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The book approaches the conceptual background of Avicenna's account of efficient causality, outlining the positions held by him and his early interpreters (eleventh and twelfth centuries), as well as the arguments that support those positions. The first aim of the book is to show the systematic unity of the Avicennian doctrines on ontology and aetiology, highlighting the threads connecting the two. The second aim is to investigate Avicenna’s influence over his interpreters, assessing continuities and discontinuities.
Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṣābūnī was a prominent jurist and theologian in Samarqand in the late 6th/12th century. His theological works are in the tradition of the Ḥanafite-Māturīdite current of Sunni kalām. In addition, al-Ṣābūnī’s argumentation reflects the increasing engagement of Māturīdite mutakallimūn with their wide intellectual-historical environment. His discussions with the famous scholar Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī are attested. In the present volume, Angelika Brodersen uses a text-critical edition of al-Ṣābūnī’s comprehensive theological work, the Kitāb al-Kifāya fī l-hidāya fī uṣūl al-dīn, to analyze, based on selected thematic examples, how both elements ...
Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas—entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties—the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni.
In how many ways can things be said to be one, how is oneness itself to be defined, and what is its relation to essence and existence? This book engages with these core questions by examining the works of Avicenna (d. 1037 CE), who is widely regarded as the most important philosopher of the Arabic tradition. In this monograph - the first that is exclusively devoted to Avicenna’s henology and to Arabic henology in general - the author analyzes the place and meaning of oneness in Avicenna’s general metaphysics and theology and devotes particular attention to how this notion relates to Avicenna’s theory of quiddity. He contextualizes Avicenna’s doctrines in light of three major intellec...
The study of Islamicate intellectual history has witnessed a rapid growth of scholarship on post-classical thinkers and especially on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210 CE), one of the leading theologians and philosophers of his time. However, there is presently a lack of methodological tools and reference works in Rāzī studies. This book is the first bibliographical work entirely devoted to this thinker. It surveys the modern historiography on Rāzī from the nineteenth century onward and includes more than 1000 specialized entries written in European languages, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The bibliography also provides a preface, an introductory essay, annotations to the entries, and various indices to help students and experts navigate the complex field of Rāzī studies.
The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific and philosophical spirit of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought -...
In Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism, Jari Kaukua offers a new interpretation of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191 CE) illuminationist (ishrāqī) philosophy. Commonly portrayed as a philosophically inclined mystic, Suhrawardī appears here as a perspicacious critic of Avicenna who developed his critique into an alternative philosophical system. Focusing on metaphysics and theory of science, Kaukua argues that Suhrawardī’s illuminationist philosophy combines rigorous metaphysical monism with a modest but positive assessment of scientific explanation. This philosophical core of Suhrawardī’s illuminationism is reconcilable with but independent of the mystical side of the shaykh al-ishrāq.
In medieval and early modern natural philosophy, very few issues were as controversial as the nature of the elements. From the thirteenth up until the sixteenth century, European thinkers discussed this problem with growing interest. Defining the nature of the elements was key to deciphering the very structure of the universe and the essence of things. Along with five primary texts, here edited for the first time, this book discusses one of the most original contributions to this debate, that of Renaissance philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi (d. 1525). Pomponazzi’s account, developed in university lectures, holds significance for two reasons. First, it provides a thorough description of the most influential doctrines on the elements presented by medieval scholars, opening a window onto three hundred years of prior discussions on the topic. Second, Pomponazzi also develops his own views on the issue, explicitly defining them as ‘heretical’ to emphasise his departure from all opinions expressed before him.
Il volume, dedicato ai 70 anni dell’iranista Professor Carlo Saccone, raccoglie i contributi presentati al VII CoBIran (Convegni Bolognesi di Iranistica) su “Scienze, filosofia e letteratura nel mondo iranico”, che abbracciano svariati ambiti delle scienze coltivate nel mondo iranico dall’epoca preislamica a oggi, tra cui astrologia, metallurgia, mineralogia, ottica e strumenti predittivi, scienze geografiche, trattatistica relativa alle feste e al calendario iranico, ma anche ingegneria idrico-meccanica, cosmogonia manichea, metodologia linguistica, scienze musicali, scienze storico-filosofiche, eredità e ricezione di Avicenna.
La narrazione nella plurimillenaria cultura iranica ha assunto molteplici forme in prosa e in versi e, così come la celebre frecia dell’eroe-arciere iranico rash – che secondo il mito percorreva uno spazio inusitato volando dai monti Alborz a sud del Mar Caspio fino a Marv in Asia Centrale – giunge a noi viaggiando miracolosamente oltre ogni confine nello spazio e nel tempo, perché la parola è “più veloce nel viaggio della freccia di rash”.