? Well, he tells us that he was a child prodigy. and that by the age of 10, for example, he had mastered the Quran already. He went on to study arithmetic, medicine, and logic. And in these disciplines, he was so impressive that he was able to outstrip the ability of his master within a year. He also tells us that by the time he was 18, he had already formulated most of his ideas and that the rest of his career was just spent spinning them out in ever more refined ways. He seems to have had a prodigious memory, so we've already seen he memorized the Quran at a very early age.

And for example, because his life was spent often moving around through Central Asia and then into modern-day Iran, he often had to work using only his memory without any sources available to him as it were on his desk. And yet he still manages to engage with a very wide range of Islamic ideas and also ideas from the Greek tradition. His father was a scholar, as I understand it, as was his brother. And you say he was very pleased with himself, but also from what you said, he had good reason to be, didn't he? Absolutely. He's quite a genius, in fact, and he knew he was a genius. So this really comes out in the autobiography.

As I say, he's very emphatic that not only was he able to accomplish these prodigious feats of memory, and also, for example, writing. So he was able to write voluminously in a very very... short period of time in a way that really impressed other people. So yeah, he was well acquainted with his own abilities. Do we know any more about his family than that his father

and brother were scholars? Is it an intellectual family? Can you just sort of set it? We're talking about a thousand years ago. We're talking about the 10th into the 11th century. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things that are important to know about his father. One is that he was a governor under the Samanids who ruled parts of Central

Asia and, or what's called Transoxania and Northern Iran. And so he was a politically, it was a politically well-favored family, at least when Avicenna was young. The other thing to know about his father was that he had apparently some kind of Shiite leaning, so it's not clear how far to take this, but his father was apparently attracted by the ideas of a group of Shiite thinkers called the Ismailis, who were in turn very influenced by ideas from the Greek platonic tradition. But Avicena, with his his customary originality, rejected these ideas when he heard them being discussed in his father's house and struck out on his own.

So I think actually that's a sign from Avicenna's childhood of his independence of mind, which I think is not something that should be underestimated. So if you think about medieval philosophers, he's probably the medieval philosopher who is most self-consciously original. and a lot of the ideas that we'll talk about shortly are not ideas that he presents as interpretations of Aristotle or anyone else, but to the contrary, there are ideas that he presents as deliberate departures from the tradition that comes down to him. There's a tendency, a kind of useful cliche, that philosophers are in ivory towers or minarets or are apart and dry and aesthetic. but he seems to have been a worldly and provocative figure. Can you develop that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely.

So one thing about Avicenna, something that's important to remember out Avicenna is that for the people around him, it was at least as important that he was a physician, so a medical physician, as that he was a philosopher. So, for example, again, when he was a teenager, he gained access to the very impressive library of the seminar.

I want to come to that minute. I want to talk about his character a bit first. We haven't quite got there. You've told us he was very pleased of himself. You've told us it was a polymouth. You've told us it every reason to be. We know about his father. But he was, he, by the, in the autobiography, he drank a lot.

He was, can you just give us? Yeah. Well, so. Just flesh it out a bit. I don't know. Don't spend more than half a minute on it. Maybe the most salacious detail from the biography is that. And I don't it's salacious.

I just want to round it up a bit because it's quite interesting. Well, he was, so he, I think it's right to say that he was someone who really enjoyed life. And, and that he, and I think it's right that these, prodigious feats of memory and his willingness to depart from the tradition was of a piece with, for example, the fact that he did use wine to keep himself up at night, right? So that's actually connected with the fact that he was able to write so much. Another example is that his student tells us, and this is not a criticism on the part of his student, this is sort of phrase, that he had a very well-developed sexual capacity and that one of the reasons why he became ill and died at the relatively young age of in his mid-50s, is that he sort of didn't follow his own medical advice and continued to indulge in this wide range of things. But on the other hand, I mean, he wasn't the hedonist.

I mean, he was clearly more than anything else of a really serious scholar and thinker. But not, I mean, I think, again, the interesting thing about him as a person is that he wasn't, he's not what you'd expect from a medieval philosopher, in that he's engaged with these sort of close readings and interpretations of texts. So he does know these texts, but he was able to sort of swallow them in with his memory very quickly and then think of on his own.

Your embarrassment can cease, Peter. We can put life aside and concentrate on the ideas from now. But I do think it's part of the mix in this particular case, and rather surprising, and it might, who knows, in the mix of it, and if things be reasonably important. Amir Abinison, can you give us a sense of the political situation in his, Abysana's early life. The Islamic world was under the sway of the Abbasid Caliphs, but wasn't that breaking up? They were in Baghdad. He was in Uzbekistan, part of the Persian Empire. Can you just tell us what the politics were?

Yes. It's a very interesting period from a political perspective. Whilst you do still have the Abbasid Caliphate situated in Baghdad, the Caliphate had become much more of a symbolic, religious institution and much less of an actual political. institution. We've already heard of the Sarmarnids who ruled in Transoxania and northern Iran. They were a dynasty of autonomous governors who recognized the Abbasids, but acted in a completely independent way in terms of governing the regions of which they were in control. However, although Avicenna's father worked for the Sarmarnids during Avicenna's own lifetime, the Sarmarid state came to an end. It fragmented, and you have other political powers coming in.

And at the centre in Baghdad itself, the caliphs were really under the de facto control of a dynasty called the Buyids, who were actually a confederation. There was a Buyid ruler based in Baghdad, in Iraq, also one in Rai in northern Iran, situated near the site of modern Tehran, and also in Fars to the south.

And in fact, it was, this multiplicity of smaller political units and the fact that there were actually numerous patrons who, if you wanted to sort of take up the previous role, which the Calists have held in Baghdad, of stimulating and patronising knowledge, that made it such a fertile time in terms of philosophy and other ideas, Shiism, Sufism. And so it's a very important time politically. You have almost a contradiction. On the one hand, you have political fragmentation. occurring. But at the same time, that's actually stimulating cultural efflorescence in a number of different relatively minor centres, including cities where Avicenna spent a lot of his time,

like Isfahan in southern Iran. Can we go back to his early days? He, when he was about 17 or 18, as I understand it, from the autobiography and the biography, he healed a regional governor, and he came to the attention of the Samanid, the local Samanid dynasty. He was invited to their court. What would he find, What would he find at that court? What advantage would it give him being part of the court? Let me ask a better question. This era is one in which interpersonal relations were of primary importance for advancement.

So the mere fact that Avicenna came to the attention of the Salmanids was very important in terms of him developing his thought and his career. It opened up career prospects to him He would begin to meet with other individuals like himself who served the Sarmarnids in some capacity, other scholars, people who served as ministers, advising the ruler, other physicians. So he became, if you like, part of a courtly elite made up of scholars and advisors. His leading characteristic then was out of a physician, a man of medicine, now that Al-Bisri at that time.

The Samanids, though, had, as I in sonnet, a vast library to which this young, man, this teenager, was given access. What will be in the library? Well, that library would have been on a par, in a sense, with the libraries that we find in Baghdad or Basra or Asfahan or even in

Cairo under the Fatimates. So in a sense, it would have had titles that related to many works that came down from the Greeks, some related also to ancient

Indian traditions, Babylonian, and also a variety of texts and studies that have been developed since the time of the translation and transmission movement, which started towards the end of the 8th century. So about no less than 200 years of commentaries and textual criticisms and expansions of whatever was encountered in terms of the translation and transmission movement within the Islamic civilization. So it would have had titles that relate to all the branches of the exact sciences and mathematics and medicine, including works on geometry, on arithmetic, works related to the newly developed discipline of algebra, works on astronomy, on mechanics, various three ties is related.

to logic, metaphysics, works on studies in the realm of psychology, or what we might call treatises on the soul, the anima, and a variety of textual traditions associated with the development of the medical profession in a sense, including texts that were established by prominent physicians in the Islamic medieval civilization. So just to give an idea about the the titles like Euclid's elements. All in Arabic. Are these translated into Arabic? All translated from Greek and Syriac into Arabic. The translation movement started around the end of the 8th century.

It intensified in the 9th century. Further refinements and revisions of translations happened throughout the 9th and the 10th century. For instance, the elements of Euclid had three versions of transgressions. in the span of not more than 30 years. And besides the text that were transmitted from the Greek traditions, there were sort of processes of adaptive assimilation and expansion of the various branches of knowledge.

Can you tell a, sir, there was a massive cave, a golden cave for him, it does. but he also drew on the Islamic and Persian ideas as found in the Kalam. Can you briefly explain what that is? Yes, it's a tradition that we might describe as a dialectical, doctrinal theology. It developed in response to a sort of the initial assimilation of Greek ideas within the intellectual milieu, particularly in Iraq, in Mesopotamia, it was a way of introducing methods of argumentation

that are based on rational deliberation or reasoning in view of addressing fundamental questions pertaining to Islamic theology. One of the debates, the heated debates, was around divine essence and the divine attributes and how to account for them in a manner that does not compromise the same. centrality of the idea of divine transcendence or the centrality of the idea of divine unity. So he brought an enormous amount was there for him to draw on, wasn't it, Peter Adepson, but as you said, he took these ideas, as you hinted in your opening remarks, and self-consciously or not, it doesn't really matter, made them original, made them,

and the originality we have to keep in mind, and the massive, massiveness of the man's achievement across the board. So let's look at one or two of his main philosophical ideas. He devised thought experiments and one was called the Floating Man or the Flying Man. Can you tell us about that and what he was driving up? Yeah, so this is a famous thought experiment that he gives us in his works on the soul. And he was, again, very pleased with himself for having thought of it. So he mentions it several times. I don't quite see why he shouldn't be pleased with myself.

Absolutely. It's a great idea. Absolutely, yeah. Actually, it occurred to me maybe I can slip in this one other. It doesn't accord with stiff upper league English modesty, but he didn't. No, in fact, you might think it's not so much that he's pleased with himself as he's just telling us the facts. I was thought of another good anecdote, which you might want to hear. I interfere, isn't it? And where we go.

He was once sort of accused of not being very good in Arabic. So he went off and wrote an entire work collating various obscure references to the Arabic language and various aspects of it to show up the person who had made this accusation against him. So this is the kind of thing he was able to do. Back to the floating man. So anyway, the floating man argument is an example he gives in several contexts where he's talking about the relationship between the soul and the body. And he says, well, imagine the following scenario.

Suppose that God creates an adult human who is perfect in terms of all of his cognitive capacities. But this person is created in midair, so floating or falling. and he's blindfolded. He can't see anything. There's nothing to hear. There's no wind. And his limbs are stretched out so that he's not touching his own body. So Avicenna then makes the assertion that a person in this situation would still be aware of his own existence. And the reason this is remarkable is that he's aware of his existence, even though he's never had any sense experiences at all. And more to the point, he doesn't know that he has a body because he can't. can't see his body, he can't touch his body, right? His limbs are stretched out. His fingers are even extended so that they're not touching each other. And because of the centrality of the claim that the flying man or the floating man would know his own existence, this is sometimes compared to the famous argument in Descartes. I think therefore I am. So Descartes says, could I doubt everything? No, because there's one thing I can't doubt, I can't doubt my own

existence. And Avicenna seems to be alluding to the same philosophical idea, so the idea that we have this intimate awareness of our own existence. Actually, I think, though, that that's not the point of the floating man argument. So what is the point? Well, as I said, it gets mentioned in context where he's talking about the relationship between the soul and the body. And the point is not so much that there's one thing the floating man can't doubt. It's that he's aware of his existence, even though he's not aware of the existence of his body. And although that doesn't, I think it would be fallacious to infer from that, that the soul is not the body and is therefore immaterial, what Avesant is trying to point out with the thought experiment is that it's conceptually possible that we are

not identical with our body. Why? Well, because I can clearly conceive of myself and know that I exist without conceiving of my body or knowing that it exists. So if I can be aware of one thing without knowing that another thing exists, then although of course that doesn't prove that the two things are distinct, it shows that it's conceptually possible that they're distinct. Well, that was a great summary.

Can you answer that Noda Elbizri? Is it presaging, 600 years later, Descartes, and I think therefore I am? It has some elements that in a sense, yes, it is close to what we find

in terms of the cogito argument, but the purposes behind the thought experiment are different than what we find with Descartes. I would say it is, the motivation is more in the sense of ontology rather than epistemology, in the sense that ultimately with the flying man argument, there is a sort of convergence between that affirmation of the existence of his own self

and the affirmation of the fact that there is something rather than nothing. It is an affirmation of a beingness. Even though it is mediated with reference to his own self, it is ultimately an affirmation of the existence in the sense of being a necessary existence. It is actualized. in the sense that that flying man is able to affirm that there is something rather than nothing,

and ultimately this connects with what we find in terms of his reflections on necessity and contingency, in terms of ontology or reflection on the question of being. This affirmation of existence is ultimately an affirmation of a connection with that which is necessary existent due to itself. I'll come back to that in a moment, but Amira Benison is, at the time he was a court physician, that didn't mean strictly. He just did, but that was a title he had, as well as a philosopher. He wrote a book, The Canon of Medicine.

Can you give us a sense of what Avicenna saw fit to put in this canon of medicine, which at the time was probably his most famous work in continued being used until at least the 17th century? Yes, well, I mean, as we've heard, Avicenna mastered medicine by the young age of 18, according to his own account. And he got his first official judge. jobs, if you like, as a physician.

He himself comments in his autobiography that medicine was by far the easiest of the sciences and philosophy was the hard intellectual game, but medicine was fairly straightforward and simple. So what he set out to do really was write a compendium of all the known knowledge about medicine, which is his medical canon, which was based to some extent on Galen, on Hippocrates, but also on Islamic medicine as it had developed over time. It's divided into five volumes looking at various aspects of medicine. One of the volumes sort of looks at general issues of the human body, it's health therapeutics.

Other volumes look at pharmacology, use of herbs in medicine, and various other remedies. There's also volumes on fevers, wounds, and dealing with these kind of problems, pathologies, different kinds of disease and how one might address them. And in addition to the medical canon, he also wrote numerous separate treatises

on various aspects of medicine. Some of the most famous are things like the cardiac remedies and other books which he wrote on the use of different herbs and plants in the healing process. But he also spoke of diseases, perhaps being, infections have perhaps being carried not only about the soil and water, which he described, but also perhaps being carried in the air. He writes about diet.

He writes about psychology. He writes about quarantine. You can see why it lasted for 700 years, can't you? Absolutely, yes. And he's seen as being quite innovative, particularly in terms of his theories of experimentation. And you've mentioned quarantine, issues of contagion. I think it links up with the fact that he is in some ways a very practical thinker

and he does try to apply the knowledge that he has. He was a practicing physician as well as writing on medicine and he does have, I think it sort of links up with some of the things we've said earlier about the fact that he's not an otherworldly character, that he is embedded in daily life as well as being a philosopher, as well as being a physician and he kind of brings those things together in a remarkable and very useful. unique way, hence his lasting fame in both the Islamic and then the Latin Christian worlds.

Well, to go back to philosophy now from Edson, although in his mind they would inform each other all the time, I presume. Nadele Rizhry, rather deceptively, his major philosophical work was called The Book of Healing. It was also translated as the cure for ignorance. You began to touch it in your last answer, developed an argument for the existence of God, which depended, as I understand it on a distinction between essence and existence. Now, is there any way you can tell us that? Explain that to us so that we understand it at this time of day and you're on your own. Perhaps I will mediate the possible response to this question by accounting for what he what we might refer to as the modalities of necessity and contingency. He treats them in

in his logic, but also he has applications of them in terms of his... What's you trying to prove, first of all, before you get getting? He's trying... There is a conflict that he faced at the beginning when he started reading Aristotle in terms of how can we have a science that is, or a body of knowledge, that is universal, that accounts for almost, if we could use the term, the ultimate principles of reality. There was a conflict in his mind between one side metaphysics or ontology, particularly the study of the question of being or existence.

And on the other side, theology, how ontology or a reflection on the question of being would lead us to a reflection on aspects that pertain to divinity, to the divine essence and attributes, and to the notion of creation. It was Al Farabi's commentary on Aristotle that opened up the possibilities for him to reconcile ontology from one side with theology. but still that tension, at least in terms of the interpretation of his work, that tension, I would think, remained altogether associated with his reflection on the question of being. It is related in a way to what you could call an ontological argument, ultimately a form of proving the existence of God, but there is a moment in it that could be taken as a pure ontology, a pure reflection on. the question of being, which ultimately, to be translated into a term that accords with religious faith

requires the introduction of a theological notion. So he deploys in the ontological context, in the context of the metaphysics, the term in the necessary existent because of itself, or the necessary existent due to itself. Wajib al-Wiju'u, fidathe. And this could be translated in theological terms into a notion of the divine, into a conception of God. But this conception of God pertains

to his own metaphysical endeavor. It was not accepted by theologians and prominently in terms of the critics of his work, we have Al-Ghazali and eventually Ibn Taimia concerning that association of the

notion of the necessary existence due to itself with God. Can you just take that on a bit, Peter Adamson. This idea of the necessary existence, necessary existence, it wouldn't be too crude to boil it down to the first cause. Yeah, that's absolutely what it goes.

All other examples of essence and existence are possible, not possible, so and so. But there's infinite regression. Until you put a stop to it and he says, the whole universe exists, it must think it's because of some necessity, and necessitary thing, which is on its own, which is outside the essence and outside what

now it was talking about. This is an outside force, and that can be called God. Right. So I think, I mean, this I think is exactly why it's such an interesting proof for the existence of God, because if you think about why most people who believe in God believe in God, there's a fundamental intuition if you look around in the studio or at home, if you're listening to this on the radio. Think about the radio. The radio. could not exist. There's no reason why it has to exist. Look around at the whole world. The world doesn't have to exist. That's the intuition behind... There's an accidental quality. Yeah, well, it's that there's no absurdity in supposing that it doesn't exist, right? So the...

We didn't have a wireless, we'd say, yeah, I know. Right. So it's a much better way of putting it. Right. So if you, if you think about this in a slightly more technical way, what Avicenna would say is that there are two kinds of essences, or three, kinds, actually. They're the ones that are impossible, so like round squares. They're the ones that are possible or contingent in themselves. And this is things like the radio. So the radio doesn't need to exist. In fact, Avicenna says something even more interesting about this, which is that if the radio doesn't exist, there has to be a reason for that too. Right. So the idea being that anything that's contingent or possible in itself, as he says, it doesn't deserve to exist any more than it deserves not to exist. So if it exists or, doesn't exist, there has to be an explanation for that. And the proof for the existence of God is really, it's actually quite simple. He just says, well, suppose that everything were merely contingent. Well, then how would we explain that it exists? We can't. Because in itself, it's merely contingent. There's no reason why it has to exist. But if you hypothesize,

including us. Including us. And if you, but if you hypothesize a necessary existence, then what you're hypothesizing is something that needs no cause in order to, or two exists. In fact, what you said about it being the first cause is a good way of thinking about it. So really all that it means for something to be possible in itself or contingent is that there must be a cause to explain why it exists if it exists. And then Avicenna says, if you take all of the things that are contingent, all of them together as one set, that would be the world. The world is just one big contingent thing. So you have to suppose that there is a cause for it. it and the cause would be God. The point you made about the infinite regress is just that if I said

that then there was a cause for that cause, I will just keep having more and more contingent things. So in order to put a stop to this chain of causes, I say there is a necessary existent and that's God. So I think the one objection you might make to this, and as not I was saying a lot of... Can I bring a mirror? Yeah. Because can you just tell us to whom these thoughts were addressed. There's an intellectual network of the time. Yes. If it was a network.

There is definitely an intellectual network. Partly through these numerous courts through which Avicenna moves. Yes, he goes from court to court as it gets shut out of war and high. From the Salmanids to the Charazam Shars to the Bouyids. So he serves a number of different

masters and all these different masters have entourages which include scholars around them. And it's very much part of the intellectual life of any court in this period that there should be regular discussions often presided over by the ruler himself on various points of theology, philosophy or other items of interest. But in Avicenna's autobiography, he also mentions that he did have gatherings of pupils in his own home every evening that he sort of worked at court and that he had a role there and he engaged at court with other thinkers. But

but he also taught numerous pupils night after night in his own home. He also engaged in correspondence with various different intellectuals of his time, including the philosopher Al-Biruni and other individuals, correspondence with his own, somebody usually described as one of his pupils, Bahman Yar and other individuals. So he is very much part of an intellectual circuit, and there is an exchange of ideas going. on and then he is

subsequently does become part of the philosophical tradition within Islam and also his criticised Al-Ghazali as Nada began to refer to was someone who criticised this idea his proof for God and his idea very

severely. Well with Al-Razali it's quite interesting because of course early on in Al-Gazali's career he writes what is in effect a commentary on one of Avesenna's works. And he's a very, very knowledgeable

about philosophy, although he's not generally described as a philosopher because perhaps his major interests lay more in theology and in jurisprudence and later Sufism, Al-Razeli was deeply, deeply influenced by the philosophical tradition. And he has sometimes been described, ironically, as one of Avesena's most, you know, true disciples. But he objected to the main idea that neither are lined to us. Yes.

Yes, although he does object to some of Avicenna's ideas, and certainly later on in his life when he writes the incoherence of the philosophers, one can see a sort of a critique of philosophy in general emerging very strongly. Because philosophy was rather dangerous as well. It was thought to be rather dangerous to theology. And his idea, as I said it, Amvsena's idea wasn't, as it were, theological enough by any means for those who upheld theology as the central thinking place inside these Islamic courts. Yeah, so I think that's very true, but of course it, again, it's somewhat ironic that in the process of debunking someone's ideas, you have to actually become very familiar with their ideas.

So what you actually see happening is sort of pure philosophy increasingly being rejected by the theological establishment. But at the same time, that establishment being deeply imbued with its concepts, with its tools of dialectic and disputation. So it's an interesting relationship. Peter Adam, can I come back to something you said at the beginning of the programme, near the beginning of the programme, about his originality? We know from what Nadia said about that magnificent library that he was able to take, which he did, from Aristotle and so forth. But can you give listeners some idea of this originality?

Because that is very striking. He's called the most innovative logician since the 2nd century BC, for instance, and so on. Can you give us a sort of taste of that? Yeah, I mean, so I think it sort of goes along with what Amir was just saying, which is that, I mean, really the history of Islamic philosophy, I would say has two phases, maybe oversimplifying. You have the phase up till Avicenna, and then you have the phase after Avicenna. And the reason for that is that after Avicenna, everyone needs to respond to Avicenna. So they don't necessarily, except for Averroes, who we had to show before, they don't necessarily write commentaries. so much on Aristotle anymore as writing commentaries on Avicenna.

And in fact, what Averrius was doing in some ways was its own response to Avicenna. It was a response of conservatism of trying to get back before these original ideas. But if you think about something like the idea of God as the necessary existent, that's a big challenge to Islam, a challenge that's not present in Aristotle's works. well, why is this? So why would someone like Hazali find this to be a threatening idea? On the one hand, Avicenna thought that he could derive all of the divine attributes that Nato was mentioning from the idea of necessity. So if you take, for example, the idea that God is omniscient. Why is God omniscient? Well, because if he didn't know everything, there would be some things he could know and doesn't.

So there'd be some possibilities that are unrealized for him. So he wouldn't be necessary, right? He'd be merely possible. there's something he could know and doesn't. That sounds good. But then Ghazali responds to that by saying, well, if everything is about God is necessary, then it will be, for example, necessary that he creates us. It won't be a gratuitous act of generosity on his part. It will be something that he's, as it were, forced to do by his own nature.

And that move by Avicenna of trying to think about God really almost purely in terms of necessity and then derive all the other features of God out of necessity is a very original move. It's not something that someone had done before. As I say, I think it's a very intuitive move because it does capture the way that a lot of theists think about the world needing, sort of calling out for an explanation,

which doesn't need its own explanation. It moves easily from Christianity to say, absolutely. In fact, can I just concentrate for a moment, sorry, come back to another. How's the, have these ideas of his own? Are they still being disputed in Islamic philosophy today, as well as being recognized, of course, in the West?

Is he still part of the picture? I would say it is mediated by responses or the development of traditions that responded to avicinism at large. And it would be, if it's in contemporary terms, it would be either in the context of mainstream academia, and it tends to be in most instances focused on establishing an accurate or relatively accurate documentation of his thought and the channels of its transmission or influence on a variety of traditions within Islam and within the history of ideas in Europe. But in terms of contemporary practices that take it as a living tradition,

it would be more associated with extensions of his thought or impressions that he had on the world. later philosophers, one of them is Mullah Sadra, 17th century theologian. Can I come back to Amira here? He was clearly important in Islamic thought there. Can you tell us how he became translated

into the European mainstream in the 11th, 12th centuries on from there? Yes, I mean, there were a couple of points in the Mediterranean basin where translation activity began to occur. Toledo, after its fall to the Castilian Kings in 1084, became the site of a flourishing translation school

and numerous scholars moved down to Toledo. One of the most famous is Michael Scott, who travelled to Toledo. Scott was born in 1175 to give you some idea of his time frame. He learned Arabic in Toledo and then subsequently went on to the court of Frederick II where he translated a lot of material, including some of Amfisena's works. and they begin to appear in various places in Europe in the 13th century. Peter Adamson, I've read that he has influenced directly people like Duns Scotus,

Roger Bacon, and Aquinas. Can you just, I'm sorry we're coming to the end of the program. So just for one example, both Aquinas and Scotus take up this proof of God's existence. Scotus' proof of God's existence is a sort of a more complicated version of the Senes. and Aquinas, I mean, he very early in his career, he wrote a work called On Being an Essence, which is especially an exploration of this essence existence contrast that we find in Aesna that Nadeau was talking about. So, I mean, I think this is one reason to say what you said at the beginning of the show, which is that Avesana is the most influential medieval philosopher, and that's because he had a huge influence on the Islamic world,

which is not true of Averroes say. but also in Latin and also in Hebrew. So the Jewish tradition is like Maimonides, for example, the greatest Jewish medieval philosopher. It's very deeply influenced by Avicenna. So he's the only medieval philosopher to have an enormous impact on philosophy and all the faiths in the medieval world. So he's quite important for that reason as well.

Am there, you have to come in there? No, I mean, I would just agree. You know, he does have this incredible reach, and it's not just the philosophy, of course, it's also the medical tradition which was translated into Latin and used extensively up until the 17th century. Nader. Avicenism in terms of ontology and metaphysics

could prove to be foundational for the renewal of the philosophical impetus in Islamic thought. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea, what's really maybe key, and we've sort of talked about this, is the relationship between ontology and these logical ideas about modality,

necessity and contingency. And so you can trace a line that goes from Avicana through scholastic Latin philosophy and into someone like Leibniz, who's doing the same thing. He's got this project of thinking about metaphysics, possible worlds. This is all, in some way, is spinning out of intuitions about modality

and how it relates to existence that we find in Avicenna. Well, thank you all very much. Thanks, Samira Benson. And thanks Nader El Bisri and Peter Adamson. And next week we're talking about the discovery of oxygen and the Anglo-Prench rivalry. Thereof, thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.

com.com.com.com.