PHILOSOPHY 556
Stephen Menn
SEMINAR: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
FALL 2006
W 12:30-2:30, LEA 927
The seminar will be mainly on Avicenna's metaphysics and on his reading of
Aristotle's Metaphysics. We will also keep an eye on Aristotle's Metaphysics itself (and
other relevant Aristotelian texts, especially the Posterior Analytics), reading the texts in
dialogue with Avicenna; and we will put Avicenna in dialogue with others who
developed or criticized Aristotle's metaphysics, both earlier writers that Avicenna is
responding to, above all Fârâbî (perhaps also Kindî and some of the Greek
commentators), and, if we have time, later writers that are responding to Avicenna
(Ghazâlî, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, perhaps some later Muslim texts on the status of
existence [wujûd]). We will take advantage of the publication of an English translation of
Avicenna's most important metaphysical work, the Metaphysics section of his great
philosophical summa the Kitâb al-Shifâ' (Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, a
parallel English-Arabic text, translated, introduced, and annotated by Michael Marmura,
Brigham Young University Press, 2005, distributed by University of Chicago Press) to
work through major pieces of its argument. Also, since Avicenna understands his project
as a rewriting of Aristotle's Metaphysics, not a commentary following the order of
Aristotle's text but a rethinking of the text in proper scientific order, we can use the text
to see discover how he is reading Aristotle's Metaphysics, and what he takes the overall
aim and structure of metaphysics as a science to be. Both on the reading of Aristotle's
Metaphysics and on the interpretation of metaphysics as a science, Avicenna is deeply
influenced by (though not necessarily in complete agreement with) Fârâbî, and we will
read him against the Fârâbian background. Both Fârâbî and Avicenna are trying to
resolve apparent tensions between Aristotle's different descriptions of "wisdom" or "first
philosophy," which Aristotle describes sometimes as a universal science of being,
sometimes as a science of substance, sometimes as a science of first principles or first
causes, sometimes as a science of things existing separately from matter, sometimes as
theology or "divine science." Both Fârâbî and Avicenna, and also earlier philosophers
such as Kindî, think that metaphysics aims at understanding God as a cause of being qua
being (a cause, to the things that are, of the fact that they are); they think that it is better
to prove God's existence and uniqueness, and to derive his attributes and his causal
activity, by considering him as the cause of being than by considering him as a cause of
motion to the physical world (and, to the extent that Aristotle seems to consider God as a
cause of motion, rather than of being, not only in Physics VIII but also in Metaphysics L,
they are led to rewrite the Metaphysics); and they hope in this way to give a scientific
account of God and his attributes and causality that will surpass the native Islamic
discipline of kalâm. But the different philosophers have different understandings of being
and of the ways that God is a cause of being, and they work out the science of
metaphysics in different ways. So far as possible, we will follow out this discussion, with
particular attention to ways of distinguishing different senses of being and to the essenceexistence distinction. If time permits, we will also look at later writers who criticize
Avicenna's metaphysical project and especially his essence-existence distinction.
Notably, Averroes, responding to Ghazâlî's kalâm-inspired critique of Avicenna's
metaphysics, says that Avicenna has gone wrong in abandoning Aristotle's strictly
physical approach to understanding causality and to proving God's existence; and, while
Avicenna thinks he is following Fârâbî, Averroes thinks that Avicenna has lapsed into
errors of Kindî that Fârâbî had already refuted. Thomas Aquinas accepts much of
Averroes' criticism of Avicenna but tries to reconstruct his essence-existence distinction
and his conception of God's causality; and other defenses and reconstructions of
Avicenna are tried out in later Muslim philosophy. If we don't get to any of these later
writers, we will at least try to bring out the problems that they were addressing.
While I don't yet have a detailed map of the course, I expect the main sequence of
topics to be roughly as follows:
1) Avicenna's conception of the science of metaphysics as shown in Shifâ' Metaphysics
Book I; how he sees the structure of Aristotle's Metaphysics and how he sees his own
Metaphysics as related to Aristotle's; comparisons with Fârâbî and other readers of
Aristotle's Metaphysics, and other views on the aim of metaphysics; being as the subject
[mawdû', uJpokeivmenon] and God as the object [matlûb, zhtouvmenon] of
metaphysics; in what sense metaphysics is the science of things separate from matter;
what is the role of the per se attributes of being; in what sense metaphysics is a
superordinate science and other sciences are subordinate
2) Avicenna's proofs of the existence, uniqueness and attributes of God and his causal
derivation of the world from him, compared with Fârâbî's proofs in the Principles of the
Opinions of the People of the Perfect City; Avicenna's attempts to improve on Fârâbî, and
to rescue Fârâbî's argument at several key junctures where it runs into difficulty, by
beginning from a critical examination of the notions of being and of the per se attributes
of being, especially modal and causal notions
3) In what sense (for Aristotle, for the Kindî circle, for Fârâbî, for Avicenna, for
Averroes) is God the first cause of being? Questions about the concept of being, about
different senses of being (being as divided into the categories, being as truth, being per
accidens, being as actuality and as potentiality), about different kinds of cause of being in
different senses, especially as raised by Fârâbî in the Kitâb al-Hurûf; the emergence of
the essence/existence distinction and challenges to it (by Fârâbî against the Kindî circle,
by Ghazâlî and Averroes against Avicenna, reconstructions by Thomas and by later
Muslim philosophers); in what sense does Aristotle have a concept of existence and of
causes of existence, and how does he see 1-place being (S is) and 2-place being (S is P)
as related; are Avicenna and Thomas making progress over Aristotle, are they
introducing confusions?
I have ordered ten copies of Marmura's Arabic-and-English version, Avicenna, The
Metaphysics of the Healing (full reference above), at the McGill Bookstore. If we run out
of copies, you can order extras from online booksellers such as Amazon or Abebooks or
direct from the University of Chicago Press (which has a lot in stock and says it can get
them to Montreal within a week). I will make other texts available by putting them on
reserve (probably in the Islamic Studies Library) or by leaving materials to photocopy in
the philosophy department office, Leacock 908. I will assume that you have access to
Aristotle, in particular the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics. (If not, there should be
extra copies of the McKeon-Reeve Basic Works of Aristotle, which I have ordered for
my undergraduate Aristotle course and which will contain most or all of the relevant
texts, at the Word Bookstore on Milton Street.) Please bring a copy of Aristotle's
Metaphysics (in whatever language you prefer) with you to seminar each day, as well as
Avicenna and the other relevant texts assigned for each week. It is not enough to do
readings in the library: you must always bring each week's texts with you to class, in
photocopies if necessary.
The course will meet for one 2-hour lecture-discussion session each week. Discussions
will depend very heavily on details of the reading: you must always have done each
week's reading carefully and on time, and have the texts with you in class, so that you are
prepared to answer questions about them. These are extremely difficult texts, and you
should allow yourself considerable time to do the readings and reflect carefully and
critically on what is going on in them. Do not come to class if you have been unable to do
the readings.
The course is open to graduate students and senior concentrators in philosophy and to
graduate students in the Institute of Islamic Studies. The prerequisite is a course on
Aristotle including at least some of the Metaphysics, Philosophy 355 at McGill or the
equivalent elsewhere. Some knowledge of Islamic philosophy and intellectual history
would be desirable but is not required. No knowledge of Greek or Arabic is presupposed,
although it would of course be an advantage, and although you will have to be willing to
listen to discussions of the meanings of Greek and Arabic technical terms, and in some
cases to accept these foreign words as technical terms in English for the duration of the
seminar.
Grades will be based on a 20-25 page research term-paper due on the last day of class
(50%), on class participation (30%), and on written outlines and analyses of the
arguments of particular texts (20%): I will ask each student some appropriate number of
times (depending on class size) during the term to prepare such an analysis and to copy it
and distribute it in class as an aid to discussion. (Please get a copy of your handout to me
24 hours before the class.) The class participation mark depends on serious active
participation in discussions, and may involve leading discussion of some topics as
requested. You should pick a topic for the term-paper early in the term, in consultation
with me, and be working on it concurrently with the course. The term-paper should be on
a section of Avicenna, or a discussion between Avicenna and some other thinker, that we
have not discussed extensively in seminar. To receive a passing grade for the course,
students must show that they have kept up with the readings and are able to discuss them
in class; students who are unable to do this will be asked to withdraw.
McGill requires me to add the following paragraph: "McGill University values
academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and
consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the code of
student conduct and disciplinary procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more
information)."
My office is Leacock 921; I will be available there Wednesdays from 4:00 to 6:00 and
by appointment. I can often be reached (especially in the evenings) at my office phone
number, 398-6056.