#1118 Peter Adamson - Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12-13th Centuries

Jul 3, 2025

Peter Adamson, a Professor of Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and King's College London, discusses the profound impact of Avicenna on Islamic philosophy. He unpacks Avicenna's contributions to logic and metaphysics while analyzing the tensions between Muslim philosophical traditions and critiques from contemporaries like Al-Ghazali. The conversation also explores the preservation of Islamic texts and the significance of 'para-philosophers' in 12th and 13th-century thought, highlighting how these ideas influenced Western scholasticism.

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INSIGHT

Avicenna's Philosophical Revolution

Avicenna revolutionized Islamic philosophy by creating a new system surpassing Aristotle's legacy.
He integrated Greek philosophy with Islamic theology, becoming the main philosophical authority in the Islamic East.

INSIGHT

Avicenna's Key Philosophical Contributions

Avicenna innovated extensively in logic, the theory of the soul, and metaphysics.
He introduced the flying man thought experiment and emphasized existence as central in metaphysics.

INSIGHT

Islamic Philosophy Mirrors Scholasticism

Philosophy in the Islamic East closely parallels scholastic Latin philosophy but predates it.
Both traditions engage deeply with Avicenna’s ideas, sharing scholastic methods and detailed argumentation.

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Dr. Peter Adamson is Professor of Philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at King's College London. He has written articles, monographs and edited books, mostly on philosophy in the Islamic world and ancient philosophy. He is the host of the weekly podcast "History of Philosophy without any gaps". He is the author of several books, including Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12-13th Centuries.

In this episode, we focus on Heirs of Avicenna. We start by talking about Avicenna and his main contributions to philosophy, the relationship between philosophy in the Islamic East and the scholastic tradition in Europe, the relationship between Avicenna and the traditions of falsafa and kalam, and how the book was organized. We focus on the topics of metaphysics in the Islamic East, and the issues that best characterize the philosophy of the Islamic East. We discuss whether the thinkers from this time period were philosophers of “paraphilosophers”. We talk about the most prominent philosophers, including al-Suhrawardī, Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, and al-Ṭūsī, as well as their legacy. Finally, we discuss what we can learn from studying philosophy beyond Europe.

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