In this wonderfully well-written book, the author, Tommaso Alpina, sets out to produce an answer to a general question of great importance for the history of ideas on the soul: into which category of knowledge did Avicenna (in Arabic, Ibn Sina) place the science of the soul, as part of physics or of metaphysics? This question may seem somewhat abstract, but Alpina will soon show that this is central to understanding much of what ancient and medieval philosophers had to say about the soul. On his way to answering the question, Alpina resolves other questions concerning Avicenna’s ideas on soul in general, his thought-experiment of the Flying Man, and other matters. Alpina restricts his analysis to the section on soul, the Nafs, from Avicenna’s famous Al-Šifa’ (The Cure, which incidentally is not a treatise on medicine), thus leaving out of his analysis other summae by Avicenna. This restriction only adds to the consistency of the investigation, and in the final chapter 6, Alpina briefly compares his findings with the relevant passages of other Avicennian summae, thus indicating new avenues of research.
The book is structured as follows: after a very brief introduction, six chapters shape the exploration. Chapter 1 sets the scene presenting the ‘science of the soul’, whereas Chapter 2 covers the precursors of Avicenna from a first beginning with Aristotle up to al-Kindī. The following three chapters cover in sequence the three concepts in the book’s title: subject, definition, activity. This forms the core investigation of the book. Finally, Chapter 6 as indicated makes brief correlations with other works by Avicenna. At the end, the reader is offered important extracts of Avicenna’s al-Nafs in English translation. (The fact that this is a selection is only stated in the general introduction, not in that to the translation itself.) The structure of the book is clearly set out in the beginning, with explanations given for the choice of the three central concepts. This gives the reader a framework to follow, even if the intricacies of Avicenna’s thoughts and our ability to grasp his wider goals is at times challenging. The following summary of the chapters should in no way be seen as exhausting their content, but only as giving an outline.
In the introduction, Avicenna’s study is presented as a direct continuation of where Aristotle, “the pioneer of the global science of the soul”, hesitated: Aristotle would not ascribe the study of the soul completely to natural philosophy (physics). The reason for this was – Alpina tells us – that the human rational soul is, in Aristotelian terms, “the actuality of no body and, consequently, separable from it” (p. 1). In other words, if we only had to treat of the souls of plants and animals, in which soul is always combined with a body, would have offered no difficulties to the resources of physics. But the human rational soul, given its independence from the body, belongs according to Aristotle to metaphysics. This leaves him with the dilemma of either treating the soul as a unitary scientific, i.e. natural, phenomenon, and leaving out its rational aspect; or no longer viewing soul as a unitary object of study. Alpina sets out to show how Avicenna solved – or attempted to solve – this dilemma.
Chapter 1 gives a clear and stepwise introduction to Avicenna’s Kitab al-Nafs (referred to as the Nafs), which is the sixth book of his great summa entitled al-Šifā’ (The Cure). After explaining the overall structure of Avicenna’s treatise (four parts on, respectively, logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics, with the part on the soul falling in the section devoted to natural philosophy), Alpina shows how closely (“without being slavish”) Avicenna adheres to Aristotle’s system and exposition, with just a little expansion and integration to complement it. Alpina here, among other things, stresses Avicenna’s recourse to observations on vision and optics, a theme on which Arabic philosophy has much to add it to its Greek precursors. Alpina briefly mentions the religious aspects that become of importance once one notices Avicenna’s endeavour to retain the notion of the soul’s immortality. Here Alpina opts for sticking to a strictly philosophical approach, avoiding all evaluation of Avicenna’s possible debt to or dependence on religious values or systems. The chapter ends with a careful presentation and clarification of the textual basis of the study, including of manuscripts and editions.
Chapter 2 starts with a statement of the matter from the perspective of Aristotelian psychology, as found above all in the De Anima, the foundation also for Avicenna’s Nafs. Alpina here finds the problem that faced Avicenna: Aristotle could not cover all (parts of) souls when taking the perspective of a natural philosopher; the human rational soul (and celestial souls) fell outside this, along with nous ‘(theoretical) intelligence’. Alpina offers a possible solution in accordance with Aristotelian approaches, by working from activities of the soul rather than from the parts of the soul responsible for them. But the exclusion of nous in Aristotle’s treatment and his allusions to the divine origin of human intelligence created a problem, if not for Aristotle, then at least for many of his later readers. Alpina covers the deliberations of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Philoponus, Olympiodorus (and to some degree Ammonius, the teacher of the latter two), before turning to Al-Fārābi, Al-Kindī (in that order), and Qustā ibn Lūqā. Here Alpina’s main target is to show their – not fully conclusive – attempts to settle the question about the status of the soul.
Chapter 3 concerns the first concept of the book’s title, subject. This concept – which in itself contains a double meaning – is analysed in the very first sections of the Nafs, i.e. the prologue, and chapter I.1, with a short excursus on chapter V.2. The main aim is to see how Avicenna embarks upon discussing the soul. Here a dichotomy arises, for he insists on treating the soul in its entirety, namely as that which is common to all sublunary souls (those of plants, animals, and human beings), yet he very soon introduces a proof of its existence that points to the specific rational human soul. Alpina therefore distinguishes between Avicenna’s psychologia generalis, which is concerned with soul from a physical perspective (motion, actions, etc.), and hispsychologia specialis, tied to human thinking. While pointing to the fact that Avicenna postpones all discussions on essence and quiddity (to chapter I.3 and later), Alpina carefully traces how Avicenna goes from insisting on the shared soul to the famous Flying man, which occurs several times in Avicenna’s works, and twice in Nafs. The Flying Man is a thought experiment: a suddenly created, yet perfect man is flying in the air, receiving no sense impulses; as Avicenna insists, even this man would know that he has a soul. The argument, which has led to strong scholarly discussion of its similarity to (and possible influence on) Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, concerns Alpina primary from the perspective of its argumentative value. According to Alpina, here in Nafs I.1 it serves to prove that the soul is not body (or a faculty of the body). But for the (in Alpina’s wording) “perspicacious” reader, this also makes the existence of the soul obvious, for they will instantly recognize this (as opposed to many other aspects of the soul) from their own experience. The chapter does not solve Avicenna’s problem (that is, of the tension the general and the special aspect of soul); rather it shows that Avicenna highlights this problem right from the start.
In Chapter 4, Alpina moves on to investigate to what extent and how Avicenna delivers a definition of the soul. Avicenna is basically following in the footsteps of Aristotle and the Peripatetic tradition, but Alpina reshapes earlier readings of Nafs I.1 by showing that the Arabic naḥuddu (“we define (the soul)”) should probably be read as nağidu (“we find”), or at least be understood as only a repetition of the standard Aristotelian definition. Overall, Avicenna opts for the soul being the perfection of the body (kamāl, reflecting Greek entelecheia), rather than its quwwa (“force”) or ṣura (“form”). To Alpina, kamāl (sometimes also represented by the corresponding concept tamām) had to Avicenna the advantage of covering a soul that is both inseparable and separable. This further depends on distinctions made by Alexander and Philoponus in the meaning of perfection, with the latter being of use to Avicenna since he stresses the possibility of separation. But, Alpina underlines, Avicenna’s contribution here (in Nafs I.3) is to stress that this perfection concerns it in so far as it is substance (on the quidditative level). This does not quite solve the question of the status of the rational soul and how it is individuated (in each specific human being), and after looking at the soul’s need of a body (especially by reading Nafs V.2 and V.3, again without including much that could be explained as concessions to monotheistic faith), Alpina states that the soul’s individuation depends on “a certain configuration, or a certain power, or a certain immaterial accident, or a combination of these, … even though we do not know what they are exactly” (p. 125). As Alpina concludes, this is walking a tightrope, not least since concepts that are relinquished at an early stage (like form, faculty, etc.) later resurface as crucial; also, one wonders whether Avicenna’s insistence on the Aristotle-based definition of soul as “first perfection” does not sometimes give way to reliance on “second perfection”. But it is at least possible to follow the step-by-step exposition, even if the overall lessons drawn are somewhat inconclusive.
Chapter 5, the last of the three central analytical parts, discusses human intellection, i.e. the rational soul and its activities. The chapter has two parts. Alpina begins by discussing Avicenna’s treatment of human intellection through the – partly Neoplatonic – terms of abstraction and emanation. This becomes more a sort of status quaestionis, with Alpina reaching only hesitant conclusions. The discussion of intellection goes into more depth when it turns to the two objects of human intellection, immaterial (i.e. intellectual) forms and material forms, respectively. The intellection of the former is, according to Avicenna, easier to grasp, whereas the latter requires more explanation, involving the question of how abstraction of the intelligible is performed by the intellect. This leads to the introduction of the Active Intellect and a detailed description of how this blends into human intellection. Alpina discusses Avicenna’s thoughts on optics, for this becomes the primary metaphor for how “the Active Intellect’s shining light guarantees that the human intellect has correctly abstracted from matter the very forms that the Dator formarum has previously infused in it” (p. 154). As we see, Avicenna – in Alpina’s rephrasing – is careful not to make the Active Intellect the agent of human intellection: rather, it becomes a sort of depository of the “imaginary” intellectual forms (i.e. the intellectual forms present or produced in the human imagination), just as the human mind is the depository of imaginary forms). Avicenna definitely provides new answers, though he also opens up new questions (e.g. the exact relation between or identity of Active Intellect and the Dator formarum, see Alpina’s discussion p. 153-54).
This book is a tour de force, dealing with wonderfully complex matters. Avicenna did not finally solve the question of where the soul belongs in the Peripatetic system of knowledge, but he certainly made an innovative attempt, as lucidly shown by Alpina. Many detailed discussions in the book open up new questions, and anyone interested in taking up these questions will need to pay careful attention to the analysis of Alpina. And anyone interested in medieval philosophy of the soul may well start here.