Abstract
This paper addresses two questions related to Themistius’ alleged influence on Avicenna’s theory of the common sense. The first question concerns the phenomenon of incidental perception, which Themistius explained by means of the common sense. For Avicenna, on the contrary, the explanation of cases like our perceiving something yellow as honey involves the faculty of estimation and the entire system of the internal senses that he coined, and this results in an analysis that is considerably more complex than Themistius’. The second question concerns Themistius’ claim according to which an incorporeal spirit is the primary subject of perception. I argue that Avicenna departs from such a view both because for him spirit is a corporeal substance and because he insists that the subject of all cognition is the soul, not any of its faculties. Finally, I conclude by briefly considering other, more general ways in which Themistius could have influenced Avicenna’s psychology.
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Notes
- 1.
Taylor 2019. According to this theory, all cognition consists in the abstraction (tajrīd) of cognitive forms from their material attachments. Abstraction is a process that takes place in increasing stages: sense perception abstracts the form from its designated matter but still requires a constant causal connection between that matter and the sense organ; imagination abstracts from the causal connection but retains the sensible features; estimation abstracts from the sensible features but retains the connection to a particular sensible object; and finally, intellection abstracts from the connection to any single particular.
- 2.
See Averroes, Comm. in de An., ad 3.7, 431b16–19, 480–502.
- 3.
Cf. Thāmisṭiyūs, In de An. 5, 148. I here cite exclusively the Arabic translation of Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn, the only extant Arabic translation and possibly the one Avicenna used (see, however, the next note). For references to the Greek text, please consult Coda’s paper in this volume.
- 4.
This is uncertain, because as Coda mentions (Chap. 7, 143–44), an ambiguous reference in the bookseller and bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 990) suggests that Isḥāq may have produced two translations of the text, and there are reasons to believe that Avicenna may have used the other one. See also Frank 1958/59 and Lyons 1973, viii–xi.
- 5.
Thāmisṭiyūs, In de An. 5, 148.12–15.
- 6.
Thāmisṭiyūs, In de An. 5, 151.14–152.1.
- 7.
Gregorić 2017: 52. I have not found an explicit reference to this argument in Avicenna. However, his theory of colour as a configuration of light, and the related denial of the corporeality of light (Shifāʾ: Nafs 3.2–3), can avoid the problem by largely the same means.
- 8.
Literally, disgraceful (al-shaniʿ).
- 9.
Isḥāq here renders the Greek logos by the notoriously ambiguous term maʿnā, which I hesitate to translate. In my understanding, the idea is that the essence of the common sense, as captured in a concept, entails that the common sense is incorporeal.
- 10.
Thāmisṭiyūs, In de An. 5, 151.5–13.
- 11.
Although Isḥāq’s Arabic is profuse in personal pronouns, it consistently distinguishes between the masculine (here in reference to rūḥ, or spirit) and the feminine (here in reference to the quwwa, or the faculty, of common sense) in this passage. I have spelled out the reference in square brackets.
- 12.
Throughout this passage, Avicenna uses the term maʿnā (pl. maʿānī) in the technical sense denoting the cognitive objects proper to the faculty of estimation. In order to stay clear of the debate of how exactly the maʿānī should be understood or how the term should be translated, I have chosen to let the Arabic term stand for this class of objects. I have presented my interpretation in Kaukua 2014.
- 13.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.1, 166.5–16.
- 14.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.1, 164–65.
- 15.
- 16.
Avicenna’s critics did not always appreciate this. For instance, Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. 1165), and later on Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635/36), accused him of analysing the soul’s primordial unity into pieces that he failed to put back together. See my concluding remarks for some further elaboration and references.
- 17.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 5.8, 263.9. This is not entirely insignificant, for there are questions, albeit ones quite unrelated to our present concern, in which the corporeality of the organs of the internal senses is of pivotal importance. Consider, for instance, Avicenna’s argument for the corporeality of our faculty of imagination , by means of which we think about geometrical problems, in Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.3, 188–92. For another example, he explains vertigo as due to the spirit’s circular movement in the brain (Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.1, 164).
- 18.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.2, 179.18–20.
- 19.
Cf. also Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 3.7, 144; 3.8, 152–54; and 5.8, 265–66. Avicenna also specifies that spirit comes in different degrees of subtlety, depending on the function in which it is designed to serve (5.8, 263–64).
- 20.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.1, 165.8.
- 21.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.3, 185.7 and 182.14, respectively.
- 22.
Cf. Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 4.1, 168–69; and 5.8, 268.9.
- 23.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 5.7, 252–57. I have analysed this passage at length in Kaukua 2015: 64–72.
- 24.
Avicenna, Shifāʾ: Nafs 2.2, 66.5–14.
- 25.
Avicenna, Taʿlīqāt §10, 30; cf. §11, 32; §462, 271; §998, 575–76; and §1005, 579.
- 26.
Think of, for instance, de An. 1.4, 408b11–17, where Aristotle says that instead of saying that “the soul pities or learns or thinks,” we should rather say “that it is the man who does this with his soul.” The terms are different but the underlying idea is similar.
- 27.
Abū l-Barakāt, Muʿtabar 2.6.3.4, 2.318–19.
- 28.
See the seminal study in Sorabji 1991.
- 29.
Averroes , Tahāfut al-Tahāfut 3, 182.3–4. The writing of this paper was generously funded by the European Research Council (grant agreement no. 682779).
- 30.
The anonymous edition of Al-Kitāb al-Muʿtabar has often been ascribed to Şerafettin Yaltkaya, by myself among others, but since he is not explicitly mentioned as the editor anywhere in the three volumes and since there are reasons to believe he in fact was not the editor (see Tunagöz 2017: 197 n.32), I have decided to list this entry under an anonymous editor.
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Kaukua, J. (2020). On Common Sense, Estimation, and the Soul’s Unity in Avicenna. In: Bennett, D., Toivanen, J. (eds) Philosophical Problems in Sense Perception: Testing the Limits of Aristotelianism. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56946-4_8
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