Avicenna (Great Medieval Thinkers)

I am satisfied with the book and I did receive it on time. Thank you.

Wow! One of the Best books i have ever bought!

This was well researched and well written.

Jon McGinnis's Avicenna provides an excellent introduction to the thought of Avicenna. Like all philosophers of the time, Avicenna is working in the shadows of Aristotle. He actually was a translator and commentator of Aristotle as well as a fellow physician. This book is arranged as the Aristotelean corpus as well; not sure if it follows Avicenna's writings chronologically. But it starts with logic unfortunately, then "natural science"--basically physics, then "psychology"--sense perception and the intellect, then metaphysics--theology and cosmology as McGinnis puts it, and concludes with ethics. I say it starts with logic unfortunately because it's not the most compelling way to start a book given how dry and dull it is. Things don't improve with the physics and sense perception chapters given that most of the science of the time has been superseded, so it's only relevant in so far as it informs the rest of Avicenna's philosophy.Things get a lot more interesting once we finally arrive at his metaphysics. But here, too, Avicenna comes across as a commentator and interpreter of Aristotle who is updating his ideas and transferring them to his background. That said, Avicenna's metaphysics as presented also provide a good introduction to posterior Christian Medieval philosophy. The rigor of thought is there but it's more understandable and simpler since it's free from the difficulties Christian thinkers get themselves into by trying to add Christian elements to their philosophies.When all is said and done Avicenna comes across like an updated and readable Aristotle but whose original writings have remained. The scope and depth of Avicenna's thinking mirrors Aristotle. He also argues by way of conceptual distinctions, divisions, and exclusive disjunctions. McGinnis provides very good summaries of Avicenna's arguments. One gets the impression that the book McGinnis really wants to write is an introduction to Aristotle--and it would be a good one.My interest in Avicenna began because somewhere I read that he was more or a Platonist than other Islamic philosophers. That's not the picture that McGinnis provides at all. So I have to wonder about the limitations of McGinnis's perspective which come across in particular in the chapter on metaphysics where there's an overemphasis on modal logic/metaphysics.Also missing are more quotations from Avicenna himself. One does not get much of a sense here of the man and his style of philosophizing. And ultimately I would have liked to have gotten an idea of the ground of Avicenna's thinking.

Ces trois achats: Avicenna, Al-Kindi et The Incoherence of the Philosophers ont parfaitement correspondu à mes attentes et leur description correspondait exactement à leur état.