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Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect »

Book cover image of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect by Herbert Alan Davidson

Authors: Herbert Alan Davidson, Davidson
ISBN-13: 9780195074239, ISBN-10: 0195074238
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: September 1992
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Herbert Alan Davidson

University of California, Los Angeles

Book Synopsis

A study of problems, all revolving around the subject of intellect in the philosophies of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, this book starts by reviewing discussions in Greek and early Arabic philosophy which served as the background for the three Arabic thinkers. Davidson examines the cosmologies and theories of human and active intellect in the three philosophers and covers such subjects as: the emanation of the supernal realm from the First Cause; the emanation of the lower world from the transcendent active intellect; stages of human intellect; illumination of the human intellect by the transcendent active intellect; conjunction of the human intellect with the transcendent active intellect; prophecy; and human immortality. Davidson shows that medieval Jewish philosophers and the Latin Scholastics had differing perceptions of Averroes because they happened to use works belonging to different periods of his philosophic career.

1	Introduction	3
2	Greek and Arabic Antecedents	7
	Stages of Human Intellect	9
	The Kind of Entity That the Active Intellect Is	13
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Human Thought	18
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence	29
	Conjunction with the Active Intellect; Immortality	34
3	Alfarabi on Emanation, the Active Intellect, and Human Intellect	44
	Al-Madina al-Fadila and al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya	44
	Alfarabi's Philosophy of Aristotle	63
	The Risala fi al-Aql	65
	Alfarabi's Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics	70
	Concluding Note	73
4	Avicenna on Emanation, the Active Intellect, and Human Intellect	74
	The Emanation of the Universe; the Active Intellect as a Cause of the Existence of the Sublunar World	74
	Stages of Human Intellect; the Active Intellect as the Cause of Human Thought	83
	Imagination, Cogitation, Insight	95
	Conjunction and Immortality	103
	Prophecy	116
	Summary	124
5	Reverberations of the Theories of Alfarabi and Avicenna	127
	Avicenna's Islamic Successors	127
	Reverberations in Medieval Jewish Philosophy	180
	Reverberations in Scholastic Philosophy	209
	Summary	218
6	Averroes on Emanation and on the Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence	220
	General Considerations	220
	The Emanation of the Universe	223
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: Epitomes of the Parva naturalia and the Metaphysics	232
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: The Commentary on De generatione animalium	242
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: The Long Commentary on the Metaphysics and Tahafut al-Tahafut (Destructio destructionum)	245
	Summary	254
7	Averroes on the Material Intellect	258
	Introduction	258
	The Epitome of the De anima and the Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction	265
	A Minor Composition on Conjunction and the Middle Commentary on the De anima	274
	Averroes' Long Commentary on the De anima and his Commentary on Alexander's De intellectu	282
	Summary	295
	Averroes' Theories of Material Intellect as Reflected in Subsequent Jewish and Christian Thought	298
8	Averroes on the Active Intellect as the Cause of Human Thought	315
	The Passage of the Human Intellect to Actuality	315
	The Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect; Immortality	321
	Prophecy	340
	Averroes' Shifting Picture of the Universe and of Man's Place in It	351
	Index	357