Expressions, meanings and future contingents in the Arabic tradition: Avicenna's Kitāb al-ʿIbāra

Avicenna's Kitāb al-ʿIbāra [Book of Expression] is a sophisticated reworking of Aristotle's De interpretatione / Peri hermeneias. In it, Avicenna examines key concepts of Aristotelian logic, providing inter alia a novel interpretation and treatment of the famous problem of future contingents studied in the original Greek. The Kitāb al-ʿIbāra, however, is not an autonomous treatise, but rather forms part of a series of nine treatises on Logic [manṭiq] within Avicenna's magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ [Book of the Cure/Healing]. The study of the important doctrinal achievements of the Kitāb al-ʿIbāra should then not be disjoined from the examination of its links with the other sections of Avicenna's masterpiece, including, but not limited to, the sections on logic. In synergy with the goals and overall activity of the FIS 2021 project SPACE - The System of Philosophy in Arabic: Charting the Encyclopaedias, the links and cross-references between Kitāb al-ʿIbāra and the other books of Avicenna's summa of philosophy will receive specific and innovative attention.

10 months