IBN SİNA’NIN BİR BİLİM OLARAK METAFİZİK ANLAYIŞI

Year 2021, Issue: 31, 133 - 152, 12.05.2021

Musa Duman

Abstract

This essay presents an interpretation of Avicenna’s idea of metaphysics as a science of being qua being. Avicenna occupies a crucial place in the history of ontology. Part of the reason of this importance lies in his distinguishing metaphysics (as a science of being qua being), the first science, methodologically from theology and in his ascribing to it a systematical foundational function. But metaphysics is not only the source and origin of all other sciences, but it is also the end of them. Avicenna believes that the meaning of being and its basic determinations (meanings of thing, existent and necessary) are a priori and as such self-evident. Human knowers thus possess an a priori, immediate intelligibility of being that forms the starting points of any philosophical reflection after reality. Avicenna’s idea of metaphysics as the science of being qua being rests on taking being as a matter of pure self-evidence and certainty, and this point is quite important for his project of sciences as a whole. Being fulfills this function as the most general meaning of human mind. We will here explore the implications of this idea of science in a critical manner.

Keywords

metaphysics, theology, being, meaning

Thanks

teşekkür ederim.

AVICENNA’S CONCEPTION OF METAPHYSICS AS A SCIENCE

Abstract

Abstract: This essay presents an interpretation of Avicenna’s idea of metaphysics as a science of being qua being. Avicenna occupies a crucial place in the history of ontology. Part of the reason of this importance lies in his distinguishing metaphysics (as a science of being qua being), the first science, methodologically from theology and in his ascribing to it a systematical foundational function. But metaphysics is not only the source and origin of all other sciences, but it is also the end of them. Avicenna believes that the meaning of being and its basic determinations (meanings of thing, existent and necessary) are a priori and as such self-evident. Human knowers thus possess an a priori, immediate intelligibility of being that forms the starting points of any philosophical reflection after reality. Avicenna’s idea of metaphysics as the science of being qua being rests on taking being as a matter of pure self-evidence and certainty, and this point is quite important for his project of sciences as a whole. Being fulfills this function as the most general meaning of human mind. We will here explore the implications of this idea of science in a critical manner.

Keywords

metaphysics, theology, being, meaning, being qua being

References

• Adamson, Peter. “Non-discursive Thought in Avicenna’s Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle” in Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, ed. J. McGinnis (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
• Aertsen, J.A. “Avicenna's Doctrine of the Primary Notions and Its Impact on Medieval Philosophy”, in Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages: Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, eds. A. Akasoy and W. Raven (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
• Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes, Volumes I and II, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984/ 1995).
• Avicenna. The Metaphysics of The Healing (The Arabic-English Parallel Text), trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005).
• _______ Dāneshnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī (The Persian-Turkish Parallel Text), trans. M. Demirkol (İstanbul: Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı. 2013)
• _______ Remarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics (Part II-III), trans. S. Inati, (NY: Columbia University Press, 2014).
• _______ Al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt (The Arabic-Turkish Parallel Text), trans. M. Macit, A. Durusoy and E. Demirli (İstanbul: Litera yay., 2015).
• Bertolacci, Amos. The Reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in Avicenna's Kitāb alŠifāʾ: A Milestone of Western Metaphysical Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
• Brown, Stephen. “Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being”, Franciscan Studies, vol. 25 (1965).
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, çev. E. Robinson & J. Macquarrie (New York:Harper and Raw, 1962 [1927]).
• Kutluer, İlhan. İbn Sina Ontolojisinde Zorunlu Varlık (İstanbul: İz Yayınları. 2013).
• Marmura, Michael. “Avicenna’s Flying Man in Context”, The Monist, Vol. 69, No. 3 (1986).
• McGinnis, Jon. Avicenna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Plato. Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997).
• Türker, Ömer. Varlık Nedir? (İstanbul: Ketebe yay., 2018).
• Wisnowsky, Robert. Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
• _______ “Avicenna and the Avicennian Tradition”, in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. P. Adamson and R. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
• Lizzini, Olga. “Ibn Sina's Metaphysics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/ibn-sinametaphysics/>,