Avicenna: The Metaphysics of the Rational Soul

Abstract

The subject that animates–literally–Avicenna’s philosophical system and lends to it unity and coherence is his theory of the rational soul, i.e., the part of the soul which is distinctively human, the intellect by which we think. The background of this development certainly lies in Aristotle’s De anima III.4–5 and the long series of commentaries in the Greek tradition which it generated, as well as in the enhancement of the ontological role played by the intellect, nous, in the philosophy of Plotinus and especially in the Neoplatonism of the Athenian school. This tradition was continued, in Arabic this time, in the work of al-Fārābi (d. 950), in whom noetics plays also an integrating role, and it was perfected in Avicenna, who considered himself a successor to al-Fārābi, at least certainly in this respect. The study of the different aspects of the rational soul in Avicenna unites most branches of his philosophy and in addition incorporates into the same rational whole such traditionally religious subjects as prophecy, revelation, miracles, theurgy, and divine providence. It therefore constitutes more than a mere theory of the soul but is a veritable metaphysics of the rational soul, and it clearly appears as the primary purpose and goal of all philosophical praxis. The rational soul, according to Avicenna, is a substance subsisting by itself which is imprinted neither in a human body nor in anything else corporeal; it is completely separable and abstracted from matter. This he establishes empirically by the self-awareness that the rational soul has of its existence, together with its independence and substantiality in the famous flying man argument. The rational soul comes into