Avicenna’s Notion of Fiṭrīyāt: A Note on Gutas’s Interpretation

Abstract

Dimitri Gutas has argued that Avicennian fiṭrīyāt (or propositions based on data with built-in syllogisms), as a group of principles of syllogism, are analytic and non-a priori, in the Kantian sense. In this paper I show that this analysis of Avicennian fiṭrīyāt is not tenable. I argue that if we want to find a place for fiṭrīyāt in the Kantian matrix of analyticity and a priority, we should accept that at least some of fiṭrīyāt are synthetic a priori.