Avicenna Soul Theory

The time of Avicenna is the heyday of Islamic civilization. Though Islam is the latest monotheism among Judaism and Christianity, there is not any looseness in doctrine of the religion. On the contrary, Islam is the strictest monotheism. It seems that this kind of religion can by no means of tolerating pagan civilization. However, since the first day of Islam, this religion is never stopping absorbing pagan sources to sustain it own vigor. The most amazing thing is the mixture of Islam and ancient Greek philosophical thoughts, and the result of the trend is the emergence of the new wisdom-Islamic philosophy. Because of the outstanding ability in understanding the trend, Avicenna became the representative figure of Islamic philosophy.The thesis focus on Avicenna’s de anima and by analyzing the details of Avicenna’s thought I will try to give a sketch about Islamic philosophy and the position of Islamic philosophy in the history of philosophy. Domestic study of Avicenna is still at starting point, and there are few theses on the theme. The centers of the study are mostly in western world, such as France, Canada, Great Britain and United State. Thanks to those centers, I found most of materials published by some related presses.The thesis has four parts, the very beginning is the introduction; the second part is the first chapter which be divided into two sections, one is the outline of three basic topics in Avicenna’s thought system, and the other is the background of the problem of de anima in ancient Greek and Islamic world as well; the third part is the second chapter entitled "the intellect problem in Avicenna’s soul theory", which is the main chapter of the thesis and is composed by four sections. The first one is "terminology", second section is the general description about Avicenna’s soul theory and subsequent section focus on distinguishing Avicenna from Aristotle by advancing inner sense and imagination as a faculty. The last section forms the point of the essay that Avicenna is a unique philosopher by his unique theory about intellect. The fourth part also the last part is the third chapter, which mainly on the relationship between Avicenna and Averroes. Because of the great influence on western modern philosophy, Averroes is took as the first rational philosopher in medieval time. His difference between Avicenna may take as the epitome of the transformation between classical to modern, which happened in Middle Ages. By searching the relationship of they two and Islamic philosophy, we tentatively get the conclusion as such:Avicenna is the epitome of Islamic philosophy.