Avicenna
Abū 'Alī al-Husayn ibn' Abd Allah ibn Sina, known as Avicenna (in Persian: ابو علی الحسين بن عبد الله بن سينا) was a philosopher, a writer, a physician and a scientist Shiite Muslim of Persian origin. He got interested in many sciences, including astronomy. He was born August 7 980 (the first month of Safar in the year 370 of the Hegira) to Afshéna near Bukhara part of the province of Khorasan in Persia, now in Uzbekistan, and died in Hamadan, in Iran, in August 1037 (the first Friday of Ramadan 428 of the Hegira).
His followers called Sheikh al-Rais, prince of scholars, the greatest doctors, the Master par excellence, the third Master (after Aristotle and Al-Farabi).
Historical Context
In the early centuries of the Hegira (seventh and eighth century), Eastern intellectuals translate, compile and comment on the writings of ancient Greek in particular. A competition begins between Arab culture and Persian culture. 750 to 850, Abbasid caliphs period, the science known as "Muslim" reached its peak. The rulers paid, sometimes its weight in gold, any book recently translated, and that is, from the ninth century, a major part of the literature of Greece was available in Arabic. The philosopher al-Farabi (d. 950), the second master (in reference to the first teacher, Aristotle), holds a prominent place in this dynamic.
The texts and traditions of Islamic dogma fixerent at that time:
* The Sunni, with al-Ash'ari (935)
* The Shi'a duodecimain with Saduq Shaykh Ibn Babuyeh (991) and Shaykh Mufid (1022)
* The Ismaeli, or Shi'a Ismaili branch of Shiism, in Arabic and Persian.
Latin in the West, the Middle Ages, between the collapse of the Roman Empire (476, Heruli invasion) and the Renaissance (1453, the fall of Constantinople).
Biography
Avicenna, its full name Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah Ibn Sina was born in August 980 to Khormeytan (or Afshéna, "Country of the Sun"), near Bukhara, east of the Persia (Transoxiana, the current Uzbekistan). His father was a Shia Ismaili Muslim and his mother probably of Jewish origin - there is a controversy about this. Avicenna would later converted to Shiism duodécimain. It seems he was in his early interest in natural sciences and medicine, to 14 years, he studied alone. Avicenna was sent during her early childhood studying computing at a merchant, al-Natili. Having a good memory, the boy eventually surpass his master in calculation and mathematics. It retains memory the entire Quran. He studied at Bukhara, interested in all the sciences, especially medicine. It is influenced by a treaty of al-Farabi, which allows it to overcome its difficulties in the study of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. The early studies in a double early in the career for 16 years, he led the famous doctors.
Everything then s'enchaene: having healed the Samanid prince of Bukhara, Nuh ibn Mansur, a serious disease, it is allowed to see the vast library of the palace. His appetite for knowledge helping, he owned 18 years all the sciences known. After the death of the prince and his father, who forced to make a living, began his nomadic lifestyle. He travels first in Khârezm, which was independent principality (from 994 to 1231) to the south of the Aral Sea, on both sides of Djihoun (Amu Darya) between Bukhara and the Caspian Sea. At Djouzdjan, a powerful protector, Abu Muhammed Shirazi, allows him to give public lectures. He began to compose his great work, the Qanun (or Canon) of Medicine.
It then passes through Khorassan, the current north-east of Iran, then Rayy (then Rhages, close to current Tehran), and in Hamadan (west of modern Iran), where the emir Shams bouyide o-dowleh chose minister (vizier). It then needed a work harassing the day, he dedicated himself to the public at night to science. In addition to live two careers, he works doubly: it leads from the front of the composition and the Shifa medical Canon, the task is so overwhelming that it must get help: two disciples share leaflets reading of two books , whose true Al-Juzjani, secretary and biographer.
In 1021, the death of Prince Shams-o dowleh, and the beginning of the reign of his son o-Sama dowleh, crystallize the ambitions and resentments: victim of political intrigues, Avicenna knows prison. Disguised as a dervish, he managed to escape and fled in Isfahan, with the emir kakouyide `o-Ala dowleh. These changes do not work its bulimia.
He had such a reputation that many princes of Asia called for their court: the king of Persia employability as both as a physician and vizier. He also successfully cultivated the philosophy, and was one of the first to study and make Aristotle. He composed according to the philosopher of the Treaties of logic and metaphysics, where he often shows original thinker.
In a dispatch, which was part of the emir `Ala o-dowleh against Hamadan, Avicenna was hit by a severe intestinal crisis, which he suffered for a long time, and contracted, it is said, as a result of excessive work and pleasure. Avicenna attempted to take care of himself, but his remedy it was fatal. He died at the age, still early, fifty-seven years in August 1037 (428 of the Hegira) after a very hectic life and full of vicissitudes, exhausted by excessive work.
Controversy around the confession of the mother of Avicenna
The confession of the mother of Avicenna is known as secondary sources. If it can be assumed at first that she is Muslim, some sources indicate that she was Jewish: this is the case in Avicenna Gilbert Sinou. If this question could have little impact on the scope of the work of the scientist that was Avicenne, it could have had an influence on the education he received. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni have spread this information to "defame" the philosopher,
His work
To a greater or lesser extent depending on the source (276 titles for GC Anawati, 242 for Yahya Mahdavi), the work of Avicenna is numerous and varied. Avicenna wrote mainly in scholarly language of his time, classical Arabic, but sometimes in the vernacular language, Persian.
He is the author of monuments, works more modest, but also short texts. His work covers the entire scope of knowledge of his time:
* Logic, linguistics, poetry;
* Physics, psychology, medicine, chemistry;
* Mathematics, music, astronomy;
* Legal and economics;
* Metaphysical;
* Mystic and comments suras of the Koran.
The design staff philosopher finds its completion in Eastern philosophy (Hikmat mashriqiya), which took the form of the compilation of twenty-eight thousand questions. This work of the bag disappeared at Isfahan (1034), and it remains only a few fragments.
For several centuries, until the seventeenth century, the Qanun is the foundation of education in Europe, where it beat Galen, as well as Asia.
He is using the case of rhubarb, the tamarind, the myrobatan, etc..
Influences
Avicenna end literate, was the translator of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, and had a care in the study of Aristotle. There is a general movement which saw the philosophers of Islamic culture to discover the Greek culture and later to rediscover the West.
Avicenna was close to the Ismaili Shiism, which owned the course his father and brother, and his autobiography relates Does their efforts to lead to its accession to the Ismaili dawat. However, Avicenna duodécimain belonged to Shiism. Today, it would be strongly denounced by the Salafist wahabbites and, among many Sunni Muslims.
Membership or non-ismaelisme is controversial and remains a current debate on the influence of this branch of Islam. The ismaélisme includes important figures such as Abu Yaqoub Sejestani (tenth century), Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 933), Hamid Kermani (circa 1017) or e Nasir Khosraw (between 1072 and 1077) whose work has strongly influenced the thinking in Islam. Thus, the Ten Intelligences theory (see below), which began in al-Farabi is among Hamid Kermani before qu'Avicenne does ownership.
Influence of Avicenna
His Canon met a great success, which eclipsed the earlier work of Rhazes (850 - 926), of Haly-Abbas (930 - 994) and Abu al-Qasim (936 - 1013) and even those of Ibn - Al-Nafis (1210 - 1288) who are after him. The crusaders of the twelfth to the seventeenth century in Europe brought the Canon of Medicine, which influenced the practice and teaching of Western medicine.
The book was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona between 1150 and 1187, printed in Hebrew and in Milan in 1473, then in 1527 in Venice and Rome in 1593. His influence was lasting and Canon is disputed until the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci rejects anatomy and Paracelsus the burns. It is the development of European science that will cause obsolescence, for example the description of blood circulation by William Harvey in 1628. However long this book marked the study of medicine and even in 1909, a course of medicine, Avicenna was given to Brussels.
Avicenna stands out in the fields of ophthalmology, the obstetrics-gynecology and psychology. There is much to the description of symptoms, describing all the diseases listed at the time, including those in psychiatry.
* It is the first to distinguish pleurisy, mediastinitis and the sub-phrenic abscess.
* It describes the two forms of facial paralysis (central and peripheral)
* It gives the symptoms of diabetes.
* He knows how the differential diagnosis of pyloric stenosis and stomach ulcer.
* It describes different varieties of jaundice.
* It gives a description of the cataract, meningitis, etc..
* It urged the role of rats in the spread of plague.
* It indicates that some infections are transmitted through the placenta.
* It is the first to recommend treatments bladders ice and rectal enemas.
* He discovered that blood from the heart to go to the lungs, and then come back and explain exactly the system of ventricles and valves of the heart.
* It is the first to describe the anatomy of the human eye.
* It also expresses the assumption that water and air contain tiny organisms vectors of certain infectious diseases.
But above all, Avicenna deals with ways to maintain health. It recommends the regular practice of sport or hydrotherapy in preventive and curative medicine. He stressed the importance of human relationships in the conservation of a healthy mental and somatic.
Avicenna medicine could be summarized in the introductory sentence of Urdjuza Tib-Fi '(Poem of Medicine): "Medicine is the art of maintaining health and possibly even cure the disease occurred in the body."
Philosophical doctrine
His philosophical doctrine, particularly its metaphysics, is based on that of Aristotle and the work of Al-Farabi. His other works are characterized by the search for Eastern philosophy and a personal mystique.
Metaphysics
Islamic philosophy, imbued with theology, Aristotle understood more clearly the distinction between essence and existence: while there is the contingent, the accidental, gasoline is, by definition, which persists in the being through its accidents.
First Intelligence
Gasoline, for Avicenna, is non-contingent. For a petrol should be updated in a (live), then the existence is made necessary by the essence itself. This relationship of cause and effect, always because gasoline is not contingent is inherent in the essence itself. So there must be a necessary gasoline itself that there could be possible: not necessarily, or even God, this being created by the First Intelligence product.
This definition profoundly alters the design of creation: it is no longer a god creating a whim, but a divine thought that thinks itself the passage of the first to be entered is a necessity and rather than a will. Then the world comes from God through His overabundance of Intelligence, according to what the Neoplatonists named product: a causal immaterial.
Avicenna draws on the work of Al-Farabi, but this difference is not necessarily which is the origin of all (see the Ten intelligences). This prospect would be more compatible with the Koran.
The creation
This is First Intelligence that will conduct the creation of plurality. Indeed,
* The First Intelligence, contemplating the principle that there is necessarily (ie God), gives rise to the Second Intelligence.
* The First Intelligence, in contemplating like an emanation of this principle gives rise to the First Soul, behind the sphere of spheres (which contains all the others).
* The First Intelligence, contemplating the nature of gasoline made possible by itself, ie the possibility of its existence, creates the material that fills the sphere of spheres is the sphere of fixed.
This triple contemplation introduces the first degrees to be. It repeats itself, giving rise to the double hierarchy:
* Superior, Avicenna are known as the Cherubim (Kerubim);
* Lower hierarchy, Avicenna are known as the angels of the magnificence these souls animate the heavens, but are devoid of meaning (meaning of the sensory perception), which lie between pure intelligible and sensitive, and are characterized by their imagination, which allows them to be desired intelligence they carry. The movement to print it eternal heaven result of their research still unsatisfied of intelligence that they want to achieve. They are the source of the visions of the prophets, for example.
This hierarchy corresponds to Ten inclusive Spheres (Sphere of the Spheres, Sphere of Fixed seven planetary spheres, Sphere sublunaire).
Angel
The tenth intelligence is of singular importance: Also called intellect agent or the angel Gabriel and associated with in the Koran, it is so far from the principle that the product breaks into a multitude of fragments. Indeed, contemplation of the angel himself, as an emanation of the ninth intelligence, is not the soul of heaven, but human souls. While Angels of Magnificence lack of meaning, human souls have a sensual imagination, sensitive, giving them the power to move the body material.
For Avicenna, the human intellect is not built for the abstraction of forms and ideas. The intelligent man is in power, but only illumination Angel gives them the power to move from knowledge to knowledge power in action. However, the strength with which the Angel enlightens the human intellect varies:
* The prophets, inundated with the influx to the point where it radiates not only the rational intellect but also imagination, re-emit to other men this glut;
* Others receive so much influx, though smaller than the prophets, they write, teach, legislate, also participating in the redistribution to the other;
* Still others receive enough for their personal perfection;
* And finally, so little that they never enter the act.
According to this view, humanity shares a single agent intellect, ie a collective consciousness. The final stage of human life, then, is union with the angelic emanation. So this gives immortal soul, to all those who made the perception of the angelic influx habit, the ability to surexistence, ie immortality.
For the neo-Platonic, which is part Avicenna, the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature and not an end.
Eastern philosophy
The second part of the philosophy avicennienne is not known; the eponymous book disappeared during the sack of Isfahan, in 1034, at the same time as the "Book of arbitration fair" (Kitab al-Insaf), and Avicenna n 'was not the time or the strength to rewrite. This monumental work (twenty-eight thousand questions) are still a few fragments. Henry Corbin think these works are the starting point of the Eastern philosophy that leads Sohrawardi later completed.
The West and the East
Western orientalists have long debated the meaning of the term mashriqiya:
* A dispute over the vocalization (mushriqiya instead of mashriqiya) leads some Orientalists to speak of a philosophy enlightenment.
* The location of the "oriental" has given rise to intense speculation, but no case has never really convinced.
The tradition in Islamic mysticism and theosophy, considers mashriq (East) as a world of light, that of intelligence and therefore of the Angels, as opposed to maghrib (the West), which represents the world sublunaire, world of darkness where decline souls. This concept is already explicit in Avicenna (see story symbolic Hayy ibn Yaqzan), and will be even more with his critics and commentators, as Sohrawardi.
The mystical East
Avicenna is the author of four texts on Eastern philosophy, the "Story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan", the "Story of the bird", the "Story of Salaman and Absâl"
* Story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan: Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a child on an isolated island. He discovered himself the universe around him. This story is an introduction to the East, archangeliques forms of light, as opposed to the West and the Far West (instead of the pure). Hayy ibn Yaqzan personalises Avicenna in his relationship with Angel.
* Story of the bird: This story addresses the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan. He undertook the trip to the Far East, this quest for absolute terms to reach the City of King. " The soul has awakened to itself. In the ecstasy of a mental ascent, it crosses the valleys and channels of the cosmic mountain in the company of an angel.
* Story of Salaman and Absâl: This story describes the plight of two heroes of the final part of Kitab al-Isharat wa-l-tanbihat (Book of Directives and Remarks). These two characters typisent both intellects - contemplative (or speculative) and practical - that duality is reflected in couples and Adam Light Phos land, Prometheus and Epimetheus, in a word célestiel man and man of flesh. Thus the structure of the soul is divided by the same structure ordering couples Kerubim-Archangels and Angels-Ames (see above).
Influence of Avicenna
The influence of Avicenna is twofold:
1) The flow of Latin Avicennisme opposing currents of other medieval scholasticism (see Averroism);
2) The flow of Iranian Avicennisme, represented by Nasir Tusi.
Avicenna and Averroes
Avicenna for "the human intellect has neither the role nor the power of abstracting the intelligible sensitive. All knowledge and reminiscence is an offshoot and an illumination from the Angel "(Henry Corbin). The intelligent man is in power, but without the angelic intervention, such remains untapped.
For its part, will identify Averroes Aristotelianism Platonists additions that had grafted on him point emanates from him.
Alchimie
Is famous in the West thought alchemical Avicenna, thanks to De congelatione and conglutinatione lapidum (From the freezer and the conglutination of stone). This is a summary translation of part of Kitab al-Shifa Avicenna, addressing "the formation of stones, the origin of mountains, the classification of minerals (rocks, liquefied, sulphurs, salts) and origin of the metals. " Avicenna explains that the metal "resulting from the union of mercury with a land sulphurous. This treaty has been added around 1200 by Alfred Sareshel of Book IV of Meteorological Aristotle, so he could pass for Aristotelian. Avicenna denies the possibility of chemical transmutation of metals: "As to what the alchemists, we must realize that it is not in their power to truly transform one species into the other, but it is their able to make beautiful imitations until the red dye in a white to make it quite similar to silver or yellow to make it quite similar to gold. " On the other hand, a pseudo-Avicenna wrote De anima in arte alchemiae.(W3C)
Read also Asklepios
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