Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200) De anima (On the
Soul), in Scripta minora 2.1, ed. I.
Bruns,
Berlin, 1887; ed. A.P. Fontinis, The De Anima of
Alexander of Aphrodisias,
Washington,
DC: University Press of America, 1979.(Important
later commentary on Aristotle.)
Davidson, H.A. (1992) Alfarabi, Avicenna and
Averroes on Intellect: Their
Cosmologies,
Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of
the Human Intellect, New York:
Oxford
UUniversity Press.(A thorough consideration of Ibn
Sina’s theory of the intellects in
relation to
Hellenistic and Arabic
philosophers.)
Fakhry, M. (1993) Ethical Theories in Islam, 2nd
edn, Leiden: Brill. (Contains
material on Ibn Sina’s ethical
thought.)
Goodman, L. (1992) Avicenna,
London: Routledge.(A useful
introduction to central features of
Ibn Sina’s philosophical
theories.)
Gutas, D. (1988) Avicenna and
the Aristotelian Tradition,
Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s
Philosophical Works, Leiden:
Brill.(An excellent account of the
considerations that entered into the
construction of Ibn Sina’s corpus,
the book contains translations of a
number of smaller texts, a careful
consideration of method and sharp
criticisms of, among other things,
ascriptions of mysticism to Ibn Sina.
This is probably the most useful
guide to an
engagement with the philosopher’s work currently
available in English.)
Inati, S. (1996) ‘Ibn Sina’,
in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds)
History of Islamic Philosophy,
London: Routledge, ch. 16, 231-46.(Comprehensive
guide to his analytical thought.)
Janssens, J.L. (1991) An Annotated Bibliography on
Ibn Sina (1970-1989), Including
Arabic and Persian Publications and Turkish and
Russian references, Leuven:
University
of Leuven Press.(An indispensible tool for study of
Ibn Sina and recent work on the
philosopher, though it will soon need to be
updated.) Kemal, S. (1991) The
Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna,
Leiden: Brill.(A philosophical study
of Ibn Sina’s philosophical
poetics and its relation to
epistemology and morality.) Mamura,
M.E. (1962) ‘Some Aspects of
Avicenna’s Theory of God’s
Knowledge of Particulars’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society 82:
299-312.(This paper, along with
those of Morewedge (1972) and Rahman
(1958), are seminal to
contemporary understanding of Ibn
Sina’s thought.)
Mamura, M.E. (1980) ‘Avicenna’s Proof from
Contingency for God’s Existence in
the
Metaphysics of al Shifa’, Medieval Studies 42:
337-52.(A clear exposition of the
proof.)
Morewedge, P. (1972) ‘Philosophical Analysis and
Ibn Sina’s
"Essence-Existence"
distinction’, Journal of the
American Oriental Society 92:
425-35.(A welcome explanation of the
implications of a distinction
central to Ibn Sina’s proof of
God’s existence.)
Nasr, S.H. (1996) ‘Ibn Sina’s Oriental
Philosophy’, in S.H. Nasr and O.
Leaman (eds) History
of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 17,
247-51.(Concise and interesting
defence of the idea that Ibn Sina
really did have distinctive system
of mystical philosophy.)
Rahman, F. (1958) ‘Essence and Existence in
Avicenna’, Medieval and
Renaissance Studies 4:
1-16.(A version also appears
in Hamdard Islamicus 4 (1): 3-14.
The paper considers the
philosophical usefulness of the
distinction of essence from
existence.)
Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version
1.0, London: Routledge
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