The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Avicenna

c. 970 – 1037 CE

Also known as Ibn Sina, Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina

Philosopher and physician who built a comprehensive system from Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas, known for the distinction between essence and existence.

Engraved silver relief of a bearded man in a turban, in profile
Engraved portrait on a silver vase in the museum at Avicenna’s mausoleum, Hamadan, Iran: a modern, imagined likeness.Photo: Adam Jones · CC BY-SA 2.0 · See the original

Ibn Sīnā, known in Latin as Avicenna, was the most influential philosopher of the Islamic world. He distinguished what a thing is (its essence) from the fact that it exists, and argued that everything whose existence is not part of its essence depends on a Necessary Existent — God. His thought experiment of the “floating man”, who is aware of himself without any sensation, anticipates Descartes.

His medical encyclopaedia, the Canon, was a standard textbook in Europe for centuries.

Region
Persia and Central Asia
Influenced by
Aristotle
al-Farabi
Influenced
Thomas Aquinas

Key works

  • The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa')
  • The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-tibb)

Sources

  1. Dimitri Gutas, Ibn Sina [Avicenna], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy