162 | CHAPTER 5
this synthesis was the study of the rational soul and the related general ques-
tions of how one knows (epistemolog y) and what one knows (ontolog y),
which together embrace the whole Aristotelian encyclopedia.^171 By taking
the rational soul as common denominator, Ibn Sīnā unified philosophical
discourses which, thanks to progressive adaptation of Greek philosophy by
Christian and Muslim thinkers, had tended to go their separate ways.^172 We
should also note how Ibn Sīnā appreciated the full philosophical range of the
Metaphysics, with Fārābī, rather than treating it as an essentially theological
treatise as Kindī had.^173
In his later works Ibn Sīnā referred less, and more critically, to the ancient
Greek philosophers, Arabized his vocabulary and became more systemat-
ic.^174 He emphasized this reorientation by calling his philosophy “Eastern,”
which in effect means “Khurasanian,” and may be taken as repudiation of the
old, “Western” exegetical tradition of Alexandria and Baghdad,^175 and a
symptom of the eastward shift I proposed in chapter 4. For centuries to
come, Arabic philosophy rejected, reformed or followed Ibn Sīnā, but could
not ignore him.^176 Robert Wisnovsky was moved to write the following
words in the Conclusion to his book Avicenna’s metaphysics in context:
Those scholars of late antiquity and of medieval Europe who ponder
about when the late- antique era ended and the medieval began, can
infer from my book that at least as far as the history of metaphysics is
concerned, the decisive moment occurred around 1001, in the Sāmānid
library in the city of Bukhārā in the Central Asian province of Tran-
soxania, far outside their traditional area of focus.^177And the obverse of this is that, with Ibn Sīnā and the beginning of the Sec-
ond Millennium, Arabic philosophy moves into a new phase of autonomous
development, out of the shadow of the Greeks. This may encourage modern
scholarship, too, to take a more “postcolonial” approach to the subject.^178
Any overall judgment on Ibn Sīnā—and indeed more generally on the
invigorating but socially constricted role of philosophy in the First Millen-
171 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 85–86.
172 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 260–61.
173 A. Bertolacci, “From al- Kindī to al- Fārābī: Avicenna’s progressive knowledge of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics,” ASAP 11 (2001) 257–95.
174 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 290–96.
175 Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 115–30. For the Baghdad/Iraq- Khurāsān antithesis, see Kraemer,
Humanism [4:82] 234–35.
176 C. Martini Bonadeo, “Seguaci e critici di Avicenna,” SFIM 627–68.
177 R. Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s metaphysics in context (London 2003) 266. (My thanks to Tony
Street for this reference.) Ibn Sīnā himself was aware of being the heir to a philosophical tradition that had
lasted almost 1,300 years: Gutas, Avicenna [5:150] 37.
178 Cf. H. Eichner, “Das Avicennische Corpus Aristotelicum,” in Entre Orient et Occident [5:151]
197–203.