Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing: On the Function of the Fundamental Scientific First Principles of Metaphysics

This thesis is concerned with answering the question, what is the central argument of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing that brings its opening ontological approach to the subject of first philosophy to its ultimate theological goal and conclusion? This dissertation contends that it is the function of the fundamental scientific first principles of metaphysics, and in particular the fundamental primary notion necessary (wājib), to provide the intelligible link that Avicenna employs to demonstrate the existence and true-nature of the divine necessary existence in itself on the basis of his doctrine of being. This conclusion is pursued through a systematic and cumulative line of inquiry that begins in Part I with Avicenna’s logical–cum–epistemological doctrine of conceptualization and assent, the heuristic order of the basic scientific questions, and his theory of a demonstrative science.The thesis then moves from the wider concentric circles concerned with logical matters into a series of narrowing concentric circles pertainingto the scientific order of the MH. Part II presents a close analysis ofthe Metaphysics of the Healing’s novel reception and reorganization of Aristotelian metaphysics according to Avicenna’s theory of demonstrative science, which consists in a subject, scientific first principles, and objects of inquiry that includes the species, proper accidents, and the science’s ultimate goal which is the aitiological–cum–theological inquiry into the causes of being. Part III transitions into a stillnarrower set of concentric circles that provide a detailed explication of the formal and material aspects of the scientific first principles ofthe Metaphysics of the Healing. Finally, the main argument of the thesis reaches the central point and question of the dissertation in Part IV, which establishes the fundamentality of the primary notion the necessary in the ontology, aitiology, and theology of the Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing. Part IV concludes thatthe principal function of the fundamental primary notion the necessary is to provide the intelligible link that connects Avicenna’s doctrine of being with the divine necessary existence in itself.status: publishe