SELF-AWARENESS IN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

This important book investigates the emergence and development of a

distinct concept of self-awareness in post-classical, pre-modern Islamic
philosophy. Jari Kaukua presents the rst extended analysis of
Avicennas arguments on self-awareness including the ying man,
the argument from the unity of experience, the argument against
reection models of self-awareness and the argument from personal
identity claiming that all these arguments hinge on a clearly
denable concept of self-awareness as pure rst-personality. He
substantiates his interpretation with an analysis of Suhrawards use
of Avicennas concept and Mull Sadrs revision of the underlying
concept of selfhood. The study explores evidence for a sustained,
pre-modern and non-Western discussion of selfhood and
self-awareness, challenging the idea that these concepts are distinctly
modern, European concerns. The book will be of interest to a range of
readers in history of philosophy, history of ideas, Islamic studies and
philosophy of mind.
jari kaukua is Academy of Finland Research Fellow in the
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of
Jyvskyl. He is the author of several articles in journals including
Vivarium and History and Theory. This is his rst book.

SELF-AWARENESS IN
ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
Avicenna and Beyond

JARI KAUKUA

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom

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Jari Kaukua 2015
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Kaukua, Jari.
Self-awareness in Islamic philosophy : Avicenna and beyond / Jari Kaukua.
pages cm
isbn 978-1-107-08879-5 (hardback)
1. Self (Philosophy) 2. Self-consciousness (Awareness) 3. Islamic philosophy. I. Title.
b745.s35k38 2014
126.0880 297dc23
2014023812
isbn 978-1-107-08879-5 Hardback
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For Ukko, Touko and Rauha

Contents

page ix

Acknowledgements

Introduction
1

Preliminary observations: self-cognition and Avicennian

psychology
1.1
1.2

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

Avicennian psychology in outline

2 Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness: the

experiential basis of the ying man
2.1
2.2

The purpose and basis of the ying man

The validity and plausibility of the ying man

3 Self-awareness as existence: Avicenna on the individuality

of an incorporeal substance
3.1
3.2

The problem of incorporeal individuality

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

4 In the rst person: Avicennas concept of self-awareness

reconstructed
4.1
4.2
4.3

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence
Self-awareness, reection and intellection

5 Self-awareness without substance: from Ab al-Barakt

al-Baghdd to Suhraward
5.1
5.2

Avicennian material in Suhraward

Substanceless self-awareness

6 Self-awareness, presence, appearance: the ishrq context

6.1

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

vii

12
12
22
30
31
37
43
43
51
62
64
80
89
104
106
114
124
125

Contents

viii

6.2 Self-awareness and being as appearance

6.3 Degrees of self-awareness

7 Mull Sadr on self-awareness

7.1
7.2

Four Avicennian arguments

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

8 The self reconsidered: Sadrian revisions to the Avicennian

concept
8.1
8.2

The self and cognitive unity

Identity in substantial change

Conclusion: Who is the I?

Appendix: Arabic terminology related to self-awareness
Bibliography
Index

142
154
161
164
181
192
192
208
228
233
238
254

Acknowledgements

This book is the distillation of the research conducted during my postdoctoral period, but some of its central insights were already formed during
my doctoral studies. I therefore owe an immense debt of gratitude to my
supervisors, the late Juha Sihvola, Mikko Yrjnsuuri and Taneli Kukkonen.
The extremely conscientious and insightful comments of Jon McGinnis
and Simo Knuuttila provided crucial corroboration and realignment at a
formative stage. Finally, Peter Adamson not only added his characteristically
penetrating points but also was pivotal for my full engagement with postAvicennian philosophy by inviting me to share my hesitant rst reections on
Suhraward at a conference held in London in February 2008.
Financially, my research has been enabled by generous support from the
Academy of Finland (through research fellowships under the titles Selfhood
in Medieval Islamic Philosophy and Knowledge in Post-Avicennian Islamic
Philosophy, and through the two Centers of Excellence led by Simo
Knuuttila, History of Mind and Philosophical Psychology, Morality and
Politics), the European Research Council (through Taneli Kukkonens
research project on Subjectivity and Selfhood in the Arabic and Latin
Traditions) and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (through the project
Understanding Agency led by Lilli Alanen and Pauliina Remes). I have
had the pleasure of conducting the research at the inspiring environments of
the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of
Jyvskyl, my academic home and the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Uppsala. During the nal revision, I enjoyed the hospitality of
the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. My gratitude goes to
the sta and the directors of these organizations, but especially to all the dear
colleagues who have shared their critical insights at the various stages of
formation of my ideas, in particular to Vili Lhteenmki, Juhana Toivanen,
Mikko Yrjnsuuri, Taneli Kukkonen, Miira Tuominen, Timothy Riggs and
Tomas Ekenberg. I have also beneted enormously from the comments of
colleagues who listened to my talks at various seminars and conferences.
ix

Acknowledgements

Particularly cherished have been the critical yet encouraging remarks

I received during my visit to Iran from Al Abidi Shahrdi, Sad Javadi
Amoli and Abd al-Rasl Ubdyat, and I would like to extend my gratitude
to Yasser Pouresmail and Mohammad Javad Esmaeili for organizing these
talks. Finally, I am heavily indebted to my editor Hilary Gaskin as well as the
two anonymous referees for Cambridge University Press, whose combined
acumen helped me to improve the book quite considerably.
The librarians at the University of Jyvskyl and the University of Uppsala
have been invaluably ecient in tracing down my frequently obscure
requests. This book would not have been possible without their help. By
the same token, I would like to recognize Sajjad Rizvis and Vasileios Syros
collegial assistance with some particularly unobtainable texts. Deborah Black,
Therese Scarpelli Cory, Jules Janssens and Luis Xavier Lpez-Farjeat have
kindly shared their own work, even in pre-publication form, for which I am
most grateful. Jessica Slattery and Tim Riggs did a great job in polishing my
English; I hold exclusive rights to the inelegancies that remain. Finally, Im
grateful for Ville Suomalainens skilled and reliable preparation of the index.
Most of all, I am grateful for the unfailing love and support of my wife
Lotta, who alone has had to bear with the more insecure stages of the books
labour. I dedicate the nished work to our children.

Introduction

The Western world revolves around the self. A sure sign of this is the
proliferation of various neologisms in, for instance, folk psychological,
alternative therapeutic or economic parlance. We are all familiar with
various self-help programmes, self-counselling sessions, prospects of selfdevelopment, self-transcendence or self-realization, the conscientious consumers need of occasional self-compassion, and the rational economic
mans guiding principle of self-interest. This general cultural trend has its
parallels in philosophy and various other disciplines in the humanities and
the social sciences. For the past decades, self-consciousness or self-awareness
has been a constant concern of philosophers of mind, with the fact of rstpersonal, self-aware qualitative experience presenting arguably the most
obstinate obstacle for the naturalist explanation of all and everything.
Questions of perceived and constructed identity, or identities, have generated a thriving academic industry, with no recession in the foreseeable
future. Indeed, modernity and post-modernity are often dened precisely
by means of the novel notions of selfhood or individual identity (or the
dissolution thereof) to which these epochs are alleged witnesses.
As a result of the sustained interest in selfhood, the term self, as well as
the related psychological terms such as self-awareness or selfconsciousness, is a nodal point of both complementary and conicting
intuitions, interests and convictions. It is therefore not a surprise that the
term is extremely ambiguous, and that there are in fact a number of more or
less distinct concepts of self; a recent enumeration of variants in the
philosophical scene alone nds no less than thirty-two dierent epithets
used to characterize the self.1 These concepts range from extremely narrow
notions of subjectivity as a structural feature of all experience to considerably more complex concepts of the self as a narrative or socially constructed
entity; some are motivated by epistemological interests while others emerge
1

Strawson 2009, 18.

Introduction

from research in genetic psychology, sociology or anthropology. On the

other hand, extended cases have been made for the thesis that a coherent
naturalistic ontology can do without anything like the self, which at best is
an arguably useful psychological or cultural ction, but more often a
hopelessly entangled web of linguistic and conceptual confusions.2
Such heated activity about the self places the historian of ideas, particularly one working with a period and cultural context far removed from our
own, face to face with a set of thorny questions. These arise rst of all from
the ambiguity of the term self and the corresponding vagueness of the
concept of self. Which of the many alternative selves are we investigating?
What type of self-awareness are we scanning the historical material for? Are
we describing the development of a psychological entity, writing the history
of an epistemic question or an ethical dilemma, or telling the story of a
conceptual ction? Other questions seem even more serious: is it not rather
suspect to set out straightforwardly to study the history of a topic so loaded
with contemporary interest? Even if we were able to dispel the ambiguity
about the self, why should we suppose that thinkers in a period and cultural
context distant from ours were interested in it in the rst place? Indeed, if
interest in the self is constitutive to modernity, should we rather not assume
that any sustained discussion about it is unlikely to have taken place before
that particular epoch?
Worries of this sort are by no means exclusive to conscientious historians.
Spurred by the ghosts of colonial history, the sociological and anthropological theses of the unimaginable variety of human intellectual and social
life have penetrated our cultural consciousness and made us particularly
sensitive to the diverse values, beliefs, convictions and experiences that
people in dierent cultural contexts can hold and recognize. Indeed, this
conviction of the variability of human being is pivotal to the post-modern
idea that human selves or identities are constructed out of elements, many
of which are not determined by our species but are rather open to all sorts of
active interference by ourselves or by various forces in the cultural and social
contexts of our lives. As tantalizing as it may initially seem to study an
ancient Greek thinkers or a seventeenth-century Iranian philosophers
respective theories of the self, the rst question to ask is why we can
legitimately expect him even to recognize the entity.
In the following, my intention is not to start from any particular
contemporary concept of the self or self-awareness. For this reason, it
would be topsy-turvy to start o by describing the focus of our investigation
2

Cf. Kenny 1988 and 1999; Dennett 1991; Olson 1998; Metzinger 2003 and 2011.

Introduction

in specic terms. Rather, I will begin by reconstructing a particular way of

describing and conceiving of the self and self-awareness that emerges
explicitly for the rst time in Islamic philosophy in the psychological
writings of Avicenna (d. 1037). Having laid this basis, I will proceed to
study the development of this particular description and concept, as well as
that of the arguments applied in its articulation, in the thought of
Avicennas most illustrious successors, down to the revisionist philosophical
system of Mull Sadr (d. 1635/6) in the seventeenth century CE. The point
is to start from the way in which our authors describe, organize and classify
their experience, asking why they chose to pay attention to this particular
aspect of human experience, and what role the concept and the phenomenon of self-awareness played in their thought.
To anticipate the story this approach will yield, it is illuminating to
make a heuristic distinction between the phenomenology and the metaphysics of the self and self-awareness. To borrow Galen Strawsons succinct demarcation, Metaphysics . . . is the general study of how things are
or can be or must be. Its a matter for scientists and mathematicians as well
as philosophers, and I take it to include physics as an evolving part.
Phenomenology is the study of a particular part of how things are or can
be or must be. Its the general study of the character of experience in all its
sensory and cognitive richness.3 Thus, the metaphysics of the self (or selfawareness) concerns the question of what sort of entity (or event, state or
capacity) it is in reality, whether such things as selves really exist in the rst
place, and if so, whether they are anything like they initially seem to be. In
contemporary terms, the paradigmatic question to ask is whether our
naturalistic framework of explanation needs such entities as selves at all,
or whether we can explain them away by reductive recourse to something
more foundational. But even if we adopt a reductionist metaphysical
stance towards the self, we need not deny its persistence on the level of
phenomenology. If it is an undeniable fact that people are aware of
themselves in some sense, and if this is all we mean by their having selves,
then the phenomenological level is a matter of discussion of how to
describe the phenomenon. We can make positive assertions about the
phenomenon without committing either to realism about a corresponding
thing or to the denial thereof; in Strawsons words, there can be selfexperiences on the phenomenological level (perhaps even consensus about

Strawson 2009, 1.

Introduction

distinctions between their types) even if nothing like selves existed according to our metaphysics.4
Thus, one way of characterizing the plot of the present story is to say that
it is an unfolding of dierent metaphysical interpretations on a shared
phenomenological basis. The repetition of familiar Avicennian arguments
related to self-awareness, often word for word, sediments the phenomenon
of self-awareness into a received foundation of psychology. From the twelfth
century CE onwards, most philosophical authors will begin their discussion
of the human soul, sometimes even their entire psychology, with the famous
thought experiment of the ying man, or apply in crucial stages the
evidence of the subjective unity of experience or the argument against
reection-based models of self-awareness. As I will argue in detail, this is
because they unanimously subscribe to Avicennas description of selfawareness and his way of singling out this particular aspect of human
experience.
The consensus dissolves, however, as soon as the discussion shifts to the
metaphysical explanation of the phenomenon and the conclusions that can
legitimately be drawn on its basis. As we will see, Avicenna himself considered self-awareness to be a potent pointer towards, if not a proof of, the
truth of his substance dualist view of human being, but this move was
already being questioned by the rst generation of his students. This
sceptical strand was continued and established as a rm part of the subsequent theological tradition by Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz (d. 1209) towards the
end of the twelfth century CE. Yet it was not the whole story, for Rzs
contemporary Shihb al-Dn al-Suhraward (d. 1191) not only adopted
Avicennas description of self-awareness, but also placed it at the very
foundation of his new illuminationist concepts of knowledge and being.
Thus, from a potent piece of evidence in human psychology, the phenomenon of self-awareness became the paradigmatic type of knowledge, and the
cornerstone of an entire metaphysics.
Not only was the phenomenon of self-awareness open for radically new
argumentative applications there was also room for debate concerning the
correct metaphysical account of the entity behind self-awareness, the
human self. This becomes eminently clear in our investigation of
the thought of Mull Sadr, who embeds the received description of selfawareness in a radically revised metaphysical framework. A determined
subscriber to his predecessors means of describing and delimiting the
4

Strawson 2009, 2. Following Strawson, in the present study the terms phenomenology and phenomenon are not used to refer to the thriving tradition of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl.

Introduction

phenomenon, he nevertheless criticized their conception of the self as being

inadequately static. Instead of a stable substance that endures unchanged
through the constant ux of its attributes and relations to the world, Sadr
preferred to conceive of the self as a substance in motion that is thoroughly
determined by the variation of its attributes, and unied only in the sense of
being a single continuous stream of existence that is aware of itself.
In an approach of this kind, the proof of the pudding can only be in the
eating. I am not studying human selfhood and self-awareness as a perennial
topic of philosophy, but aim instead to describe one historical, and radically
contingent, trajectory that to me seems best understood by means of our
terminology of self and self-awareness.5 In the end, the texts under study
must not only provide the ingredients for our reconstruction of the Islamic
philosophers description of self-awareness, they must also yield sucient
evidence that philosophers writing in Arabic from the eleventh century CE
onwards had both the motivation and the conceptual means to pay systematic descriptive attention to their experience. Although Avicennas,
Suhrawards and Mull Sadrs concepts of self and self-awareness are not
without parallels among contemporary classications of dierent types of
selfhood and self-awareness, the crucial claim remains that we can and must
reconstruct those concepts, and the underlying preoccupations, interests
and convictions, without taking our primary cue from corresponding
modern concepts.
Since the present book is a story of the emergence and development of
one particular concept of self and self-awareness, it is by necessity relatively
narrow in its focus. Consequently, it does not strive to give an exhaustive
overview of the dierent possible concepts of self and self-awareness that
one might be able to locate in Islamic intellectual history between the
eleventh and the seventeenth centuries CE. If such a general investigation
were conducted rigorously, that is, according to the sort of bottom-up
approach we have just sketched, it would exceed the limits feasible for a
single-volume study, and would most certainly be beyond the capacities of
the present author. A more liberal charting of the landscape, on the other
hand, could scarcely avoid taking its cue from some contemporary ways of
conceptualizing the self and self-awareness, which would seriously compromise its value for the systematically and historically demanding reader.
5

Thus, I wholeheartedly subscribe to the concern over anachronistic rational reconstruction as seminally formulated in Skinner 1969, although I believe that it must be qualied by a recognition of the
limits of all historical reconstruction. For an attempt at articulating those limits, with a particular view
to the questions of self and self-awareness, see Kaukua and Lhteenmki 2010.

Introduction

This is by no means the rst historical study of the self and self-awareness
in pre-modern philosophy. Charles Taylors seminal Sources of the Self
already set o with a sketch of the opening of the interior space of
experience in ancient philosophy, even if the books main emphasis was
on the emergence of the specically modern notion of selfhood.6 More
recently, Richard Sorabji published a large volume with the succinct title
Self, which deals emphatically and at considerable length with ancient and
medieval views on a range of metaphysical, psychological and ethical questions related to selfhood and self-awareness.7 Roughly simultaneous to
Sorabjis book, Raymond Martin and John Barresi came out with an
intellectual history of personal identity titled The Rise and Fall of Soul and
Self.8 Finally, Alain de Liberas ongoing Archologie du sujet is an engaging
story of how the modern notion of subjectivity emerges from the development of decidedly medieval philosophical concerns.9 These are just some of
the most prominent recent examples, which can be supplemented by several
excellent studies focused on a single thinker or a more distant period.10 Yet
in spite of the considerable joint merits of these books in covering a vast
array of thinkers, none of them ventures very far into the territory of Arabic
or Islamic philosophy, with the stand-alone exception of Avicenna, whose
thought experiment of the ying man is often quoted as a perspicacious if
puzzling attempt at describing and delineating the phenomenon of selfawareness. Similarly, the handful of articles or book chapters that have been
written on self-awareness in Islamic philosophy are mostly focused on
Avicenna.11
That historians of the self have neglected the post-Avicennian development in Islamic philosophy is not particularly surprising. Until quite
recently, Islamic philosophy was regarded as a fringe phenomenon in the
broad scope of the history of philosophy, worthy of inclusion only to the
extent that it played a role in the transmission and transformation of
the Greek heritage before its nal appropriation by the Latin philosophers
and theologians from the thirteenth century onwards. While the absence of
veriable contacts between the principal proponents of Islamic and
Christian philosophy after Averroes death in 1198 CE may have legitimated
the delegation of the study of the subsequent Islamic tradition to the
6
9
10
11

7
8
Taylor 1989.
Sorabji 2006.
Martin and Barresi 2006.
De Libera 2007 and 2008, with two more volumes announced.
Cf., for example, Gill 1996 and 2006 (on Greek literature and Hellenistic philosophy, respectively);
Cary 2003 (on Augustine); Remes 2007 (on Plotinus); Cory 2013 (on Aquinas).
Cf. Sebti 2000, 100117; Black 2008 and 2012; and Kaukua 2007. Marcotte 2004 and Kaukua 2011
deal with Suhrawards relation to Avicenna.

Introduction

orientalists, this was often coupled with the more derogatory thesis that
there simply was no philosophical activity worthy of the name in the Arabic
language after Averroes allegedly unsuccessful attempt to defend philosophy against Ab H
mid al-Ghazls (d. 1111 CE) fatal blow dealt in his
critical Tahfut al-falsifa.
It has since been conclusively shown that Ghazl did not put an end to
the development of philosophical thought in the Islamic world, either
single-handedly or as the spearhead of a wider opposition from orthodox
theologians. In fact, the contrary consensus is beginning to emerge according to which he may not even have intended anything of the sort. Instead,
Ghazl has been argued to have knowingly incorporated a great amount of
philosophical material, not to mention the philosophical method of rigorous argumentation, into his own thought, and to have been followed in this
by Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz, another highly venerated Sunn theologian.12
Thus, although self-proclaimed philosophers may have grown rare in the
subsequent centuries of Islamic thought, philosophical activity prospered in
Sunn theological writing and teaching, quite likely down to our era.13
On the other hand, Iran has fostered a thriving philosophical tradition
through to the present day. In the light of our increasing knowledge of the
development of this eld of intellectual activity, it seems a safe estimate to
say that post-Avicennian Islamic philosophers were not afraid of making
departures comparable in extent to their early modern European peers.14
This is especially evident in the thought of Suhraward and Mull Sadr
whose revisions of received views will be our major concern in the following.
Nevertheless, the strictly philosophical value of this tradition is sometimes
still obscured by the fact that some of its most prominent Western scholars
have tended to emphasize other, more mystical aspects of the philosophers
thought. This is especially true of the pioneering work of Henry Corbin
who played a major role in their introduction to the Western public. Corbin
was an eccentric thinker who developed his own method of phenomenological interpretation, which hinged upon the explicit permission, or indeed
requirement, to give up most of the rigour of the historical method; instead,
one was to strive to imaginatively reinvigorate the mystical insights of ones
objects of study. Instead of an attempt at philosophical understanding, this
often involved extravagant emphasis on the symbols and myths, which
12
13
14

See Wisnovsky 2004a; Shihadeh 2005 and 2006; Griel 2009.

See Wisnovsky 2004b; El-Rouayheb 2010.
For a concise account of the central debates in Iranian philosophy in the fteenth and sixteenth
centuries, see Pourjavady 2011, 1105.

Introduction

some of the authors frequently employ, to draw daunting connections not

only between dierent eras of Iranian thought but also between the Islamic
philosophers and historically unconnected European mystics such as Jakob
Bhme or Emmanuel Swedenborg.15 This approach to reconstructing the
history of Iranian philosophy has hardly increased the credibility of the
tradition in the eyes of less extravagant readers, and the situation has not
been helped by the fact that a number of inuential scholars have maintained Corbins emphasis on mysticism.16 Although many of these scholars,
and Corbin in particular, should be lauded for their historical and philological contributions, their work has been a mixed blessing for the wider
recognition of the philosophical merits of post-Avicennian philosophy.
The recent past notwithstanding, few specialists today will debate the
inclusion of post-Avicennian philosophical authors in the class of subjects
meriting serious philosophical study. But despite several excellent studies
since the 1980s,17 our understanding of later Islamic philosophy is not yet on
the level that we have come to expect in the case of canonical gures such as
al-Frb, Avicenna or Averroes. In my view, it is crucial for reaching this
goal that we interpret the post-classical authors in close and rigorous
connection to the classical Avicennian framework, in the understanding
of which we can rely on several decades of rst-rate philosophical scholarship on a wide range of topics. As this study of self-awareness suggests, even
the most original moves of thinkers like Suhraward or Mull Sadr can be
fully appreciated only against this background; Avicennas insights are
neither a model to be slavishly followed nor an antiquated edice to be
simply discarded in favour of supposedly higher mystical ways to reach
the Truth, but rather potent material for revision and reapplication. This is
most obvious in Suhrawards employment of Avicennas psychological
arguments for the irreducibility of self-awareness as the basis for his new
metaphysics of light and appearance in the H
ikma al-ishrq. It is true that
the debts are not always acknowledged, and it is not uncommon that we
have to show the Avicennian credentials of an author against his express
denouncement again, Suhrawards wholesale rejection of Peripatetic
metaphysics and theory of science, preliminary only to the introduction
of another piece of Avicennian evidence, is a case in point but in this
regard the post-Avicennian philosophers are by no means unique.
15
16
17

For a prime example of Corbins method in practice, see Corbin 1971, vol. ii.
Cf., for instance, the work of Corbins close associate Seyyed Hossein Nasr (such as his 1978 and
1996); and studies like Morris 1981 or Amin Razavi 1997.
Cf. Ziai 1990; Jambet 2002 and 2008; Bonmariage 2007; Rizvi 2009; Kalin 2010; Rustom 2012.

Introduction

Thus, by means of the particular case of self-awareness I hope to substantiate the claim that we should read authors like Suhraward and Mull
Sadr as reacting rst and foremost to philosophical debates and texts, and to
interpret them with the sort of expectations of conceptual rigorousness and
insight that guide us in the formative case of Avicenna. Conversely, the
study will also propose that the investigation of the reception of some of
Avicennas original ideas may be a considerable asset in our attempts to
understand those ideas in their inceptor by providing corroboration for our
reconstructions of them. In the case of self-awareness, the novelty of
Avicennas concept gives rise to a number of complications in the framework of Peripatetic psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics, which in
turn has made its reconstruction a matter of considerable diculty and
debate. While similarity with a particular strand of reception is of course
no evidence for the correctness of any single interpretation of the view that
is being received, the twelfth-century discussion of self-awareness can still
help us by showing which interpretation the thinkers temporally and
culturally close to Avicenna considered as the most plausible. This is
evinced by their devising additional arguments along Avicennian lines,
such as the systematic distinction between the subject and the object of
experience in terms of I and it, respectively, or their introduction of
highly claricatory new terms to describe self-awareness, such as
Suhrawards I-ness (anya).
The rst chapter of the book discusses the most prominent pre-Avicennian
philosophical concepts of the self and the various types of self-cognition,
and introduces briey some of the basic doctrines of the Avicennian
psychology that provide the framework for much of the ensuing discussion.
Chapter 2 will introduce the phenomenological basis of Avicennas new
concept of self-awareness. I will start with one of his most famous arguments, the thought experiment featuring the ying or oating man. By
reading the ying man in its immediate context and in close connection
with the argumentative goals it is intended to reach, I attempt to show that
Avicenna builds his concept of self-awareness upon something he expects us
all to be familiar with from our everyday experience. This is an important
point to make not only because the nature of the thought experiment has
been a matter of scholarly debate, but rst and foremost because its familiar
phenomenological basis is crucial to my later reconstruction of Avicennas
concept of self-awareness.
Chapter 3 adopts a parallel line of approach by considering Avicennas
possible motives in introducing the new concept of self-awareness. This

10

Introduction

question of theoretical rationale becomes pressing because of the striking

claim that Avicenna makes in his mature correspondence, namely the claim
that self-awareness amounts to the existence of the immaterial human
substance. The interpretation I suggest is that Avicenna may have perceived
self-awareness as instrumental to presenting a coherent psychological substance dualism in the Peripatetic framework that founds individuality on a
strong connection to matter. In other words, he may have seen in selfawareness a solution to the question of how a human being can be both an
immaterial substance and an individual instantiation of the human species.
After these preparatory chapters, I nally present my reconstruction of
Avicennas concept of self-awareness in Chapter 4. By considering a number
of Avicennian arguments related to self-awareness, I attempt to show that
the new concept is intended to capture a very narrow sense of rstpersonality inherent in all human existence. I argue that this reconstruction
of the concept is particularly charitable to Avicenna, because it is capable of
fullling the stringent requirements placed upon the concept by all the
argumentative contexts in which the phenomenon is applied. This is further
supported by a consideration of the scattered remarks Avicenna makes on
reective self-awareness.
Chapter 5 moves on to discuss the treatment of this aspect of the
Avicennian heritage in the thought of his twelfth-century critics. The
chapter shows how the critical remarks of Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd
(d. 1164/5 CE) and Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz lead eventually to Suhrawards
separation of the phenomenon and the concept of self-awareness from
Avicennas metaphysical account of it as the existence of the human substance. Henceforth, self-awareness can be conceived in purely phenomenological terms, that is, without explaining it in more foundational
metaphysical terms.
As will be shown in Chapter 6, the separation of Avicennas phenomenology of the self from his metaphysics is decisive for Suhrawards own
attempt at developing a self-styled illuminationist (ishrq) alternative to
Avicennas Peripatetic system. Through a close reading of the passages in
which he introduces the pivotal concepts of knowledge as presence (hudr)
is
and being as light (nr) or appearance (z uhr), I show that self-awareness
pivotal to the denition of both new terms. Thus, Suhraward is witness to a
seismic shift in the application of the concept of self-awareness without any
change in the description of the underlying phenomenon. Regardless of its
great explanatory power, Avicenna seems to have restricted the importance
of self-awareness to psychological concerns, but in Suhraward it becomes a
cornerstone of both epistemology and metaphysics.

Introduction

11

Chapter 7 proceeds to consider how self-awareness gures in the thought

of Mull Sadr, the great seventeenth-century synthesizer of the various
strands of earlier Islamic thought. A thorough consideration of Sadrs
magnum opus al-H
ikma al-mutaliya f al-asfr al-arbaa al-aqlya shows
that he incorporates most of the traditional arguments revolving on selfawareness as well as a great deal of the critical attention subjected to them in
the intervening centuries of Islamic thought. This is particularly interesting
because two of the philosophical doctrines that set Sadr apart from most of
his predecessors seem to be severely at odds with the Avicennian concept of
self-awareness. Chapter 8 will therefore turn to consider in detail how
Sadrs adherence to the ancient theory of cognitive unity, and to his
original theory of thoroughgoing change involving the substantial core of
each and every created entity, aects his understanding of the self and selfawareness. It will be seen that notwithstanding Sadrs initial subscription
to the traditional material, his concept of the self is signicantly dierent
from that of his predecessors. Instead of a narrow and static rst-personality,
the Sadrian self is thoroughly intertwined with other determinations of
experience and thereby subject to genuine change and development.
To sum up, the story that we are about to tell hinges on a single
philosophically loaded phenomenon, a feature of human experience that
all central actors single out and dene by largely the same empirical and
argumentative means. Yet it is a genuine story because it incorporates
signicant shifts in the conclusions made on that shared basis. Moreover,
as we will see, even the phenomenological basis of the concept of selfawareness is opened for revision. This space for conceptual variations
notwithstanding, it is important to underline that the storyline itself
emerges from the historical material. It is clear that each subsequent
philosopher latches on to a discussion, the means and motives of which
he inherits from his predecessors. I do not doubt that other eminently
interesting and historically sound stories about the self and self-awareness in
the Islamic cultural milieu remain to be told, but I would like to claim that
the narrow focus of the present study allows us to reap the benet of a plot
that marries philosophical suspense to historical truth.

chapter 1

Preliminary observations: self-cognition and

Avicennian psychology

1.1

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

One of the historical claims of the present study is that Avicennas work
marks the point of entry of a new concept of self-awareness into the Arabic
philosophical scene. This does not mean that there was no prior Arabic
philosophical discussion about the self and the various types of selfcognition, nor do I wish to claim that the novel concept was developed
on a clean theoretical slate. Like all philosophers, Avicenna builds on the
remarks, arguments and doctrinal convictions of his predecessors, but it is
an altogether dierent question whether these were sucient to determine
his thinking, or whether Avicenna gave the tradition a decided twist of his
own. In order to substantiate the latter alternative, developed in a more
positive vein in the following chapters, let us briey review some of those
aspects of the ancient heritage that pertain to questions about the self and
self-awareness and that were demonstrably available in pre-Avicennian
Arabic philosophy.
An obvious point of relevance is Aristotles discussion of our perceiving
that we perceive in De anima III.2. Although self-awareness is not the main
focus of this passage, which is naturally interpreted as addressing the more
general problem of phenomenal consciousness,1 it can be argued to imply
some sort of self-awareness as well, since Aristotle explicitly states it to be
one and the same subject of perception that both perceives something and
perceives itself to perceive that something.2 Aristotles reasons for introducing the question of the perception of perception are a matter of debate; one
plausible view is that he does it out of a need to distinguish the physical
1

For an inuential recent version of this interpretation, see Caston 2002 (and cf. Sisko 2004; Caston
2004; Johansen 2005; Polansky 2007, 380402; and Perl 2010, 43101). Earlier studies of the topic
are Kahn 1966; Kosman 1975; Hardie 1976; Hamlyn 1978; Modrak 1981, 1987; and Osborne 1983.
Cf. NE IX.9, 1170a29b1, which suggests that Aristotle may have entertained an explicit concept of
such a primitive type of self-awareness.

12

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

13

changes that result in perception from those that do not.3 This is a problem
because, as Aristotle recognizes in De anima II.12, the very same causes can
produce both perceivable qualities and actual perceptions in another thing
consider, for example, a rose that makes the surrounding air odorous but
incites a pleasurable sensation of smelling in a human being.4 The basis of
the distinction is left strangely underdeveloped in De anima,5 but Aristotle
does state it in the more general context of Physics VII.2, where we can nd
the general claim, here translated from Ish.q ibn H
unayns (d. 910/11 CE)
Arabic, that that change in other than the senses [that is, the change of what
is not animate (al-mutanasa)] is not aware of the change (takna
al-istihlata tilka bi ghayri al-h.awssi lam tashur bi al-istih.la).6 Since
percipient animals are not mere bodies, like rocks whose behaviour can be
exhaustively described in general physical terms, the natural philosopher
must introduce further dierentiating properties as principles for their
study in the specic subdiscipline of cognitive psychology. The percipient
subjects awareness of the processes of perception can be understood as
precisely such a dierentiating property. Thus, in this reconstruction
Aristotles introduction of the question of how awareness of perception
comes about is an immediate result of his general concept of perception.
In the Greek text, Aristotle speaks of us sensing that we are seeing or
hearing (aisthanometha hoti hormen kai akouomen) and therefore in some
sense perceiving ourselves in the act of seeing or hearing, and mentions a
sense faculty or act which is capable of sensing itself (aut hauts).7 He
argues that awareness of oneself as perceiving is a kind of perception, and
consequently a corresponding faculty of perception must be ascribed to
explain it. Two options then readily suggest themselves: either there is a
second-order faculty in addition to each sense which perceives the rst sense
perceiving, or the rst-order sense perceives both an external object and its
own perception of the external object. Since the rst option will lead to an
3
4
5

6
7

So Caston 2002, 755759; for the conicting view that Aristotle simply takes the phenomenon for
granted, see Perl 2010, 51.
Ar. De an. II.12, 424b317.
Aristotle may also have been thinking about the implicit distinction between mere alteration (inanimate things) and the actualization of a potency (animate things) in De an. II.5, or the distinction
between receiving a quality with matter (inanimate things) and without matter (animate things) in
II.12.
Arist.t.ls, al-T.aba VII.2, 244b12245a2, 751. On Ish.qs translation, see Peters 1968, 3034.
Ar. De an. III.2, 425b1217. Whether he meant an act or a faculty is one of the scholarly bones of
contention; see Caston 2002 and Johansen 2005 for prominent representatives of the activity and
capacity readings, respectively. My use of faculty in the following should not be taken as a stand in
this debate, although it does seem the more natural reading from the point of view of Arabic
philosophical psychology, especially that of Avicenna.

14

Preliminary observations

innite regress unless a self-perceiving faculty is posited at some point,

Aristotle argues that we should posit such a faculty at the rst stage. As a
conclusion, every faculty of perception is said to perceive its own act.
Unfortunately, the beginning of De anima III.2 is not included among
the surviving fragments of Ish.qs translation, Avicennas preferred text. An
inferior anonymous translation, to which he also had access, renders the
relevant section as follows:
But since we apprehend when we see and hear (kunn mudrikna lamm
raayn wa saman), visions apprehension when it sees must necessarily be
either through itself (bi nafsihi) or through something else. But it would
apprehend both itself (yakna mudrikan nafsahu) and the colour of the
subject. Because of that either two things apprehend a single thing or vision
apprehends itself (nafsahu). If vision had a distinct sense, then that would
descend innitely in division or turns to apprehend itself (rajaa fa kna
mudrikan nafsahu); as a consequence, this is to be said of the rst sense.8

Where the Greek original speaks of sensing that we are seeing or hearing,
the anonymous translator renders the point by means of an implicit and
largely ambiguous distinction between seeing or hearing as such, and
apprehending when (lamm) we see or hear. Not only is it said that we
apprehend when we see and hear things, even the faculty of vision does.9
However, this ambiguity does not obscure the texts relevance for the
question of self-awareness, which becomes pronounced in the subsequent
reexive use of nafs in connection with mudrik there really is something
apprehending itself here.
Since we lack access to Ish.qs allegedly superior translation, it is dicult
to determine what exactly readers of the Arabic Aristotle drew from De
anima III.2. I would like to argue, however, that although perception of
perception continued to be recognized as a psychological topic, its ingredients seem not to have made their way into explicit discussions on selfawareness proper. Avicenna, for instance, alludes to the problem as a
question that is pertinent to his theory of the internal sense faculties, with
not so much as a hint that he would have perceived it to have any considerable repercussions to his concept of self-awareness.10 Although the
thinkers studied in the present volume uniformly agree that all cognitive
8

9
10

Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.2, 425b1217, 64. That this version is not Ish.qs was established in Frank
19589 (for Avicennas access to the anonymous translation, see 232); the most extensive recent
summary of the scholarly debate is Elamrani-Jamal 2003.
An additional diculty is due to the fact that lamm (when) is orthographically identical to lim
(here what [is seen or heard]), which would also make sense in the present passage.
For Avicennas brief reference to perception of perception, see Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 6667 Rahman.

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

15

activity involves a primitive type of self-awareness, no one seems to connect

this view to De anima III.2. In the end, this is not even particularly
surprising, for the tendency after Avicenna is to emphasize the independence of self-awareness from any kind of perception.
Another framework in which pre-Avicennian Arabic philosophy
addresses the self and self-cognition is the theory, also of Aristotelian
provenance, of intellection as an identity or unity of the intellect in act
and its intelligible object. If this unity between the two relata is understood
in a strict manner, it has the consequence that, in the nal analysis, all actual
intellection is self-intellection. Although the theory was the subject of erce
debate in our period,11 it had an authoritative basis in the translations of
some of the most highly regarded ancient metaphysical texts.
In his discussion of the intellect in the third book of De anima, Aristotle
makes the repeated claim that, in an act of intellection, the intellect is one
with its object. Some of these statements are lost in the anonymous Arabic
translation,12 but the following excursion to the intelligibility of the intellect
clearly asserts the unity thesis about pure intellects that are completely
unmixed with matter:
[The intellect] is also understood just like other [things] that are understood.
[In the case of] those in which there is no hyle, what understands and what is
understood is a single thing.13

This is corroborated at length in Metaphysics XII and its account of how

God as thought thinking itself moves the world by functioning as its nal
cause. Without going into the details of this idea and its transmission into
the Arabic, let us briey cite two representative formulations in Ust.ths
(ninth century CE) and Ab Bishr Matt ibn Ynus (d. 940 CE) translation, respectively:14
That which grasps itself (yafhamu dhtahu) is the intellect through the
acquisition of what is understood, and it comes to be understood when it
is in contact and grasps.15
11
12
13
14

15

As will be seen, Avicenna adamantly rejects the theory in his account of human intellection while
Mull Sadr subscribes to it with equal conviction.
Compare Ar. De an. III.5, 430a20 with Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.5, 430a20, 75. Ish.qs translation of
this passage has not survived.
Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.4, 430a35, 74. We do not have Ish.qs translation of the passage.
For a concise account of the various Arabic versions of Aristotles Metaphysics as well as the attribution
of the passages to Ust.th and Matt, see Bertolacci 2006, 535; and for the twelfth book in particular,
Georoy 2003. Avicenna is argued to have read from Ust.ths translation (Georoy 2003; Janssens
2003a), but his version of the second passage does not seem to have survived.
Ar. Met. XII.7, 1072b2021; the Arabic text is in Averroes, Tafsr m bad al-t.aba, 1614
(cf. Genequand 1986, 157). Cf. Avicenna, Sharh. kitb h.arf al-lm, 27.

16

Preliminary observations
[T]herefore it [that is, the best possible thing] understands itself (yaaqilu
dhtahu) since it is the most powerful, and it understands intellection. But it
is always seen that knowledge, sense perception, opinion and intellection are
of another, and when it comes to [them being] of themselves (li dhtihi), this
is only by accident. Furthermore, if intellection is one thing and being
understood another, to which of them will excellence belong? The thatness
of intellection is not identical with being understood, like knowledge is the
thing known in some things. In the case of intellectual things, the substance
which is of no element and the what are [identical] in terms of thatness as
well. As regards theoretical [things] (al-rya), the thing is word and intellection, and so what is understood is not dierent from the intellection.16

What these passages make clear is that the unity between the cognitive
subject and object holds of acts of pure intellection, that is, acts that have no
relation whatsoever to anything material. It is also clear that Aristotle holds
such strong cases of unity to amount to acts of self-intellection. But as the
second passage indicates, not all acts of intellection are of this type, for there
are cases in which the act of intellection, like acts proper to other modes of
cognition, refers to an external object. Although Alexander of Aphrodisias
(second to third centuries CE), perhaps the most venerated of Aristotles
commentators for the Arabic philosophers, did seem willing to extend the
thesis of unity to hold also of human intellects that are related to material
bodies and actualized in time through a process of learning, he too wants to
emphasize that the unity only holds of the subject and object in an act of
intellection. In absolute terms the human intellect, which moves discursively from one act of intellection to another and is often in the state of
potency with regard to most acts of intellection, is not identical to the
intelligibles it is in principle capable of grasping.17
The idea of all intellection as self-intellection is even more explicit in
some of the propositions of the Kitb al-dh. f al-khayr al-mah.d, a treatise

attributed to Aristotle but in reality translated

and adapted from the
Neoplatonist Proclus (d. 485 CE) Elements of Theology. Consider, for
instance, the twelfth proposition:
Every intellect understands itself (yaaqila dhtahu), that is, it is simultaneously what understands and what is understood. Therefore, since the
intellect is both what understands and what is understood, it undoubtedly
16
17

Ar. Met. XII.9, 1074b331075a4; the Arabic text is in Averroes, Tafsr m bad al-t.aba, 16921693
(cf. Genequand 1986, 190191). Cf. Avicenna, Sharh. kitb h.arf al-lm, 3132.
Cf. al-Iskandar al-Afrds, F al-aql, 181199 Finnegan; 3142 Badaw. Alexander also suggests that
there is a corresponding unity between the subject and object of actual sense perception. As argued by
Kalin 2010, 1725, in this regard he is an important predecessor for Sadrs broad concept of cognitive
unity. For Alexanders pivotal role in the transformation of Aristotelian noetics, see Moraux 1978.

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

17

sees itself (yar dhtahu). It knows that it is an intellect understanding itself

(alima annahu aqlun yaaqilu dhtahu). And when it knows itself (alima
dhtahu), it knows the rest of the things that are under it, because they are
from it.18

For the present concerns, we can set aside the vast dierences between
Proclean and Aristotelian metaphysics; the majority of the original readers
of the two Arabic texts perceived them, if not always as originating from a
single pen, at least as essentially compatible with each other. Thus, the point
remains that when we abstract intellection from all concerns related to the
perceptible world of concrete material entities, it consists in an undivided
act in which the subject that understands is the very object understood, a
single act of intellection with two interdependent structural constituents
divisible in analysis but not in reality. However, as the end of the cryptoProclean passage clearly indicates, the paradigmatic case of cognitive unity is
again a type of intellection that is quite distant from the human realm. We
are dealing with an eternally actual intellect that is capable of bringing
the world about through its overabundant act of self-intellection, that is, the
Neoplatonic intellectual hypostasis which, when combined with the
thought thinking itself that functions as the goal for all existing things in
Metaphysics XII, acts as both the source and the point of return of the entire
cosmos, including individual human intellects. Consequently, the sort of
self-cognition these texts describe cannot be identied with any ordinary
type of human self-awareness, at least not without a considerable amount of
additional analysis and interpretation. This is not to deny that the idea of all
actual intellection as self-intellection provided an ingredient for the concept
of self-awareness emerging in Avicenna; on the contrary, as I will argue
below, it seems natural to think that in articulating the novel concept
Avicenna took his cue from precisely this piece of the tradition. However,
the theory of all intellection as self-intellection, when considered alone and
without further qualications, seems insucient to account for the emergence of the considerably more mundane concept of self-awareness that is
our main concern in the present study.
One way of describing the relation between human intellection and the
sort of self-intellection we have just characterized is to conceive of the latter
as the second perfection proper to human intellects. When a human being is
born, her intellect is at the state of pure potency. However, it is not entirely
non-existent, and since at least the potency exists we can say that the
18

Kitb al-dh. f al-khayr al-mah.d XII, 1415; corresponding to Proclus, El. Th. 167169. For very

which corresponds to Proclus, El. Th. 83.

similar formulations,
see XIV, 16,

18

Preliminary observations

intellect proper to that human being has reached a state of rst perfection
which amounts to saying that it simply exists. As the person acquires
knowledge through an arduous process of learning, her intellect proceeds
to a state of greater perfection; this is, however, perfection no longer in the
sense of simply existing but in the sense of existing in a more excellent way
according to the standard proper to the sort of thing it is. The sense in which
her intellect is more perfect is thus in terms of the second perfection of
existing more or less well according to intellectual standards.19
The fact that the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic precedents for the Arabic
discussion of self-cognition were designed to describe the second perfection
proper to us as intellectual entities is particularly evident in the corpus
known as the Arabic Plotinus. These texts are replete with uses of the term
dht that read naturally as references to various self-relations entailing some
kind of self-cognition (or self-recognition). Regular mention is made of, for
instance, entering oneself (dakhala f dht), returning to oneself (rajaa f
dht), being inclined towards oneself (mla il dhtihi), and beholding
oneself (naz ara il dhtihi).20 Once these passages are read in their context,
it soon becomes obvious that we are dealing with dierent aspects of the
second perfection of human being. For example, the inclination towards the
self is always portrayed in contrast to a corresponding mundane orientation
that entails an emphasized attention to and striving for various worldly
objects and objectives: one enters or returns to oneself precisely by withdrawing from the world and its concerns. The implied notion of the self is
part and parcel of the general emanationist framework of the Arabic
Plotinus, and it amounts to the type of upward epistrophe specic to
human beings, to a turning back towards ones origin in an imitation of
its cognitive perfection. Extrapolating somewhat, we might say that this is
self-cognition insofar as it amounts to the acquisition of a correct conception of ones proper place in the cosmos of Gods creation, and to actions in
accordance with this conception. Knowing oneself means recognizing ones
true self, what one is or can be according to the highest potencies inherent in
ones essence not a mundane creature with a variety of ephemeral concerns but an intellectual entity capable of gazing at the divine. Thus,
19
20

For an excellent account of the emergence and maturation of this pair of concepts up to Avicenna, see
Wisnovsky 2003, 21144.
See, respectively, ThA I, 22 (corresponding to Plot. Enn. IV.8.1.110); VI, 8081 (corresponding to
Plot. Enn. IV.4.43.1644.6); VIII, 116117; IX, 132133 (corresponding to Plot. Enn. V.1.12.1220);
and cf. VIII, 111 (corresponding to Plot. Enn. V.1.4.1825), 115117 (corresponding to Plot. Enn.
V.8.10.2611.13); and the pseudo-Frbian Risla f al-ilm al-ilh, 173174 (corresponding to Plot.
Enn. V.3.8.89.20).

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

19

although the Arabic Plotinus addresses the human self in considerably

broader terms than the narrow focus at self-intellection in Metaphysics XII
and Kitb al-dh. f al-khayr al-mah.d allows, it remains on the level of what

implied concept of self is something

results from acquired
knowledge. The
we must strive to reach, and hence something that we do not initially have.
This is clearly acknowledged by Ab Nas.r al-Frb (d. 950 CE) who in the
Mabdi r ahl al-madna al-fdila, right after describing the rst principle
understands itself, goes on to characterize
of all existence as an intellect that
it by distinguishing it from human intellects that need to acquire the
intelligibles by means of which they can think themselves.21 In his brief
treatise on the intellect, Frb makes the same point by stating that
intellection becomes self-intellection only when the intellect is fully developed and can therefore dispense with any reference to external material
objects.22
Although this inherited discussion on self-cognition and self-recognition
mostly revolves around the benets of purely immaterial intellection, it was
brought to bear on more ephemeral cases of human intellection in a manner
seemingly pertinent to our topic by the Constantinopolitan commentator
Themistius (d. c. 388). In his remarks on De anima III.5, Themistius
attempts to elucidate the distinction between the active and the passive
intellect by means of a related distinction between I and what it is to be me.
This he does by asking the question (which in spite of its originality is based
on a perfectly sound Aristotelian distinction between an entity and its
essence) of which of the two intellects, potential or active, we human beings
should identify with.
I wonder whether we are the intellect in potency or the intellect in act. We
say that if in the case of all things composed of what is in potency and what is
in act the thing is dierent from the existence of the thing, then I must also
be dierent from the existence belonging to me (akna an aydn ghayra al
wujdi l), and so I am the intellect composed of what is in potency
and what
is in act, whereas the existence belonging to me is before that which is in act,
that is, that which is [in act] through it. I know and conrm this in writing,
for the intellect composed of what is in potency and what is in act writes, and
its writing is not by means of what is in potency but rather by means of what
is in act, the act emanating to it therefrom . . . Thus, just as the animal is
something and the existence belonging to the animal something else, the
21

22

Frb, al-Madna al-fdila I.1.67, 7072 Walzer; 4951 Cherni. This aspect of the rst principle is

then described as trickling

downwards in the emanative chain until we reach the active intellect
(al-Madna al-fdila II.3.110, 100104 Walzer; 8187 Cherni).
Frb, Risla f al-aql, 1819, 3132.

20

Preliminary observations
existence belonging to the animal being from the soul which belongs to the
animal, similarly I am one thing and the existence belonging to me another
thing, and the existence belonging to me is from the soul, but not from any
soul, for it is not from the sensitive [soul], that being hyle for the imagination, nor from the imaginative, that being hyle for the intellect in potency,
nor from the intellect in potency, that being hyle for the active intellect.
Thus, since the existence belonging to me is from the active intellect alone,
this alone is genuinely (bi al-s.ih.h.a) a form, or rather the form of forms,
whereas the others are both subjects and forms.23

The intriguing example notwithstanding, a close reading of the passage

reveals that Themistius is not concerned with the self and self-awareness as
such. Rather, his point is to locate the individual human being in the
dynamic relation between the material and the active intellect, which had
become the central question of Aristotelian noetics since Alexanders
extended focus on the relevant sections of De anima. Themistius thus
uses the rst person for reasons that are primarily rhetorical or didactic,
and the point could just as well be made by means of an individual human
being and the essence of humanity. The second perfection proper to human
beings is intellectual activity, and it is in this sense that the human rst
person, I uttered by a human being, properly refers to an actual subject of
intellection. The basis of this particular type of second perfection is to be
found in the human essence, or, in Themistius terms, in the type of
existence proper to me as a human being. This existence, the form of my
being actually me, is provided by the active intellect, because any act of an
intellect generated in time owes its actuality to the active intellect. Thus, in
spite of the rst-personal terms in which Themistius renders his case, the
discussion reverts to the self in the sense of an actualized intellect, an entity
that has already proceeded at least to some extent on the way towards the
second perfection proper to it. Moreover, in spite of its obvious originality,
this passage from Themistius seems never to have been brought up as
having any relevance to self-awareness by any of our protagonists.
Although he was, together with Alexander, absolutely pivotal to Averroes
notorious idea of the shared material intellect,24 Themistius inuence on
the post-Avicennian discussion on self-awareness was all but negligible.

23

24

Themistius, F al-nafs VI, 182183; cf. the Greek original in Themistius, in De an., 100,16100,36,
bearing in mind that the manuscript at the basis of Heinzes edition belongs to a dierent branch of
the manuscript tradition (see Lyons 1973, XIII).
Cf. Averroes, in De an. III.1, 429a2124, 387413; for an English translation and the surviving Arabic
fragments, see Taylor 2009, 303329.

Self-cognition in the ancient heritage

21

As a nal example of pre-Avicennian concepts of self-cognition, let us

consider Aristotles statement according to which an actual intellect is
capable of considering itself at will. As a possibility for intellects that are
already actual, this type of intellectual self-reection presupposes the selfintellection that results from the unity of the subject and object of intellection, and must therefore be distinguished from it. By the same token, it
would seem to be even further removed from what each and every human
being receives as her birthright. But since this particular concept of selfcognition resurfaces in one of Avicennas arguments for his own concept of
self-awareness, it is worth briey spelling out. The point is rendered with
admirable clarity in the anonymous Arabic translation:
Thus, when all we have told is in the state we have said before, [namely,] that
the intellect is like the active knower (this it is when an act can be originated
by it), then after its knowing it knows that it knows (alima annahu lim)
within the limits of potency, but not like before it knew and before it found
knowledge; and at that moment it can understand itself (yaaqila nafsahu).25

Once an act of intellection is realized, its subject can perform a reective

turn to understand its own activity. As Aristotle species later on in the
same chapter, this second-order act of intellection is possible because the
rst-order act is immaterial,26 all intellection being based on a process of
abstraction from material constraints. If materiality is the only obstacle of
intellection, then the immaterial rst-order act comes readily prepared to be
understood at will. Importantly though, Aristotle also states that selfreection must be preceded by actual intellection of some other thing; the
human intellect is nothing before it understands something,27 and what is
nothing cannot reect on anything, not even itself.
This is straightforward enough, and it was generally accepted by most
philosophers in Arabic.28 What does, however, become a matter of debate is
whether the potentiality of the individual human beings material intellect is
as pure as Aristotle suggests in the same context. Is there really no actual
existence to it prior to the act of conceiving an abstract intelligible form that
it receives from the active intellect? The problem of course is that any such
existence would have to be spelled out in cognitive terms, given that the
intellect is an immaterial entity whose existence primarily amounts to being
a subject of cognition. If one cannot rely on any actual intellection, very few
25
26
28

Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.4, 429b69, 73. Ish.qs translation does not survive, but Avicenna discusses
the passage in al-Talqt al hawshin kitb al-nafs li Arist., 103.
Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.4, 430a39, 74. 27 Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.4, 429a2325, b3132; 74.
For a rare example of debate, see Rz, Sharh. al-Ishrt, I.169173.

22

Preliminary observations

alternative routes remain open, which seems to conrm Aristotles point:

self-awareness rst arises through reection.
As we will see shortly, Avicenna does recognize a reective type of selfawareness that he characterizes as awareness of awareness (shur bi alshur), and is followed in this regard by virtually all subsequent Islamic
philosophers. However, this type of self-awareness is frequently discussed in
the context of an argument designed to refute the claim of its foundational
status. Thus, instead of subscribing to the Aristotelian thesis that the human
intellect is nothing before it actually understands something, Avicenna
presents his alternative concept of self-awareness in striking contrast to it.
According to him, self-reection requires as its condition of possibility that
the human being capable of reection is rst aware of herself in some more
primitive and more foundational sense.
To thus sum up this quick foray to pre-Avicennian Arabic concepts of self
and self-cognition, we can say that all the texts we have brought up hinge on
the activity of either human or superhuman intellect. From an Avicennian
point of view, they deal with something that presupposes, rather than
explains, what should properly and in the most basic sense be called selfawareness. Although some of the features in the passages we have considered
do arguably play a role in the emergence of Avicennas novel concept of selfawareness, they do not suce to explain that emergence, nor can they
provide the basis for an exhaustive understanding of that concept. We
should not draw exaggerated conclusions from the fact that these
pre-Avicennian texts use some of the same linguistic means to describe
intellectual self-relations as Avicenna does to characterize self-awareness, for
both the reexive terms denoting the self (dht and nafs in particular) and
the variety of cognitive terms applied to render the cognitive aspect of selfawareness would have been available in the relevant sense from nontechnical colloquial speech.29

1.2 Avicennian psychology in outline

It is a widely recognized fact that with some exceptions, most notably the
Andalusian tradition spearheaded by Averroes, Islamic philosophy from the
twelfth century CE onwards can be legitimately summed up as postAvicennian.30 This is due to a seismic shift in terms of the texts that provide
the foundation for the emphatically literary practice of Islamic philosophy.
29
30

For a brief account of these terms, see Appendix.

Cf., for instance, Endress 1990; Michot 2003a, 2003b; Wisnovsky 2004b; Shihadeh 2005.

Avicennian psychology in outline

23

If Aristotle, the First Teacher, was not only the ceremonial master of
philosophy but also the foremost textual authority for Avicenna and most
of his predecessors, in the later period the role of authority is assumed by the
Chief Master (al-shaykh al-ras). This is certainly true of the science of
psychology, in the eld of which the sixth part of Avicennas voluminous
summa of philosophy, the Shif, becomes the authoritative textbook.
As a result of this shift in authority, the entire discussion that we are
about to chart takes place within the general framework of Avicennian
psychology. Thus, I will briey review four of its key doctrines in order to
provide a point of quick reference that will assist in the understanding of
some of the more detailed arguments in the core of our study. These
doctrines are the Aristotelian theory of the three dierent functions of
souls, Avicennas un-Aristotelian substance dualism, the principles of faculty psychology and the theory of internal sense faculties, and the cognitive
psychological theory of the abstraction of forms from matter.
The Aristotelian tripartition of souls and Avicennas substance dualism
Avicenna subscribes to Aristotles denition of the soul as the rst perfection of a natural body possessed of organs that performs the activities of
life.31 Thus, the soul is the formal principle that makes the living body what
it is and maintains it in actual existence. Now, since there are three general
types of life vegetative, which amounts only to self-nutrition, growth and
reproduction, animal, which comprises in addition the activities of perception and voluntary motion, and human, which alone manifests rational
cognition and action Avicenna postulates, again following Aristotle, three
corresponding types of soul, with each more perfect type performing the
activities of the less perfect types in addition to those proper to it.32
In the third book of De anima, Aristotle raises the question of whether all
three types of soul are enmattered formal principles, or whether the intellectual capacity of the human soul requires it to be an immaterial substance
that performs a formal function but is strictly speaking not a material
form.33 Although he clearly suggests that the intellectual capacity requires
immateriality, Aristotle leaves the question of the exact consequences this
has for the ontology of human souls suciently ambiguous for it to become
a major question of debate in the subsequent tradition. Of the various
31
32
33

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 12 Rahman; cf. Ar. De an. II.1, 412a2627.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 3940 Rahman; cf. Ar. De an. II.2, 413a20413b13.
Ar. De an. III.4, 429a1821; III.5, 430a1719.

24

Preliminary observations

alternatives,34 Avicenna opts for a full-blooded substance dualism: the

individual human essence is an immaterial substance, which is not strictly
speaking a form of the human body, although it does perform the functions
of a form, animating and using the body for its own ends. This marriage of
Aristotelian psychology and substance dualism is not an easy one, and one
problematic consequence in particular is signicant for Avicennas discussion of self-awareness.
If the human essence is immaterial, why is it connected to a body in the
rst place? Like any other essence considered in itself and in abstraction
from all relations to other things, such as matter or a body, the human
essence is one, undivided and simple. In order to be instantiated in a
multiplicity of numerically distinct individuals, the human essence
again, like any other essence must be actualized in matter or in a sucient
relationship to matter. This is because only the unique spatiotemporal coordinates aorded by matter can individuate the essentially identical instantiations; for a simplied example, if we have two triangles with exactly
matching dimensions, the only way to distinguish between the two is by
attributing them with distinct co-ordinates.
Thus, the soul and the body are in mutual need of each other, but for
dierent reasons. The body requires the soul as a formal principle that
animates it, or makes it a living body. The individual soul, on the other
hand, needs the body as a necessary condition of its initially coming to be as
an individual.35 This is because an individual human soul is emanated from
the active intellect, the principle informing the entire sublunar world, only
when a corporeal composite suitable for functioning as its body is formed in
the mothers womb.36 The material process alone is incapable of developing
the embryo or the foetus to an individual human being capable of living on
its own, for this requires a soul that has a separate origin. Thus, the
emergence of the body is a necessary but not sucient condition for the
emergence of an individual soul. Nevertheless, the individual soul is intimately connected to its proper body through an inherent natural desire to
govern, occupy itself with, and take care of the one body that is its own.37

34
35
36
37

For a useful summary of the pre-Avicennian reception of Aristotles theory of the intellect, see
Davidson 1992, 773.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.3, 223227 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 222223.
For a concise account of the Avicennian theory of emanation, see Davidson 1992, 7483.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.3, 225 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 222223. It is precisely on the basis of this
intimacy that Avicenna rejects the transmigration of souls in Shif: F al-nafs V.4, 233234 Rahman
(cf. Najt II.6, 227).

Avicennian psychology in outline

25

Although the human soul is thus genetically dependent on and therefore

incapable of pre-existing the body, Avicenna still wants to maintain its
ontological independence from the body after its inception. The relation
between the soul and its body is, after all, merely accidental to the soul.38
Moreover, as Thrse-Anne Druart has observed, Avicenna prefers to speak
of the co-emergence of the soul and the body as a simple simultaneous
happening; he never asserts that the body is a proper cause of the souls
coming to be.39 The only cause the soul can have must be an intellectual
principle that is situated above it in the cosmological hierarchy of emanation. But this principle, the active intellect, only contains the pre-individual
human essence and thus requires the unique individuating conditions
aorded by the suitable body in order to produce an individual soul.
Thus, in Avicennas view the individual human being is a nodal point of
two conicting tendencies; eventually, the thorny question of the souls
independence from the body returns to Avicenna in the form of the
problem of how to reconcile individuality with immateriality after the
demise of the body (see Chapter 3).
Faculty psychology and the internal senses
Although the concept of a psychological faculty, power or potency
(Gr. dynamis, Ar. quwwa) can be found already in Aristotle, Avicenna
represents a stage of comparative maturity in the development of the
psychological method of faculty analysis. His general denition of the
three types of soul by means of faculties characteristic of each is
Aristotelian in outline,40 but the eld in which he really comes into his
own is the explanation of both human and non-human animal cognition.
Here Avicennas most important contribution is the classication of ve
distinct faculties, the so-called internal senses (al-h.awss al-bt.ina), that
take on the dierent activities of Aristotles phantasia.41 The classication is
based on three criteria explicitly stated by Avicenna: (1) each distinct type of
38

39
40
41

Shif: F al-nafs V.4, 227228 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 223227. To be more precise, since Avicenna
denes soul in relational terms as something that is in an animating relation to the body, we should
say that being a soul is accidental to the individual human essence.
Druart 2000, 262263.
Cf. Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 3941 Rahman, with Ar. De an. II.2, 413a20413b13.
An excellent concise account of Avicennas system of internal senses is Black 2000, 5962. For other
studies on some or all of the internal senses, see Wolfson 1973; Gtje 1988; Black 1993; and Hasse
2000, 127141. That Avicennas system of internal senses is a dierentiation of the distinct activities of
phantasia is corroborated by Avicenna, al-Talqt al hawshin kitb al-nafs li Arist., 98 (cf. Averroes,
Talkhs kitb al-h.iss wa al-mah.ss, 39; and Tahfut al-tahfut [XVII].2, 546547).

26

Preliminary observations

cognitive object requires a distinct faculty, (2) active and passive relations to
an object require two respective faculties, (3) a receptive passive relation to
an object is distinct from a retentive passive relation to it, and the two
require two respective faculties.42 Since there are two types of objects,
sensible forms (sing. sra) and meanings inherent in them (sing. man),
there must be two corresponding classes of objects. Since there is both
passive reception and active transformation of those objects, as exemplied
by sense perception and creative imagination, there must be both passive
and active faculties. Finally, since both forms and meanings are not only
received but also retained for subsequent retrieval, there must be both
receptive and retentive faculties for both types of object. Thus, the application of the three criteria yields Avicenna a system of ve internal senses:
1. common sense (al-h.iss al-mushtarak) or fantasy (bant.siy): reception of
forms
2. imagery (khayl) or the formative faculty (al-quwwa al-mutas.awwira):
retention of forms
3. estimation (wahm): reception of meanings
4. memory (dhikr) or the retentive faculty (al-quwwa al-h.z a): retention
of meanings
5. the imaginative faculty (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila) or, in human animals,
thought (kr): separation and combination of forms and meanings.43
Our perceptual experiences are brought about through a co-operation of
these faculties on the sense data provided by the ve external senses (sight,
hearing, smell, taste and touch). First, the common sense unites the various
sense data into a synaesthetic whole, which is then retained in the formative
faculty; thus, the formative faculty functions as a sort of memory for the
sensible qualities of our experience. When the sense data have been
apprehended as a synaesthetic whole, the estimative faculty is capable of
apprehending the meaning carried in that whole. The exact nature of the
meanings and the details of the consequent function of estimation are a
matter of debate,44 but a reasonably uncontroversial case of estimative
apprehension is Avicennas commonly cited example of a sheeps apprehension of enmity in a wolf that it perceives. The enmity is not a sensible
42

43

44

Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 4344 Rahman. Receptive and retentive faculties are distinguished because of
dierent material qualities required in their respective organs: a faculty of reception must function by
means of a relatively malleable organ, and a faculty of retention by means of a relatively rigid organ.
This is the standard classication as presented in Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 4445 Rahman. For classicatory and terminological variations of the system of internal senses in Avicennas works, see
Wolfson 1973, 276282.
Cf. Black 1993 with Hasse 2000, 127141; I have presented my own view in Kaukua 2014a.

Avicennian psychology in outline

27

form, nor can it be reduced to any of the wolfs sensible properties, and so it
must be a distinct type of object, a meaning. Nevertheless, the sheep must
somehow apprehend the enmity in the particular wolf it sees or smells, and
so the meaning must be closely connected to, indeed inherent in, the
synaesthetic perception of the wolf. These two features, non-sensibility
and inherence in what is sensible, are the two features denitive of the
Avicennian meanings. Once apprehended, the meanings are retained in the
faculty of memory for subsequent retrieval. They are actively analysed and
synthesized by the imaginative faculty, which also makes connections
between meanings and sensible forms.
This brief account may give an inadequately atomistic impression of
Avicennas theory of the internal senses. To be sure, the distinctions are not
merely conceptual, for Avicenna locates each faculty in a distinct part of the
brain.45 But when he relates the activity of the faculties to their experiential
counterparts that he expects his interlocutors to be familiar with, he usually
describes their operation in strikingly holistic terms. For instance, the
recognition of a perceived yellow substance as honey involves the retrieval
of the corresponding meaning (honey) from memory, an estimative
apprehension of that meaning, the retrieval of complementary sensible
qualities related to that meaning (for instance, sweetness) from the imagery,
and the connection between the meaning and the related forms by the
imagination.46 Apart from the perception of isolated simple qualities,
perceptual cognition involves the system of internal senses as a whole.
Abstraction
According to Avicenna, all cognitive apprehension takes place through the
acquisition of the form known, whether it is perceived or intellectually
understood. If the form known is material to begin with, that is, if we
perceive an individual human being for instance, her perceived form must
rst be separated or abstracted from her matter. In fact, Avicenna builds his
entire theory of knowledge on this principle of increasing abstraction
(tajrd) of the form from its material features, classifying dierent types of
cognition on the basis of how much of the material residue remains in the
known form.47
45
46
47

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 4445 Rahman.

This is my reconstruction of Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs IV.1, 166 Rahman. For a more detailed
version, see Kaukua 2014a.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 58 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 207208.

28

Preliminary observations

The type of cognition most intimately connected with matter is sense

perception, because it can only take place at the actual presence of an
extramental object that is perceived. This is only reasonable, since sense
perception depends for its actuality on the causal inuence of the extramental object; if the perceivable features of the person in front of me leave
no traces in my sense organs, there is no way I can perceive her. For the same
reason, I can only perceive the persons form as accompanied by a number
of features that are accidental to the form that makes her a human being; by
necessity she will stand in a certain place at a certain time, be of a certain
length, weight, complexion and so forth.48
When the perceived form is transferred from the common sense to the
imagery, we arrive at the second stage of abstraction. The increased abstractness of the form retained in the imagery is not due to any change in its
qualitative features; the perceived person that remains in this faculty is still
spatiotemporally located and clothed in features due to her embodiment.
But the existence of the cognitive form is no longer immediately dependent
on the presence of the extramental person, for once acquired in the imagery,
it can be retrieved for further consideration at will, without any external
causal inuence.49
The estimative apprehension of meanings is the next stage in the gradual
abstraction of the cognitive form. Here, for the rst time, we are dealing
with aspects of the person that are not reducible to her perceivable features
the mysterious feature that allows me to recognize a person I am already
acquainted with, despite all the interim changes in her appearance. Since
such recognition is common to us and non-human animals that lack the
conceptual capacities proper to intellectual beings, it must have its basis in a
shared psychological faculty, and the only Avicennian alternative is estimation. But although estimative apprehension of the form of the person is
above her perceivable features, it is not entirely abstract from them, for it
can only be apprehended as something that is carried by those features, or
something inherent to them, separable in analysis but not in reality. I can
recognize the person and realize that my recognition is not due to any
particular thing in her appearance, but I cannot recognize her without that
appearance.50

48
49
50

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 59 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 208.

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 5960 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 208209.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 6061 Rahman; cf. Najt II.6, 3940. On estimation and this kind of
incidental perception, see Black 1993, 225227.

Avicennian psychology in outline

29

The highest grade of abstraction in human cognition is that of intellectual apprehension of the form. Here the form is abstracted from all of its
accidental features, which enables one to understand the essence of the
person, that which really makes the person the human being she is. Since
this essence is separated from the accidental features that render an individual distinct from other individuals of the same species, the intellectual
form is potentially shared by many perceived individuals, making it a
universal concept.51
To conclude, it is important to point out a crucial dierence between
intellection and the other types of human cognition. All cognition up to the
level of estimation involves the abstractive activity of the human soul, and
follows a strictly bottom-up chain of causal conditions. Sense perception
depends on the activity of the extramental object, the souls retention of the
form in the imagery depends on the prior existence of the form, and the
estimative act of abstraction presupposes some synaesthetic whole that
carries its proper object. But when we reach intellection, the soul becomes
dependent on a higher principle, namely the active intellect which is
required to emanate either an intellectual light that enables the soul to
apprehend the intellectual form in the object of the lower faculties,52 or the
intelligible forms as such.53
51
52
53

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs II.2, 61; cf. Najt II.6, 209210.

The metaphor of intellectual light is of course not particular to Avicenna; in this context, it is
ultimately derived from Ar. De an. III.5, 430a1417.
The question of where the souls activity ends and that of the active intellect begins is a matter of
debate. According to the traditional view, the soul simply receives intelligible forms when it is
suciently prepared (see, for instance, Goichon 1937, 309; Gardet 1951, 151; Rahman 1958, 15;
Weisheipl 1982, 150; Davidson 1992, 9394; Black 1997, 445), but Hasse 2001 (cf. also Gutas 2012)
presents substantial evidence for the view that intellection depends more intimately on the souls
abstractive activity, and that all that the soul receives from the active intellect is the light that enables it
to see the intellectual form in the prepared object.

chapter 2

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness:

the experiential basis of the ying man

Ab Al H
usayn ibn Abd Allh ibn Sn, the Latin Avicenna, is undoubtedly the most famous of the philosophers writing in Arabic and in the
cultural context of Islam.1 What is more, his fame is by and large deserved.
By the death of the Persian polymath in 1037 following a series of failed
attempts at curing an intestinal complaint, Arabic philosophy had reached a
level of maturity at which the ancient inheritance had been digested into a
system of thought that had proven, and would prove, capable of incorporating indigenous ideas, both critical and constructive, and was strong
enough to penetrate most areas of Islamic learning.2 In the subsequent
centuries, authors in search of the philosophical stance would increasingly
revisit Avicenna before Aristotle, the rst teacher.
In this regard, it is relatively uncontroversial to state that Avicenna was a
philosophical renovator. This, however, is not always readily apparent. Like
most of his philosophical contemporaries, he holds on to the Peripatetic
framework, with the Neoplatonic twist prominent in the late ancient
philosophical schools, and does not aim at a shift of the philosophical
paradigm. But within the received framework, he nds plenty of room to
reformulate questions and responses, to develop arguments against novel
problems, and to integrate new phenomena into the system.
The focus of the present study is precisely on such a point of new
concerns. The type of self-awareness Avicenna introduces in his psychology
did not have a ready-made locus of discussion in the Peripatetic framework.
And in fact, as witnessed particularly by some of the posthumously collected
correspondence investigated below, it did not always sit particularly well,
and certainly not without signicant conceptual revisions, in the systematic
1
2

As a result, there are several introductions to his life, thought, and cultural milieu. For two excellent
places to start, see Gutas 1988 and McGinnis 2010.
For this naturalization of Avicennian thought, see Endress 1990, 3037; Michot 2003a, 2003b; and
Wisnovsky 2004b.

30

The purpose and basis of the ying man

31

niche Avicenna envisioned for it. In light of the reluctance and straightforward opposition of some of his contemporaries, it seems warranted to say
that the concept of self-awareness Avicenna introduces, as well as many of
the means of describing its foundational phenomenon, was a philosophical
novelty. This is not to say that he instigated the discussion out of nothing.
Meryem Sebti3 has unearthed arguments strikingly similar to Avicennas in
the so-called Kitb mudhala al-nafs (The Book of the Castigation of Soul,
a work of late ancient provenance that was likely a part of the Hermetic
corpus),4 and in the early ninth century Mutazilite Muammar ibn Abbd
al-Sulam.5 However, the systematic integration of these ideas into the
philosophical tradition is, as far as I am able to tell, a genuinely
Avicennian move. Avicennas approach does have similarities with certain
ancient discussions, for instance in Galen,6 Plotinus and Augustine, but in
the absence of obvious textual predecessors connections will remain
speculative.

2.1 The purpose and basis of the ying man

Avicenna begins the discussion of the soul in the Shif by arguing that the
soul is something the natural philosopher has to postulate due to the fact
that she perceives life in the physical world about her. The animate
processes and actions in which life appears to her nutrition, growth,
reproduction, perception and voluntary movement are subject to such a
great variation that they cannot be explained merely by recourse to the
account of the general types of natural motion as described in physics. Thus,
there must be a specic agent behind those actions, and that is what the
natural philosopher calls soul (nafs).7
Having shown that there must be souls, Avicenna proceeds to consider
the various traditional attempts at the denition of the term soul. These
considerations revolve around the necessity to make room in the denition
for all the dierent kinds of entities that can function as souls. In the
philosophical tradition, the soul has been dened as the capacity (quwwa)
to act in the animate body, the potency (quwwa) to receive cognitive
objects, and as the form (s.ra) of the animate body. For Avicenna, all of
these denitions are too limiting. The two senses of quwwa both pick up
3
5
6

Sebti 2000, 118119. 4 Kitb mudhala al-nafs 14, 112.

An argument based on self-awareness is attributed to Muammar in Jh.iz, al-Masil wa al-jawbt li
al-marifa 4, 51.
Cf. Walzer 1954, especially 255256. 7 Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 4 Rahman.

32

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

one aspect of the souls various responsibilities in relation to bodies but

exclude others, and so neither can be a general denition applicable to all
kinds of souls. Similarly, if we dene the soul as a form in the strict technical
sense of a hylomorphic principle which informs matter by inhering in it, we
end up excluding from our denition those entities that do not inhere in
matter but do function as souls in relation to it. Thus, if we want to include
such obviously immaterial entities as the celestial souls in our denition, we
cannot dene the soul as a form.8
The denition Avicenna arrives at by excluding the alternatives is soul as
perfection (kaml) of the genus living body. The actually existing soul
perfects the genus by rst bringing it into existence through the dierentia
specic to the actual soul, that is, as a vegetal, animal or human body.9
Avicenna further species this denition by distinguishing between rst and
second perfection, or between that through which the species becomes an
actual species, like the shape for the sword, and the actions and passions
which follow from the species of the thing, like cutting for the sword.10
Since a living thing is alive already at the stage of rst perfection, the soul in
the most general sense must be a rst perfection. By means of these
argumentative moves Avicenna comes to dene the soul as the rst perfection of a natural organic body which performs the acts of life.11
So far the moves, including the denition they have yielded as their
conclusion, are of course perfectly familiar. However, it is important to note
that for Avicenna soul is a relational term, that is, it refers to the agent
behind animate actions insofar as it is the agent of those actions and therefore has a relation to the body in which they take place. Thus, although the
natural philosopher has to postulate the existence of something that functions as a soul, she will not thereby have made any assumptions about the
nature of or the category proper to that thing as it is in itself.12 If that thing
happens to be a substance independent of the body which it animates, being
a soul may be a mere accident to it, yet the natural philosopher will
8
9

10

11

Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 68 Rahman.

Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 68, 12 Rahman. Cf. I.5, 40 Rahman, which claries that the vegetative soul is the
genus of the animal soul, and the animal soul the genus of the human soul. This sense of perfection is
discussed in more general terms in Shif: al-Ilhyt V.3.89, 164166; and V.6.2, 175176.
Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 11 Rahman. Robert Wisnovsky (2003, 120127) has found three dierent though
reconcilable distinctions between rst and second perfection in Avicenna. The present context is the
primary locus for the distinction between form (rst perfection) and function (second perfection).
The other distinctions are between the principle of an activity (rst perfection) and the activity itself
(second perfection) and what can be considered foundational to the other two, between what is
necessary for existence (rst perfection) and what is necessary for existing well (second perfection).
Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 12 Rahman. 12 Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 45 Rahman.

The purpose and basis of the ying man

33

nevertheless study it just in that regard, that is, as a soul that causes a
particular kind of motion in the body.13 But in spite of this qualication,
Avicenna concludes the rst chapter of the psychological section of the
Shif by considering the question of whether the human soul as the thing
which performs the animating acts proper to its relation with a human body
is exhaustively grasped when it is understood as a soul. In other words, is the
human soul, like the souls of plants and animals, a material form and
therefore reducible to its animating agency, or does it, like the celestial
souls, exist apart from these acts and independent of the body?
A demonstrated answer to this question will have to wait until the last
book of the psychological section of the Shif. However, Avicenna decides
to lay his cards on the table from the very beginning by presenting a socalled reminder (tanbh) or a pointer (ishra) towards the correct view.
We have now come to know the meaning of the name bestowed on the thing
that is called soul due to a relation it has, and so we should strive to
apprehend the quiddity of this thing which has become a soul by the
aforementioned consideration; in this place we must point towards
(nushra) establishing the existence of the soul that we have by means of a
reminder (al-tanbh) and a call for attention (al-tadhkr), by a pointer that
will be found apposite to the situation (ishratan saddata al-mawqi) by one
who has the capacity to see the truth by himself without the need to educate
him, prod him onwards, and divert him from fallacies.14

Reminder and pointer are closely related technical terms which denote a
call for attention to something one is vaguely or inexplicitly aware of but
which tends to elude ones explicit attention. This indicative method15 can
be used instead of a proper demonstration for educational purposes in order
to have the student arrive at the necessary conclusion by herself and in the
course of so doing understand the matter at hand more thoroughly than
would be the case had the teacher given a ready-made demonstration that
could be learnt by heart. But sometimes a reminder may be the only
available method of argument, as for instance in the case of arguing for
the rst principles of all intellection. Since such principles are foundational
to all acts of intellection, they cannot in turn be founded through a
demonstration which relies on them. Instead, the only way to convince
13
15

Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 910 Rahman. 14 Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 1516 Rahman.
See Gutas 1988, 307311, with a focus on ishra. Although there may be a nuanced dierence in
meaning between ishra and tanbh, with tanbh carrying connotations of correction whereas ishra
rather suggests that something is introduced that one has not hitherto considered, from the point of
view of the present study the two terms can be considered synonymous. In any case, both terms gure
in our text without an obvious dierence in meaning.

34

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

ones interlocutor of their necessity is by indicating their presence in her

thinking, that is, by reminding her that she in fact assumes their validity
even when adopting a sceptical stance towards them.16
The reminder Avicenna applies in our context is of course the famous
thought experiment of the ying or the oating man.17 It is used to argue for
the initial plausibility of the substance dualist view that there might be
something to human being apart from embodied existence. In other words,
it is intended to convince the reader who fails to see that the thing which is a
soul for the human body can be something in itself, independent of its
relation to the body, and it does this by showing that there is a feature in our
experience that gives a clue of what the incorporeal existence could possibly
consist in.
As a reminder the ying man is not presented as a demonstration or a
denitive argument for the human souls existence as an immaterial substance. Avicenna clearly thinks that substance dualism can be properly
demonstrated, although not without a signicant amount of additional
knowledge, part of which will be acquired in the course of the psychological
research we are presently initiating.18 In that respect, the introductory
chapter is not the proper place for a demonstrated answer. However, the
reason to apply the method of reminding in the present context is very
similar to that described in the case of the rst principles of intellection.
Avicenna uses the reminder to make us pay attention to something that is
and has always been there for us but that we seldom take heed of. This new
focus of attention is then suggested to be relevant to the question of whether
the human soul is merely a soul or whether it exists in itself apart from this
function.
These methodological remarks are important because once the ying
man is read in this light it will be hard to deny that the argument hinges on
evidence that is supposed to be phenomenally or experientially given.
Although the argument may be per impossibile, it is still used to point out
something present to the readers experience instead of, say, a mere logical
necessity or a transcendental condition for the possibility of something else.
Indeed, later on in another instance of the ying man, Avicenna explicitly
16
17

18

Shif: al-Ilhyt I.5.15, 2223. In the context, Marmura translates tanbh as drawing attention. For
a similar claim in a psychological context, see Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 257 Rahman.
Avicenna himself does not use the title, and as far as I have been able to ascertain it is only used in
secondary literature. The earliest instance seems to be Gilson 1929, 41. The thought experiment comes
up in several occasions and in many dierent works of Avicenna. For a seminal overview of three
instances, see Marmura 1986. Other passages are introduced in Hasse 2000, 8182.
The demonstration, which is based on the capacity for intellection inherent in the human soul, is rst
presented in Shif: F al-nafs V.2, 209216 Rahman; that is, in the last book of the work.

The purpose and basis of the ying man

35

says that the evidence this reminder points towards is exemplied in myself
(yakna tamaththuluhu . . . f nafs), but I need to be alerted to this example
in myself because of my tendency to neglect it in favour of other, bodyrelated contents of my experience.19
But in order nally to get to what it is that should be experientially given
here, let us have a closer look at the reminder itself.
So we say: one of us must imagine (yatawahhama) himself so that he is created
all at once and perfect but his sight is veiled from seeing external [things], that
he is created oating in the air or in a void so that the resistance of the air does
not hit him a hit he would have to sense and that his limbs are separated
from each other so that they do not meet or touch each other. [He must] then
consider whether he arms the existence of his self (wujda dhtihi). He will
not hesitate in arming that his self exists (li dhtihi mawjdatan), but he will
not thereby arm any of his limbs, any of his intestines, the heart or the brain,
or any external thing. Rather, he will arm his self (dhtahu) without arming for it length, breadth or depth. If it were possible for him in that state to
imagine (yatakhayyala) a hand or some other limb, he would not imagine it as
part of his self (dhtihi) or a condition in his self (shart.an f dhtihi). You know
that what is armed is dierent from what is not armed and what is
conrmed is dierent from what is not conrmed.20 Hence the self (dht)
whose existence he has armed is specic to him in that it is he himself (huwa
bi aynihi), dierent from his body and limbs which he has not armed. Thus,
he who takes heed (al-mutanabbih) has the means to take heed of (yatanabbaha) the existence of the soul (wujdi al-nafs) as something dierent from the
body indeed, as dierent from any body and to know and be aware of it
(annahu rifun bihi mustashirun lahu).21

The general idea of the argument is quite uncontroversial.22 Evidently, the

thought experiment aims at an analytical distinction of an aspect of
19

20

21
22

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 257 Rahman. Moreover, in his defence of the argument against Ab al-Qsim
al-Kirmns critical remarks, Avicenna explicitly says that it is based on the interlocutors contemplation of his own state, which is something not everyone is capable of (see Mubh.atht III.5859
Bdrfar; Michot 1997, 170). The full importance of this point will be forcefully brought home once
we get to explicate what Avicenna thinks self-awareness amounts to, for experiential familiarity with
the phenomenon will then be a crucial criterion in our reconstruction of his concept of self-awareness.
Whatever other features the concept will have, it must refer to something readily available in our own
experience.
I have chosen to follow Bako reading of al-muqarru bihi and yuqarru bihi (what is conrmed and
what is not conrmed, respectively) instead of Rahmans al-maqraba and yaqrabuhu.
Orthographically very similar, both readings are supported by manuscript evidence.
Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 16 Rahman; 1819 Bako.
Indeed, there is a widespread consensus about how the thought experiment should be conducted
(cf. Rahman 1952, 911; Galindo-Aguilar 1958; Arnaldez 1972; Marmura 1986; Druart 1988; Davidson
1992, 83; Hasse 2000, 8087), although there are almost as many views about its purpose as there are
scholars. For a concise overview of the dierent interpretations, see Hasse 2000, 86.

36

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

experience by means of an imaginative bracketing of other aspects of

experience which tend to hide the one Avicenna wants us to pay attention
to. Since he is interested in the question of whether we can nd any
experiential support for the idea that the human soul is independent from
the body, and hence an immaterial substance, he starts by setting aside all
those aspects of experience that involve the body or that require embodiment. The most obvious of these aspects is perception, and that is why the
ying man is carefully described to be in a position where none of his senses
is capable of transmitting any sensations to him. Even his sense of touch is
rendered ineective by ensuring that there are absolutely no impulses to the
organ of touch from either his own body or the surrounding air. Secondly,
since the ying man is supposed to be created immediately to his state, he
cannot have any imaginative, estimative or memorative aspects of experience either. This is because all imagination, estimation and recollection are
based on the prior appearance of sensory data, which these so-called internal
senses (al-h.awssu al-bt.ina) then subject to their respective actions.23 By
the same token, this excludes all actual intellection as well, since, in
Avicennas empiristic epistemology, whatever human beings come to
know, they will have acquired by means of an abstractive operation
performed on sense perceptions, which thus are a necessary condition of
human intellection as well.24 Thus, the ying man has no objective content
of experience whatsoever, no acts of perception, imagination or intellection,
nothing.
Having imagined this state, I must then ask whether there is anything left
to my experience. Avicenna states as obvious that my answer must be
armative: I will still experience my own dht to exist, and I will have to
arm that this dht is me. In other words, I myself will still be there as
something I am aware of. This, for Avicenna, points towards substance
dualism insofar as it gives us a concrete experiential sense of what the
existence of the thing that functions as our soul could possibly be in
separation from the body of which it is the soul and connected to which
it normally appears. When we consider the way in which Avicenna applies
my awareness of myself as a pointer towards substance dualism, we have to
conclude that he takes self-awareness to be a phenomenal feature of experience, not a mere transcendental or logical condition. Thus, in order to
function as a pointer, self-awareness has to be accessible to each and every
one of Avicennas interlocutors as an uncontroversial constituent of
23
24

Shif: al-nafs I.5, 4344 Rahman; see Chapter 1.2, 2527.

For Avicennas cognitive psychology, see Chapter 1.2, 2729.

The validity and plausibility of the ying man

37

experience, quite regardless of whether we ultimately agree that it has the

suggestive power in favour of the substance dualism that Avicenna builds
upon here.25

2.2 The validity and plausibility of the ying man

Although the ultimate goal of the present study is to understand what sort of
phenomenon Avicenna casts in the pivotal role here, we should briey
consider whether the argument hinging on it is convincing, or even formally
valid. This is particularly the case because, as many scholars have pointed
out,26 it seems to commit the rather blatant fallacy of proceeding from an
epistemic or phenomenological distinction to a metaphysical one. For a
contemporary reader versed in the philosophy of mind, this is obvious: the
fact that the brain or the extended neural network of my body does not
gure in the phenomenology of my rst-personal experience does clearly
not warrant the conclusion that my experience is metaphysically independent of them, for it is perfectly possible, even likely, that my experience is
opaque in the sense that mere introspection will never reveal its physical
foundation.
Indeed, if Avicenna intends the ying man to demonstrate the immateriality of the entity that functions as a soul in the human body, it is dicult
not to judge the argument as fatally fallacious. Moreover, there are sound
reasons for thinking that he may have intended the argument as at least a
sketch for a complete demonstration. Ibn Kammna, a thirteenth-century
CE commentator, attempted to esh it out into a syllogism,27 and we
25

26
27

Thus, my reconstruction of the arguments procedure is inverse to Marmuras (1986, 387388),

according to whom the ying man rst makes us alert to the existence of the self as immaterial
and subsequently to the experiential knowledge of this immaterial existence . . . In other words, we
discern here two stages of knowing. The rst is knowing that the self is immaterial, leading to the
second, the experiential knowledge of ones self as an immaterial entity. I nd this order of
procedure that is, from a theoretical observation to experiential knowledge problematic for two
reasons. First of all, it is dicult to see how a piece of personal experiential knowledge, which
Marmura suggests as the ultimate result of the thought experiment, would be a particularly relevant
conclusion in the context of scientic psychology dealing with universal natural truths. Rather, it
seems clear to me that Avicenna is interested in what the things that function as souls in human bodies
are in general, even if he applies the particular case of the interlocutors own soul as a means to reach
the general conclusion. But more importantly, although we may come to learn something about our
particular selves in the thought process, the experiential level must have been there from the very
beginning as the basis of the entire argument. If there is no uncontroversial shared starting point to
pay attention to by means of the ying man (a starting point which I argue Avicenna takes to be found
in all human experience), he will be hung in thin air, indeed.
For particularly lucid statements of this case, see Sebti 2000, 121122; and Black 2008, 65.
See Muehlethaler 2009.

38

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

cannot be certain that he was not thereby merely following a wellestablished line of interpretation. Furthermore, some of Avicennas own
descriptions of the indicative method suggest that pointers and reminders
should indeed be so eshed out by the apt reader.28 However, if we allow the
ying man to be a less stringent application of the indicative method, the
looming fallacy need not be fatal. In this reading, the argument is only
designed to point towards the substance dualism Avicenna will eventually
demonstrate by other means, or, to put it another way, give a concrete idea
of what the existence of an immaterial human substance could be when
separated from the body we commonly nd it conjoined with. This would
be achieved not by painting a narrative picture of an otherworldly type of
existence, but rather by pointing out a plausible candidate in perfectly
commonplace human experience. Avicenna could then meet the dissatised
reader accusing him of the fallacy by simply recognizing that the argument
does not work in her case and asking for some patience until the proper
demonstration of the human substances immateriality in the fth book of
Shif: F al-nafs.29
But whatever the eventual verdict, the argument loses none of its relevance for our present purpose of reconstructing Avicennas concept of selfawareness as long as it is agreed that some kind of self-awareness, the
precise nature of which remains to be determined, is pivotal to it. However,
even this is controversial, for in one of the most extended studies of
Avicennas psychology, Dag Hasse has argued in extenso that the ying
man is not about self-awareness in the rst place, and a fortiori not based on
a phenomenal feature of experience. According to him, reading dht as self,
although linguistically legitimate, is not warranted by the context. This is
rst of all because the ying man recurs in Shif: F al-nafs V.7, with an
explicit reference to the passage from chapter I.1 that we have just
28
29

Cf. Ishrt, 1; and see Gutas 1988, 307311.

Two further fallacies have been detected in the ying man, neither of which is as striking as the one
above. The rst of these is perceived in Avicennas procedure from the ying mans knowledge that he
is to the knowledge of what he is, that is, from mere self-awareness to an awareness of the self as an
immaterial substance, even though the ying man was supposed not to have any actual intellectual
content (such as the concepts immaterial and substance). In my view, this alleged fallacy is based on
a confusion between what the ying man is supposed to be aware of and what the performer of the
thought experiment concludes on that basis. The latter is of course not required to lack actual
intellection or to be unable to apply concepts to the awareness paid attention to by means of the
thought experiment. The second fallacy (noted by Marmura 1986, 388) is claimed to lie in Avicennas
procedure from a hypothetical example to categorical ends. This may well be a fallacy, but if it is one,
it is common to all thought experiments, and as such far beyond the connes of the present study. For
an excellent extended discussion of the question of the validity of thought experiments in philosophical psychology, see Wilkes 1993, 148.

The validity and plausibility of the ying man

39

investigated but without a single occurrence of dht, having us instead

arm the existence of our thatness (annya), the bare fact that we are
there.30 Hasse suggests that this is also the sense in which we should
understand dht in I.1, and so the common denominator of the two
words is something unspecic like core being.31 Secondly, Hasse thinks
that since the context is concerned with what the soul is in itself, that is, its
essence, in distinction from the soul-relation it has to the body, we should
read dht as denoting essence.32 Thus, the text is concerned with the
armation of an essence, or rather the existence of an essence, independent
of the body to which it is related.33 Hasse explicitly addresses the suggested
possibility that Avicennas use of dht is ambiguous and that the word
means both essence and self, but argues that it univocally stands for
essence: To conclude, the Flying Man does not have immediate access
to himself, nor is he conscious of his existence or fully aware of his
personal existence, nor does he arm his existence, but he arms the
existence of his core entity, his essence, while not arming the existence of
his body.34
Obviously, if Hasses categorical denial of the relevance of self-awareness
to the ying man is correct, my claim that in the argument Avicenna relies
on an explicit phenomenon of self-awareness will be completely unfounded.
But let us pause to consider what argumentative power the thought experiment will have once we take the evidence of immediate self-awareness out of
the equation. Having bracketed all objective content of experience, what
grounds do I have for claiming that I am aware of my essence? What would
awareness of essence in this case consist in? It cannot be awareness of the
concept of human being, or any other concept my essence can be subsumed
under, because all intellection was ruled out in the construction of the
thought experiment. Since alternatives other than intellection are even
harder to come by, it seems that without a reference to some kind of
self-awareness, to the fact that I will still be there even though I am not
aware of my body or indeed anything else at all, the thought experiment is
unconvincing at best, downright incoherent at worst. This is not to say that
my interpretation pushes Avicennas attempt to argue for his substance
30
31
32
33
34

The passage in question is Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 255 Rahman. I will quote and discuss the passage
below in Chapter 4, 6671.
Hasse 2000, 83.
Hasse 2000, 83. This of course accords with the frequent technical use of the term in philosophical
Arabic. See Appendix, as well as Rahman 1991 and Goichon 1938, 134139.
Hasse 2000, 8384.
Hasse 2000, 86. The quotes of the interpretations Hasse rejects are, respectively, from Druart 1988,
34; Davidson 1992, 83; Pines 1970, 808; Rahman 1952, 10; and Marmura 1986, 387.

40

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

dualism beyond debate, but I do claim that the more charitable interpretation will in the very least retain some initial plausibility for the argument.
On the other hand, although the word dht does not appear in the ying
man of Shif: F al-nafs V.7, the context of the arguments application in
that chapter makes the connection to self-awareness, if possible, even more
prominent. The pressing question here is how to account for the fact that
our experiences tend to be coherent and unied wholes of complex constituents in face of Avicennas stringent distinctions between the cognitive
and conative faculties responsible for those constituents. In other words,
how is it possible that I smell freshly brewed coee, develop a desire for a
cup and stand up to fetch one, if the olfactory perception, the desire and the
muscular movement are acts of distinct and unconnected faculties, which
produce distinct and unconnected constituents of experience? Avicennas
strategy in the solution is to argue for the necessity of a single subject or
agent behind the distinct acts, the inviolable unity of which will be sucient
to connect the acts to the sort of whole we recognize in our experience. He
goes on to characterize this single thing in which these faculties are conjoined, the human soul, by appealing to the intuition of his interlocutors,
saying that it is the thing that each of us sees as himself (al-shayu al-ladh
yarhu kullun minn dhtahu).35 In this general context, the ying man
gures in a more specic argument against the claim that this thing that
each of us sees as himself is the body as a whole: since one can be aware of
the unifying subject that one is oneself without being aware of the body (as
the ying man is supposed to show), the body cannot be the unifying
subject. Thus, contrary to what Hasse claims, once we have a look at the
larger context of Shif: F al-nafs V.7, we see that Avicenna explicitly refers
to self-awareness, and precisely in a sense which he clearly believes is
perfectly familiar to his readers from their own experience, in the immediate
context of the ying man.
The fact that Avicenna speaks of knowing the existence of ones annya in
the ying man in Shif: F al-nafs V.7 need not be a problem either, for
annya refers to the fact that (anna) a thing exists and can thus be translated
as thatness.36 As a technical term, it is diametrically opposed to mhya,
which is derived from the question m huwa (what is it?) and can be

35

36

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 253 Rahman. The point is made more emphatically after the ying man at
256257. I discuss the entire context in detail below in Chapter 4, 6671. On the contexts of the two
versions, see Marmura 1986, 385390.
See dAlverny 1959, 73.

The validity and plausibility of the ying man

41

translated as quiddity or whatness.37 Now, insofar as an essence that can

be known is an answer to the question what and therefore a quiddity, it
would seem that Hasses argument for excluding the interpretation of dht
as self in the ying man of Shif: F al-nafs I.1 falls through. For certainly
the immediate awareness of the fact that one exists is cognitively less
developed than the knowledge of what one is by essence. Moreover, knowing that ones essence exists certainly requires some sort of cognitive grasp of
the essence, which brings us back to the problem we started with, that is, if
we conceive of this grasp as a normal case of intellection, it will be
incoherent with the peculiar conditions posed in the thought experiment.
Thus, I argue that Hasses arguments are insucient to rule out the most
obvious interpretation of the ying man, that is, as an argument which
hinges on the phenomenon of self-awareness. The fact that dht also means
essence is something that Avicenna may not have seen necessary to rule out,
for as I will argue later on, there is a sense in which awareness of oneself
indeed is the existence of an individual essence. In light of texts in which this
identication is most explicit,38 the question rather becomes whether
Avicenna even recognized a need for a rigorous distinction between the
two senses of dht. If self-awareness is awareness of the very core of ones
being, and if the very core of the being of anything is its essence which
prevails unchanged in the ux of the various accidents appended to it, then
the two indeed merge into one instead of excluding each other. In this sense,
I am in agreement with Hasses conclusion: the ying man does hinge on
arming the existence of ones essence as separated from the body. The
dierence is that I fail to see how that conclusion can be reached without the
pivotal identication of awareness of that essence with self-awareness.
But in order to not run too far ahead, let us briey summarize the main
argument of the present section. I have claimed that a close reading of the
thought experiment known as the ying man shows us, rst, that Avicenna
recognizes the phenomenon of self-awareness as something we all can
recognize in our own experience. But what is more, it shows that
Avicenna thinks this phenomenon has considerable psychological relevance. Indeed, considering the fact that self-awareness gures prominently
in the introductory chapter of the psychological section of Avicennas most
37

38

In this light Avicennas formulation that the ying man knows the existence of his thatness may
seem strangely redundant, for it could be explicated as knowing the existence of the fact that one
exists, which is one step removed from knowing ones existence. However, I believe this can be
explained by recourse to the frequent use of annya in reference to the individual thing instead of its
quiddity. Cf. dAlverny 1959, 8081.
Cf. Talqt, 160161. This text is discussed in detail in Chapter 3.2.

42

Avicenna and the phenomenon of self-awareness

extensive philosophical summa, and that it provides the starting point for
the investigation of the soul in perhaps his most independent mature work,
al-Ishrt wa al-tanbht,39 he must have perceived it as not having received
its proper due from his predecessors in philosophical psychology. So far,
however, we do not know what exactly Avicenna thinks self-awareness
consists in, how it should be described, or whether it can be analysed or
explained by recourse to more basic phenomena. All we have found out is
that he believes that such a phenomenon can be determined and pointed to,
and perhaps even expects it to be relatively uncontroversial once it has been
suciently determined and distinguished from other features of common
experience by such means as the ying man. Indeed, if we recall the
suggested similarity between self-awareness and rst intelligibles, it should
be as obvious as the laws of the excluded middle or non-contradiction.
Avicenna also suggests that as such a basic fact of human mental life, selfawareness provides a pointer towards the truth of psychological substance
dualism. In fact, it can be argued that he may have cast it in an even more
prominent role as an indispensable foundation for a coherent dualism.
39

The third namat. of the second part of the Ishrt (119 .), on the soul, begins with the ying man. See
Chapter 4.2, 80.

chapter 3

Self-awareness as existence: Avicenna on the

individuality of an incorporeal substance

3.1

The problem of incorporeal individuality

Avicenna grounds his demonstration of psychological substance dualism on

a peculiar feature of the human capacity for intellection.1 All objects of
intellection, insofar as they are actually understood, are indivisible.
Although one can analyse the concept of human being, for instance, into
its generic and dierential constituents (animal and rational, respectively), when the concept is actually understood, the constituents must
both be actual in a single undivided act of intellection. Moreover, the
analysis cannot be pursued innitely for it will ultimately come across
simple intelligibles, such as thing or existent, which can no longer be
analysed or dened.2 On the other hand, all corporeal entities are innitely
divisible. Thus, if a corporeal organ were the substrate of the intellectual
soul, the soul would be divisible due to the divisibility of its substrate. This
in turn would entail the innite divisibility of the object of intellection that
inheres in the soul at the moment of actual intellection, which has already
been argued to be impossible. As a result, insofar as we are capable of
intellection, we cannot be divisible, and hence are not corporeal.3

2
3

Avicenna also refers to self-awareness after this demonstration (see Shif: F al-nafs V.2, 216218
Rahman), when he argues that our awareness of perceiving (Aristotles perception of perception in De
an. III.2, 425b1126) cannot be due to the corporeal organs of perception but requires an incorporeal
basis. Importantly, though, this proof is based not on the evidential force of self-awareness, but on the
impossibility of nding the kind of immediate self-relation, which awareness of perceiving requires, in
anything corporeal.
See Shif: al-Ilhyt I.5.221, 2327.
Shif: F al-nafs V.2, 211216 Rahman; cf. Ishrt, 130. Earlier on (209211) Avicenna also considers the
suggestion that the body in which the intelligible inheres is an unextended and therefore indivisible
point. This is impossible because as a limit of a line or a magnitude the point is accidentally extended,
hence divisible, and will transfer this accidental divisibility to the intelligible. The points mindindependent existence as such (that is, without anything extended the limit of which it would
designate) is refuted by means of familiar arguments against atomism.

43

44

Self-awareness as existence

Avicennas dualism is thus ultimately based on the traditional view that

intellectuality entails incorporeality.4 But since he argues for a strong unity
of the soul despite the multiplicity of its faculties, Avicenna thinks that
incorporeality is not exclusive to an intellectual part of the human being.
On the contrary, each of us is incorporeal even when considered as a soul,
that is, as the agent of acts that take place in the body. Since we have
experience of remaining the same entity when we think intellectually and
when we perceive, desire or move our bodies, Avicenna concludes that the
soul behind all these acts is one, and dierentiated only by means of its
faculties or capacities.5 With the exception of intellection, the souls use of
its faculties of course does take place by means of respective corporeal
organs, and so the acts are corporeal, but since the agent remains one and
the same from one act to another, and since this one agent is capable of
intellection, it must be incorporeal.
Problems arise when this dualistic concept of the soul is connected to the
Aristotelian metaphysical framework that Avicenna subscribes to.6 As a
substance dualist concerning human beings, Avicenna departs from a
straightforward interpretation of hylomorphic psychology in which the
soul is simply the form of the body; although the soul still retains a formal
function in relation to its body, it is not a form strictly speaking, since it
does not inhere in the matter of the body. This departure from orthodox
Aristotelian doctrine is decisive, for it leads to a dilemma concerning the
individuation (tashakhkhus.) of human beings. The commonplace
Aristotelian account of individuation explains individuality by means of
matter: matter individuates forms as ostensible things, as unique examples
of primary substances each of which is traditionally referred to as a this,
tode ti. In other words, the primitively determined spatiotemporal coordinates aorded by matter are the ultimate guarantee of the individuality
of each individual entity, since, unlike all the entitys other properties
considered in themselves, those co-ordinates are exclusive to it in a primitive
sense: no two entities can reside in the same place at a single given moment
of time. But in the case of immaterial substances Avicenna cannot rely on
matter to account for their individuality.
Avicenna tackles the problem headlong in Shif: F al-nafs V.3, saying
that the emergence of a suitable body is a necessary condition for the
4

5
6

See Shif: al-Ilhyt VIII.6.67, 284285. This view is explicitly formulated already in Ar. De an.
III.4. For a lucid discussion of the view in the Ishrt and the commentaries by Rz and T.s, see now
Adamson 2011a.
Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 253254 Rahman.
The following reconstruction of the problem is based on Black 2012.

The problem of incorporeal individuality

45

emergence of an individual soul. Thus, the souls individuality requires a

relation to a body proper to it and it alone.
It is thus sound that the soul comes to be as corporeal matter suited to be
used by it comes to be, and the body that has come to be is its instrument and
governed by it. In the substance of the soul that has come to be with a body
that body necessitates its coming to be from the rst principles there is a
conguration of natural tendency to be preoccupied with and use [that
body], to be concerned about its states and to be attracted to it, which is
proper to [the soul] and turns it away from all other bodies. Thus there is no
doubt that when [the soul] exists as individuated (mutashakhkhis.a), the
principle of its individuation (tashakhkhus.ih) attaches to it something
from the congurations that designates it as an individual (min al-hayti
m tutaayyanu bihi shakhs.an). Those congurations are necessary to make
[the soul] proper to that body, and they are in accordance with the mutual
suitability of one to the other, even if that state and that accordance were
unknown to us.7

Thus, human individuals rst occur at the occurrence of suitable bodies.

When the embryo has developed into a foetus as part of the mothers body
governed by the mothers soul, and the foetus in turn has reached a stage in
which it is a natural organic body which performs [or is capable of performing] the acts of life, a respective soul to govern it and it alone emerges from
the active intellect. But having said all this, Avicenna immediately goes on
to consider the question of the bodys corruption. Given that the individuality of the soul is due to its body, does the soul cease to exist as an
individual entity when the body is corrupted? In other words, since the
souls individuality requires a relation to a body proper to it, and since any
relation will cease to prevail when one of its relata ceases to exist, how can
Avicenna account for the existence of the human soul post mortem? A
denial of the afterlife would be problematic not only for religious reasons,
but also on systematic grounds, for given that matter is the precondition for
corruption, and that the soul is only relationally connected to its body, it is
hard to see how the immaterial soul could cease to exist. To avoid this
problem, Avicenna suggests that the relation to the body has to be understood as a property of the soul, as a temporally qualiable being-related-tothe-body that can be the souls property whether or not any body actually
exists: We say that after the separation of souls from bodies, there is no
doubt that every single soul will have existed (takna qad wujidat) as a dht
made singular by the dierence of the matters which were (knat), by the
7

Shif: F al-nafs V.3, 224225 Rahman.

46

Self-awareness as existence

dierence of the times of their coming to be, and by the dierence of their
congurations in accordance with their dierent bodies.8 As a property of
the soul, the relation to the body can receive dierent temporal qualications, and so, although ultimately grounded upon the existence of a body
for the soul at a determined moment in time, that property can belong to
the soul at any subsequent moment of time, even when the body no
longer exists. Thus, the soul will be individuated after the corruption of
the body by its having once been related to that particular body at a
particular time.
What Avicenna thereby ends up with is a theory of individuation by
means of a special property or a bundle of properties that are unique
to the immaterial entity that they individuate. In fact, in the immediately following section of our chapter he is quick to list a set of such
properties:
After [the soul] has been individuated as singular, it and another, numerically [dierent] soul cannot be one dht we have repeated the discussion
on the impossibility of this in a number of places. But we are certain that
[1] the soul can, when it comes to be with the coming to be of a temperament, afterwards come to have a conguration in rational actions and
rational passions that as a whole are distinct from the corresponding
conguration it would have in another, as two temperaments in two bodies
are distinct; that [2] the acquired conguration, which is called an intellect
in act, is also to a certain degree something by which [the soul] is distinguished from another soul; and that [3] an awareness of its particular self
(shurun bi dhtih al-juzya) occurs to [the soul], and that awareness is
also a certain conguration in it which is proper to it and to no other. It
may be the case that [4] a proper conguration also comes to be in it with
respect to bodily faculties. That conguration is connected to moral congurations or is the same as them. There [may] also be [5] other properties
unknown to us that are appended to souls when they come to be and
afterwards, just as similar [properties] are appended to individuals of
corporeal species so that [the individuals] are distinguished by them for
as long as they remain; similarly souls are distinguished by their properties
in them, whether the bodies are there or not, whether we know those states
or not, or know [only] some of them.9

Avicenna mentions ve types of individuating properties. First we have a set

of rational actions and . . . passions, which seems to refer to immaterial
character traits or in modern parlance, psychological properties that
correspond with the unique humoral temperament of the souls erstwhile
8

Shif: F al-nafs V.3, 225226 Rahman; emphases added.

Shif: F al-nafs V.3, Rahman 226227.

The problem of incorporeal individuality

47

body.10 These properties are based on the Galenic theory of temperaments,

according to which the relations of domination between the bodily
humours blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile cause corresponding
emotional dispositions in the soul; for instance, a predominance of black
bile tends to make a person melancholic in character. Given Avicennas
refutation of atomism, the relative amounts of the humours in a given
temperamental whole allow for an innity of variations, and so the temperamental basis alone provides a means of distinguishing an innite number
of souls from each other.11 Second, each human soul will have developed its
intellect to an extent particular to it, and thereby reached a degree of
cognitive perfection dierent from that of other souls; each of us has
more or less knowledge, and knowledge about dierent things than our
peers. Our cognitive perfection, although it may seem to be independent
from the body, also requires the body in its coming to be, for, as we have
already mentioned, Avicenna holds that we acquire knowledge by means of
learning and abstraction through perceptual data. Third, Avicenna mentions the awareness each person has of her- or himself. We will return to this
conguration in a moment; suce it to say at this point, however, that, as
we learned from the ying man, Avicenna thinks that self-awareness, unlike
the other properties enumerated here, is at least possibly independent from
the body. Let us also point out that, unlike the other possible factors of
individuation, self-awareness is not qualied by any verbal sign of hesitation
(such as can, to a certain degree or it may be the case). Fourth, each of us
has particular character traits that we have acquired through habituation.
One person may have been disposed to regular physical hardship from an
early age, having thus developed a character of strong endurance, whereas
another person may have been similarly subjected to a steady diet of
sweetmeats and will subsequently nd a life devoid of such substances
dicult to bear. Avicenna refers to these character traits as moral congurations or congurations related to character (al-haytu al-khalqya), and
it seems quite clear that they derive from the account of dispositions
(Gr. hexeis, Ar. akhlq) in the Nicomachean Ethics.12 Fifth and last,
10

11
12

For an extended discussion of the role of the humoral temperament in the individuation and
origination of the immaterial human substance, as well as of the general emanationist context, see
Marmura 2008, especially 123130.
For Avicennas refutation of atomism, see Shif: al-Sam al-t.ab III.5, 302310. Concerning the
innite number of souls in Avicenna, cf. Marmura 1960, 232235.
For a general account, see Ar. NE II.1. Avicenna discusses habituation as a psychological phenomenon
in the context of the faculty of estimation (see Shif: F al-nafs IV.3, 184185 Rahman; for discussion,
cf. Kaukua 2007, 5152). Thus, even though the habits themselves are in the immaterial soul, their
coming to be requires corporeal faculties.

48

Self-awareness as existence

Avicenna mentions the possibility of other individuating properties that we

may not be aware of. Since each body has a practically innumerable variety
of properties, there may be some that we will miss; if that is possible, the
same may be true of the souls properties. Presumably, however, this fth
group will be ontologically similar to the others, in that the factors in it are
also properties of the soul somehow caused by its relation to the body. The
important point here is that although they are genetically based on the
body, all of these properties are properties of the soul, and as properties of an
immaterial entity they are immaterial as well.
Avicenna therefore seems to suggest a version of what contemporary
metaphysicians call a bundle theory to explain the individuality of the
immaterial human substance. In this account, no single property alone is
expected to provide the foundation for human individuality, but the
properties due to the souls relation to its body are collectively thought to
be de facto unique to the soul, and thus capable of singling it out from
among its kin. Now, this leap from de facto uniqueness to individuation in
principle entails a well-rehearsed problem: if no single immaterial property is
capable of conveying individuality to the subject whose property it is, why
should we assume that a collection of such properties will acquire that
capacity from the mere conjunction of the properties? What is more,
Avicenna himself makes the very point explicit in Shif: al-Madkhal I.12:13
The individual (al-shakhs.) becomes an individual when accidental properties
(khaws..s), both concomitant and not concomitant, are conjoined with the
nature of the species, and designated matter is assigned to them (tataayyanu
lah mddatun mushrun ilayh).14 It is impossible for the intelligible properties, however many they are, to be conjoined to the species without an ultimate
reference to an individuated meaning, so that the individual thereby subsists in
the intellect. For if you said Zayd is the tall one, the writer, the handsome
one, and so forth for as many descriptions as you wish, Zayds individuality
would not be assigned for you in the intellect. Rather, the meaning, which is
put together from the collection of all that, can belong to more than one, but it
is made concrete (yuayyinuhu) by existence and by reference to an individual
meaning, just as you say that he is the son of so-and-so, exists at such-and-such
a time, is tall, and is a philosopher, and it then happens to be the case that no
13

14

The incoherence was rst raised by Deborah Black (2012), who also suggests in passing that selfawareness may have played a special role in Avicennas account of human individuality (see also Black
2008, 7376). The following reconstruction, however, is not based on Blacks article. Another
assessment of Avicennas account of the individuation of human substances as being incomplete
and possibly aporetic is Druart 2000, 266267, 273.
One could also read designated matter is assigned to [the nature of the species]. The nuance is
inconsequential for our concerns, since in both cases the point remains that matter is required for
individuation.

The problem of incorporeal individuality

49

one shares these attributes with him and also that you have had a previous
acquaintance with the case by means of the kind of apprehension which points
towards [the case] on the basis of sense perception, pointing to the very person
and the very moment. Then the individuality of Zayd is ascertained for you,
and this statement indicates his individuality.15

Right at the beginning of the passage, Avicenna atly rejects the bundle
theory of individuation that we have just read from the psychological
section of the Shif. He is adamant that in addition to the conjunction of
accidental properties to a specic nature i.e. the conjunction of properties
(1), (2), (4) and (5) to the dht of a human being individuation requires
that designated matter is assigned to this bundle of accidental and essential
properties. However, precisely that assignment is lacking when the bundle
is supposed to constitute an immaterial entity. As a result, the alleged
individuation turns out to be insuciently grounded; at best we might
have accidental individuality due to the de facto non-existence of another
entity with exactly the same bundle of properties. But without the irreducible material basis, there is nothing to prevent the bundle from belonging
to more than one soul in principle.
The incongruence hinges on a close connection between intellectuality,
intelligibility and immateriality. Something is an intellect for the same
reason as it is intelligible: because it is abstract, either by itself or as a result
of a human intellects act of abstraction, from matter and the features
concomitant to it, such as having unique spatiotemporal co-ordinates.
Furthermore, intelligibility entails potential universality; any intelligible is
in principle shareable or participable (mushtarik) by more than one specifically identical individual, regardless of whether there actually are more than
one, or indeed any, corresponding individuals.16 Thus, even if the bundle of
the accidental properties of a given human substance did happen to constitute a complete description of a given individual entity, a Leibnizian
complete individual concept if you will, they would not suce decisively to
single out that individual, since there will always remain the possibility that
there is another individual exactly alike but numerically dierent. What is
needed is a way for this set of properties to refer to an individual, and so to
have an individuated or individual meaning (man mutashakhkhas., man
shakhs.),17 which in the case of Zayd in our passage amounts to an ostensive
15
16
17

Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, 70. Cf. Shif: al-Ilhyt V.8.89, 188189; and Bck 1994, 4850.
Shif: al-Madkhal I.5, 2627; cf. Shif: al-Ilhyt V.1.23, 148149.
The notion of individuated meaning or individual meaning is not entirely clear, and according to
Black 2012, Avicenna never gives an explicit denition of the term. Black does venture to suggest,
however, that individual meanings are involved in Avicennas account of self-awareness a suggestion

50

Self-awareness as existence

reference to the embodied person. This reference enables all the other facts
known about Zayd to be specic to him and him alone.
One might ask, however, whether the incoherence is not dissolved if we
take our cue from the existence proper to a class of immaterial individuals
which Avicenna explicitly asserts, namely the celestial intellects. If they can be
genuine individuals, why can we not explain the individuality of the immaterial human substances along the same lines? The problem is that the types of
individuality respective to the two classes of being, human and celestial
intellects, are dierent in kind and accountable by drastically divergent
reasons. The celestial intellects are individual because each of them is the
sole instantiation of its species,18 whereas human substances are multiple
instantiations of the single species of humanity. Thus, although both celestial
intellects and human beings are individual for causes external to their quiddities,19 these reasons are distinct: the lack of other instantiations of the
species in the case of the celestial intellects, the aforementioned relation to
bodies in that of humans. What is more, Avicenna explicitly states that the
allegedly individual bundles of the human essence and its unique accidents
cannot be understood as subspecies of human: only the human essence can
constitute a species that is capable of subsisting by itself.20 This is clearly an
expression of the Aristotelian belief according to which only natural kinds are
substances in the strict sense, that is, entities that are capable of subsisting and
enduring through the variation of their accidental attributes, and that are the
subjects of denitions in the proper sense.21 Since the variation concerns
precisely the sort of features that form the allegedly individuating bundle, the
bundle fails to produce a new species of substance, the sole instantiation of
which the individual human would be.
Thus, if we look at the list of the allegedly individuating characteristics
Avicenna mentions in Shif: F al-nafs V.3, we can see that the majority of
them suers from the same problem as the bundle of properties discussed in
Shif: al-Madkhal I.12. If the rational actions and aections that are parallel
to the humoral temperament of the souls body are immaterial properties,
we can immediately ask the question of why they could not in principle be
shared by other souls. Even if they were caused by a particular body, it

18
20
21

I will discuss in Chapter 4.3, 9194. For the present purpose it suces to point out that, in the case of
multiple individuals of a single species, individuated meanings seem to presuppose material existence.
Indeed, it is possible that Avicenna applies the term simply to mean straightforward reference to a
mind-independent object. For relevant uctuations in the meaning of man in theories of reference
in Arabic philosophy, see Eichner 2010.
Shif: al-Ilhyt V.2.2, 158; VIII.6.16-17, 288. 19 Shif: al-Madkhal I.5, 2627.
Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, 7172.
See, for instance, Ar. Met. VII.12, 1037b271038a35; and cf. Shif: al-Ilhyt V.7.1112, 184185.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

51

would still be possible that there is another soul with precisely the same
properties yet due to another body that is identical to the rst in respect to
its humoral temperament. In such a case, we would not have any means of
distinguishing between the two souls. The souls moral conguration is
similar to its humorally induced properties in this regard: certainly we can
imagine two souls with exactly matching histories of character formation,
only mediated by two spatiotemporally distinct bodies. Again, in such a case
we will have no way of distinguishing between the two souls. Similar
problems are faced when we consider the degree of actualization of the
souls capacity of intellection: nothing rules out the possibility of another
soul having the exact same amount of acquired knowledge. If anything, this
might seem even more plausible than the possibility of two souls with
exactly similar humorally induced character traits. The set of unknown
attributes, whatever they may be, can be dealt with in the same way: as
immaterial qualities, they are by denition potentially common to many
and therefore have no power to individuate the subject whose qualities they
are. In the end, the problem stands rm: without the relation to its body,
which ceases to prevail at the bodys corruption, the human substance lacks
a reference to designated matter and its primitively individuating spatiotemporal co-ordinates, and its individuation remains a mystery.

3.2

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

Even if none of the body-related properties were capable of individuating

the immaterial human substance, Avicennas list leaves us with one possible
factor to consider: the souls awareness of its particular self which is a
conguration proper to it and to no other. The role of self-awareness in the
individuation of a human being is not developed at any greater length in the
psychological books of the Shif, but the Talqt, a later compilation of
correspondence possibly meant to be appended to the Shif,22 does contain
an extended discussion of self-awareness which perhaps suggests a solution
to the problem of individuation. Many of the points this passage gathers
together are made separately, and are occasionally expanded upon, in a
number of other contexts, but the way they are here composed into a single
whole is unique. Moreover, the emphatic repetition, in slight variations, of
the point that self-awareness is the mode of existence of the human
substance is to my knowledge without parallel in the Avicennian corpus.
It is also the basis on which the passage can be read as suggesting a solution
22

So Gutas 1988, 141144, whose suggestion is corroborated by Janssens 2012.

52

Self-awareness as existence

to the incoherence in the Shif. For these reasons I will quote the passage at
exceptional length. In order to see how the arguments that gure scattered
in Avicennas other works do indeed belong together, it is important not to
dissect the text into independent parts. (The lettering is added only to
facilitate reference in the discussion below.)
[a] Furthermore, when an instrument is attributed to something, [that thing]
acquires by means of [the instrument] what it has potentially, not actually.
The selfs self-awareness (shuru al-dhti bi al-dhti) is never23 potential but
rather innate (maft.ra) to it; the human self is an aware self (dhtu al-insni
dhtun shiratun), and its awareness of itself (shuruh bi dhtih) is natural
to it. Since that is the case, it is not acquired; and since it is not acquired, it is
not by means of an instrument.
[b] Self-awareness is essential for the soul (al-shuru bi al-dhti dhtyun li
al-nafs), it is not externally acquired; it is as if when the self occurs, awareness
occurs with it (wa ka annahu idhan h.as.ala al-dhtu, h.as.ala maah al-shur).
One24 is not aware of it by means of an instrument, but one is aware of it by
itself and from itself (yusharu bih bi dhtih wa min dhtih). Its awareness
of it25 is absolute awareness; I mean that there is no condition whatsoever in
it and that it is constantly aware (dimatu al-shur), not from time to
time.26 Apprehension of the body takes place by way of a sense, and that is
either by means of vision or by means of touch; thus, he who allows that
knowledge of the self (al-maarifatu bi al-dht) is from an indication to it by
means of a sense has the consequence that he does not know himself (lam
yaarif dhtahu) absolutely but knows [himself] (arafah)27 when he perceives his body. Furthermore, apprehension by means of a sense requires that
there is something which is known to apprehend what is sensed by means of
a sense, and which is dierent from the sense, and it is no doubt the soul. As
regards28 us being aware that we were aware of ourselves (fa amm an
nashura bi ann qad shaarn bi dhawtin), it is from an act of the intellect.
Self-awareness is actual for the soul (al-shuru bi al-dhti yaknu li al-nafsi
bi al-l), so that it is constantly aware of itself (fa innah takna dimata
23

24

25
26
27
28

Reading qat.t.u, instead of Badaws faqat., in accordance with the forthcoming critical edition by
Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, who has kindly bestowed upon me a manuscript version. Both readings
are supported by manuscript evidence.
Here and later in the sentence I read in passive (l yushar) with Mousavian instead of Badaws rstperson plural (l nushar), also supported by manuscript evidence. Strictly speaking, it would of
course be problematic to ascribe a plural subject (we) for awareness of an individual self. However,
such a loose manner of speaking is understandable, and in fact Avicenna does resort to it later on in
the text in places where the manuscripts are unanimous.
Reading shuruh bih with Mousavian, instead of Badaws shurun bih, also supported by
manuscript evidence.
Cf. Talqt 79, which repeats this point almost verbatim.
Reading the feminine sux with Mousavian, instead of Badaws arafahu, which is also supported by
manuscript evidence. The dierence between the readings is inconsequential.
Reading fa amm with Mousavian instead of Badaws fa in m.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

53

al-shuri bi dhtih). As regards awareness of the awareness (al-shuru bi alshur), it is potential; if awareness of the awareness were actual, it would be
constant and no consideration of the intellect (itibri al-aql) would be
needed for it.
[c] My apprehension of myself (idrk li dht) is something constitutive
to me,29 not occurring from a consideration of another thing. Thus, when I
say I did such and such, I consider my apprehension of myself (idrk li
dht) even if I neglect my awareness of [myself] (wa in kuntu f ghaatin an
shur bih); how else would I know that I did such and such, if I didnt rst
consider myself (law l ann itabartu awwalan dht)? Thus, I have rst
considered my self, not its act (qad itabartu awwalan dht, lam lah), and
I do not consider anything by means of which I would apprehend myself
(lam atabar shayan adraktu bihi dht).
Our awareness of our self is our very existence (shurun bi dhtin huwa
nafsu wujdin).
When we know something, in our knowledge of our apprehension of it
there is awareness of our self (f ilmin bi idrkin lahu shurun bi dhtin);
for we know30 that our self has apprehended it (naalima anna dhtan
adrakathu), and so we have rst been aware of our self (fa shaarn awwalan
bi dhtin). How else would we know that we have apprehended it, if we
werent rst aware of our self (shaarn awwalan bi dhtin)? What is like that
is a reminder,31 not a demonstration, that the soul is aware of itself (anna
al-nafsa shiratun bi dhtih).
[d] Those which are primary are not actual for us,32 for otherwise there
would be no need for a consideration about them.
[e] Self-awareness is innate to the self, it is [the selfs] very existence
(al-shuru bi al-dhti huwa gharzyun li al-dhti, wa huwa nafsu
wujdih); so nothing external is needed by means of which to apprehend
the self rather, the self is that which apprehends itself (fa l yuh.tja il
29

30

31

32

Reading amrun muqawwimun l with Mousavian, instead of Badaws amrun yaqmu l, something
that arises (or emerges) for me, which incoherently supposes me to be something to which selfawareness can arise and which therefore is separable from it. Avicenna argues for a much stronger
connection between me and my self-awareness, indeed one in terms of constitution.
Reading li ann naalima with Mousavian instead of Badaws l naalim, which does have manuscript
support. Mousavians reading is coherent with Avicennas statement elsewhere in the Talqt (79)
that, when we know something with certainty, we know that we know. While Badaws reading could
perhaps be reconciled with that passage, more interpretative work is required, and therefore
Mousavians reading appears more probable. For the connection between epistemic certainty and
self-awareness in Avicenna, see Black 2008, 7681.
Reading tanbh with Mousavian instead of Badaws bayyanatun, which does have manuscript support
and makes sense. However, tanbh in the technical sense mentioned above is arguably the lectio
dicilior and provides a clear reference to arguments like the ying man.
Badaw omits the lan retained by Mousavian. The point clearly concerns the explicit presence of the
rst principles of knowledge as objects of our consideration; cf. our discussion on the similarity
between self-awareness and such rst principles, and the corresponding similarities in arguments for
them, in Chapter 2.1, 3334. The point is made in more explicit terms in Talqt, 7980.

54

Self-awareness as existence
shayin min khrijin tudraku bihi al-dhtu, bal al-dhtu hiya al-lat tudriku
dhtah).33 Thus, it is not sound for it to exist without there being awareness
of it (takna mawjdatan ghayra mashrin bih) given that what is aware of it
is its very self (yakna al-shiru bih huwa nafsu dhtih), not any other
thing. This is not exclusive (khs..san) to human beings, rather all animals are
aware of themselves (tashiru bi dhawtih) in this respect.34

For the present purposes, let us reiterate the points on which the alleged
solution to the problem of individuation hinges. Avicenna begins by stating
in section [a] that our self-awareness is not acquired but innate. As a
consequence, it is also immediate, and involves no use of cognitive instruments of any kind. This could have been inferred from the ying man as
well, based as it was on bracketing all acquired knowledge and shutting out
all cognitive faculties by rendering their respective instruments inoperative.
In section [b], Avicenna continues by claiming that self-awareness is essential and hence necessary or concomitant to human beings, something that
will always prevail given the existence of an individual human and that
therefore does not permit intermission. He rephrases the point in section
[c], stating that self-awareness is constitutive to all actual human beings and
as such never gures as a potency the actualization of which would depend
on accidental circumstantial conditions. These considerations are further
developed by means of an argument against models of self-awareness based
on reection,35 which is followed by the statement, presented as if in
conclusion of what has been said so far, that our awareness of our self is
our very existence. This is repeated in section [e] in the form of a summary:
awareness of the self . . . is its very existence. The obvious outcome is that,
instead of a human property, self-awareness constitutes human existence. It is
the mode in which individual immaterial human substances exist just as
materiality is the mode in which individual human bodies exist.
If we read this as an attempted solution to the incoherence in the Shif,
the point is that just as the spatiotemporal co-ordinates make material
existence the existence of individual things, self-awareness renders immaterial existence individual. As we recall, Shif: F al-nafs V.3 listed selfawareness as merely one of the ve types of attributes of the immaterial
human substance, a constituent among others of a bundle of properties
which as a whole were argued to individuate the immaterial human
33

34
35

I read in passive (l yuh.tja, tudraku, tudriku) with Mousavian instead of Badaws rst-person plural
(l nuh.tja, nudriku, nudriku), which also has manuscript support and would make sense as a loose
manner of expression.
Talqt, 160161.
The argument resurfaces in the Ishrt and will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4.1, 7275.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

55

substance, but which on closer analysis, and in light of Shif: al-Madkhal

I.12, seemed unt for the task. In the present passage, self-awareness is
promoted to a unique constitutive status: as the existence of an individual
human being it is the determining factor in that human beings individuation. To put it another way, instead of one of the many attributes of the
human substance, Avicenna now presents it as the substrate of all subsequent attributes. This is entailed by the argument against reection-based
models of self-awareness in section [c].
Let us approach this idea by way of an example. Suppose that a colleague
enters my oce with a lunch proposal. Caught in the act of contemplating,
I decline the oer, uttering I am thinking as an excuse. Now, the emphasis
here is obviously on thinking, which expresses my reason for declining,
and not on I, which species myself as the agent entertaining a line of
thought. Yet in order for the thinking to be given in the relevant sense in the
rst place, that is as an act I can attribute to myself, I must rst be aware of
myself as something concrete to which I can attribute the act. This prior
self-awareness is completely independent of whether or not I ever pay
specic attention to it. As a primitive constituent of any individual
human being, self-awareness is the basis which enables us to attribute
anything to ourselves as exclusive to a certain individual. This act of
thinking is mine, even if another individual were thinking an exactly similar
thought elsewhere, because it is an attribute of my self-awareness. Thus, the
metaphysical role of self-awareness is similar to that of the spatiotemporal
co-ordinates of the volume of matter which constitutes a material individual. In other words, self-awareness is the existence of an individual soul in
precisely the same sense as corporeality, with the entailed spatiotemporal coordinates, is the existence of an individual body.
Avicenna does not spell out why he believes that self-awareness can be
cast in this important explanatory role. However, it is perhaps plausible to
assume that this is due to its unique phenomenological features. Each
human beings awareness of herself is exclusive to her and cannot be shared
by anyone or anything else; it is something to which only that individual has
access.36 But quite apart from whether the reconstructed solution is
36

If this is the basis of the reconstructed solution, then its plausibility hinges on accepting Avicennas
description of self-awareness. Minimally, this includes the claim that self-awareness is primitive and
irreducible to more basic psychological or epistemic constituents. Self-awareness does not arise from
the cognition of a special object, for as Avicenna states in the argument against reection-based
models of self-awareness, recognition of oneself in an object requires prior familiarity with oneself.
However, while citing this passage, Black 2012 does reconstruct Avicennas concept of self-awareness
as an awareness of the individual intention of Shif: al-Madkhal I.12. I will revisit this suggestion in
Chapter 4.3, 9194.

56

Self-awareness as existence

plausible in systematic terms, it remains a fact that neither Avicenna nor any
of his immediate interlocutors ever explicitly recognize the described incoherence, nor do they present self-awareness as its solution. However, this
does not necessarily mean that the reconstruction is anachronistic, for a
similar appeal to self-awarenesss as a solution to the problem of individuation is recognized as Avicennian a century and a half later by the critical
commentator Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz.37 Moreover, the connection between
individuation and self-awareness is retained in Mull Sadrs discussion of
mental existence.38 In the end, however, it must be admitted that we have
no conclusive evidence for treating the question as Avicennas own, let alone
reading the passage in the Talqt as expressly designed for its solution.
Moreover, regardless of the plausibility of this reading, it is problematized
by the context in which the passage is embedded, a complex patchwork of
alternating sections on theology and psychology or epistemology. Our
present knowledge of the textual history and the principles of organization
of the Talqt allows us no denite assessment of the text, but this
uncertainty notwithstanding, the theological relevance of the discourse on
self-awareness is relatively straightforward.39
Avicennas description of the characteristics of human self-awareness
takes place in the wake of an account of Gods knowledge of Himself and
His creation. In a manner familiar from the Shif, he rst claims that Gods
knowledge entails knowledge of the created world because He knows
Himself as its maker. In fact, creation primarily exists in being understood
by God. In a reformulation of the Neoplatonic framework of emanation
and return, Avicenna then says that God is both the origin and the end of all
through His understanding of Himself as the origin and as absolute good,
worthy of the pursuit of all things. The usual denial of any kind of passivity,
receptivity and impression in Gods knowledge are added in order to
distinguish His knowledge from the sort of cognition His creatures may
be capable of. Avicenna thereby asserts that, in the case of God, the subject
and object of knowledge are one, something he has vehemently denied
elsewhere of all other cognitive subjects.40 This is based on the theological
tenet that all of Gods attributes, including His knowing Himself as the
origin and the good as well as the entailed knowledge of the created world,
are identical to His essence or His self (dht).41
37
39
40

Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.5.5, II.402403. See Chapter 7.2, 185187. 38 See Chapter 7.2, 187188.
Moreover, another similar foray into self-awareness in the Talqt (7880) gures in a similar
context.
Cf. Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240 Rahman. 41 Talqt, 158160.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

57

This section of the Talqt is very close to the account of Gods knowledge in Shif: al-Ilhyt VIII.67, but immediately thereafter Avicenna
suddenly moves to consider human cognition insofar as it is similar to Gods
knowledge of Himself. If this order of procedure is originally Avicennian
and not a result of a later recension, it can be understood as an attempt to
elucidate the identity of the dierent attributes of God with His self on the
one hand, and the identity of intellection, its subject and its object on the
other. For a devout sceptic could ask how we can even begin to understand
Gods knowledge if it, due to its absolute unity, is fundamentally dierent
from our own, the only phenomenon we can use as a starting point in any
discussion of knowledge. Thus, it would be in order to make his realist
description of Gods knowledge more palatable to the sceptical reader that
Avicenna suggests that, notwithstanding the multiplicity inherent in
human intellection, there is a certain qualied sense in which we can
speak of the unity or identity of what knows and what is known in it as
well. This is stated right before section [a] in a paraphrase of the Aristotelian
claim that they share one and the same actuality. My being an intellect in act
(my actual aqlya) amounts to the actual existence of an intellectual form
for me, and this existence is nothing other than the forms being actually
understood (its actual maqlya) by me.42 Although the intelligible form
remains distinct from the intellectual subject that understands it because of
their metaphysical classication under opposing categories the form is an
accident which inheres in the intellectual substance they nevertheless share
in the actuality of intellection.
Having thus qualied his denial of the unity of subject and object in
human cognition, Avicenna moves on in our passage to consider an aspect
of the human intellect that he seems to think shows a much greater
similarity to Gods self-intellection. More than anything else we have
immediate access to, human self-awareness approaches the absolute identity
between the subject and the object of cognition that is characteristic of
Gods knowledge. From this perspective, it would be in order to make sense
of this attribute of God that our passage contrasts self-awareness so diligently with other types of cognition, which take place either by means of a
given intellectual object or, in the case of perception and imagination, by
way of corporeal instruments. Similarly, if the context is genuinely
Avicennas, it seems natural to assume that Avicenna dwells at such length
on the identity of our self-awareness and our existence precisely in order to
42

Talqt, 160.

58

Self-awareness as existence

elucidate the parallel identity between Gods knowledge and His self.43
Avicennas intention would not be unlike that of Augustine in De trinitate,
that is, to nd in the soul of man [the] image of the Creator,44 or to come
to understand something that is innitely above us by means of the
similarities to it that we can nd in ourselves.
In the end, we have to admit that neither of the two discussions to which
we have embedded Avicennas excursion on self-awareness is unequivocally
the correct context for it. Reading the passage in light of the psychological
discussion concerning the individuality of the human substance is made
problematic by Avicennas complete silence about the connection, whereas
the haphazard organization of the Talqt throws doubt on the putative
connection to the theological discussion of Gods knowledge. However, if
the passage and its blunt identication between human self-awareness and
human existence belongs to either of the two contexts, this will be due to
one and the same idea, that is, that self-awareness is the sort of existence
proper to an immaterial, hence intellectual, substance. This in turn suggests
that despite the novelty of Avicennas concept of self-awareness, his starting
point is the result of three interconnected ideas, all of which are perfectly
traditional as such.
The rst of these ideas is that immateriality is equivalent to intellectuality. In other words, if something is an immaterial entity, it is by the same
token an intellect, and vice versa. The second idea verges on the tautological: if something is an intellect, its actual existence amounts to intellection.
Finally, the third idea expresses a particular concept of intellection: intellection always amounts to self-intellection because it consists of an identity
or unity of some sort between the subject and the object of intellection.
Avicenna subscribes to this set of ideas explicitly, if not without certain
qualications, both in the Shif and in the Ishrt. For a lucid example,
consider the following description of God as the paradigmatic intellect:
The First is understood by [Him]self and subsists [by Himself] (al-awwalu
maqlu al-dhti qimuh).45 Thus, He subsists free from attachments,
obligations, matters and other such [things] which would bring the self to

43

44
45

In this regard, the Talqt is not entirely unique in Avicennas oeuvre; cf. the discussion of the relation
between the theological and psychological parts of the Shif and the Ishrt in Adamson 2011a.
Interestingly, Suhraward resorts to a similar strategy in the Talwh.t and al-Mashri wa
al-mut.rah.t; see Chapter 6.1.
Aug. De trin. XIV.4.6.
This is a dicult sentence. I read it as consisting of two parallel idfas, that is, maqlu al-dhti (wa)

qimu al-dht.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

59

be by means of an additional state. And you know that what is judged such
understands itself and is understood by itself.46

Gods intelligibility is equivalent with His immateriality, His freedom from

attachments and deciencies that are due to matter, and as such He is
known by denition to understand Himself and be understood by Himself.
In other words, Gods intellectuality amounts to a constant act of selfintellection.
Avicennas introduction of the discussion of human self-awareness in a
context dealing with Gods intellectuality strongly suggests that he
approaches the phenomenon from the point of view of the traditional
theory of the intellect. Because the entity that functions as a soul in relation
to the human body is an immaterial substance independent of its relation to
the body, its existence in itself must be intellectual. If it is intellectual, it
must be intellectually aware of itself. In this regard, the human substance is
like any other intellect.47 However, there is an important dierence
between human and divine intellection which may have motivated
Avicenna to explain the unity of Gods intellection at such great length.
Gods knowledge of Himself merges with His knowledge of His creation,
whereas we are always emphatically aware of ourselves in the face of an
other, and this introduces a persistent structural duality to our cognition. In
Shif: F al-nafs V.6, Avicenna vehemently denies the theory of cognitive
unity in the case of human intellection, attributing it to Porphyry who was
bent to speak in imaginative, poetic and mystical (s.fya) expressions which
restricted both himself and others to imagination. The argument annexed
to the denial is admirably lucid. Suppose that I understand catness now at
time t1 but horseness a moment later at time t2. According to the theory of
cognitive unity, at t1 I am identical to catness but at t2 identical to horseness,
and so, given the obvious dierence between catness and horseness, we
cannot speak of any me that endures in knowing both at the successive
moments. This, however, violates our intuition that we can, in some
46
47

Ishrt IV, 146. Cf. Shif: al-Ilhyt VIII.668, 284285. For discussion, see Sebti 2000, 100103;
Adamson 2011a; and cf. Pines 1954, 3639.
The fact that Avicenna occasionally claims that all animals are aware of themselves in the same
manner he has just described human beings to be is of course problematic. I have argued elsewhere
(Kaukua and Kukkonen 2007; cf. Lpez-Farjeat 2012) that, on systematic grounds at least, Avicennas
theory of animal self-awareness (which he is hesitant about; for passages conicting with the present
one, see Mubh.atht 305, 184 Badaw [VI.656657, 221 Bdrfar]; 358, 199 Badaw [VI.504505, 176
Bdrfar]; and most importantly Talqt, 79) should be dierent from his theory of human selfawareness. In the end, I believe that Avicenna failed to develop a fully coherent theory of animal selfawareness, or one capable of reconciling his dualism with intuitions concerning animal psychology
that he seems to have shared with his contemporaries.

60

Self-awareness as existence

suciently robust sense, intellectually apprehend dierent things at dierent times, that I who am thinking about horseness now am the very person
who was thinking about catness a moment ago.48 To save this intuition, we
have to postulate our selves to endure unchanged from t1 to t2, and therefore
reject the theory of cognitive unity. Instead, we should opt for a theory of
intellection in which the intelligible forms actually understood are conceived as accidents inhering in the human intellect, separable from it not
merely in analysis but also in reality.49 While this may be compatible with a
modest version of the theory of cognitive unity, according to which the
intellect and its object share in a single act of intellection, such a unity will
be considerably weaker than that in the divine intellect. As a result, also our
means of describing Gods single act of intellection of Himself and His
creation are severely inadequate to render the unity as anything other than a
conjunction of two analytically distinct constituents, that is, Gods knowledge of Himself on the one hand, and His knowledge of His creation on the
other. But even though our capacity of intellection will not take us very far
in understanding Gods synonymous act, there is one feature in our knowledge that is capable of giving us a more concrete idea of the unity in Gods
knowledge. It is for this reason that Avicenna emphasizes the immediacy
and the primitive nature of our self-awareness, the sole cognitive phenomenon in us that is capable of resisting the necessity of a real distinction
between subject and object.
But even if Avicenna took his cue from the tradition in applying human
self-awareness to account for our individual existence and to make sense of
Gods knowledge of Himself, his emphasis on the immediacy of selfawareness forced him to depart from the traditional ground. This is because
none of the available modes of cognition can be used to explain such a
primitive type of awareness. If nothing is allowed to mediate between the
human subject and her awareness of herself, self-awareness has to be
conceived of in a manner dierent from both perception and intellection.
Both types of cognition take place when what is known is impressed or
inheres in the knowing substance or its cognitive organs. Depending on
the type of cognition, the known object can be of three dierent types. It
can be a proper or a common sensible form, such as colour, sound, motion,
shape and so forth, in which case it will be impressed in the corresponding
48

49

The argument thus implicitly relies on a feature of our self-awareness, which is explicitly brought
forth in an argument from personal identity in Mubh.atht VI.403, 147 Bdrfar; cf. 453, 226 Badaw;
see Chapter 4.1, 7579.
Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240 Rahman.

Self-awareness as incorporeal existence

61

sense organ, and by means of that in the faculty of common sense, as a

material property that corresponds to an extramental object. It can be what
Avicenna calls meaning (man), such as the enmity a sheep apprehends in a
wolf. This is an object proper to the faculty of estimation (wahm), and
although not sensible as such, it is conveyed in what is sensed. Thus, even if
it no longer has the sensible properties that are immediately due to matter, it
does reside in what is sensed, and since it also inheres in the material organ
proper to estimation, it remains material.50 Finally, the object can be
intellectual, in which case it is received by the soul from the active intellect
without any corporeal faculty, although the soul must have been prepared
for this reception by a process of abstraction which it performs by means of
corporeal faculties.51 But as we have just seen, although the intellectual form
is immaterial, it remains distinct from the intellect in which it inheres as an
accidental attribute really separate from it. Since this distinction between
subject and attribute is thus common to all these types of cognition, the
form known is in each case apprehended as an object, which I conceive to be
dierent from myself and which therefore cannot function as the medium
of self-awareness.
Thus, self-awareness must be a very peculiar type of cognition. To my
knowledge, Avicenna never explicitly attributes a special cognitive category
to it, although something along such lines is hinted at in a hesitant remark
he makes in the Mubh.atht: It may be that intellection [in the sense of
that] which grasps intelligibles is not applicable to the purity of complete
self-awareness but comes after that. That is worth thinking about.52 In any
case, although Avicennas thesis of self-awareness as the mode of existence
proper to the immaterial human substance is based on the traditional
equivalence between immateriality and intellection on the one hand, and
the equally traditional concept of intellection as self-intellection on the
other, he is landed with the task of conceiving human self-awareness in a
manner distinct from commonplace intellection. Avicenna never sets out to
full this task in a systematic fashion; there are no chapters On selfawareness in any of his psychological summae. However, I claim that if
we gather together the frequent, albeit somewhat scattered, remarks he
makes on the phenomenon, we can reconstruct a coherent concept of
self-awareness that is able to gure in all contexts of its application.
50
51
52

For a fuller classication of the cognitive faculties and objects of the sensitive soul, see above
Chapter 1.2, 2527.
For the process of abstraction, see above Chapter 1.2, 2729.
Mubh.atht 373, 209 Badaw (cf. V.288, 119 Bdrfar, and VI.886, 316 Bdrfar); see also 371, 208
Badaw (V.278281, 117118 Bdrfar).

chapter 4

In the rst person: Avicennas concept

of self-awareness reconstructed

The passages that weve considered so far set two rather stringent conditions
for Avicennas concept of self-awareness. The rst of these is due to the
blunt claim of identity between self-awareness and our existence. It seems
intuitively plausible that our existence is continuous in time, not a series of
discrete episodes punctuated by periods of non-existence. If Avicenna wants
to save this intuition, the phenomenon his concept of self-awareness picks
out must also be continuous, that is, he must speak of self-awareness in a
sense that allows no lapses into a state lacking it. One could of course
entertain the possibility that he sets out to deny and argue against the
intuition of the continuity of our existence, showing that as a matter of fact
we are intermittent entities and our intuition amounts to little more than
prejudice. Such a denial, however, is nowhere to be found, and this for good
reason too, since it is manifestly clear that Avicenna opts for the rst
strategy, fully aware of the condition. The above passage from the Talqt
explicitly states that the self is constantly aware, not from time to time, and
the reminder that initiates the discussion of the human soul in the Ishrt
addresses the issue with more concrete examples. In connection with the
ying man, Avicenna there brings up the cases of a sleeping and an
intoxicated person whom he clearly considers to embody states of which
we would nd it natural to deny any kind of awareness, a fortiori explicit
self-awareness. The examples are introduced only to argue that selfawareness in the sense he speaks about it is present in them as well.1 This
provides explicit support for the view that Avicenna was fully aware of the
arguably problematic consequences of the equivocation between human
self-awareness and the existence of the immaterial human substance.2

1
2

Ishrt, namat. 3, 119.

A related passage in the Mubh.atht (III.6672, 6162 Bdrfar; 380381, 210 Badaw) suggests that
these counterexamples may have been introduced by Ab al-Qsim al-Kirmn in a critical series of

62

In the rst person

63

The second condition is due to the ying man. In the above I suggested
that the argument hinges on something anyone performing the thought
experiment should be able to nd in her own experience after bracketing all
other constituents of the experience in the required manner. I argued at
length that the remaining constituent is self-awareness, in a sense that
remained to be determined. However, it was suciently clear at that stage
that, in order for his argument to work, Avicenna must deal with a perfectly
commonplace type of self-awareness, nothing extraordinary or exclusive to
special states of mind, although it may well be something we do not often
pay attention to and so must be aroused to notice by means of a reminder
such as the ying man.
When these two conditions are brought together, it becomes clear that
Avicennas concept of self-awareness should refer to a phenomenon that is
(1) constant and (2) experientially given. This is obviously a rather strong
requirement. In any case it immediately rules out any kind of reective selfawareness such as your explicit consideration of the fact that you are now
reading this sentence. Although reective self-awareness is experientially
given in the full sense of the word and thereby fulls condition (2), it is an
intermittent and occasional state and therefore fails to full condition (1).
Part of the experience of reection is precisely coming to reect upon
oneself, which entails that the reection was preceded by a state in which
one did not pay reective attention to oneself. Moreover, reection requires
the introspective use of ones cognitive faculties, which in turn involves an
object (the prior state) that is acted upon, and is often prompted by
peculiarities of the situation one nds oneself in. More complex selfrelations, such as those that occur when one reects on ones personal
identity and its constituents (am I primarily a present father or an aspiring
academic?), are ruled out a fortiori, since they are evidently founded upon
the simpler type of reection.
Once again, Avicenna is fully aware of the stringency of his situation.
This is evidenced by his distinction of self-awareness from reective awareness that he calls awareness of awareness (al-shuru bi al-shur), adding
that the latter is not constant but instead requires consideration of the
intellect which is by nature an event with a rather narrow temporal scope.
Moreover, in the argument against models of self-awareness based on
reection, which we will consider in greater detail in a moment, Avicenna
questions directed at the ying man. However, the provenance of the examples depends on the dating
of the Ishrt, which is a matter of controversy (see Gutas 1988, 140141; Michot 1997, 153163; and
Reisman 2002, 215219, 222224).

64

In the rst person

states that reective awareness of oneself depends for its possibility on the
more fundamental type of self-awareness.
How likely is it then that Avicennas concept of self-awareness is a
coherent one in the rst place? Before delving into hasty assessments of
this question, let us attempt to reconstruct a more fully edged version of
the concept by means of three discussions in which the underlying phenomenon gures in a prominent role. Despite the occasional use of dierent
vocabulary, these discussions are explicitly related to the texts on selfawareness we have already considered and can therefore be legitimately
used to make sense of Avicennas concept of self-awareness.3 Once we have
eshed out a reconstruction of the concept, we can assess it against the two
conditions.

4.1 Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

Argument from the unity of experience
In a pioneering study from 1974, Ben Lazare Mijuskovic charted the outlines of the modern history of a particular argument which, following Kant,
he called the Achilles of rationalist psychology (referring both to the
invincibility of and an inherent weakness, the notorious heel, in the argument) and which proceeds from the evident unity of our experience to the
simplicity of the soul that is its subject.4 Very briey, the argument
generally sets o from two premises: (1) that our experience is in fact a
unied whole of multiple constituents (such as data due to the ve external
senses, various desires, and acts of intellection, in a perfectly commonplace
case) and (2) that such a unied whole must be due to a single subject that is
one in itself, neither divided nor divisible into distinct parts. From these it is
concluded (3) that the human soul responsible for the experience is one.5
As is well known, Avicenna subscribes to the argument and in fact uses a
broad version of it to argue onwards, by means of the further premise
(4) that all corporeal things are divisible into distinct parts, to the conclusion
(5) that the soul is incorporeal.6 This version of the argument can be found
3

4
5
6

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, the very chapter from which we draw the discussion of the argument from unity,
presents a version of the ying man. A brief version of the argument against reection-based models of
self-awareness is featured in the passage from the Talqt discussed above. It is also brought to bear in a
defence of the ying man in Mubh.atht III.64, 60 Bdrfar; 370, 207 Badaw.
See Mijuskovic 1974. For a recent attempt at lling some of the gaps in Mijuskovics story, as well as a
history of the argument prior to the Cambridge Platonists, see Lennon and Stainton 2008a.
For a concise exposition of various forms of the argument, see Lennon and Stainton 2008b.
For a brief discussion of the argument as presented in Najt II.7, 228230, see Lagerlund 2008, 7880.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

65

in its most extended form in Shif: F al-nafs V.7, to which we will now
turn. Our primary interest, however, is not in the argument itself, but in the
peculiar role self-awareness plays in Avicennas rendering of it.
The unity of our experience is a particularly pressing concern for
Avicenna, whose psychology is founded on the idea of distinct faculties,
capacities or powers. As he states his method in Shif: F al-nafs I.5, he
proceeds by postulating a corresponding faculty whenever he can determine
a discrete psychic act.7 The faculties, their respective acts, and the
corresponding objects are rmly separate from each other, so that no two
faculties can share an object. Thus, the act and object of desire or
the appetitive faculty are dierent from the act and object of anger or the
irascible faculty, and by the same token both are to be separated from the
respective acts and objects of the external and internal senses. Avicenna
insists on this methodological basis in the very context in which he presents
the argument from unity.8
Yet the stringent criteria of distinction inherent in Avicennas faculty
psychology seem to be at odds with common experience. First of all, as
Avicenna points out, the faculties that were supposed to be distinct from
each other are capable of hindering each other in their respective acts. For
instance, my attempt to read a dicult text can fail because I am distracted
by the smell of and desire for freshly brewed coee. If such a thing is
possible, there must be some connection between the distinct faculties.
Furthermore, the act of one faculty often seems to cause an act of another,
such as when I smell the freshly brewed coee and then begin to desire a
cup. Yet according to Avicennas criteria, sense perception and desire are not
even directed to the same thing. What is smelled and what is desired are two
entirely dierent objects, and even if both are caused by a single external
thing, the two causal chains leading to the two objects are distinct from each
other. Thus, there has to be another connection due to which the two
objects collapse in the soul and which in this sense is above them.9
Now, the most natural answer is of course that the soul, to which all the
distinct faculties belong and which is the single agent behind them all, is
what provides the connection. Indeed, this is exactly how the argument
runs in the Najt: Thus, it remains that that which combines is a soul by
itself (nafsan bi dhtih), or a body in the respect that it really has a soul, and
so that which combines is the soul. That soul is the origin of all these
7
8
9

Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 3951 Rahman.

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 252253 Rahman. For Avicennas faculty psychology, see Chapter 1.2, 2527.
Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 253 Rahman. Cf. Najt II.7, 228229.

66

In the rst person

faculties.10 This is a paradigmatic case of the argument from unity, based

largely on received or demonstrated views concerning the soul, and with no
reliance at all on any experiential data related to self-awareness. The ambiguity of the term nafs, owing to which the word can sometimes be read to
mean self, is not relevant here, for the argument can be exhaustively
explained by means of the distinction between soul and body.
However, the same argument is dwelt upon at greater length in the Shif,
where much of the expansion consists of experiential data designed to
render the souls role as the unier of the dierent constituents of experience intuitively more plausible. To begin with, prior to a series of arguments
against the claim that the body is the unifying principle, Avicenna introduces the souls role as follows:
Now this single thing in which these faculties are conjoined is the thing that
each of us sees as himself (al-shayu al-ladh yarhu kullun minn dhtahu) so
that it is sound that he says since we perceived, we desired.11

Notice that Avicenna does not straightforwardly say, as he does in the Najt,
that the unifying agent is the soul, that is, the theoretical entity postulated
and studied in psychology. Instead, he starts from the commonplace
experience of motivated action, which is not obscured by the awkward
formulation in plural; we frequently explain our actions by pointing out a
connection between a perception and a resulting emotional motivation, a
connection that is here expressed by means of the causal since (lamm).
Suppose, for instance, that I see a car speeding through a crossing that a
child is trying to pass. I instantly feel an upsurge of indignation, which
causes my hand to make a universally understandable gesture and my
mouth to emit a related verbal expression. If someone then asks me for
the reason behind the outburst, it is natural for me to answer with a brief
description of what I just saw, thereby expecting my anger and its expression
to be readily understandable. Avicenna all but agrees: such an explanation is
perfectly sound (yas.duqu).
But to what is the connection between the perception and the desire
ultimately due? Let us consider the constituents of the expression since we
perceived, we desired. The connection expressed by the logical connective
since cannot be the basis here, since that would amount to a circle in
explanation. Moreover, the connection can take many forms, even the
contrary we perceived but did not desire, which clearly shows that the
connection itself requires a causally determining factor. The words
10

Najt II.7, 229.

11

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 253 Rahman; emphasis added.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

67

perceived and desired, in turn, refer to the contents of experience at issue.

Now, the contents can be said to play a role in attempts to justify the
connection, insofar as they determine the success of our explanation in
persuading our peers about our reasonability. I make my action understandable to others and subject it to their approval precisely by referring to
such constituents of my mental states that I can expect to stand in a
reasonable connection to each other because of their inherent features.
However, no justication of a connection between discrete psychic acts
can be a psychological explanation, for clearly there are also connections
between perceptions and desires that are not justiable in this sense; our
varying idiosyncratic preferences and tendencies are cases in point. The
psychological explanation, on the contrary, has to be so general that it can
account for these as well.
This leaves us with but one element in the sentence, the repeated
pronoun we. The repetition is important because it makes explicit the
fact that it is we in one and the same sense who perceive and desire, which
means that the subject of perception is in a strict sense identical with the
subject of desire. Thus, what Avicenna points at here by means of commonplace experience is an implicit connection, all too obvious for me to notice,
let alone pay attention to: it is me that sees, becomes angry, and acts in a
corresponding manner. The connection between the distinct constituents
of experience cannot be based on anything else. Without an identical
subject behind the two acts, perceiving and desiring, there would be no
way of bringing forth the logical connective. This single subject is the thing
that each of us sees as himself.
Later on, in his third argument against the claim that what unites the
distinct constituents of experience into a single whole is the body, Avicenna
again resorts to our common experience of ourselves:
[T]his body is either12 the whole body, so that if a part of it was lost, what we
are aware of being us (m nashuru ann nah.nu) would not exist. But that is
not the case, for I would be me (akna an) even if I did not know that I have
a hand, a leg or some other of these organs, as has been told earlier in other
places.13 I suppose instead that they are my appendages, and I believe that
they are instruments for me that I use in needs, and were it not for those
needs, I would have no necessity for them. I would be me even if they were
not there (aknu aydan an an wa laysat hiya). Let us consider what we said

12

13

The other alternative comes only much later in the text and is the suggestion that the body connecting
the constituents of experience is a specic organ instead of the body as a whole. See the next quote
below.
This is most likely a reference to the ying man in Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 1516 Rahman.

68

In the rst person

earlier and say: if a human being were created in a single instant, and created
with his limbs separate from each other, without seeing his limbs, and it
happened that he would not feel them, they would not be in contact and he
would not hear a sound, [then] he would be ignorant of the existence of all
his organs yet know the existence of his thatness (annya) as one thing while
being ignorant of all that. What is unknown is not the same as what is
known. These our organs are in reality only like clothes which, because of the
duration of their adherence to us, we have come to regard as parts of us.
When we imagine ourselves (anfusan), we do not imagine [ourselves]
naked, but rather we imagine [ourselves] to have enveloping bodies
(dhawta ajsmin ksiyatin). The reason for this is the duration of the
adherence. It is only because we are prepared to strip o and discard clothes
in a way we are not prepared to do with the organs that our belief that the
organs are parts of us is rmer than our belief that clothes are parts of us.14

It is important to notice that the present argument hinges on the same

intuition, that is, that our selves are the nexus between the diverse constituents of our experience and action. The body cannot be the node because no
body can be a self. This is for two reasons. First, Avicenna argues that what I
perceive to be me will remain unchanged no matter how drastic any changes
that occur to the body. Quite apart from whether we agree, this is something he considers evident. Secondly, as the brief version of the ying man
shows, one can be aware of oneself without being aware of ones body. On
this basis Avicenna concludes that since what one is aware of cannot be the
same as what one is not aware of, the body cannot be the self; and that since
the self has earlier been claimed to connect the diverse constituents of
experience, no such task is left for the body to perform. Now, as noted
above in our discussion of the ying man, this argument is far from
unproblematic.15 The fallacy of straightforwardly inferring a metaphysical
distinction from a phenomenological distinction is particularly prominent
in this case, because here the ying man hovers in a nodal point in the larger
refutation of the bodys capacity to unite the distinct constituents of
experience. However, judging the argument to be invalid does not force
us to deem it irrelevant or uninteresting for our present concern, that is, the
reconstruction of Avicennas concept of self-awareness. On the contrary,
the fact that the whole argument, and the ying man as its part, builds on
the intuition expressed in the rst passage (namely that the unifying subject
in my experience is the thing that each of us sees as himself or what we are
aware of being us) shows that Avicenna perceived a crucial connection
between the ying man and our intuitive familiarity with ourselves. In light
14

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 255 Rahman.

15

See Chapter 2.2, 3738.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

69

of this context, it therefore seems natural to assume that here too selfawareness, or the experience of being a self, amounts to the diverse
constituents of my experience all being mine in one and the same sense.
The same point is made even more apparent in the immediately following refutation of the claim that some specic part of the body is responsible
for connecting the disparate constituents of experience into a single whole.
If it [i.e. the body in which the powers of the soul converge] is not the whole
body but a special organ, then that organ is the thing which I believe to be me
in essence, unless the meaning of that which I believe to be me is not this
organ even though it cannot do without the organ. If the quiddity of the
essence of that organ i.e. of its being a heart, a brain, some other thing or a
number of organs capable of this or the quiddity of their collection is the
thing of which I am aware that it is me, then it is necessary that my awareness
of me is my awareness of that thing. But the thing cannot be, in one and the
same sense, both what [one] is aware of and what [one] is not aware of. The
case is not like that, anyway. On the contrary, when I know that I have a
heart and a brain, this is through sensation, hearing and experience, not
through my knowing that I am me. Thus, that organ in itself is not the thing
of which I am aware that it is me in essence, but it is me accidentally. What is
meant and by means of which I know of me that I am me and what I refer
to in my saying I sensed, understood, acted and combined these characteristics is a dierent thing, and that is what I call I.16

Avicenna states that the self cannot be corporeal, because there is no body
that I could not be unaware of while being aware of myself as an
I. Moreover, I am always aware of a body as an object of perception, and
thus as something other than the subject of that perception, which the I is. I
can of course subsequently identify the perceived body as myself, but in
such a case the body will be me only accidentally, and as brought out in the
argument against the reection theory of self-awareness, such identication
with ones body or recognition of ones self in ones body presupposes prior
awareness of oneself as one of the two relata of identity. This leads to the
further problem, highlighted in a related passage from the Mubh.atht,17
that if the self were primarily given as an object in an act of a cognitive
faculty, it would never be given as it is in itself. I can recognize myself in a
number of vastly dierent objects, between which there need not be any
obvious similarity that would account for the recognition in each and every
case. For instance, no perceivable connection can be established between
the gure I see in the mirror and the voice I hear on a recording, yet I can
legitimately recognize both as appearances of myself. Even in cases of
16

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 255256 Rahman.

17

Mubh.atht 55, 134 Badaw.

70

In the rst person

self-intellection, the self is understood as an instance of a universal, and not

as the singular entity it is in itself. Thus, if we want to hold on to the view
that the self is given as it really is in itself in self-awareness, the mediation of
any cognitive faculty must be rejected.
However, the most telling passage for our concerns comes at the end of
the present quote. Again, self-awareness, my knowledge about myself, the
utter familiarity of me being me, comes explicitly to the fore in expressions
of motivated action. This time Avicennas formulation is in an emphatic
rst-person singular: it is the same I that perceived, understood, acted and
conjoined these dierent constituents of its experience. But if this is the
case, the I must be separate or separable from each of its acts. Even if the self
were only given in relation to its acts, it would still remain separate from and
independent of any particular act precisely because it can be the self of
distinct acts in one and the same sense. The sense of I in the acts does not
change, only the acts do.
Avicenna makes a further interesting statement about the self in the
immediately following paragraph where he nally attempts to spell out the
psychological relevance of his remarks hitherto. As I have emphasized, his
argument against the body being the unifying factor behind our experience
has consistently relied on the claim, which he clearly believes every human
agent or subject will nd intuitively plausible, that each of us is aware of
herself as the unifying subject of her experience. Yet Avicenna still has to
argue for the move from the intuitive data concerning the self to a psychological conclusion concerning the soul:
Now, if someone said that you do not know that [the I] is a soul, I would say
that I always know it according to the sense in which I call it the soul. I might
not know it as designated by the word soul, but when I comprehend what
[it is that] I refer to as the soul, I comprehend that it is that thing and that it is
what uses motive and cognitive instruments. I am ignorant of [the I as
designated by the word soul] for only as long as I do not comprehend the
meaning of soul. This is not the case with the heart or the brain, for I may
comprehend the meaning of heart and brain and not know [the I]. When I
mean by soul that it is the thing which is the origin of those motions and
cognitions that belong to me and that end in this collection, I know that
either it is really me or it is me as using this body. It is as if I now was not able
to distinguish the awareness of me pure and simple from [its] being mixed
with the awareness that it [i.e. I] uses the body and is associated with the
body.18

18

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 256257 Rahman.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

71

Avicenna thinks that the problem is solved by a mere reiteration of the souls
denition. Once the soul is dened as the agent responsible for psychic acts
and as the subject of experience, it becomes immediately evident that the I,
which each of us is, is in fact the soul. Cashing out the psychological relevance
of self-awareness is merely a matter of being reminded of the denition of soul
and the fact that the souls functions overlap completely with our awareness of
ourselves as agents and subjects. Thus, in spite of the fact that our passage
only speaks of soul (nafs) as the entity studied in psychology, its embeddedness in a context of extended and explicit appeal to our intuitive familiarity
with ourselves warrants reading it as a neat and revealing summary of what
Avicenna means with the sort of self-awareness pivotal to the ying man and
the argument from unity. The self is nothing other than I, and being aware of
oneself is nothing other than being an I, existing in the rst person. While
Avicenna does speak about awareness of the self in two senses, as pure and
simple and as associated with the body, it seems that in either case awareness
of the self is nothing other than being an I; in one case it is being an I pure and
simple and in the other an I associated with the body. This is just as one
would expect in light of the Talqts equivocation between self-awareness
and the existence of the immaterial human substance. One need not become
explicitly or pronouncedly aware of oneself as an I in order to be one, for the
being of an I only amounts to existence in the rst person.
I have dwelt on this fairly straightforward chapter at such length only
because I believe it reveals with particular clarity the central idea behind
Avicennas concept of self-awareness. As rst-personality, self-awareness
simply designates the fact that, regardless of what contents of experience I
am aware of, they will always be given to me in a rst-personal perspective as
so many aspects of my experience. The commonplace use of the rstpersonal indexical I points towards this primitive fact of rst-personality,
and as such to the mode in which the immaterial entity that acts as a soul in
relation to the human body exists in itself. This may seem an excessively
blunt, straightforward or even simplistic claim to make; why should we
believe that self-awareness or rst-personality is primitive or unanalysable,
something that need not, or indeed cannot, be described or explained by
means of more basic epistemological or psychological concepts? Be that as it
may, Avicenna does consider it primitive in this sense. But he does not insist
on the claim entirely without argument, for as we have seen, he provides
systematic reasons for his view that self-awareness cannot be due to the act
of any cognitive faculty. A rather elliptic version of one such argument
gured in section [c] of the extended passage from the Talqt, and we
should now turn to investigate it in detail.

72

In the rst person

Argument against reection-based models of self-awareness

The target of Avicennas argument is a model of self-awareness as a reexive

relation of the cognitive subject to herself. This model, which resembles the
higher-order theories popular in contemporary debates on self-awareness,19
is tackled in a slightly extended form in the Ishrt. Earlier in this context,
Avicenna has presented a short version of the ying man in order to show
that self-awareness does not depend on any particular object of cognition.
He then proceeds to consider as a counterargument the reectiontheoretical thesis that self-awareness requires a prior act of the self of
which the self subsequently becomes reectively aware:
Perhaps you say: I cannot arm myself except by means of my action. Then
it is necessary that you have an action that you arm in the said premise, or a
movement or something else. In our consideration of the said premise we
have put those out of your reach.
When we regard the more general matter, if you have armed your action
as action in the absolute sense, it is necessary that you arm an agent of it in
the absolute sense, not in the particular sense. [This agent] is your very self. If
you have armed [your action] as your action, you do not arm yourself
through it. On the contrary, your self is part of the concept of your act insofar
as it is your act. The part is armed in the conception preceding it and it is
not made any less by being with it but not through it. Thus, your self is not
armed through [your action].20

The counterargument is rather elliptic and leaves room for a possible

ambiguity that we should rst dispel. It seems to me that two senses of the
expression by means of my action are possible here, the second of which
yields two further possibilities of interpretation. First of all, (1) the action
mentioned can be understood as an act of reection. The point then would
be simply to say that I rst become aware of myself by reecting on myself.
The other interpretation is (2) that the action by means of which one
becomes aware of oneself is an act prior to reection which then functions
as the medium of self-awareness. This act, for its part can either (2a) be
19

20

What is more, Avicennas argument bears a striking resemblance to the consistent critique of
reection theories voiced by representatives of the so-called Heidelberg school of philosophers.
This critique was seminally formulated by Dieter Henrich, taking his cue from Fichte, in whose
original insight he thought it rst emerges (Henrich 1966 and 1970, 280284). For an extended
systematic assessment, see Zahavi 1999, 3137.
Ishrt, namat. 3, 120. Other instances of the argument can be found in Mubh.atht 64, 60 Bdrfar
(370, 207 Badaw); and in Talqt, 79. In the latter text, Avicenna states that I recognize my action
(kuntu uarifu) through some kind of mark or characteristic (bi almatin min al-almt), and that
self-awareness is due to the existence of the form of myself to me in a concrete fashion (li wujdi .srati
dht f al-aayni l).

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

73

self-aware in a primitive sense, or (2b) become self-aware through a reective attention to it, in which case it would be an objective medium for the
emergence of self-awareness. As we shall see, (2a) collapses with Avicennas
own view, and since he clearly sees a genuine dierence of opinion here, we
can rule that interpretation out. On the other hand, (1) and (2b) collapse
insofar as both require reective attention to a state or an act that is not selfaware, that is, a relation the outcome of which is a self-aware state. The way
in which Avicenna addresses the counterargument suggests that either he
made no distinction between these two senses, or, if he did, he found it
inconsequential. Thus, the counterargument represents a higher-order
theory of self-awareness in a broad and unspecic sense.
In spite of its imprecision, the counterargument seems quite plausible
from the point of view of Aristotles theory of intellection. As we have
learned, Aristotle states that the human intellect is actually nothing before it
has acquired at least some intelligibles, and that once it has acquired these, it
is capable of understanding or thinking about itself at will (yumkinuhu f
dhlika al-waqti an yaaqila nafsahu).21 There are of course a number of
possible interpretations of this dense passage, but one plausible reconstruction is to read it as a theory of self-awareness or self-intellection roughly
equivalent with the claim made in Avicennas counterargument.22 On the
other hand, the counterargument need not be more than a commonsensical
reaction to the striking claim, made just a few paragraphs earlier, that selfawareness is constant. Given that we explicitly consider ourselves only in
states of reection, it seems natural to assume that self-awareness in fact rst
comes to be at the occurrence of such states. If this is the case, Avicenna
need not argue against any particular rival theory here.
Regardless of the provenance of the counterargument, it obviously entails
the position of a rst-order non-reective act that precedes and functions as
the object of the reective attention through which self-awareness is rst
claimed to emerge. Avicenna begins his response by simply stating that
because of this position the counterargument is based on a miscomprehension of the ying man. If one understands the conditions posited in the
thought experiment, one realizes that there are no acts upon which one
21
22

Arist.t.ls, F al-nafs III.4, 426b69, 73. Unfortunately, Ish.qs translation of this passage has not
been preserved.
For a lucid discussion of Aristotles theory of self-knowledge, see Lewis 1996. It must be emphasized
that self-knowledge in this sense should be distinguished from consciousness, or our awareness that
we perceive, think, act and so forth. Aristotle seems not to have considered in explicit terms the
question of whether consciousness entails self-awareness in the particular sense meant by Avicenna; in
any case the inherent rst-personality of all consciousness never becomes a pronounced topic for him.
See Chapter 1.1, 1215.

74

In the rst person

could reect. But most important for our concerns, Avicenna decides to
give his opponent the benet of further doubt in order to show that her
argument can be refuted on its own terms, independently from the ying
man. Avicenna thus uses the counterargument as a means to corroborate his
own thesis that self-awareness is immediate and epistemically primitive.
Suppose, then, that we rst become aware of ourselves through an act of
reection. In such a case, two possibilities emerge: either the pre-reective
act is an act in an absolute sense, that is, not the act of any particular agent,
or it is an act of a particular agent. In the rst case, the object of reection
will be simply an act or a mental state with certain determinations (an act of
thinking, walking, hitting and so forth; or a state of perception, imagination
or intellection) and certain objective content (a thought concerning something, walking somewhere, hitting something; perception, imagination or
intellection of something). Such an act or state could belong to anyone, and
by the same token, is not actually particular to any agent. This being the
case, Avicenna asks how one can identify such an anonymous act or state as
ones own in reection. If the state is not particular to any subject, it cannot
be mine either. There are no non-arbitrary means of introducing any kind of
mineness in the act of reection, for if the reection is supposed to be a
truthful act of intellection, it should grasp the rst-order non-reective state
as it is, without any additions or distortions. But if the self is nowhere to be
recognized in the object of reection, why should the act of reection give
rise to any sort of self-awareness any more than my current perception of any
random object, such as the pine outside my window. In this regard, the
non-reective state will be an object like any other, not earmarked to any
particular cognitive subject, and the reection turns out to not be reexive
in any meaningful sense after all.
If we want to hold on to the possibility of reective self-awareness, the
state prior to reection must already be characterized as my state in some
manner. The reective act will then recognize this characteristic of the state
along with its own determinations, and as a result I will be aware of the prior
state as something I myself have undergone. By all accounts, this would be a
perfectly legitimate account of reection for Avicenna. However, the phenomenon to be explained was not reective self-awareness but our being
self-aware in the rst place. Thus, Avicenna can say that his opponent has to
concede a certain characteristic of myness in the non-reective rst-order
state and therefore all but admit that reective self-awareness is based on a
more primitive type of self-awareness. The order of explanation is inverted
and the counterargument turns out to be based on a petitio principii; it fails
to explain self-awareness because it ends up presupposing self-awareness in

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

75

the very explanation. Avicenna formulates the point very carefully: the fact
that self-awareness occurs together with an act or experiential content, that
is, that my rst-personality is rarely bare but rather most often connected to
acts or objects that are rst-personally given, does not make it subsequent to
those acts or dependent on those objects. Rather, in these cases just as in the
rather less usual case of the ying man, in which self-awareness gures
divested of all further determinations of the persons acts or experiences,
self-awareness is an irreducible constituent of the act or the experience as an
act or an experience that belongs to a particular subject.
Again, the point of spelling this admirably clear argument out at such
length is to make explicit the concept of self-awareness it hinges upon. I
claim that the most natural interpretation here, just as in the case of the
argument from unity, is to say that Avicennas concept of self-awareness
purports to grasp nothing more than the fact that all my experience is
qualied as mine, that no matter what I apprehend I will apprehend as an I,
and that every act of mine is performed by me. In other words, when
speaking of self-awareness Avicenna attempts to pick out the rstpersonality inherent in all human beings, and that everything about us is
given in the rst person, to a rst-personal subject. Nothing more is meant,
but nothing less either. Self-awareness is being an I, which is the mode of
existence proper to an immaterial entity.
Argument from personal identity
The sixth book of the Mubh.atht introduces a third argument revolving
around the phenomenon of self-awareness. The argument is embedded in
a discussion of the endurance of individual substances through the change
of their attributes. Against this background we suddenly come across a
clear statement of dissatisfaction with the ying man voiced by one of
Avicennas most illustrious students, Bahmanyr ibn Marzubn
(d. 1066).23
I want that a method other than self-awareness (al-shuri bi al-dht) be
applied to me in showing that,24 for I have already attempted that myself (fa
inn qad jrabtu nafs f dhlika),25 and in my opinion it is deceptive in spite

23
24
25

For Bahmanyrs relation to Avicenna, see Reisman 2002, 185195; and Janssens 2003b.
That is, in showing what the endurance of individual substances is due to.
This refers to the argument on self-awareness, that is, the ying man; Bahmanyr has performed the
thought experiment but is dissatised with it.

76

In the rst person

of its validity26 and I want to know it in another way, so that my heart will
nd peace.27

Avicennas answer takes its cue from the question posed by the context:
The persistence of a numerically one thing is that it persists as numerically
one in terms not of its quantity and quality but in terms of its substance.
Then my persistence as a single I in terms of my substantial thatness
(thumma thabt an wh.idan bi innyat al-jawharya), [the fact] that what
existed yesterday has not perished or ceased to exist while numerically
another has come to be, that I am that observer of what I observed yesterday
and the one remembering what I have forgotten from what I observed
yesterday [all this] is something about which no doubt occurs to me, and
similarly I have not come to be today, nor is my body something that was
corrupted yesterday, I will not cease to exist tomorrow and my individual will
not be corrupted, even if my time should come tomorrow and a substance
other than me should come to be.
Thus, if he whose servant I am28 is of the opinion that he has come to be
today from his simile that was corrupted yesterday, and that he is not that
which existed yesterday, but that he is renewed in substance just as he is
renewed in states, let him be of that opinion and have that view, and let him
ask in another place for an additional explanation for this proof.29

Avicenna believes he can point to an indubitable intuition in his interlocutors experience, which provides immediate evidence of the endurance
of the interlocutors very substance in the midst of the constant change he is
subject to in terms of his attributes. That evidence is provided by the
interlocutors remaining the same I, that is, by his awareness of himself as
the subject that is aware of itself now just as it was aware of itself the day
before.
The argument is not entirely unrelated to the ying man with which
Bahmanyr was expressly dissatised; it characterizes its nodal point by the
very same term as the version of ying man in Shif: F al-nafs V.7, pointing
our attention to a single thatness (innya) at the core of our mental life, and
suggesting that the recognition of the correct nature of this thatness is
instrumental to reaching the desired conclusion. But there are also clear
dierences between the two arguments. Indeed, where the ying man is
26

27
29

The reference of the suxes here is ambiguous, but I believe the most sensible reading is: and in my
opinion [the ying man] is deceptive in spite of the validity of [the claim that the individual
substance endures through the change of its attributes].
Mubh.atht VI.402, 146147 Bdrfar. 28 That is, Bahmanyr.
Mubh.atht VI.403, 147 Bdrfar (453, 227 Badaw); cf. III.94, 68 Bdrfar (cf. 430, 224 Badaw); and
VI.456460, 163165 Bdrfar (39, 128129, and 454, 226227 Badaw). For discussion, see Sebti
2000, 110111.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

77

about the independent existence of this thatness, this argument from

personal identity hinges on its endurance through the variation of its
attributes. Also, the ying man was designed to argue for the independence
from the body of that which functions as a soul in us, whereas this argument
aims to single out that which is substantial in us and to distinguish it from
its quality, quantity, and other features that are subject to constant variation. I would like to argue however that, these clear dierences notwithstanding, the similarities are more important. First of all, both arguments
try to point attention to something readily available from our experience,
and to do this by separating this something from the accidental features we
commonly nd it associated with, whether particular observations, recollections and so forth, or the relation to the body in its entirety. Secondly,
and more importantly, it seems that the thing pointed to in the two arguments is one and the same, the interlocutors awareness of himself as an I. It
is true that they emphasize distinct aspects of this self-awareness: the ying
man its epistemic and metaphysical independence, the argument from
personal identity its endurance and identity in change. But such dierences
in emphasis need not entail a dierence in the object of attention; indeed,
both arguments are readily understandable if we suppose that they rely on
one and the same phenomenon.
But if the argument from personal identity builds on the same evidence
as the ying man, why should Avicenna expect it to prove any more
persuasive? We have to notice that in the last paragraph he recognizes the
possibility that Bahmanyr will remain unconvinced even after the consideration of this new piece of correspondence, but it is hard to avoid perceiving a scarcely hidden irony in his manner of addressing the student. This is
probably due to the commonsensicality of his new argument: Avicenna
seems to hold that common sense and human social life require this
awareness of persistent rst-personality of each of us. If we did not rely on
the endurance of ourselves, we would have no basis upon which to plan our
future, make agreements or promises, or give reliable accounts of past
observations. The basis of that reliance, the fact that each of us is rst and
foremost an I, is all that Avicenna is attempting to point to here. It is for the
sake of this purpose that he identies being an I with being a substance, for
he clearly presumes Bahmanyr to subscribe to the foundations of
Aristotelian metaphysics the sort of thing that endures through change
is a substance. Thus, although the ying man and the argument from
personal identity are founded on the same evidence, Avicenna does have a
point in supposing the latter to be more palatable; instead of relying on an

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In the rst person

imaginative thought experiment, it hinges on a necessary condition of one

of our most commonplace beliefs.
Finally, regardless of the shared ground between the ying man and the
argument from personal identity, there remains the question of whether the
latter is really relevant for our present purpose, namely the reconstruction of
Avicennas concept of self-awareness. This is a pressing question for two
reasons. First of all, because Avicenna does not mention self-awareness or
the self anywhere in the text, and although he does explicitly speak about
the rst person, or the I, this is only to provide evidence for the persistence
of the substantial core in each of us. Secondly, in the context of Mubh.atht
VI, the argument from personal identity is provided as an alternative to the
ying man, which Bahmanyr in his question describes as an argument
from self-awareness. Should we thus not expect this argument to deal with
something decidedly dierent?
The second concern can, I believe, be met by the aforementioned
distinction between dierences in emphasis on a single phenomenon.
Whereas it seems natural to call the ying man an argument from selfawareness it is, after all, based on distinguishing the mode of our awareness
of ourselves from the mode of our awareness of other things, our bodies in
particular the present argument points out a distinction in the interlocutors experience between a persisting feature, hinting at his substance,
and varying features, hinting at his various accidents, without any mention
of dierences in the respective modes of grasping these two types of features.
But this can be explained as due to a dierence in application, while the
feature applied in the two arguments is one and the same: the fact that each
of us, Bahmanyr included, is rst, foremost and always an I.
As regards the rst concern, it is clear that the argument from personal
identity is not meant to dene self-awareness or simply point our attention
to it. Instead, just as in the case of the ying man and the argument from the
unity of experience, the phenomenon of rst-personality is cast in an
exclusively instrumental explanatory role; it becomes the focus of attention
only in order to transfer us to the ultimate conclusion, whether that is the
independent existence of the entity that functions as soul in the human
body or, as here, the endurance of the human substance. Successful performance in this explanatory role does not depend on a specic term of
description; on the contrary, a technical term such as shur bi al-dht may
prove counterproductive by revoking the sort of technical questions the
ying man had given rise to. For our purpose, it is crucial to recognize the
similarities in the experiential data on which the arguments rely, and for
these I have already argued at length.

Three Avicennian arguments from rst-personality

79

The relevance of self-awareness to the argument from personal identity

is also corroborated by the fact that the argument makes explicit a
metaphysical entailment which is of considerable importance to all of
Avicennas discussions of self-awareness, even when its formulation is left
implicit. This is the claim that the narrowly dened but enduring I
provides us with unique information of our respective substances, the
metaphysical bases of our very being: any attribute of mine, whether my
act or a content of my experience, can change, but the I, the substance to
which and the perspective from which those attributes appear, will remain
intact. In this sense, the substantial core of human being, unlike that of
other animals, is not available by abstracting from our third-personal
apprehension of the informing functions it performs on the body a
fact evidenced by the need for a separate reminder at the end of the review
of the souls functions in Shif: F al-nafs I.1. This implication is explicit
in a passage from the relatively early Risla al-adh.awya f al-mad,30 in
which Avicenna explicitly distinguishes between the thing due to which
he (huwa) is said of [a human being], and the way in which he says I
of himself (yaqlu li nafsihi an).31 Later on in the same context Avicenna
describes the reference of the rst-person indexical in a manner that
expresses in a concise form the central insight behind all the arguments
we have been considering:
When it comes to truth, the human, or the thing considered of the human
on which the meaning of I is based in him (huwa al-wqiu alayhi man an
minhu), is his real self (dhtuhu al-h.aqqya); it is the thing of which he knows
that he is it, and it is certainly the soul.32

In light of the foregoing analysis, the density of the passage is not an

obstacle to its clarity: the I is the real self and essence of a human being,
and thereby his substance, and it is the thing discussed as soul in psychology. Now, if the Risla al-adh.awya is indeed an early work, and if the
sixth book of the Mubh.atht can be dated to the last decade of Avicennas
life,33 this insight into rst-personality and its argumentative potential
informed the entire period of gestation of his most important philosophical works.

30
31
33

For an argument for the early dating (10141015) as well as a brief consideration of rival views, see
Michot 2003a, 149151; cf., however, Marmura 2008, 132.
Al-Risla al-adh.awya IV, 127. 32 Al-Risla al-adh.awya IV, 128.
by Reisman 2002, 233239, 252.
As is suggested

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In the rst person

4.2 First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence

Having thus reconstructed the Avicennian concept of self-awareness, let us
consider it in relation to the two conditions we stated at the beginning of
this chapter. The questions to ask are (1) whether the reconstructed concept
of self-awareness is plausible given that the phenomenon underlying it
should be constant, and (2) whether it makes sense to suppose that selfawareness in the intended sense is readily available to each and every one of
us in our own experience, so that by means of it we can retain whatever
capacity of persuasion the ying man had to begin with.
(1) Let us approach the question of the constancy of self-awareness by
considering the cases of the sleeping and the intoxicated person which
Avicenna mentions together with the Ishrt version of the ying man:
Return to yourself (irja il nafsika) and consider whether, if you were
healthy or even in some other state of yours, [but] so that you grasp the
matter accurately, you would be ignorant of the existence of yourself
(dhtika) and would not arm yourself (nafsaka). I do not think this
would happen to the perspicacious. Even in the case of a sleeper in his
sleep or a drunk person in his drunkenness, his self will not escape his self (l
taghrubu dhtuhu an dhtihi), even if no representation of him in himself
(tamaththuluhu li dhtihi) were left in his memory. If you imagine your self
(law tawahhamta dhtaka) to have been initially created perfect in intellect
and conguration, and [your self] is supposed to be all in all in such position
and conguration that its parts are not seen and its limbs do not touch each
other but are rather momentarily suspended apart in open air, you will nd it
(wajadtah) even though you are ignorant of everything but the persistence
of its thatness (thubti annyatih).34

Considered in isolation, the text allows for two ways of understanding the
respective states of the two persons. Either the sleep and the intoxication are
so profound that the persons are in states we would now call unconscious,
that is, lacking consciousness of any cognitive input whatsoever, or they are
in states that are not completely unconscious but still in some relevant sense
dierent from the healthy or sound states mentioned in the text. Avicennas
dense characterization of the latter (so that you grasp the matter accurately)
suggests that the relevant dierence between sound and unsound states
concerns the human capacity (or lack thereof) to reect discerningly on
oneself and to thereby assert the existence of ones self. This amounts to
saying that the sleeping and the drunk person are incapable of turning their
attention to their self-awareness, but this does not necessarily rule out their
34

Ishrt, namat. 3, 119.

First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence

81

being non-reectively aware of a variety of things, from angels and pink

elephants to themselves.
But since the sleeper and the drunk are followed by the much clearer and
stricter conditions set in the ying man, one easily wonders why Avicenna
considered it worth his while to introduce them in the rst place. If there is
something going on in their minds, the sleeper and the drunk will be less
problematic cases than the ying man, for surely it is more plausible to
assume that someone actually aware of something is also aware of herself
than to assume that someone aware of nothing is nevertheless self-aware.
On the other hand, if the sleeper and the drunk are lacking awareness
altogether, their case seems to be identical to that of the ying man.35
Avicennas motive for considering the two examples becomes clear in a
corresponding section of the Mubh.atht where their introduction is
attributed to his opponent, Ab al-Qsim al-Kirmn.36 Here it becomes
obvious that we should understand the sleeper and the drunk to be in the
less stringent condition; the sleeper may well be dreaming and therefore
entertaining all sorts of experiential content, and mutatis mutandis this will
hold of the intoxicated person as well. Avicenna neglects any mention of the
dreaming persons lack of reective capacity here, possibly because he nds
it sucient to simply show that something is going on in the persons
mind.37 Indeed, this seems a natural move in the light of our reconstruction
of his concept of self-awareness: if self-awareness amounts to nothing but
the rst-personal perspective to whatever is in ones mind, then the presence
of any mental content will indeed be enough.
However, since the ying man is prominently featured in the context of
the Mubh.atht as well,38 we still have to solve the second problem: why
worry about the weaker case if you have at your disposal an argument that
will clear the table anyway? The need for this extension of the initial
35

36

37
38

Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz, Avicennas critical commentator, interprets the dierent states as exemplifying
distinct degrees of discernment (t.na). According to him, in sleep only the external senses are
rendered dysfunctional. Intoxication, on the other hand, amounts to the ineciency of both external
and internal senses, and therefore entails a more serious lapse of consciousness. See Sharh. al-Ishrt,
121122; and for discussion and translation of the passage, Marmura 1991.
This attribution may be historically true, for if Mubh.atht III was written after the acrimonious
encounter with al-Kirmn in Rayy in 1030 (as argued in Reisman 2002, 216219, with a refutation
of Michots (1997, 153163) alternative dating), it may well have incorporated elements of that
discussion. Moreover, Ishrt is also commonly dated to a late period in Avicennas career (1030
1034 in Gutas 1988, 140141), and if this is right, Avicenna may have included a tacit reference to the
debate in it.
Mubh.atht 380, 210 Badaw; III.68, 61 Bdrfar.
Indeed, the entire section consists of Avicennas responses to al-Kirmns critical remarks concerning
the ying man.

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In the rst person

argument is due to a briey cited remark by al-Kirmn who, seemingly

unhappy with the highly fanciful situation of the ying man, attempts to
bring the discussion of self-awareness down to the level of everyday phenomena.39 It is for this reason that he introduces the case of the sleeper:
whatever our verdict on the ying man, surely it makes no sense to claim
that a sleeping person is aware of herself. Had I been aware of myself
throughout the night, even if I was aware of nothing else, surely I should
be able to remember at least having been aware of that peculiar nothingness.
By the same token, if I was aware of myself throughout my intoxication,
should it not have felt like something to pass out, and should I not be able
now to remember what it was like? Since no such recollections seem to be
forthcoming, al-Kirmn suggests that we should deny Avicennas argument
from the constancy of self-awareness to the immateriality of the human
substance, and thereby also reject his concept of self-awareness.
The fact that Avicenna wants to integrate the sleeper and the intoxicated
person in the Ishrts introductory argument for the immateriality of the
human substance suggests that he is fully aware of the initial implausibility
of his claim that our self-awareness is constant, and that he believes he can
deal with the contrary intuition. True to the general method of the Ishrt,
his answer is condensed, but it can be extrapolated by means of the extended
version in the Mubh.atht:
The sleeper operates on his imaginations (khayltihi) just as he operates on
[the things] he senses when awake, and he often operates on intellectual and
cogitative things just as when awake. In the state of his operation on that he is
aware that he is that operator just as he is at the state of being awake, and so if
he notices and remembers his operations, he remembers his awareness of
himself (shurahu bi dhtihi), but if he notices but does not remember that,
he does not remember his awareness of himself (shurahu bi dhtihi). That
does not indicate that he wasnt aware of himself (shiran bi dhtihi). Rather,
awareness of self-awareness is dierent from self-awareness (al-shuru bi
al-shuri bi al-dhti ghayru al-shuri bi al-dht), and so remembering selfawareness is dierent from self-awareness (dhikra al-shuri bi al-dhti ghayru
al-shuri bi al-dht). Even one who is awake may not remember his awareness of himself (shuruhu bi dhtihi) when the pursuits, which he had and
during which he was not unaware of himself (lam yaghfulu fh an dhtihi),
are not retained in his memory.40

Avicennas argument is admirably clear: it is one thing to be aware of oneself

and another thing to have second-order awareness of this self-awareness,
39
40

Mubh.atht III.6566, 6061 Bdrfar; cf. 380, 210 Badaw.

Mubh.atht III.68, 61 Bdrfar; cf. 380, 210 Badaw.

First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence

83

such as when one remembers that one was aware of oneself, and no lack of
the latter warrants an inference to a corresponding lack of the former. In this
regard, self-awareness is not dierent from awareness of other things, such
as ones own acts or pursuits (muzwalt) or the objects of ones experience; no jury will relieve a defendant simply because she fails to remember
committing the crime she is charged with. No matter how sincere this
failure is, it does not exclude the possibility that the defendant in fact did
commit the crime and if she did, she was certainly aware of herself in the
intended sense.
This extended version of the argument is fully coherent with Avicennas
psychological theory of memory. For him, memory is an internal sense the
function of which is to retain the peculiar cognitive objects he calls meanings (man). The exact nature of meanings is a matter of scholarly debate,41
but in this context it suces to recognize that they are constituents of
experience that, among other things, enable us to bring past experiences to
mind. Whatever the exact mechanism according to which meanings perform this task, it is clear that recollection will not take place without them.
Moreover, it is equally uncontroversial to say that meanings are determinations of the objective content of experience, that is, aspects that are
inseparable from the appearance of some object of awareness. Thus, what
distinguishes the sleeping and the intoxicated person from a human being in
a wakeful and sober state is that no meanings belonging to their respective
experiences are left in their memories. As a result, they have no access to
their past experiences, and it is only because of this that their awareness of
themselves as the subjects of those particular experiences is also unavailable
to them. While Avicenna does not go into great detail concerning the
questions of why this is the case and what causes the cessation in the act
of memory in sleep or intoxication, it is clear that the account would have to
involve the liberation of the faculty of imagination from the governance of
estimation and its apprehension of meanings.42 But regardless of the
detailed reasons for these kinds of meaningless mental states and the
consequent lack of memory in the two cases of the sleeper and the intoxicated person, Avicennas point remains straightforward: continuity in the
sense required of the primitive type of self-awareness does not entail that we
should remember every past moment in the continuity of our self-aware
mental life. On the contrary, owing to the nature of the meanings stored in
memory, any recollection of a past moment requires remembering an
41
42

For memory and meanings, see above Chapter 1.2, 2527.

Cf. the scattered remarks in Shif: F al-nafs IV.2, 170171, 174176 and 181182 Rahman.

84

In the rst person

experience with some objective content.43 Or to be more precise, remembering amounts to bringing that content to mind anew. But when the
estimative grasp of meanings is cut out, nothing can be retained in memory,
and nothing retrieved from it as content of past experience. There will
simply be nothing to remember.
In his answer Avicenna therefore grants that we have no immediate
knowledge of what the states of sleep and intoxication were like, because
we have no memory of those states and therefore no access whatsoever to
them. I have no idea of what went on in my mind between the moments of
my falling asleep and waking up. Although I can infer, by taking a look at an
external indicator of time such as the bedside alarm clock or the sky, that
there is a yawning temporal gap between my last recollection of the night
before and my morning state of awareness, I will nevertheless lack rst-hand
experiential knowledge of passing the gap. All I have is knowledge by
inference. Avicennas point is, however, that the assumption of the gap,
while entirely correct and warranted in its own right, does not allow us to
conclude a corresponding gap, or indeed any kind of breach, in our selfawareness. Self-awareness and the memory of having been self-aware are
two entirely dierent matters. Even if sleep and intoxication can be claimed
to prevent us from the latter, they do not warrant our drawing any
conclusions about self-awareness, because the alleged lapses from it can be
explained as mere absence of memory-traces.
It must of course be added that the distinction between being aware of
oneself and remembering having been aware of oneself in no way demonstrates Avicennas thesis about the continuity of self-awareness either. But
this is not a problem for him, because a further demonstration is not what
he is after in this debate with al-Kirmn. Rather, if his thesis about the
constancy of self-awareness turns out to be a natural consequence of the
psychological tradition and its conception of the intellect, the burden of
proof is returned to the challenging interlocutor. In other words, if human
souls in themselves are immaterial entities a thesis Avicenna took to be
demonstrable by other means they must be somehow there and aware
even when the bodys lights are o. Moreover, if the primitive type of selfawareness is in fact the most minimal account of what such existence-cumawareness might consist of, the interlocutor suddenly appears to stand on
much less secure ground. It suces for Avicenna to be able to show that
sleep and intoxication do not force us to infer any straightforward denial of
the constancy of self-awareness and that the claim of those states lacking
43

Cf. Mubh.atht 380, 210 Badaw; III.68, 61 Bdrfar.

First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence

85

self-awareness is no less an undemonstrated one than his claim indeed, in

the light of other concerns it turns out to stand on shakier ground. Thus,
Avicenna can consistently say that self-awareness, in the narrow sense of
rst-personality, is constant and continuous, and therefore something he
can consistently equivocate with human existence.
(2) The other condition that the reconstruction of Avicennas concept of
self-awareness should full is due to a particular aspect of the ying man
argument. As I emphasized in discussing the thought experiment, its
plausibility hinges on the interlocutors capacity of locating the phenomenon of self-awareness in her own experience. Although Avicenna does
demand a certain amount of wit from the interlocutor, it is important to
notice that this is only required to be able to pay second-order analytic
attention to something any normally developed human being will have as a
necessary constituent of her experience. This abstractive feat may be beyond
the capacity of some people,44 but its object is not generated in it. On the
contrary, in order that the thought experiment prove plausible in the rst
place, it is crucial that we deal not with any special state of mind but instead
with something familiar to each of us from a perfectly commonplace human
experience.45
I believe that the reconstructed concept of self-awareness will survive the
test. Although not uncontroversial, it nevertheless makes reasonable sense
to say that if I have successfully bracketed all objective content of my
experience, I will still be left with the peculiar mode of givenness or
appearance of all such content, that is, its appearance to me. In other
words, the fact that I am an I will remain in spite of the absence of all
further determinations of that I, whether as tasting an apple, thinking about
the identity of indiscernibles, fancying a beer or walking about in the park.
The ying mans unusual experience of nothing will be my experience in
this commonplace sense.
Furthermore, this reconstruction is capable of retaining the arguments
motivation as well as the precise technical sense in which Avicenna speaks of
it as a reminder. Consider the brief description of this type of argument in
Shif: F al-nafs V.7, that is, in the very context in which Avicenna presents
a shorter version of the ying man.
44
45

Cf. Avicennas scarcely veiled diatribe against al-Kirmn in Mubh.atht III.5665, 5860 Bdrfar
(partly in 370, 207 Badaw).
Although this point may seem trivial, it has been debated (see Chapter 2.2, 3841). Moreover, the
debate with al-Kirmn in Mubh.atht III suggests that it was not entirely obvious to Avicennas
contemporaries either.

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In the rst person

[I]t is not when I am investigating whether [the thing which governs the
body] exists and whether it is not a body that I am wholly ignorant of it,
rather I do not pay attention to it. It is often the case that knowledge about
something is close at hand, but one does not pay attention to it, so that it
verges on the unknown and is investigated at the greatest remove. Sometimes
knowledge that is close at hand is like the reminder, which is lost through
inadequate eort, so that ones wit, due to the weakness of [its] grasp, does
not nd the way to it, and then one needs to approach it from afar.46

As a reminder, the ying man is designed to make us aware of something

that is particularly close to us but most often tends to escape our attention.
Now, it does not seem far-fetched to say that our rst-personality is
precisely such a thing. For the most part, we are immersed in and preoccupied with the various contents of our experience, lacking either a reason,
time or both to concentrate on the fact that those contents are rstpersonally given and that each of us is there to experience them in each
case as our own. In this regard, self-awareness is exactly like the rst
intelligibles, to the simultaneous presence and absence of which in our
thought Avicenna explicitly compares it.47 When we apply the law of
non-contradiction in everyday reasoning, for instance when I attempt to
persuade my daughter that she cannot both go out to play and stay sitting in
front of the television, we rarely pause to consider the law itself but rather
concentrate on the application. Were someone to ask us about this aspect of
our reasoning, we may even nd ourselves utterly confused and incapable of
formulating a coherent general law apart from the concrete instances of its
application, let alone demonstrate the law. Yet when a teacher of logic
brings the law to our attention by suciently clever pedagogical means,
perhaps indeed arguing for it indirectly by means of an Avicennian
reminder, we will eventually recognize the intuitive plausibility of the law
as something we have in fact been relying on all along. This is exactly the
kind of plausibility or familiarity Avicenna expects his concept of selfawareness to be found to have.
If we have a look at the discussion related to the ying man in the
Mubh.atht, it becomes clear that in this case the teachers intention was
not particularly easy to grasp. Most of the discussion revolves around critical
remarks that arise from the interlocutors incapacity or refusal to recognize a
mode of awareness that is not based on the normal functioning of any of the
human cognitive capacities.48 This, however, need not be fatal for our
46
47
48

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 257 Rahman.

Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 257 Rahman; cf. Shif: al-Ilhyt I.5.15, 2223.
See Mubh.atht III.5674, 5861 Bdrfar; for discussion, cf. Michot 1997, 168174.

First-personality, the ying man and incorporeal existence

87

reconstruction of Avicennas concept of self-awareness. To begin with, the

concept of self-awareness Avicenna introduces is a novel one, and the
phenomenon on which it is based has no ready-made niche in the preceding
psychological tradition. There is certainly nothing extraordinary in a philosophical novelty proving to be dicult to palate.
But there is also a further diculty, which is due to a peculiarity of the
ying man, and indeed any attempt to pay explicit attention to primitive
self-awareness, for performing the thought experiment involves at least
three distinct levels of awareness, a confusion between which is both easy
and understandable. On the rst-order level we have the constant prereective self-awareness that is prior to the thought experiment and entirely
independent of whether or not we ever perform anything like it. This level
should be distinguished from the higher-order consideration involved in
actually performing the imaginative manoeuvres which the thought experiment requires of us and which are designed to bring us to a state in which we
notice something about the rst-order state that we had not paid attention
to before. Furthermore, we can distinguish another higher-order level on
which we draw conclusions about rst-order awareness on the basis of the
results of our second-order state that resulted from a successful performance
of the thought experiment. The two higher-order states of awareness are
reective acts in relation to the rst-order awareness, but it is very easy to
confuse at the third level of psychological conclusions the act of reection,
which has the rst-order state as its particular object, with self-awareness
pure and simple, by holding that the rst-order state is somehow transformed from a state lacking self-awareness to a self-aware one by the
reective act. Avicennas explicit claim, however, is that the thought experiment points towards something that was already there. All that it brings into
being is our attention to that something.49 Failure to realize this will result
in exactly the kind of criticism the Mubh.atht is witness to: that our rst
becoming self-aware requires a particular intellectual process, such as performing the thought experiment of the ying man.50 Avicenna, however,
attributes the confusion to al-Kirmns lack of required wit, showing quite
striking impatience towards his older peer.
Finally, the use of self-awareness in the ying man entails a potential
third problem that we should address. This is because the argument clearly
49
50

This is also evident from the argument against reection-based models of self-awareness, which
Avicenna reiterates in the context of the Mubh.atht dealing with the ying man.
This confusion is addressed in Suhrawards discussion of the ying man in Talwh.at III.4.3, 156
Habb; see Chapter 5.1, 107108.

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In the rst person

relies on self-awareness as an important piece of evidence for the human

selfs incorporeality. Now, if self-awareness is nothing but being an I and
therefore not based on any constant act of intellection with a specic object,
the evidence it provides must be dierent from that applied in Avicennas
proof from the indivisibility of intelligible objects and intellectual subjects.51
The question then is, what sort of evidence can self-awareness provide? Why
could it not just as well be a feature of a corporeal subject?
Here again it is important to distinguish clearly between the initial level
of self-awareness and the reective attention paid to it in the course of the
thought experiment. It is not self-awareness as such that provides evidence
of our incorporeality were that the case, the question would not have
been debated in the rst place. Rather, crucial to the argument is the fact
that our awareness of ourselves is readily given to us as an object of
reection, independent of any mediating cognitive instruments or acts.
The capacity to reect presupposes incorporeality, for corporeal things are
by denition incapable of such a wholesome relation to themselves.52 But
it also presupposes that the object reected upon is available to the
reecting subject, in other words that the subject is already aware of itself
in some manner before it turns its reective gaze to itself. In the Talqt,
Avicenna refers to this givenness by means of various formulations based
on the notion of the selfs presence (h.udr) to itself, a term which gains in
stature in the twelfth-century reception of Avicenna that we will soon turn
to study.53 The idea is that the self is constantly present to itself, regardless
of whether anything else is present to it, or whether it ever turns to reect
on this presence. The mere capacity of performing this turn, which the
thought experiment of the ying man by necessity actualizes for its
performer, is sucient to indicate the selfs incorporeality, and as
Avicenna states explicitly in the argument against reection-based models
of self-awareness, self-awareness in the simple sense of presence is a
necessary condition of the reective capacity. It is in this sense that selfawareness provides evidence of the incorporeality of the self, quite independently of the inference from the indivisibility of intellectual objects to
the indivisibility, and the consequent incorporeality, of the subject of
intellection.

51
52
53

For this proof, see Shif: F al-nafs V.2, 211218 Rahman; and Chapter 3.1, 43.
In the psychological context, this amounts to denying the claim that the corporeal cognitive faculties
are capable of apprehending their own acts. See Najt II.6, 218.
Cf., for instance, Talqt, 69, 79, 148, 162. For presence in Rz and Suhraward, see Chapter 6.1.

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89

4.3 Self-awareness, reection and intellection

Our characterization of primitive self-awareness by setting it in contradistinction to explicit self-reection naturally gives rise to a question: does
Avicenna have a concept of reectivity that is developed enough to provide a
sucient basis for the distinction? I would therefore like to conclude this
chapter with an argument for the view that although his remarks are somewhat scattered, we can reconstruct a genuinely Avicennian concept of
reectivity that is not only systematically and historically plausible but
also intimately connected to, indeed relying on, his concept of primitive
self-awareness. Finally, with the reconstructed concept of reectivity as our
cue, we can perhaps better dispel some of the doubts caused by certain
problematic passages from the Mubh.atht that are well known but that we
have so far refrained from addressing.
The central insight of Avicennas concept of reection was introduced in
nuce towards the end of section [b] of the lengthy passage from the Talqt.
Self-awareness is actual for the soul, so that it is constantly aware of itself. As
regards awareness of the awareness, it is potential; if awareness of the awareness
were actual, it would be constant and no consideration of the intellect (itibr
al-aql) would be needed in it.54

Here, Avicenna explicitly distinguishes reective self-awareness from primitive self-awareness by referring to the former as a higher-order awareness of
awareness, and by describing the higher-order awareness as potential,
intermittent and requiring an intellectual eort of consideration. The
brevity of the passage belies the fact that it expresses a reasonably considered
view, for these statements clearly echo a more elaborate account found in
the Ishrt:
You know that anything, which understands something, understands by a
potentiality close to actuality (bi al-quwwati al-qarbati min al-l) that it
understands [that thing], and that is intellection of [the thing] for it (wa
dhlika aqlun minhu li dhtihi). Thus, whatever understands something is
able to understand itself (lahu an yaaqila dhtahu).55

Avicenna qualies the human potential for reective self-awareness as

potentiality close to actuality. This notion stems from Aristotle, who in a
well-known passage from De anima II.5 distinguishes between the three
senses in which a human being can be said to know things. In the weakest
sense, a person is a potential knower by virtue of the fact that she is a
54

Talqt, 161; emphases added.

55

Ishrt, namat. 3, 132.

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In the rst person

member of the human species, an essential characteristic of which is the

capacity to know. A person is potentially knowing in a stronger sense, if she
has acquired a piece of knowledge through prior insight, experience or
instruction, and thus has access to that knowledge at will, but is not
presently engaged in the consideration of her knowledge. Finally, a person
is actually knowing, if she has acquired knowledge and is presently engaged
in the consideration of her knowledge.56 Avicenna rephrases this
Aristotelian idea to accord with his theory of knowledge as a combination
of abstractive eort and receptivity to intellectual emanation, but retains
the central distinction between the two types of cognitive potency. In the
discussion of learning in Shif: F al-nafs V.6, he denes learning as the
acquisition of a capacity to connect to the active intellect at will in order to
receive the content of thought that one has learned, or to put it another way,
learning is the capacity to bring to mind the preparedness, for instance a
certain mental image or linguistic symbol, that is required for the renewed
reception of the learned piece of knowledge. Avicenna then distinguishes
the two senses of potency Aristotle had described by using the very terms
applied in the description of reective self-awareness:
But if one has turned away from [what one has learned], the faculty [of
understanding] recedes and the form becomes potential, albeit potential very
close to actuality (quwwatan qarbatan jiddan min al-l). The initial learning
[of something] is like treating the eye which, when it has become a healthy
eye, can turn according to its wish towards the thing from which it receives
some form. And when it has turned away from that thing, the thing becomes
potential close to actuality.57

It is hardly a coincidence that Avicenna uses this concept to describe the

capacity of self-reection. The reective capacity in us is naturally conceived
as analogous to a persons capacity to consider the knowledge she has
acquired but is not presently preoccupied with. As a potentiality close to
actuality, it is something one can actualize at will, and in this sense reective
self-awareness, or awareness of awareness, is a constantly open possibility for
any primitively self-aware subject. At any moment, we can turn our attention to the primitively self-aware act, thought or perception that we are
presently engaged in.
This much is a natural consequence of the received theory of intellection.
As Avicenna reiterates time and again, anything that is immaterial in itself is
readily available for an intellect to understand. The only property that can
56

Ar. De an. II.5, 417a22417b20.

57

Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 247 Rahman.

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91

prevent a thing from being understood is materiality.58 Yet the human self is
only one possible object of intellection among many others, even to itself,
and for this reason its reective turn towards itself is merely intermittent.
Avicenna also species that reexivity in this sense is exclusive to entities
endowed with intellection; only that which understands something is
capable of taking its own understanding as an object of a further act of
understanding. Again, this is due to the immateriality of all subjects of
intellection, for only an immaterial entity is capable of a genuine and
wholesome relation to herself.
However, although Avicenna refrains from mentioning another necessary condition for reection in this particular pointer, since he mentions it
earlier on in the Ishrt and states it slightly later on in the relevant section of
the Talqt, it seems warranted to incorporate it into his full account of
reective self-awareness. This condition is of course primitive self-awareness
as the reective subjects constant familiarity with herself, as spelled out in
the argument against the reection-model of self-awareness. Notice that the
argument was designed not to deny our capacity of reection, but to argue
that it has to be founded on a more primitive type of self-awareness that
allows us to recognize the act reected upon as belonging to ourselves.
Thus, self-reection is possible only if the self is already primitively given in
the object of reection to which one turns, that is, if it provides an
individuating reference for the concepts by means of which we reect
upon ourselves, as outlined above.
But how is the subject given to herself in reection? Two preconditions
our answer must meet bear mentioning here. First, the subject must be
given as primitively individual in order to be identied with the individual
subject that performs the reective act. However, at the same time it must
be possible to subsume it under the universal attributes that are employed in
the reective act. This is because, in the above passages, Avicenna has
explicitly described reection as an act of intellectual consideration, and
acts of intellection simply are, by denition, acts constituted by universal
content. How, then, to meet two such seemingly contradictory
preconditions?
Deborah Black has recently made the interesting suggestion that the
individual meanings encountered in Shif: al-Madkhal I.12 might play a
role in Avicennas theory of self-awareness. Although Blacks suggestion is

58

This is stated in the remainder of the very ishra just quoted (Ishrt, namat. 3, 132); cf. Shif:
al-Ilhyt VIII.6.67, 284285.

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In the rst person

tentative, I believe it is based on a perspicacious and important insight.59 As

we saw above,60 Avicenna introduces the concept of individual meaning in a
context that deals with the question of our capacity to know individual
entities and to refer to them by means of universal concepts. Little harm will
be done by revisiting the central lines:
It is impossible for the intelligible properties, however many they are, to be
conjoined to the species without an ultimate reference (ishra) to an individuated meaning, so that the individual thereby subsists in the intellect. For if
you said Zayd is the tall one, the writer, the handsome one, and so forth for
as many descriptions as you wish, Zayds individuality would not be assigned
for you in the intellect. Rather, the meaning, which is put together from the
collection of all that, can belong to more than one, but it is made concrete
(yuayyinuhu) by existence and by reference (al-ishra) to an individual meaning, just as you say that he is the son of so-and-so, exists at such-and-such a
time, is tall and is a philosopher, and it then happens to be the case that no
one shares these attributes with him and also that you had a previous
acquaintance with the case by means of the kind of apprehension which points
towards (yushru) [the case] on the basis of sense perception, pointing (yushru)
to the very person and the very moment.61

The intellect can grasp an individual under a universal description only if a

reference to an individuated or individual meaning is provided for it. This
reference is not described by means of any mental content unsurprisingly,
since that would only constitute further additions to the bundle of universals that will fail to individuate itself, no matter how extensive it becomes.
Rather, the reference amounts to an acquaintance with a concrete thing that
is made by our perceptual access to the world of enmattered individual
entities. Thus, here the term meaning is used not in the sense of mental
content that is familiar from Avicennas psychological texts, but rather to
denote the referent of such content in a sense that Avicenna systematically
employs in logical semantics.62 In this sense, an individual meaning is a
59

60
62

See Black 2012, sections 13. Although I confess that the present account is in many ways indebted to
Blacks initial insight, my interpretation of the relevance of the individual meaning to Avicennas
theory of self-awareness diers from hers in two important respects. First, I do not think Avicenna
employed them in his concept of primitive self-awareness; instead, I claim that they rst come into
play on the level of explicit self-reection. Secondly, I do not believe they should be understood along
the lines of Scotian haecceitates, that is, as singular properties or concepts of singulars. Rather, as I
attempt to argue here, the concept of individual meaning denotes a special type of reference, not a
special type of content.
See Chapter 3.1, 4850. 61 Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, 70; emphases added.
Shif: al-ibra I.1, 3: That which is in the soul signies things, and they are those which are called
meanings (man), that is, intentions (maqs.id) of the soul, just as the traces [that is, content in the
soul] are also meanings in relation to [linguistic] expressions. Cf. I.1, 5; and for discussion, see Black
2010 and Kaukua 2014b.

Self-awareness, reection and intellection

93

concrete individual referent to which we attribute universal content but

which does not thereby cease to be given to us as a perceived individual.
So far so good, but what does our access to enmattered individuals have
to do with self-awareness? If anything, the previous chapters should have
convinced us that Avicenna is sternly against all attempts to explain our selfawareness by recourse to features of sense perception. My suggestion is,
however, that primitive self-awareness provides us with a type of individuating reference that is functionally analogous with, but metaphysically and
psychologically dierent from, the example of the concrete material individual perceived by way of the senses. The idea is, very simply, that the I of
primitive self-awareness is the individual meaning, or the point of reference,
for the universals employed in an act of reection. The I as the object of a
subjects reective intellectual apprehension of herself is individual only
because it belongs to the subjects primitively individual rst-personal
perspective. As Avicennas argument against reection-based models of
self-awareness put it, a subject can recognize herself in reection only if
she already is familiar with herself. Just like the unique spatiotemporal coordinates primitively individuate a materially existing substance and enable
it, by means of sense perception, to provide an individuating reference for
an intellects bundle of universals, the subjects self-awareness primitively
individuates her as an immaterially existing instantiation of the human
species and can therefore provide an individual reference for her reective
act and its universal content.
Another way of characterizing this is to say that, instead of a special kind
of intellectual object, primitive self-awareness provides the concepts
employed in reection with an indexical referent. Consider, again, the
case described in Shif: al-Madkhal I.12. My personal awareness of an
individual, such as my friend Zayd, as an attributee of certain universal
properties that he shares with other individuals, requires that I have an
indexical access to the materially existing Zayd. On the most general level, I
must be able to point, by means of perception, to a this to which I can then
attribute the bundle of properties I have in mind, whereby my understanding of the bundle comes to concern an individual human being. The
individual meaning only indicates the sort of indexical reference made
manifest by utterances such as this here. The self is available to itself as
an individual in an analogous fashion, that is, as something to which one
can point by means of the rst-personal indexical I. And just as one can
attribute all sorts of properties to a this, the I can be subject to any variety of
characterizations which become individual, or have an individual meaning,
through this attribution to a primitively individual subject. I can reect

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In the rst person

upon myself as an individual fan of the local football team just as I can
recognize the individual cheering beside me as another individual fan of the
very same team. What is crucial is that in the case both of myself and of my
fellow, the property of supporting the local team would remain universal,
and indeed shareable by many, were it not for the reference to a primitively
individual this or I.
It must be emphasized that, according to Avicenna, I do not need
explicitly to utter or think the indexical I in order to be primitively
aware of myself, that is, in order to exist as I as he has repeatedly asserted,
primitive self-awareness is both prior to and independent of reection. Yet
at the same time, Avicenna holds that I can utter or think the rst-person
indexical, and thereby reectively focus my attention on myself, at will.
Moreover, our applications of the rst-personal indexical in reference to
ourselves are all but self-evident, neither open to doubt nor in need of
learning. This is forcefully suggested by the way in which Avicenna speaks
of our intuitive recognition of ourselves as subjects and agents that provide
the unifying point of reference for a variety of states and acts. Moreover, the
argument from personal identity asserts unequivocally Avicennas belief
that each of us is intuitively and indubitably aware of a stable I as the
substantial core enduring throughout our lives. This indubitability is a
natural concomitant of the epistemically primitive nature of self-awareness:
just as I cannot not be aware in a rst-personal perspective, I cannot fail to
recognize that perspective as my own in reection.
This reconstruction of Avicennas concept of reection is coherent with
his way of dealing with two related questions, namely of whether our
primitive self-awareness is reduplicated in the act of reection, and of
whether the inherent potentiality of reection in every primitively selfaware state is liable to give rise to an actually innite series of reective acts.
The rst question is addressed in the context of a discussion of the
distinction between external existence, or existence in concrete (f
al-ayn), and mental existence, or existence in the mind (f al-dhhn).
Having briey presented the distinction in the paradigmatic case of externally existing individual substances, which when known come to exist in the
mind as accidental attributes of the knowing subject, Avicenna turns to the
more peculiar case of our reective awareness of ourselves. Here the distinction between external and mental existence is complicated by the fact
that, in both modes of existence, the human subject is immaterial and can
therefore be reasonably described as mental. Nevertheless, Avicenna holds
that it is still valid to distinguish the subjects existence as a substance from
her existing as an attribute of a knowing substance. This is intimately related

Self-awareness, reection and intellection

95

to our mode of existence as immaterial substances, that is, our selfawareness:

A human being may be inattentive to his self-awareness and then reminded
of it, but he is not aware of himself twice. As regards awareness of awareness, it
may be by acquisition, not by nature.63

In other words, when my primitively self-aware state becomes an object of

reection, it is no longer an act of existence proper to me as a substance and
due to me by nature, but a piece of acquired cognitive content and hence an
accidental attribute of me. Because of this change, the acquired awareness of
my awareness does not result in redoubled self-awareness; rather, I remain
aware of a single self in exactly the same sense as before, only now I realize
that I was aware of it all along.
I do not think Avicenna means that the prior state, in which I was
primitively self-aware without paying attention to my awareness, is preserved intact in the posterior act of reective attention towards it. Rather,
his point is that for each human being there is always one and only one
primitively self-aware state. Now, an act of reection involves minimally
two states: a prior state which functions as the object of reection and a
present state which is the act of reecting upon the prior state. If all of the
selfs acts are self-aware, then surely the present state of reection should be
such. But if one is not aware of oneself twice, then the state one is reecting
upon can no longer be self-aware when it has been made an object of
reection. In becoming an object of reection, the prior state is transformed
from a primitively self-aware state to mental content representing such a
state. What is then immediately experienced is the act of reection; if I
reect on my writing, I am no longer simply writing, but reecting on my
writing. Provided I am suciently capable of cognitive multitasking, the
writing may go on during my reection, but this does not change the fact
that my initial immersion in the act of writing is lost.
In this respect it is not correct to say that reective self-awareness is
fundamentally dierent from primitive self-awareness, because reection is
primitively self-aware as well. It of course has a particular type of object, an
act or state indexically attributed to oneself, that sets it apart from most
other primitively self-aware states, and this dierence entails an epistemic
ascent to a higher-order level of consideration in comparison to the state
reected upon, but it does not entail either ascent or descent with regard to
63

Talqt 147; emphasis added. Cf. Mubh.atht 422, 221 Badaw (VI.435437, 158 Bdrfar); 425426,
222223 Badaw (VI.444446, 160161; and VI.892, 318 Bdrfar). For a brief discussion, see Black
2008, 79.

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In the rst person

primitive self-awareness as such. Any reecting subject is primitively, but

not reectively, aware of herself in her reective state, and just like any other
primitively self-aware state, her reecting state can in turn become the
object of a reective act of a yet higher order. True, a subject of reection
recognizes herself in the object, when she attributes the state reected upon
to herself as her own past state. This recognition, however, is not immediate
but due to a relation of identity (huwya) which the subject of reection
grasps intuitively as prevailing between herself and the object of her reection.64 This is neatly in line with Avicennas explicit denial of immediate
identity between the subject and the object of human intellection in Shif:
F al-nafs V.6.65 If the subject of reection were primitively self-aware of the
subject of the state reected upon, this denial of identity would be violated.
This need not rule out the self-evidentiality of the reective identication
through recognition, something Avicenna explicitly states, but it does entail
that the recognition is not immediate. Rather, the relation of identity is an
intelligible constituent of the act of reection, albeit one that is not open to
sincere doubt.
The second concern, that is, whether the inherent reexibility of all
primitively self-aware states will result in the possibility of an innitely
ascending series of higher-order reective states, is addressed in Shif: alIlhyt V.2:
Because it is in the souls power to understand, and to understand that it has
understood, and to understand that it has understood that it has understood,
and to construct relations upon relations, making dierent relational states
for a single thing potentially ad innitum, it is necessary that there be no end
to these intellectual forms that are arranged upon each other, and as a result
they will go on innitely, but in potency, not in actuality.66

The text is unambiguous: there is no preordained limit to the amount of

reective steps that we can possibly take in relation to our mental states and
acts. This is a natural consequence of the claim that each self-aware state,
that is, each moment in human existence, contains the potency close to
actuality for the subject to turn reectively towards herself. But this innity
of ascending steps is merely potential; it is not possible ever actually to
ascend an innite number of times. Most often this is probably due to
64

65

For this particular use of the term huwya, see Talqt, 147148. I realize that this is an anomalous
reading of the term, but in this particular context Avicenna contrasts it with otherness (ghayrya),
which strongly suggests that the relation of identity is what he has in mind. For the more common
uses of huwya in Avicenna, see Goichon 1938, 411413.
Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240 Rahman. 66 Shif: al-Ilhyt V.2.8, 160.

Self-awareness, reection and intellection

97

accidental distractions that seize ones attention, but there is also a more
principled reason for the limitation of the number of actual reective states.
Because each reective ascent is a temporal occurrence, because each human
being capable of reection has a temporal beginning to her existence, and
because each mental state is only primitively self-aware in itself, the actual
existence of every human being at any given moment will by necessity halt
at a nite degree in the scale of higher-order states. This idea becomes clear
from Avicennas comparison of the potential series of reective steps with
our knowledge of the entailments of the piece of knowledge we are actually
considering.67 Suppose I know the quadratic formula, for instance. By
knowing the formula I know the solution to every single quadratic equation
even though I do not indeed cannot thereby consider them all in
actuality. In the same way, the possibility of reective self-awareness is
concomitant to every single self-aware act of mine only in the sense that
as an immaterial entity I can always turn to consider that I am the one
acting. The actualizations of these possibilities must take place successively.
This exposition of Avicennas concept of reection gives us a solid basis
for investigating the questions and problems concerning self-awareness that
are raised in the Mubh.atht, a collation of Avicennas correspondence with
his critically gifted students. This material easily reads like a series of
hesitant, often ad hoc reactions to seemingly fundamental problems;
indeed, with an exclusive focus on the Mubh.atht, one would quite likely
end up with a rather dismal assessment of Avicennas theory of selfawareness.68
A comprehensive analysis of the Mubh.atht material shows that the
critical points largely revolve around the diculties, already familiar to us,
that Avicenna faced when attempting to locate the phenomenon of primitive self-awareness in the scheme of the capacities described in his cognitive
67
68

See Shif: al-Ilhyt V.2.8, 160161. Cf. Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 241243 Rahman.
This is exemplied by Pines 1954, the rst serious scholarly attempt at a comprehensive reconstruction of Avicennas concept of self-awareness. This pioneering study was largely motivated by Abd alRahmn Badaws 1947 publication of his edition of the Mubh.atht. Relying extensively on the
critical remarks contained therein, Pines arrives at the suggestion that, despite the wealth of his
insights, Avicennas concept of self-awareness was aporetic, incoherent, and inferior to those of such
ancient predecessors as Aristotle and Plotinus. Allegedly, this is because Avicenna modelled his
concept of self-awareness on the received account of intellection, which landed him with a load of
problems when dealing with self-awareness as it appears on the lower levels of cognition. (Pines 1954,
36, 39, 43.) Although my interpretation is diametrically opposed to Pines, it must be admitted in his
defence that he lacked access to the Talqt, another collection of Avicennian Nachlass, which was
rst edited by Badaw in 1973. Although plenty of material on self-awareness can be derived from the
Shif (as recognized in, for instance, Pines 1954, 25, 2930, 34) and the Ishrt, the relevant passages in
the Talqt are quite unique in their explicit emphasis on self-awareness and in the way in which they
bring the scattered arguments together to a thematically dened discussion.

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In the rst person

psychology. Perhaps the most pressing, and lucid, case in point is the
following piece of correspondence between Bahmanyr and Avicenna:
[Avicenna] was asked: by means of which faculty are we aware of our
particular selves (bi ayyi quwwatin nashuru bi dhawtin al-juzya)? For
the souls apprehension concerns meanings, either by means of the intellectual faculty, but particular self-awareness is not understood (al-shuru bi aldhti al-juzyu laysa huwa yuaqalu), or by means of the estimative faculty,
but the estimative faculty apprehends meanings connected to what is imagined, and it has been shown that I am aware of myself (ann ashura bi dht)
even if I am not aware of my organs and do not imagine my body.
So he answered: it is clear that the universal meaning is not apprehended
by means of a body, and it is clear that the individual meaning,69 which is
individuated by hylic accidents a kind of dened determination (al-qadr)
and dened position is not apprehended by anything other than a body;
but it is not clear that the particular is not at all apprehended by anything
other than a body or that the particular does not gure in a judgment of the
universal; rather when the particular is not individuated by a determination
and a position and what embroiders them, nothing prevents that one is aware
of that particular,70 and it is not clear that this is impossible in a position.
There is nothing to object to [the fact] that the cause of this individual is hyle
and something hylic in some manner, when the consequent individuating
conguration itself is not hylic but rather one of the congurations that
individuate what is not through a body. On the contrary, the intellect or the
understanding soul does not apprehend particulars that are individuated by
determined hylic congurations. As regards to what is free of that, it may be
apprehended, and this is apprehended both when it is peeled from individuating things and [when] the individuating things, taken as universals, are
related to it. Separate things are either individuals of a species which are
distinguished by properties and the essences of which (dhawtuh)71
are apprehended as such, or singulars (afrd) the species of which is not
divided into individuals (bi mukhas..sas.t), but the species is in one essence (f
dhtin wh.idatin) which does not need to be distinguished except by
specicity, and so also their essences (dhawtuh) are apprehended by their
specicity. Then here it is to be contemplated whether the rst sort are
apprehended by their individuality.72

69

70
71
72

Because of the way in which individual meaning (al-man al-shakhs.) is contrasted with universal
meaning, I believe that in this case the term denotes mental content, albeit one that owes its
individuality to the sort of reference we have just discussed.
Some manuscripts, including the one Badaw based his edition on, add the specication I presume
[that this is] the intellect.
The word dht is here used in the sense the thing itself or the very thing, with a reference to an
individual entity. The same holds of the instance of dht in the next sentence.
Mubh.atht 371, 208 Badaw; V.278281, 117118 Bdrfar; for discussion, see Pines 1954, 4748.

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99

Bahmanyrs question is unambiguous: how can we explain self-awareness

in terms of Avicennas cognitive psychology, given that both of the
alternatives, intellectual and estimative apprehension, are fundamentally
problematic, albeit for dierent reasons. Estimation necessarily involves
perceptual mental content and thereby the body, whereas self-awareness
has been shown to be independent of both by means of arguments we,
like Bahmanyr, have already discussed at length. Intellection in turn
concerns universals, but the self of which each of us is aware is a unique
individual.
At this stage of investigation, we should expect Avicennas answer to be
ready and clear: self-awareness is due to neither an estimative nor an
intellectual act, but rather constitutes a category of its own which, as the
very existence of the cognitive subject, is foundational to and independent
of both types of cognition. In this light, the response section of the passage
is especially problematic, for although the question is posed in the very
terms by means of which Avicenna usually describes primitive selfawareness, his answer unequivocally sets out to attempt a solution in
terms of intellection. Avicenna seems to think that if only we can make
conceptual room for the intellection of particulars, the question will solve
itself. His attempt is thus very close to the account of the individuation of
immaterial human substances found in Shif: F al-nafs V.3: although the
self I am aware of is individuated by a bundle of properties that owe their
genesis to matter, the properties as such and the self they serve to
individuate are immaterial and therefore readily intelligible. It is painfully
evident that none of the worries expressed elsewhere are so much as hinted
at in Avicennas answer. The passage can thus be read as strong counterevidence to our interpretation of self-awareness as primitive or irreducible:
as far as texts like this are concerned, when all is said and done, Avicenna
seems to have conceived of self-awareness as a quite commonplace act of
intellection.
However, if we read his response closely, we see that Avicenna does not
explicitly claim that self-awareness should be understood as an act of
intellection with a certain individual as an object. All he does is entertain
the possibility. Since the resulting account is so obviously incoherent with
Avicennas explicit arguments elsewhere, for instance for the constancy of
self-awareness (is not the explicit understanding of oneself as a bundle of
properties a rather rare occasion?) and against the reection-model of selfawareness (how will one recognize the apprehended individual as oneself?),
we should be wary of adopting the passage as expressive of Avicennas

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In the rst person

considered view.73 Indeed, the very last sentence of his answer clearly signals
that Avicenna hesitates to assert the sketched solution and terminates
instead in a problem that is postponed for further consideration. If the
attempted solution is close to Shif: F al-nafs V.3, the problem is an elliptic
expression of the contrary insight we found from Shif: al-Madkhal I.12: in
the absence of a primitive factor of individuation analogous to the spatiotemporal co-ordinates aorded by matter, do we have any reason to assume
that the immaterial bundle of properties I understand as myself is anything
but a bundle of universals? Thus, instead of a straightforward account of
self-awareness as due to an act of intellection, we seem to be left with the
aporia characterized in the previous chapter, albeit with the dierence that
self-awareness is now ruled out as a way out and forwards.
This hesitation is a recurrent feature in the Mubh.atht questions related
to self-awareness.74 It may be perceived as a sign of the unease Avicenna felt
in the face of the problems an overtly intellectualist account of selfawareness is bound to run into when dealing with corporeal acts and
perceptual cognition, that is, with acts and mental states the embodied
agents and subjects of which seem quite indubitably to be aware of themselves.75 But although the symptoms are undeniable, dierent diagnoses of
the cause remain possible. First of all, it is not at all clear that the unease was
due to Avicennas insistent subscription to the view that self-awareness is the
result of an intellectual act, and not rather because his new conception of
primitive self-awareness lacked a ready-made niche in the received cognitive
psychological framework. Secondly, quite regardless of the fact that
Avicenna subscribes to a strongly dualist conception of human being, and
73

74
75

The same vagueness shrouds the immediately following question in Mubh.atht 372, 208209
Badaw; V.282285, 118119 Bdrfar (cf. Pines 1954, 5051). As for Mubh.atht 426, 222 Badaw
(VI.892, 318 Bdrfar), another similar passage (cf. Pines 1954, 5253), it deals not with primitive selfawareness but with our capacity of understanding the human essence (dht) of which each of us is an
instantiation. The point is that my understanding my own humanity (my own dht) diers not in
content, but only in reference, from my understanding of the humanity of another human being.
Humanity is the same in both cases, and in reection I attribute it to myself just as I attribute it to
another individual in an act constituted by perception and intellection.
Its most pronounced expression is Mubh.atht 373, 209 Badaw (cf. V.288, 119 Bdrfar), where
Avicenna entertains the possibility that self-awareness is not an act of intellection at all.
Pines 1954, 5455, takes up the question of animal self-awareness (raised in Mubh.atht 375, 209
Badaw (V.291293, 120 Bdrfar); and 421, 222 Badaw (VI.891, 317318 Bdrfar)) as a particularly
telling case in point. The question of animal self-awareness, brought up again by Rz in his critical
commentary to the Ishrt (Sharh. al-Ishrt, 122), is complicated and must be set aside for the present.
Suce it to say that I believe the question shows that the sort of self-awareness we have been
discussing here is exclusive to immaterial, and hence intellectual, entities. For a more detailed
treatment of the question of animal self-awareness, see Kaukua and Kukkonen 2007 and LpezFarjeat 2012.

Self-awareness, reection and intellection

101

thus one that places a decided emphasis on our intellectual capacities, it is

not clear that self-awareness as the mode of existence proper to the immaterial aspect of us is incompatible with activity and cognition in or by means
of the body.
It has been suggested, indeed quite plausibly in the light of such inconsistency, that Avicennas view of the cognitive class proper to self-awareness
was subject to development throughout his career, and that he may never
have managed to arrive at a denite solution.76 If this is the case, the natural
question to ask is how we should date texts like the present piece of
correspondence with its aporetic conclusion. Do they represent a passing
phase in the course of Avicennas labour with self-awareness, or are they
rather expressive of a mature view? The details of the genesis and dating of
the Mubh.atht texts are extremely complex, but, in the light of our current
knowledge, it seems warranted to hold that the set of questions to which the
present one belongs was drafted by Bahmanyr and answered by Avicenna
before 1030 and so quite possibly before the excursions on self-awareness in
the Ishrt and the Talqt.77 The text may therefore represent a stage in
which Avicenna had gained the insights that were to provide the basis of his
concept of self-awareness (note the veiled reference to arguments like the
ying man at the end of Bahmanyrs question) but had not yet drawn the
conclusions about its immediacy and consequent uniqueness as a mode of
cognition that are exemplied in the later works. In any case, regardless of
the ultimate order of production of Avicennas works, our present knowledge does not warrant us to consider the present text as an expression of
Avicennas nal stand.
If we approach the Mubh.atht from this perspective, they bear witness
to a constant labour in nding a niche for the newly discovered phenomenon of rst-personality in the Peripatetic psychological framework, and
portray a thinker in a sustained attempt to twist the received concept of
intellection as self-intellection to tally with such a narrow concept of selfawareness.78 But although Avicenna may not have been entirely successful,
and certainly failed to persuade all his interlocutors, his tentative consideration of the possibility that self-awareness is not an act of intellection at all
76
78

Sebti 2000, 116117. 77 I infer this on the basis of Reisman 2002, 212, 221224, 227, 231.
Cf. the largely concurring assessment in Sebti 2000, 113117. It should also be noted that certain postAvicennian developments, such as Suhrawards concept of knowledge as presence and Mull Sadrs
identication of knowledge with existence (see Chapters 6.1 and 8.1 below, respectively), can be read
as further steps in the pursuit of a concept of awareness that is no longer reducible to the ancient
dichotomy between perceptual knowledge of particular objects and intellectual knowledge of
universals.

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In the rst person

may have been positively loaded with sustained consideration.79 While it is

true that Avicennas concept of self-awareness is based on the view that an
individual human dht is an immaterial substance and therefore an intellectual entity, the texts we have discussed in extenso strongly suggest that
that substances awareness of itself is not an ordinary act of intellection. If
our reconstruction of Avicennian self-awareness as rst-personality is anywhere close to the mark, it is rather an inherent feature of all human
experience from the highest echelons of intellection down to the lowest
strata of sense-perception. All of these drastically dierent experiences, as so
many accidental determinations of an individual entity, are always given as
mine to the respective individual, or, to put it another way, the individual
will always undergo or live through them as an I. In this limited respect,
there is no dierence whatsoever between her various states: as far as my
primitive self-awareness is concerned, it is the same regardless of whether I
am engaged in physical labour, a rapturous erotic act or the contemplation
of the law of non-contradiction. Explicit reective intellection of oneself is
an altogether dierent phenomenon, but also one that Avicenna explicitly
distinguishes from the more primitive type of self-awareness.80 As weve
learned, reective self-awareness is an act of intellection, which presupposes
prior familiarity with oneself as its condition of possibility. Hence, primitive
self-awareness as this familiarity must be distinguished from reection, just
as Avicenna repeatedly does.
In the end, it has to be admitted that, despite its coherence, our reconstruction of Avicennas concept of self-awareness remains a rational reconstruction, pieced together from somewhat (though not entirely) fragmented
pieces of discussion. It remains a fact that Avicenna never explicitly denes
his concept of self-awareness, nor does he devote a single chapter of his
psychological works to the phenomenon. At the same time, the reconstruction is hardly marred by a shortage of material, and as I hope to have shown,
the material is not only ample, but highly coherent as well. Finally, many of
the arguments that are presented separatim in Avicennas other works were
in fact brought together in the Talqt.
79

80

Here I refer especially to passages like Mubh.atht 373, 209 Badaw (cf. V.288, 119 Bdrfar): It may
be that intellection [in the sense of that] which grasps intelligibles is not applicable to the purity of
complete self-awareness (mujarrada al-shuri al-mujmali bi al-dht) but comes after that. That is
worth thinking about.
Pace Pines 1954, 46. The distinction seems to have been there in some of the texts circulated under the
rubric of Mubh.atht (cf. VI.549, 185 Bdrfar), but apparently not in the recension represented by
the manuscript Badaw used for his edition.

Self-awareness, reection and intellection

103

As we have seen, the Avicennian shur bi al-dht alludes to the rstpersonal perspective inherent in all our experience. As such, it is the mode in
which we exist as immaterial substances. The way in which we have seen
Avicenna develop this insight has two consequences, which may be relatively unproblematic, even trivial, in their Avicennian setting, but which
become problems and points of critique for his followers whom we will next
turn to discuss. For this reason, these consequences merit being briey
spelled out.
First of all, Avicennian self-awareness is static and allows no room for
development. Since self-awareness is our birthright, it cannot be relied on to
make sense of the process of acquisition of our second perfection, the
cognitive goal proper to the human species. Our self-awareness notwithstanding, we will still be imbued with the task of developing our characters
by consistently doing the right things and making the right choices as well as
labouring in the pursuit of knowledge. But regardless of the eventual degree
of our success, we will taste its fruits as subjects aware of ourselves in exactly
the same sense as when we rst came to be. I will be no more and no less an I
when I have reached the degree of a virtuous sage than I was as a peckish lad.
I may be able to pay attention to my being an I, to understand why that is
the case, and to fully grasp and attempt to realize the sort of duties towards
myself it entails, but the fact itself of being an I is not changed at any stage of
this development. Intimately related to this point is a second one, namely
that the self indicated by the phenomenon of primitive self-awareness is a
similarly static entity, that is, an Aristotelian substance. As the argument
from personal identity in the sixth book of the Mubh.atht makes particularly explicit, the human self remains immune to change throughout the
course of its existence, despite the uctuation of its attributes. As substances, Avicennian selves do come to be, but they are not subject to any kind of
alteration, change or development in the proper senses of these terms.
In the subsequent centuries, both of these features come to be ercely
contested. Intriguingly enough, however, these critical moves are made in a
framework that is entirely based on Avicennas ways of describing selfawareness and of arguing for its primitivity. I believe that a close study of
the reception of this part of the Avicennian heritage will further corroborate
the reconstruction proposed here.

chapter 5

Self-awareness without substance: from

Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd to Suhraward

In many ways, the twelfth century CE is decisive for the solidication of

the Islamic philosophical scene, duly characterized as post-Avicennian.
Instigated by Ab H
mid al-Ghazls (d. 1111 CE) critical appropriation
and Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdds (d. 1164/5) radical scrutiny of Avicennas
philosophy, two closely related, if fundamentally dierent ways of applying
this heritage emerge towards the turn of the century, both of which would
prove formative for the subsequent centuries. These are Fakhr al-Dn alRzs systematic theology and Shihb al-Dn Yah.y al-Suhrawards ishrq,
or illuminationist, school of philosophy.1
Although many authors of the period address Avicennas remarks on selfawareness, it is in Suhrawards thought that their developmental potential
is most fully accomplished. Information about Suhrawards youth is scarce,
but we do know that he was born in 1154, possibly in the village of Suhraward
in northwestern Iran, and acquired an education in philosophy and theology
from a number of notable teachers of his time. After a period of itinerant
existence in Syria and Anatolia, we nd him in Aleppo from 1183 onwards,
gathering a circle of notable students about him. One of these was the
young prince al-Malik al-Zhir, recently appointed as the ruler of the city
by his father, the great Saladin. This seems to have aroused the ire and
jealousy of Aleppo jurists who complained to Saladin. The conict with
crusaders growing increasingly tense, the leader ordered his son to execute
Suhraward, which the latter eventually submitted to in 1191, though not
without reluctance.2
Despite his early demise, Suhraward left a considerable corpus, the most
important texts of which are often divided into three main classes: (1)
mystical allegories, (2) Peripatetic philosophical treatises, most importantly
1
2

For a general account of the early reception of Avicenna, see Eichner 2009, 395; and for more specic
studies, cf. Wisnovsky 2004a; Shihadeh 2005; Eichner 2011; and Treiger 2012.
Walbridge and Ziai 1999, xvxvii; Walbridge 2005, 201.

104

Self-awareness without substance

105

the Talwh.t and the Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t, and (3) ishrq treatises,
3
in particular the H
ikma al-ishrq. The question of the exact relations of
importance between these dierent types of texts is a matter of debate.
Some scholars, most notably Henry Corbin, perceive the mystical narratives
as the culmination of Suhrawards thought and read the ishrq treatises as
their systematic counterpart, while assigning the so-called Peripatetic works
a status of secondary importance.4 Other scholars have argued for a much
stronger connection between the dierent types of philosophical treatises.
According to Hossein Ziai, the impetus behind the composition of
each of these works was nothing other than the systematic presentation of
the philosophy of illumination. This means that when Suhraward states
that the Intimations [al-Talwh.t], for example, is written according to
the Peripatetic method, it is not an independent work written solely as
an exercise in Peripatetic philosophy, nor does it represent a Peripatetic
period in Suhrawards life and writings. Rather, it points to the fact that
certain parts or dimensions of the philosophy of illumination are accepted
Peripatetic teachings.5 By the same token, it has been argued that instead of
a culmination of the Suhrawardian corpus, the mystical narratives amount
to little more than introductory treatises designed for students who are not
yet able to savour the technical and conceptually rigorous argumentation
proper to the philosophical works.6
I see no reason to hide my sympathy with the latter line of interpretation.
Had the Peripatetic works been merely propaedeutic in character, why
should Suhraward have spent so much precious paper and ink on them
particularly in comparison to the decidedly less imposing volume of the
H
ikma al-ishrq? Indeed, why did he choose to write two such introductory
works when the Talwh.t, for instance, would alone seem to have been
perfectly apposite to the task? Furthermore, recent work which situates
Suhraward in the context of the twelfth-century reception of Avicenna has
shed some direly needed light on the question of how the discussion in the
Peripatetic treatises paves the way for Suhrawards transition to the overtly
7
ishrq philosophy of the H
ikma al-ishrq. Since the Talwh.t and the
Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t are comparably closer to the terminological
framework of Avicennian philosophy, they provide us with invaluable
evidence for assessing why and to what extent the H
ikma al-ishrq departs
3
4

Walbridge and Ziai 1999, xviii. For a voice of concern, cf. Marcotte 2012.
See, for instance, Corbin 1971, vol. II, 187200. This view is manifested in Corbins decision to omit
both the logical and the physical sections of the Talwh.t and the Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t from his
edition of these texts.
Ziai 1990, 1011. 6 Walbridge 2000, 109112. 7 A prime case in point is Eichner 2011.

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Self-awareness without substance

from that tradition. This interpretative stance will, I hope, be amply

substantiated also by the following two chapters.

5.1

Avicennian material in Suhraward

From both the historical and the systematic point of view, the most
interesting aspect of Suhrawards treatment of self-awareness is his novel
application of the phenomenon in introducing his alternatives to the
Peripatetic concepts of knowledge and existence. However, to bring this
aspect of his thought into clear focus, we must delineate and chart the
ground he shares with Avicenna, the epitome of that tradition. Fortunately
for this concern, Suhrawards arguments for the constancy and immediacy
of self-awareness are for the most part familiar from the previous chapter,
which strongly suggests that Suhraward is indeed referring to exactly the
same phenomenon as Avicenna. Furthermore, on the occasions when he
ventures beyond his predecessor, he articulates even more explicitly the
Avicennian thesis that self-awareness amounts to bare rst-personality as an
irreducible and necessary constituent of human experience.
When one sets out to read the section on the rational soul in the
psychology of the Talwh.t, one cannot fail to notice a close resemblance
to Avicennas method of procedure in al-Ishrt wa al-tanbht. Just like his
predecessor, Suhraward initiates the discussion of the properly human
aspect of the soul with the thought experiment of the ying man:
Is it not so that you are not absent from yourself (dhtika) in the two states of
your sleep and wakefulness, your sobriety and intoxication? If you were
supposed [to be] created all at once to a perfection of your intellect, and your
sense were not preoccupied with anything from you or from another, and the
members [were] extended in the air so that they would not touch, you would
ignore everything but your thatness (annyatika). Thus, you will not have
acquired either bodies or accidents when they were not included in your self
(dhtika) which you understand without them [and] without the need of a
medium, or a corporeal indication or notication, and so you know for
certain about your self (maarifatuka li dhtika) that it is incorporeal.8

The two examples of sleep and intoxication give away Suhrawards

immediate source, and he follows Avicenna in all the essential aspects of
the thought experiment. The conclusion is just as familiar: because selfawareness can be there in the absence of the awareness of ones body or any
8

Talwh.t II.4.3, 155156 Habibi; 337338 Ziai and Alwishah. Cf. Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 119, in
Chapter 4.2, 80.

Avicennian material in Suhraward

107

other cognitive object, it cannot be based on or brought about by anything

else. Two signs of departure from Avicenna are Suhrawards tacit introduction of terminology related to his own concept of knowledge as
presence (you are not absent (l taghbu) from yourself) and the increase
in the arguments demonstrative power (you know for certain (darrya)
of the
about your self that it is incorporeal),9 but since these aspects
passage are intimately related to Suhrawards original application of selfawareness, which we will discuss below, we will have to set them aside for
the time being. In the remainder there is little that we have not already
encountered in Avicenna. If anything, Suhrawards formulation of the
ying man is even more elliptic than the already condensed version of the
Ishrt, and he seems to direct no extended attention at the phenomenon
the argument builds upon; in fact, one could argue that Suhrawards
terminology is less indicative of rst-personality than that of Avicenna.
However, Suhraward dovetails the passage with a sceptical question that
we cannot nd in Avicenna and that gives away the clarity of his grasp of
the arguments basis.
Question: I have come to know myself (araftu dht) by means of this act,
and so it is a medium.
Answer: In your supposition you were divested of your act, and so there is
no medium.
Question: This supposition is an act, and so it is a medium.
Answer: It is an omission of an act, or rather it is an idea, and when you
come across it, you come across the one having the idea (dh al-khat.ra)
behind it and known before it, not by means of it, and that is your self
(dhtuka).10

Suhraward has his interlocutor raise the question of whether the ying
man itself, as a thought experiment, rst brings self-awareness about, and if
it does, whether this does not constitute a problem for the claim that it is
immediate and not acquired. Although Suhrawards answer is rather condensed, it belies a solid grasp of the Avicennian method of reminding.
Although the ying man stages our awareness of ourselves in a manner
that forces it into the focus of our attention, it thereby only enables the
recognition of what must have already been there. Supposing oneself in the
situation of the ying man is a very peculiar operation of thought, a most
9
10

The latter aspect is even more pronounced in Ibn Kammnas thirteenth-century commentary on the
Talwh.t (Muehlethaler 2009).
Talwh.t II.4.3, 156 Habb; 340 Ziai and Alwishah.

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Self-awareness without substance

unlikely idea (khat.ra), but its peculiarity lies precisely in the fact that it is
designed to foreground the subject that has the idea (dh al-khat.ra), which
cannot be supposed to be generated by the idea it has. If this interpretation
of Suhrawards dense little dialogue is correct, he had an accurate grasp of
the basis of the ying man: the thought experiment is a means of paying
attention to something that tends to elude our consideration but is constantly given to each of us in perfectly commonplace experience.
If the main purpose of the Talwh.t was to present the outlines of the
Peripatetic system of thought, it can be asked whether Suhraward is merely
using the Ishrt as an authoritative source of the traditional doctrine
without himself subscribing to its contents. Such concerns are undermined
by the same section of the Ishrt being mined for arguments in Suhrawards
positive exposition of his alternative system. Consider, for example, how the
argument against reection-based models of self-awareness is articulated in
the H
ikma al-ishrq:
The thing that subsists by itself and apprehends itself (al-qima bi dhtihi
al-mudrika li dhtihi) does not know itself by means of an image of itself
in itself (l yaalamu dhtahu bi mithlin li dhtihi f dhtihi) . . . if [that]
were by means of an image that it does not know to be an image of itself
(li nafsihi), it would not know itself (nafsahu); if it does know that it is an
image of itself (nafsihi), it must have already known itself (qad alima
nafsahu) without the image. How could it not, when it is not conceivable
that the thing knows itself (yaalama nafsahu) by means of something
added to itself (al nafsihi), for [that] would be an attribute of it? Thus,
when it judges that every attribute added to itself (al dhtihi), whether
knowledge or something else, belongs to itself (li dhtihi), it has already
known itself (qad alima dhtahu) prior to and apart from all the attributes,
and so it has not known itself (l yakna qad alima dhtahu) by means of
the added attributes.11

The alien context notwithstanding,12 the argument is clearly familiar. If

we suppose that self-awareness is due to an awareness of a special type of
object, here an image of oneself, we will come across the problem of how to
explain the recognition of the image as an image of oneself. Since there is no
non-arbitrary way of introducing the recognition in the case of some images
but not others, we have to suppose that the recognition is based on a more
basic familiarity with oneself. Suhraward sums this up in a general claim:
11
12

H
I II.1.5.115, 80 Walbridge and Ziai; 111 Corbin.
In this section of the H
ikma al-ishrq Suhraward is engaged in the characterization of the concept of
pure or incorporeal light by means of Avicennian arguments for the immediacy of self-awareness. For
a discussion of this material in its context, see Chapter 6.2, 146154.

Avicennian material in Suhraward

109

any image or attribute that I recognize as my own, as attributable or

belonging to me, has to be qualied as mine to begin with.
We have seen Avicenna claim that this mineness or rst-personality
inherent to our attributes is a constant feature of our experience. As a
consequence, it cannot be based on anything that we can be intermittently
aware of, such as our bodies. This basic dierence between the intermittency and constancy respective to the awareness proper to bodies on the one
hand and to selves on the other is repeated by Suhraward immediately after
the above argument against the reection-model of self-awareness:
You are never absent from yourself and your apprehension of it (anta l
taghbu an dhtika wa an idrkika lah), and since the apprehension
cannot be by means of a form or an addition, you do not need in your
apprehension of yourself anything other than your self, which appears to
itself, or is not absent from itself (fa l tah.tja f idrkika li dhtika il
ghayri dhtika al-z hirati li nafsih aw al-ghayri al-ghibati an nafsih).
Thus, your apprehension of it must be due to itself as such (fa yajibu an
yakna idrkuka lah li nafsih kam hiya),13 and you are never absent from
yourself or any part of yourself (l taghbu qat.t.u an dhtika wa juzi
dhtika). What your self is absent from (m taghbu dhtuka anhu), such
as organs like the heart, the liver and the brain . . . do not belong to that of
you which apprehends, and so that of you which apprehends is not by
means of an organ . . . since otherwise you would not be absent from it
insofar as you have enduring self-awareness that does not cease (kna laka
shurun bi dhtika mustamarrun l yazlu).14

Again, the metaphysical context does not betray the familiarity of this
series of statements, which reads readily as a paraphrase of the central
insights behind the lengthy excursion on self-awareness from the Talqt.
Suhrawards emphasis on the constancy and continuity of self-awareness
suggests that he is aware of Avicennas striking and potentially counterintuitive claim that we are always aware of ourselves, and that he knowingly
adopts the Avicennian concept of self-awareness. This is further corroborated by a related argument, characterized as a reminder (dhikrun tanbh),
in the psychological section of the Talwh.t.
Your skin is such that you have the power to change it while aware of the
persistence of your thatness (annyatika), and the same holds of your esh
and your bone, and so they have no share in it. You have understood it while
13

14

I read idrkuka (instead of idrkuh as preferred by both Corbin and WalbridgeZiai) which is
supported by some manuscripts and is not as awkward as the alternative reading. Insofar as you is
synonymous with your self, as is the case here, there is no dierence in meaning.
H
I II.1.5.116, 80 Walbridge and Ziai; 112 Corbin.

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Self-awareness without substance

ignoring the heart, the brain and the liver, which are known to you through
dissection; something has occurred to your mind about them once or twice
every year, and you are not through what is distant from your thatness, and
so what is not included in it in the intellect is not constitutive of it. Thus,
[the] you behind the whole is [such] that it is a self (anta wara al-jami
annah dhtun) that exceeds the confusion of the ignorant about it; it is a
substance which we rightfully call the rational soul.15

Just as in the passage from the H

ikma al-ishrq, Suhraward here makes
the distinction between the self and any of its cognitive objects by means
of the constancy and intermittency respective to them. If anything, this
time the connection to Avicenna is even more pronounced, for both the
argument and the context in which it is embedded read naturally as a
paraphrase of a passage from Shif: F al-nafs V.7.16 What is more, the
argument is followed by one based on another aspect of dierence between
our awareness of our bodies and our selves, and with an equally Avicennian
provenance.
If nothing has dissolved from your body and the nourishing [faculty] has
produced what it has produced so that the volume of your body has grown
very large up to what you are familiar with, or up to the position of the
resting [faculty], and if dissolution is then asserted and you are aware of the
persisting heat in decomposition, corruption and other causes, then will you
not be another self (dht) every year, or a self whose thatness is diminished
(aw dhtun muntaqis.atu annyatih)? Or is it a self that does not dissolve?
Thus, it is not embodied; I have reminded you! Be reminded that it is a
divine re, undescended, exalted above both impression [in] matter and
being the same as the temperament.17

This argument relies on the interlocutors intuitive certainty of the

endurance of her self through time despite the indubitable changes that
take place in her body. As we recall, Avicenna had brought forth the very
same intuition as a response to Bahmanyrs dissatisfaction with the ying
man. And even though nothing in Suhrawards formulation gives away the
Mubh.atht as his immediate source, all the ingredients of the present
argument were already laid on the table by other Avicennian texts. It is
also worth pointing out that Suhraward briey resorts to illuminationist
terminology in spelling out the dualist conclusion of the argument. This
suggests, if somewhat obliquely, that he perceived a connection between
15
16
17

Talwh.t II.4.3, 156 Habb; 342 Ziai and Alwishah.

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 255256 Rahman.
Talwh.t II.4.3, 157 Habb; 342343 Ziai and Alwishah; cf. H
I II.1.5.116, 80 Walbridge and Ziai;
112 Corbin.

Avicennian material in Suhraward

111

this aspect of Peripatetic psychology and his own alternative system of

philosophy.
Let us nally consider another argument based on our awareness of our
enduring selves. This time the context is epistemological and the argument
original to Suhraward, notwithstanding that it gures in an argument for
an entirely Avicennian thesis and has an equally Avicennian basis in its use
of self-awareness. Suhraward now relies on the phenomenon in a piece of
evidence brought forth to refute the identity or unity theory of cognition.
He begins by arguing that if the identity theory is correct and the subject of
knowledge indeed becomes the known form, or inversely, if the known
form is assimilated into the subject, then there remains no sense in which we
can speak of cognition anymore; rather, all we have is the subject or the form
(depending on which of them becomes the other) as it was before the
identity. On the other hand, if both remain, there is no identity.18 This
Avicennian case19 is then supported by a corroborating piece of evidence:
Then the self-aware substance of you (al-jawharu al-shiru bi dhtihi minka)
is not such that it is renewed every moment, but it is a single thing which
endures before, with and after the form, and the form is something that
occurs while it endures. Thus, you are you with the apprehension and
without the apprehension, and so there is no meaning for unication.20

Self-awareness is here used to substantiate a commonplace Peripatetic

claim: a necessary condition for understanding any kind of process is that
we are aware of an unchanging substance in relation to which the process
takes place or to which the process somehow belongs. To take learning as an
example, I as the subject of learning must not be replaced when I come to
know what I did not know before, for were that not the case, whom could
we say to have learned anything thereby? I must be I in some unchanging
sense with and without any attribute of mine, such as the knowledge I have
managed to acquire.
This last argument therefore highlights the factor that is common to all
four types of arguments we have cursorily analysed, namely that they all
hinge on the same phenomenon. It shows that the self and its awareness of
itself can be distinguished from its awareness of objects or attributes by
which it is qualied, and, as became clear from Suhrawards consideration
of the intricacies of the ying man as well as from the contrast he drew
between the endurance of the self and the uctuation of the body, self18
20

Mashri III.7.1, 474. 19 See Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240 Rahman.
Mashri III.7.1, 474475.

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Self-awareness without substance

awareness, in an immutable sense, is attached as a necessary constituent to

any awareness of objects. Thus, even without resorting to as laborious an
argument as we did in the previous chapter, I dare propose that the requirements these arguments amass on the concept of self-awareness that gures
in them forcefully point towards the view that Suhraward adopts the
Avicennian concept of self-awareness in the sense reconstructed above. In
other words, for Suhraward just as for Avicenna, self-awareness amounts to
bare rst-personality, or the simple fact that all we are aware of is given to us
in a rst-personal perspective.
This is underlined by a conceptual distinction between the self-aware
subject and any object it is aware of to which Suhraward consistently sticks
throughout his philosophical works. Let us consider two examples, the rst
from the already familiar section on the rational soul from the Talwh.t:
Every corpus (jirm) and accident in it of your body (badanika) and others is
referred to from your perspective by its being an it (mushrun ilayhi min
jihatika bi annahu huwa), and whatever is referred to from your perspective
by its being an it is distinct from you by being dierent from both you as a
whole21 and [any] part of you; thus, every corpus and accident in it is distinct
like that. Since you are distinct, you are not them as a whole, for not a part of
them exists for you (li adami juzyatih laka); thus, your self (dhtuka) is
incorporeal altogether and not merely in some respect.22

Unlike ourselves, each object we are aware of appears to us, or from our
perspective, as an it, something in front of our regard to which we can
refer ostensively by means of the third-person indexical pronoun. Since all
bodies are given to us in this manner, Suhraward believes that the dierent
mode of givenness of ourselves allows us to conclude that our selves are not
bodies. The argument is not entirely without parallel in Avicennas psychological works; one is reminded especially of the sustained claim in Shif: F
al-nafs V.7 that our intuitive use of the rst-personal indexical is an
indication of our incorporeality.23 Moreover, we found a similar distinction
in the Risla al-adh.awya f al-mad.24 However, Suhrawards consistent

reliance on the distinction

is without parallel in his predecessor. The novelty
of this move is particularly clear in the following passage from the H
ikma
al-ishrq:
21

22
23
24

I read kullika with Habb instead of the dhtika in Ziai and Alwishah, because it ts better with the
immediately following juzika, part of you. I take it as obvious that the reading in Ziai and Alwishah
is perfectly compatible with my interpretation of the passage as a whole.
Talwh.t II.4.3, 156 Habb; 341 Ziai and Alwishah.
Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 256257 Rahman; see Chapter 4.1, 6671.
Avicenna, al-Risla al-adh.awya IV, 127128; see Chapter 4.1, 79.

Avicennian material in Suhraward

113

The thing that subsists by itself and apprehends itself does not know itself by
means of an image of itself in itself, for if its knowledge were by means of an
image and if the image of its I-ness (anya) is not [the I-ness], [the image]
would be an it in relation to [the I-ness], but then what is apprehended
would be the image, and as a consequence, apprehension of I-ness would be
identical to apprehension of what is an it (yakna idrku al-anyati huwa bi
aynihi idrka m huwa huwa), and apprehension of self would be identical
with apprehension of another (yakna idrku dhtih bi aynihi idrka
ghayrih), which is absurd, unlike in the case of external [things], where
the image and what is that for it are both an it (al-mithla wa m lahu dhlika
kullhum huwa).25

Suhrawards argument is designed to refute the claim that self-awareness

is due to the cognition of a specic object, here an image (mithl) representing a subject to itself. As such, the argument is clear enough. But the terms
in which Suhraward stages it are of prime importance for our topic, for here
we nd the object of cognition explicitly distinguished from its counterpart,
the subject. Any object will be given as an it facing our attentive regard,
whereas the subject will be given to itself as an I (an). From this rst-person
indexical Suhraward derives the abstract noun I-ness to single out the
mode of being proper to a cognitive subject. Having made this categorical
distinction, he can rephrase Avicennas argument against reection-based
models of self-awareness in more general terms: it is not possible to proceed
from the awareness of any object or it, however specic we suppose it to be
to the subject in question, to an awareness of the subject, an I or me. In this
respect self-awareness is fundamentally dierent from awareness of objects,
for as Suhrawards last clause states, nothing prevents a representational
relation between an image appearing to the mind and the thing it is an
image of (what is that for it, that is, what the image is an image of), because
both the image and its referent exist in the third person, each being an it.
I would like to claim that Suhrawards introduction of the abstract
noun derived from the rst-person indexical an in an argument that is in
clear and considerable debt to Avicenna supports my reconstruction of
Avicennas concept of self-awareness in the previous chapter. The new
term signals that by the end of the twelfth century the discussion of selfawareness had become a rm enough xture in the philosophical tradition
to warrant the coinage of a novel highly technical term.26 Let us now shift
our focus to material which shows that this part of the Avicennian heritage
was still very much in formation.
25
26

H
I II.1.5.115, 80 Walbridge and Ziai; 111 Corbin; cf. Mashri III.7.1.208, 484.
Cf. also the parallel passages in the Persian Partaw-nma: III.28, 2425, and V.43, 3839.

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Self-awareness without substance

5.2

Substanceless self-awareness

As we have seen, Avicenna considered self-awareness to be a potent pointer

towards the human beings existence and subsistence independent of her
body. In Avicennas metaphysics, this amounts to the view that the entity
which functions as a soul in relation to the human body is an immaterial
substance, for an entity that subsists by itself is by denition a substance.
Avicenna does not dwell on the basis of his inference at any great length,
presumably because he saw no need to reassess the foundational role of
substance in Peripatetic metaphysics and therefore considered the conclusion of the souls substantiality to be a natural outcome of its incorporeality.
This is corroborated by his summary account of the dierent kinds of
substances in the metaphysical section of the Shif:
[E]very substance either is or is not a body, and if it is not a body, either it is
a part of a body or it is not a part of a body but rather altogether separate
from bodies . . . If it is separate, it is not a part of a body, and then it either
has a connection of some governance to bodies in terms of motion, and
we call it soul, or it is free from matters in every respect, and we call it
intellect.27

Once that which functions as a soul in the human body is established to

exist as a subject that is aware of itself independently of its body, its
classication within this remarkably unequivocal metaphysical scheme is a
matter of course.28
But regardless of how innocent the move from incorporeal self-awareness
to the selfs substantiality may have seemed to Avicenna, it was questioned
by Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd in his highly original, and equally critical,
Kitb al-mutabar:
[P]eople use expressions in their conversations each according to what he
means. No one means by his expression what he does not conceive of and
grasp in his mind. No one says my soul (nafs) or your soul in a conversation to refer to anything but his self (dhtihi) or his reality (h.aqqatihi).
If he says my soul rejoices ( farih.at nafs) or your soul is suering (taallamat nafsuka), there is no dierence for him between that and his saying
I rejoice ( farih.tu) or you are suering (taallamta). Similarly, he says my
soul knows and [my soul] is ignorant as if he were saying I know or I am
ignorant there is no dierence for him between his saying my soul or my
self (dht) and his saying I (an) . . .This is the correct understanding
of peoples uttering the expression soul in their conversations. If this

27

Avicenna, Shif: al-Ilhyt II.1.10, 48.

28

Cf. also Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 125, 132133.

Substanceless self-awareness

115

expression were said against the rst two [ways of] understanding,29 it would
be said in truth which convinces them both of this understanding by argument and evidence (bi h.ujjatin wa bayn). When a human being grasps this
meaning from the expression soul, he does not thereby know whether the
soul is the entire body, or one of its internal or external parts which diers
from it in nature, or an accident in the body, or whether it is an incorporeal
substance. Rather, most of them refer by means of this expression, and use it
in their conversation to refer to a grasp of themselves (mafhmin bi aynihi),
and they do not thereby consider or think about any of that. Thus, it is
proper that this is the rst grasp of this expression, I mean the expression
soul, and according to this grasp it is evidence of existence for everyone
uttering this expression. Thus, not a single human being needs an argument
to assert the existence of his soul. Who would doubt that he exists so that this
would be shown to him by means of an argument? How could this not be the
case when according to every human being nothing is more evident than
that, I mean more evident than the existence of his self (dhtihi)? Similarly,
he does not need to be shown that another human being has a soul or
a self (nafsan ay dhtan), which is his itness (huwyatuhu) and thatness
(annyatuhu), even though he does need to be shown what his existing self
or soul is (m dhtuhu wa nafsuhu mawjda) and what another persons self
(dht) is.30

In this perspicacious analysis of common language utterances expressive

of the Avicennian phenomenon of self-awareness, Ab al-Barakt questions
the great Peripatetics claim that the connection between the incorporeal
substance of dualist psychology and the I one is constantly aware of is selfevident. Rather, he claims, no man in the street will feel compelled to
commit either to the hylomorphic theory of the soul as the enmattered form
of the body or to the dualist notion of the self as an independent entity that
acts by means of the body but does not exist in it. Although the analysis
presented in support of this claim seems to be motivated by the ambiguity
of the Arabic nafs, which is both a common language reexive noun and a
technical term in psychology, we should pay careful attention to its clear
and precise characterization of what the common language term expresses.
Ab al-Barakt states that in common use nafs signals the speakers awareness of his individual existence, that is, of the fact that he exists (his annya or
thatness) as an individual (his huwya, itness or heness) all terms that had
29

30

This is a reference to the preceding context where Ab al-Barakt has rst introduced the hylomorphic notion of soul as a form that functions as the rst perfection of a potentially living body and then
the Avicennian idea that the soul is an immaterial substance which animates the body. See Baghdd,
Mutabar: al-ilm al-t.ab VI.1, II.298300.
Baghdd, Mutabar: al-ilm al-t.ab VI.1, II.300301.

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Self-awareness without substance

gured prominently in Avicennas discussion of self-awareness.31 The target

of the critique is therefore clear: the phenomenon of self-awareness that
Avicenna appeals to, although quite uncontroversial as such, simply does
not have sucient persuasive power in regard to the question about the
proper category and correct metaphysical classication of the self. To put it
another way, the self-evidentiality and indubitability of ones existence
notwithstanding, it fails to give away what it is that exists thereby.
A similar point is raised by another critical commentator, the famous
theologian Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz, in his al-Mabh.ith al-mashriqya. The
following passages are from a chapter that addresses arguments for and
against the view that the human soul is an incorporeal substance.
Fourth, substance is a genus for what is under it, and so if the soul is a
substance, knowledge of its substantiality will be intuitive (badhyan) and
occur without acquisition, but the consequence is false, and the premise
likewise.32

This dense argument against the substantiality of the soul is based on the
Avicennian claim of the souls transparency to itself: if the soul is constantly
aware of itself, and if it is a substance when considered in itself independent
of its relation to the body, then surely it should be aware of its own
substantiality just as incontestably as it is aware of itself. However, since
substantiality is not intuitively evident in the souls awareness of itself, the
soul is not a substance.
Although the premise that the souls self-awareness does not give away its
substantiality is familiar from Ab al-Barakt, he never drew the conclusion
presented here but rather intended to make the point that the substance
dualist view requires arguments that go beyond the phenomenon of selfawareness. Rzs defence of the souls substantiality elaborates on the
distinction between self-awareness and substantiality along similar lines.
[T]he master [that is, Avicenna] has said that we only know of the soul that it
is something governing the body, but as regards the quiddity of that thing,
it is unknown, and the substance essential to that quiddity (al-jawharu
al-dhtyu li tilka al-mhya) is not grasped to be something which governs
the body, and so what constitutes it as a substance is not known to us, and
what is not known to us constitutes the substance, and therefore the
obscurity remains.
Someone may say that according to the above, my knowledge of my soul
(ilm bi nafs) does not occur by acquisition, and so either I do not know my
31
32

See, for instance, Avicenna, Talqt 160161; Shif: F al-nafs I.1, 16 Rahman; V.7, 253 Rahman.
Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.1.3, II.246.

Substanceless self-awareness

117

soul except insofar as it has a relation to my body, or I know its reality, and
the rst is false, for it has been established above that my knowledge of my
soul is prior to my knowledge of its relation to my body. Moreover, how
could this statement be sound from someone who says that my knowledge of
my soul is identical to my soul (nafsu nafs) and that it is always present
(h.dir) in act? It is amazing that someone says something like these two

statements
and then neglects their incoherence, albeit not armatively.
The sound answer is to say that substantiality is not one of the essential
things (al-umri al-dhtya), and because of that it can remain unknown as
has been shown.33

The passage begins with a paraphrase of the situation in which Avicenna

introduces the ying man in Shif: F al-nafs I.1.34 We know that the soul
exists from its action in the body it animates, but we lack information about
the entity itself that functions as a soul, that is, whether or not that entity is
an incorporeal substance independent of its relation to the body. The
counterargument that accuses Avicenna of incoherence is somewhat less
clear. The idea seems to be that the two statements that my self-awareness is
constant and that I am my self-awareness, when taken together, amount to
the claim that the self is fully transparent to itself. This, however, is in
blatant contradiction with the confession that we lack knowledge of
whether the self is a substance or not. The particularly puzzling feature in
the accusation is that it seems to all but ignore the argument of the ying
man which is precisely designed to indicate the human souls substantiality
on the basis of its awareness of itself.35 But regardless of this puzzle,
Rzs defence is unambiguous: substantiality is not self-evidently given
in self-awareness because it is accidental to the phenomenon. This is a
striking claim and an obvious departure from the Avicennian theory it
allegedly defends. Although Rzs statement seems to be instigated by
Ab al-Barakts critical insight, as well as his own materialist theory of
the human soul,36 he takes the idea a step further, for instead of merely
questioning the demonstrative force of self-awareness in the question of
33
35

36

Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.1.3, II.246247. 34 Cf. Chapter 2.1.

Perhaps the accusation is based on the epistemological status of the reminder, which is perceived to be
inferior to that of a demonstration proper. If self-awareness is as pervasive and immediate as Avicenna
claims, surely our substantiality too should be indubitable. This would be incompatible with Rzs
critique of the corresponding section of the Ishrt in his commentary (see Sharh. al-Ishrt, 121122;
for discussion, see Marmura 1991). At least some later commentators attempted to develop a logically
valid demonstration on the basis of the ying man; for an account of this process in the thirteenthcentury commentator Ibn Kammna, see Muehlethaler 2009. Later on, Mull Sadr presents his
version of the ying man as a demonstration of the souls immateriality (see Asfr IV.2.2, 47; and cf.
Chapter 7).
See Marmura 1991, 630633.

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Self-awareness without substance

substantiality, Rz expressly denies any necessary connection between selfawareness and substantiality. As a result, the phenomenon of self-awareness
is abstracted from the particular metaphysical basis of the concept of
substance.
I am not claiming that this abstraction was Rzs aim. But be that as it
may, the theoretical possibilities opened by such a conceptual move did not
pass unnoticed by Suhraward.37 Bearing in mind Suhrawards general
criticism of the concept of substance as a foundation of metaphysics, it is
not surprising to come across a critique of Avicenna along similar lines. But
particularly interesting is the manner in which Suhraward develops the
ingredients laid on the table above. Moreover, the critical argument against
the substantiality of the self-aware human being is presented in both the
comparably more Peripatetic setting of the Talwh.t and the overtly ishrq
framework of the H
ikma al-ishrq, which suggests that Suhraward considered it to be of prime importance to his departure from the tradition.
The beginning of the last, eschatological section of the Talwh.t is a
lengthy eulogy, rife with symbols, for knowledge and its soteriological
power. Much of its terminology is familiar from Suhrawards less technical
works, and it therefore signals a move away from a strictly Peripatetic
conceptual framework.38 Just before the passage below, Suhraward has
praised a group of thinkers he characterizes as the people of wisdom,
seemingly a reference to representatives of the Peripatetic philosophical
tradition that has been the object of study for the preceding sections of
the book, for having revealed the most important doctrines concerning the
worlds origination from and return to its Creator, that is, the principles of
the knowledge required for human perfection. However, he then adds a
point he has qualms about.
You have made the greatest destination evident by the clearest argument . . .
were it not for one word here, namely that I was separated by myself
(tajarradtu bi dht), gazed into it and found it to be thatness and existence,
and it was added to not be in a subject which is like a description of
substantiality and [to have] relations to the body which is a description of
soulness. Regarding the relations, I found them external to it, and regarding
37

38

I do not claim that the following discussion in Suhraward derives from this particular work by his
contemporary Rz, whom he certainly knew, for both had studied theology and philosophy with
Majd al-Dn al-Jl (Walbridge 2005, 201). It is perfectly possible that Rz and Suhraward had a
common source, or that both were addressing a topic pertinent to the twelfth-century reception of
Avicenna. For a brief but lucid characterization of this crucial period, see Eichner 2011, 117119.
Talwh.t III.5.111, 276279 Habb; 105110 Corbin. Chapter 10 is especially interesting because it
speaks of isolation or retreat into oneself from externally caused appearances in order to reach a higher
type of knowledge, and thereby paves the way for our passage in chapter 15.

Substanceless self-awareness

119

its not being in a subject, it is something negative. If substantiality has

another meaning, I did not come across it, whereas I did come across my self
and was not absent from it (uh.as..silu dht wa an ghayru ghibin anh), and
it did not have a dierence (fas.l), and so I know it by the very non-existence
of my absence from it (uarifah bi nafsi adami ghaybat anh). If it had a
dierence or a property (khus.s.ya) beyond existence, I would have apprehended them when I apprehended it, for nothing is closer to me than me,
and upon analysis I only see in myself (f dht) existence and apprehension,
nothing else. [That] is distinct from another through accidents, and apprehension is as has been [explained] above, and so only existence remains.
Furthermore, if apprehension is supposed to have an acquired grasp against
what has been said it will be apprehension of something, and [my self] is
not constituted by an apprehension of itself (bi idrki nafsih) since it [that is,
the apprehension] would be after [the self] (huwa baada nafsih), nor by an
apprehension of another since that is not concomitant to it. Preparedness
for apprehension is accidental, and anyone who apprehends himself
under the concept I (man adraka dhtahu al mafhmi an) will not nd
upon analysis and inspection anything but existence that apprehends itself
(nafsahu), and he is it. The concept of I as the concept of I (mafhmu an min
h.aythu mafhmu an) as far as it is common to both the Necessary and
others is that it is something which apprehends itself (dhtahu). Thus, if I
had a reality other than this, the concept I would be accidental to it, and so I
would apprehend the accidental due to my not being absent from it while
being absent from myself (aknu an udriku al-aradya li adami ghaybat
anhu wa ghibtu an dht), and that is absurd. Thus, I judge that my quiddity
is identical with existence, and my quiddity in the intellect is not divisible
into two things, with the exception of negative things which have been
given existential names and relations.39

Suhraward has no objections to the Avicennian phenomenon of selfawareness; his qualms are exclusive to the added qualications that the self is
not in a subject (that is, that it is an incorporeal substance) and that it has
relations to the body (that is, that it is a soul). The latter qualication is
quickly done away with as something unessential to the self, which of course
is not adverse to Avicenna who applied self-awareness precisely to point
towards the existence in itself of the entity that functions as a soul in relation
to the body. The rejection of the selfs substantiality, on the other hand, is
motivated by a metaphysical departure from Avicenna. Since substantiality
can only be dened negatively as not being in a subject, it depends on a
mind that is capable of negating a property of its object. As a negative
property, substantiality is not a real feature of the object considered
39

Talwh.t III.5.15, 282283 Habb; 115116 Corbin.

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Self-awareness without substance

anymore than a dog that I presently distinguish from being human is

constituted by this perceived non-humanity.40 The dogs constitutive features are independent of what is specic to human beings, and although
they entail the negative property of non-humanity, this entailment can be
made actual only by a mind that is distinct from the real particular dogness.
Notice that Suhraward applies the argument found in Ab al-Barakt
and Rz substantiality is not evident in self-awareness in a new systematic framework. Substantiality is no longer merely accidental to selfawareness. As a negative property it is not even an accident but something
imported to the primitive phenomenon of self-awareness in a consideration
that is external to it. Suhrawards point in accentuating this critical departure from Avicenna is brought out by his additional consideration of selfawareness as mere apprehension and existence, that is, separated from any
substance whose apprehension and existence would be at stake. Even as
such a bare actuality, apprehension is found problematic. This is rst and
foremost because apprehension entails a relation to what is apprehended.
There is no apprehension absolutely speaking, because apprehension must
always be realized (made distinct from another) by its content, whereas
self-awareness is characterized in the arguments discussed above as lacking
any specic content. Interestingly, however, Suhraward grants the target
of his argument the benet of the doubt by considering the possibility
that self-awareness is due to an acquired content (mafhmun muh.as..sal, or
acquired grasp) of something specic to the self.41 This is refuted by means
of a very condensed version of the Avicennian argument against reectionbased models of self-awareness: the apprehension of the content specic to
the apprehending subject must be subsequent to the subject, for the subject
can recognize the content as itself only by means of a prior familiarity with
herself. Finally, Suhraward considers, albeit in a rather condensed argument, the special case of the rst-person indexical I as a concept specic to
the self-aware subject. While self-awareness in the primitive sense (as
existence that apprehends itself) does provide the reference to this concept,
it cannot be brought about by the concept, because our explicit use of the
rst-personal indexical, both in speech and in thought, is intermittent and
hence accidental to our existence. Consideration of a concept in the absence
of reference is consideration of a mere concept, and if the concept I has no
40
41

For a more detailed account of Suhrawards critique of the Peripatetic concept of substance, see
Chapter 6.2, 142144.
This is exactly parallel to Avicennas rhetorical manner of procedure in Ishrt, namat. 3, 120; see
Chapter 4.1, 7275.

Substanceless self-awareness

121

primitive self-awareness as its basis,42 then in my use of it I will apprehend

something that is accidental to myself without apprehending myself.
Suhraward clearly thinks he has the weight of the epistemological tradition
and common sense behind him when he declares the view as absurd.
Thus, this series of remarks connects a familiar Avicennian argument
for the immediacy of self-awareness to a decidedly un-Avicennian view of
the metaphysics underlying the phenomenon. Self-awareness is no longer
the existence of a substantial self but merely a certain type of existence, an
existence that apprehends itself, which does not belong to any entity
distinct from it. The rst-personality that Avicenna carefully delimited as
the existence of a certain type of existent is now divested of that existent.
That these remarks amount to Suhrawards nal take in the discussion of
self-awareness is corroborated by the emergence of a very similar argument
in the H
ikma al-ishrq, right at the heart of a section in which self-awareness
is cast in an entirely new theoretical role. Having emphasized the immediacy of self-awareness by the familiar method of separating it from all possible
objects of cognition, including ones own body, he goes on to consider the
case of substantiality.
If substantiality is the perfection of [the selfs] quiddity or is taken to mean
the denial of a subject or a substrate, it is nothing independent that your self
could be identical to (laysat bi amrin mustaqillin takna dhtuh nafsuh
hiya). If substantiality is taken to be an unknown meaning (man) and if you
apprehend yourself continually and not by means of something additional,
then this substantiality, which is absent from you, is neither your self
as a whole (kulla dhtika) nor a part of your self (juza dhtika). On close
examination you will not nd anything by means of which you are you43
except something that apprehends itself (shayan mudrikan li dhtihi):
this is your I-ness (anyatuka). Everything that apprehends itself and its
I-ness (kullu man adraka dhtahu wa anyatahu) shares this with you.
Apprehensiveness (al-mudrikya), therefore, is not by means of an attribute
or anything additional, whatever it is like. It is not a part of your I-ness, since
the other part would then remain unknown as long as it remains beyond
apprehensiveness and being aware (al-shirya), and so it would be unknown
and would not belong to your self whose awareness is not additional to it
(l yakna min dhtika allat shuruh lam yazid alayh). Thus, it is evident

42
43

Cf. Talwh.t III.3.1, 239 Habb, 7071 Corbin, where Suhraward describes the concept I as a
commonplace universal.
I read m anta bihi anta with Corbin instead of the rather awkward m an bihi anta in Walbridge and
Ziai. The latter may be a typographical error, for Walbridge and Ziais translation accords with
Corbins reading.

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Self-awareness without substance

in this way that thingness is not added to being aware either, and so it44
appears to itself by itself (huwa al-z hiru li nafsihi bi nafsihi), and there is no
property with it so that appearing (al-z uhr) would be its state. Rather, it is
that which appears itself (huwa nafsu al-z hir), nothing else.45

The argument is familiar from the Talwh.t. If substantiality merely

indicates that the attributee is not in a subject, it is a negative property and
therefore nothing that can be found in reality independent of the act of
attribution. If, on the other hand, we suppose substantiality to be a real
property of ourselves, we come across Ab al-Barakts observation that the
souls substantiality is simply not given in the experience of a self-aware
subject. When people refer to themselves by means of rst-person indexicals
and related expressions, they do not intend to commit to any ontological
theory of their selves. All they do is point out that they are aware of themselves,
and that is what Suhraward urges the philosopher to settle with as well.
Earlier on in the metaphysical section of the H
ikma al-ishrq, Suhraward
has allowed for a certain qualied use of the concept of substance. This is in
the case of corporeal entities, which owing to the strictures of their material
constitution can never appear completely or in their entirety. For a simple
example, I cannot see the underside of the table on which I write unless I bend
down to look at the table from below, but this will in turn rob me of the view
of its upper surface. Yet in spite of all surfaces of the table never appearing
simultaneously, it seems intuitively plausible to attribute them all to a
single thing as its simultaneous aspects. This opacity or darkness (z ulma)
of corporeal things can be overcome by means of the concept of substance to
which the dierent aspects can be attributed. It is important to notice that the
concept of substance is fundamentally linked to this opacity in the H
ikma
al-ishrq, where Suhraward constantly uses the conjunctive formula dusky
substance (jawhar ghsiq), and that substantiality is added in intellectual
consideration and never appears as such.46
But when it comes to my presence to myself, we are dealing with full
and constant transparency, which bereaves us of all reasons to attribute
substantiality to ourselves nothing hidden is required for understanding
self-awareness. As a parallel conceptual move Suhraward also denies that
self-awareness is a property, or even existence, that belongs to a thing. By
denying thingness (shayya) of self-awareness thingness being one of the
44
45
46

It is not obvious what the masculine third-personal pronoun refers to here. I take the reference to be
to everything that apprehends itself and its I-ness two sentences earlier.
H
I II.1.5.116, 8081 Walbridge and Ziai; 112113 Corbin; cf. II.1.5.118119, 8182 Walbridge and Ziai;
114115 Corbin.
H
I II.1.34, 7779 Walbridge and Ziai; 107110 Corbin.

Substanceless self-awareness

123

most general concepts in Avicennas metaphysics47 Suhraward denies the

viability of all metaphysical accounts of the phenomenon, beyond mere
ostension and naming, for if the self-aware subject cannot even be said to be
a thing, we can hardly expect to reach very far in attempting to dene what
kind of thing it is. Moreover, slightly later in the same section Suhraward
argues against the view that self-awareness, like any act of intellection, could
be explained by means of the incorporeality of its subject,48 which amounts
to a rejection of another explanatory feature in Avicennas approach to selfawareness.
As the outcome of these critical remarks Suhraward concludes that selfawareness is self-awareness, period. It is not a property of any thing, not even
a mode of existence, which could yield it to alternative metaphysical
accounts. All we can do, and should even aspire to, is point towards it in
an analytical description of our experience. But such a description will
merely pick out something that is immediately obvious to us. Once it has
been so picked out, it can be named but it can never be dened or explained
by means of anything more basic or better known.
Suhraward had a reason for rejecting both the inference from selfawareness to the substantiality of the human soul and the idea that
self-awareness is denable or explainable in any way. As we will see, he
resorts to the phenomenon of primitive self-awareness in giving content to
the foundational notion of his metaphysics, that of pure incorporeal light,
and for this purpose substantiality would be quite superuous, indeed
potentially problematic. Moreover, the simultaneous obviousness and
undenability of self-awareness provides Suhraward with a foundational
type of knowledge, on which he builds his revisionist concept of knowledge
as presence.
47
48

For this status of thingness, see Avicenna, Shif: al-Ilhyt I.5, 2229.
H
I II.1.5.119, 8283 Walbridge and Ziai; 114116 Corbin. Suhrawards somewhat sophistical argument is based on the idea that prime matter is also incorporeal in the sense that it is not determined
into discrete bodies. Thus, if self-awareness is due to incorporeality, prime matter will also be aware of
itself. Since the conclusion is absurd, we must reject the explanatory connection between selfawareness and incorporeality.

chapter 6

Self-awareness, presence, appearance:

the ishrq context

In spite of his major debt to Avicennas philosophy, Suhraward departs

from his predecessor in two interrelated questions of fundamental importance. The rst of these concerns the foundation of epistemology: what in
the nal analysis is primarily known, epistemologically primitive and foundational, and therefore the basis of our knowledge? The second question
penetrates the corresponding foundation of metaphysics: what in the nal
analysis is primarily there, metaphysically primitive and foundational, or, in
Aristotelian terms, the primary sense of the verb to be?
Interestingly for our topic, self-awareness functions in a most prominent
role in the articulation of the Suhrawardian alternative in both of the two
questions. The epistemological point is stated most explicitly in the Talwh.t
and the Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t, that is, in those of Suhrawards philosophical works that are considered Peripatetic in comparison to the fullblown illuminationism of the H
ikma al-ishrq. In fact, the positive treatment
of the concept of knowledge in the latter is relatively scant, the focus being
instead on the metaphysical question. The presence of its overarching terminology shows, however, that the concept of knowledge articulated in the two
systematically prior works is preliminary to illuminationist metaphysics.
One can therefore speculate upon the argumentative order between the two
departures and say that the concept of knowledge as presence is a condition of
the concept of being as appearance in much the same way as the general
account of being comes after indeed much later than the theory of science
in the structure of the Peripatetic system. This would tally neatly with
Suhrawards own advice to study his philosophical treatises in an order
1
culminating in the H
ikma al-ishrq. Systematically speaking, however, it
seems more natural to conceive of the two as fundamentally interdependent.
Indeed, it does not seem to be a coincidence that Suhrawards metaphysics
hinges on the concept of appearance (z uhr), derived from a term
1

See Mashri III, muqaddama, 194 Corbin; cf. Ziai 1990, 911, 1419.

124

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

125

with a primarily epistemic meaning, whereas the corresponding epistemology

is based on the concept of presence (h.udr), a term with existential

connotations.2

6.1

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

Although the Talwh.t follows a rather traditional Peripatetic order of

procedure, Suhraward introduces the notion of knowledge as presence
neither in the sections devoted to the theory of science nor in those
discussing cognitive psychology. Rather, it is only towards the end of the
third, metaphysical part, when tackling the problem of Gods knowledge,
that he has recourse to the term and the idea behind it. The term gures
systematically only in the enigmatic passage in which Suhraward recounts
how Aristotle, as an emphatically mythical gure, appears to him in a
dreamlike vision after he had exhausted himself labouring with the question of knowledge.3
Much has been written about this passage, but few writers have paid close
attention to its context. Two observations in particular are quite crucial for a
full comprehension of why and in what sense Suhraward introduces the
concept of presence here. First of all, the passage is embedded in the
metaphysical discussion of God, the particular explanandum being Gods
knowledge of particular things.4 Secondly, this section of Talwh.t shows
considerable similarities with the way in which self-awareness gures in the
discussion of Gods knowledge in Avicennas Talqt.
Before introducing the appearance of Aristotle, Suhraward briey
reviews the problems in some of the available alternatives for making
sense of knowledge in general and of Gods knowledge in particular. He
rst argues against the identity theory of knowledge in a manner that is
entirely derivative of Avicenna.5 But he also has qualms with Avicennas
own theory, according to which cognitive forms inhere in the knowing
subject, universal forms in an intellectual subject, and particular forms in
a corporeal organ of perception.6 According to the standard Avicennian
phrase, God knows particular things in a universal manner, which is often
2
3
4
5
6

The rest of this chapter is a rened adaptation of Kaukua 2013 and 2011, respectively.
Talwh.t III.3.1, 238239 Habb; 70 Corbin.
This observation is somewhat controversial; I will discuss Eichners (2011) alternative interpretation
below.
Talwh.t III.3.1, 237238 Habb; 6869 Corbin. Cf. Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240
Rahman.
Eichner 2011 (119127) shows that the problems Suhraward raises were commonplace in the twelfthcentury reception of Avicennian epistemology.

126

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

qualied by saying that He knows His creation by knowing Himself as its

cause.7 The universality of Gods knowledge is due to His immateriality,
which entails that He is a subject of intellection and that therefore the
proper objects of His knowledge are universal.8 The equivalence of immateriality and intellectuality is explicitly borne out in Avicennas discussion
of human access to particulars in Shif: al-Madkhal I.12.9 Given that the
human soul is intellectual, the manner of cognition proper to it is the
apprehension of universals, and so as an intellect, like God, it only has
access to particular entities in a universal manner. For instance, I can only
know my friend Zayd as a human being with a particular complexion,
build, gait, humoral character and so forth with as many other universal
attributes as I like to add. But the problem is that the Zayd that I thereby
grasp is not a particular person but a bundle of universal properties which
can in principle be shared by individuals other than Zayd. Yet I nd it
intuitively plausible that my friend is a unique person whose individuality
cannot be reduced to the accidental fact that there happen to be no other
human beings with the exact same bundle of properties. The problem
Suhraward seems to perceive here is that I am somehow certain that
I apprehend an individual in this strong sense and that our theory of
knowledge should be able to save this intuition.10
But Avicenna did propose a solution to the dilemma: human beings are
not merely intellects but also souls that function in and engage with the
material world by means of corporeal instruments proper to them. Thus,
their faculties of sense perception allow them an ostensive reference to the
unique spatiotemporal co-ordinates which are the foundation of the individuality of material entities. The person I am conversing with can be
none other than my friend Zayd because I perceive him as this individual
here right now.11 Now, Suhraward is perfectly aware of this attempt at a
solution.12 Why does he nd it unsatisfactory?
It has recently been suggested that this is because of problems related to
Avicennas substance dualism, more precisely his inability to make lucid
sense of the relation between the immaterial human substance and its
body.13 Since the case is exclusively epistemological here, the relevant
7

For the relevant texts and discussion, see Marmura 1962 and Adamson 2005.
For this traditional tenet in Avicenna, see Adamson 2011a.
9
Avicenna, Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, 70; cf. Chapter 3.1, 4850.
10
Talwh.t III.3.1, 237238 Habb, 69 Corbin; for discussion, see Eichner 2011, 129.
11
Avicenna, Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, 70; cf. Ishrt, nahj 1, 56. For discussion, see Black 2012 and
Eichner 2011, 130.
12
Talwh.t I.1.4, 8 Habb; cf. Eichner 2011, 129. 13 Eichner 2011, 135136.
8

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

127

aspect of the mindbody relation is of course how a material process in the

organs of perception can cause an immaterial appearance of a particular object
in a cognitive subject that is designed to apprehend universal objects. Merely
stating that the organs are causally related to particular things does not explain
how those things can be given as appearances to the soul.
Although this problem is a real one for any substance dualist, it is dicult
to see how Suhrawards proposed solution could meet with any greater
success. I will revisit this point once we have a clearer idea of what
the concept of knowledge as presence is about, but let it now be said that
I believe a rather dierent motive for Suhrawards dissatisfaction emerges
from the context of discussion. Two conditions are relevant here. First of all,
since God is absolutely one, His knowledge of Himself and the world of His
creation cannot be two pieces of knowledge in Him. Secondly, since God is
the supreme knower, He has to somehow know the world lest there be any
deciency to His knowledge.14 As a result, Suhraward needs a concept of
knowledge that is capable of making sense of a subjects simultaneous
knowledge both of itself and other objects, and allows for both particular
and universal objects to be given to the same subject. Avicennas theory of
knowledge, because it is based on the inherence of cognitive forms in the
knowing subject and makes the apprehension of particular objects conditional to a relation to matter, fails on both accounts as an explanation of
Gods knowledge. This is why Suhraward attempts to carve the conceptual
map anew by means of the notion of knowledge as presence.
In fact, it is precisely in the solution of the problem of how to account for
the possibility of an immaterial subject apprehending particular objects that
Aristotle comes to help Suhraward:
[a] So he said to me: Return to yourself (irja il nafsika), and it will be
solved for you.
I said: How?
And he said: You apprehend yourself, and your apprehension of yourself is
either by yourself or by means of another (innaka mudrikun li nafsika, fa
idrkuka li dhtika bi dhtika aw ghayrih), but then you would have
another faculty or self that apprehends yourself (dhtun tadruku
dhtaka), and the discussion would revert, and so its absurdity is evident.
[b] Since you apprehend yourself by yourself (adrakta dhtaka bi
dhtika), is that by considering a trace of yourself in your self (bi
itibri atharin li dhtika f dhtika)?
I said: Of course.
14

For these conditions, see the discussion immediately following the account of Aristotles appearance,
especially Talwh.t III.3.1, 244245 Habb; 7576 Corbin.

128

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

He said: Then if the trace does not correspond to your self (dhtaka),
it will not be its form, and you will not apprehend [your self].
I said: Thus, the trace is the form of my self (dht)?
He said: Is your form of an absolute soul or one individuated by other
attributes?
And I opted for the second.
So he said: Every form in the soul is universal even if it were
composed of many universals and it does not prevent participation in
itself; if it is supposed to be prevented, that is due to another preventing
[factor]. You apprehend yourself (anta mudriku dhtika), and it prevents
participation in itself, and so this apprehension is not of form.
So I said: I apprehend the concept I (udriku mafhma an).
And he said: The concept I as the concept of I does not prevent
participation from occurring in it, and you know that the particular,
insofar as it is nothing but a particular, is universal; this, I, we and
he have universal intelligible meanings with respect to their separate
concepts without particular reference.
So I said: How then?
He said: Since your knowledge of yourself (ilmuka bi dhtika) is not
by means of any faculty other than your self (dhtika) and you know that
you are nothing but the one apprehending your self (anta al-mudriku li
dhtika l ghayr), not by a trace that does not correspond and not by one
that does, your self (dhtuka) is an intellect, that which understands and
that which is understood.15

Aristotle relies on the indubitable phenomenon of self-awareness in an

extended argument against the validity of the impression theory of knowledge
as an account of our apprehension of particular things such as ourselves. He
begins in section [a] by countering the view that self-apprehension is by means
of something apart from the self that apprehends and is apprehended. The
argument is a condensed version of the familiar refutation of reection-based
models of self-awareness, construed here as a regress argument: if awareness of a
special object is supposed to render me aware of myself, then I must somehow
recognize the other as myself, which forces us again to face the question of
whether this recognition is due to the same self being both that which
apprehends and that which is apprehended or due to a further special object.
Since the regress must be ceased at the earliest possible stage, the thesis that selfawareness is by means of a special object distinct from the self can be ruled out.
Section [b] addresses the possibility that although self-awareness is
due to the self instead of any distinct object, it should be explained by a
special feature in the self, such as a trace or a form, that is caused by and
corresponds to the self. Here we come across the concern extrapolated
15

Talwh.t III.3.1, 239240 Habb; 7071 Corbin.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

129

above. Since the soul is immaterial, all forms in it will be universal. Thus, if
I were aware of myself by means of an impression of the form of myself,
I would be aware of something universal, and this has to be rejected in the
face of my intuitive certainty of my uniqueness as an individual. Along lines
familiar from his denial of the selfs substantiality, Suhraward also suggests
that self-awareness is induced by an apprehension of the rst-person indexical, but Aristotle cogently argues that theres nothing individual in the
concept I when taken alone as a concept. All subjects of experience share in
being an I, and although the concept expresses in each case an inherently
individual selfs awareness of itself, as a point of reference this awareness is
prior to the concept.
Thus, self-awareness is presented here as a paradigmatic example of
knowledge that cannot be explained as a case of the inherence of what is
known in the knower. As we know, this is something Avicenna would have
agreed with. However, as we have also learned, Avicenna was ill at ease in his
attempts to articulate the cognitive category proper to self-awareness. This
tension in Avicennian cognitive psychology is increased by further phenomena that the mythical Aristotle introduces to Suhraward. The rst of these
is our constant awareness of our bodies as being unique to ourselves.
Thus, our awareness of them cannot be due to a universal form of the
body inherent in us.16 Further corroboration for the claim that we must be
aware of individual objects is provided by a brief excursion into Avicennian
faculty psychology and its account of discursive thought by means of the
system of internal senses. The human faculty of thought (mufakkira) can
only operate by means of particular objects of cognition, which Suhraward
considers especially problematic because thought plays an indispensable
role in the acquisition of the universal objects of intellection proper to the
immaterial subject of cognition. Were it not for this faculty, we could never
abstract from the particular features of our percepts, nor could we arrange
acquired propositions into syllogisms that render us capable of understanding new propositions as their conclusions. Thus, Avicennian epistemology
itself requires that we are aware of both universal and particular objects.
Finally, Suhrawards Aristotle suggests that we are indubitably aware of the
activity of our internal senses in such processes of thought, and this awareness is something that none of these faculties is capable of, for since they
act through a corporeal organ, they cannot establish a transparent relation
to themselves. On the other hand, if the incorporeal self only knows by
16

Talwh.t III.3.1, 240 Habb; 71 Corbin. Suhraward uses the expression l taghbu anhu (you are not
absent from it) of the body, indicating thereby his concept of knowledge as presence.

130

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

means of universal forms inhering in it, it cannot grasp this particular

activity either.17 The unstated conclusion is that a new concept of knowledge is direly needed.
Having dealt with these phenomena as so many problems for the
impression theory of knowledge, Aristotle moves on to present a new
positive denition:
[c] He said: Since you know that [the soul] apprehends neither by means of a
corresponding trace nor by means of a form, know that intellection is the
presence of the thing to a self (al-dht) separate from matter, or if you like,
you can say: [the things] not being absent from [the self]. This is more
complete because it includes the apprehension of something of both itself
(li dhtihi) and another, for the thing is not present to itself, but it is not
absent from [itself] either (al-shayu l yah.duru li nafsihi wa lkinna l
and not absent from itself
yaghbu anh). As regards the soul, it is separate
(ghayru ghibatin an dhtih), and in accordance with its separation it
apprehends itself (dhtah) and what is absent from it, which when it is
not made present to [the soul] in concrete (aynihi), such as heaven, earth and
their kind, [the soul] makes present its form. As regards particulars, they are
in faculties that are present to [the soul], and as regards universals, they are in
[the soul] itself (f dhtih), for among those that are apprehended the
universal is not impressed in bodies, and what is apprehended is the very
form that is present, nothing external to conception. If it is said of the
external that it is apprehended, that is in a secondary sense. [The souls] self is
not absent from itself (dhtuh ghayru ghibin an dhtih), nor is its body
[absent from the soul] in any regard whatsoever, nor are any faculties
apprehending its body [absent from the soul] in any regard whatsoever.18

At the outset, knowledge is dened as the presence of what is known to

the knower, and so it is contrasted with the Avicennian theory based on
the inherence of a representation or form of what is known in the knower.
The notion of presence is then rephrased by means of a semantic double
negation as the known objects not being absent from the knower. The
latter denition is stated to be more appropriate because it is inclusive of
both self-awareness and the awareness of other objects, which suggests
that presence is a special case of the non-existence of absence. All objects
of cognition, whether universal or particular, as well as the cognitive
capacities of the subject that is aware of them, are known by the subject
through their presence to her. Since they are present to the subject, by
denition they cannot be absent from her. On the contrary, the subjects
17
18

Talwh.t III.3.1, 240 Habb; 71 Corbin.

Talwh.t III.3.1, 240241 Habb; 7172 Corbin; cf. Mashri III.7.1, 487.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

131

awareness of herself is not due to presence, for presence being characteristic

of objects, nothing can be present to itself, but the subject is not absent from
herself either, and in this latter sense her self-awareness can also be spoken of
as knowledge. Thus, it seems that knowledge in the more specic sense
of presence means being an object of knowledge for a subject, or, to use a
Suhrawardian expression, an it that appears for an I. The non-existence of
absence on the other hand seems to be a more vague phrase for simply being
given as a matter of experience, appearing either as an it or as an I.
Suhrawards epistemological use of the concept of presence is not unique
in the twelfth-century reception of Avicenna. Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz applies
the term profusely in al-Mabh.ith al-mashriqya19 and especially in the
summary of Avicennas Ishrt known as the Lubb al-Ishrt.20 In the
latter work, Rz begins the section on cognitive psychology by a denition
of apprehension (idrk) in terms of presence: Apprehension amounts to the
presence of the form of what one is aware of in the one that is aware (h.udru

21
.srati al-mashri bihi f al-shir). The notion of presence is then used to
argue for a mental mode of existence for the immediate objects of knowledge that is independent of whether anything corresponds to them in
extramental reality. Later on in the same section, in presenting an argument
for the existence of the holy faculty (al-quwwatu al-qudsya),22 Rz equivocates between presence and awareness:
When we have apprehended an intellectual form and then forgotten it, it is
said that after forgetting that form either is or is not present in our souls. The
rst is impossible, because if it were present in our souls, one would be aware
of it (law knat h.diratan f nufsin la knat mashran bihi), for there is no

other meaning of awareness

than that very presence (l man li al-shuri ill
nafsu dhlika al-h.udr).23

Rz here refutes the existence of intellectual memory and then explains the
empirical fact that we do recall matters of understanding by means of a
renewed connection to the active intellect. The holy faculty, around which
the argument as a whole revolves, is then dened as the spontaneity of such
a connection. Our interest, however, lies in the connection of awareness to
presence. If the argument against intellectual memory is to hold, my being
19
20
22

23

Cf. Rz, Mabh.ith II.1.2.3.1.3, I.444; and see Eichner 2011, 126127.
See, for instance, Rz, Lubb, namat. 3, 2, 235242. 21 Rz, Lubb, namat. 3, 2, 235.
This is a paraphrase of Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 127. The holy faculty is the rare human capacity of
connecting to the active intellect spontaneously, without recourse to learning or discursive thought.
Avicennas explanation of prophecy hinges on this capacity; cf. Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.6,
248250 Rahman.
Rz, Lubb, namat. 3, 2, 239.

132

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

aware of an object must mean that the object appears to me as an object of

my actual consideration, for were that not the case, it is dicult to see what
the intuitive evidence could be which Rz here clearly relies on. Thus, both
awareness and presence entail that something is experientially given.
Rz does not dene knowledge as presence that is a uniquely
Suhrawardian move but his way of characterizing the term corroborates
the interpretation according to which Suhrawards concept of presence is
designed to focus on knowledge as a matter of experience. We are intuitively
certain that we have experience of individual entities, or to put it another
way, that such entities are experientially present to us, and in this sense it
makes sense to say that we know them. As is suggested by the strong reliance
on intuitive certainty in the discussion leading to section [c], Suhraward
thinks that it should not, indeed cannot, be explained away in the face of
problems that are due to the Avicennian combination of substance dualism
and the inherence theory of knowledge. Diametrically opposed to Avicenna
in this regard, Suhraward takes his cue from this intuitive certainty and is
determined to make room for it in his concept of knowledge. His method of
procedure thereby all but neglects the entire question of truth, absolutely
crucial to all normative concepts of knowledge. The question of the correspondence between the experiential presence of what is known and its
extramental existence is set aside by the simple statement that it is subsequent to presence. Only once something is present to me in experience can I
begin to consider the question of whether anything like what is present
exists without my experience.24
But why would one want to design a concept of knowledge shorn of this
normative dimension? As I stated in the beginning of this section, the entire
appearance of Aristotle is embedded in a theological context, and it is
thereby motivated by the task of explaining how, or in what sense, God
can be said to know His creation, constituted as it is by an innite number
of individual entities, in spite of the fact that He is absolutely one in a
manner that our conception of His knowledge must not violate. In view of
this aim, it is not relevant to consider the dierence between truth and
falsity in human knowledge. In the Peripatetic framework, this dierence is
dealt with naturalistically in terms of a psychological account of how
knowledge comes to be, and Suhraward has related a standard, if somewhat
simplied, Avicennian version of such an account earlier on in the
Talwh.t.25 But if one is to explain Gods knowledge by means of its
24
25

This is pointed out by Hairi Yazdi 1992, 4447.

Talwh.t II.4.2, 151154 Habb; II.4.3.12, 157166 Habb.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

133

similarities to the more readily available phenomenon of human knowledge,

one will want to focus on aspects common to the two. From this point of
view, questions of truth and falsity and the peculiarities of human cognitive
psychology are not merely irrelevant but downright counterproductive.
Moreover, Suhrawards criticism of Avicenna is dicult to grasp without
assuming a shift of approach of the sort I have described. As Heidrun
Eichner has suggested, Avicennas account of intellection and universals
houses a conict of theoretical interests between logic and psychology.26 If
intellects are conned to the exclusive apprehension of universals, as the
case is made in logic, then Avicenna will run into seemingly insurmountable
problems in his psychological account of the apprehension of particular
things by human subjects, who because of their immateriality are intellects
by denition. However, pace Eichner, I do not believe that this incoherence
is Suhrawards target here, for were that the case, it would be hard to avoid
a rather grim assessment of his philosophical acumen. Why should
Suhrawards solution that particulars are present to the immaterial self
by means of the presence of its corporeal faculties of cognition be any less
obscure or problematic than that of Avicenna? In fact, isnt his alleged
solution a mere paraphrase of the Avicennian constituents of the problem?
Corporeal faculties will still be required for human awareness of particulars.
But if the point is to clear conceptual room for the knowledge of particulars
in absolute terms, that is, including the special case of God and departing
from the connections between immateriality, intellection and universality
on the one hand and materiality, perception and particularity on the other,
then Suhrawards move appears much sounder. The concept of knowledge
as presence performs this task by focusing on the givenness or appearance of
what is known, entirely setting aside questions about the manner in which
the appearance is brought about. This shared basis of givenness, appearance
or presence allows Suhraward to use ordinary human knowledge, with its
simultaneous apprehension of the knowing self and the objects known, as a
means of elucidating Gods knowledge.
In the above, I have claimed that Suhraward builds his concept of
knowledge as presence on the phenomenon of self-awareness he inherits
from Avicenna. But how precisely is self-awareness foundational in the
crucial section [c]? Is it not simply one type of knowledge among others
that the new concept is inclusive of? To answer this question, it is important
to notice that the enumerated types of non-existence of absence are hierarchically ordered. The selfs not being absent to itself is the basis for the
26

Eichner 2011, 130131.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

presence of its faculties to itself, and it is only by means of the faculties that
the objects of the selfs operations can be present to it.27 A natural way of
interpreting this is to say that my body, the corporeal faculties of cognition
and the objects of their activity are present to me by entering my experience,
that is, by entering the eld of presence opened by my self-awareness, or by
my not being absent from myself. In other words, presence only means
being given for a rst-personal subject or appearing to a subject that exists in
the rst person. I admit that this interpretation requires reading quite a bit
between the lines of the dense section [c] above, but it helps us to see how
Suhraward could have expected the concept of knowledge as presence to
avoid the contradiction between Gods absolute unity and the multiplicity
introduced by the world of particular creatures as the object of His knowledge. Moreover, this aspect of the concept of knowledge as presence is
laid out in a more extended fashion in a parallel chapter of the Mashri wa
al-mut.rah.t.
The chapter in question is the rst of the seventh mashra in the
metaphysical section of the book, and it is devoted to the task of explaining
the apprehension and knowledge of the Necessary Existent and those that
are separate. Just as in the Talwh.t, Suhraward begins by arguing against
the identity theory of knowledge, this time applying the permanence of selfawareness in an interesting argument which we have already analysed.28 He
then proceeds to refute in passing, referring to a discussion earlier on in the
book, the theory according to which knowledge amounts to a union with
the active intellect. Following this section, he addresses an argument for the
self-awareness of any immaterial entity, which he attributes somewhat
enigmatically to people . . . who are stronger in investigation than those
proposing the union with the active intellect. These people
have set a premise within the question of knowledge. Thus, they have
established a principle that what is separate must apprehend itself (anna
al-mufraqa yajibu an yakna mudrikan li dhtihi) which is that whatever is
understood has a subsisting essence (dht), the existence of which outside the
mind is like its existence in the mind, that is, separate from matter. Thus,
when it is understood, its form can be connected to another intelligible in the
soul, and as a result it is understood along with another thing. Since its
27

28

Cf. Mashri III.7.1, 487. A parallel hierarchy is put forth in the account of Gods knowledge later on
in the Talwh.t: God is primarily aware of (or not absent from) Himself, but this entails the
simultaneous presence of His concomitants in a descending order from the celestial intellects to
the celestial souls, and subsequently to whatever takes place under their guidance below them
(Talwh.t III.3.2, 244245 Habb; 7576 Corbin).
Cf. Mashri III.7.1, 474475; and see Chapter 5.1, 111.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

135

essence, as its form, is not surrounded by material accidents, its quiddity can
be connected to an intellectual form, and so it can be rendered understood. If
intellection were impossible for substance and what is impossible in the
genus of its nature is impossible in the species self-apprehension (idrku
dhtihi) would not be possible for any substance, and that is not the case.
Since the intellection of an intellectual form is not impossible for it, the
intellection of that form entails that it understands itself (yaaqila dhtahu).
Thus, that which understands something is to understand that it is that
which understands (lahu an yaaqila annahu huwa alladh yaaqila). Since
this thing is such that it is actual in every respect, what is not impossible for it
is not possible for it as a non-occurring possibility, rather it must have
necessity through itself (bi dhtihi) or through another in some things,
such as the intellects. Thus, whatever is understood has an essence (dht)
that is separate from matter and subsists by itself (bi nafsih), and it understands itself (dhtahu) and another.29

This particular version of the argument derives from Avicenna,30 but as

such it expresses a view with a much longer history according to which the
existence proper to an intellect entails self-intellection. Suhraward, however, does not accept the argument, based as it is on the idea of the inherence
of the known form in the knowing subject. His main problem is that God
too understands Himself, but in His absolute unity He cannot be a subject
in which any known form could inhere and therefore represents an exception to the principle upon which the argument hinges.31 But as a follow-up
to this critical assessment, Suhraward adds that he has no objections to the
equivalence between self-cognition and immateriality. It is perfectly sound
to say that since God is immaterial, He is not absent from Himself and
therefore understands Himself. However, this piece of truth must be
detached from the Avicennian concept of knowledge as the inherence of
what is known in the knower. Rather, Gods self-understanding is a simple
fact, and although we can distinguish in analysis between the act of His
understanding, His being a subject of understanding and His being the
object of understanding, no such distinction exists in reality.32
This emphasis on Gods unity is followed by a discussion of Gods
knowledge of His creation. In a rather traditional manner, Suhraward
states that He knows particular creatures through His knowledge of
Himself, that is, as His concomitants. This is analogous to the way in
29
31

32

Mashri III.7.1, 475476. 30 Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 132.

This argument derives from Rz, Sharh. al-Ishrt, I.169. Suhraward also presents two further
counterarguments based on a distinction between mental and extramental existence. (Mashri
III.7.1, 476477.)
Mashri III.7.1, 477.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

which we, knowing the human essence, will also know its concomitants,
with the dierence that where our knowledge of the relevant concomitants
is potential in the sense that we can give an account of them if presented
with the task, Gods knowledge of His concomitants is constant and
actual.33 Even though Suhraward goes through an array of counterarguments to this traditional claim,34 he eventually seems to accept it, though
not without a qualication. Again, he emphasizes that Gods knowledge of
His concomitants is not to be explained as the inherence of the concomitants in Him in the manner of the inherence of accidents in a subject.35
After this analysis of the sound and unsound aspects of the alternative
concepts of knowledge, Suhraward states that his own view can be read in the
H
ikma al-ishrq and that his present motive has been to show to what extent
the Peripatetics have been in the right. He adds that the next best account is
given in the appearance of Aristotle in the Talwh.t, the method of which can
be summarized in the maxim that the human being rst investigate his
knowledge of himself (f ilmihi bi dhtihi) and then rise to what is higher,36
and he goes on to give an extended paraphrase of it. Thus, the following
discussion of presence takes place in a context exactly similar to that in the
Talwh.t; Gods knowledge is elucidated by considering the entire range of
human knowledge from a point of view that sets aside dierences in causes
respective to each type of knowledge and focuses instead on their shared
features, that is, presence and lack of absence, which are then relied on in a
new account of Gods knowledge of Himself and His creation.
Suhraward starts as he did in the Talwh.t, that is, by presenting selfawareness as a type of knowledge that the Avicennian inherence theory of
knowledge cannot explain:
So we say that when our souls apprehend their self (nufsan idhan adrakat
dhtah), their apprehension of it is not by means of form due to [several]
respects. The rst of them is that the form which is in the soul is not
identical with [the soul] (laysat bi aynih hiya hiya), whereas that which
apprehends itself (al-mudriku li dhtihi) apprehends what is identical to his
I-ness (mudrikun li ayni m bihi anyatuhu), not something corresponding
to it, and every form, which in the apprehender is additional to its self (al
dhtihi), is in relation to it an it, not being an I for it, and so the
apprehension is not by means of form.37
33

34
37

Mashri III.7.1, 478. Interestingly, an Avicennian version of this argument gures in the Talqt in
the very context in which the most striking remarks about human self-awareness are made (Talqt
158160).
See Mashri III.7.1, 478480. 35 Mashri III.7.1, 480483. 36 Mashri III.7.1, 483484.
Mashri III.7.1, 484.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

137

This argument rules out the possibility that self-awareness can be

explained as an apprehension of a special object by means of the distinction,
familiar from the H
ikma al-ishrq, between a subjects appearance to itself as
an I and an objects appearance to the subject as an it. The case is made in
terms that take greater liberties with its Avicennian heritage than the parallel
argument in the Talwh.t, but the immediately following second argument
is closer to that text.
Secondly, if the souls apprehension of itself (idrka al-nafsi li dhtih) were
by means of a form, then since every form occurring in the soul is universal,
its correspondence to many is not impossible, and even if one takes a
combination of universals, the whole of which is exclusive to a single
individual among souls, one will not do away with its being universal.
Every human apprehends himself (yudriku dhtahu) in a manner which
prevents sharing, and so his intellection of his particular self (taaqquluhu li
dhtihi al-juzya) cannot be by any form whatsoever.38

The crux of the question is familiar from section [b] of the appearance of
Aristotle. Since the human subject is immaterial, any form inhering in it,
including the form that is alleged to make the subject aware of itself, must
be universal. This extrapolation of the Avicennian equivalence between
immateriality and intellectuality, however, violates our intuition according
to which the self each of us is aware of is a unique individual. Moreover, it
makes impossible our exclusive operative access to our bodies and the
cognitive faculties that rely on corporeal organs:
Furthermore, the soul apprehends its body, and it apprehends its estimation
and imagery, and if it apprehended these things by means of a form in itself
(f dhtih) that form being universal the soul would move a universal
body and operate universal faculties, and it would have neither apprehension
of its body nor apprehension of the faculties of its body. This is not correct
how could it be when estimation ignores itself (nafsahu) and also ignores the
internal faculties! In that case it would not reject their traces. Thus, since
estimation does not apprehend these faculties, since none of the corporeal
faculties apprehend themselves (nafsahu), and since the soul apprehends
nothing but universals, the human must not apprehend his body, his
estimation and his imagery which are exclusive to him as particulars. That
is not the case, for he is not human who does not apprehend his particular
present body and his particular present faculties and operate his particular
faculties. Thus the human does not apprehend himself (mudrikun li nafsihi)
by means of a form, nor does he apprehend his faculties as a whole by means
of a form, nor his body as a whole by means of a form.39
38

Mashri III.7.1, 484.

39

Mashri III.7.1, 484485; emphases added.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

In comparison with the corresponding passage in the Talwh.t, this text

emphasizes that the basis of the bodys presence is in the prior self-awareness
of the soul that acts in and through the body. Nothing in the body is capable
of apprehending or making present the body or anything in it, not even
estimation, the highest cognitive faculty operative in the body. Were it not
for the soul that is aware of itself, the body could never be present to
anything, precisely because presence requires a subject that is already aware
of herself and to which other things can therefore be present. In other
words, the body enters the souls experience because that experience belongs
to a subject that is aware of herself to begin with.
But importantly, it is the body itself that is present to the soul, and only
therefore can it be present as my particular body, the locus of operation for
my particular faculties. If the body was present only through the mediation
of a representative form inhering in me, the inhering form would of course
be mine in the same sense, but because of my immateriality and the
consequent universality of whatever is supposed to inhere in me, the form
would not be uniquely representative of a single body. Thus, only the
knowledge of the body and the acts taking place in it would be mine in
this strong sense, but this would exclude neither the possibility that what I
know is applicable to other bodies nor the possibility that a single body is
known in the same respect by two dierent subjects.
This aspect of the concept of knowledge as presence, namely that the
known thing itself can be present to the knower without the mediation of
inhering representations, is particularly prominent in Suhrawards discussion of the phenomenon of pain.
What conrms that we have apprehensions, in which there is no need for any
form other than the presence of [the thing] itself that is apprehended (h.udri

dhti al-mudrak), is that the human being suers pain because the cohesion
is impaired in an organ of his, and he is aware of it, not because the
impairment of the cohesion occurs for him as another form in that organ
or in another; rather, what is apprehended is identical with that impairment
(nafsu dhlika al-tafarruq), it is sensed and pain by itself (bi dhtihi), not by
means of a form occurring from it. It has thus been indicated that there are
such apprehended things that the occurrence of [the thing] itself (h.us.lu
dhtih) to the soul, or to something with a proper presential connection to
the soul, is sucient for apprehension.40

When we feel pain, we do not feel an eect of a cause that does not appear
but the thing itself. Pain is not a representation of a wound, a lesion or
40

Mashri III.7.1, 485.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

139

anything like that, but rather the very wound itself as it is present through
the faculty of touch. Of course, I can later on see the wound and infer that
what I see is causing the pain, but I should not draw the conclusion
therefrom that what is seen is in any sense prior to or more real than
the pain. The two appearances, the wound seen and the pain felt, can be
identied because both are present to the same subject, not because the
wound that is seen causes the pain.
Importantly, Suhraward does not consider pain to be an anomaly in
perception. Rather, owing to its pronounced immediacy pain provides a
brilliant example of a fact true of all perception: perception is not constituted by the occurrence of forms that represent extramental objects of
perception but is rather to be conceived as the entrance of the very things
perceived through the souls faculties of perception into the eld of presence
that the soul is in itself. This is summarized in Suhrawards concluding
remark on the various types of human knowledge:
What the party of Peripatetics has to admit is this: they allow that the form
may occur in the instrument of sight without the human being aware of it
when he is immersed in his thought or in what another sense is bringing
forth and so there is no doubt about the souls attention (iltiht) to that
form, and apprehension is only by means of the souls attention to what it
sees as being looked at (al-idrku laysa ill bi iltifti al-nafsi inda m tar
mushhadatan), and what is being looked at is not by means of a universal
form, rather what is being looked at is by means of a particular form, and so
there is no doubt that if the soul has presential illuminational knowledge
(ilmun ishrqyun h.udr), it is not by means of a form.41

It is not sucient for perception to arise that a physical process takes place
in the organ of perception. The process has to be attended by the soul, or it
has to be present to the soul. In other words, what goes on in the organ of
perception has to enter the eld of presence constituted by the soul, that is,
its experience, in the manner proper to the particular faculty in whose organ
the process takes place. In itself, the soul is nothing but this eld of
presence, this rst-personal experience, which is entered by the various
contents that are thereby made present.
When Suhraward turns to elucidate Gods knowledge by means of these
observations about human experience, it becomes obvious that his point is
not to present a natural philosophers account of how knowledge comes to
be. Rather, the concept of knowledge as presence is an attempt at spelling
out what knowledge is when it is understood in exclusively experiential
41

Mashri III.7.1, 485; emphasis added.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

terms, as an appearance to a subject of experience. It is in this specic sense

that Suhraward uses human knowledge as a means to elucidate his theological subject. Self-awareness is foundational for this purpose precisely
because it provides the basis on which other cognitive content can become
present without the presence of that content in any way compromising the
constancy, stability and unity of the self and its awareness of itself. Gods
knowledge is dened as
illuminational knowledge (al-ilmu al-ishrq) without a form or a trace but
merely by means of an individual relation which is the illuminational
presence of the thing (h.udru al-shayi h.udran ishrqyan), like for the soul,

but in the Necessary Existent

it is more primary
and more complete.42

And because of this greater completeness, God

apprehends Himself (dhtahu) not by means of anything additional to
Himself (dhtihi) as came up in the souls case and He knows things
by presential illuminational knowledge (bi al-ilmi al-ishrqyi al-h.udr).43

Thus, the only dierence between knowledge as presence as found in God

and in human beings is due to how the presence of other things is brought
about; human subjects will passively receive their content from what is
genuinely other through their faculties, but God will have His as His own
concomitants, just as is proper for a supreme agent. But this dierence is all
but irrelevant here, for the reason why the kind of presence we nd in
ourselves can assist in elucidating the presence of God is that it is similar to it
in some fundamental respect.
Suhraward is in considerable debt to Avicenna in this theological application of the phenomenon of self-awareness. Not only does he derive the
narrow concept, particularly tting for the purpose, of self-awareness from
his predecessor, but quite possibly he was also inspired to apply it in this
particular question by the context in which Avicennas excursion into it
was embedded in the Talqt. As we have seen, Avicenna may have been
motivated to make some of his most striking claims about self-awareness by
the task of accounting for the absolute unity and immediacy of Gods
knowledge of Himself, for which he may have found a simile in human
self-awareness.44 But in Suhraward, human experience, and its basis in selfawareness, is used to make sense not only of Gods knowledge of Himself
but also of His creation. The human case can be cast in this explanatory role
only if we disregard the psychological approach and focus on knowledge as a
42

Mashri III.7.1, 487; emphasis added.

43

Mashri III.7.1, 487.

44

See Chapter 3.2, 5661.

Self-awareness and knowledge as presence

141

given matter of experience, that is, as presence or the non-existence of

absence. As the paradigmatic case of the latter, human self-awareness gives
us an idea, as imperfect as it may be, of what immediate knowledge is like at
its most intense. But it also enables Suhraward to explain in what sense it
can be both one with and distinct from the presence of other cognitive
content. By not being absent from itself as the rst-personal eld in which
other things can become present, the self is there in immediate relation to
but also independent of the content of its experience. At the same time, that
content owes its presence to the self-aware subject for which it appears
because, were it not for the subject as the eld that enables presence, no
content would be present in the rst place. Furthermore, considered merely
as such a eld, the subject persists unaltered by any of the content that
enters and leaves the eld.45 It will be an I in an immutable sense regardless
of what attributions the I will be connected to.
In this sense, Suhraward can claim that God knows particular things
as particulars, without the Avicennian qualication in a universal way,
because as the same sort of rst-personal eld for the presence of objects as
human subjects are, He is not changed by the entrance of particular things
into His knowledge. Moreover,
He has absolute illumination and dominion, and nothing escapes from Him,
and past and future things the forms of which are established by the celestial
directors are present to Him because He encompasses and illuminates the
substrate of those forms, and the same holds of intellectual origins.46

God is aware of the universe in a hierarchical continuity, mediated by the

celestial intellects and souls that are the causes of the sublunary realm. But this
need not conne Him to cognition in universal terms, for the mediation of
the celestial intellects and souls can be conceived in the same manner as the
mediation of the human souls faculties in its knowledge of objects external
to it. In spite of the mediation, the very individual things are brought into the
eld of presence that is Gods knowledge. By the same token, God retains His
absolute unity as the pure non-existence of absence, because the qualications
due to the attribute of knowledge do not aect that lack of absence in any way.
God remains Himself, because His apprehension of Himself is His life as the
light in which created things come to be.47
If the aforesaid is a correct interpretation of Suhrawards concept of
knowledge as presence and the decisive role of self-awareness in cancelling it
out, his so called Peripatetic works seem remarkably consistent with the
45

Mashri III.7.1, 488.

46

Mashri III.7.1, 488.

47

Mashri III.7.1, 489.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

48
full-blown illuminationism of the H
ikma al-ishrq. In the passages we
have considered, Suhraward has described how the selfs not being absent
from itself, its self-awareness, provides the foundation for its cognitive
relation to its body and by means of the body to the world. The body and
the world, in both particular and universal terms, can be present to the self
because the self is not absent from itself. If this relation suers comparable
neglect in the H
ikma al-ishrq, this is merely due to the fact that
Suhrawards main concern in that work is to make sense of the metaphysical counterpart of knowledge as presence, that is, of appearance (z uhr).

6.2

Self-awareness and being as appearance

The H
ikma al-ishrq begins with a dense but substantial criticism of the
Peripatetic theory of science and metaphysics. When Suhrawards subsequent account of the philosophical system he presents as its alternative is
read in the light of this critical introduction, it is hard not to receive the
impression that he intends to replace the intimately connected Peripatetic
concepts of substance and denition with the new concepts of light (nr)
and appearance (z uhr). As we will see, Suhrawards strategy of dening
light and appearance in a manner that is independent of these Peripatetic
foundational concepts is heavily reliant on the phenomenon of selfawareness. But in order to understand the introduction of the new concept,
we have to describe briey how Suhraward paves the way for it by criticizing the Peripatetic foundations of being and knowledge.
In his discussion of the concept of substance, or substantiality, Suhraward
sets out from the Peripatetic denition as transmitted by Avicenna. According
to this received view, substance is what does not exist in a subject, regardless
of whether it is altogether independent of a substrate or inheres [in a
substrate], but the substrate is not independent of it like forms.49 This
denition from the Talwh.t contrasts substance with the accident (al-arad)

that exists in a subject. It also hints at the traditional division between dierent
types of substances, that is, matter, form and their composite. The corresponding denition in the H
ikma al-ishrq adds a reference to extramental
reality; according to it, substance is something that has an existence outside
the mind and that does not inhere in another so that it is entirely diused.50
This denition distinguishes substance from a state (haya) that exists
in another, adding the qualication so that it is entirely diused (al sabli
48
50

Pace Eichner 2011, 139140. 49 Talwh.t III.1, 177 Habb; 56 Corbin.

H
I I.3.3.52, 42 Walbridge and Ziai; 61 Corbin.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

143

al-shuyi bi al-kullya) in order to distinguish states from independently

subsisting parts of a whole, which can nevertheless be said to be in
the whole and thereby to exist in another. In light of this denition of
substance, Suhraward detects four dierent kinds of substances in the
world: three-dimensional substances with unique spatiotemporal locations,
that is, bodies,51 the two constituents of bodies, that is, matter and form, and
substances that are separate from matter, that is, intellects.52
For Suhraward, the problem with both of these denitions of substance
is that they hinge upon negation: substance is that which does not exist in a
subject. Now, negations do not refer to anything real immediately; there is
no non-being as such. Instead, their truth requires a mind or an intellect
which is capable of conceiving something that exists and considering it in
relation to something else that is also conceived by the mind in some
manner but that does not exist in the reality without the mind. When the
mind considers these two things properly related, it then proceeds to deny
or negate the non-existing of the existing thing. Because negations, and
denitions based on the use of negation, are dependent on a mind or an
intellect, Suhraward calls them mental or intellectual considerations
(itibrt dhihnya, itibrt aqlya).53 If the concept of substance cannot
be dened positively, it will be a mere intellectual consideration, and as a
result it will not refer immediately to anything real. And if substances
depend for their very existence on a mind that postulates them, they cannot
possibly provide a foundation for metaphysics as that which is said to be or
to exist in a primary sense.
Suhraward presents a sustained argument for his claim against the reality
of mental considerations. If we postulate something like substantiality that
is independent of the mind and as such the basis of all being, we end up with
an innite regress of substantialities. Suppose that substantiality1 is basic to
the existence of the tree in front of me. If substantiality is a real basis of all
that exists, then substantiality1 must have an ontologically prior substantiality2 at its basis, and so forth ad innitum. Barring the possibility of
an ordered innite series in act, Suhraward suggests that we give up
the supposition of substantiality as metaphysically foundational. The innite regress argument is Suhrawards frequent strategy to refute the

51
52
53

For this characterization of bodies, see H

I I.3.3.53, 43 Walbridge and Ziai; 62 Corbin.
Cf. Talwh.t III.1, 177178 Habb; 6 Corbin. This division is also the basis for Avicennas discussion
of substance in Shif: al-Ilhyt II, see especially II.1.10, 48.
Cf. H
I I.3.3.68, 5051 Walbridge and Ziai; 7172 Corbin; and Talwh.t III.2, 193, 196 Habb; 22, 26
Corbin.

144

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

mind-independent reality of mental considerations.54 In the Talwh.t he

concludes his discussion of them by stating it as a general principle: any such
thing, the supposition of which as a real entity leads into innite regress,
does not exist really but is a mere consideration of the mind or the
intellect.55
Corresponding to his critique of the notion of substance, Suhraward
nds fundamental problems with its epistemological counterpart, the concept of denition as the foundation of knowledge. He denes denition in
rather traditional terms, though not without certain important qualications. At the beginning of the section on expository propositions in the
Talwh.t, the complete denition is said to be a statement (al-qawl) which
indicates the quiddity of something and combines all of its constituents, and
in the case of principal realities (al-h.aqiqi al-as.alya) [that is, substances], it
is composed of their genera and dierentiae.56 Comparison with corresponding denitions in Avicenna shows that Suhraward has subtly added
the word all (kulluh) where Avicenna merely speaks of the proximate
genus and the dierentia of the thing to be dened.57 Suhrawards stronger
requirement gives natural rise to the question of whether such stringent
conditions can ever be met and whether we are likely to acquire complete
denitions of anything. In the Talwh.t, these consequences remain
implicit, but Suhrawards explicit criticism of the concept of complete
denition suggests that that is the direction he is heading towards.58
The crux of the critique becomes explicit in H
ikma al-ishrq I.1.7, where
Suhraward bluntly states that we can never be absolutely certain of having
arrived at a complete denition which collects together all essential characteristics of the deniendum. To put the same in extensional terms, we can
never be sure that our denition picks those and only those individuals that
instantiate the essence we are interested in and that this collection is due to
those and only those of their properties that really are essential and not
merely accidental or concomitant to the essential properties.59 Related to
this point, Suhraward also criticizes the Peripatetic method of arriving at a
denition by means of an inductive inference. In order to be certain,
54
55
56
57
58
59

For an extended use of this argument in relation to various mental considerations, including
substantiality, see H
I I.3.3.5668; 4551 Walbridge and Ziai; 6572 Corbin.
Talwh.t III.2, 196 Habb; 26 Corbin.
Talwh.t I.2.1, 18 Habb. For discussion, see Ziai 1990, 100.
See Ziai 1990, 100102, who contrasts the Talwh.t formulation with Avicennas Kitb al-h.udd and
Shif: al-Burhn.
Ziai 1990, 113114.
H
I I.1.7.1315, 811 Walbridge and Ziai; 1821 Corbin. For Suhrawards debt to Ab al-Barakt alBaghdd in this regard, see Ziai 1990, 115116.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

145

induction must encompass all relevant cases, but since it is not possible to
cover every individual instantiation of a species occurring in an innite
course of time, we can never be certain of not having overlooked an exceptional case that would force us to qualify our inductive denition.60
The denition of denition cited from the Talwh.t makes another
subtle point by means of the phrase is composed of (yutarakkaba), which
is explicated in the Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t. In order that a complete
denition be true and thus capable of producing knowledge of the thing
dened, it must correspond to that thing. However, the external thing is
one, an absolute unity with no independently subsisting constituents. This
is not the case with the denition: it consists of the really distinct conceptual
units of genera and dierentiae, which are merely conjoined to each other in
an act of composition, and this is incapable of bringing about a degree of
unity corresponding to that of the external thing we strive to dene. In view
of this incoherence between absolute unity and unity through the composition of discrete parts, the best our denitions are capable of is describing
the denienda.61
What is more, denitions will always rely on constituents that must be
known before they can be applied in a denition. Since we cannot proceed
innitely with steps that dene the terms used in subsequent denitions,
we must admit that at least some things, such as the rst intelligibles, must
be known without denitions.62 Thus, our knowledge is not ultimately
founded upon denition,63 and in the nal analysis nothing will be known
if we subscribe to a concept of knowledge based on denition.
Suhrawards intention is not to give up the notion of denition as
something utterly useless in the pursuit of knowledge, but his criticism
does amount to a straightforward rejection of denition as the foundation of
knowledge. From here on, denitions come to serve in an instrumental
role, perhaps a pedagogical one, in the acquisition of knowledge. Once this
is understood, they should be conceived in conceptualist terms: they
dene linguistic concepts, but, in order to be capable of this, they require

60

61
62
63

H
I I.1.7.15, 1011 Walbridge and Ziai; 2021 Corbin. This problem of induction was seized upon by
Avicenna, who developed a systematic notion of experience (tajriba) as its alternative (see McGinnis
2003), a suggestion with which Suhraward unfortunately does not engage. For empirical premises in
Suhraward, see Talwh.t I.3.3, 2830 Habb; H
I II.2.7.30, 27 Walbridge and Ziai; 4142 Corbin;
and Ziai 1990, 54.
Mashri I.2.2, as edited in Ziai 1993, 115116. For discussion, see Ziai 1990, 104, 108, 110111.
See Ziai 1990, 137138. Related to this point, Suhraward makes a fourfold distinction between innate
and acquired conception (tas.awwur) and assent (tas.dq) in Talwh.t I.1.1, 45 Habb.
Cf. H
I I.1.7.1415, 911 Walbridge and Ziai; 1921 Corbin. See Ziai 1990, 116117, 120121.

146

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

the full presence to the dening mind of that to which the relevant concept
is applicable.64 In this function even ostensive denitions, which are not
concerned with grasping the essential properties or causes of the thing
dened, may serve a perfectly legitimate purpose, although they are of
course not sucient in their own right to provide knowledge of the thing
dened.65
But how do we grasp the thing our denitions can merely describe? What
is primarily known in Suhrawards epistemological alternative? By the same
token, if substances are not real, what is the primary sense in which being is
spoken of?
Suhraward builds his alternative philosophical system quasi-axiomatically
by bluntly stating, rst, his conception of what is primarily known, and
second, his conception of what should be said to primarily exist. Let us
consider the two axioms in some detail.
If there is in existence that which does not need to be dened or elucidated,
it is that which appears (al-z hir). Nothing is more apparent than light
(al-nr). Thus, nothing is more independent of denition.66

Notice that this introduction of the illuminationist technical term light

describes it solely in terms of appearing or being evident. All that is said is
that light appears and is evident before and in spite of anything else, and
as a result knowledge about it cannot be acquired through a denition or
elucidation by means of other things that are known prior to it. Because
of the opacity of Suhrawards dense formulation, it is worth spelling out
the rather obvious point that what he means by the most apparent thing
can hardly be the quiddity of the optical phenomenon we usually speak of
as light. Were that his intention, the very fact that the quiddity of light
was a point of serious contention would have been a sucient cause to
judge his statement philosophically unsatisfactory.67 If we want to interpret him in philosophically charitable terms instead, we should stick to
his words: in this context, the primary meaning of light is the fact of
appearing, that which appears insofar as it appears. Although the term
will be described at greater length in the immediately following chapters,
it is important to notice that the term is used in a very precise and rather
narrow technical sense.
64
65
66
67

Mashri I.2.2, as edited in Ziai 1993, 115116. See Ziai 1990, 108, 110111, 125.
Mashri I.2.56, as edited in Ziai 1993, 118119.
H
I II.1.1.107, 76 Walbridge and Ziai; 106 Corbin.
Cf. Avicennas discussion of light in Shif: F al-nafs III.14, 91115 Rahman. For an excellent
overview of the theory, see Hasse 2000, 108113.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

147

The second axiom concerns independence in existence:

The independent (al-ghan) is such that neither its essence (dhtuhu) nor its
perfection is due to another. The dependent (al-faqr) is such that something
of it is due to other than its essence and perfection.68

If the rst axiom addressed the question of what is primarily known, its
follow-up makes an intimately connected point about the foundation of
metaphysics: what should be said to exist in the primary sense of the word is
that which is not dependent in any manner on anything other than itself.
The subsequent exposition of the relation of the concepts of light (that
which is most apparent) and of darkness (that which does not appear as
such) makes it clear that the two points are inseparable: that which is most
apparent and primarily known is also the only thing that can be said to exist
independently, and therefore it is that which exists in the primary sense of
the word. Prime examples of dark things are the material substances that we
suppose to subsist out there in the world. Suhraward denies them of any
positive reality; corresponding to the negativity at the core of the denition
of substantiality, the darkness of material substances merely amounts to a
lack or a privation of light. The only positive appearance they can have is
when an adventitious light (al-nr al-rid ) falls upon them and makes them
appear for another.69 Thus deprived ofany positive reality, it is clear that
material substances cannot be said to exist in the primary sense of the word.
But the adventitious light that renders them apparent is also dependent on
another, in fact doubly so, for it not only requires the other in which it
advenes, it also must have a cause that is separate light (al-nr al-mujarrad)
or pure light (al-nr al-mah.d ), pure appearance in and for itself.70

This discussion was pertinent

to the seventeenth-century debate over the
primacy of quiddity (as.la al-mhya) as opposed to the primacy of
existence (as.la al-wujd).71 It should be pointed out that although appearances are always appearances of essences, Suhrawards adoption of the
concept of appearance as the foundation of metaphysics does not amount
to a at denial of the reality of existence. What is under attack is the
Peripatetic view according to which substantiality is the paradigmatic
mode of existence. The point comes out in the way in which the continuity
68
69

70
71

H
I II.1.2.108, 76 Walbridge and Ziai; 107 Corbin.
Suhraward refers to these encounters between dark substances and adventitious lights as barriers
(barzikh), presumably because they stand at the border of complete non-appearance and
appearance.
H
I II.1.3.109, 7778 Walbridge and Ziai; 107109 Corbin.
For a concise outline of the debate, see Bonmariage 2007, 3052.

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

and identity of individual things is explained, for, according to Suhraward,

the continuous existence of things such as the pine outside my window
should be conceived not in terms of an underlying material substance that
persists intact through the constant change of its accidental attributes
but rather in terms of an essential unity due to the persistent cause of the
stream of the pines constantly changing appearance. It was clear to both his
thirteenth-century commentator Qutb al-Dn al-Shrz (d. 1311) and Mull
Sadr, perhaps the most prominent voice in the debate, that Suhraward
simply speaks of existence as appearance; the stream of appearance is
nothing but existence.72
In the fourth chapter, Suhraward emphasizes the dependence of all
appearance on pure appearance by means of an anti-Avicennian point
concerning the existence of individual entities. He states that their individuality is due to their apparent properties, and since these are real properties,
they can only be due to light, which alone is real. As something inherently
unreal, matter cannot provide the basis for individuality, and by the same
token there is no individual substantiality beyond the appearances, anything like that is a mere intellectual consideration.73 The two principles in
which Suhraward concludes the axiomatic introduction to his new system
reiterate the dependence of adventitious lights, or appearances for another,
on pure lights, or appearances in and for themselves. They also state that,
unlike adventitious lights, pure lights are not accessible to a spatio-temporal
ostensive reference.74
At this point, pure light or pure appearance has been axiomatically laid
out as the basis of Suhrawards new illuminationist metaphysics. Light is
metaphysically foundational, and since pure light is appearance in and for
itself, it is also immediately and primarily known. The Platonic overtones of
all this are clear, but it can still be legitimately asked whether the concept of
pure light or appearance is anything more than a play of words, a mental
ction every bit as fanciful and unreal as the concept of substance it is
designed to replace. Moreover, in both of the axioms cited above, the crucial
concept is characterized in strikingly negative terms: what is most apparent
is not in need of denition or elucidation, and what exists independently
is not due to another. If there is no way of making positive sense of these new
concepts, Suhrawards new theory only amounts to so much heated air.
72

73
74

See Qutb al-Dn al-Shrz, Sharh. H

ikma al-ishrq, ad II.1.1.107, 283284; and Sadr, al-Talqt al
Sharh. H
ikma al-ishrq, ad II.1.1.107, 283. Ziai 1990, 166171, seems to agree, but for a voice of concern
see Walbridge 1992, 4955.
H
I II.1.4.111, 7879 Walbridge and Ziai; 109110 Corbin.
H
I II.1.4.112113, 79 Walbridge and Ziai; 110 Corbin.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

149

It seems that Suhraward is fully aware of his situation, for the decisive
chapter II.1.5 considers the newly introduced concept of light from a
completely dierent perspective:
Whatever has a self which it is not unaware of (dhtun l yaghfulu anh) is not
dusky (ghsiq) because of the appearance of itself to it (li z uhri dhtihi indahu).
Nor is it a dark state in another, for even a luminous state is not light for itself
(li dhtih), let alone a dark [state]. Thus, it is a separate pure light which
cannot be pointed at (nrun mah.dun mujarradun l yushru ilayhi).75

The basis of the new approach is signalled in the very rst sentence. In
spite of the doubly negative expression we are now suddenly dealing
with a positive phenomenon, that of appearance to self or self-awareness.
Through a rhetorical process of excluding the alternatives, Suhraward states
that whatever is self-aware is an instance of what he calls separate or pure
light. Thus, after the axioms related to the concept of light discussed above,
this new beginning can be characterized as an attempt at an ostensive
elucidation of the new concept. That this is Suhrawards strategy is corroborated by this brief elucidation being immediately followed by a series of
familiar arguments for the immediacy and irreducibility of self-awareness.
The rst of these is the argument for immediacy by the rejection of any
object corresponding to the self as well as the distinction between the two
types of awareness of I and it.76 Added to this is an emphatic insistence on
the constancy and continuity of self-awareness, a related denial of the
identication of the self with the human body we nd it to govern, and a
denial of the substantiality of the self.77 This suggests that Suhrawards
concern is to nd a commonplace phenomenon to which his newly introduced concept of light can refer and thus to nd plausible support for his
revisionist metaphysics, which henceforth has been introduced in an exclusively axiomatic manner.
Suhraward sums up these elucidations in a new principle concerning
light:
[L]ight is that which appears in the reality of itself (al-z hiru f h.aqqati
nafsihi) and which makes another appear by itself (al-muz hiru li ghayrihi bi
dhtihi),78 and it is more apparent in itself (az haru f nafsihi) than all [that] to
75
76
77
78

H
I II.1.5.114, 79 Walbridge and Ziai; 110111 Corbin. Cf. the summary reiteration of this principle in
II.1.5.120, 83 Walbridge and Ziai; 116 Corbin.
H
I II.1.5.115, 80 Walbridge and Ziai; 111 Corbin. Cf. Chapter 5.1, 111113.
H
I II.1.5.116, 8081 Walbridge and Ziai; 112113 Corbin. Cf. Chapter 5.2, 121123.
An alternative would be al-maz haru li ghayrihi bi dhtihi, appearance for another by itself. This
would make sense in relation to the reference (omitted in the present quote) to adventitious lights,
which appear to another but are light or appearance in themselves. However, I have chosen to follow

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Self-awareness, presence, appearance

whose reality appearance is additional . . . It is not so that light occurs and is
then accompanied (yalzamuhu) by appearance, so that it would not be light
in the denition of itself (nafsihi) and would be made apparent by another
thing. Rather, it is that which appears, and its appearance is its lightness
(nryatuhu).79

According to this principle, light is nothing but appearing. Appearing is not

an additional feature of light, not even a concomitant characteristic, but the
very thing that the lights being light amounts to. What is interesting, just as
in the above, is that this claim is elucidated by the example of human selfawareness and the reiterated thesis that there is no substance behind
self-awareness to which the phenomenon could be attributed as either an
accidental or a concomitant feature.80 As a conclusion, Suhraward states
that whatever apprehends itself (kullu man adraka dhtahu) is a pure light,
and every pure light appears to itself and apprehends itself (z hirun
li dhtihi wa mudrikun li dhtihi).81
This reveals Suhrawards motive for rejecting the Avicennian inference
from self-awareness to a self-aware substance. If self-awareness belonged to a
substance, it could not be applied in an ostensive elucidation of a novel
metaphysical concept designed precisely to replace the very concept of
substance. In order to use the phenomenon as the basis of his metaphysics,
Suhraward has to render it primitive and denuded of all prior metaphysical
commitments. A related abstractive operation is performed in relation to
the claim, also familiar from Avicenna, according to which immediate
self-awareness is concomitant to the incorporeality of an incorporeal substance.82 Suhrawards point, supported by a somewhat suspicious argument according to which this claim entails the self-awareness of prime
matter,83 is clearly to argue that as self-awareness, pure light or pure
appearance cannot be reduced to or explained by means of any other
allegedly more foundational concepts. And if that is the case, he should
be warranted in adopting the phenomenon of self-awareness and the concept of light or appearance as the foundation of his metaphysics.

79
80
81
82
83

the reading preferred both by Corbin and by Walbridge and Ziai, which emphasizes the activity of
pure lights in all appearances to another. Since the two readings are systematically compatible with
each other, it is of course possible that Suhraward is purposefully ambiguous here.
H
I II.1.5.117, 81 Walbridge and Ziai; 113114 Corbin.
H
I II.1.5.118, 8182 Walbridge and Ziai; 114 Corbin.
H
I II.1.5.118, 82 Walbridge and Ziai; 114 Corbin.
H
I II.1.5.119, 8283 Walbridge and Ziai; 114116 Corbin.
This is because prime matter, divested from the most elementary form of body in general, is
incorporeal. If self-awareness is a concomitant of incorporeality, prime matter too will be aware of
itself about as implausible a claim as one can make in a Peripatetic context.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

151

But if the concept of light or appearance is supposed to be metaphysically

foundational, a mere argument that there is such a thing as pure light will
not suce. In addition to bringing forth human self-awareness as an
instance of pure light, one must also be able to explain how the concrete
things in the world, which most certainly are not instances of self-awareness,
can nevertheless be founded upon it. Suhraward tackles this task in an
investigation into the dierent types of lights, which he embarks upon
immediately after having laid out the foundation described above. This
dense section contains in a nutshell Suhrawards account of the world of
objects that we perceive around us.
Suhraward distinguishes between two types of light or appearance, light
that is for itself (nr li nafsihi) and light that is for another (nr li ghayrihi),84
stating that light for another is based on the metaphysically prior light for itself.
The two lights are hierarchically related for two reasons. First of all, the other
to which the light for another appears has to appear to itself or be aware of itself
in order to be able to apprehend the appearance of a light distinct from itself.
Suhraward is unambiguous about this requirement: What has no awareness
of itself is not aware of another (l yashuru bi ghayrihi man l shura lahu bi
dhtihi).85 But more importantly, nothing can appear to another unless it rst
appears to itself. In other words, the light appearing to another is caused by a
light that appears to itself, or, formulated in a more accurate way, it is the
external appearance of something that is pure appearance in and for itself.86
While this may sound unsettling, the historically informed reader will nd
it arguably less awkward once she perceives the Platonic underpinnings of
Suhrawards metaphysics. These are laid out in the second maqla of the
metaphysical section of the H
ikma al-ishrq. The multiplicity manifest in the
universe in spite of its absolutely one source is explained in chapter II.2.9 as
due to a series of complex refractions and reections of the single pure light of
all lights.87 Towards the end of this account Suhraward mentions the lights
that cause the appearance to another of concrete composite and single things.
These dominating luminous species (al-anw al-nrya al-qhira), which
subsist by themselves in the world of pure light,88 are the formal causes of
concrete things, but unlike the Peripatetic material forms endorsed by
84
85

86
87
88

H
I II.1.6.121, 8384 Walbridge and Ziai; 117118 Corbin.
H
I II.1.6.121, 84 Walbridge and Ziai; 117 Corbin. Cf. II.1.6.122, 84 Walbridge and Ziai; 118 Corbin:
When a thing makes something appear to another, that other must appear to itself before anything
else can appear to it.
H
I II.1.8.128, 86 Walbridge and Ziai; 120 Corbin.
H
I II.2.9.150152, 99101 Walbridge and Ziai; 138143 Corbin.
H
I II.2.9.153, 101102 Walbridge and Ziai; 143144 Corbin.

152

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

Avicenna, these forms subsist independently of their appearances in concrete.89 Each of them is universal, not in the sense that it is predicated, but
in the sense that it is equal in terms of the relation of emanation to these
numerically many individuals (al-add), as though it were both the whole
(al-kull) and the principle (al-as.al). This universal is not such that the
conception of its meaning does not prevent the occurrence of sharing, for
they recognize that it has an individual self and knows itself (lahu dhtan
mutakhas..sas.atan wa huwa limun bi dhtihi).90
In a word, then, the pure lights or appearances behind the lights or appearances for another are Platonic forms, which account for the identity and stability
of concrete appearances by being their immediate causes in a downward
emanative process of illumination.91 Given the constancy of the emanative
agency of the pure lights or specic forms, Suhraward no longer needs to rely on
the supposition of a substance behind the external appearance, a substance that
can never appear as such and that cannot even be positively dened, since the
appearance itself, being the appearance of a self-subsistent form, is that which
guarantees its identity. On the other hand, the self-subsistent form that is
distinct from us cannot appear to us as it appears to itself; our sole access to it
is by way of its individual instantiations, its appearances to another. Repeated
encounters with several such instantiations will of course allow us to formulate a
universal concept of the form, expressed in a denition, but this concept is not
the same as the forms appearance in itself to itself. We can grasp the common
factor between the distinct individual instantiations only in an intellectual
consideration that subsumes them under a single concept which they all are
asserted to have a share in. This aspect of sharedness between many or commonness to many, indispensable for universality, must therefore be added as an
intellectual consideration. But what is based on an act of the mind can be
reductively explained by recourse to the mind and is therefore neither metaphysically nor epistemically primitive. The appearance itself that was subsumed
under the universal, on the other hand, cannot be further analysed or explained,
and in this sense it is foundational in both senses; in the metaphysical sense
because it is due to nothing but appearance, and in the epistemic sense because
it is the very thing known, the form itself in its appearance to another.
89
90
91

H
I II.2.12.168169, 109 Walbridge and Ziai; 159161 Corbin.
H
I II.2.12.169, 109 Walbridge and Ziai; 160 Corbin.
H
I II.3.4.193, 123 Walbridge and Ziai; 186 Corbin. The dierent properties of concrete things are due
to the simultaneous agency of several pure lights (H
I II.2.11.172, 111 Walbridge and Ziai; 165 Corbin).
On the hierarchical structure of the emanated pure lights, see H
I II.3.3.182183, 118119 Walbridge and
Ziai; 177179 Corbin. For an extended discussion of Suhrawards subscription to the Platonic theory
of forms, see Arnzen 2011, 135143.

Self-awareness and being as appearance

153

Thus, here we also encounter Suhrawards alternative to the epistemological concept of denition. He does not intend to deny our knowledge of
the quiddities common to individual entities; according to Suhraward, like
the majority of his philosophical contemporaries, we can grasp the equinity
common to all horses that we perceive or imagine. But instead of a thought
process leading to the denition of the concept of horse, this grasp should be
understood in more straightforward terms: one simply grasps the appearance of the quiddity in the eld of ones awareness. There are no media that
can be resorted to in an epistemological or psychological explanation of
what takes place. Appearance cannot be demonstrated, it is unshareable, no
one can make another aware of an appearance, and yet it is self-evident for
the one aware of it.92 All sorts of preparatory processes, including syllogistic
reasoning and attempts at denition, may assist in the occurrence of the
appearance; they may help me see the horse in front of me in a manner I was
not capable of before, but once the conditions are there, equinity simply
appears to me in the individual horse. The preparatory processes do not
cause the intuition in the proper sense of the term, because no awareness of
appearance will necessarily follow from them. An exemplary instantiation of
equinity has to appear to me as a single concrete object that I am presently
aware of, for the denition requires something that it helps me to become
better aware of. Moreover, the validity of the denition can only be assessed
against the intuitive certainty I have on the basis of my indubitable awareness of the appearance of the deniendum.93 And nally, awareness of the
appearance of equinity is not dependent on denition or syllogistic reasoning, for it is perfectly possible that someone simply sees the equinity in an
excellent representative of the species without any prior preparation or
instruction. Thus, the theories of denition and syllogistics concern what
are at best educational tools.94 The intelligible form is a simple thing, and it
is grasped in a simple act of intuition. We can express what is simple by
means of the complex, but this does not render the reference of the
expression complex in itself. In the nal analysis, knowledge is not based
on denition but amounts to the simple appearance of what is known, and
the one who is aware of the appearance can dispense with the denition.95
In light of the above, the originality of Suhrawards application of the
phenomenon of self-awareness is dicult to exaggerate. Instead of an
explanatory factor in the psychological investigation of human being, as
in Avicenna, it furnishes him with the basis of an original reformulation of
92
94

93
H
Cf. Ziai 1990, 121122.
I I.3.4.70, 5152 Walbridge and Ziai; 73 Corbin.
Ziai 1990, 124125. 95 H
I
I.3.70,
52
Walbridge
and
Ziai; 73 Corbin. Cf. Ziai 1990, 130, 134135.

154

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

Platonic metaphysics. Admittedly, Suhraward is not entirely without

precedents in this regard, for Ghazl had already spoken of existence in
terms of appearance and light, and of self-awareness as a particular type
of light, in the rst chapter of the Mishkt al-anwr.96 However, as I
hope to have shown, Suhraward constructs his novel metaphysics upon
self-awareness in full awareness of the originality of his move and with an
argumentative rigour that is all but missing in Ghazls work, which is
ultimately little more than a paraphrastic account, in light of the famous
verse from the .sra of light (Q 24:35) and the h.adth of veils, of Neoplatonic
cosmology and the situation of human being in it, designed to edify and
invigorate its reader rather than establish a secure foundation for a philosophical system. Suhraward, on the contrary, attempts to elucidate his
chosen foundational concept of metaphysics in an ostensive fashion by
stating that pure light is the self-awareness which each of his readers will,
upon introspective analysis, nd herself to consist in.
For Suhraward, self-awareness is something that no theoretical account
can explain. The best he can do is try to make it evident for his interlocutors
by means of the argumentative pointers he inherits from Avicenna.
However, what is thereby paid attention to can of course be constructively
applied in subsequent theorizing, and this is exactly what Suhraward does
in the metaphysical section of the H
ikma al-ishrq. Despite the noble
Islamic and Zoroastrian history of light metaphors to which the book
occasionally refers,97 pure light is rst and foremost introduced as a
name for a constant feature of experience, or, to put it another way, the
term is characterized by purely experiential means, ostensively as it were.

6.3

Degrees of self-awareness

As we have seen, Suhraward cashes out the concept of pure light or

appearance to self, the foundation of the illuminationist metaphysics, by
means of the phenomenon of self-awareness as delineated by Avicenna.
96
97

Ghazl, Mishkt al-anwr I.32, 1213; I.4041, 16; and I.49, 19.
Cf. H
I II.2.2.138, 92 Walbridge and Ziai; 128129 Corbin; II.2.10.159, 104 Walbridge and Ziai; 149150
Corbin; II.2.12.166, 108 Walbridge and Ziai; 106108 Corbin; II.4.1.201, 128 Walbridge and Ziai; 193
Corbin; II.4.3.208210, 131132 Walbridge and Ziai; 198201 Corbin. The systematic use of this
mythology is scant in comparison to the philosophical ingredients, and to my mind the Corbinian
hierohistorical account of Suhraward as a reviver of an ancient Persian Platonism (see Corbin 2009a,
XLIIILXII; Corbin 2009b, 3355; an extended treatment of this conviction is Corbin 1971, vol. II)
drastically overstates its importance. I am neither alone nor the rst in claiming this; for a consistent
argument that the philosophical tradition is much more determinative of Suhraward, see Walbridge
2000. Corbins interpretation is set in a historical context in Walbridge 2001, 9091, 105110.

Degrees of self-awareness

155

Later on he revisits this connection, stating explicitly that every pure light
shares this particular type of self-awareness with us human beings and
moreover that this is because self-awareness is constitutive to pure lights,
that in which being a pure light consists:
It has been shown that your I-ness is a separate light and apprehends itself
(mudrikun li nafsihi), and that separate lights do not dier in their realities
(h.aqiq). Thus, the whole must apprehend itself (mudrikan li dhtihi), since
what is necessary for something is also necessary for that which shares the
reality with it.98

Thus, insofar as there are other pure lights, I can assume that they are
essentially similar to what I have found myself to be. This is because as pure
lights we share or participate in one and the same reality, that of being light.
Furthermore, since I have found myself to be nothing but self-awareness,
I am warranted to conclude that the being of other pure lights also consists
solely of their awareness of themselves, in exactly the same sense as I am
aware of myself.99
It is important to note that the shared reality does not entail any kind of
dissolution or merging into the radiance of a single light. Instead,
Suhraward holds on steadfastly to the idea that the multiplicity apparent
in the world is genuine and real, as a consequence of which pure lights,
although participating in a single reality, are distinct from each other. This
gives rise to a version of the problem of individuation which Avicenna
tackled in Shif: F al-nafs V.3 and which we have discussed in some detail
above:100 if pure lights are such only because of their self-awareness, how
can they be distinguished from each other?
Interestingly enough, Suhraward tacitly refers to Avicennas solution in
the psychological section of the Shif when he addresses the question of the
individuality of human beings post-mortem.101 His version of the list of
factors that allow an intellectual sort of distinction (imtiyzan aqlyan)
between individual human beings is made up of their self-awareness
(shurih bi dhtih), their awareness of their lights and their illumination
(shurih bi anwrih wa ishrqtih), and individuation based on the
governance of fortresses, the second and third factor presumably summing
up the properties due to the body (or fortress) elaborated at greater length

98
99
101

H
I II.1.8.127, 86 Walbridge and Ziai; 120 Corbin; cf. II.1.8.126, 86 Walbridge and Ziai; 120
Corbin.
This point is also noted by Ziai 1990, 150152. 100 Chapter 3.1.
H
I II.5.2.243, 148 Walbridge and Ziai; 228229 Corbin.

156

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

by Avicenna. None of the factors other than self-awareness can, however, be

used to account for the individuation of pure lights in general terms, since
not every pure light is a managing light, or, in more familiar terms, a soul
that governs a body. Thus, pure lights have to be distinguished from each
other by features inherent to their being light.
Suhraward locates this feature in the degree of luminosity unique to
each of the pure lights. According to Suhraward, lights form a hierarchically ordered series of emanation, reection and refraction in which a
proper place is designated to each and every light by virtue of its degree
of luminosity. If their mutual dierences were due to anything external
to luminosity, each pure light would have a constituent in itself, which,
not being light, would not appear to itself a consequence in blatant
contradiction to the manner in which the concept of pure light was
axiomatically sketched to begin with.102 This idea of degrees of luminosity
ultimately allows Suhraward to conceive of the entire realm of existence,
including God as the Light of all lights, by means of a single term: in
the nal analysis, all is light in one and the same sense but in dierent
degrees.
But if light and luminosity amount to self-awareness, and if luminosity
allows degrees, then Suhraward nds himself committed to the view that
self-awareness allows degrees, that one can be more or less aware of
oneself. Such a view is diametrically opposed to Avicennas central insight
according to which self-awareness amounts to the rst perfection of
human beings. As we have seen, according to Avicenna each of us is
aware of herself in the very precise sense that she will nd all content of
experience given to her in the rst person in a manner which endures
intact and unchanged from the very beginning of her existence until the
proverbial end of time. This rst-personality is not subject to change; one
will be an I regardless of whether as a ying man, a newborn, a vile sinner
or a virtuous sage fully developed in terms of knowledge, the second
perfection of human being. On the contrary, Suhraward not only allows
for degrees in human self-awareness, but in full knowledge embraces the
farther reaching point that all pure lights, including God, are each an I in
the same sense as we are, only somehow more so.
Although it is part and parcel of the metaphysical tradition to conceive
of God as a cognitive agent similar but superior to ourselves, the shift of
this idea to the basis of self-awareness allows Suhraward to make sense of
102

Cf. H
I II.1.8.126, 86 Walbridge and Ziai; 120 Corbin.

Degrees of self-awareness

157

Gods awareness of Himself in a manner arguably more profound than his

Peripatetic predecessors.103 By means of a variation of the traditional
argument from contingency, Suhraward rst argues that there must be
a necessary being: given that each of the manifold lights is caused by
another light, they are all necessary through another; since an ordered
innite series is impossible, and since nothing can exist without being
necessary in itself or having been made necessary through another, there
has to be an end to the postponement of necessity, an end which is
necessary in itself.104 Furthermore, since pure lights are highest in the
hierarchy of being, and since existence can only be bestowed in a downward order of causation, only another pure light is capable of bringing
about a pure light.105 The necessary being must therefore be a pure light,
an appearance to itself in itself, and this to the highest possible degree a
Light of all lights. Finally, there can be only one such light, for were there
two or more, these would have to dier due to something additional to
their merely being lights. Since such a dierentiating factor could be
neither a light (for this would render the Light of lights necessary through
another) nor a non-apparent state (for in that case the Light of lights
would not be a pure light), nothing is left to dierentiate between two
lights necessary in themselves, and thus it makes no sense to conceive of
more than one Light of lights. As a result,
[i]t is thus established that the Light of lights is separate from all else and
nothing is associated with it. It cannot be conceived that there is [anything]
more splendorous than it. Since the point [of speaking about] somethings
knowing itself goes back to its selfs appearance to itself (rajaa h.s.ilu ilmi
al-shayi bi nafsihi il kauni dhtihi z hiratan li dhtihi), which is pure
lightness the appearance of which is not through another, the life and selfknowledge (ilmuhu bi dhtihi) of the Light of lights are not added to its self
(dhtihi). This has already been shown to you in the case of every separate
light.106

The passage speaks of self-awareness as the appearance of the self to itself

along the lines familiar from the section in which the concept of pure light
103

104
105
106

For an example of Avicennas use of human cognitive categories to make sense of God, cf. Talqt,
158161, and the discussion in Chapter 3.2, 5661. Suhrawards explication of Gods awareness of
Himself by means of our self-awareness also has an obvious parallel in his introduction of the concept
of knowledge as presence.
H
I II.1.9.129, 87 Walbridge and Ziai; 121122 Corbin. For an Avicennian formulation, cf. for instance
Avicenna, Shif: al-Ilhyt VIII.1.46, 258259.
H
I II.1.9.132, 88 Walbridge and Ziai; 123 Corbin.
H
I II.1.9.134, 89 Walbridge and Ziai; 124 Corbin.

158

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

was introduced by means of the arguments delineating the Avicennian

phenomenon of primitive self-awareness. All that is new is the connection
of this phenomenon to Gods awareness of Himself. Although it is possible,
indeed natural, to interpret the description of God as a self-aware subject to
be but a variation of the familiar Peripatetic theme of thought thinking
itself, the explicit connection to the most primitive level of self-awareness
results in an important dierence. As a subject of perfect intellection in
which the subject and the object completely coincide, God will at best
remain a somewhat remote example of the cognitive second perfection
proper to though seldom reached by human beings. Moreover, God is
not only a self-knower, but also a creator: his self-intellection is the cause for
all other things, which makes it highly doubtful whether our selfunderstanding can really be compared to His. For Suhraward, however,
God is self-awareness in exactly the same sense as I, regardless of my
cognitive progress or lack thereof, always nd myself to be only to a
greater degree. Although Avicenna too can be seen to ground his account of
Gods self-intellection on his psychological theory of intellection in general
and human intellection in particular,107 the dierence in emphasis is clear.
Even if self-awareness does play a role in intellection by making each act of
understanding exclusive to the rst-personal subject to whom it belongs,
Avicennas account revolves around the content of intellection and in this
regard there is literally a world of dierence between God and the human
being in its cognitively undeveloped state.
In addition to this theological concern, Suhraward speaks of human
development towards the perfection proper to us in terms of an increase
of light and therefore an increase in self-awareness. The illuminationist
terminology fails to hide the fact that he here presents a rather
straightforward paraphrase of the traditional doctrine of emanation and
return. According to Suhraward, all lights are driven by an innate love
(mah.abba), desire (shawq) or passion (ishq) for the higher lights that are
their source;108 this unique upward drive, as exclusive to each light as its
self-awareness is, accounts for the particular features of the type of
epistrophe proper to it. In the case of human beings, the return to the
perfection of our origin amounts to a detachment from the body and a

107
108

Cf. for instance the reference to psychology in the theological context of Ishrt, namat. 4, 146. This
connection between the two parts of the Ishrt is discussed in Adamson 2011a.
H
I II.2.6.147, 9798 Walbridge and Ziai; 135137 Corbin.

Degrees of self-awareness

159

corresponding increase in terms of knowledge.109 This is further qualied

by a claim, inherited from Avicenna,110 that the desire for the particular
type of pleasure that is proper to human beings is conditional upon the
human subjects apprehending (idrk) the proper object of desire as
pleasurable. Thus, a human being may fail to apprehend her present
state in the light of her true self, in relation to what she really is and
what she should therefore strive to be; in other words, one may fail to
recognize oneself as the sort of thing one really is, that is, as a pure light,
and consequently fail to pursue the goal, proper to a pure light, of
becoming more luminous and better aware of oneself.111
But merely stating that self-awareness allows degrees is not a particularly convincing move unless one appends to it at least an elementary
elucidation of what those degrees amount to. How am I to conceive of
the dierence in degree between Gods self-awareness and my own?
How is it possible to be more or less an I than I presently am?
Moreover, isnt it possible that such a dierence, although seemingly
conceived in purely quantitative terms, will ultimately make Gods
awareness of Himself just as inconceivable and inaccessible to me as
His self-intellection, which brings the world into existence, is dierent
from my self-intellection as a subject in and passive to that world?
Finally, does all this not compromise the validity of Suhrawards
application of self-awareness, along the lines described above, in laying
the foundation for his new metaphysics?
Unfortunately, the elucidation of the sense in which self-awareness is
gradual is awkwardly underdeveloped in Suhraward. While he clearly
endorses the idea, it is not obvious whether he recognizes that it amounts
to a departure from the Avicennian concept of self-awareness. He does make
enough observations to enable a rational reconstruction of at least the
elements of a theory behind the idea,112 but in the end such reconstructions
are bound to remain more or less speculative. A historical study of the
development of the concept of self-awareness in Islamic philosophy must
remain closer to Suhrawards explicit words, carefully charting the loose
ends but refraining from tying them up too neatly, as awkward as the result
may seem. This is particularly the case with the idea of the gradation of selfawareness, since it seems to be picked up and explicated at far greater length
109
110
111
112

H
I II.5.2.237, 145 Walbridge and Ziai; 223224 Corbin. Cf. II.2.12.171, 110111 Walbridge and Ziai;
162165 (with a reference to the Arabic Plotinus); and II.4.8.226, 139 Walbridge and Ziai; 213214 Corbin.
Cf. Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 8, 191194.
H
I II.5.2.238, 145146 Walbridge and Ziai; 224225 Corbin.
I have suggested one possible reconstruction in Kaukua 2011, see especially 151156.

160

Self-awareness, presence, appearance

by Mull Sadr, though not without a fundamental revision to the concept

of the self involved in self-awareness. In light of that departure, Suhraward
appears to represent a point of conict between the Avicennian description
of self-awareness as a static feature of I-ness and the idea that one can
develop in terms of ones I-ness and thereby to be more or less of an I. As we
can see, the conict can be resolved only by surrendering one or the other
thesis.

chapter 7

Mull S adr on self-awareness

Since the vigorous promotion of his philosophy by his Qajar commentators

in the nineteenth century, the name of Muh.ammad ibn Ibrhm ibn Yahy
al-Qawm al-Shrz, better known by the honoraries Sadr al-Dn, Sadr alMutaallihn and Mull Sadr, has been virtually synonymous with Islamic
philosophy in the Shiite seminaries of Iran. He is venerated for his synthesis
of the rival philosophical, theological and mystical currents of his time into
an original system that represents the summit of the philosophical interpretations of the Muh.ammadan revelation. In an uvre of encyclopedic
proportions, Sadr does indeed develop a philosophy that, as we will soon
see, is genuinely novel yet at the same time brewed from recognizable
ingredients, mainly from three traditions of learning. The rst of these
goes back to Avicenna and lives on in the theological tradition of critical
commentary on his thought, while the second is represented by Suhraward
and his ishrq commentators and the third by the akbar tradition of
theoretically oriented Susm founded upon the heritage of Muhy al-Dn
Ibn Arab (d. 1240). But in spite of his considerable learning, Sadrs own
assessment is that the most signicant inuence came not from his predecessors but straight from the Source, for time and again he emphasizes the
crucial impact of personal inspired intuition upon the development of his
philosophical system.1
Sadrs philosophical career is closely interwoven with the cultural politics of the early Safavid state. Born in 1571 or 1572, Sadr left his native
Shrz in his early twenties to pursue the studies in philosophy and the
Islamic sciences that he seems to have begun on his own, eventually arriving
at Isfahn, the Safavid capital.2 Under the tutelage of Bah al-Dn al-mil
(d. 1620/1), he is reported to have acquired a level of knowledge in the
Islamic sciences that was unprecedented among his philosophical
1
2

For an example of this topos, see Asfr, muqaddima, I.1415, 1718; cf. Rizvi 2005, 231.
Rizvi 2007, 58, 10.

161

162

Mull Sadr on self-awareness

predecessors,3 and this was complemented by a profound schooling in

philosophy by one of the most original Islamic thinkers, Mr Muh.ammad
Bqir Astarabd (d. 1631), better known as Mr Dmd and often referred to
by the honorary Third Teacher (after Aristotle and al-Frb).4
Sadrs rise to prominence in the intellectual milieu of Isfahn seems to
have been met with considerable opposition from the more conservative
scholars of the city.5 Prompted at least in part by the adverse reception, he
returned to Shrz in 16012, but sustained opposition in his hometown,
once renowned for its thriving philosophical scene,6 eventually inspired him
to retreat to the small village of Kahak near Qom, the present centre of
Shiite learning.7 Sadr himself reports that in Kahak he largely retired from
public and collegial life, focusing instead on ascetic and meditative practices.
As he recalls in the preface to his magnum opus, his constant eorts in
prayer and ascesis led to a series of intuitions which may have been
instrumental in convincing him that the ishrq doctrine, which he had
adopted from his teacher, was prone to fundamental problems. These
hinged especially on Mr Dmds adoption of the notion of quiddity as
the basis of his metaphysics, the famous theory of as.la al-mhya, or
primacy of quiddity, against which Sadr eventually developed an alternative based on existence.8 He held rmly to this in both writing and
teaching for the rest of his career through the itinerant years that nally
settled him at the turn of the 1620s in a prestigious teaching position in
Shrz, where he remained until his death in Basr on a seventh pilgrimage,
most likely in 1635/6.9
The Sadrian corpus consists of more than fty works, ranging from
multi-volume summae to brief treatises on strictly dened topics. In rough
terms, these can be divided into two main classes.10 On the one hand, Sadr
wrote a number of works in the so-called Islamic sciences, the most
prominent among which are his three treatises on the principles of
Qurnic exegesis (Asrr al-yt wa anwr al-bayyint, Mafth. al-ghayb
and Mutashbiht al-Qurn), his large commentary on selected .sras of
3
5
6
7
8
9
10

4
Ziai 1996, 636; Nasr 1996, 643.
Rizvi 2007, 913; Dabashi 1996, 621632; Ziai 1996, 636.
Corbin 1964, 3; Morris 1981, 16; Dabashi 1996, 623, 627. For a considered critique of this received
view, however, see Rizvi 2007, 3136.
For a concise account of philosophy in early sixteenth-century Shrz, see Pourjavady 2011, 144.
Rizvi 2007, 14.
Asfr, muqaddima, I.714; Mashir VI.85, 35; cf. Kalin 2003, 2728. For an excellent overview of the
debate between as.la al-mhya and as.la al-wujd, see Bonmariage 2007, 2853.
Rizvi 2007, 14, 2230.
Cf. Kalin 2003, 3560. Rizvi 2007, 52111, to my knowledge the most complete bibliography of Sadr,
opts for a more nuanced classication.

Mull S adr on self-awareness

163

the Qurn, and his commentary to Ab Jafar ibn Muh.ammad ibn Yaqb
al-Kulayns (d. 941) Us.l al-Kf, the rst section of one of the most
authoritative Shiite collections of ahdth. We can also include a number
of practically oriented works of ethical guidance in this class.11 The other
class consists of Sadrs philosophical works, among which the uncontested
pride of place belongs to the immense mature work, al-H
ikma al-mutaliya
f al-asfr al-arbaa (The Transcendent Wisdom in Four Journeys,
16061628), our main source in the present study. Although modelled on
earlier endeavours at the summary presentation of the philosophical explanation of the world, Sadrs magnum opus deviates from the classical
Peripatetic model by its decided emphasis on metaphysics and eschatology
at the cost of the natural sciences.12 Other important philosophical treatises
are al-Mabda wa al-mad (completed in 1606), a relatively early work on
the origination of the cosmos from God and its return to Him, the Kitb
al-mashir, a concise presentation of Sadrs theory of existence as the
foundation of metaphysics written after 1628, al-Shawhid al-rubbya f
al-manhij al-sulkya, a more condensed summa than the Asfr completed
before 1631, and al-H
ikma al-arshya (completed between 1631 and 1634), a
late work with an eschatological emphasis.13 Sadr also wrote several minor
treatises in philosophy as well as commentaries on works by Avicenna,
Suhraward and other philosophers.14
Much like in Suhrawards case, earlier Western scholarship, with Corbin
and Seyyed Hossein Nasr at the spearhead,15 has tended to emphasize the
mystical aspects of Sadrs thought and thereby to downplay the importance
of his consistent systematic and analytic striving, immediately evident in
works like the Asfr.16 For a long time, the only exception was Fazlur
Rahmans monograph The Philosophy of Mull S adr,17 now obsolete in
many regards, but a number of studies published since 2000 are beginning
to consolidate the image of an original and profound philosopher who should
be considered a peer of his most luminous European contemporaries.18
Reading Sadr, it is dicult not to recognize the analytic acuity that he
11
12
13
15
16

17

Cf. Kalin 2003, 3541; Rizvi 2007, 6991.

The structure of the Asfr is analysed in Arnzen 2007. For changes in philosophical summae between
Avicenna and Sadr, see Eichner 2007.
Rizvi 2007, 5268. 14 Rizvi 2007, 6977, 91111.
Corbin 1964, 1971; Nasr 1963, 1978. A later but inuential representative of this strand is Morris
1981.
For a critique of this line of interpretation, see Ziai 1996, 638639; and for a concise defence, Nasr
1996, 645 and 659. The dierent approaches in contemporary scholarship on Sadr are lucidly
described in Rizvi 2009, 414.
Rahman 1975. 18 Jambet 2002, 2008; Bonmariage 2007; Rizvi 2009; Kalin 2010; Rustom 2012.

164

Mull Sadr on self-awareness

applies to his vast reading, most evident in the manner, ubiquitous in the
Asfr, in which he painstakingly develops his own thought in a critical
relation to one or several of his predecessors. The authors brought into play
are not exclusively philosophers, but even when dealing with theological or
Su interlocutors Sadrs aims and foci remain thoroughly philosophical
and systematic.19 Methodologically, Sadr ceaselessly asserts the indispensability of intellect and reason.20
But instead of dwelling on this general level of debate, I would rather
introduce the following study of Sadrs treatment of self-awareness as a case
in point to support the claim that he should be read rst and foremost as a
philosopher, albeit one that departs from the tradition in many important
respects. In order to highlight the departures in the topic of self-awareness
and selfhood, we must begin by establishing that he stands on a shared
ground with his predecessors. A brief glance into Sadrs discussion of
knowledge and intellection, as well as into the arguments for the immateriality of the soul in the psychological section of the Asfr, suces to show
that he imports most of the arguments Avicenna and Suhraward designed
to describe and delimit the phenomenon of self-awareness. In the following,
I will briey revisit the Sadrian versions of the ying man, the related
argument from the constancy of self-awareness, the argument against
reection-based models of self-awareness and the argument from the
unity of experience.

7.1

Four Avicennian arguments

The ying animal

One of the most amusing features of Sadrs attempt at establishing the

immateriality of the animal soul in the second chapter of the psychological
section of the Asfr is his sustained reliance on Avicennian arguments. This
is amusing because these arguments were originally designed precisely to
distinguish the entity that functions as a soul in the human body from its
functional counterparts in non-human animals. This dierence in application is most striking in Sadrs reappropriation of the ying man, now recast
as an animal.
19
20

Moreover, as Rustom 2012 shows, there seem to be no doctrinal breaches between Sadrs philosophical and theological works.
This is substantiated by his hierarchical classication of the cognitive methods available to human
beings. See, for instance, Asfr IV.10.4, IX.315; and IV.11.26, IX.464465.

Four Avicennian arguments

165

Another demonstration that the animal is not the sensible structure is that we
say: if an animal is supposed such that it is created all at once, and is created
perfect, but is veiled in its senses from beholding what is external, and that it
is oating in a void or in open air so that the airs volume does not collide
with it and it does not sense any qualities, and its limbs are separated so that
they do not touch each other, then in this state it will apprehend itself
(dhtahu) and ignore all of its external and internal organs, or rather, it will
arm itself (dhtahu) without arming a dimension for it, neither length
nor breadth nor any direction; even if it imagined a position, a direction or
some organ in that state, it would not imagine it to be a part of itself
(dhtihi). It is evident that what one is aware of is dierent from what one
ignores; and so its itness (huwyatuhu) is dierent from all the organs.21

Notwithstanding the arguments reappropriation for the animal case, a

number of clues betray that Sadr is reading from Shif: F al-nafs I.1.22
However, it is worth pointing out that by replacing the human being with
an animal Sadr loses whatever plausibility the original argument may have
had. Avicennas thought experiment hinged on the givenness of selfawareness in the interlocutors own experience; the ying man was a
means of bracketing aspects of experience that prevent us from directing
our attention at the type of narrow self-awareness each of us has due to our
shared nature. Other animals dier from us in many respects, not least in
terms of cognitive capacities, and as a consequence we cannot claim
intuitive access to animal experience. Thus, animal experience is not available as the sort of immediate evidence one can plausibly build an argument
upon. On the contrary, if self-awareness is intimately related to our being
intellectual subjects, as Avicenna seems to have thought, its application in
an argument for the immateriality of the sub-intellectual animal soul
appears even more suspect.23
Another sign of Sadrs relapse from Avicennas argumentative rigour is
his characterization of the argument as a demonstration (burhn) instead of
a reminder (tanbh) or a pointer (ishra), as Avicenna had presented it. Sadr
also sidesteps Avicennas emphatic requirement that the interlocutor must
21
22

23

Asfr IV.2.2, VIII.47.

There are both direct quotes (created all at once and . . . perfect, oating in a void or in . . . air,
limbs are separated so that they do not touch, arm itself without arming . . . neither length nor
breadth) and considerable similarities on the level of thought, for instance the added qualication of
a per impossibile act of imagining a body, and the explication of the arguments logical basis (what is
armed as an explicit object of awareness is dierent from what is not so armed). For the
Avicennian text, see Chapter 2.1, 35.
Cf. Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.327328, where Sadr suggests that animals are incapable of self-awareness in the
absence of other contents of experience. This dierence, however, is not due to their alleged
corporeality but due to the fact that they are not capable of intellection.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

personally perform the act of imagining herself into the ying mans situation
and chooses to speak in passive about supposing (law furida) the animal in

the void or the open air.

Two possible reasons for Sadrs less rigorous take on the thought experiment readily suggest themselves. First of all, by the seventeenth century the
argument had become a rm part of the psychological tradition. Earlier
commentators, such as Ibn Kammna, had attempted to increase the
strength of the argument by developing it into a demonstrative syllogism.24
Informed by this line of development, Sadr may simply have considered
the argument worthy of the status of demonstration. On the other hand,
Sadrs claim that non-human animals are aware of themselves in the same
sense as human beings may have been based on an argument earlier on in
the same section which infers self-awareness from the perception of pain
and pleasure. An animals perception of pain and pleasure, which Sadr
seems to consider obvious from elementary observation of animal behaviour, concerns pain and pleasure not in absolute terms but rather as specic
to the very perceiving animal itself. Thus, the animal must be aware of itself
in addition to its perception of the object causing the pain or the pleasure.25
In either case, Sadrs move remains a signicant departure from
Avicenna.26 However, as I think will become obvious from his consistent
use of familiar arguments, this does not mean that the phenomenon his
concept of self-awareness was based upon was dierent from Avicennas.
Rather, the departure signals Sadrs dierent application of the phenomenon; instead of an Avicennian attempt at making sense of the individual
existence of an intellectual, hence immaterial entity, Sadr believes it should
be an elementary feature of a much broader scope of mental, and thereby
immaterial existence.
This expansion of the scope of self-awareness becomes more explicit in a
later chapter designed to argue for the independence of the souls cognitive
faculties from their corporeal instruments. For this purpose, Sadr brings
forth the following piece of evidence:
24

25
26

See Muehlethaler 2009. However, Ibn Kammnas attempt, although a masterful combination of a
number of Avicennian insights, did not do away with the fact that the premises of the demonstration
had to be acquired by means of a rst-personal performance of the thought experiment.
Asfr IV.2.2, VIII.4546. This argument is suggested to provide the basis of the ying animal by
Jambet 2002, 229.
If Avicenna had a theory of animal self-awareness, it must have been based on acts of estimative
apprehension. Thus, despite certain similarities, the phenomenon would have been dierent from
the self-awareness instantiated in human beings. For a reconstruction of Avicennas theory of animal
self-awareness, see Kaukua and Kukkonen 2007. Sadr was quite probably aware of this, for he
paraphrases an Avicennian discussion on animal awareness in Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.326328.

Four Avicennian arguments

167

When the human beings external faculties and corporeal senses are still due
to sleep, lack of consciousness (al-ighm) or [something] else, he will often
nd of himself (yajidu min nafsihi) that he hears, sees, smells, touches, strikes
and walks. Thus, he has in himself (f dhtihi) these sensations (al-mashir),
faculties and instruments without deciency or the need of anything other
than them.27

Curiously enough, this argument seems to be based on an intuition that is

diametrically opposed to that behind the ying man. At the same time,
one cannot help thinking of the sleeping or the intoxicated person
featured in the Ishrt version of the ying man; yet here we have Sadr
claim that even in such seemingly unconscious states one will remain
aware of ones capacity to perceive. For Sadr, this is evidence of the
absolute immateriality not just of the intellectual, but also of the imaginative and even the perceptual mode of mental existence. Immersed in
acts of perception that demand our complete attention, we may fail to
notice that the perceptions themselves are modes of our own existence, not
that of an external object supposedly independent of and causally active
upon us. Nevertheless, both the capacity to perceive and the act of
perception are in us. Later on in the same context Sadr formulates the
case even more straightforwardly with important corroboration from the
pseudo-Aristotelian Theology:
Thus, his self is by itself (dhtuhu bi dhtihi) sight for the apprehension of
what is seen and hearing for the apprehension of what is heard, and similarly
for every species of sensibles. Thus, in itself (f dhtihi) it is hearing, sight,
smell, taste and touch for itself (li dhtihi). You already know from the
preceding the unity of sense with what is sensed, and so he is the sense of all
senses.28

Thus, although Sadr recognizes the validity of the ying man, and
thereby the concept of self-awareness it hinges upon, he subscribes to this
aspect of Avicennian heritage only with two important qualications. The
scope of self-awareness must be broader and include both the intellectual
and the sub-intellectual mode of mental existence. On the other hand, the
last passage in particular seems to call for a full reassessment of the question
of whether self-awareness is really separable from other constituents of
human experience. The motive and the immense consequences of these
qualications will be our main concern in the next chapter.

27

Asfr IV.8.7, IX.90.

28

Asfr IV.8.7, IX.92.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

Argument from the constancy of self-awareness

Closely related to the intuition behind the ying man is the Avicennian
distinction between the constancy of self-awareness and the intermittency
of all acts of awareness concerning the body. This distinction yields the
familiar argument: were the soul or the self corporeal, it would have to be
aware of the organ in which it resides and which is therefore indispensable
for its existence, whenever it is aware of itself; but since we are not constantly
aware of any organ, let alone the entire body, although we are constantly
aware of ourselves, we must reject the supposition and assert that the soul is
incorporeal.29
This argument appears repeatedly in the psychological section of the
Asfr,30 mostly with rather insignicant additions to or deviations from the
Avicennian original. An exception to this rule, however, is a passage in
which Sadr engages in a debate that the argument had aroused between the
two commentators of the Ishrt, Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz and Nas.r al-Dn alT.s (d. 1274).31 In one of his counterarguments, Rz had challenged the
validity of Avicennas inference by saying that it presupposes the human
soul to be always aware of all of its attributes and concomitants, which does
not seem plausible on the basis of our experience.32 The simple fact that I
am sometimes unaware of the body is sucient to establish that my body is
not constitutive of or concomitant to me only if we suppose that I am
constantly aware of whatever is constitutive of or concomitant to me. In
spite of Sadrs extremely elliptical rendering of the argument, it seems to
rely on the salient point that the soul is not in every respect transparent to
itself. As we have seen, Rz himself had argued that the souls substantiality
is not obvious to the soul merely from its awareness of itself.33 Earlier on,
Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd had pointed out that, the souls constant
awareness of itself notwithstanding, some of its acts in the body, such as
digestion and growth, are very rarely, if ever, given to it as its own.34 In the
light of such counterexamples, it is only natural to ask why the selfs
inherence in the body could not be both constitutive or concomitant and
29
30

31
32
33
34

See Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 255256 Rahman; Ishrt, namat. 3, 120.
Cf. Asfr IV.2.2, VIII.4647 (in an argument for the incorporeality of the animal soul); IV.6.1,
VIII.347348 (with an interesting remark against the Aristotelian thesis that the faculty of sense
perceives its own act of perceiving); and IV.6.1, VIII.353355 (in a variation of the argument from the
unity of experience).
For the argument, which Sadr seems uncharacteristically critical of, see Asfr IV.6.1,
VIII.338340.
Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.343.
See Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.1, II.246247, as discussed in Chapter 5.2, 116118.
Baghdd, Mutabar: al-ilm al-t.ab VI.5, II.319320.

Four Avicennian arguments

169

opaque to the self. The choice, decisive for the argument, between those
opaque aspects of the self that are constitutive to it and those that are not
seems all but arbitrary.
T.ss answer in Avicennas defence is based on a distinction between
two types of constituents of experience:
The attributes and concomitants are divided into what is necessary for the
soul due to itself (li dhtih), such as its apprehending itself (kawnih
mudrikatan li dhtih), and what is necessary for it after comparing it with
things that are dierent from it, such as its being separate from matter and
not existing in a subject. The soul apprehends the rst sort constantly, just as
it apprehends itself constantly (knat mudrikatan li dhtih diman), but it
does not apprehend the second sort except in the state of comparing, because
the condition is lacking in states other than that.35

T.sis point is clear: in order to be aware of its relation to and separation

from the body, the soul has to compare and relate itself explicitly to the
body by means of considerations such as the present argument. This
comparison requires information acquired through the operation of the
senses and is therefore not essential, innate or constitutive to the soul, unlike
the souls awareness of itself.
Sadrs assessment of the debate is admirably clear in its density. If we
hold, as he does, that the selfs perceptions (apprehension in T.ss second
class) are acts of the self that it is aware of in and due to itself, we must reject
T.ss distinction as based on inadequate evidence.36 Again, Sadrs basic
insight will become clearer when we chart the consequences of his theory of
cognitive unity for his conception of human selfhood. Suce it now to say
that his analysis of this debate generated by the argument from the constancy of self-awareness shows that Sadr latches on to a well-established
discussion on self-awareness without pointing out any pressing need to
reject the underlying phenomenon. That he understood this phenomenon
in exactly the same sense as his aforediscussed predecessors becomes clear
from his treatment of the two remaining types of argument.

35
36

Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.343344. Cf. T.s, Sharh. al-Ishrt II.346348.

Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.344. Let it be added that Sadrs refusal of T.ss line of defence does not entail that
he takes Rzs criticism to be conclusive. If one dierentiates categorically between the material and
mental existence of one and the same entity, as Sadr does, the opaque aspects of a human being can
be exhaustively relegated to material existence so that they no longer pose a problem for the full
transparency of every act of mental existence. As a material form, the human souls existence does
consist in unaware acts in the body, but that is simply because material existence is below the level of
the mental. Cf. Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.7779.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

Argument against reection-based models of self-awareness

This Avicennian argument gures in two dierent contexts in the Asfr.

Sadr reproduces the intuition underlying the original in a chapter dedicated to showing that an intellects act of self-intellection is identical with
the intellect itself, and therefore temporally coterminous with it. The
argument is preceded by a closely related statement according to which all
human apprehension and action take place in the rst person:
When a human is engaged in an apprehensive or a motive act, his purpose is
not absolute apprehension or movement but an individual apprehension
which originates in him and occurs to him, and the same is to be said of
movement. When someone escapes from an enemy or heat or cold, his
escape is not from an absolute enemy but from his individual enemy, nor is it
from absolute heat but from an individual heat which has hurt him and
happened to his self (dhtihi), and knowledge of the occurrence of the heat or
the cold to him entails knowledge of him. Similarly, someone who intends to
act in some manner or to acquire something desired does not intend that the
act occurs in an absolute sense but that it occurs with respect to him, nor to
satisfy an absolute desire but a desire particular to him, and all this is derived
from his knowledge of himself (dhtihi). It is thus evidently shown that a
humans knowledge of his soul and his self (bi nafsihi wa dhtihi) is the rst
and oldest knowledge, it is always present and he is never without it.37

The argument relies on commonplace examples of motivated action: no

disinterested perception of a potentially painful quality will cause any
reaction in us, but only a quality that we actually perceive as painful and
therefore concerning ourselves will. By the same token, we will be driven to
neither ght nor ee at the sight of an armed person unless we perceive him
to be hostile towards ourselves. Thus, the rst-order perceptions that
prompt reactions in us must entail some sort of self-acquaintance, they
have to be uniquely our own. Now, if such self-acquaintance is a necessary
feature of such commonplace acts and related apprehensions, Sadr argues,
we have no reason to presume that they are not there even in apprehensions
that do not demand immediate reactions of us. In this precise sense, therefore, each human being, as an intellectual entity, is constantly aware of
herself.
Thus, Sadrs argument hinges on the fact that all our experience and
action take place in the rst person, in much the same way as Avicennas
argument against reection-based models of self-awareness. It is therefore

37

Asfr I.10.2.4, III.505.

Four Avicennian arguments

171

not surprising that he supports his case with what amounts to an uncredited
quote:
No one can say: my knowledge of myself (bi nafs) is due to a medium which
is my act, I am informed of myself by my act (ustudilla bi l al dht). That
is because I can neither be informed of myself (dht) by an absolute act nor
be informed by an act which originates from myself to myself (s.adara min
nafs al nafs). If I am informed by an absolute act, an absolute act only
requires an absolute agent, and only an absolute agent can be established by
means of it, not an agent that would be me. If I am informed of myself (alay)
by my act, I can only know my act after knowing myself (nafs). Thus, if I can
only know myself (nafs) after knowing myself (nafs), a circle results, and it is
false. This therefore indicates that a human beings knowledge of himself (bi
nafsihi) is not by means of his act.38

This version of the familiar argument is clearly derived from the Ishrt and
is used to make exactly the same Avicennian point.39 If my self-awareness is
supposed to be due and subsequent to my reective consideration of my
own act, we will not be left with anything by means of which the rst-order
act can be rendered an act that belongs uniquely to me. Thus, the state has
to be somehow earmarked as mine to begin with, and as the earlier argument spelled out, this can be achieved because of the inherent rstpersonality of the act, its being my act.
Another occurrence of the same argument can be identied in the
chapter that has already yielded us the ying animal. The purpose is,
again, to argue for the immateriality of the animal and, a fortiori, the
human soul. One of Sadrs demonstrations is a syllogism relying on a
premise that the animal is constantly aware of itself, not by means of an
acquired object of knowledge. The argument against reection-based models of self-awareness is relied on as support for that premise.
Were knowledge of the souls existence acquired, it would be either by means
of sense-perception, which is false . . . or by means of thought, and thus no
doubt from evidence (dall), the evidence being either a cause of the soul or
its eect. The rst is false, because the cause of souls is something too
elevated to be encompassed by the animals knowledge; furthermore, most
people know themselves (anfusahum) even though the cause of their souls
(anfusihim) does not occur to their mind. The second is also false, because either
the medium in the evidence is an absolute act or [the animals] act related to it;
thus, if it considers an absolute act, consequently it asserts an absolute agent, not
an agent that is it; and if it considers a related act, knowledge of an act related to
an individual depends on knowledge of [the individual], so that if knowledge of it
38

Asfr I.10.2.4, III.505.

39

Cf. Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 120; and see Chapter 4.1, 7275.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

were acquired from knowledge of an act related to it, a circle would result. Thus,
it is established that the animals knowledge of itself (bi nafsihi) is not derived
from sense-perception or evidence.40

In all its density, the argument is a remarkably faithful rendering of the

Avicennian original. However, the fact that it is embedded in a context
dealing with the animal soul has consequences that may seem problematic
at rst sight. In Avicenna the argument is designed to refute a thesis that
arises from a commonplace phenomenon of human psychology: we are
capable of reecting upon ourselves, and since it is in an explicit reective
stance that we rst come to pay attention to ourselves, it may seem natural
to adopt reection as the primary sense in which we choose to speak of selfawareness. The capacity of reection, however, is an exclusive prerequisite
of intellectual subjects and thereby something that non-human animals are
bereft of. Since nothing indicates Sadrs willingness to give up this traditional tenet,41 it seems natural to read this version of the argument against
the reection model of self-awareness as an argument per impossibile. But
unlike the ying animal, this re-appropriation of a discussion on human
beings in the animal case is not fatal to the arguments plausibility. A
counterfactual argument can be perfectly valid provided that the thesis
it is intended to support can be corroborated by other means. And Sadr
clearly does not base his claim of the immateriality of the animal soul on the
argument against reection, which instead serves the signicantly more
modest purpose of rejecting the suggestion that animal self-awareness is
due to acquired knowledge.
There is also a less obviously Avicennian variation of the argument, in the
course of which Sadr makes an interesting qualication. This version is
embedded in an extended case for the immediacy of self-awareness.
Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that self-awareness is due to a special
object of awareness, a cognitive form which refers to ones self and the
awareness of which will thereby mediately amount to self-awareness. In such
a case, this form will either have to be identical to ones self or in some
respect dierent from it. If it is identical to ones self, then a form (of the self
as object of awareness) will occur to itself (the same self as the subject of
awareness). The problem is, given that the self-aware human being is
immaterial, we have no means of distinguishing between the two identical
forms, and so the duality required in the presupposition can no longer be
maintained. If, on the other hand, the form is somehow dierent from the
40
41

Asfr IV.2.2, VIII.4647; emphasis added.

That animal self-awareness is not intellectual is explicitly stated in Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.326328.

Four Avicennian arguments

173

self it represents, awareness of the form is not a case of self-awareness sensu

stricto. Sadr is elliptic about why exactly this is the case, but it seems natural
to read his statement as a tacit reference to the argument against reectionbased models of self-awareness: if the form is simply dierent from me,
there is no non-arbitrary way to recognize it as myself. In any case, when all
possibilities of an alleged medium of self-awareness have been ruled out, so
the argument runs, the self must simply occur to itself. Since this cannot be
a question of acquisition, self-awareness has to be constant.42
In light of what we have learned from Sadrs predecessors, one might
expect the discussion to be settled at this point. However, Sadr nds the
argument problematic because it threatens to rule out the possibility of
reective self-awareness, which he says many of us are perfectly familiar
with. This is because when I take a prior mental state or act of mine into
explicit consideration in a higher-order act of reection, a form that is
identical to me will have to occur to me. Were it not for this identity, I
would not be able to recognize myself in the object of reection; were it not
for the distinction between the rst- and second-order states, no reective
relation could be established. Thus, Sadr thinks that a rephrasing of the
argument is in order.43
According to Sadr, the real problem behind the claim that a specic
form acts as a medium for self-awareness is that any form occurring to a
subject that is aware of it is an accident of that subject. But if the self is a
substance and the object of knowledge an accident, I should be aware of
myself as an accident of myself. This is evidently not the case. On the
contrary, if I choose to apply the Aristotelian system of categories to myself,
I will inevitably classify myself under substance. Thus, self-awareness has
to be due to an immediate presence of the self to itself, just as Avicenna
cogently, if in somewhat inaccurate terms, had argued.44 However, it is
42

43
44

This argument, with slight variations, gures in two contexts in the Asfr: rst in a discussion
concerning the self-intellection of all intellects (Asfr I.10.2.4, III.501), and later on in the psychological section of the book in a chapter designed to show that the rational soul is incorporeal (Asfr
IV.6.1, VIII.320326). In the latter, Sadr informs us that he is drawing from Avicennas Mubh.atht.
While certain specic points in the discussion can be located in that compilation of Avicennian
correspondence (cf. Avicenna, Mubh.atht 5558, 134135 Badaw (VI.446, 121; and VI.493, 172173
Bdrfar) with Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.320324; Avicenna, Mubh.atht 426, 222223 Badaw (VI.892, 318
Bdrfar) with Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.324325; the discussion on animal self-awareness in Avicenna,
Mubh.atht 357358, 199 Badaw (VI.502505, 175176 Bdrfar) and 374375, 209 Badaw
(V.289293, 120 Bdrfar) seems to be vaguely related to the considerably more developed views in
Asfr IV.6.1, VIII.326328), I have not been able to nd precedents for all steps in the series of
questions Sadr discusses.
Asfr I.10.2.4, III.501. This follow-up is not included in the psychological context.
Asfr I.10.2.4, III.501. This is reminiscent of Avicennas response to his interlocutors as reported in
Asfr IV.6.1, VIII, 320321; cf. Avicenna, Mubh.atht 56, 135 Badaw; VI.446, 121 Bdrfar.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

important to notice that Sadr clearly thinks that his manner of phrasing the
point is better equipped to make sense of commonplace acts of reection.
When I reect upon myself, I realize that my act of reection is accidental
and that its object is just as fortuitous as any other object of my awareness.
Thus, the form that is me as an object of reection does occur to me
accidentally. Yet it is equally important to point out that this qualication
is inconsequential for Sadrs account of the primitive self-awareness at its
basis, an account which remains thoroughly Avicennian. His only qualm is
that we have to allow for the possibility that a cognitive subject is presented
with an object she apprehends as distinct from yet identical to herself. The
identity between the subject and the object is grounded in rst-order
primitive self-awareness, the subject of which recognizes herself in reection
precisely because she was already there in the object of reection, whereas
the distinction is due to the hierarchical relation between the subjectsubstance and the object-accident.
The Avicennian argument against the reection model of self-awareness
hinges on an implicit distinction between the types of awareness respective
to a subject and an object. In the previous chapter we saw Suhraward
explicate this distinction by means of the pronouns I and it. Sadr revisits
this method in a loaded chapter that gathers together the premises required
in an investigation into Gods knowledge. Having established a distinction
between the epistemological concept of knowledge as a mental form that
refers to an external object and the psychological concept of knowledge as
simply a feature of the world, he makes the following observation on selfawareness:
We apprehend ourselves (dhawtan) through our very form through which
we are we, not through a form additional to it. Thus, every human being
apprehends himself (dhtahu) in a manner which prevents sharing. If this
apprehension were through a form which occurs in our soul, [the form]
would be universal, and even if it were a collection of universals the whole of
which is individuated by a single self (dht), then nevertheless its very
conception would not rule out the possibility of being true of many.
Besides, we refer to every universal concept and mental form even if it
were something which subsists through our self (dhtin) by it whereas
our self (dhtin) we refer to by I, and our knowledge of our self is identical
to the existence of our self and our individual itness (ilmun bi dhtin aynu
wujdi dhtin wa huwyatin al-shakhs.ya).45

45

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.149.

Four Avicennian arguments

175

Self-awareness is a unique cognitive phenomenon because in it the

epistemological and the psychological concept of knowledge coincide: we
know ourselves simply through our existence, or, in the Avicennian terms
Sadr borrows here, our knowledge of ourselves is our very existence. But
the way in which Sadr argues towards this statement is a mixture of two
Suhrawardian ideas. As we recall,46 Suhraward argued against the impression theory of knowledge by saying that whatever is impressed in an
immaterial subject, such as the human soul, is universal, because immateriality entails intellectuality, and intellects have universals as objects. Sadr
connects this to the statement that objects always appear in the mode of an
it, whereas appearing as an I is exclusive to our respective selves, unshareable
by and inaccessible to any other subject.47 The interesting feature in this
combination of the two Suhrawardian insights is that Sadr seems to deny
his predecessors claim according to which the rst-personal indexical is a
universal in its own right.48 This impression is corroborated later on in the
same context: whatever is composed of universal concepts can only be
referred to by means of it, not by means of I.49
Suhraward spoke of the I as a universal concept presumably because it
refers in one and the same sense to primitive rst-personality in the case of
each of its multiple utterers. When Zayd, Umar and Khlid say I, each
indicates his being a rst-personal subject of experience; although the
individual referent of the pronoun is given exclusively to the subject uttering it, everyone refers to individual instantiations of the same I-ness. Sadr,
however, quite probably owing to the needs of his context, emphasizes the
indexicality of the pronoun instead of the alleged meaning that is preserved
from one context to another. Whenever someone utters the expression I,
she must refer to her unshareable and exclusive awareness of herself, and in
this sense the indexical cannot be used of any object. Moreover, strictly
speaking Sadr does not even say that the rst-personal indexical does not
function as a universal in the sense expounded by Suhraward; all he states is
that whatever is explicitly given in universal terms is by necessity given as an
object and thereby distinct from the I or the self.50
46
47

48
49
50

Cf. Chapter 6.1, 128130.

This familiar distinction is not obscured by the fact that Sadr uses the technical term itness
(huwya) at the end of the passage. In the sense intended here, itness does not denote the opposite
of I-ness but rather refers to the individuality of any existing thing, whether the thing is a subject (I)
or an object (it). Cf. Goichon 1991.
Cf. Suhraward, Talwh.t III.5.15, 282283 Habb; 115116 Corbin; and see Chapter 5.2, 119121; and
Chapter 6.1, 128129.
Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.149; cf. III.1.3.1, VI.150.
Cf. Asfr IV.2.3, VIII.5051, where Sadr speaks of the concept I.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

Our brief consideration of Sadrs use of the argument against the

reection model of self-awareness shows, again, that he speaks of selfawareness in the same sense as his predecessors. This is not obscured either
by his somewhat less rigorous terminology or by the qualications he makes
for the argument. If anything, the qualications help to underline the fact
that by the seventeenth century this particular way of delimiting the
phenomenon had undergone considerable renement.
Argument from unity of experience
The traditional argument from the unity of experience surfaces in a condensed form quite frequently in the psychological part of the Asfr. I will
consider only two somewhat more extended treatments of it; the rst comes
from a chapter designed to demonstrate the souls unity despite its seemingly distinct faculties, while the second is embedded in an eschatological
refutation of transmigration. I will conclude by considering a qualication
Sadr is driven to make in a consideration of Ab al-Barakts and Rzs
counterexample of unconscious vegetative acts such as digestion.
Sadrs discussion of the Avicennian theory of the internal senses in the
fth section of the psychology of the Asfr culminates in three demonstrations for the souls unity, notwithstanding the faculty psychological analysis
of its functions. Of these demonstrations from the object known, the
knowing subject and knowledge itself, respectively the second is a variation of the argument from unity.
You do not doubt that you see things, hear sounds and apprehend intelligibles, nor do you doubt that you are numerically one. If that which
apprehends intelligibles were dierent from that which apprehends sensibles,
then the substance of your self (jawharu dhtika), which is strictly speaking
(inda al-tah.qq) you, would not perceive the two together. If it does
apprehend both, then that which apprehends them is one self (dhtan),
and that is what was sought for, otherwise you would be two selves (dhtayn)
instead of one self (dhtan). The same is to be said about desire and anger, for
you do not doubt that you desire intercourse or something else, and that you
are angry at your adversary.51

There is little extraordinary about this version of the argument. Sadr relies
on the familiar phenomenon of distinct objects being given to a subject that
one will constantly identify with regardless of the uctuation in the objective content the subject is presented with. That subject, the persistent rst51

Asfr IV.5.4, VIII.265.

Four Avicennian arguments

177

personal perspective to that content, is what the interlocutor will intuitively

recognize as herself.
However, slightly later on, when dealing with a counterargument according to which the real subject of each apprehension is the respective faculty or
organ, Sadr is led to make an interesting specication regarding the proper
realm of the experiential unity that the argument relies on.
If you say: I do not apprehend after the service,52 then you do not see, you
do not hear, nor do you nd in yourself (min nafsika) your pain, your
pleasure, your hunger or your thirst, but you know that the eye, which is
your instrument and the seeing faculty, has apprehended and seen something, and this knowledge is dierent from the reality of seeing and vision.
Thus, knowledge that the eye sees, the ear hears, the foot walks and the hand
strikes is not seeing, hearing, walking or striking, just as knowledge that
another is hungry, in pain or joyful is not intuition (wijdnan) of hunger,
pain or joy. But even those in the very beginning of their understanding
know that they hear, see, suer pain, rejoice, strike and walk, and if this
knowledge can be denied, then all that is perceived and beheld can be denied.
It is therefore known that the faculty of our hearing, seeing, striking and
walking is through the soul, and through it we hear, through it we see,
through it we strike and through it we walk. By means of this it is established
that the substance of your soul (jawhara nafsika) through which you are
you hears, sees, suers pain, rejoices, understands, comprehends, strikes
and walks, even if in each species of these acts it needs a proper natural
instrument. There is no dispute about that as long as we remain in the world
of nature, but if the soul casts away the body and becomes independent in
existence, these acts emerge from it without instruments.53

Knowledge of the relevant corporeal processes which the Peripatetic

philosophers took to cause perception or amount to action, that is, knowledge that the eye sees, the ear hears, the foot walks and the hand strikes, is
not awareness of actually perceiving or acting. Yet our awareness of our
seeing, hearing, walking and striking is one of the rst facts we recognize as
intuitively evident, and therefore the foundation upon which all our further
knowledge must lie. This is of course an oblique subscription to the
Avicennian claim of the primitivity of self-awareness, but here in the
context of the argument from unity it serves to distinguish the corporeal
52

53

Service (al-tadiya) here refers to the operation of the instrument of the souls act, in this case of
apprehension. Earlier on Sadr has stated that even if we allow, for arguments sake, that the
instrument apprehends its objects, the apprehension of the soul or the self still remains distinct
from it, and it is the latter that the argument from unity hinges upon. Here he proceeds to tackle the
stronger claim that there is no subsequent apprehension of the single self at all.
Asfr IV.5.4, VIII.266267.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

processes allegedly underpinning our experiences from those experiences

considered as such. The argument from unity derives its force from the
realm of the latter, and the self-awareness whose recognition it hinges upon
is precisely the sort of commonplace phenomenal fact that Avicenna had
introduced. Sadrs specication intensies Avicennas argument in a fashion that rings peculiarly modern in its explicit distinction between thirdpersonally describable objective things and events, such as corporeal
processes, and rst-personally experienced qualitative experiences. By the
same token, Sadr takes his predecessors substance dualism a step further:
for him, mental existence, or the realm of self-aware experience, is ultimately self-subsistent and entirely independent of its erstwhile corporeal
basis. The body is an instrument which the soul, having reached the level of
mental existence, can leave behind, not merely in intellection but equally in
experiences of the perceptual mode.54
In the last, eschatological part of the Asfr, Sadr devotes an entire section
of considerable length to a refutation of transmigration, with one of the
chapters building upon the fact that every human individual has a single
self (dhtan) that is his soul,55 that is, on the argument from unity. This fact
is established at the very beginning of the section as follows:
Each one of us knows intuitively (bi al-wijdn), before resorting to demonstration, that his self (dhtahu) and reality is one thing, not many things.
Thereby he knows that he understands, apprehends, senses, desires, is angry,
prefers, moves, is at rest and is characterized by a combination of attributes
and names, some of which are of the class of the intellect and its states, some
of the class of sense-perception and imagination and their states, and some of
the class of the body and its accidents and passions. Although this is something intuitive, most people cannot know it with respect to the art of
knowledge but deny this unity when they embark on inquiry and scrutiny,
except the one whom God assists by a light from Him. How will one who is
incapable of the unity of his self (nafsihi) have strength for the unity of his
Lord? What has reached us from the ancients regarding this question is that
when they distributed types of acts to types of faculties and related each one
of them to a dierent faculty, they needed to show that in all of them there is
something like root and origin and that the rest of the faculties are like its
consequences and branches.56

The argument itself is perfectly familiar, but the methodological point

Sadr raises is worth spelling out. As the end of the passage clearly indicates,
he diagnoses the problem of unity as due to the faculty psychological
54
55

For corroborative passages, see Asfr IV.3.8, VIII.150151; IV.11.1, IX.270; and IV.11.13, IX.372.
Asfr IV.8.5, IX.72. 56 Asfr IV.8.5, IX.7273.

Four Avicennian arguments

179

postulation of distinct faculties as theoretical counterparts of distinguishable

acts. Thus, despite the vague reference to the ancients, Sadr seems to have
Shif: F al-nafs V.7 on his desk here.57 Particularly interesting from this
point of view is Sadrs reservation about Avicennas claim that the identity
between the soul, that is, the entity the functions of which are studied in
psychology, and the self one is aware of is self-evident. Notwithstanding the
fact that every human being knows intuitively and indubitably from her
own experience that as a subject she persists from one mode of apprehension
or action to another, psychological inferences of the souls substantiality on
this basis may not be quite as straightforward as Avicenna claimed. As we
have seen, this suspicion had already been raised by Ab al-Barakt who was
then followed by Rz and Suhraward.58 But Sadrs stance is somewhat
dierent. He does not deny the validity of the move as such, but points out
that not everyone is capable of applying intuitive evidence in theoretical
argumentation in the proper manner. For this reason alone, the move is
more involved than Avicenna thought.
Moreover, the theory of really distinct psychological faculties can be set
in two alternative relations to the souls unity, and the one that Avicenna
opted for will make the souls unity ultimately unattainable. This is because
he set out by analysing experience into atomary content units, postulating
on that basis a corresponding distinction in reality between faculties responsible for each of them, and only subsequently attempted to bind the discrete
units back into a unied whole that corresponds to our experience.
According to Sadr, we should instead start from the fundamental unity
of the soul and proceed to explain the distinction between faculties and the
respective organs as a step subsequent to that unity. This method of procedure has a parallel in theology: only by taking our cue from Gods absolute
unity can we expect to make sense of His manifold attributes, whereas the
inverse order of explanation that begins with attributes that are supposed
really to exist as such will never attain an adequate conception of His unity.
The souls unity signalled by the selfs unity has to be the foundation and
the starting point of psychology. We must anchor our psychology to this
fundamental unity of the soul and conceive of the distinction between
faculties as subsequent to it, a fact that is exclusively due to the souls body
the deciency of which enables it to reproduce the mental unity of
57

58

Cf. Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 252257 Rahman; and see Chapter 4.1, 6671. The connection to
this chapter of the Shif is also belied by formulations such as knows that he understands . . . and is
characterized by a combination of attributes and names, as well as the explicit discussion of the validity
of psychological inferences on the basis of this aspect of self-awareness.
See Chapter 5.2.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

experience only through a structural unity of spatially distinct organs.59 Yet

despite this dierence from Avicenna, it is clear that Sadr has no objections
to his description and application of self-awareness in the argument from
unity. He merely believes that the phenomenon can function in the
explanatory role devised for it only if the faculty psychological approach is
assigned to its proper realm of relevance.
To conclude this discussion of Sadrs application of the argument from
unity, let us have a brief look at his treatment of a related counterargument
which, though originally presented by Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd, he culls
from Rzs al-Mabh.ith al-mashriqya.60 The argument can be summarized
as follows. If the souls status as the single agent of all acts in the animated
body is evidenced by our awareness of ourselves as single subjects and agents
behind our experience and action, then given that Avicenna holds the same
soul to be equally responsible for vegetative acts such as growth and
digestion, should we not be equally aware of ourselves as agents of such
acts as well? But that is evidently not the case; on the contrary, for the most
part those acts remain below the threshold of any sort of awareness. Thus,
such subconscious animate processes as digestion or growth threaten to
invalidate the crucial connection between the experience of self and the
theory of soul.61
Sadr tackles this challenge by means of three metaphysical principles of
his own. The rst concerns what he calls active knowledge (ilm l):
knowledge is active if it causes an eect, whether or not it entails knowledge
of that eect.62 This rather dense principle expresses the manner in which
immaterial things, such as the human self, exist and act as causes: their
existence is self-cognition, and in cognizing themselves they bring about
eects in the material world. The important point is that knowledge of the
eect is not necessary either for the self-cognition or for the causal power of
the immaterial things. The second principle states that knowledge (ilm) in
the most general sense is a perfection proper to the mental level of existence
and thereby something that material existence is by denition devoid of.63
Because the human soul exists both materially and mentally, it can have
characteristics that are proper for one mode of existence but not for the
other. In this sense acts such as vegetation and growth on the one hand, and
self-awareness on the other, fall on opposite sides of the fence. Finally,
59
60
61
63

Asfr IV.8.5, IX.7677, 80.

For the original, cf. Baghdd, Mutabar: al-ilm al-t.ab VI.5, II.319320. Sadrs source is Rz,
Mabh.ith II.2.2.1.5, II.257.
For Sadrs paraphrase of the argument, see Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.77. 62 Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.7778.
Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.78.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

181

according to Sadrs third principle, knowledge and its object can be asymmetrical in terms of their respective levels of existence. The subconscious
animate processes exist on the lowest level of material existence, and since
their existence is therefore knowledge neither in nor of itself, they can only
be known when a form represents them for a subject that is capable of
knowledge.64
These principles allow Sadr to state that the selves we are aware of are the
true agents of even subconscious animate processes, even though they are
not aware of their agency in these cases in the same manner as they are aware
of themselves or such acts of theirs as intellection, perception or deliberate
action. The selfs awareness of itself and its innate desire for the perfection
proper to it causes the subconscious acts. In this sense the self, by being
aware of itself, is aware of the cause of these acts just as it is aware of the
cause of its conscious acts. The fact that it is not aware of itself as the agent of
those acts is due not to any opacity in the self, but rather to the weak degree
of existence those thoroughly corporeal acts are inherently conned to
indeed, as far as the mode of existence proper to cognitive phenomena is
concerned, they border on non-existence. They are, as it were, inconsequential material concomitants of the selfs existence, not unlike reections
of the Suns light, which although caused and fully dependent on their
origin, are incapable of penetrating to the level of its intensity.
Sadrs answer to the evidence that was designed to counter the argument
from unity shows that he approaches the phenomenon of self-awareness in a
new conceptual framework. This was also signalled in some of the qualications we have seen him make to otherwise familiar arguments hinging
upon the phenomenon. But they also show that he latches on to a tradition
of sustained discussion that stays within the framework established by
Avicennas original denition of self-awareness. As I believe the wealth of
shared material shows, all the additions and qualications notwithstanding,
the concept of self-awareness with which Sadr operates amounts to the
same very narrow concept of rst-personality that we have encountered in
Avicenna and Suhraward.

7.2 The complicated evidence of self-awareness

The familiarity of Sadrs discussion of self-awareness goes beyond a mere
description of the phenomenon, for he casts self-awareness in a theoretical
64

Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.7879.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

role that resembles those we have considered in both Avicenna and

Suhraward. This debt is signalled by the following passage:
We know through our intuition (bi wijdnin) that when we apprehend our
self (dhtin) we may be unaware of all universal concepts and signs, not to
mention the concept of substance or rational, or other [concepts]. Whatever
we know of these things, we do not refer to it as I, and from this it is known
that all is absent from us except our simple itness, and no doubt this simple
itness is nothing but existence. Whatever is other than it no doubt falls under
one of the categories and is composed of universal things. Existence is not
like that, for as has repeatedly come up, it does not enter under a universal
meaning, even if many of those meanings are true of it.
Herefrom emerges the remark by one of them to the people when they
assert the souls separation by [the fact] that we are unaware of the body and
other corpora as well as their accidents while not unaware of our self
(dhtin), and so our self (dhtun) is a separate substance, no body or any
of their accidents where he says in opposition that we often apprehend our
self (dhtan) without the meaning of separate substance having occurred to
our mind at all, how then can our self (dhtun) be identical to a separate
substance?65

The central claim that self-awareness is nothing but existence already

comes close to Suhrawards denial of substantiality behind the phenomenon,66 and Sadr pays his dues in the anonymous reference to the shaykh
al-ishrq in the second paragraph. Even if we were forced to classify
ourselves under the category substance in a self-reective act, we must
not infer that substantiality is a real, observer-independent feature of our
self-awareness. However, Sadr applies the phenomenon with an
Avicennian twist, for he does seem willing to allow for a mode of existence
that is not equivalent to self-awareness. Rather, self-awareness is rst and
foremost a characteristic of mental existence in much the same way as
Avicenna conceived it as exclusive to intellectual, and therefore immaterial,
entities. But the Sadrian concept of mental existence is articulated in a
system that renders it fundamentally dierent from Avicennas concept of
immaterial human existence, which cannot but have important consequences for his understanding of self-awareness. In order to get a grasp of this
aspect of Sadrs thought, we have to start from one of his most famous or
notorious ideas, the theory of change in the category of substance.
Islamic philosophers seem to have almost univocally subscribed to
Aristotles thesis according to which motion or change takes place only in
65

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.150; emphases added.

66

Cf. Chapter 5.2, 118123.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

183

categories other than substance.67 Avicenna, for instance, accepts motion

with respect to quality (alteration), quantity (augmentation and diminution, densication and rarication), place (locomotion) and position (for
instance, the motion of the celestial spheres).68 All these types of motion,
like their respective categories, take place in or by means of something else,
namely a substance that is their subject. Substances themselves, on the other
hand, of course come and cease to be, but this is not a change properly
speaking. It is not a temporal process with an intermediate state of perfection which could be correctly called motion, but an instantaneous, durationless replacement of a form by another in a material substrate. Thus, the
generation of a substance is an instantaneous move from pure potentiality
(with regard to the emerging form) to full actuality (of the same form),69
and since there is nothing actual in relation to which we could mark these
two moments as phases in a continuum, the move does not count as a
motion properly speaking.
Sadr departs from the mainstream view by constantly resorting to his
postulation of substantial change (h.araka jawharya). This idea diametrically contradicts the traditional claim: change is possible, and even primarily
takes place, in the category of substance. Yet despite this departure from the
tradition, Sadrs claim is an expression of the fundamentally Aristotelian
tenet that all natural processes are teleological, or ultimately based on
teleological processes, innately directed towards a specic goal. Every natural thing, having come to exist, by its very nature strives to exist well,
pursuing a manner of perfection proper to it. But whereas this was traditionally conceived as change within the set of the concomitant accidents, as
distinguished from completely fortuitous accidents, of the substance with
the substance itself remaining static, Sadr understands it as a process within
the very category of substance, a process that concerns the substance as a
whole down to its very core.
The most impressive example of substantial change is provided by the
human development from an exclusively material embryo to a perceiving
infant, and ultimately to an adult with a more or less perfectly developed
intellect. In making sense of this development, Sadr subscribes to the
Avicennian idea according to which individual human souls rst come to
67

68
69

Cf. Ar. Phys. V.2, 225b1012; and Avicenna, Shif: al-Sam al-t.ab II.3.16, 136141. Avicenna does
mention, as a conceptual possibility, the extreme view according to which there is motion in
substance, but in the end this merely amounts to calling generation and corruption a kind of motion,
that is, to an improper use of the term (Shif: al-Sam al-t.ab II.2.1, 128).
Avicenna, Shif: al-Sam al-t.ab II.3.720, 141151.
Avicenna, Shif: al-Sam al-t.ab II.3.2, 136137.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

be because of their connection to a material body. Of these two constituents

of early human existence, the soul is of course the ontologically higher one
that which gives the human being a stable identity in the face of the
continual transformation of its material basis70 but its superiority notwithstanding, the soul still owes its individual genesis to the body it governs.
All of the foregoing is familiar to any student of Avicennas psychology, but,
unlike his predecessor, Sadr thinks that in this early stage of its existence
the soul is a material form pure and simple, not at all dierent from the
forms of minerals or plants in this respect.71 The dierence is that the souls
of neither human nor non-human animals are not restricted to exist as
material forms. Rather, it is part and parcel of the substantial change proper
to them that they develop in perfection until they reach the level of mental
existence (wujd dhihn), really distinct and independent from material
existence. This happens when the soul becomes capable of perceptual, and
subsequently imaginative and intellectual, apprehension, and it is only at
the acquisition of this level of existence that self-awareness is introduced.
Thus, at the beginning of its existence as a material form, the human soul
is not aware of itself. This is because self-awareness amounts to the presence
of the self-aware entity to itself. Now, the only presence a material entity can
have to anything, whether to itself or another, is the spatial relation of
proximity or contiguity. But neither proximity nor contiguity allows a
material entity to have a holistic relation to itself; we can of course imagine
a material thing folding upon itself like a piece of cloth, but it is obvious that
such a folding will be neither complete (for no part of the cloth will be in
contact with every other part) nor properly described as a relation of the
entity to itself (only a contact between its parts). These limitations, inherent
to spatiality, preclude any self-relation, let alone presence to self, on the
material level of existence. Moreover, Sadr states that strictly speaking
there is no presence of any material thing to any other material thing, for
spatial juxtaposition does not entail presence unless one or both of the
juxtaposed things apprehends the juxtaposition.72
The situation is completely dierent in the case of immaterial, or mental,
existence:
Whatever exists incorporeally occurs to itself (h.s.ilun li dhtihi), for its self
(dhtahu) is not veiled from itself (dhtihi). Thus, it understands itself
(dhtihi), for knowledge is the same as existence provided that there is no
veiling. But the only veil there really is is non-existence, and likewise, non70
72

Asfr IV.7.1, VIII.380384.

Asfr I.10.2.1, III.483.

71

Asfr IV.7.2, VIII.385; cf. IV.7.4, VIII.440.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

185

existence of the veil comes back to a conrmation and intensication of

existence until there is no weakness borne by privation, which is a kind of
non-existence.73

This passage reads quite naturally as an expression of the traditional doctrine according to which immateriality entails intellectuality, and intellectuality in turn amounts to self-intellection. But I would argue that Sadrs
exclusive regard to intellection here is primarily due to the context, which is
devoted to a discussion of intellection. As we have already seen in such cases
as the ying animal, Sadr transformed the traditional idea to hold true of all
apprehension: whatever apprehends exists mentally, and since mental existence is immaterial, the subject apprehending any object whatsoever will
thereby apprehend herself.
So far so good: Sadr departs from Avicenna by taking the material
constituent of human existence to be essential to it in the beginning, but
he subscribes to the latters dualism when it comes to the mental existence of
the same human being. This similarity naturally gives rise to two questions.
First, does Sadr identify mental existence with self-awareness in the manner of Avicenna? And if he does, is this in order to deal with the problem of
the individuation of immaterial existence that we found looming in
Avicenna?
The question of individuation does indeed come up in the psychological
section of the Asfr in an argument for the thesis that the individual human
soul is generated in time. The discussion is particularly interesting because it
incorporates, by way of refutation, Fakhr al-Dn al-Rzs critical remarks on
Avicenna. In al-Mabh.ith al-mashriqya f ilm al-ilhyt wa al-t.abyt,
Rz presents six arguments against Avicennas demonstration of the individual human souls generation in time.74 As we have seen, Avicennas
demonstration was based on the Peripatetic idea that distinctions between
generated individual entities are always due to matter, and so, in order to
become instantiated in multiple distinct persons, the human essence common to them all must be related to a corresponding number of bodies.75 In
73

74

75

Asfr I.10.2.1, III.483. Cf. I.10.2.1, III.484485, where the second argument for the self-awareness of all
immaterial entities is based on essentially the same idea. This argument dwells at some length upon
the rejection of the claim that presence to self entails a real relation. Instead, Sadr states that the
relation is merely apparent and due to our manner of speech; in reality the self as that which is present
and the self as that to which it is present are one and the same thing.
Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.5.5, II.401403. Sadr quotes the arguments at length in Asfr IV.7.2,
VIII.389391, but he seems to attribute them to Rzs Mulakhkhas. f al-h.ikma. Unfortunately, this
work has not been edited, and I have not been able to nd the arguments in the sole manuscript
available to me (Berlin Staatsbibliothek Or. Oct. 623).
Shif: F al-nafs V.3, 223227 Rahman; see Chapter 3.1.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

his sixth and nal argument Rz brings forth the case of souls that have
been actualized as individuals by being generated through relations to their
respective bodies but that, having passed away in infancy, have failed to
acquire any further distinguishing characteristics. According to Avicenna,
even such souls will have some kind of individual existence, albeit a very
thin one, after the demise of their bodies.76 But, Rz counters, this
amounts to saying that they subsist as mere material intellects, with no
accidents to account for their individuality. In other words, they are stated
to be individuated by themselves (l yakna fh shayun min al-awridi ill
mujarrada dhtihi). Yet if this suces for individual existence in theafterlife, why cannot souls be individuated by themselves before their connection to bodies?77
At rst glance, Rzs paraphrase seems rather uncharitable to Avicennas
account of body-induced accidents in the immaterial soul. However, he
may have been guided by the insight behind his second argument against
the generation of souls, which can be read as a rephrasing of Avicennas
discussion of individuation in Shif: al-Madkhal I.12.78 Since all attributes
of an immaterial intellect are universal by denition, Rz can reconstruct
the situation of those deceased in infancy in terms of the material intellect.
This would tally well with the generous return he grants to Avicenna.
Perhaps the thesis of the temporal individuation of human beings can be
salvaged by recourse to their self-awareness: even undeveloped souls, whose
existence borders on nothingness, will be aware of themselves in a unique
and unshareable manner (li kullin minh shuran bi huwyatih al-khs..sa).
Thus, their state would resemble that of the ying man; they would indeed
exist in an extremely narrow sense, but this would nonetheless be a genuinely individual existence. Rzs clever answer turns on the ambiguity of the
pivotal term dht. Earlier on, Avicenna has identied a things awareness of
itself with the very dht of that thing (shuru al-shayi bi dhtihi huwa nafsu
dhtihi), that is, with its self or essence; the human soul cannot exist without
being aware of itself because self-awareness is a necessary constituent of the
existence proper to human beings. But if the souls self-awareness is identical with its dht, then souls must dier by their very essence! And if that is
the case, individual souls will be essentially distinct before their respective
connections to bodies.79
76
77
78
79

In Najt III.2, 333, Avicenna describes them as coming to a wealth of Gods mercy and a kind of
rest.
Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.5.5, II.402403; Asfr IV.7.2, VIII.391.
See Chapter 3.1, 4850; cf. Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.5.5, II.401; and Asfr IV.7.2, VIII.389.
Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.5.5, II.402403; Asfr IV.7.2, VIII.391.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

187

In his conclusion Sadr attempts to save Avicennas insight according to

which self-awareness plays a crucial role in the individuation of immaterial
entities, but not without giving Rzs perspicacious point its rightful due.
As we recall, Avicenna held that connection to a proper body immediately
brings forth an immaterial substance whose subsequent existence is independent of that body and amounts to its awareness of itself. As a result, the
self-awareness in question is of an extremely narrow, indeed contentless
kind, and it is precisely this feature that Rz seizes upon. Sadr, on the
contrary, believes that Rzs challenge can be met if Avicennas insight is
incorporated into the theory of substantial change.
Let us rehearse the essential phases of human development. Over the
course of her substantial motion, a single human being comes to exist in
various distinct modes. In rst coming to be, she is a material form that
diers from the forms of minerals or plants only with respect to her
cognitive and motive potencies. When these potencies are actualized, and
she begins to perceive and to move voluntarily, informed by what she has
perceived, she comes to exist in the mental mode.80 From this moment on,
the human being is an immaterial entity whose existence is always characterized by self-awareness, or more accurately, amounts to self-awareness.
But having rst been individuated as material forms, human souls are
always already determined as individuals by a multitude of attributes that
they inherit from the period they spent inhering in matter. Only after that
period,
it then follows that each of them is determined by their individual existence
(thumma yalzamu taayyunu kullin minh bi wujdih al-khs..s), which is
identical to their self-awareness (aynu shurih bi dhtih), and that is what
endures permanently though with a kind of existential renewal.81

Thus, Sadrs strategy in meeting Rzs challenge is to incorporate the

accidental features due to the body into mental existence as necessary
constituents of the self-awareness uniquely exclusive to each human
being. Although self-awareness, in the narrow sense of rst-personality,
does not vary from one person to another, the experiential content and
personal attributes that we inherit from our bodies render us individual
subjects. On the other hand, Sadr does recognize the need, as expressed in
Shif: al-Madkhal I.12, to account for the individuality of these features that
80

81

Asfr IV.7.3, VIII.430432; IV.7.6, VIII.449450; IV.8.2, IX.3132; IV.9.4, IX.127; IV.11.9,
IX.317318. In IV.9.5, IX.150, Sadr species that mental existence begins at some point during the
fourth month of pregnancy.
Asfr IV.7.2, VIII.395.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

now belong to an immaterial subject. His solution is that the body-induced

attributes, even when divested of their spatiotemporal co-ordinates, remain
individual because they are given in rst-personal perspectives as in each
case uniquely mine. Mental existence thus necessarily consists of both selfawareness and its various determinations.
As will become forcefully clear below, when we turn to discussing the
consequences of the theory of cognitive unity for his concept of selfawareness, Sadr opts for the phenomenologically plausible view that we
are always aware of ourselves as engaged in an act or undergoing an
experience, not as naked rst persons divested of all predicates. This
plausibility, however, does not come without a price, which is cashed out
as a serious weakness in Sadrs nal stance on human individuality. If selfawareness is individuated by its body-induced content, and that content in
turn by belonging to an individual self, Sadrs account of the individuation
of mental existence turns out to be viciously circular. In this regard it seems
that Avicenna was not entirely misguided in emphasizing the primitive and
irreducible nature of individual human self-awareness. But notwithstanding
the circularity in his reasoning, it is clear that Sadrs discussion of this
particular application of self-awareness is witness to his thorough familiarity
with the subtleties of the traditional concept. What is more, this familiarity
is shown compellingly in the treatment of another inherited question.
As we recall, Avicenna relied on self-awareness in an inference to the
substantiality of the human self: because I can be aware of myself while
unaware of all other things, my body in particular, I am independent of
those things, my body included, and therefore I exist as an immaterial
substance. As we have also seen, the inference to the selfs substantiality was
sternly criticized by Ab al-Barakt and Rz, and its conclusion was
ultimately rejected by Suhraward.82 Sadr latches on to the debate, again,
by means of Rz. The argument in question is the one we have already
examined in the course of our discussion of Suhrawards critique of the
human selfs substantiality. It seems that Rz sets out to contest the ying
mans argumentative power in the context of Shif: F al-nafs I.1. In that
chapter, the thought experiment was designed to make us pay attention to
our self-awareness, which in turn would readily indicate the substantiality of
the self we are aware of while unaware of the body.83 But according to Rz,
nothing in my self-awareness forces me to lean on one view rather than
another; yet if the self really is a substance, I should be aware of my
82

See Chapter 5.1.

83

See Chapter 2.1.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

189

substantiality whenever I am aware of myself.84 That this is not the case is

clear from the bare fact that philosophers debate the issue.
Sadrs manner of saving the Avicennian inference in the face of Rzs
critique follows a pattern pervasive in the Asfr: we have to distinguish
between the rst-order act of existence, here constituted by human selfawareness, and the second-order act of an intellectual apprehension of it. As
an act of mental existence, a mode of presential knowledge, self-awareness is
a state of mental existence which is able to provide the basis for many
possible kinds of conceptual analysis without being actually constituted by
discrete constituents corresponding to the results of the analysis. Rather, the
analytic act of intellection introduces the distinctions into what is one to
begin with; although the fact that the act of existence in question has a given
degree of perfection does provide the basis for those distinctions, for
instance for conceiving the corresponding existent as a substance of some
sort, the existence in itself is not a composite of substantiality and a given set
of specic dierentiae.85 To take Avicennian primitive self-awareness as an
example, it is dierent from and prior to any act of reective self-intellection
(such as the act of performing a thought experiment), which involves
application of universal concepts and therefore does not entail awareness
of oneself as a substance. But in spite of this, it is still sound to say that
substantiality is necessarily and self-evidently introduced in the act of selfintellection, because the existent that one nds when reecting on oneself
turns out to be an independently subsisting essence for the kind of which
substance is the summum genus. Regardless of which aspect of myself I
come to focus upon, whether my humanity, my intellectuality or my agency
in and through my body, I can only perform this consideration by conceiving of a genus and a dierentia, and upon further analysis these will be
shown to entail the most general concept of substance as their foundation.
In such an analysis, the fact that substantiality is not given in the rstorder act of self-aware existence need no longer be fatal to Avicennas
argument. In order to function in the role Avicenna had devised for it, it
is enough if our rst-order self-awareness is such that our second-order
intellectual attention to it will necessarily entail the concept of substance.86
This entailment itself, although necessary, need not be obvious, and I do
not believe Avicenna himself thought it is, for it is precisely in order to
84
85
86

Rz, Mabh.ith II.2.2.1.3, II.246247; Asfr IV.2.3, VIII.50. Sadr also mentions the critical point in
Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.150.
See Asfr I.1.1.7, I.7879. A most lucid account of this aspect of Sadrs metaphysics is Bonmariage
2007, 4347.
Asfr IV.2.3, VIII.50.

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Mull Sadr on self-awareness

render it such that he brings forth arguments like the ying man, designed
as it is to rule out the possibility that the self inheres in a body. Thus, the
necessity is not to be understood in psychological terms, for the very fact of
our disagreement about the question suces to refute it. On the contrary,
we are dealing with a logical necessity which can and will become obvious in
sound reection. If one fails to grasp it, one has simply not reected upon
ones self-awareness in a correct manner but has rather focused on one or
another of its accidental features, such as the seemingly constant presence of
the body and ones agency in and through it.
Nevertheless, it is important to realize that Sadr subscribes to Avicennas
inference only under these qualications. When it comes to the foundational level of primitive self-awareness, he seems rather to side with
Suhrawards deationary position, as the following conclusion shows:
when a human turns to himself (rajaa il dhtihi) and makes his itness
present (ah.dara huwyatahu), he may neglect all universal meanings, even the
meaning of his being a substance, an individual, or a governor for the body.
Thus, in examining myself (inda mut.laati dht) I only see an existence
which apprehends itself as a particular (wujdan yudriku nafsahu al wajhi
al-juzya), and whatever is other than the individual itness to which I refer by
I is external to myself (dht), even the concept I, the concept of existence,
the concept of what apprehends itself (al-mudriki nafsahu), and the concept
of governor of the body, or soul, and so forth; for they all are universal
cognitions, to which all I refer by it, whereas I refer to myself (dht) by I.
Thus, neglect or ignorance of substantiality does not refute that it is one of
the predicates that are essential for the quiddity of a human being, and also of
an animal; and it is possible to apply the Masters [that is, Avicennas]
discussion here so that the aforementioned contradiction is expelled.87

Even if it can only be understood as the existence of a substance, rst-order

self-awareness as such consists in nothing but being an I, and it involves no
consideration of what kind of thing this I is or what its quiddity is. The
second-order reective consideration of this I as an instantiation of some
quiddity diers from the rst-order self-awareness because it regards the I as
an object, as an it, not as the I it was to begin with. It does this by
introducing one of the many possible universal concepts under which the
I is subsumed, whether that of a human, individual, soul, existence, or
indeed subject or self (the concept I). That one thereby necessarily also
introduces the concept of substance, which is the highest genus of anything
subsumed under a specic concept, suces to save Avicennas argument,
87

Asfr IV.2.3, VIII.5051.

The complicated evidence of self-awareness

191

but this does not hide the fact that Sadrs analysis is tacitly derivative of
Suhraward.88 Thus, in the end Sadr conceives of self-awareness as a
particular mode of existence (that is, mental existence) rather than an
indication of substantiality. But on the other hand, he seems reluctant to
follow Suhraward to the extreme point of identifying self-awareness with
existence (or appearance and light) pure and simple.89 In this regard, he
represents a middle stance between his two predecessors, an Aristotelian
attempt to do justice to both by incorporating them, under the aforementioned qualications, into his own account.
88

89

This is betrayed by the distinction between I and it as well as the mention of the concept I. Sadr
here comes very close to Suhraward, Talwh.t III.5.15, 282283 Habb; 115116 Corbin. For a
discussion of this chapter, cf. Chapter 5.2, 118121. It also provides the basis for Asfr I.1.10.2.1,
III.503504, where Sadr endorses the denial of the selfs substantiality in more unqualied terms.
However, in this context he does not explicitly address the relevant question, which compromises the
demonstrative value of the endorsement.
This assessment must, however, be qualied by noting that there are passages which suggest that
Sadr holds all existence to entail a more or less developed type of self-awareness (cf. Asfr III.1.3.1,
VI.147148; IV.2.5, VIII.79; IV.4.1, VIII.184; IV.4.2, VIII.192; IV.11.13, IX.358362, 364365). This
question, alas, is both so wide and so debatable that I must postpone its treatment to a later occasion.

chapter 8

The self reconsidered: S adrian revisions

to the Avicennian concept

As our discussion of Sadrs sustained strategy shows, he is familiar with the

subtleties in his predecessors applications of self-awareness in their respective theoretical concerns. This familiarity shows that when he incorporates
the inherited concept of self-awareness into his own system of philosophy,
he must be conscious of the precise meaning of that concept. Thus, as we
turn to discuss his departures from the narrow concept of self-awareness at
work in both Avicenna and Suhraward, we can rest assured that the
departures are made in full awareness.

8.1

The self and cognitive unity

Sadrs epistemology can be succinctly characterized as a sustained attempt to

rehabilitate the ancient theory of knowledge as a unity between the subject
and the object of the actual act of cognition.1 An early version of it was
Aristotles theory of intellection, which famously holds that the intellect is all
the intelligibles and that actual intellection collapses with the actual existence
of what is understood.2 Later on, the doctrine of cognitive unity became part
of the Neoplatonic theory of the intellect as a single indivisible entity, albeit
one with an internal structure.3 Yet the venerable provenance notwithstanding, the theory may seem strangely counterintuitive at close inspection. One
of its problems, perspicaciously formulated by Avicenna, is that it contradicts
the commonsense intuition according to which I am perfectly capable of
perceiving or understanding dierent things at dierent moments of time. If
at time tx I understand and am therefore identical to an object x, whereas at
time ty I understand and am therefore identical to object y, then either x and y
1
3

For Sadrs epistemology, see now Kalin 2010. 2 Ar. De an. III.5, 430a20; III.7, 431a1.
This version of the theory is most prominently present in the crypto-Proclean Kitb al-dh. f al-khayr
al-mah.d (see, for instance, XII, 1415, which corresponds to Proclus, El. Th. 167169) and the Plotinian
of Aristotle (see, for instance, II.21, 32, which corresponds to Plot. Enn. IV.4.2.48; cf.
Theology
Adamson 2002, 120121, 152).

192

The self and cognitive unity

193

are transitively identical or I do not endure as a substance from tx to ty. The

rst option is obviously false (an apple is not an orange), and the second entails
a rejection of the eminently plausible view according to which the subjects at tx
and ty are both me in one and the same sense. According to Avicenna, our only
alternative is to deny the theory of cognitive unity, a suspicious innovation
which he disparagingly attributes to Porphyrys intent to speak in imaginative, poetic and mystical (s.fya) expressions,4 although he does allow that
Gods intellection, owing to His absolute unity and immutability, may be a
special case for which the theory of cognitive unity is capable of giving its due.
Yet in spite of such problems, Sadr holds the theory of cognitive unity to
be true not only of intellection, but of all modes of cognition, including the
most elementary types of sense-perception.5 Addressing the case of intellection, he states that the existence of each immaterial form that is actually
understood is identical with its existence for the corresponding subject of
intellection. In other words, the intelligible human that I am thinking of
right now is nothing but my act of understanding; the act of understanding
exhausts the intelligible existence of the human being. An intelligible can
only exist actually if it is actually understood, and this requires a subject of
understanding actually understanding that very intelligible. Thus, the two
are not really separable from each other.6
This insight is not exclusive to intellection but pertains to all types of
cognition:
What is sensed . . . is divided into what is sensed potentially and what is
sensed actually, and what is sensed actually is united in existence with the
actually sensing substance.7

Sadr corroborates his thesis by a brief argument against alternative theories

of perception, that is, the theory of the impression of forms from the
material objects in the perceiving soul, the extramission theory of vision,8
and the theory of primitive relationality between the subject and the object
4
5

6
8

Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.6, 239240 Rahman

Sadr seems to think that once his theory of substantial change has been established, the solution to the
problem raised by Avicenna will be all but self-evident. If any entity subject to change has a static
identity only when the process of change is considered from an extratemporal perspective as a fourdimensional whole (time being one of its dening dimensions), it will no longer be a problem if an
entity, even the human intellect, does not endure unchanged from one act of intellection to another.
The intuition of the subjects enduring identity can be saved by recourse to Sadrs view that later
phases in the process of substantial change include the earlier ones by transcending them. I will discuss
this topic in greater detail in Chapter 8.2.
Asfr I.1.10.1.7, III.340341. 7 Asfr I.1.10.1.7, III.342; cf. IV.10.7, IX.200.
According to the extramission theory, endorsed by the optician Ibn al-Haytham as well as some
philosophers, such as Ab al-Barakt al-Baghdd, the act of vision consists in the emission of extremely

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The self reconsidered

of vision held by both Rz and Suhraward.9 This is followed by his positive

account of perception:
On the contrary, sense perception occurs so that an apprehensional luminous form, of which there occurs apprehension and awareness, is emanated
from the giver (al-whib),10 so that it is both the percipient in act and the
perceived in act; prior to that there is neither a percipient nor a perceived
except in potency. As regards the existence of a form in proper matter, [the
material form] is a preparation for the emanation of that form which is the
perceived and the percipient in act. The discussion of this forms being
perception, percipient and perceived by itself (bi aynihi) is like the discussion
of the intellectual forms being intellection, that which understands and that
which is understood.11

The passage is remarkably unambiguous: the existence of the perceived form, just as that of the form understood, is nothing but its
being perceived which in turn is unqualiedly identical to the corresponding act of perceiving. We should, however, pay careful attention
to Sadrs somewhat oblique statement towards the end of the passage,
namely, that cognitive unity only concerns the mental mode of existence.12 While not an invention of Sadrs, mental existence is a concept
that he articulates at a considerably greater length than any of his
subtle yet nonetheless material rays from the eye. When these rays encounter extramental objects, they
bring back information to the eye, which then results in vision. For an extended discussion of the
impressionist and extramission theories of perception in Sadr, see Kalin 2010, 118135.
9
Asfr I.1.10.1.7, III.342. These critical comments are further developed in the psychological section of
the Asfr (see IV.4.6, VIII.210212), where Sadr explicitly refers to the present context.
10
This is a reference either to the active intellect, which was standardly referred to as the giver of forms
(whib al-s.uwar), or more vaguely to the immaterial origin of both the human soul and all material
things, and thereby ultimately to God as the origin of all (Asfr IV.4.6, VIII.212 speaks of the power
of God). This ambiguity notwithstanding, the crucial point is clear: the perceived, imagined and
understood forms, that is, the content of experience as experienced, are not caused by external material
things but brought about by the immaterial origin of the soul. In this sense, all experience is generated
from within the soul.
11
Asfr I.1.10.1.7, III.342343; cf. IV.1.1, VIII.18; IV.2.5, VIII.74; IV.3.3, VIII.98; IV.4.5, VIII.208209;
IV.4.6, VIII.212; and IV.8.7, IX.92.
12
Cf., however, Asfr IV.3.9, VIII.155, where Sadr says that in its descent to govern the body, the soul
becomes, for instance, in touching identical with the touching organ, and in smelling and tasting
identical with that which smells and tastes (my emphasis). I believe that this passage can be
interpreted in a manner that salvages Sadrs consistent distinction between the material and the
mental. As a material form, the soul is of course responsible for the proper functioning of the cognitive
organs, and in a sense those organs in their action can be identied with their form. Yet while this
aspect of the souls action may be parallel to the mental act of perception, it is not an instance of
cognitive unity in the sense expounded here, but an instance of the souls action as form that is in
principle not dierent from its corresponding action in the organs of digestion, for example. Sadrs
focus in this context is precisely on the souls descent to matter, and for this purpose it may be relevant
to emphasize the material circumstances parallel to but not causally active upon the mental event of
perception.

The self and cognitive unity

195

predecessors,13 and that is pivotal to his explicit distinction between the

two possible descriptions of perception. We can of course describe
perception by means of the material process that takes place in the
perceptual organs of the body, but such a description will not grasp the
experiential reality, or the mental phenomenon, of perception. In this
latter sense, perception is an indivisible act of mental existence, the
subject of which cannot be really distinguished from its object, because
the subject only exists in unity with the object as the subject perceiving
this object, and inversely the object only exists as an object for this
subject. This is corroborated by Sadrs comparison, towards the end of
the chapter devoted to the unity theory of knowledge, of the relation
between the subject and the object of cognition to the hylomorphic
relation between matter and form. The two are relations only in a
qualied sense and must be distinguished from relations proper,
which prevail between two independently subsisting things such as a
house and its inhabitant, property and its owner, or a parent and her
ospring, precisely because in them the relata are interdependent in
existence. Matter can only exist as actualized by form just as form
requires matter for its subsistence; similarly, just as there can be no
object of cognition without a subject to cognize it, the subject of
cognition needs something to cognize in order actually to be such a
subject.14
Finally, Sadrs account of mental existence denies any causal power to
extramental objects, even in the case of perception.15 The content of
perceptual experience is produced by them only in the sense that they
provide the circumstantial conditions for the emanation of experiential
content from the higher principle that is the origin of both the soul itself
and its content.16 As a consequence, Sadrian mental existence is thoroughly
detached from matter. Even though its objects may have a spatial structure
and location and in this sense be analogous to material things, their
13
14
15
16

For an overview of Sadrs arguments for mental existence, see now Marcotte 2011. Knowledge is
discussed as a mode of existence in Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.143144.
Asfr I.1.10.1.7, III.345; cf. I.1.10.2.3, III.498499.
Asfr IV.4.6, VIII.212213; cf. IV.4.7, VIII.217; IV.11.13, IX.376.
Asfr IV.10.5, IX.189; IV.10.10, IX.245246. In true Neoplatonic fashion, this source is also conceived
to be the souls goal in its development towards the perfection proper to it, which Sadr seems to
identify with the active intellect. In Asfr I.1.10.2.3, III.498499, Sadr says that there should be
(yanbagh an yakna) a principle for sense-perception analogous to the active intellect in the case of
intellection. Finally, in Asfr IV.4.12, VIII.239240, he states that objects of perception depend on
imagination for their subsistence, whereas the objects of imagination depend similarly on the
intellect. The idea is that the higher principles are thereby potentially present in the actuality of the
lower what is perceived can also be imagined and ultimately understood.

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The self reconsidered

spatiality is not material but experiential, a matter of either imagination or

perception.17
The consequences of the theory of cognitive unity to Sadrs discussion
of self-awareness are clear. As Avicenna must have perceived when he set
out to argue against the theory, the claim of a strong unity between the self
as the rst-personal subject of experience on the one hand, and the
objective content of its experience on the other, amounts to a denial of
the reality of the narrow type of self-awareness endorsed by both Avicenna
and Suhraward. If the I is one with its determinations, we can never
encounter pure I-ness divested of all its possible acts and passions.
I would now like to argue that Sadr is clearly aware of this consequence
by means of two separate but mutually corroborative discussions that bear
on the topic. The rst consists in an extended discussion on self-awareness
that Sadr engages in in order to lay out the principles needed for understanding Gods knowledge, while the second is a discussion of the souls
faculties from the psychological section of the Asfr.
The fth principle Sadr presents as requisite for making sense of Gods
knowledge of Himself and the world of His creation focuses on the
immediacy of our awareness not just of ourselves in the narrow sense, but
also of our various faculties:
Just as the soul apprehends itself (dhtah) by means of the very form of itself
(bi nafsi .srati dhtih), not by means of another form, similarly it apprehends many of its apprehensive and motive faculties, not by means of
another mental form.18

The idea that our faculties are immediately given, or present, to us is of

course familiar from Suhrawards introduction of the concept of knowledge
as presence. That Sadr is relying on a Suhrawardian source here, most
likely al-Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t III.1.7, is suggested by substantial similarities between his arguments for the principle and those Suhraward
brought forth in that chapter.19 But instead of the similarities, let us focus
on Sadrs development of the inherited material.
17

18
19

Asfr I.1.10.2.6, III.512515. In his eschatology, Sadr puts forth an argument for our embodied
existence in the hereafter, only the body there is immaterial, an exclusively experienced body (cf. Asfr
IV.11.4, IX.303304; IV.11.17, IX.389390).
Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.150151.
Suhraward, Mashri III.7.1 is discussed in extenso in Chapter 6.1, 134141. For the similarities
between the two texts, compare Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.151152 (Sadrs second argument) with
Suhraward, Mashri III.7.1, 484; Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.152 (Sadrs third argument from the evidence
of pain) with Suhraward, Mashri III.7.1, 485; and nally, Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.153154 (attention as a
condition of actual apprehension) with Suhraward, Mashri III.7.1, 485.

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The self and cognitive unity

The rst thing to notice is that Sadrs formulation of the principle is not
entirely unambiguous. Are the other faculties apprehended simply by being
aware of oneself, that is, as necessary constituents of ones self, or are they
apprehended by themselves, as an immediate consequence of their operation,
so that awareness of them is merely structurally analogous to self-awareness,
not caused by it? Dissolving the ambiguity is pivotal to our topic, for the rst
alternative would clearly be incompatible with the venerable argument of the
ying man and the narrow concept of self-awareness it was designed to
corroborate. The second alternative, on the contrary, would merely amount
to saying that by operating ones cognitive faculties one is necessarily aware of
them, and thus it would be perfectly coherent with the ying man, for it is
precisely the non-operation of the faculties that the thought experiment
hinges upon. Fortunately for us, Sadr substantiates the principle with ve
arguments and an explication of considerable length, which provide the key
for unravelling the ambiguity. The rst four arguments deal with the immediacy of sense perception in general terms and therefore do not immediately
bear upon our topic. But a fth, thronal (arsh) argument, that is, one based
on Sadrs own intuition,20 is more consequential:
[I]n the beginning of its creation, the soul is devoid of both conceptual
(tas.awwurya) and assentual (tas.dqya) knowledge. There is no doubt that
the employment of instruments such as the senses is a voluntary act, not a
natural act, and so it undoubtedly depends on knowledge of those instruments. If all knowledge were through the impression of a form from what is
known, then as a result its dependence on the employment of instruments
would depend on knowledge of those instruments, and so the discussion
would be reiterated; and both circle and regress are impossible.21

Sadr starts from a denial of innate knowledge, stating that the acquisition
of knowledge requires a knowing use of cognitive faculties and organs. The
problem is, if one is not immediately aware of the faculties to begin with, if
one is completely lacking in innate knowledge about how to operate them,
one will never get underway with the learning process. Were the familiarity
with the faculties not innate, then in order to learn that one has the faculties,
let alone how to operate them, one would have to acquire knowledge about
them. Since those very faculties are the means by which one acquires
knowledge of anything, one would have to acquire knowledge that one
has cognitive faculties, and learn how to use them, by having, knowing and
using them, which of course results in either a vicious circle or an innite
regress. Thus,
20

For the term arsh in Sadr, see Nasr 1978, 56, and Corbin 2009a, liiiliv.

21

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.152.

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The self reconsidered

by necessity the souls rst knowledge is its knowledge of itself (bi dhtih),
and then its knowledge of its faculties and instruments, which are the
external and the internal senses; these two are presential knowledge.22

The conclusion is reminiscent of Aristotles account of phenomenal consciousness as a concomitant of the basest acts of perception.23 According to
Aristotle, our awareness that we perceive is indubitable but needs nonetheless to be given a psychological explanation. Since adding a higher-order
faculty to perceive that we perceive would result in innite regress, he
suggests that we close the inevitable reexive circle at the rst possible
instant and build phenomenal consciousness into our account of rstorder sense-perception as one of its necessary constituents.
But in spite of the similarity in argument, Sadr diers from Aristotle by
explicitly qualifying that it is not the individual faculties as such that we
should conceive to be self-aware. Following Avicenna, he holds instead that
only the primitively self-aware soul, which operates them all, can have them
present to itself and thereby be aware of them.24 This unity of subject in all
experience had already been anticipated in the rst argument for the
principle under discussion, where the soul was described as the single
subject of awareness in the operations of its various faculties, such as
thinking, imagination and sense-perception. Sadr here states that these
operations are immediately present to the soul, and what is more, their
respective objects, constitutive as they are to the operations, are present to it
through or in the operations. This becomes particularly evident in the
straightforward identication of the power of thought with the concrete
individual forms that it has as its objects: what receives these operations and
transformations [that is, the operations characteristic of thinking] is nothing
but concrete individual forms, I mean the power of thought.25 This is of
course a consequence of Sadrs broad subscription to the theory of cognitive unity, and, as if to underline this, he concludes the argument by saying
that in the nal analysis the soul sees and is aware of the objects of its
cognitive operations ultimately by seeing itself (bi bas.ari dhtih).26 This is
because the souls operation and the objects constitutive to that operation
are in turn constitutive to the souls awareness of itself as a self engaged in
this particular operation. Thus, in the end Sadrs emphasis on the unity of
experience leads him to depart from Avicenna: engaged in its operations, the
soul is not a detachable I or pure rst-personality that can attach to various
22
24
25

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.153. 23 Ar. De an. III.2, 425b1117. See Chapter 1.1, 1215.
Cf., for instance, Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, 253254 Rahman; and see Chapter 4.2, 6671.
Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.151; my emphasis. 26 Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.151; my emphasis.

The self and cognitive unity

199

contents without being dependent on or determined by them. In Sadr, the

soul is literally one with and inseparable from its acts.
This point is made more forcefully in the explication of the fth argument. Immediately after the passage quoted above, Sadr says:
Then after these two knowledges [that is, the souls knowledge of itself and of
its faculties], there emerges from the souls self to itself (min dhti al-nafsi li
dhtih) the employment of instruments without any conception of this act,
that is, of the use of instruments, or assent of its usefulness, like in the case of
other voluntary acts which originate from us outside the body. Thus, this
[employment of instruments] is another type of volition, not by means of
intent (al-qas.d) and deliberation (al-ruwya), even though it is not separate
from the knowledge of it; for here volition is identical with knowledge,
whereas in other voluntary acts originating from the soul it is preceded by a
knowledge of them and by an assent of their usefulness.
As regards this act which is like the souls employment of faculties, senses
and the like, it emerges from itself (an dhtih), not from its deliberation;
thus, its self by itself (dhtuh bi dhtih) necessitates the employment of
instruments, not by means of an additional volition or additional knowledge.
Rather, the soul in the very beginning of its creation knows itself (bi dhtih)
and loves [itself] and its action by a love generated from the self (al-dht), and
it is forced to employ the instruments which is all it is capable of.27

This rich passage not only emphatically corroborates the claim that human
self-awareness is not separable from but built in to our various acts, but also
gives us a clue to how Sadr thinks the awareness of acts follows from selfawareness. In order to explicate this point, Sadr makes an interesting
phenomenological distinction between two types of voluntary acts. The
more commonplace type involves deliberation and conscious intentionality,
and it is exemplied by the all too familiar situation of having to choose
between two compelling but mutually exclusive goals of action, for instance,
whether to head home and spend time with ones ospring or to stay sitting at
the oce in the labour of a delayed paper. Regardless of what would be the
complete account of the potentially very complex set of reasons and motives
which contribute to making the eventual choice, it seems safe to assume, as
Sadr does, that this type of conscious volition involves minimally two
cognitive acts: a conception (tas.awwur) of the alternative courses of action,
and a belief in or assent to (tas.dq) their respective values.28 It is because of
these explicit acts of conception and belief that the choice can be called a
conscious one, or as Sadr says, performed by means of intent and deliberation. But having cleared that, we must note that Sadr describes the more
27

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.153.

28

For tas.awwur and tas.dq in Sadr, see Lameer 2006.

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familiar case only in order to characterize the other, less commonplace type of
voluntary action and that it is precisely this other type that is involved in
the explanation of how the human souls self-awareness entails its awareness
of its operations. This less familiar type of voluntary action is not characterized by explicit deliberation and belief but is rather identical to the
knowledge of actually performing the voluntary act. Since in the absence of
explicit conception of the pursued goal there can be no volition in the sense of
free choice, this sort of act is voluntary only in the sense that it is not forced,
that in the moment of acting I am aware of causing the act myself, even
though I have never decided to do so. To consider an example, when
I suddenly come to think of my deceased grandfather, I am fully aware of
both that I did not decide beforehand to think of him now and that I myself
nevertheless am the agent and the subject thinking that very thought. It is in
this sense that the soul employs its faculties: nothing forces it to do this, it acts
by itself, but at the same time it never chooses whether or not to employ
its faculties, for it always nds itself in the process of already actually employing them.
It is true that in the second paragraph Sadr does speak of the soul being
in some sense forced (udt.urrat) to put its faculties to use because its
awareness of itself entails a loving, interest-laden relation to itself and its
acts. However, I believe that in order to make any sense of the passage, we
have to distinguish this sense of being forced from being forced by an
external cause, for Sadr consistently describes the souls operation of its
faculties as free precisely because of the absence of external causes. The
souls free voluntary operation of its faculties is forced only in the sense that
it follows naturally, and therefore necessarily, from the souls essence, and is
thus not a matter of choice. The soul by itself necessarily proceeds to operate
by means of its faculties.
But if we nd ourselves from the beginning of our creation acting freely
by ourselves, no one will ever be aware of herself as a mere I detached from
all possible acts. Even the ying man will be aware of its interest-laden
relation to the body if not otherwise, then at least by being frustrated in his
attempts to act. However, I believe Sadrs point goes deeper still, for he is
not content to say that our self-awareness is always accompanied with the
awareness of performing some of the acts characteristic to us. Rather, as
becomes clear from the explication shortly after the present passage, he
insists on the stronger claim that our self-awareness is one with the actual
performance of those acts. In an argument against the implied suggestion
that his theory of knowledge fails to account for the dierences in peoples
acquired knowledge, Sadr says:

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[When] being a knower and being known is realized between two things,
there is no doubt about an essential connection between them in accordance
with existence, and so a unicational connection or existential bond of one
knowing the other is realized between both of the two things, provided that
there is no obstacle due to one of them being decient in existence or mixed
with non-existence and veiled by dark appendices, and that connection
requires the occurrence of one of them to the other and its being revealed
to it. It may take place between the very self of what is known (nafsi dhti
al-malm), in accordance with its concrete existence, and the self of the
knower (dhti al-lim), like in the souls knowledge of itself (f ilmi al-nafsi
bi dhtih), its attributes, its faculties and the forms established on the tablets
of its awareness, or it may be between a form which occurs from what is
known and is additional to its self (dhtihi) and the self of the knower (dhti
al-lim), like in the souls knowledge of what is external to itself (dhtih)
and the self of its faculties and its awareness (dhti quwanh wa mashirih),
and it is called occurrent knowledge or emergent knowledge. What is
really apprehended is also here the very form that is present, not what is
external to it, and when it is said of the external that it is known, this is in a
secondary sense. Similarly existent is said of both existence itself and of the
existing quiddity, but what really exists is the rst division. It is really
concrete and distinct without the quiddity, for [the quiddity] in itself is
something obscure, unconcrete in essence. Thus, when the word existent is
applied to it, this is in a secondary sense in respect to a bond to existence.29

Sadr begins by asserting in general terms his thesis of the unity in existence
between any knowing subject and the object she knows. The two can only
exist as an actual knower and something actually known in a single act of
mental existence. This amounts to saying that the connection between
them must be understood not as a relation prevailing between two independently existing things, but rather as a mode of existence proper to
knowledge: the knower and what is known literally rst come to be in an
act of this type of existence. Sadr conceives of this shared actuality in
mental existence abstracted from any reference to or causal dependence on
what is external to it. On the level of mental existence, that is, in the absence
of any darkness or deciency due to matter, actual existence simply requires
that what is known occurs or is revealed to the knower. The paradigmatic
example of such a union is the subjects knowledge of herself, her faculties
and their operations, along the lines we have just described. But as Sadr
strikingly asserts here, it also holds of all forms known, that is, of the
objective constituents of acts of mental existence. No matter how natural
it may seem to believe that the objects of our experience, the gures,
29

Asfr III.1.3.1, VI.154155.

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colours, sounds, smells and textures that we are aware of as interdependent

properties of substance-like objects, are mere representations of extramental
things that exist independently of our consideration, and that the latter are
the true objects of our knowledge, Sadr explicitly states that this conviction
is due to an implicit secondary consideration, a tacit addition to the basic
level of mental existence that we have to start from. Ultimately it is nothing
but an unfounded hypothesis that we have formed on the basis of experience acquired over a long period of time, neither a necessary constituent of
the act of mental existence nor something necessarily entailed by the
awareness inherent to that act of existence. On the contrary, the phenomenal object, abstracted from any possible reference to a world outside
experience, is just as constitutive to the act of mental existence as its selfaware subject.
Thus, for Sadr self-awareness is nothing less than a constitutive part of
mental existence (all mental existence is aware of itself), but it is also not
more than a constituent of it. I can of course distinguish myself as the
subject of my experience from any object I am aware of, and I can coin
various terms that reify this result of my analysis into a substance conceived
independent of the cognitive attribute it was distinguished from. Sadr does
not deny that we can think and speak of the two constituents of mental
existence as two independent existents which can survive their mutual
connection in the particular act of mental existence that we started from.
Indeed, this is precisely what Avicenna and Suhraward had done in their
arguments for a narrow concept of self-awareness as pure rst-personality or
I-ness. Rather, Sadrs point is that such a postulation of a mutually
independent subject and object is always secondary to a primordial experience in which the two gure as one and requires that a second-order analytic
operation is performed on the rst-order act of mental existence. But
distinguishability in analysis does not entail distinction in reality. Neither
the subject nor the object of the act of mental existence exists really
independent of the other, but only as twin constituents of the act of
existence that alone is real, the experience of this subject knowing this object.
The inseparability of self-awareness from the unied act of mental
existence, of which it is one constituent, resurfaces in the context of an
argument for the metaphysical priority of the mental cognitive faculties in
relation to their counterparts among the organs of the body.
[W]hen a human beings external faculties and his corporeal senses are stilled
by sleep, loss of consciousness (al-ighm) or [something] else, he will often
nd of himself (nafsihi) that he hears, sees, smells, touches, strikes or walks,

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and so he has in himself (f dhtihi) these sensations, faculties and instruments with no deciency or lack of any of them, although they are not
established in this world that is, the world of sense and observation for
otherwise anyone with a sound sense would observe them, which is not the
case. It is thus known that their dwelling is another world, which is the world
of the hidden and the internal.30

The argument relies on a piece of evidence which Sadr clearly believes to be

obvious on the basis of his interlocutors personal experience: any adult
human being must have imagined or dreamt herself as perceiving, acting or
reacting in all manner of ways without a corresponding physical process
taking place in the body that could be observed by another person. This
leads Sadr to the conclusion that the faculties, the sucient means to
perform acts proper to them and the acts themselves are in the soul or the
self that is aware of itself as their subject.
Of course, any modern reader will consider the case inconclusive, at least
in the form Sadr has given here, for he has failed to address the possibility
that the sleepers experiences are dependent on physical processes taking
place in the brain. In spite of his aversion to the pursuit of such practical
sciences as medicine, Sadr certainly knew of the cognitive functions postGalenic authors like Avicenna had accorded to the brain, and he was fully
aware that inferences concerning the brain are hardly a matter of straightforward observation. Moreover, the examples of sleep and loss of consciousness readily bring to mind the Avicennian discussion of the self-awareness of
a sleeping or intoxicated person in the Ishrt.31 If it is not entirely unlikely
that Sadr had the Ishrt on his table here, it seems strange that he should
have so thoroughly failed to grasp Avicennas central intuition according to
which the possible lack of any experiential content in the sleepers mind is
due precisely to the broken connection between her self-aware soul and the
cognitive organs in the body, the brain in particular.
In the nal analysis, I do not believe that Sadrs argument, if taken
alone, survives this criticism. However, he may not have intended it to be
conclusive, but merely as one piece of evidence which, when supported by
further evidence and proper arguments, provides valid support for dualism,
although on its own it can only provide a pointer of sorts towards that view.
The qualication towards the end of the passage suggests that Sadrs
immediate point is to highlight the strict distinction between mental and
corporeal existence. For him, the fact that a complete breakdown of the
connection between the soul and the cognitive organs of the body entails no
30

Asfr IV.8.7, IX.90.

31

Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 119; see Chapter 4.2, 8084.

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The self reconsidered

cessation of mental activity corroborates his strategy of discussing the variety

of experiential phenomena the awareness we have of ourselves as hearing,
seeing, smelling, touching, striking, walking and so forth in exclusively
mental terms.
This move, on the other hand, is crucial for understanding another
dierence from Avicennas discussion of the sleeper. As we recall,
Avicenna employed the special cases of the sleeping and the intoxicated
person to argue for a narrow type of self-awareness that can plausibly be said
to remain even in states lacking all experiential content. Sadrs strategy is
the polar opposite: because the sleepers experience is not empty, her
cognitive faculties and their acts must take place in the sleeper herself, not
in the body. Later on in the same chapter, he ventures to formulate the same
point in even stronger terms:
the psychic human (al-insnu al-nafs) has sense-perceptions of things by
himself (bi dhtihi) and judges them by himself (bi dhtihi), not by means of
a natural instrument that he would need in his apprehension and act; thus,
although his apprehension of external percepts is by means of an additional
form that is present to him or occurs in him, his apprehension of it is by means
of those very forms, not by means of another form, for otherwise a regress to a
multiplication of apprehensional forms would result. Thus, his self by itself
(dhtuhu bi dhtihi) is sight for apprehending what is visible and hearing for
apprehending what is audible; and in this manner for every species of what is
perceived, and so he in himself (f dhtihi) is hearing, sight, smell, taste and
touch for himself (li dhtihi). You know from the preceding the unity of the
sense with what is sensed, and so he is the sense of all senses. Furthermore, he
judges by himself (bi dhtihi) about estimative and other premises, not by
means of anything additional to the forms of the premises, and he is desire for
himself (li dhtihi) of what is desirable and anger for himself (li dhtihi) of what
is repulsive, with no additional desire or anger.32

The somewhat unusual term psychic human is derived from the

Theology of Aristotle, which provides the framework for much of the chapter
our passage is embedded in.33 It refers to a human being that has left the
mode of existence proper to a material form and ascended to the mental
mode of existence, being therefore a self-aware existence, but that has not
yet become a pure intellect.34 In other words, Sadr is describing a rather
commonplace human experience when he states that the psychic humans
32
33
34

Asfr IV.8.7, IX.92.

Cf., in particular, the extended discussion on dierent levels of human being in ThA X.52136,
142154, based on Plot. Enn. VI.7.2.53VI.7.11.36.
Asfr IV.8.7, IX.89.

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205

self is by itself, for itself and in itself the ve external senses as well as all of
the Avicennian internal senses, represented here by the governing faculty of
estimation, the motive faculties of desire and anger, and ultimately the
intellect as well, if that is what the other premises refers to. He does
acknowledge the fact that we commonly take sense perception to be caused
by extramental entities and to have those entities as its proper objects, for
later on in the chapter he qualies his thesis by saying that sense perception,
unlike imagination and intellection, requires the presence of extramental
objects as a necessary circumstantial condition for the creation of mental
percepts in the soul.35 However, he does not seem to think that this in any
way alters the fact that when considered exclusively in terms of mental
existence, or as phenomenal experience, perception has a mental origin and
should be understood as a unied act of mental existence consisting of both
self-awareness and objective content.36 After all qualications, the central
point remains that the self-aware subject of mental existence is in a very
robust sense one with and inseparable from her various experiential contents. The way in which Sadr repeatedly insists on the point suggests that
he is fully aware of departing from the traditional, narrow concept of selfawareness, and the explicit reference to his general theory of cognitive unity
gives out his motive for the departure.
The same point is revisited in a later chapter designed to elucidate the
subsistence of the human soul in the hereafter. Having dealt with alternative
interpretations of the strikingly sensualistic descriptions of the afterlife in
the Qurn, Sadr oers his own account according to which the afterlife is
just as real and concrete as this life, only it is lived purely mentally, free from
any connection to matter. As a consequence, the afterlife is stronger in
experiential terms than our mundane existence here and now. Since the
human soul is of an immaterial origin, it can create immaterial mental forms
by itself. Its connection to the body sets certain conditions to this creation,
and since these conditions are constantly changing due to the unceasing
material process in the body, the souls existence in the mental sphere is also
eeting, impermanent and weak. But when the soul is separated from the
body, intermittently in states like sleep or ecstasy and permanently in death,
it can create its percepts free from those material conditions, as a result of
which they will be stronger and more stable.37
35
36

37

Asfr IV.8.7, IX.9495.

Cf. Asfr IV.10.10, IX.237241, where Sadr, following Ghazl, makes an explicit distinction between
the content and the cause of a mental state. The experience of pain or sexual pleasure is the same
regardless of whether it is caused by an external wound or intercourse, or one that is merely imagined.
Asfr IV.10.10, IX.244245.

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The self reconsidered

To corroborate this argument Sadr describes the ascent to the afterlife by

means of the traditional trope, of Plotinian origin and familiar from both
Avicenna and Suhraward,38 of returning to oneself.
Do you not see that whenever the soul is relieved from the concern and the
necessary movements in preserving this body made up of incongruent things
on the verge of falling apart, and the external senses are suspended of their
act . . . it seizes the opportunity and returns to itself (dhtih) to some
extent though not entirely, because the natural, vegetative and other
faculties [remain] in operation . . .
Thus, through this return the soul becomes an originator for forms and
observes them by means of senses which are in itself (dhtih), with no
participation of the body, and so it has in itself (dhtih) hearing, sight, smell,
taste and touch; for if it didnt have these ve in itself (dhtih), how could a
human in the state of sleep or lack of consciousness see, hear, smell, taste or
touch while his external senses are suspended of their apprehensions? . . .
Just as these ve corporeal ones go back to a single sense, which is the
common sense, so all the senses and the apprehensive and motive faculties of
the soul go back to a single faculty which is its luminous self (dht) that is
emanative of Gods permission, might and power, and during its return from
this world to itself (dhtih) its apprehension of things becomes identical
with its power. If its return to itself even though it [remains] operative in
the body to some extent gives rise to the creation of forms in this manner,
what do you think when it leaves the connection and all the obstacles behind
and returns to itself (dhtih) and to the self of its origin (dhti mabdaih)
entirely?39

Since the argument is remarkably clear as it stands, let us concentrate on

the important formulations: the soul has its perceptual content in itself, and,
what is more, its self is the very faculty of perception and motion in a single
act of mental existence. If that is a description of the soul as it is in itself,
temporally or permanently cut o from all conscious action related to the
body,40 then we have here a clear parallel to the state of the ying man. But
Sadrs description of the state could scarcely be more drastically at variance
with that of Avicenna and Suhraward; for him, the souls awareness of
itself, that is, its very existence in the mental mode, necessarily entails
awareness of its cognitive and motive capacities as well as the corresponding
acts. When this entailment is understood in the framework of the
38

39
40

Cf. ThA I.21, 22 (based on Plot. Enn. IV.8.1.14); VIII.150, 116 (based on Plot. Enn. V.8.10.3940);
Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 119 (see Chapter 4.2, 80); and Suhraward, Talwh.t III.3.1, 239 Habb, 70
Corbin (see Chapter 6.1, 127128).
Asfr IV.10.10, IX.245246.
Cf. Asfr IV.8.3, IX.53. For the unconscious nature of vegetative acts, see Sadrs answer to Ab alBarakts related comments in Asfr IV.2.5, VIII.7779.

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207

epistemological theory of cognitive unity, as we have seen Sadr explicitly

do, it becomes clear that the narrow concept of self-awareness that Avicenna
introduced and Suhraward subscribed to appears fundamentally problematic, for consistent systematic reasons.
According to Sadr, self-awareness is always part and parcel of a complex
experiential whole, a necessary constituent of a unied act of mental
existence. While Avicenna and Suhraward would probably have been
ready to admit that in the majority of normal human cases self-awareness
is conjoined to manifold experiential content that one is thereby aware of as
ones own, there remains a principal divide that separates Sadr from them
and that can be spelled out by means of the thought experiment of the ying
man. The question we should ask is whether the ying man is an argument
per impossibile.41 For Avicenna and Suhraward, the case of the ying man
may well be impossible but only in the sense that no one ever actualizes that
particular potentiality by coming to exist in such a state, that his is an
exclusively imaginary case. As a consequence, the ying mans situation can
still be called logically possible, that is, the inherent features of the essences
denoted by the relevant concepts allow that someone can have such a thin
experience that it consists of nothing but being an I. What is more, there
remains a sense in which the case is nomically possible as well, for, given the
omnipotence of God, He can presumably create anew a fully developed
human being to oat in the air without any perceptions at all, if only He
happened so to choose.
For Sadr, however, the impossibility runs deeper. While the ying man
may be a useful means of analysis, and can even provide the basis for a valid
argument for the souls immateriality,42 it entails no real consequences for the
self-awareness involved. It is not a real possibility for a mentally existing human
being to have rst-personal experience without content, because the existence
of the rst person necessarily gives rise to content it experiences as its own. The
Sadrian ying man, or animal, would be minimally aware of being capable of
cognition and voluntary motion and would be driven by its nature to put its
capacities to use. Even if we suppose that he were prevented from actually using
them, he would, unlike his Avicennian and Suhrawardian peers, be aware of
what he is lacking, subject to all the anguish of a soul divested of its body.
41

42

Let it be emphasized that the following is entirely a product of rational reconstruction and should be
understood as a heuristic device designed to articulate the dierence between Sadr and his predecessors. I realize that our protagonists interpretations of the modal terms (possible and impossible)
may not yield to this manner of exposition.
As we saw in Chapter 7.1: 164166, Sadr presents it as one of the arguments for the immateriality of
the animal soul in Asfr IV.2.2, VIII.47.

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The self reconsidered

Thus again, Sadr would maintain, in order to arrive at the narrow

concept of self-awareness, we must perform a second-order analysis of the
immediately given rst-order act of mental existence that each of us nds in
her own experience. The ying man is a potent means of performing that
analysis, but we must be careful not to postulate a really existing pure I to
correspond with the result of the analysis. Each of us is an I, that much is
true, but always an I engaged in a concrete act, immersed in a concrete
perception or thought, driven by a concrete desire, and so forth. This critical
departure is, I presume, not entirely implausible in light of available
phenomenological evidence, but Sadrs primary motivation for making it
seems nevertheless to have been his rm adherence to a particularly broad
version of the theory of cognitive unity. The picture that emerges from the
chapters in which he makes that departure is one of a thinker who is willing
to save as much of the inherited discussion of self-awareness as is possible in
light of a commitment he has made in another context. The same is true of
the revision his theory of substantial change drives him to make to his
predecessors understanding of human selfhood.

8.2

Identity in substantial change

The narrow self that Avicennas concept of self-awareness entails is intimately connected to a particular view of the identity of an individual human
being. This view provided the basis for Avicennas primary argument
against the unity theory of knowledge, but as we have seen, it was also
explicitly connected to the topic of personal identity over time in an argument for psychological substance dualism found in the Mubh.atht.43
What endures unchanged through the constant variation of my corporeal
acts and experiential content is the I in me, the narrow rst person that is the
agent and subject of them all in one and the same sense. This concept of self
is also familiar from another argument for dualism, that is, the one from the
unity of experience, which we have seen Sadr apply in much the same
manner as his predecessors. If I rst smell coee, then begin to desire a cup,
and in the end proceed to stand up in order to walk to the coee room, are
not these three constituents of the explanation of my action quite obviously
temporally consecutive states? And if that is the case, does not the plausibility of the explanation hinge on the fact that the I remains one and the
same despite the changes that result in its three distinct states? Finally, since
much of the power of these arguments is derived from the interlocutors
43

Avicenna, Mubh.atht VI.402403, 146147 Bdrfar (cf. 453, 227 Badaw); see Chapter 4.1, 7579.

Identity in substantial change

209

shared intuitions, it must be presumed that the idea of a stable I in each of us

is not entirely lacking in commonsense plausibility either.
It therefore seems that human self-awareness and selfhood pose a major
problem for Sadrs theory of substantial change, according to which all
aspects of created entities such as human beings, their respective substantial
cores included, are subject to change. Even if the I or the self is in some sense
the core and essence of my being, its stability turns out to be but an illusion.
If everything in me, down to the very core of my rst-personality, is subject
to change, can I in any reasonable sense identify with the former phases of
my substantial development? What makes the present I the same as the I ten
years, ten days or even ten minutes ago? If there is no stable I in me, but
merely a series of consequent and distinct I-phases, can any of these
legitimately claim to be the proper subject of the change in what sense
can I now say that I am living my life? To conclude our investigation of
Sadrs concept of self-awareness, I would now like to argue that he not only
is aware of these problems but also attempts to provide a solution to them.
Faced with the choice of whether to qualify the doctrine of substantial
change or to revise the concept of human selfhood, he clearly opts for the
latter, despite the fact that he has found use for a great deal of the relevant
Avicennian and Suhrawardian insights.
Sadrs solution is based on a new concept of identity introduced in his
theory of substantial change. To begin with, he denes the concretely
existing individual nature, which corresponds to the substantial essence
that provides the basis for the identity of an individual entity in the
Peripatetic framework, as a continuum of substantial change.44 Now, we
can of course pause to consider any given phase of the continuum, and by
analysing it into its constituents we can distinguish an essence for it that is
distinct from other features that provide its accidental determinations. We
can also compare the essences derived from the analyses of two or more such
phases and judge that the phases are instantiations of a single essence and
therefore identical in terms of what they are. However, we must not thereby
neglect the fact that the identity we then perceive between the essences is
possible only because they share in a quiddity that we understand. In other
words, the identity is intelligible and therefore a case of the instantiation of a
universal quiddity in two or more particulars. But since it is the identity of a
temporally existing individual entity that we are concerned with, we cannot
settle with this, for, considered as individuals, the essences in the phases we
44

Asfr I.1.7.19, III.7476.

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have analysed remain numerically and specically distinct.45 The I that

woke up this morning is the same as the I reading these words only in the
sense that both are considered in abstraction from all other features of the
two individual acts of existence, that is, as instantiations of a quiddity such
as I-ness; but considered in themselves, the I-that-woke-up-this-morning
is distinct from the I-that-reads-these-lines.
However, the temporal continuum of existence to which the phases
belong does have a genuine individual identity. This identity is above
change, but not in the sense of enduring through time, for it is based on
an extratemporal consideration of the continuum as a temporally extended
whole.46 In his articulation of this new concept of identity, Sadr relies on
the notion of xed essence (ayn thbit) introduced by the great Su
theoretician Ibn Arab. As the ultimate foundations of the identity of
individual existents, the xed essences are atemporally present in Gods
mind, but as such they are mere potentialities that lack the kind of existence
proper to them. Their mode of existence in reality is to be unfolded in time
as processes of substantial development towards increasing perfection.47 But
a xed essence that can only exist as a process of change will not be available
for intellectual abstraction from any particular phase in the process. If a
metaphor is allowed for clarication, our concrete existence amounts to
performing in time all the acts of a script that is xed once and for all, but
since the play is about our own development, we are conned to the
protagonists closed perspective and the plot will remain a secret to us
until the very end.
Sadr does seem to think that on the primary level of merely existing, that
is, when one is not attempting to understand explicitly what it is that exists,
the identity of the process of existence is somehow given in the very act of
existence.48 In the same context, he describes the extratemporal essence in
causal terms, stating that the essence enters existence by directing it to the
sort of goal proper to that essence and thereby determining the corresponding act of existence to be of the type it is.49 It thus seems that the existence of
each xed essence amounts to a restricted instantiation of the Neoplatonic
circle of origination (mabda) from and return (mad) to the Origin. As the
single point of origin and return, the essence is present at each stage of the
45
46

47
48

Asfr I.1.7.19, III.76; I.1.7.22, III.83; I.1.7.24, III.95.

This bears an intriguing resemblance to four-dimensionalist theories of identity in contemporary
analytic metaphysics; cf. Gallois 2012. According to Rahman 1975, 109, Allma Sayyid Muh.ammad
T.abt.ab (d. 1981) has presented an interpretation of Sadr along these lines.
Asfr I.1.7.25, III.105107; IV.7.3, VIII.398404; IV.7.6, VIII.449452.
Asfr I.1.7.22, III.86; I.1.7.25, III.107. 49 Asfr I.1.7.23, III.8992; cf. IV.9.5, IX.143144.

Identity in substantial change

211

process, but since each instant is a unique phase of the process that consists
of all the determinations it has, an act of understanding cannot straightforwardly identify two phases of one process with each other. Rather, the
identication must take place by means of some quiddity, which in an ideal
case would be the very xed essence actually governing the process one is
considering.50
In the remainder of this subsection I will start by investigating some
textual evidence for the claim that Sadr was aware of the consequences his
new theory of identity bears for the discussion of self-awareness. My aim
here is to show that he deliberately attempted to import change into the very
I each of us is aware of ourselves as being. I will then move on to consider the
related question of whether we are transparent to ourselves in the manner
most of Sadrs predecessors, Avicenna and Suhraward in particular, seem
to have thought, or whether the new concept of selfhood rather introduces
an amount of opacity to our self-awareness.
Much of the positive account in the chapter of the psychological
section of the Asfr in which Sadr promises to explain the endurance of
the human faculties, the related acts, and the human body in their
constant transformation, consists of a series of quotes from the Theology
of Aristotle. The thrust of the material is that the identity in change is due
to an atemporal, unchanging and unied principle governing the change,
quite in line with our brief account of the theory of substantial change.
However, Sadr concludes the chapter with an extended critique of
Avicenna who, failing to grasp this crucial crypto-Plotinian point, was
incapable of dealing with a number of psychological problems related to
identity in change.51
One of these problems goes straight to the heart of our concern. Sadr
takes Avicenna to task by citing a question from the Mubh.atht:52 how can
Avicenna say that a human soul becomes an intellect when an immaterial
intellectual form actually occurs to it, for does this not entail that a soul
which is not yet immaterial can nevertheless apprehend something that is
immaterial, and would this not be a rather obvious violation of Avicennas
50

51

Sadr clearly allows the possibility of subsuming two or more phases of a process under dierent
quiddities, as shown by his remarks on accidental motion, that is, motion considered as not
immediately concomitant to the essence, such as a particular change of place, a particular qualitative
change or a particular amount of growth (see Asfr I.1.7.19, III.75). For instance, I can conceive of a
sparrows ight from one tree to another as the movement of a bird or as the movement of some
brownish thing. Both quiddities will enable me to attribute the two stages in the locomotion to a
single entity in this restricted case.
Asfr IV.9.5, IX.139146. 52 Avicenna, Mubh.atht 377, 209 Badaw; V.302303, 122 Bdrfar.

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The self reconsidered

own dearly held principles? Avicenna attempts to explain the problem away
by appealing to a metaphorical sense of becoming, but Sadr is, unsurprisingly, not convinced. According to him, the question points to a real
problem in Avicennas theory of the human soul, which arises from
Avicennas claim that the human being is immaterial and hence intellectual,
in an immutable sense from the very beginning of its coming to be a
moment which Sadr, presumably relying on a later source, locates at the
fourth month of pregnancy when the foetus has reached a sucient stage of
development to enable the emanation of an immaterial entity capable of
functioning as a soul for it.53 Avicenna did of course allow for two momentous events in the course of human existence, that is, the eventual cessation
of the souls relationship to the body and the actualization of its intellectual
potency through the acquisition of knowledge. However, in both cases the
sense in which the human being exists as an immaterial and therefore
intellectual thing, her self-awareness, remains immutable. Insofar as I am
an I, I with the body am exactly the same as I without the body. Similarly,
whether or not I have acquired knowledge, I am and remain I. For Sadr, on
the contrary, the soul
is at rst an imagination in act, an intellect in potency, and then, by means of
the repetition of apprehensions and the extraction of intelligibles from
sensibles and universals from particulars, it comes from the degrees of
potential intellect to be at the degree of actual intellect; its self (dhtuh)
evolves and is transferred in this substantial transformation from an imaginative faculty to an intellectual faculty.54

Sadr is emphatic: the soul literally becomes an intellect by changing in

itself from an imaginative capacity to an intellectual one. This development is not a matter of intellectual objects merely replacing what was
imagined, although that is involved as well. Because of the theory of
cognitive unity, to which Sadr refers elsewhere in the chapter,55 the
subject and object of all cognition are fundamentally interdependent,
and the ascent to a higher level of knowledge and existence concerns the
subject and object alike.
One may duly ask whether we are not reading too much into Sadrs
choice of the ambiguous dhtuh here. More precisely, is there anything
that forces us to bring self-awareness into play, instead of interpreting
the formulation as a vague reference to change in the essence or the
substantial core of a human being? The present context alone provides no
53

Asfr IV.9.5, IX.150.

54

Asfr IV.9.5, IX.151.

55

Asfr IV.9.5, IX.148.

Identity in substantial change

213

denitive giveaway,56 but corroborative material can be found from related

passages elsewhere in the Asfr.
In the part of the Asfr devoted to the theory of substantial change Sadr
addresses the problem of identity in change by taking human existence as a
case in point. This is instigated by an argument for dualism that relies on
our self-awareness as evidence for an enduring immaterial self that, by
functioning as a soul, underpins the identity in ux of its body.
Some of them have said: By means of this it is known that the soul is not
temperament; for temperament is something owing and renewed, and in
what lies between any two extremes it has potentially innite species. The
sense of potentially is that no species is actually distinct from its neighbour,
just as points and parts in a line segment are not actually distinct. Every
human being is aware of himself (dhtihi) as one individual and unchanging
thing, even if he is one in the sense of continuity (al-ittis.l) to the end of life.
I say: it is as if something of the scent of the selfs (al-dht) renewal in the
human came upon this speaker when he said even if he is one in the sense of
continuity to the end of life; for temporal continuity is not incompatible
with transformation in that very continuum (al-muttas.il), you will know this
when we resume the discussion.57

According to the argument Sadr cites, the body is a temperamental

constitution of elements, subject to ceaseless uctuation of its constituents,
and therefore requires an external principle of stability that keeps it from
falling apart. This external principle is the soul, which can function as such
a principle precisely because it is stable and unchanging in itself. What
makes the argument interesting for us is the reference it makes to selfawareness. The argument explicitly assumes that human beings universally
share an intuition of their respective dhawt as enduring unchanged
through time, and, in order to save the plausibility of this assumption,
I believe we have to read dht here to mean self.58 If that is the case, then
notwithstanding the arguments anonymity, the insight it builds upon is

56

57
58

In Asfr IV.9.4, IX.155. Sadr does criticize Avicenna for having incoherently held that the immaterial
human substance is capable of really separating from the body and for having nevertheless denied
substantial change. According to Sadr, separation from the body is an instance of substantial change:
what rst existed as a soul comes to exist as an independent immaterial substance. He then characterizes the motion as istih.latun dhtya, which could be translated as transformation in terms of the
self, but equally well, indeed perhaps less awkwardly, as essential transformation. Thus, the passage
does not help to resolve our dilemma. Cf. also Asfr IV.11.1, IX.265266.
Asfr I.1.7.24, III.95.
My argument would be the same, mutatis mutandis, as in the discussion of Hasses interpretation of
the ying man (see Chapter 2.2, 3841). If we read dht as essence here, we face the question of what
sort of awareness of essence could plausibly be regarded as intuitively obvious by anyone.

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The self reconsidered

of course familiar from Avicenna.59 However, the addition at the end, which
qualies that the self remains one throughout the change in the sense
of continuity (bi man al-ittis.l) departs from the common ground.
Whatever the origin or the motive for the qualication, Sadr nds it
particularly apposite because he rejects any straightforward notion of stability in the human self. It is crucial to notice, though, that he does not deny
the plausibility of our intuition of our selves remaining the same in spite of
the change about and related to them only this identity is a property that is
due to the continuity of the process of change, not a relation between any
two instants isolated from that continuity in intellectual analysis.
This is a point Sadr has laboured at some length earlier on in the
chapter. Another example by means of which he attempts to clarify his
thesis is qualitative change, such as the gradual darkening of a colour.
Suppose you are sitting under a tree at dusk, observing the shadows grow
increasingly thick by the minute. Although the shadow was visibly lighter a
moment ago than it is at present, which enables you to distinguish the
particular shade or species of its earlier black from that of the present one,
you can still say that the two are instances of the same shadow or the same
colour. This is legitimate because primarily, that is, prior to any intellectual
distinction between the two shades, they were embedded in one process of
change, which is potentially divisible by an intellect but actually one in
itself.60 Our selves are similar to the thickening shadow: I can distinguish
between two phases in the temporal development of my being, and even
identify one with the other in subsequent reection, but that is only because
the development was one continuous whole to begin with. If I consider the
two phases in isolation, I can never identify them with each other, because
they are distinct individuals. I may of course subsume both under a single
universal, but then I will lose grasp of their individuality and it is precisely
as an individual that I am aware of myself. The way out of the impasse is by
locating the identity in the rst-order self-awareness prior to the intellectual
consideration. On the level of primitive self-awareness, I am primitively
aware of myself as a continuous existence that remains a single process
despite the thoroughgoing changes it is subject to. But ascending from this
59

60

A parallel case, though in a dierent formulation, can be found in Avicenna, Mubh.atht

VI.402403, 146147 Bdrfar (cf. 453, 227 Badaw), and Avicenna, al-Risla al-adh.awya IV,
for Sadrs
127128; cf. Chapter 4.1, 7579. I have not been able to determine an immediate source

argument here; it may be a summary of the interchange between Rz and T.s over a directive from
the third namat. of the Ishrt. For the passages in question, see Avicenna, Ishrt, namat. 3, 120121;
Rz, Sharh. al-Ishrt 125127; and T.s, Sharh. al-Ishrt II.350356.
Asfr I.1.7.24, III.9495.

Identity in substantial change

215

primitive awareness to explicit intellectual consideration of myself, I lose the

awareness of identity, and the only substitute I can come up with is a
universal quiddity that divests its instantiations of their individuality.61
That the substantial change of human beings concerns our very rstpersonality is also supported by means of proverbial evidence in a psychological chapter on the generation of individual human souls. Earlier in the
chapter Sadr has stated a preference for the view that, prior to their
connections to bodies, human souls are xed essences in Gods knowledge.62 In a corollary to this statement he tackles Suhrawards refutation of
pre-existence, particularly the critical claim that attributing the two states
proper to a xed essence and to a soul, respectively, to one and the same
thing leads to asserting that the very reality of the thing is subject to
transformation (inqilb).63 Unsurprisingly, Sadr says that as long as this
transformation is understood in the framework of his doctrine of substantial
change, there will be nothing to object to in it. Having brought forth a
number of physical and cognitive processes as examples of perfectly legitimate transformations from one mode of existence to another,64 he concludes with the following chapter.
What is reported from Pythagoras supports this claim. He said: A spiritual
self (dhtan) radiated knowledge (al-marif) upon me, and I asked: Who are
you? It said: I am your complete nature. Oh my beloved, if you were enabled
to ascend in the layers of your existence, you would see numerous itnesses,
dierent in existence. Each of them is a completion of your itness, not
lacking anything of you, and each one of them is referred to by means of
I. This is like in the famous proverb: You are I, so who am I?65

Sadrs explication is almost as enigmatic as Pythagoras dictum, but the

context in which it is introduced warrants us to interpret it as a condensed
expression of his novel theory of identity. If I were, per impossibile, able to
ascend to later and therefore more perfect phases of my continuous existence, all the while remaining what I presently am, I would encounter them
as distinct individual things or itnesses (huwyt) separate from me. Yet at
the same time each of them would be me in as full and complete a way as
I now am me, for once I reach these phases in the continuous development
of my existence, I will be aware of myself and refer to myself by the
61
62
65

For other passages on the individual human identity as a continuity, see Asfr IV.10.8, IX.227228;
and IV.11.1, IX.267268.
Asfr IV.7.3, VIII.398401. 63 Asfr IV.7.3, VIII.417420. 64 Asfr IV.7.3, VIII.420422.
Asfr IV.7.3, VIII.422423. The saying reported from Pythagoras is ascribed to Hermes by
Suhraward in Mashri III.6.9.193, 464. The context is an argument for Platonic forms, and
Suhraward spends no time at all on the implications of the quote for the concept of self-awareness.

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The self reconsidered

rst-personal indexical in exactly the same manner as now. The seeming

contradiction can be dissolved by means of the distinction we have just
introduced; the phases are distinct from each other in a second-order
consideration, such as the depicted ascent, but in the continuity of primitive
rst-order self-awareness one remains aware of oneself as a single self
throughout the development.66 The playful proverb at the end of the
passage yields to a similar interpretation. If each of the numerous phases
of my existence has a legitimate claim to provide the reference for the use of
the rst-personal indexical exclusive to me, we can ask which of the phases,
if any, is really me in the most fundamental sense.67 The true answer, of
course, is two-tiered. In the rst-order level of continuous primitive selfawareness where there is no actual distinction between them, they are one
and therefore all me in one and the same sense, whereas on the level of
second-order consideration, none of them has a more valid claim to be me
than any other.
Occasionally, Sadr applies the phenomenon of self-awareness as evidence for the way in which our identity is due to the single xed essence that
is both the origin and the point of return pursued in our existence. A
particularly explicit case is the following version of the argument from the
unity of experience that concludes an Avicennian classication of the souls
faculties:68
This notion [that is, the souls unity] will be better revealed to you if you
regard yourself (dhtika) separate from all else. You will then see it to
understand and to apprehend universals and particulars, to estimate, to
perceive, to hear, to see, to have desire, anger, love, joy, will, and other
attributes which are innumerable and uncountable. You know that a form is
either simple or composite and that matter too is either simple or composite;
yet the composite existent is united in some manner of unity, for what has no
unity has no existence. Thus, multiplicity is caused by unity, because it is the
origin of multiplicity, its principle, model and goal.69

At rst glance, the passage reads like a straightforward rephrasing of the

Avicennian argument from unity: the self is the immutable subject of all the
acts attributed to distinct faculties, which provides an important insight
concerning the corresponding unity of the psychological entity known as
66
67
68
69

Cf. Asfr IV.8.2, IX.17; and IV.8.5, IX.7273.

Notice that the pivotal man an is ambiguous and can be translated both as who am I and as
who is I.
The bulk of Asfr IV.3.8, VIII.146150, is a paraphrase of Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs I.5, 3951
Rahman.
Asfr IV.3.8, VIII.151.

Identity in substantial change

217

the soul. This impression dissolves, however, if we pay careful attention to

the qualications Sadr appends to the argument. There is a unity underlying the multiplicity that appears in the selfs involvement in divergent acts,
but instead of the stability of a Peripatetic substance it is a unity proper to a
continuous process, which is made one by the origin and the goal whose
unfolding in temporally extended existence it is. The acts, passions and
other determinations of the self are one manifold because they all are
constituents of one and the same existence, phases in a single process
from the origin to the goal. In a closely related context, Sadr characterizes
this process of human development governed by a xed identity in the
origin and goal as our way of imitating Gods unity.70 God is mysteriously
one by being identical to all of His semantically distinct names; the best I
can do to approach this absolute unity is to be one by living through the
entire course of the unbroken continuum of my existence.
When the passage is set into its context, it becomes clear that Sadr is
using the Avicennian insight into the force of evidence provided by the selfs
unity in experience to make a point that is in polar opposition to Avicenna.
Instead of pointing towards a substantial core that endures through the
uctuation of attributes its existence consists in, the narrow selfhood upon
which the argument from unity hinges is now used to provide us with a clue
to the principle that governs our existence as a continuous whole. But the
self we are experientially aware of within the continuity can only be
identied with that principle if we realize that the uctuation is an essential
and inseparable part of it. The narrow concept of selfhood may help us to
arrive at this realization, but only if we understand it in heuristical terms and
resist the temptation straightforwardly to identify its abstract stability with
the much more contentful principle. The I is there all along, yes, but only as
a dimension of continuous development.
This point is corroborated by another characterization of the self as a
continuity, this time in an eschatological context. Sadr inaugurates the
section of the Asfr devoted to an argument for corporeal afterlife by
recounting the principles required in the argument. The sixth of these
principles states that the individual unity (al-wah.da al-shakhs.ya), or identity, varies according to the dierent modes of existence. In the case of
temporally extended existence, the unity is identical with its renewal and
completion (aynu tajaddudih wa taqaddih), that is, with the continuity
of the respective individual existence as a whole.71 According to this principle, the human soul or self is one by proceeding through the entire course
70

Asfr IV.3.7, VIII.136; and IV.3.9, VIII.154155.

71

Asfr IV.11.1, IX.265.

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The self reconsidered

of her existence at all of the levels due to it, from sense-perception through
imagination to intellection.72 The closely related seventh principle, according to which the principle of identity in human existence is the immaterial
soul, formulates the point with particular explicitness:
the human itness in all these transformations and variations is one and
identical to itself (wh.idatun hiya hiya bi aynih), because it takes place in
the manner of unitive gradual continuity (al sabli al-ittis.li al-wah.dnyi
al-tadrj). What is decisive is not the substantial individualities and existential denitions which take place by way of this substantial motion; on the
contrary, what is decisive is that which persists and remains, and it is the soul,
for it is the perfectional form in human being, which is the principle of his
itness and self (huwyatihi wa dhtihi).73

An individual human being is realized as a continuity of constant gradual

transformation. As a result, we can grasp ourselves as one individual only by
focusing on the principle of our development towards perfection, not by
attempting to locate, by means of abstractive analysis, some sort of substantial core to our individuality or denitional limits to our existence. Sadr
clearly does not deny the possibility of such analysis, but he does reject its
ability to get to the core of our individual identity. It is experientially
available to us in our very rst person, but only by living through all the
gradual phases of our rst-personal existence.
Let us pause to recapitulate. The evidence we have considered suggests
that Sadrs solution to the problems raised by his simultaneous subscription to both the Avicennian arguments that rely on the stability of selfawareness and the strong concept of thoroughgoing substantial change in all
temporal entities is based on a novel concept of individual identity based on
the continuous whole of temporally extended existence instead of an
enduring substantial feature. As a result of this concept, the change through
time that each of us is bound to undergo is now built in to our very selves.
On the rst-order level of primitive self-awareness, that is, on the level in
which each of us simply is an I without pausing to consider what being an I
minimally amounts to, each of us is aware of herself as one because she is
living through the development by which her identity can only be realized.
But on a second-order level of reective attempts to grasp that rst-order
unity, that is, in maneouvres of thought (such as the ying man) designed to
isolate the phenomenon of rst-personality, we are bound to lose either
our unity, by nding the rst-order unity fragmented into distinct slices of
rst-personal existence determined by dierent sorts of content, or our
72

Asfr IV.11.1, IX.266.

73

Asfr IV.11.1, IX.267.

Identity in substantial change

219

individuality, by abstracting from those determinations and subsuming the

distinct slices under a universal quiddity such as I-ness. The tacit criticism
towards Avicenna and Suhraward would therefore be that they mistake a
result of abstraction (the narrow concept of selfhood as pure I-ness) for a real
individual (rst-personality embedded in a process of constantly uctuating
determinations).
That, however, is not all, for Sadrs insistence on the change built
into the very self of every human being results in another important
dierence from his predecessors. Avicennas and Suhrawards narrow
concept of selfhood as pure I-ness divested of all accidental determinations has a feature common to the vast majority of dualist theories of
self-awareness, namely, that the self is thoroughly transparent to itself.
This is of course only proper for an immaterial, and thereby intellectual,
entity: if there are no material obstacles preventing me from regarding
myself, then I should be fully manifest to myself in all my immaterial
glory. What could there possibly be about being me that I can be
unaware of? But if I-ness is conceived as a dimension of change, I
suddenly become decisively less apparent to myself. Indeed, if I pause
to anticipate the future phases of my career of development, I soon
realize that to a large extent this aspect of me is not only unclear but
entirely unavailable to me. Thus, Sadrs concept of selfhood as subject
to substantial change introduces a fundamental sort of opacity to our
selves. If change is indeed crucial to our being, then there will be more in
store of us in the future, something about us that we are not presently
aware of, our immediate awareness of ourselves notwithstanding.74
As we have learned by now, the direction of substantial change is unilinear: like all creatures, we strive to reach ever higher levels of perfection
proper to our type of existence. In general schematic terms, this amounts to
rst leaving behind the level of mere sense perception and becoming actual
imagination and what is actually imagined, and at a still more developed
stage, becoming an intellect and what is understood in act.75 If at the
imaginative level I am in a strong sense one with the imagined content I am
aware of, as Sadr states, then the higher level of intellection must be hidden
to me. Even if my existence as an imagination in act contains the
74
75

The rest of this chapter is adapted from the more extensive discussion in Kaukua 2014c.
Asfr I.1.10.2.2, III.495. This is Sadrs standard account of cognitive substantial change, for other
formulations, cf., e.g. Asfr IV.4.5, VIII.208209; IV.4.12, VIII.239240; IV.10.1, IX.167168. Sadr
also describes human development in moral terms (e.g. Asfr IV.8.3, IX.41), by means of a distinction
between relative activity and passivity (Asfr IV.11.24, IX.445), and by comparing it to various
methods in the sciences (e.g. Asfr IV.10.4, IX.184186; IV.11.9, IX.315316).

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The self reconsidered

potentiality to develop into an intellect in act, being potentially something

is not the same as being that something in full act and awareness.
But if a lower stage of development contains the higher in potency, can I
not conceive the higher stage by conceiving the potency in myself? Those of
us who have the experience of catching themselves in the act of daydreaming will certainly recognize the possibility of this sort of anticipation;
perhaps with some added rigour we could be more accurate in our anticipations, and this could be a means of penetrating the opacity in ourselves,
albeit not without a signicant amount of mediation. Sadr does not discuss
this possibility as such, but he does make an interesting remark in a chapter
dealing with the self-intellection due to all intellectual subjects. The instigation for the remark is, again, provided by Rz who argues against the
Avicennian identication of Gods essence with His existence. Suppose we
grant that Gods essence is His existence and then describe His existence as
pure existence, divested of all determinations that would diminish it in one
way or another. Since we can understand what existence is, and since we can
also understand what those determinations are to which we apply the
equally understandable logical operator of negation, the outcome is that
we can understand Gods essence. But this amounts to saying that we can
understand God as He understands Himself, which is about as outrageous a
claim as one can make.76
In his answer, Sadr is unwilling to reject any of the premises as such.
Instead, he opts to qualify our understanding of existence by distinguishing
between existence and the concept of existence. Existence in reality allows
an innite variation of degrees of intensity and weakness, and the concept of
existence can be common to all instantiations of existence in spite of their
dierences in intensity only by abstracting from those dierences. Thus,
understanding a particular existence, in this sense Gods, as an instantiation
of the concept of existence is not the same as being that particular existence.77 In other words, although a less intense existence can conceive of a
more intense existence, it does not thereby know what it is like to exist more
intensely. Moreover, given that the sort of existence proper both to intellectually capable human beings and the innitely capable Creator is cognitive,
we can also rephrase Sadrs point by stating that knowing God as He
knows Himself, and not as we now do by means of the concept of existence,
would amount to existing at His level, or existing as Him.

76
77

Asfr I.1.10.2.1, III.488. Sadr seems to be paraphrasing from Rz, Mabh.ith I.1.5, I.124.
Asfr I.1.10.2.1, III.488.

Identity in substantial change

221

Although the discussion concerns the innite dierence in degree

between us and the Creator, there seems to be no reason not to believe
that the statement holds also of the nite dierence between a less and a
more developed phase of our own existence. We cannot know what we have
the potency to become before we actually are that; full awareness of the
innate goal of development can only be had upon arrival at the goal. In the
context of interpreting the topic of the straight path (al-s.irt. al-mustaqm)
as addressing the ethical implications of the human return to God, Sadr
frames the point in a rather charming symbol:
the journeyer towards God I mean the soul travels in itself (f dhtih),
and passes through sojourns and stations that occur in itself through itself (f
dhtih bi dhtih). Thus, at every step it lays its foot upon its head, or rather
its head upon its foot, and this is something astonishing; yet it is not
astonishing upon verication and knowledge (al-irfn).78

Earlier in the chapter, Sadr has stated that the straight path is the soul itself,
suggesting that the path is only paved when it is rst trodden upon.79 The
idea is that the souls choices and acts determine its lot in the afterlife;
treading on the path of its self, as straight or crooked as it turns out to be, it
generates itself as an entity with the corresponding character traits. Our
passage then connects this eschatological theme to the idea of development
in the most intimate dimension of self-awareness. The earlier phases of the
souls self-aware existence provide the basis for the later ones; one can only
develop by surpassing ones present self, or, in terms of the simile, by using
ones head as a stepping stone upon which one can step to reach higher. Yet
at the same time, the later phase is later precisely because it ascends the
earlier one. When we consider the fact that proper human development
takes place as an increase in knowledge as an ascent from the lower modes
of perception and imagination towards the summit of intellection we
realize that one really only progresses by standing as erect as a human being
should, that is, by placing ones head, which after Avicenna is the uncontested seat of the highest body-related cognitive faculties, in its proper place
above ones feet.
If we connect this metaphorical description of the properly human
substantial change to Sadrs general claim that the higher stages in the
substantial development of any act of existence somehow include the lower
or preceding ones,80 it begins to seem that in the human case this inclusion
amounts to a superior cognitive perspective to oneself. In a process whose
78

Asfr IV.11.19, IX.403.

79

Asfr IV.11.19, IX.394396, 402.

80

Cf., e.g., Asfr I.1.7.25, III.106.

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The self reconsidered

logic is not altogether unlike that of the Hegelian Aufhebung, abstracted

from the grand historical story, the later self (a head above feet) is aware of
itself as the present state of a developmental process, and thereby grasps the
earlier phases as so many steps that have led it to the present. As patronizing
as it may be, one will always know better when one comes of age intellectually, as one progresses from a predominantly perceptual subject to one
capable of imagination, and ultimately to a fully mature intellect. In this
sense, I can legitimately say that I am the same person as I was ten days, ten
months or even ten years ago, in spite of all the changes I have been subject
to, for I would not be my present self were it not for those earlier stages in
the development, which in this sense belong to myself. But this inclusion in
awareness of course implies a corresponding exclusion from the perspective
of the earlier phases of self-aware existence. The foot that is about to step
higher is not aware of the superior perspective it will thereby gain for the
head, and similarly, the I a decade ago can only be aware of the present I by
developing to the level of existence corresponding to it that is, by
becoming it.
The inaccessibility of future development in self-awareness is not the
only source of opacity in the Sadrian self, for the inclusion of the past in the
present also comes in degrees of intensity of awareness. As most of us know
all too well, we do not remember our entire personal histories. On the other
hand, although I can have a recollection of myself as I was a decade or two
ago, I may already have lost touch with myself ten minutes into the past.
Moreover, there are many things I now know that I know I must have
learned in the past, although I have no recollection whatsoever of ever
having learned them. Were it not for the blatant implausibility that a
concept like my wifes favourite licorice could be hard-wired into my
psychological make-up, it might just as well be a priori for my present
self. Sadr discusses phenomena like these in terms of habituation which,
given his theory of substantial development, does not concern merely the
accidental character traits of ones soul but ones very self.81
Habituation is addressed especially in the eschatological part of the Asfr
and is consistently approached by means of two Qurnic topoi, that of the
opening of the book of the soul on the nal day,82 and that of the sinners
81
82

Cf. Asfr IV.7.1, VIII.382383; IV.10.4, IX.184; IV.11.4, IX.303304; IV.11.9, IX.315; IV.11.220,
IX.404405; IV.11.33, IX.537538. Dierent types of habituation are described in IV.9.2, IX.115122.
Cf., e.g., Q 7:187; 17:1314, 71; 18:49; 50:22; 69:1920, 2526; 81:10; 84:1012. For a concise account,
see Asfr IV.11.20, IX.404412. The topos gures constantly also in the brief and derivative Iksr
al-rifn (see, e.g., I.5, 9, 1213; II.5, 22; II.78, 2527; IV.3, 6768). For an extended discussion, see
Jambet 2008, 150203.

Identity in substantial change

223

appearance in the afterlife in a variety of animal forms.83 On the nal day,

each soul is read its proper judgment from a book, which the soul itself
constitutes and which contains a complete account of all its acts that are
worthy of praise or blame. Prior to the opening of the book, the soul was
oblivious to these acts despite the fact that it had been their agent and that
the acts had become part of the soul itself as its habitudes. This suggests that
the previous phases of an individual human existence need not be presently
given as explicit cognitive objects. Instead, as habituations to perceive,
estimate and react to the world, they often determine the present in all
kinds of ways one is not aware of, and it is precisely such hidden aspects of
ones self that will be painfully clear to read on the nal day. By the same
token, the habituations can be made apparent in the afterlife when their
bearers are transformed to exist in angelic, satanic, animal or bestial forms
that are depictive of their respective habituated states, henceforth tortuously
explicit for all to see.84
The relevance of this eschatological discussion from the point of view of
our topic can be assessed by considering two questions. First, does Sadr
explicitly state that our character traits, or at least some of them, are below
the threshold of awareness? Second, does he identify the unaware traits with
the self? The answer to the rst question seems to be armative, not only on
systematic grounds (what opening or revelation would there be unless the
revealed traits were somehow hidden to begin with?) but also in light of
textual evidence. Consider as an example the following variation on the
opening of the souls book:
We also say that the intoxication of nature and the souls stupor in this
abode due to its preoccupation with the deeds of the body prevent it
from apprehending the harms and pains of the soul that occur to it and that
are acquired from among the results of its deeds and the concomitants of its
destructive character traits (akhlqih) and habits (malaktih), by a true
apprehension which is not spoiled by what the senses convey to it and what
they are engaged in, forgetting and ignoring. Thus, when the veil is lifted
from the human by death and the cover is removed, on that day his sight
falls upon the consequences of his acts and the results of his deeds, so that
they then end up if he is mean in character traits, evil in deeds and
destructive in beliefs in strong pain and great disaster, as in His saying,
83
84

Cf., e.g., Q 5:60 (apes and pigs) and 7:166 (apes). Sadr also cites a number of ahdth from the
Prophet and the imams. Cf. the extended discussion in Asfr IV.8.2, IX.1232.
Asfr IV.8.2, IX.2930; cf. IV.8.3, IX.4344; IV.10.4, IX.184 (where Sadr also discusses habituation
in terms of traces and blemishes on the mirror of the soul); IV.11.20, IX.404405, 407408; and
IV.11.26, IX.464.

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The self reconsidered

praised be He: therefore We have now removed your covering, so your sight
today is piercing.85

Immersed in perception and its various investments in the perceived world,

the human soul is incapable of directing its attention to the habituating and
accustoming consequences of its acts in and relations to the world. As a
consequence, it lacks a true grasp of this opaque aspect of itself and is
unaware of its habituations and character traits as such, apprehending
instead their traces in its present objects of experience.86 The meaning of
the opening of the souls book, when the veil is lifted . . . and the cover . . .
removed, is precisely that the human being is forced to face the character
traits by which she has been determined all along but which have thitherto
escaped her explicit awareness. The pleasure or pain she is due in the afterlife
consists precisely in her immediate awareness of herself down to the
murkiest recesses of her being.87
This distinction between the opacity and transparency of the human self
is particularly prominent in Asfr IV.11.20, the eschatological chapter dedicated to explaining the symbol of the opening of the souls book. It also
contains formulations that clearly indicate Sadrs sustained insistence on
the unity of the self and its characteristics. Having stated that all morally
relevant acts, even an atoms weight of good or evil that a person has
performed in this world are inscribed in her soul, Sadr states:
When the resurrection takes place and the time comes for his sight to fall
upon the face of his self (dhtihi), due to his emptiness of the preoccupations
of this mundane life and what the senses have brought him, and to turn to
the page of his interior and the tablet of his conscience (il .safh.ati bt.inihi wa
lawh.i damrihi), which is the meaning of His saying, praised be He: when the
spread out, then he who is heedless of the states of his soul and the
pages are
account of his vices and virtues will say at the unveiling of his cover, presence
of his self (h.udri dhtihi), and reading of the page of his book: what is in this

book leaves neither

the minute nor the great unaccounted, and they will nd
present what they have done, your Lord does no injustice to anyone, on the day on
which every soul nds present what good it has done and what vicious it has done,
wishing that there were a great distance between it and itself.88

In the very sentence that emphasizes the souls lack of awareness of its own
characteristics, Sadr states that they are recognized by turning the gaze of
awareness upon oneself. There are thus aspects of the self that can become
85
86
88

Asfr IV.8.3, IX.4849; Sadr quotes Q 50:22.

See also Asfr IV.10.2, IX.169170; and IV.10.3, IX.177182. 87 Asfr IV.11.33, IX.539.
Asfr IV.11.20, IX.408; Sadr quotes Q 81:10, 18:49 and 3:30, respectively.

Identity in substantial change

225

present to the self, but this is possible only because they were not such to
begin with. The wish in Q 3:30 at the end is thus counterfactual in a very
radical sense, for there can hardly be a distance, great or small, between the
self and its characteristics if they are one with each other.
That Sadr intends his eschatology to be coherent with his theory of
cognitive unity is corroborated by a later passage from the same chapter:
What gardens, trees, rivers and so forth there are in the other [world] are
spirits, which are nothing other than (hiya bi aynih) suspended forms that
subsist by themselves (bi dhtih) and whose life is identical with their
essence (nafsu dhtih), and every human soul, together with what houris,
castles, trees and rivers are attached to it, the whole of them exists through
one existence and lives through one life, the whole with its individual unity
being manifold in form.
When the human has departed from the world and has divested of the
garb of this nethermost, and this cover is removed from his sight, his
apprehensive faculty is a power, his knowledge hidden, and what is hidden
of him is manifest, so that he comes to see the consequences of his deeds and
thoughts, to behold the traces of his movements and acts, reading the scroll
of his deeds and the tablet of his book, his virtues and vices, as He said,
praised be He: and upon every human being we have forced his bird upon his
neck, and we shall bring forth for him on the day of resurrection a book he shall
nd wide open. Read your book, your soul suces you today as an accountant.89

A close reading of the passage will reveal virtually all the peculiarities of
Sadrs conception of human selfhood in operation. The unity of the
subject and object of knowledge provides the basis for identifying the soul
with its particular lot in the hereafter; the soul does not merely have what
houris, castles, trees and rivers are attached to it, rather the whole of the soul
and its characteristics exists through one existence as an individual unity . . .
manifold in form. On the other hand, the idea of substantial change in the
human self, the very core of the human being, though perhaps less emphasized, seems nevertheless to be required in order to account for the accumulation of the determinations that are the individuals afterlife. Sadrs
systematic interpretation of the Qurnic theme of a superior cognitive
perspective reached at the apex of ones development in death, when one
fully realizes not only what one was on the way to becoming but also what
the road to that apex was really all about, relies on the idea that later and
higher developmental stages contain the earlier and lower, an idea which is
explicable only in the framework of the theory of substantial change.
89

Asfr IV.11.20, IX.411; Sadr quotes Q 17:1314. Cf. IV.11.21, IX.413414; IV.11.26, IX.469; IV.11.27,
IX.480481.

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The self reconsidered

A later formulation makes this point even more explicit by undoing the
strict dierence between our present life and that post-mortem: Know . . .
that the garden, to which he who is of its people will arrive, is visible to you
today with respect to its substrate (min h.aythu mah.allih), not with respect
to its form, and you dwell in it in the state you are in, yet you do not know
that you are in it (wa anta tutaqallibu fh al al-h.li al-lat anta alayh wa
l taalimu annaka fh).90 In our present state we already are living the
afterlife in the sense that we bear in us the potency out of which the superior
cognitive perspective evolves, or to put it another way, it is our present self
that we come to regard in the afterlife. It will be dierent from the way it is
now in the sense that it will then be informed by the superior perspective
revealed in death, but it will also be the same in the sense that participation
in the same act of existence will enable the later self to recognize itself in and
identify with the earlier. The counterpart of this idea is, however, that there
is something in the very core of me that I presently lack awareness of despite
my constant awareness of myself.
Although he treads faithfully along the path opened by Avicennas and
Suhrawards arguments related to self-awareness, its primitiveness, and its
irreducibility to any other type of cognition, Sadr demotes the phenomenon from the pivotal role it once had, particularly in Suhraward who
placed the phenomenon at the foundation of his revisionist epistemology
and metaphysics. As a result, his discussion of self-awareness is somewhat
less systematic, and we have been forced to gather together the passages
under investigation from a number of dierent contexts of discussion. This
notwithstanding, I hope to have shown that Sadrs treatment of selfawareness is not only systematic but also highly original. This is due to
his sustained attempt to t the phenomenon into the general framework
established by the two theories that, in addition to the foundationality of
existence (as.la al-wujd), are his true labours of love.
The theory of cognitive unity, as we have seen, is problematic for the
narrow concept of selfhood as pure rst-personality or I-ness. If the subject
and the object of knowledge are inseparably one in an act of cognition, it
seems unwarranted to postulate that the I we can separate from the it in
analysis could exist as such, isolated and alone, in reality. As we have seen,
this is precisely the conclusion Sadr draws: selfhood as pure rstpersonality is a mere concept, whereas in reality the I is always determined
by its acts, perceptions, desires and so forth. This does not mean that the
90

Asfr IV.11.26, IX.468.

Identity in substantial change

227

concept is purely ctional, for it does refer to a structural feature in all our
acts and experiences: all that we do we do as rst-personal agents, and all
that we are aware of we are aware of in the rst person. What he does reject,
however, is the postulation of a real entity that corresponds exclusively to
our rst-personal reference.
On the other hand, Sadrs theory of substantial change further undermines the Avicennian identication between the self and the stable
substantial core of the human being. If everything in us is subject to
development, then there seems to be no reason to assume that I remain
the same throughout my existence. Earlier on, we saw Suhraward tentatively introduce the idea that self-awareness comes in degrees, but it is in the
framework of Sadrs theory of substantial change that the gradation of selfawareness blooms in full. As we develop in the manner proper to human
beings from perceiving entities to ones capable of imagination, and ultimately towards increasingly complete subjects of intellection, we thereby
acquire more perfect modes of being in the rst person. This, however,
requires Sadr to forge a new explanation for the phenomenologically
plausible view that we have a rst-personal identity that is capable of
some stability in the constant uctuation of its properties. And as we have
seen, Sadr no longer ascribes our identity to a stable substantial core to our
being but conceives of it as a feature that belongs and is due to our existence
as a continuous whole. A corollary of this novel concept of identity is that
we are no longer as transparent to ourselves as Avicenna and Suhraward
held; there are determining features in us that we are not fully aware of, and
instead of merely accidental appendices, these are constitutive to our very
selves. I do not want to claim that Sadr was intent on developing anything
like a theory of the unconscious, for it seems clear that the discussion of the
selfs opacity is indeed a corollary of other, more important concerns. Yet
the scattered but systematic remarks he makes seem almost epochal from
the point of view of our present focus.

conclusion

Who is the I?

Much of the preceding hinges on the reconstruction of shur bi al-dht as

pure rst-personality, or the sort of existence proper to an I abstracted
from all other considerations. Such a result may appear disappointingly
meagre and short of explanatory force, for surely the natural thing for any
philosophically oriented mind is to ask, rst, how rst-personality is
brought about, and second, what being an I consists in. I believe, however,
that when the plausibility of the reconstruction is tested in the wider
context of post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy, we nd that the continuous discussion not only corroborates the legitimacy of the reconstruction
but also alleviates the initial disappointment by providing some esh over
its bare bones. It is true that I-ness remains a primitive fact throughout our
period; it is not explained by recourse to any more foundational type of
existence, or anything more evident or better known, either in itself or to
us. All our experience is simply taken to be given to us in the rst person,
as is proper to a certain class of beings, namely immaterial intellects. From
the point of view of a contemporary physicalist, this may seem a strikingly
unreected, dogmatic and unphilosophical account. But if we adopt a
broader and more charitable stance, we can read Avicenna as indeed
presenting a kind of answer, for when he states that self-awareness is the
existence of an intellectual substance, he assigns the phenomenon its
proper place in the available categories of being. His answer is arguably
unnuanced, but in essence it is of the same form as that of the contemporary physicalist whose reductionism he would sternly reject; the minimal account just is the most thorough explanation of self-awareness
available in the framework of his metaphysics. This is highlighted by
Suhrawards antipodal strategy in which self-awareness is taken to be
foundational to all explanation, something that cannot be explained but
rather provides the Archimedean point for the knowledge and explanation
of all other things.
228

Conclusion: Who is the I?

229

But from the historians point of view, the second question concerning
the constitution of I-ness is perhaps the more interesting one, and correspondingly, the failure to perceive its relevance a clear sign of the philosophical barrenness of a context of discussion. Again, it is true that Avicenna
held the human substance at its barest, in the undeveloped state of mere rst
perfection, to be nothing but a rst-personal perspective to a variety of its
potential determinations, that is, to the various acts human beings are
capable of, or to the perceptions, volitions and cognitions they have the
means to acquire. Considered in isolation, this perspective is not constituted
by anything, and thus cannot be described or dened by means of anything
more elementary. This, however, does not mean that Avicenna considered
such pure rst-personality to be the whole story about our possibilities to
exist in the rst person. Although he did not present a sustained analysis, the
remarks he makes on self-reection and the individuation of human beings,
for instance, suggest that his account of the concrete rst-personality
instantiated in persons like you and me would have been considerably
more complex and inclusive of the various accidental determinations we
in fact have. The I-ness he focuses on is an abstraction, a minimal condition
we must full in order to exist in the rst place, and it is only this aspect of
us that he holds to be unanalysable. From this point of view, Sadrs
rejection of the selfs separability from its determinations, as well as his
alternative conception of rst-personality as a structural constituent of the
complex whole of experience with its variety of objective content and
epistemic or conative attitudes, is not so much a contrary theory of the
self as a refusal to admit the self-sucient existence of the transcendental
conditions of our empirical existence if a characterization in foreign terms
is pardoned. For Sadr, although we are always minimally aware of ourselves
in the sense of being in the rst person, there are no minimal selves. All that
has led me to the present state, as well as all that is to become of me, is
essential to me and should therefore be featured in a complete account,
indeed the only absolutely valid (even if humanly unattainable) account, of
my particular self.
Notwithstanding the variety of views with regard to the constitution of
the self, it remains the case that the self of all Islamic philosophers is
something each of us simply has to accept as given. In a sense, I am what
I am irrespective of my own choice and eort. Nothing like the malleable
self which is a product of social construction, various contingent economic,
historical and libidinal factors, or even the individuals reective eorts to
guide her own existence, and which becomes increasingly to the fore in early
modern European thought, seems to emerge in the Islamic context. As I

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Conclusion: Who is the I?

hope the foregoing clearly indicates, this is not simply because thinkers in
classical Arabic lacked the conceptual means to arrive at such a radically
open concept of the self. Sadrs new concept of individual identity is
considerably detached from the strong species-specic determination that
arguably still governs the intuitions of Avicenna and Suhraward, and
although it was based on the idea of a xed essence known to God, the
explication of which the existence of an individual human self is and which
governs the course of the selfs development in a strongly deterministic
fashion, there seems to be no conceptual necessity why further analysis
could not have separated the idea of a constructible self from that particular
doctrinal xture. Yet it remains a fact that this nal move was never made,
and a natural question to ask is why that is the case.
Questions of this sort bring us to the limits of the explanatory power of a
history of philosophy narrowly conceived. To even attempt an answer, one
should adopt Charles Taylors seminal method of procedure and take into
account as much as possible of the complex set of extraphilosophical
historical factors, stemming from and related to the spheres of religious
and ethical intuitions, natural science, economy, urban and rural planning,
politics, and so on and so forth. I will be the rst to confess that such an
investigation is beyond my capacity, knowledge and inclination. However, I
would also like to add that it may be hasty, and slightly too easy for comfort,
to jump to the conclusion that the discussion on self-awareness provides us
with another example of the stiing inuence of religion, and in particular
of the stagnation of Islamic intellectual life after the classical and golden era
of science and philosophy. Regardless of our ethical convictions, it is not
clear whether the liberal individualistic intuition of the construability of the
self stands on a solid theoretical ground. Perhaps the openness of the self to
our own eorts of construction is merely an illusion, albeit an arguably
benecial one, and perhaps we really are determined down to the core of our
being. Perhaps the self, which I have chosen to identify with and which
therefore provides me with a narrative bridge from my present person to
those in my past, is a mere conceptual ction that fails to reproduce the true
connections that are exclusively due to the continuous stream of existence,
not to any enduring characteristics, regardless of how central to my person I
take them to be. Perhaps the me that I now reectively grasp is connected to
the me ten years, ten days or even ten minutes ago in ways my grasp fails to
encompass; and perhaps, regardless of the decisions I now believe I am
making, that stream of existence will lead to a me ten minutes, days or years
later that is connected to the present in all sorts of ways that will remain
obscure to me until the Final Day, in any case. Perhaps you, aware of

Conclusion: Who is the I?

231

yourself reading this line, really are but a phase in a continuity the logic of
whose inevitable development is simply inaccessible to you.
From this point of view, Sadrs conception of the self and its true
identity suddenly appears decidedly less dated. On the contrary, the trajectory of the Islamic discussion on the self seems to have led us to a set of
questions that remain a matter of acute debate in the philosophy of mind
both westwards and eastwards from the Islamicate world. Prominent philosophers of mind with a strong physicalistic bent have recently found an
interesting piece of shared ground with Buddhist contesters of the selfs
reality, and the question of whether there is such a thing as the self is
arguably more in vogue than ever before, at least in the history of the
philosophical tradition that goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Interestingly, it
seems that in this debate between the challengers and the defenders of the
self,1 Sadr would represent a middle position that is opened by means of a
further question. Supposing that there is some reality to the self, do I have
any reason to believe that my concept of my self is capable of matching that
reality? Sadrs radical doubt of the endurance of any of the momentary
selves that we can delineate in reective investigation should not be
straightforwardly identied as a denial of the self, for he clearly recognizes
that there is a principle of unity operative in our conscious experience,
which we can legitimately characterize as a self. Our stream of consciousness
is not a haphazard series of abrupt cuts between unrelated moments, but a
continuity with an internal logic of development that corresponds to a unity
of origin and purpose. However, that unity is not due to any principle that
endures immune to change within the stream of conscious experience;
rather, the principle is embodied in the stream as a whole. As a consequence,
our self as this principle of unity is not available to our consideration from
any single moment of the stream. Trapped within the constant change of
the stream, we are limited to a participants point of view. Thus, for Sadr
the self is unreal if we mean by it some stable thing corresponding to the
concept that I form through a process of conceptual abstraction from the
continuous stream of self-aware experience, but this is of no consequence
for the self as the principle of unity embodied in the continuity as a whole.
Neither a no-self doctrine like that of the Buddhist philosophers and the
contemporary deniers of the self, nor its opposite according to which the self
is a transcendental principle that endures experiential change and can be
accurately grasped from within the empirical stream of consciousness that it
structures, we should perhaps characterize Sadrs view as revolving on the
1

Summarized with exemplary conciseness in Zahavi 2011.

232

Conclusion: Who is the I?

idea of a super-self underlying all the eorts, thoughts and characteristics

that I consider as my own. I am a product, or a creature, brought about in
the unfolding of that greater self, and although I have my momentary share
of its light, I should eventually realize my own limits and withdraw to the
shadows from obscuring the respective share of all the other Is that remain
to be generated.
Finally, perhaps this distinction between an unreal and an eminently real
self provides us with a vantage point from which to reassess the problematic
relation between the rational and philosophical on the one hand, and the
mystical and religious on the other, in Sadr and later Islamic philosophy at
large. Perhaps Sadrs emphatic exhortation to follow the shara strictly and
to engage in supererogatory acts of abstinence and devotion, an undeniable
feature of his writing that is sometimes supposed to represent a mystical or
irrational aspect of his thought and to somehow transcend his eorts in
theoretical reasoning, can be understood as referring to a means of identifying with the greater self. According to this view, these practices, which
continue to be venerated by a great many Muslims, are reappropriated as a
method of divesting oneself of erroneous limited conceptions and beliefs
regarding an enduring self, and of connecting instead more immediately to
the basis and origin of ones experience. If that is the case, it is important to
be clear about the question of in what sense exactly these aspects of Sadrs
writing suggest a step beyond philosophy and rational thought. This is not
because they represent a superior type of thinking or knowledge, for the
supreme theoretical account of the world of Gods creation remains to be
attained through a rigorous process of learning and thought governed
by the best principles of philosophy. Rather, they transcend philosophy
because they pertain to being a self, whereas philosophical theorizing
remains at the level of what it is to be one. This, however, should not
blind us to the fact that it is in works of philosophy that we nd the
questions, and answers, of what the individual self is and why she nds
herself in the situation that calls for the prescribed remedy.

appendix

Arabic terminology related to self-awareness

The present study as a whole should stand as an argument for the claim that
the Arabic philosophers had at their disposal sucient terminological
means for an analytic discussion of self-awareness. This appendix is therefore not intended as a further substantiation of this claim, but is rather
meant simply to gather together the central terms for quick reference.
Dht. The Arabic term our authors most often use to refer to the self is the
ambiguous dht (pl. dhawt) which, in addition to its colloquial reexive
meaning (for instance in phrases like al-rajul bi dhtihi, the man himself),
functions in philosophy as a technical term denoting essence.1 This it does,
moreover, in a most general sense, referring simply to the principle that
makes a thing the sort of thing it is, and not specifying whether we are
dealing with essence as an object of knowledge (mhya, or quiddity), as
existing in an active formal principle in matter (t.aba, nature, or .sra,
form), or from the point of view of its actualization in reality (h.aqqa,
reality, or annya, thatness).2 Thus, in this sense too, dht could legitimately, if somewhat imprecisely be rendered as (the thing) itself when
contrasted with the accidental attributes it can lose without turning into a
dierent kind of thing. However, in the present study I have adopted a
much more strict translation of dht as self in roughly the sense in which
the term is used in contemporary discussions of self-awareness or selfconsciousness. I defend this translation in some detail in Chapter 2, but
my nal argument for its legitimacy in most appearances of the term in the
texts discussed relies on the massed evidence of those very appearances it
simply makes eminently good sense to interpret these passages as dealing
with what we would now call a self. Be that as it may, I have made a point of
rigorously providing the Arabic equivalents of all relevant phrases for the
critical readers consideration.
1

Cf. Afnan 1964, 101; Rahman 1991.

Goichon 1938, 134137.

233

234

Appendix: Arabic terminology

Nafs. Another ambiguous term often used in the reexive sense of self is
nafs (pl. nufs, or anfus), for example in phrases like al-rajul bi nafsihi, the
man himself. This term is potentially even more problematic than dht
because it was adopted as the standard translation of the Greek word psych,
meaning soul, which is prone to generate confusion in psychological texts
dealing with self-awareness. As a frequently occurring Qurnic term, it was
also common in popular ethical and religious texts; for instance, there are a
number of dierent Su classications of the various types of nafs, a matter
which in no way alleviates the translators arbitration between soul and
self. In the present study, in order to try and beg as few questions as
possible, I have striven to translate nafs consistently as soul whenever the
context allows, and opt for some variation of self only in those cases in
which soul seems obviously ill-tting. Again, in the latter cases I always
provide the Arabic for the critical readers evaluation.
An. The rst person indexical pronoun an is of obvious relevance to
our topic. The pronoun itself presents no particular diculties for translation, but dicult questions of interpretation do arise concerning the level
of abstraction at which it is used. Most importantly, is the pronoun used, in
a quasi-technical manner, in a generalized description of self-awareness
(what am I? in the sense of what is the I?) or does it refer in a more casual
way to the subject of writing?3 Although Arabic does not standardly demand
the explicit utterance of indexical pronouns, as a result of which their mere
appearance often carries a certain air of emphasis, the exact sense in which
an is used in each of the passages under consideration will have to be
determined by a close analysis of the context. This, however, is not the case
about the abstract term anya (I-ness), which was introduced by
Suhraward and which, as far as I have been able to determine, the philosophers use exclusively in discussions on self-awareness.4
Ayn. A less frequently occurring term is ayn, which is usually embedded
in phrases like bi aynihi (by himself or he himself) or in idioms designed
to identify one thing with another such as huwa aynu al-nafs (he is
[identical with] the soul), or employed in distinctions between what exists
concretely in extramental reality (ayn or f al-ayn) and what exists in the
mind (dhihn or f al-dhihn).5 This term seems not to have been used
technically in the philosophical discussion of self-awareness, but it does
occur in looser turns of phrase, which merits its brief consideration here.
3
4

A case in point is the extended context of Avicenna, Shif: F al-nafs V.7, discussed in Chapter 4.1,
6671.
For Su uses of the term, however, see Afnan 1964, 9394. 5 Afnan 1964, 101102.

Appendix: Arabic terminology

235

Annya, huwya. Two other expressions, which are tangentially related to

self-awareness, are the technical terms annya (thatness) and huwya
(itness), both of which refer to the existence of an individual thing
considered as an individual, that is, to the fact that (an or anna) the thing
is there or to its being an individual object that can be ostensively referred to
as an it (huwa), in distinction from the question of what the thing is, an
answer to which would require subsuming it under some universal
concept.6 However, when the terms were forged in the rst wave of the
translations of Greek philosophical works, they were used rather loosely as
correlates of clearly distinct concepts in the original, and, as a consequence
of this, their precise sense in subsequent philosophical texts is a constant
problem of interpretation. For example, in Ust.ths translation of the
Metaphysics, in Ibn Nima al-H
imss (d. early ninth century CE) rendering
of the pseudo-Aristotelian Theology, and in the crypto-Proclean Kitb
al-dh. f al-khayr al-mah.d, both terms were relied on to translate to on

and to einai, as a result of which

they can be used in the sense of being (in
the senses of both verbal noun and agent). Sometimes annya is even used to
render to ti n einai, Aristotles term for essence, which in the Metaphysics is
used synonymously with ousia.7 Finally, the modern Arabic use of huwya in
the sense of identity already gures in al-H
imss Theology, where the term
occasionally translates the Greek tautots, but this seems to be a somewhat
anomalous case; for instance, Ust.ths Metaphysics never uses huwya for
tautots, opting instead for the closely related huwa huwa. This staggering
variety of meanings is to some extent held together by the fact that annya
and huwya focus on the individual existence of their reference. Thus, the
terms naturally gure in discussions on self-awareness the entire phenomenon does, after all, hinge on a cognitive relation of an individual thing to
itself but the Arabic philosophers conceptual grasp of the phenomenon is
not primarily dependent on these terms. In most cases we can simply
translate thatness or itness without needing to specify in which precise
meaning the terms are used.8
Shaara, shur. The cognitive aspect of self-awareness (the awareness)
is most often denoted by the verb shaara and the corresponding verbal
noun shur, which I have standardly translated as to be aware and
awareness, respectively. They gure especially frequently in combination
6
7
8

Goichon 1938, 1991; dAlverny 1959; Afnan 1964, 9497; and van den Bergh 1991. Cf. Aristotles
distinction between to hoti and to ti estin in An. post. II.1, 89b2325.
DAlverny 1959, 7274; Goichon 1991; van den Bergh 1991.
Exceptions to this rule are Avicennas controversial use of annya in the ying man (see Chapter 2.2, 3841),
and Suhrawards use of huwa and huwya as contraries of an and anya (see Chapter 5.1, 111113).

236

Appendix: Arabic terminology

with dht; indeed, although not explicitly dened as such, shur bi al-dht
emerges from the texts as a quasi-technical term that very naturally translates as a compound such as self-awareness. The choice of this particular
term seems to be motivated by its apparent connotation of the phenomenal,
experienced or felt aspects of dierent types of cognition.9
Adraka, idrk. Another cognitive term often used in discussions of selfawareness is the fourth form verb adraka and its cognate noun idrk. This
pair of terms commonly functions as a generic expression for all types of
cognition, and I have attempted to capture this sense of generality and
vagueness by translating them consistently as to apprehend and
apprehension.
Other cognitive terms. Many of the most common cognitive terms gure
occasionally in the philosophical discussion of self-awareness. In order of
increasing specicity, the three most important of these are the verbs arafa,
alima and aqala, and their cognate verbal forms and nouns.
The somewhat ambiguous verb arafa and the corresponding noun
maarifa are sometimes taken to have mystical connotations,10 but in the
classical philosophical literature the most prominent use seems to be rather
more ephemeral, simply denoting knowledge, usually in the sense of the
preliminary starting point provided by the senses for more developed types
of knowledge,11 but occasionally also in the sense of recognizing something
one knew from prior acquaintance.12
The verb alima and the cognate noun ilm, translated here as to know
and knowledge, respectively, may also be used in an ambiguous and loose
manner, but more commonly they have the technical meaning of scientic
knowledge, as is proper for the standard Arabic translation of Aristotles
epistm. A closely related psychological verb is aqala (to understand,
sometimes also in the fth form taaqqala) and the corresponding noun
aql (intellect). Since the human subject, around which most of
the discussion on self-awareness revolves, is an intellectual entity, it is
unsurprising to come across these terms in our texts. Worth mentioning,
however, is the fact that they are rarely used of self-awareness, and thus

9
10
11
12

Cf., for instance, Avicennas discussion of pleasure in Ishrt, namat. 8, 192. For other examples, see
Goichon 1938, 161.
This is particularly manifest in the use of the cognate noun irfn for a mystical type of philosophy,
particularly in Iran; see Mutahhari 2002, 89141.
So, for instance, in Avicenna, Shif: al-Burhn I.3, 12; and I.6, 2627. For a brief discussion of this use
of marifa, see Adamson 2005, 266268.
Cf., for instance, Avicenna, Talqt 147, 161.

Appendix: Arabic terminology

237

when they do gure in the relevant contexts they merit special attention.13
But although both alima and aqala suggest a considerably developed type
of knowledge, and therefore something above mere awareness, they are
occasionally used in a loose manner that renders them virtually synonymous
with shaara or adraka.14
Finally, many other cognitive terms, such as ra (to see) or fahima (to
grasp or to conceive) and its passive participle mafhm (concept), feature
infrequently in the discussions on self-awareness, but in light of the present
study it seems warranted to assess that the terminological variation does not
signal any systematic classication of dierent types of self-cognition. The
most consistent distinction along such lines is that between reective selfawareness and the more primitive type of self-awareness it presupposes, but
that distinction is usually made by means of the expressions shur bi al-dht
(self-awareness) and shur bi al-shur (awareness of awareness), and even
then there is signicant terminological vacillation.
H
ara, h.udr, z ahara, z uhr. Finally, the ishrq tradition instigated
ad

is witness to the emergence of an entirely novel pair of

by Suhraward
concepts, that is, the verb h.adara (to be present) and the cognate noun
z ahara (to appear) and its cognate noun
h.udr (presence), and the verb

z uhr (appearance), in the introduction of which the phenomenon of selfawareness plays a major role. Since the investigation of these novel concepts
and their relation to the phenomenon of self-awareness is one of the central
tasks of Chapter 6, I refrain from characterizing the concepts here.
13
14

Such is the case, for instance, in our discussion of the epistemic category proper to Avicennian selfawareness in Chapter 4.3, 97103.
Cf., for instance, Sadr, Asfr I.10.2.4, III.505, where a familiar Avicennian argument about selfawareness is rendered in terms of knowledge (ilm) of the self.

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Index

mil, Bah al-Dn, 161

Ab Bishr Matt, 15
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 16, 20
argument against reection models of
self-awareness, 4
Avicenna, 5455, 63, 64, 69, 7275, 87, 88, 91,
93, 99
Mull Sadr, 170176
Suhraward, 108109, 113, 120, 128
argument against the souls substantiality,
116, 120
argument from personal identity
Avicenna, 7579, 94, 103
Suhraward, 110111
argument from the unity of experience, 4
Avicenna, 6471, 75, 78
Mull Sadr, 176181, 198, 208, 216217
Aristotle, 1216, 21, 2325, 30, 73, 89, 97, 162, 182,
192, 198, 231, 235236
perception of perception, 1214, 43
soul, 23
Augustine, 6, 31, 58
Averroes, 6, 8, 1516, 20, 22, 25
Avicenna
abstraction, 27, 29
awareness of awareness, 22, 63, 74, 82, 8991,
95, 97, 102
dualism, 10, 2324, 32, 34, 3639, 42, 44, 51, 59,
61, 64, 82, 114, 115, 126
and self-awareness, 51, 5456, 58, 62, 69, 71,
82, 88, 93, 95, 101102
and individuation, 10, 25, 4451, 4748,
5456, 58, 93, 99100, 186
Ishrt, 38, 42, 4244, 54, 5859,
62, 63, 72, 80, 81, 82, 89, 91, 97, 101,
106108, 114, 117, 120, 126, 131, 135, 158,
167168, 168169, 171, 203, 206, 214, 236
Mubh.atht, 35, 59, 6062, 61, 64, 69, 72,
7576, 7879, 8182, 8487, 8687, 89,
95, 9798, 100101, 102, 103, 110, 173, 208,
211, 214

254

Najt, 2425, 2729, 6466, 6566, 88, 186

pointer and reminder, 4, 3336, 42, 53, 6263,
79, 8586, 91, 114, 165
Risla al-adh.awya f al-mad, 79, 112
self, 35, 38, 41, 46, 5254, 62, 6872, 7880, 93,
95, 99, 103, 114
and presence, 88
self-awareness, 24, 4142, 47, 5155, 5764,
7175, 7880, 8287, 89, 93, 95, 97,
98101, 102, 104, 106, 228
and individuation, 229
and intellectuality, 5861, 100, 228
and presence, 88
as existence, 10, 5156
as rst-personality, 10, 6971, 7475, 8088
concept of, 31, 38, 6164, 68, 71, 75, 78,
8082, 8588, 91, 92, 97, 99103, 113,
202, 208
in animals, 100
phenomenon of, 30, 36, 3941, 6263,
6566, 6971, 77, 80, 85, 8788, 165
primitive, 55, 6061, 6364, 7071, 7374,
8384, 8791, 92, 9397, 99100, 102103,
158, 188
Shif, 23, 5152, 54, 56, 58, 97
al-ibra, 92
al-Burhn, 144, 236
al-Ilhyt, 32, 34, 4344, 4950, 57, 59, 86,
91, 96, 9697, 114, 114, 123, 143, 157
al-Madkhal, 4850, 55, 9193, 100, 126,
186187
al-Sam al-t.ab, 47, 183
F al-nafs, 14, 2329, 31, 3136, 33, 35, 38,
3940, 4041, 4347, 4446, 4951, 54, 56,
59, 60, 6470, 76, 79, 83, 8586, 88, 90,
96, 97, 99100, 110, 110112, 112, 116, 117,
125, 131, 146, 155, 165, 168, 179, 185, 188, 193,
198, 216, 234
soul, 2325, 3133, 3537, 39, 4243, 4546, 48,
51, 59, 61, 6466, 7071, 7779, 89, 92,
96, 98, 114

Index
and body, 25, 32, 34, 36, 4448, 5051, 61, 66,
69, 114
and form, 32, 44
and self-awareness, 5253
animal, 23, 32
human, 2325, 29, 32, 3334, 34, 36, 40, 45,
47, 62, 64, 186, 211, 212
incorporeality of, 44
unity of, 44
vegetative, 23, 32
Talqt, 41, 5154, 5658, 62, 64, 71, 72, 8889,
91, 95, 9597, 101102, 109, 116, 125, 136,
140, 157, 236
Baghdd, Ab al-Barakt, 10, 104, 114117, 120,
122, 144, 168, 176, 179180, 188, 193, 206
Bahmanyr Ibn Marzubn, 7578, 9899, 101,
110
bundle theory, 46, 49, 92, 99, 126
dht, 18, 22, 3536, 3841, 4546, 49, 5253, 56, 58,
68, 75, 78, 80, 82, 98, 100, 102103, 106,
108110, 112, 115, 119, 121, 127, 130, 134,
136138, 140, 149, 155, 157, 167, 169,
170171, 174, 176, 178, 182, 184, 186, 190,
196, 198199, 201, 203204, 206, 212,
213, 215216, 221, 224225, 228,
233, 236
emanation, 24, 2526, 90, 152, 156, 158159,
194195, 212
epistemology, 910, 36, 56, 124125, 129, 192, 226
cognitive unity, 17, 5960, 111, 125, 134, 192193
impression theory, 128, 130, 175, 193
Frb, Ab Nas.r, 8, 19, 162
rst-personality, 20, 71, 73, 75, 7780, 8586,
101102, 106107, 109, 112, 121, 156, 175,
181, 202, 218219, 226, 228229
ying man, 4, 168, 186, 188, 213
Avicenna, 6, 9, 30, 34, 3642, 47, 53, 54, 6263,
6364, 67, 68, 7178, 8082, 8588, 101,
110, 117, 165167, 190, 207, 235
Ibn Kammna, 117, 166
Mull Sadr, 117, 164167, 171, 197, 200,
206207, 218
Suhraward, 87, 106108, 111
Ghazl, Ab H
mid, 7, 104, 154, 205
Gods knowledge
Avicenna, 5660
Mull Sadr, 174, 196, 215
Suhraward, 125127, 132136, 139141, 156,
158159

255

H
ims, Ibn Nima, 235
Ibn Arab, 161, 210
Ibn Kammna, 37, 107, 117, 166
illuminationism, 4, 10, 104105, 110, 118, 124, 146,
148, 154, 161162
internal senses, 25, 65, 81
Avicenna, 2528, 8384
common sense/fantasy, 26, 28, 61, 206
estimation, 2629, 36, 47, 61, 83, 137138, 205
imagery/formative faculty, 2629, 137
imaginative faculty, 2627, 36
memory/retentive faculty, 2627, 36, 80,
8284
Mull Sadr, 176, 198, 205
Suhraward, 129, 137138
thought, 26, 129
Ish.q Ibn H
unayn, 1314, 15, 21, 73
Kirmn, Ab al-Qsim, 35, 62, 8182, 84,
85, 87
Kitb al-dh. f al-khayr al-mah.d (Liber de causis),
17, 235

16,
Kulayn, Ab Jafar ibn Muh.ammad ibn
Yaqb, 163
metaphysics, 34, 810, 17, 77, 114, 118, 121,
123124, 142143, 147151, 154, 159, 162,
163, 189, 210, 226, 228
Mr Dmd, 162
Mull Sadr, 35, 79, 11, 1516, 56, 148
al-H
ikma al-arshya, 163
al-H
ikma al-mutaliya f al-asfr al-arbaa, 117,
161, 163165, 167178, 182, 185, 187,
189190, 193194, 196199, 201,
203204, 206, 211213, 215217, 221222,
223225, 237
al-Mabda wa al-mad, 163
al-Shawhid al-rubbya f al-manhij
al-sulkya, 163
al-Talqt al Sharh. H
ikma al-ishrq, 148
cognitive unity, 16, 169, 174, 188, 193196, 198,
201, 226
dualism, 178
individuation, 185
existence, 168, 175
gradation of, 181
modes of, 169, 180, 182, 184185, 187, 191, 201,
203204, 210, 215, 217
primacy of, 162163, 226
God, 163
Kitb al-mashir, 163
life, 161162
Mafth. al-ghayb, 162

256

Index

Mull Sadr (cont.)

mental existence, 94, 101, 166167, 169,
177178, 180, 182, 184185, 187, 188, 194,
195, 201202, 205206
and self-awareness, 5, 56
self, 160, 167, 169170, 174, 178, 181182, 190,
197, 201, 203206, 215, 221, 224
and agency, 180
and cognitive unity, 11
and identity, 216217
and mental existence, 181
and opacity, 219
and presence, 224
and substantial change, 212213, 216217,
219, 221, 225227
and substantiality, 173, 176, 182, 188190,
202, 227
concept of, 213, 219, 222, 229231
gradation of, 181
opacity of, 211, 222224, 226227
self-awareness, 166167, 169, 171174, 181, 197,
204, 213, 226
and agency, 199200
and cognitive unity, 188, 196, 198199, 202,
205, 207208
and existence, 182
and rst-personality, 175, 187
and identity, 214, 216
and individuation, 187188
and mental existence, 167, 182, 184185,
187189, 191, 202, 205, 208
and presence, 173, 184
and substantial change, 187, 209, 211,
213215, 218, 221222, 230
and substantiality, 182, 189190
as existence, 182, 191
concept of, 166167, 176, 181182, 197, 205,
207208
gradation of, 227
in animals, 166, 172
phenomenon of, 181
primitive, 174, 177, 189190, 198, 214,
216, 218
reective, 173
soul, 164, 168171, 174, 177, 195198, 200201,
206, 217, 221, 223
and agency, 200
and body, 166, 178179, 182, 184, 205, 213
and cognitive unity, 225
and form, 184
and substantial change, 212, 217218
and substantiality, 168, 177, 179
and unity, 179
animal, 164165, 171172, 207
human, 170, 205

substantial change, 182183, 187, 193, 208, 211,

213, 219, 227
and identity, 209211, 217
works, 162163
nafs, 22, 31, 35, 52, 66, 68, 71, 75, 80, 108, 114116,
122, 127, 130, 136137, 149, 155, 157,
170172, 177178, 199, 201202, 225, 234
Neoplatonism, 1718, 30, 56, 154, 192, 195, 210
Peripatetic, 810, 30, 101, 104106, 108, 111,
114115, 118, 120, 124125, 132, 141142,
144, 147, 150, 151, 157158, 163, 177, 185,
209, 217
Plato, 231
Plotinus, 6, 1819, 31, 97, 158
Porphyry, 59, 193
presence (h.udr), 131132, 185, 237

primacy of existence,
147
primacy of quiddity, 147, 162
Proclus, 16, 17
psychology, 2, 4, 9, 1213, 2325, 30, 3637, 38, 42,
44, 56, 59, 6466, 71, 79, 9899, 106, 111,
115, 125, 129, 131, 133, 158, 172, 176, 179, 184
Rz, Fakhr al-Dn, 4, 7, 10, 56, 88, 104, 116118,
120, 131132, 168, 169, 176, 179, 185189,
194, 214, 220
Lubb al-Ishrt, 131
Mabh.ith, 56, 116117, 131, 168, 180, 185,
185186, 189, 220
Sharh. al-Ishrt, 21, 44, 81, 100, 117,
135, 214
self-intellection, 1517, 19, 21, 5758, 61, 70,
91, 135
Shrz, Qutb al-Dn, 148
Suhraward, Shihb al-Dn, 45, 710, 58,
104105, 161, 163, 179, 194
appearance (z uhr), 8, 10, 122, 124, 137, 140,
142, 147153, 157
denition
critique of, 144145, 153
dualism,
and individuation, 126
existence, 118, 121123, 134135, 142143,
147148, 156157
H
ikma al-ishrq, 8, 105, 108110, 112113, 118,
121122, 124, 136137, 142, 144, 146147,
149151, 154155, 157
individuation, 126, 148, 155156
I-ness, 9, 113, 121, 122, 136, 155, 160, 175, 202
knowledge, 106107, 123125, 127130, 133134,
136, 138142, 157, 196
life, 104

257

Index
light (nr), 8, 10, 108, 142, 146151, 154159
Mashri wa al-mut.rah.t, 58, 105, 111, 124, 130,
134136, 141145, 196
pointer and reminder, 109
presence (h.udr), 10, 88, 101, 107, 123125, 127,
130134, 136, 138142, 157, 196
quiddity, 121, 135, 144, 146, 153
self, 106, 107, 110113, 119121, 127130, 133,
136137, 140, 149, 152, 157, 159
and presence, 109, 119, 130, 133, 141142
and substantiality, 119123, 129, 149150,
188, 191
self-awareness, 106, 109, 138, 149150, 154, 159
and appearance, 149, 154, 157
and incorporeality, 123
and light, 149, 151, 154, 156
and presence, 122
and substantiality, 182, 190, 228
as a challenge to Avicennas theory of
knowledge, 136, 138
as a foundational concept, 154
concept of, 109, 112, 120123, 136

phenomenon of, 106, 119120, 153

primitive, 121, 123
soul, 106, 110, 119, 128130, 134, 136140
and body, 127, 130, 137138
and presence, 138140
human, 141
rational, 112
substance, 111, 118119, 120, 122, 135, 142
critique of, 142144, 148, 152
Talwh.t, 58, 105110, 112, 118119, 121, 122,
124125, 127128, 130, 132, 134, 136138,
142, 144145, 175, 191, 206
vision of Aristotle, 125, 127130, 132,
136137
thatness (annya), 16, 3940, 41, 68, 7677,
80, 106, 109110, 115, 118, 233, 235
Themistius, 19, 20
T.s, Nas.r al-Dn, 44, 168169, 214
Sharh al-Ishrt, 169, 214
Ust.th, 15, 235