“School of Philosophy”
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| Paper IPM / Philosophy / 14436 |
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| Abstract: | |||||
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According to the common wisdom, among both contemporary scholars and
classic interpreters, Avicenna is committed to 'Co-origination': The human soul is temporally
originated with the human body. Against the common wisdom, we will argue that Coorigination
is ambiguous and vague and thus its attribution to Avicenna is in need of
clarification and precisification. The problem is broken down into two sub-problems: First,
the problem of the origination of different souls/powers, namely the vegetative, animal and
rational, in humans, and second, the problem of the relationship between these
souls/powers. Based on our solutions to these two sub-problems, we will offer our own
reading of Co-origination according to which Avicenna is not committed to the view that the
human soul is originated with the 'human body' in its ordinary sense. Our reading has
significant corollaries: First, we will attempt to show where an influential argument by Dag
Hasse and Dimitri Gutas against a form of 'supernal knowledge' by the faculty of
imagination goes astray, and second, we will offer a solution to the notorious problem of the
integrator and retentive factor of the fundamental elements of the embryo's body, a matter
of substantial disagreement between ar-RÄzÄ« and aá¹-ṬūsÄ«. We shall briefly explain how the
seemingly 'contrary' textual evidence may be handled and will end by touching upon some
open questions that our study engenders.
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