Avicenna on Compositive Imagination in the Context of Active Perception Debates
Article Sidebar
DOI:
10.12730/is.1751643Abstract
The history of philosophy reflects the tensions between the claim that the human mind is the mere perceiver of objective reality in the external world and the claim that the human mind is the founder of objective reality in the external world. Is the object perceived without any processing? Or is perception formed in the mind through certain processes? In classical philosophical psychology, including Avicenna’s, the internal senses are referred to as the faculties that enable the relation between the purely rational and the purely material in the perception and movements of both celestial and human souls. The discussions about the imagination that occurred in this period are important not only because of the questions they raised but also because they highlighted areas of tension among fragmentation, difference, and individuality in the sensory realm and among simplicity, commonality, and generality in the rational realm. This article analyses how Avicenna’s scheme of internal senses, and particularly compositive imagination, influenced his position on active perception. To this end, first, the scheme of internal senses, which originated with Avicenna, is considered. Second, Avicenna’s redefinition of the functions of compositive imagination, especially with respect to active perception, is analyzed
References
Alpina, Tommaso. “Intellectual Knowledge, Active Intellect and Intellectual Memory in Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Nafs and Its Aristotelian Background”. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 25 (2014), 131-183.
Alpina, Tommaso. Subject, Definition, Activity: Framing Avicenna’s Science of the Soul. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
Alwishah, Ahmed R. D. Avicenna’s Philosophy of Mind: Self-Awareness and Intentionality. Los Angeles: University of California, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2006.
Black, Deborah L. “Avicenna on the Ontological and Epistemic Status of Fictional Beings”. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997), 425-453.
Black, Deborah L. “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions”. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 32/2 (1993), 219-258. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217300014414
Black, Deborah L. “Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations”. Topoi 19 (2000), 59-75.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006399407731
Black, Deborah. “Rational Imagination: Avicenna on the Cogitative Power”. Philosophical Psychology in Arabic Thought and the Latin Aristotelianism of the 13th Century. ed. Luis Xavier López-Farjeat - Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp. 59-81. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Brann, Eva T. H. The World of the Imagination - Sum and Substance. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Bundy, Murray W. The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought. Illinois: The University of Illinois, 1927.
Cai, Zhenyu. “Mad Man, Sleeper and Fire: Avicenna on the Perception of the External”. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 35/1 (March 2025), 53-70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423924000110
D’Ancona, Cristina. “Degrees of Abstraction in Avicenna: How to Combine Aristotle’s De Anima and the Enneads”. Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. ed. Simo Knuuttila - Pekka Kӓrkkӓinen. 47-71. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6125-7_4
Davidson, Herbert A. “Alfarabi and Avicenna on the Active Intellect”. Viator 3/1 (January 1972), 109-178. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301667
Davidson, Herbert A. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Frank, Richard M. “Some Fragments of Isḥâq’s Translation of the de Anima”. Cahiers de Byrsa 8 (1958-1959), 231-251.
Gilson, Étienne. “Les sources gréco-arabes de l’augustinisme avicennisant”. Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 4 (1929-1930), 1-107.
Gutas, Dimitri. “Avicenna: The Metaphysics of the Rational Soul”. The Muslim World 102/3-4 (October 2012), 417-425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.2012.01413.x
Gutas, Dimitri. “Imagination and Transcendental Knowledge in Avicenna”. Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy – From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank. ed. James E. Montgomery. 337-354. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2006.
Gutas, Dimitri. “Intellect Without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna”. Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy. ed. Maria Cândida Pacheco - José Francisco Meirinhos. 351-372. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.RPM-EB.3.2880
Gutas, Dimitri. “Intuition and Thinking: The Evolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology”. Aspects of Avicenna. ed. Robert Wisnovsky. 1-38. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
Gutas, Dimitri. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Works. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Hall, Robert E. “A Decisive Example of the Influence of Psychological Doctrine in Islamic Science and Culture: Some Relationships Between Ibn Sīnā’s Psychology, Other Branches of His Thought, and Islamic Teachings”. Journal for the History of Arabic Science 3 (1979), 46-84.
Hall, Robert E. “Intellect, Soul and Body in Ibn Sīnā: Systematic Synthesis and Development of the Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and Galenic Theories”. Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam. ed. Jon McGinnis. 62-86. Leiden: Brill, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047405818_007
Harvey, E. Ruth. The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute University of London, 1975.
Hasse, Dag N. “Avicenna on Abstraction”. Aspects of Avicenna. ed. Robert Wisnovsky. 39-72. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
Hasse, Dag N. Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–1300. London: The Warburg Institute, 2000.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. Avicenna’s De Anima (Arabic Text): Being the Psychological Part of Kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. Fazlur Rahman. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. “Risālah fī l-nafs wa-baqāʾihā wa-maʿādihā”. Aḥwāl al-nafs. ed. Aḥmad Fuʾād al-Ahwānī. 45-143. Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyyah, 1952.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt. ed. ʿAlī Riḍā Najafzādah. Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār wa-Mafākhir-i Farhangī, 2005.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād. ed. ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī. Tahrān: Muʾassasah-ʾi Muṭālaʿāt-i Islāmī Dānishgāh-i Māk Gīl, 1984.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. al-Mubāḥathāt. ed. Muḥsin Bīdārfar. Qom: Intishārāt-i Bīdār, 1371/1992.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. al-Qānūn fī l-ṭibb. ed. Idwār al-Qashsh. Beirut: Muʾassasat ʿIzz al-Dīn, 1993.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. al-Taʿlīqāt. ed. Ḥusayn Mūsawiyān. Tehran: Muʾassasah-ʾi Pizūhishī-yi Ḥikmat wa-l-Falsafa-ʾi Īrān, 2013.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. Kitāb al-Hidāyah. ed. Muḥammad ʿAbduh. Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhirah al-Ḥadīthah, 1974.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. Kitāb al-Najāh fī l-ḥikmah al-manṭiqiyyah wa-l-ṭabīʿiyyah wa-l-ilāhiyyah. ed. Mājid Fakhrī. Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīdah, 1985.
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī. ʿUyūn al-ḥikmah. ed. Muḥammad Jabr - Muwaffaq Fawzī Jabr. Damascus: Dār al-Yanābīʿ, 1996.
Ivry, Alfred L “The Arabic Text of Aristotle’s de Anima and its Translator”. Oriens 36 (2001), 59-77. https://doi.org/10.2307/1580476
Ivry, Alfred L. “The Triangulating the Imagination: Avicenna, Maimonides, and Averroes”. Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy. ed. Maria Cândida Pacheco - José Francisco Meirinhos. 667-676. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.RPM-EB.3.2901
Kaukua, Jari. “Avicenna on the Soul’s Activity in Perception”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 99-116. Cham: Springer, 2014.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_6
Kaukua, Jari. “Avicenna’s Outsourced Rationalism”. Journal of the History of Philosophy 58/2 (April 2020), 215-240. https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2020.0037
Kearney, Richard. The Wake of Imagination. London: Routledge, 2003.
Kemp, Simon - Fletcher, Garth J. O. “The Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses”. The American Journal of Psychology 106/4 (Winter 1993), 559-576. https://doi.org/10.2307/1422969
Kind, Amy (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination. London - New York: Routledge, 2016.
Klaus, Corcilius. “Activity, Passivity, and Perceptual Discrimination in Aristotle”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 31-53. Cham: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_3
Kocakaplan, Nursema. Fârâbî ve İbn Sînâ’da Tahayyül. İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2024.
Kurun, İsmail. “Avicenna’s Intuitionist Rationalism”. History of Philosophy Quarterly 38/4 (October 2021), 317-336. https://doi.org/10.5406/21521026.38.4.02
Lizzini, Olga. “L’âme chez Avicenne: quelques remarques autour de son statut épistémologique et de son fondament métaphysique”. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 21 (2010), 223-242.
McGinnis, Jon. “Making Abstraction Less Abstract: The Logical, Psychological, and Metaphysical Dimensions of Avicenna’s Theory of Abstraction”. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 80 (2006), 169-183. https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2006804
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium: Text with Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Ogden, Stephen R. “Avicenna’s Emanated Abstraction”. Philosopher’s Imprint 20/10 (April 2020), 1-26.
Pormann, Peter E. “Avicenna on Medical Practice, Epistemology, and the Physiology of the Inner Senses”. Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays. ed. Peter Adamson. 91-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139047890.006
Rahman, Fazlur. Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1958.
Remes, Paulina. “Plato: Interaction Between the External Body and the Perceiver in the Timaeus”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 9-30. Cham: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_2
Silva, Jose Filipe - Yrjönsuuri, Mikko. “Introduction: The World as a Stereogram”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 1-7. Cham: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_1
Silva, José Filipe. “Augustine on Active Perception”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 79-98. Cham: Springer, 2014.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_5
Silva, José Filipe. “Medieval Theories of Active Perception: An Overview”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 117-146. Cham: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_7
Tachau, Katherine H. “Approaching Medieval Scholars’ Treatment of Cognition”. Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy. ed. Maria Cândida Pacheco - José Francisco Meirinhos. 1-34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.RPM-EB.3.2868
Taylor, Richard C. “Avicenna and the Issue of the Intellectual Abstraction of Intelligibles”. Philosophy of Mind in the Early and High Middle Ages. ed. Margaret Cameron. 56-82. London - New York: Routledge, 2019.
Tiryaki, Mehmet Zahit. “Duyumsama, Soyutlama ve Duyulur Nitelikler: İbn Sînâ Nitelce Temsilcisi ya da Dışsalcısı Olabilir mi?”. Felsefe Arkivi 62 (Haziran 2025), 59-76. https://doi.org/10.26650/arcp.260625
Tiryaki, Mehmet Zahit. “Tahayyül Kavramında İbn Sînâcı Dönüşümler”. Kavram Geliştirme – Sosyal Bilimlerde Yeni İmkanlar. ed. Kübra Bilgin Tiryaki - Lütfi Sunar. 199-252. Ankara: Nobel, 2016.
Tiryaki, Mehmet Zahit. İbn Sînâ Felsefesinde Mütehayyile/Müfekkire ve Vehim. İstanbul: Marmara University Social Sciences Institute, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2015.
Tuominen, Miira. “On Activity and Passivity in Perception: Aristotle, Philoponus, and Pseudo-Simplicius”. Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy. ed. José Filipe Silva - Mikko Yrjönsuuri. 55-78. Cham: Springer, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_4
Watson, Gerard. Phantasia in Classical Thought. Galway: Galway University Press, 1988.
Wedin, Michael V. Mind and Imagination in Aristotle. New Haven - London: Yale University Press, 1988.
Wolfson, Harry A. “The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophical Texts”. The Harvard Theological Review 28/2 (1935), 69-133.