A relatively well-known medieval Latin innovation is the doctrine of distributive supposition. This notion came to be used in syllogistic theory in the late medieval and early modern periods, as Latin logicians sought to establish general rules for syllogistic productivity across the various figures. It is much less well-known that some logicians in the medieval Arabic tradition also attempted to establish general rules for the syllogism, appealing to what they called “subject generality.” In the present article, I introduce this use of “subject generality” in some influential Arabic works on logic from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, specifically Al-ǧumal by Afḍal al-Dīn al-Ḫūnaǧī (d. 1248) and Tahḏīb al-manṭiq by Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and some of their commentators. I also compare this concept of “subject generality” to the Latin concept of “distribution.”

Cet article s’intéresse à deux doxographies présentes dans des résumés et abrégés de Ḥunayn au traité Sur les Éléments de Galien. Nous retraçons l’origine de ces doxographies, depuis des scolies grecques au traité galénique jusqu’au Commentaire à la Physique de Simplicius, dont nous montrons qu’il en est la source ultime. Nous indiquons aussi que le Commentaire de Simplicius a inspiré une interprétation de Parménide et Mélissos que nous trouvons chez Ḥunayn. Cela nous permet de voir des traces du Commentaire à la Physique de Simplicius dans le monde arabe et d’apporter quelques éclaircissements sur la construction de ces résumés à l’oeuvre de Galien que l’on appelle les Summaria alexandrinorum.

Cet article comporte l’editio princeps du traité d’Ibn al-Hayṯam « Sur le miroir ardent parabolique », Fī al-marāyā al-muḥriqa bi-al-quṭūʿ, ainsi que sa première traduction en français. Nous examinons la place qu’il occupe dans l’histoire du miroir parabolique durant plus d’un millénaire et demi, aussi bien en grec qu’en arabe et en latin.

The Letter on the Soul is interesting and significant; it attempts to tackle fundamental problems that fall on the borderlines of psychology, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and logic. The consensus among Avicenna scholars is that The Letter is Avicenna’s. In this paper, I will argue against this consensus. I will examine the philosophical and logical content of The Letter, as well as Avicenna’s view on the impossible forms in his authentic works, and construct a content-based argument against the authenticity of The Letter. This study, I hope, sheds some light on Avicenna’s view on the impossibilia, what they are, and how they can be apprehended.

Cet article démontre que la théorie de l’expérience (taǧriba) d’Ibn Sīnā nécessite une référence croisée entre la logique et la psychologie. Suivant la tradition linguistique basrane, il paraphrase les noms dérivés (ism muštaqq) dans la formule li-x y (« y appartient à x ») : par exemple, ʿālim (« savoir ») est paraphrasé en lahu ʿilm (« un acte de savoir lui appartient »). Sa théorie de l’expérience emploie cette formule pour arranger les phénomènes observés dans une certaine forme de syllogisme et décrire les fonctions des sens internes du cerveau. Ibn Sīnā arrange les phénomènes observés dans la formule li-x y ou la proposition dont un prédicat est un nom dérivé de y. En même temps, il soutient que le sens du souvenir est impliqué dans le processus de l’expérience. Le souvenir est un sens interne du cerveau, qui préserve maʿnā perçue par le sens de l’estimation. L’estimation consiste à percevoir maʿnā (y) qui est inhérente à un sujet (x), et à porter un jugement sur x en fonction de y. Ainsi, dans ce processus, l’analyse des noms dérivés range les phénomènes observés dans un ordre rationnel, et le sens interne établit la causalité entre l’appréhension et l’affirmation logique. L’article se termine par une discussion sur la relation de cette philosophie avec la médecine.

Do Avicenna’s extant works preserve any trace of his now-lost early philosophical production? This paper considers a hitherto neglected text, namely the chapter “On Hypothetical Propositions” from Avicenna’s “Concise Treatise on the Principles of Logic” (Risāla mūǧaza fī uṣūl al-manṭiq, henceforth: RM). The new evidence offered by the RM chapter in question will lead to a different reading of another well-known passage of Avicenna’s reworking of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics (Qiyās) from the “Book of Healing” (Kitāb al-šifāʾ). The clues gathered from an analysis of these two works will finally lead us to ponder the possibility that Avicenna may in fact have composed a (now lost) work on hypothetical propositions and syllogisms. Since Avicenna’s RM is to date unedited, an edition, as well as an English translation of the relevant chapter, is also provided in the Appendix of this paper.

Late in his intellectual life, Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī espoused a dualistic position on the nature of the soul, denying that the soul is in any sense a material body. This view, which in broad terms concurs with Avicenna’s, sets al-Rāzī in opposition to the theologians’ materialistic stance. To make his position clear, in his last work Almaṭālib al-Rāzī sets out a comprehensive case for the theologians’ materialism, before critiquing that position. This paper offers a reconstruction of al-Rāzī’s arguments for the theologians’ materialism, providing an insight into arguments in the philosophy of mind during the Islamic Middle Ages.

This paper deals with a solution to the infamous liar paradox, usually known in the Arabic literature as Maġlaṭat al-ǧaḏr al-aṣamm. The solution is raised by a fifteenth-century Ottoman treatise that is attributed, among others, to Ḫaṭībzāde Muḥyiddīn Efendī. The paper also compares it with the solution by the contemporary Persian philosopher, Ǧalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī. The short treatise devoted to the paradox is one of the few works by Ottomans on the subject and it comprehensively addresses the paradox in its two forms. An analysis of the solution offered by the treatise to the paradox, the paper aims to bring Ottoman discussions of the liar to the attention of contemporary scholarship and contribute to filling the obvious gap in the literature on the paradox in Islamic thought.

Both Arabic modernists and Western humanists often regard the Muslim philosopher Averroes as one of the earliest precursors of Kant and the European Enlightenment. In contrast to this reputation, this paper argues that it was Kant’s critics Herder and Tiedemann who rediscovered Averroes. Tiedemann was the first German historiographer to give an accurate account of Averroes’ thought. This was accompanied by a re-evaluation of Averroes by Herder in his Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, in which he recognized the similarity between his own concept of the spirit of the age as historical reason – his alternative to the Enlightenment concept of a universal and ahistorical reason – and Averroes’ concept of a single material intellect for all individual human minds. Finally, the paper outlines the possible connections between Averroes’ interpretation of Aristotle’s intellect and Hegel’s concept of reason in history.

Kitāb muḫtaṣar waǧīz fī l-usṭuqussāt § 1, 1 p. 63, l. 6ff. Bos-Langermann: