Papers by Amos Bertolacci
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 36.1, 2026
The Proem of Averroes' Long Commentary (Tafsīr) on Metaphysics Lambda has been intensively studie... more The Proem of Averroes' Long Commentary (Tafsīr) on Metaphysics Lambda has been intensively studied in recent times. Against the background of previous scholarship, the present contribution argues that Averroes' Proem witnesses not one, but two distinct works originally stemming from Alexander of Aphrodisias, namely both a specific Proem to Metaphysics Lambda, belonging to Alexander's overall Commentary on this treatise-called "Alexander 1"-and an Overview of the entire Metaphysics-labelled "Alexander 2"-arguably representing a distinct type of work. Whereas Alexander 1 can be taken as the first leg of Alexander's exegesis of Lambda that Averroes fragmentarily reports in the rest of his Tafsīr after the Proem-an exegesis named "Alexander 3"-compelling evidence attests that Alexander 2 is an autonomous writing, independent from Alexander 1 and Alexander 3. The historical trajectory of Alexander 2 from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Averroes is canvassed, by means of a close comparison of Alexander 2 with the analogous and similarly structured overview of the Metaphysics written by a deep knower of the Alexander Arabus like al-Fārābī.
Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies, 34, 2026: Marginal Intelligences. Glossae as Places of Creativity and Differences (4th-16th c.), 2026
Amos Bertolacci, The Text or the Comments On It? Remarks on the Lithograph of the Science of the ... more Amos Bertolacci, The Text or the Comments On It? Remarks on the Lithograph of the Science of the Divine Things of Avicenna’s Book of the Healing (Tehran, 1885-8)
A lithographic print of Avicenna’s (Ibn S ̄ına ̄, d. 1037) metaphysical mas- terpiece – the Science of Divine Things (Ila ̄hiyya ̄t) from the Book of the Healing (Kita ̄b al-Šifa ̄ʾ) – published in Tehran between 1885 and 1888 presents a vast and interesting exegetical apparatus, which can be defined overall as ‘marginal’: it partly precedes the text of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t (the lithograph opens with the commentary on the first six treatises of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t by Mulla ̄ S.adra ̄, d. 1050H/1640), partly surrounds it at the edge of the page (glosses by various other commentators of the 16th-18th centuries), partly inter- sperses with it (interlinear notations taken from the manuscripts of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t or from the exegesis of the commentators mentioned above).The contribution proposes a first attempt at a historical contextualization of this important witness of Iranian philosophical publishing at the end of the nineteenth century, classifying the multifaceted exegesis of the text of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t contained in it; moreover, it highlights the organization of knowl- edge that emerges from the way in which the lithography places meta- physics before the natural philosophy of the Šifa ̄ʾ, and advances some hypotheses on the sources used by the editors and on the respective weight that they gave to Avicenna’s text and to the exegesis of his commentators within the work.
“Frate e maestro fummi”. Dante e la filosofia di Alberto Magno, ed. A. Rodolfi, Aracne Editrice, Roma 2025, pp. 47-79, 2025
Nella prima parte del presente contributo riassumo per sommi capi i principali riferimenti all’Is... more Nella prima parte del presente contributo riassumo per sommi capi i principali riferimenti all’Islam che si trovano nelle opere di Alberto Magno, passando in rassegna testi finora solo frammentariamente indagati o del tutto inesplorati nella letteratura secondaria, di cui nella seconda parte provo ad identificare le fonti principali. Nella terza parte getto uno sguardo sull’Islam per così dire “diffuso” nella Divina Commedia, estendendo l’attenzione dal luogo iconico di condanna della religione musulmana di Inf. XXVIII ad altri passi delle tre cantiche, certamente meno ragguardevoli ed artico- lati dell’incontro di Dante e Virgilio con Muḥammad e ʿAlī nella nona malabolgia, ma ugualmente indicativi della considerazione in cui Dante teneva la religione islamica. A seguito di ciò, nella quarta parte, provo a tracciare un paragone tra questi due sommari e ad esplorare una possibile dipendenza di Dante da Alberto.
![Research paper thumbnail of Amos Bertolacci, “Power and Limits of the Human Mind: On the Arabic Reception of the Analogy of Bats and Daylight in Aristotle's Metaphysics (II [α], 993 b 9-11)”, Studia Graeco-Arabica, 14, 2024, pp. 515-545.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/121836420/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Studia Graeco-Arabica, 14, 2024. Studies offered to Concetta Luna by her friends, colleagues, and pupils, ed. E. Coda, C. D’Ancona, S. Donati, pp. 515-545. OPEN ACCESS, 2024
This paper examines how some of the leading exponents of the so-called formative or classical age... more This paper examines how some of the leading exponents of the so-called formative or classical age of Arabic philosophy responded to the puzzling analogy found in the first chapter of Book Alpha Elatton of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (993 b 9-11), in which the intellectual capacity of the human soul in relation to the most evident things of all is compared to the visual capacity of the eyes of bats in relation to daylight. Against the background of the two extant Arabic translations of Aristotle’s passage, the paper analyses the interpretations of al-Kindī (IX c.), Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, X-XI c.), and Averroes (Ibn Rušd, XII c.) in three different types of works they devoted to the Metaphysics (original metaphysical treatise in the case of al-Kindī; summa of philosophy in the case of Avicenna; literal commentary on the work in the case of Averroes). These interpretations explicitly address the problem posed by the analogy and answer the question of its compatibility with Aristotle’s more general conception of the nature and aims of metaphysics, and with his more optimistic view of the power of the human mind elsewhere. The three authors in question creatively modify the analogy through considerations that are, respectively, methodological, eschatological, and teleological: al-Kindī rephrases it in the context of a sharp distinction between intellectual and sensory knowledge; Avicenna locates its ultimate cause in the body-soul relationship during earthly life; Averroes retains its content but subverts its purport on the basis of the idea that the innate human desire for knowledge cannot remain unfulfilled.
Scienze, filosofia e letteratura nel mondo iranico. Da Gundishapur ai nostri giorni. Omaggio a Carlo Saccone per i suoi 70 anni (Atti del VI Convegno Bolognese di Iranistica (VI CoBIran), Università di Bologna, 20-21 Ottobre 2022), Collana Indo-Iranica et Orientalia, Series Lazur, vol. 27, cur. N..., 2024
The article analyzes the quotation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Λ.7, 1072b24-26, which occurs in t... more The article analyzes the quotation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Λ.7, 1072b24-26, which occurs in the metaphysical section of the philosophical summa Dānešnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī (Book of Science for ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla), composed by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037) in Persian. In this quotation, which regards a crucial doctrine of the Metaphysics, Aristotle is called “guide of the sages and rule and master of the philosophers”, with a praise that has no parallel in Avicenna’s oeuvre. It is argued that this quotation, in all likelihood, is not taken from a Persian translation of the Metaphysics, unattested otherwise, nor is it the result of Avicenna’s own translation into Persian of the passage in question according to the Arabic translations of the Metaphysics he could dispose of. More likely, the quotation is Avicenna’s reworking in Persian of the exegesis of this passage of the Metaphysics that one finds, in Arabic, in his coeval exegetical summa Kitāb al-Insāf (Book of the Fair Judgment). The high laud of Aristotle that this quotation conveys might be part of Avicenna’s strategy of promotion of falsafa, i.e. of the philosophy of Greek origin, in the court of the Kākūyid ruler ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla (reg. 1008-1041).
La rappresentazione del gruppo di pensatori riuniti attorno ad Aristotele in Inferno IV, 106-144,... more La rappresentazione del gruppo di pensatori riuniti attorno ad Aristotele in Inferno IV, 106-144, costituisce una succinta storia della filosofia, utile a ricostruire la concezione che Dante aveva della natura e dello sviluppo di questa disciplina. Gli studi precedenti hanno sottolineato il carattere disorganico, se non addirittura disordinato, di questo passo, segnalando la varietà delle sue fonti ed alcuni paralleli parziali in opere di Tommaso d’Aquino. Ma non mancano elementi di coerenza in questa sintetica rassegna di pensatori, la quale pare rispondere ad una logica unitaria: essa include infatti l’iniziatore della storia della filosofia occidentale, Talete, e termina con il personaggio più vicino cronologicamente a Dante tra tutti quelli menzionati, cioè Averroè, la cui qualifica di commentatore rimanda chiaramente ad Aristotele “maestro di color che sanno” citato all’inizio. L’ipotesi che Dante menzioni questi pensatori non secondo la logica lineare di una lista, ma secondo l’angolo visuale di un cerchio – con al centro Aristotele, seguito da Socrate e Plato, nel semicerchio retrostante altri filosofi pre-aristotelici e nel semicerchio antistante i filosofi post-aristotelici – aiuta a dare ordine al quadro.
In questo profilo di storia della filosofia, il pensiero di Alberto Magno, assieme ed ancor più di quello di Tommaso d’Aquino, potrebbe avere funto da principio ispiratore e da fattore di unità, attraverso canali di conoscenza, diretti o indiretti, testuali o contestuali, che gli studi su Dante stanno mettendo in sempre maggior luce. Il carattere fortemente polifonico della “filosofica famiglia” (il gruppo di personaggi più numeroso tra i tre che Dante colloca nel Limbo, dopo i poeti ed i politici), la sua interculturalità (con inclusione di pensatori di provenienza greca, latina e araba) ed interdisciplinarietà (la filosofia teoretica dialoga con quella pratica, con la matematica e con la medicina) corrispondono infatti ad altrettanti tratti fondamentale dell’approccio di Alberto alla pratica filosofica ed al pensiero precedente. Più specificamente, una possibile influenza di Alberto Magno può essere rintracciata nell’armonia tra Aristotele e Platone che Dante propone, nella rilevanza che egli accorda ad Averroè come commentatore di Aristotele, nel risalto dato ad Avicenna in ambito non solo filosofico ma anche medico, e nell’importanza che viene ascritta alla matematica in filosofia, con particolare riguardo all’autorità di Euclide e Tolomeo.
Albert the Great and his Arabic Sources: Medieval Science Between Inheritance and Emergence, ed. K. Krause, R. Taylor (PATMA 5), Brepols, Turnhout 2024, 2024
“Dante orientalista? Considerazioni su Edward Said lettore della Divina Commedia”, in La mente di Dante. Visioni, percezioni, rappresentazioni, ed. A. Beccarisi, M. De Giorgi, W. L. Puccetti, F. Somaini, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2024, pp. 23-41 La mente di Dante. Visioni, percezioni, rappresentazioni, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Università del Salento, Lecce, 30 settembre-3 ottobre 2021, ed. Alessandra Beccarisi, Manuela De Giorgi, Walter Leonardo Puccetti, Francesco Somaini, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2024, 2024
La visione dell'islam che Dante Alighieri esprime nella Divina Commedia ha ricevuto grande spazio... more La visione dell'islam che Dante Alighieri esprime nella Divina Commedia ha ricevuto grande spazio e attenzione nel libro Orientalismo di Edward Said (1935Said ( -2003)), pietra miliare degli studi odierni sulle relazioni tra Oriente e Occidente 1 . Dante e la Commedia sono di gran lunga l'autore e l'opera medievale maggiormente citati da Said: non solo un'ampia sezione del libro li a ronta ex professo, ma si fa riferimento ad essi, ripetutamente, anche in altri luoghi dell'opera ove essi vengono richiamati come esempi emblematici del tipo di fenomeno storico e culturale che l'autore libanese-americano tematizza nel suo capolavoro. Vero e proprio landmark e punto di svolta della ri essione contemporanea su come il mondo occidentale si sia relazionato alla sua controparte orientale, ed opera innovativa e provocatoria sotto molteplici rispetti, Orientalismo di Said ha suscitato inevitabilmente una serie di reazioni critiche, alcune delle quali hanno investito espressamente il modo in cui l'autore ha inteso la rappresentazione dantesca del mondo musulmano. Il presente contributo intende presentare per sommi capi il ruolo e l'importanza che Said attribuisce alla Divina Commedia come paradigma del modo 'orientalista' di intendere i rapporti dell'Europa cristiana con la civiltà islamica (Parte I) ed elencare le criticità rinvenibili nell'interpretazione di Dante fornita in Orientalismo, con l'intento, per un verso, di relativizzare le critiche sollevate nora (Parte II) e, per un altro verso, di indicarne possibili altre (Parte III). Questa rivisitazione di Said come lettore della Commedia è utile a mettere in risalto, in controluce, aspetti 1
Images of Desire in the Mediterranean World, ed. A. Paravicini Bagliani, P. Silanos (Proceedings of the Conference Figure del desiderio. Testi e contesti nel Mediterraneo medievale e oltre, Università degli Studi di Bari, 24-26 maggio 2022, org. Pietro Silanos, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani), SISM..., 2024
The paper examines one specific aspect of Avicenna's (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037) treatment of desire in h... more The paper examines one specific aspect of Avicenna's (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037) treatment of desire in his magnum opus of philosophy, namely the desire for God as it is framed in the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things) of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of Cure/Healing), the account of metaphysics placed at the end of Avicenna famous and influential encyclopedia of philosophy. The perspective of analysis is necessarily "transversal", since the topic of the desire for God is not dealt with ex professo in any specific place of the Ilāhiyyāt, but emerges in various parts of it, characterizing each of its main structural components (epistemology of metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, philosophical theology, eschatology). Thus, the Avicennian doctrine of the desire for God expounded in the Ilāhiyyāt not only provides a multifaceted account of the theme, but also allows to appreciate the multilayered structure of Avicenna's work. Some key texts of these different frameworks evidence a subtle gradation, according to which there is a desire for God that characterizes all things other than God, a desire for God that is specific of the movers of celestial bodies, and a properly human desire for God: each of these desires is designated by specific terminology and falls besides the exclusively divine propension that God has for Himself, which, properly speaking, cannot be considered a desire. In this way, the presence or absence of desire for God determines in Avicenna’s universe the same bifurcation between the non-divine realm of reality, on the one hand, and God Himself, on the other, that elsewhere Avicenna obtains by means of other pairs of concepts, like “relative necessity” vs. “absolute necessity”, or “existence mixed with essence” vs. “pure existence”.
In the Commentary on the Metaphysics, Albert the Great (d. 1280) envisages the possibility that t... more In the Commentary on the Metaphysics, Albert the Great (d. 1280) envisages the possibility that the human intellect relates to the highest realities not only as the eyes of the bat see the light of day (analogy used by Aristotle at the beginning of the second book of the Metaphysics) but also-thanks to study and gradually, already in this life-as the eyes of the eagle see the circle of the Sun. In the Summa theologiae, discussing the same Aristotelian passage, Albert the Great replaces the eagle with the herodius ("golden eagle", i.e. the eagle having supreme vision for Albert). The paper analyzes the meaning of this variation in Albertine ornithology, examining other passages of his works in which the herodius is mentioned and evaluating whether this is a sheer case of substitution of a species (the eagle) with one of its subspecies (the herodius) with the same meaning and function, or a subtle distinction between two different cognitive abilities required respectively by metaphysics and theology to know their objects of investigation.
When an Arab medieval cartographer describes your town better than a modern tour operator: Lucca ... more When an Arab medieval cartographer describes your town better than a modern tour operator: Lucca as seen by al-Idrisi (XII c.) [in Italian]
Atti del Convegno Internazionale promosso dall’Opera della Cattedrale di Lucca e dalla Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca per i 950 anni della dedicazione della Cattedrale (Lucca, 24-26 novembre 2021).
Studi sull’aristotelismo medievale (secoli VI-XVI), 2, 2022, ed. A. Conti, G. Fornasieri. Festschrift Onorato Grassi, 2022
Avicenna deals with the theme of the otherworldly destiny of mankind (what he calls "return") in ... more Avicenna deals with the theme of the otherworldly destiny of mankind (what he calls "return") in two chapters of his main metaphysical work, the Science of Divine Things (Ilāhiyyāt) of the Book of Cure or Healing (Kitāb al-Šifāʾ). Leaving chapter IX.7, better known and more investigated, in the background, the contribution examines what Avicenna says in Ilāhiyyāt X.2 about the Koranic doctrine of the afterlife, with particular reference to a passage in which the Arab philosopher inserts an interesting citation of the sunna or Muslim tradition. The ḥadīṯ reported by Avicenna in Ilāhiyyāt X.2 conveys from Allāh an idea of the afterlife made up of "things that no eye has ever seen nor ear has ever heard", echoing chapter 64:4 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and chapter 2:9 of the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. In the light of this scriptural convergence, and taking into account the hiatus between Qurʾānic revelation and the philosophical explanation of eschatology that Avicenna places in IX.7, the paper considers in what light Avicenna and his eschatology might have appeared to a medieval Christian reader of the XIII century, unaware of the fact that the passage in question by Avicenna corresponded to an element of the Islamic tradition and that Avicenna sharply criticized Christian eschatology in his other works not translated into Latin. In other words, under examination are the dynamics of reception, adaptation, and transformation that arose in the medieval Christian context when a passage of the metaphysics of a famous Muslim philosopher like Avicenna attuned with a biblical scriptural datum, both of the Old and of the New Testament. Against the background represented by Peter the Venerable in the XII century, the contribution focuses on the ways in which Ramón Martí and Roger Bacon in the following century read the Latin translation of Avicenna's Ilāhiyyāt.
Open Access at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003309895/contextualizing-... more Open Access at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003309895/contextualizing-premodern-philosophy-katja-krause-luis-xavier-lópez-farjeat-nicholas-oschman
Abstract:
The article has three interrelated aims. First, to analyze a crucial passage of the Long Commentary on the De Anima by Averroes (Ibn Rušd, d. 1198 CE), one of the most informative criticisms of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037 CE) devised by the Commentator, unraveling its details by means of similar passages in other Aristotelian commentaries and other works by Averroes. Second, to emphasize the historical importance of this passage as a precious testimonium of the entrance of Avicenna’s philosophy in Andalusia, documenting that, in this text and in other quotations, Averroes’ knowledge of Avicenna’s thought is probably based on a given summa by Avicenna, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure, or: of the Healing), apparently known first-hand. Finally, to advance the possibility that, in what he says about Avicenna in the passage under discussion, Averroes may depend on the Introduction of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ authored by al-Ǧūzǧānī.
The article has three interrelated aims. First, to document that the title “Book of Letters”, des... more The article has three interrelated aims. First, to document that the title “Book of Letters”, despite its fame, was far from being ‘traditional’ in Arabic philosophy, as it is often presented, but it rather served as a temporary designation of the Metaphysics in Arabic. Apart from later derivatives, this title is attested only four times, in different forms, in writings of the IV/X century, with no trace beforehand and a life-span of a few decades, from the time of the translation activity of Abū Bišr Mattā (d. 328H/940) until the composition of an ethical work by Miskawayh (written between 358H/968 and 360H/970) and of the Fihrist (377H/987-8). This title soon disappeared from the philosophical scenario in the course of the V/XI century, when it apparently lost currency in philosophical contexts. The second aim is to shed some light on the origin of this expression. “Book of Letters” as a title of the Metaphysics comes, in fact, from a cultural environment different from the Arabic-Islamic one, namely from the Syriac tradition of Greek philosophy, or from its Pahlavi offshoots. The Syriac provenience is indicated by the first known user of this expression, Paul the Persian (VI c. CE). It is corroborated by the Syriac background of some parts of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the Metaphysics preserved in Arabic, in which all the treatises of the Metaphysics are systematically designated through letters. The third aim is to explain the waning of the title under discussion with reference to Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428H/1037) and his renewal of philosophical nomenclature in the V/XI century. The author of the Book of the Cure/Healing (Kitāb al-Šifāʾ) not only neglected the title at stake, as already others had done before him: in his masterpiece on metaphysics, he also proposed a new and alternative denomination of Aristotle’s eponymous work (“First Teaching”, al-taʿlīm al-awwal), which condemned to irrelevance the textual content of the Metaphysics and a fortiori its material arrangement in distinct treatise designated by means of letters.
The article examines Dante's receptive attitude towards Arabic culture, on the one hand, and his ... more The article examines Dante's receptive attitude towards Arabic culture, on the one hand, and his categorical rejection of the Islamic religion, on the other, taking the Divine Comedy as a work of reference. While the Arabic culture, represented by the physician Avicenna and the philosopher Averroes, is inserted by Dante into the "philosophical family" of the great spirits whose praises are woven in Limbo (Inf. IV), the two main representatives of the Islamic religion, the prophet Muḥammad and his successor ʿAlī, are placed in the lower part of Hell, where they are depicted horrendously mutilated, according to an analogical retaliation with respect to the schism that Dante accuses them of having determined within the Christian religion (Inf. XXVIII). Another Arab-Muslim, Saladin, figures among the great spirits of politics, but, unlike Avicenna and Averroes, he is separated from the rest of his group. This multifaceted and polyvalent attitude expressed in Alighieri's masterpiece constitutes a particularly effective representation of trends in place in many other thinkers of Latin culture and the Christian religion of the time. In fact, we can trace in the Divine Comedy a paradigmatic model of what historically has been the relationship of the medieval Latin-Christian world with the Arab-Islamic world, in which the contribution of Arabic culture has acted as a bridge of connection capable of going beyond the walls of religious opposition, without being affected by the upheavals and turmoil of politics, then as now.
The paper aims at providing a comprehensive description of the manuscript Rampur, Rampur Raza Lib... more The paper aims at providing a comprehensive description of the manuscript Rampur, Rampur Raza Library 3476 (ḥikma 112), which contains three of the four main parts of Avicenna's philosophical magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (the Book of the Cure or: of the Healing). This manuscript documents important developments in the history of Arabic-Islamic philosophy. First, it attests a precise intellectual genealogy within the influential Daštakī family from Shiraz, several exponents of which can be identified as successive owners of this manuscript at the turn of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, among whom one should mention Ṣadr al-Dīn Moḥammad Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 903/1498), the founder of the so-called "Šīrāzī school" of philosophy; Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Manṣūr Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 948/1542), son of the preceding and author of the first extant commentary on the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things, or Metaphysics) of the Šifāʾ in Arabic presently known; and Fatḥollāh Šīrāzī (d. 997/1589), a student and possibly also a relative of Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Manṣūr Daštakī Šīrāzī, one of the main advocates and promoters of rationalism in India. Second, copied in 718/1318, the manuscript at hand highlights a crucial phase of the transmission of Avicenna's Šifāʾ, at the pivotal juncture between the most ancient phase of dissemination of the work (fifth to seventh/eleventh to thirteenth centuries) and the later period of its manuscript production (ninth to fourteenth/fifteenth to twentieth centuries). Third, it offers a concrete and insightful specimen of the intellectual exchanges between the Safavid (1502-1736) and the Mughal (1530-1707) empires in the seminal and formative phase of cultural life in Iran and India in the tenth/sixteenth century, in an itinerary that from Shiraz, the place of origin of the Daštakī family, goes eastward in the direction of the Mughal court of Akbar I (r. 963-1014/1556-1605) until it reaches the Raza Library of Rampur at some point.
The present paper overviews the Pococke collection of manuscripts of Avicenna’s magnum opus Kitāb... more The present paper overviews the Pococke collection of manuscripts of Avicenna’s magnum opus Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing) preserved in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, which originally consisted, in all likelihood, of twenty-five items. This codicological evidence is then confronted with the historical report according to which Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī commented on the Šifāʾ by means of an exegesis made of twenty-five volumes. The contribution explores whether these two apparently unrelated pieces of evidence – relevant, respectively, for the transmission of Avicenna’s masterpiece in philosophy and the history of Avicennism – may be interconnected, trying to determine which relation, if any, links the twenty-five codices of the Šifāʾ actually preserved in the Bodelian Pococke collection with the twenty-five volumes of the alleged commentary on the Šifāʾ by al-Rāzī.
![Research paper thumbnail of “The Translator’s Cut. Cultural Experience and Philosophical Narration in the Early Latin Translations of Avicenna”, in Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation, ed. Katja Krause, Maria Auxent, Dror Weil, Routledge, New York-London 2023 [29 June 2022], pp. 303-324 OPEN ACCESS](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/88148241/thumbnails/1.jpg)
A particular scholarly experience prompted the earliest Latin translators of Avicenna, the Jewish... more A particular scholarly experience prompted the earliest Latin translators of Avicenna, the Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Daud and the Christian Dominicus Gundissalinus, to choose Avicenna’s philosophical encyclopedia Book of the Cure/Healing and translate only some parts of it, with noticeable modifications. By privileging this summa among the other works of Avicenna available in Andalusia at the time, Ibn Daud and Gundissalinus opted for Avicenna’s most “Aristotelian” writing. Moreover, by focusing on natural philosophy and metaphysics—with reduced attention to logic and a complete neglect of mathematics—they reoriented the doctrinal purport of the work. Finally, by labeling the final part on metaphysics as “first philosophy” and abridging its last two, “Islamic,” chapters, they applied a non-confessional approach. In all these respects, the translators acted as movie directors do when they select a screenplay, cut and splice the scenes, and end the movie with a close-up and dissolve. Similarly, Ibn Daud and Gundissalinus conveyed to their Latin readers a narrative of philosophical “reality” (Avicenna and his oeuvre) that was sensibly different from their Arabic source.
Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes, Volume III. On Causes and the Noetic Triad, ed. D. Calma, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2022
Previous scholarship has emphasized the centrality of chapter viii.4 of the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of... more Previous scholarship has emphasized the centrality of chapter viii.4 of the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things, or Metaphysics) of Avicenna's Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure / Healing) as the main piece of evidence that can be invoked to argue for the dependence of Avicenna's metaphysical thought on the Arabic tradition of Proclus in general, and of the Liber de causis in particular.1 Scholars have stressed that this chapter contains the most glaring example of Avicenna's debt towards the Arabic Proclus, in the form that the Proclean Arabic tradition takes in the Kitāb fī Maḥḍ al-Ḫayr, the Book of the Pure Good, better known as Liber de causis. In other words, to get the best idea of Avicenna's recourse to the Liber de causis in the Ilāhiyyāt of the Šifāʾ (henceforth: Ilāhiyyāt), one has to look at chapter viii.4 of Avicenna's work. The key-doctrine in this regard is the theory according to which the First Cause or God does not have any essence, since It is only being. This idea, which surfaces in Ilāhiyyāt viii.4, is notoriously expressed in the famous proposition viii[ix] of the Liber de causis. This proposition marks a "dramatic" departure from the original Proclean and Plotinian tenet of a totally transcendent and unspeakable nature of God, and ascribes to the First Principle a positive nature, namely being. This nature maintains the uninformed or shapeless character of the divine nature already postulated by Proclus, but also holds a precise and intelligible content.2 With Ilāhiyyāt viii.4 and proposition viii[ix] we are at the doctrinal core, respectively, of Avicenna's magnum opus on metaphysics and of the Liber de causis. With respect to Avicenna, we find in this chapter the fundamental discrimination of Avicenna's cosmos between created beings, on the one hand, and God, on the other, drawn by means of the pivotal distinction of essence and existence in created being
A glaring example of the centrality of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s metaphysics in medieval Arabic-... more A glaring example of the centrality of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s metaphysics in medieval Arabic-Islamic philosophy is provided by the most important philosopher of the so-called “classical” or “formative” phase of falsafa, namely Avicenna (d. 428H/1037). Alexander of Aphrodisias is surely one of the main Greek sources of Avicenna’s metaphysics, as his four explicit quotations in the most important metaphysical work by Avicenna – the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things), of Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure or of the Healing) – attest. The present contribution analyzes Avicenna’s four explicit references in the Ilāhiyyāt to the writing Maqāla fī l-Qawl fī mabādiʾ al-kull bi-ḥasab raʾy Arisṭāṭālis al-faylasūf (Treatise on the Speech regarding the Principles of the Universe according to the Opinion of Aristotle the Philosopher) ascribed to Alexander in the Syriac and Arabic tradition, contextualizes them in the framework of Avicenna’s recourse to the philosophical and scientific authorities that Avicennas’ mentions in this work, and discusses the degree of realiability of the interpretation of the Alexander Arabus that Avicenna provides.
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Papers by Amos Bertolacci
A lithographic print of Avicenna’s (Ibn S ̄ına ̄, d. 1037) metaphysical mas- terpiece – the Science of Divine Things (Ila ̄hiyya ̄t) from the Book of the Healing (Kita ̄b al-Šifa ̄ʾ) – published in Tehran between 1885 and 1888 presents a vast and interesting exegetical apparatus, which can be defined overall as ‘marginal’: it partly precedes the text of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t (the lithograph opens with the commentary on the first six treatises of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t by Mulla ̄ S.adra ̄, d. 1050H/1640), partly surrounds it at the edge of the page (glosses by various other commentators of the 16th-18th centuries), partly inter- sperses with it (interlinear notations taken from the manuscripts of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t or from the exegesis of the commentators mentioned above).The contribution proposes a first attempt at a historical contextualization of this important witness of Iranian philosophical publishing at the end of the nineteenth century, classifying the multifaceted exegesis of the text of the Ila ̄hiyya ̄t contained in it; moreover, it highlights the organization of knowl- edge that emerges from the way in which the lithography places meta- physics before the natural philosophy of the Šifa ̄ʾ, and advances some hypotheses on the sources used by the editors and on the respective weight that they gave to Avicenna’s text and to the exegesis of his commentators within the work.
In questo profilo di storia della filosofia, il pensiero di Alberto Magno, assieme ed ancor più di quello di Tommaso d’Aquino, potrebbe avere funto da principio ispiratore e da fattore di unità, attraverso canali di conoscenza, diretti o indiretti, testuali o contestuali, che gli studi su Dante stanno mettendo in sempre maggior luce. Il carattere fortemente polifonico della “filosofica famiglia” (il gruppo di personaggi più numeroso tra i tre che Dante colloca nel Limbo, dopo i poeti ed i politici), la sua interculturalità (con inclusione di pensatori di provenienza greca, latina e araba) ed interdisciplinarietà (la filosofia teoretica dialoga con quella pratica, con la matematica e con la medicina) corrispondono infatti ad altrettanti tratti fondamentale dell’approccio di Alberto alla pratica filosofica ed al pensiero precedente. Più specificamente, una possibile influenza di Alberto Magno può essere rintracciata nell’armonia tra Aristotele e Platone che Dante propone, nella rilevanza che egli accorda ad Averroè come commentatore di Aristotele, nel risalto dato ad Avicenna in ambito non solo filosofico ma anche medico, e nell’importanza che viene ascritta alla matematica in filosofia, con particolare riguardo all’autorità di Euclide e Tolomeo.
Please note this article is published with Brepols Publishers as a Gold Open Access article under a Creative Commons CC 4.0: BY-NC license: https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503609379-1
The article is also freely available on the website of Brepols Publishers: https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484%2FM.PATMA-EB.5.135807 under this same license.
Atti del Convegno Internazionale promosso dall’Opera della Cattedrale di Lucca e dalla Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca per i 950 anni della dedicazione della Cattedrale (Lucca, 24-26 novembre 2021).
Abstract:
The article has three interrelated aims. First, to analyze a crucial passage of the Long Commentary on the De Anima by Averroes (Ibn Rušd, d. 1198 CE), one of the most informative criticisms of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037 CE) devised by the Commentator, unraveling its details by means of similar passages in other Aristotelian commentaries and other works by Averroes. Second, to emphasize the historical importance of this passage as a precious testimonium of the entrance of Avicenna’s philosophy in Andalusia, documenting that, in this text and in other quotations, Averroes’ knowledge of Avicenna’s thought is probably based on a given summa by Avicenna, the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure, or: of the Healing), apparently known first-hand. Finally, to advance the possibility that, in what he says about Avicenna in the passage under discussion, Averroes may depend on the Introduction of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ authored by al-Ǧūzǧānī.