Tag Archive for: Avicenna

M. F. Attar 2021 Review of Michael Noble’s “Philosophizing the Occult” – M. Fariduddin Attar

“Michael Noble’s Philosophizing the Occult lies at the intersection of two recent developments in Islamic studies: (1) the renewed appreciation for the philosophical and theological thought of the Sunnī theologian and polymath Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), a trend that has led to an exponential growth of studies devoted to this figure since the 2000s; and (2) the recent consolidation of a subfield devoted to the study of what was hitherto considered a marginal and problematic preoccupation of many Muslim thinkers, namely the occult sciences. The work is thus significant for two reasons. It aims to show how al- Rāzī’s controversial engagement with the astro-magical traditions of the period is a key element in the formation of his mature intellectual project and how the astrological tradition and the theories that underlie them stood alongside the disciplines of falsafa and kalām as major sources of the scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives that emerged in the post-Avicennian period“

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Avicenna on Theology

Abstract:

“The year 1951 is being celebrated throughout the Muslim world, and especially in Persia, as the millennary according to lunar reckoning of the birth of Avicenna, one of the greatest and most original thinkers produced by Islam, Dom in 370 (980) at the little village of Afshana in the province of Bukhara-a region now hopelessly lost within the territories of the Soviet empire -Abu ‘Ali al-Husain ibn ,Abd Allah called Ibn Sina (to give him his Muslim name) largely by virtue of his own exceptional genius and diligent self-instruction became a master alike of the ancient Greek learning and the Arab sciences, and was the author of large works on medicine and philosophy which, translated into Latin, continued to be studied in the medieval universities of Europe to the end of the sixteenth century. Concerning Avicenna genealogy we know virtually nothing. His father ‘Abd Allah, a native of Balkh, was appointed governor of an outlying district of Bukhara by the Samanid ruler Nuh ibn Mansur, and was therefore presumably a man of some”

Ibn Sina, Avicenna On Theology (trans. Arberry)
Ibn Sina, Avicenna On Theology (trans. Arberry)Download

Avicenna – Jon McGinnis

Abstract:

“Ex nihilo nihilo fit: Nothing comes from nothing, and Avicenna and his philosophy are no exception. Indeed, multiple influences were at work in the formation of his thought. In this chapter, I consider a few of these influ- ences so as to provide a general backdrop against which to situate the intel- lectual and political-historical milieu within which Avicenna worked.1 To this end, I begin the odyssey that was Avicenna’s life with a brief look at the Greek scientific and philosophical course curriculum being taught at the Academies in Athens and Alexandria, which in turn became the standard regimen of study for those practitioners of falsafa, that is, the Arabic philo-“

McGinnis, Avicenna
McGinnis, AvicennaDownload