Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina (Latin: Avicenna, 980–1037) was a Persian philosopher and physician whose synthesis of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Islamic thought shaped both falsafa and Latin scholasticism. Trained in Bukhara under Samanid patronage, he served as physician and vizier in successive courts across Khurasan and western Iran, composing the encyclopedic Kitab al-Shifa (Book of Healing), the medical Qanun fi al-Tibb, and the late, more austere al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat. His metaphysics centers on the distinction between essence (mahiyya) and existence (wujud) and on the proof from contingency: contingent beings require a Necessary Existent (wajib al-wujud) whose essence is identical with its existence — the demonstrative core of his natural theology. He also defended a doctrine of emanation, the eternity of the world, and an immaterial intellect surviving the body, illustrated by the 'Flying Man' thought experiment for self-awareness. These positions provoked al-Ghazali's celebrated refutation in Tahafut al-Falasifa, which charged Avicennan philosophers with unbelief on three points (eternity of the world, God's knowledge of particulars, bodily resurrection). Despite this, Ibn Sina's framework dominated post-classical Islamic theology — absorbed by Ash'ari and Shi'i kalam alike — and reached Latin readers through twelfth-century Toledo translations, decisively influencing Aquinas. Modern scholarship (Gutas, Wisnovsky, Marmura, McGinnis) continues to reassess his originality vis-à-vis Aristotle and his role in shaping later Islamic philosophy through Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra.