Avicenna's Notion of Fiṭrīyāt : A Comment on Dimitri

Gutas' Interpretation

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour

Philosophy East and West, Volume 70, Number 3, July 2020, pp. 819-833 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2020.0038

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/759290

[ Access provided at 17 Sep 2020 05:24 GMT from University of Liverpool ]

COMMENT AND DISCUSSION

Avicenna’s Notion of Fit.rīyāt: A Comment on Dimitri Gutas’

Interpretation

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
saleh.zarepour@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

I. Introduction

In an illuminating article, Dimitri Gutas has tried to show that Avicenna’s

theory of knowledge should be understood within a full-blown empiricist
framework very similar to that of John Locke.1 Gutas’ argument is based on an
analysis of Avicennian ‘principles of syllogism’2 (mabādī al-qiyās). The
principles of syllogism are those judgments and propositions that form the
irreducible and axiomatic foundations of syllogisms and definitions.3 Avicenna
categorizes these principles based on how we accept and acknowledge the
truth (tas. dīq) of them. This categorization appears, with some slight modifica-
tions, in many places in Avicenna’s oeuvre, for example in the Kitāb al-Burhān
of al-Šifā’,4 and the logic parts of al-Naǧāt5 and al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt.6
According to al-Naǧāt, the principles of syllogism are divided into sixteen
types based on the cognitive mechanisms through which we grasp them.7
Gutas’ argument for his main claim has two steps: (a) he considers these
different types of principles, one by one, quoting the most important texts in
which Avicenna discusses each of these principles; and (b) he shows, based
on his analysis of the selected quotations, that the acknowledgment of the
truth of these principles is finally grounded on what we grasp from our
sensory experiences (mušāhadāt). More precisely, Gutas wants to show,
based on the textual evidence, that we cannot acknowledge the truth of the
principles of syllogism merely by the operation of our theoretical intellect
and without appealing to what we obtain non–a priori, in the Kantian
sense.8 The conclusion is that, according to Avicenna, all sorts of human
propositional knowledge have an empiricist bedrock.
No one can deny that Gutas’ article, like all his other works, includes
many valuable and insightful ideas. Despite this fact, I am not completely
convinced by his analysis about at least some of the aforementioned
principles. Specifically, what he says about the nature of the data with built-
in syllogisms (qad. āyā qiyāsātuhā ma‘ahā or muqaddamāt fit.rīyāt al-qiyās—
henceforth fit.rīyāt) seems implausible to me. Gutas believes that Avicennian

Philosophy East & West Volume 70, Number 3 July 2020 819–833 819
© 2020 by University of Hawai‘i Press
 fit.rīyāt are non–a priori and analytic propositions. However, in the present
article I argue that a deeper look at Avicenna’s writings on fit.rīyāt reveals a
plausible view that is very different from Gutas’ position. I try to show that,
contrary to what he proposes, Avicennian fit.rīyāt are synthetic a priori.
My article is organized as follows. The next section below presents the
details of Gutas’ views about fit.rīyāt. I show that there is an equivocation in
the term ‘fit.rīyāt’ and that it can be understood in at least three different
ways (when it is employed as a property for judgments). In section III, I
show that at least some fit.rīyāt are a priori judgments. In section IV, I show,
based on Kant’s principal criterion for analyticity, that fit.rīyāt are, contrary to
what Gutas explicitly claims, synthetic. Section V concludes.

II. Gutas’ Interpretation of Avicennian Fit.rīyāt

Gutas argues that primary data and fit.rīyāt are two groups of principles of
syllogism “whose necessity is internal to the soul and is imposed by the
intellect.”9 The difference between them is that the truth of the former group
is directly imposed by the intellect, while the truth of the latter group is only
indirectly imposed by the intellect, that is, “through an operation natural” to
it.10 This natural operation is the fit.ra of the intellect. In fact, each of our
cognitive faculties, Gutas argues, has a natural mode of operation that is its
fit.ra. Criticizing the common understanding of fit.ra according to which fit.ra
is the main source of innate knowledge, Gutas tries to show that Avicennian
fit.ra is not an independent cognitive faculty;11 it is merely the natural mode
of the operation of our cognitive faculties.12
Moreover, Gutas emphasizes that Avicenna “denies innate ideas. His
theory of the rational soul, well studied by now, is unambiguous. Upon birth,
the newly created intellect that is associated with the body is absolutely
potential, a tabula rasa.”13 In Avicennian epistemology, Gutas believes, “[t]he
human rational soul, upon its first creation and association with the body of
the newly born infant is absolutely potential, a tabula rasa . . . . As the child
grows up and until it reaches maturity . . . , Experience (mušāhada) provides
him with information about the world and himself.”14 He finally concludes
that “[t]he function of the intellect is procedural; in itself it has no innate
or a priori contents.”15 Gutas argues that in Avicenna’s theory of knowl-
edge there is no room for either innate propositional knowledge (al-ilm al-
tas. dīqī) or innate concepts (al-ilm al-tas. awwurī). It is worth mentioning that
some pieces of our propositional knowledge, for example self-awareness,
and some of our concepts, for example the concept of existence, have
been argued by some scholars of Avicenna’s philosophy to be examples of
innate knowledge.16 Yet Gutas believes that they are not really pre-given,
inborn, or innate: all of them are grounded finally on what we obtain from
our experiences of the external world (by sense perception) and/or our own
internal world (by reflection).

820 Philosophy East & West

 Gutas quotes the following passage from al-Naǧāt as evidence in support
of the aforementioned views about fit.rīyāt:
[The floating man can submit something to his mind and raise] a doubt about it.
If he is able to doubt it, then his fit.ra does not attest to it; but if he is not able
to doubt it, then it is something which his fit.ra imposes. But not everything
which the human fit.ra imposes is true, but many of them are false. True is only
the fit.ra of the faculty called intellect . . . . [Sometimes the fit.ra of estimation
makes wrong judgments].17
Only judgments and propositions (not concepts) can be considered as fit.rī in
the sense expressed in this passage. This is because concepts have no truth-
value and cannot be true or false. The second point that can be understood
from this passage is that all fit.rī judgments have some kind of psychological
(or phenomenal) necessity; that is, they cannot be denied by anybody who
considers them. If we accept that logical necessities are the only proposi-
tions that can neither be false nor be conceived to be false, then it follows
from the passage above that the judgments imposed by the fit.ra of the
intellect are logically necessary.18 By contrast, the judgments imposed by
the fit.ra of the other cognitive faculties (e.g., judgments imposed by the fit.ra
of the estimative faculty), though seemingly true, may be false.
This shows that there is an equivocation in the term ‘fit.rīyāt’. It seems
that it can be understood in at least three different ways (when it is
employed to describe a property of some judgments). According to its most
general meaning, every judgment imposed by the fit.ra of one of our
cognitive faculties is one of fit.rīyāt. According to the second meaning, which
is less general, only those judgments imposed by the fit.ra of the intellect can
be considered as fit.rīyāt. In this case, not only data with built-in syllogisms
but also primary data (see endnote 7) should be considered as fit.rīyāt. This
is because both of them are imposed by the fit.ra of the intellect.19 But what
I refer to by the term ‘fit.rīyāt’ in this article is restricted only to the data with
built-in syllogisms. This is the third and the narrowest meaning of the term
‘fit.rīyāt’ that we may have in interpreting Avicenna. As we will see,
confusing these different understandings of fit.rīyāt may lead us to an
inaccurate analysis of the epistemic and semantic status of fit.rīyāt.
What, then, is the difference between primary data and fit.rīyāt (in the
sense that we use this term) for Avicenna? Gutas argues that the difference is
only that every primary datum can be verified just by understanding its
terms (i.e., its subject/predicate or minor/major terms) without any need to
construct a syllogism. But each fit.rīyāt can be verified only after constructing
a syllogism whose middle term will automatically appear in the mind,
immediately after understanding the terms of that proposition.20 Gutas does
not believe that this difference plays any important epistemic or semantic
role. He thinks that primary data and fit.rīyāt have a completely similar
epistemic and semantic status: both of them are non–a priori and “analytic,

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour 821

 in Kantian terms.”21 In the next two sections I will argue that this
understanding of Avicenna is not tenable. More explicitly, I think both of
these groups of principles of syllogism are a priori. However, unlike primary
data (which are analytic), fit.rīyāt are synthetic.22

III. Avicennian Fit.rīyāt Are A Priori

I think that Gutas’ understanding of the notion of a priority does not

correspond to the standard interpretation of this notion (at least in its Kantian
sense). More precisely, it seems to me that two things are problematic with
his understanding of this notion. Let me explain.
First, he thinks that the notion of a priority is identical to the notions of
innateness and pre-givenness. Therefore, he thinks that the sufficient
condition for the non–a priority of a concept or a judgment is for it to be
not innate or given inborn. ‘A priori’ for Gutas means “what we have in our
soul prior to our birth.” For example, he says: “In all [of its] operations the
function of the intellect is procedural; in itself it has no innate or a priori
contents.”23 Moreover, in order to argue for the non–a priority of principles
of syllogism, Gutas refers (as his evidence) to the texts in which Avicenna
says that these principles “come about” in the human intellect as a man
grows up.24 But as we will see, this picture of the connection between these
notions (i.e., innateness and a priority) is oversimplified.
Second, Gutas reduces the a priority of a judgment or proposition to the
a priority of the concepts from which that proposition is constituted. In other
words, he considers every proposition constituted from non–a priori
concepts to be a non–a priori proposition. For example, in order to show
that the proposition ‘the whole is greater than the part’ (as a primary datum)
is non–a priori, he argues just that the concepts ‘the whole’, ‘greater’, and
‘part’ come, through abstraction, from sensation.25 Again, the relation
between the a priority of a proposition and the a priority of its conceptual
components seems to be more complicated than what we see in Gutas’
picture. In the remaining of this section, I will clarify Kant’s view on the
notion of a priority. Based on that, I will show that both primary data and
fit.rīyāt can be considered as Kantian a priori judgments.
Kant uses the notion of a priority as a property for at least three different
things: concepts, judgments, and justifications/warrants for judgments.26 A
priority is the property of being independent of all experiences and even of
all impressions of the senses. An a priori concept is formed independently of
all our experiences and impressions from the external world. A concept is a
priori if it is in principle possible to have and entertain this concept without
having any experience of the external world. According to this under-
standing of the a priority of concepts, a concept may be a priori but not
innate. However, all innate concepts are a priori. Kant without reservation
believes in innate concepts—for example time, space, and the categories.27

822 Philosophy East & West

But he also believes in some other a priori concepts that are not innate. For
example, the concepts of numbers are formed “through successive addition
of units in time.”28 The concept of ‘two’ therefore arises from the a priori
intuition of two successive units in time. It is not pre-given and inborn; it
comes about in our intellect as we grow up. Nonetheless, Kant considers
this concept to be a priori, since what we grasp from our experiences of the
external world has no significant role in its formation. This analysis clearly
shows that in order to prove the non–a priority of a concept it is not
sufficient to argue that it is not innate and that it comes about in our mind
as we grow up. A concept is non–a priori only if it is formed by what we
obtain from our experiences of the external world. Consequently, even if,
according to Avicenna, we accept that there is no innate concept, this does
not necessarily mean that all concepts are non–a priori for him.29 Now,
does Avicenna believe that all concepts are non–a priori in the aforemen-
tioned Kantian sense? And even if he does, does Gutas provide sufficient
reasons to show this?
Gutas does not provide any general argument to show that all concepts
are a priori according to Avicenna. As I mentioned above, Gutas has argued
that concepts such as ‘the whole’, ‘greater’, and ‘part’ come, through
abstraction, from our experiences of the external world. So if his argument is
sound, it entails that these concepts are non–a priori. But he has not shown
that concepts like ‘four’ and ‘even’ are formed through the mediation of our
sense-perceptual experiences; he has only said that they ‘come about’ in our
mind as we grow up. This is definitely insufficient to show that these
concepts are non–a priori in its Kantian sense.30 Coming-about-in-mind is
not the same notion as non–a priority. Moreover, I think that if we accept
the condition of being independent of sense-perceptual experience as the
criterion of a priority (instead of the innateness or not-coming-about
criterion), then we should conclude that Marmura is right about the a
priority of some primary universal concepts like ‘necessity’, ‘thingness’, and
‘existence’ in the framework of Avicennian philosophy.31
The problem goes deeper. Even if we accept that all concepts, including
all conceptual components of primary data and fit.rīyāt, are non–a priori, we
cannot still conclude that these principles are non–a priori judgments. To
clarify Kant’s position on the a priority of judgments, we should first discuss
the a priority of justifications. A justification for the truth of a judgment is a
priori only if it is not based on empirical evidence that cannot be grasped
without having some experience of the external world. Such a justification
cannot be defeated by empirical information. Consider that a person S has a
justification J for the truth of a judgment P. J is a priori only if its validity
and plausibility are independent of the condition of the possible worlds that
S inhabits.32 The a priority of J is completely independent of the a priority of
the conceptual components of P. It is possible for P to be justified by an a
priori justification even though it contains some non–a priori concepts.

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour 823

 Consider the proposition ‘bachelors are unmarried’. This is constituted from
the concepts ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried’, which are non–a priori concepts
since both are formed based on our experiences. But its justification is a
priori, since after grasping and understanding its conceptual components,
one would not need empirical information to acknowledge the truth of
this proposition. That the typical example of propositions with a priori
judgments—that is, ‘bachelors are unmarried’—is constituted from non–a
priori concepts shows how crucial it is not to confuse the a priority of
concepts with that of justifications.
Here, again, the innateness of a judgment cannot be concluded from the
a priority of its justification. Kant believes that all plausible justifications of
all mathematical judgments are (and must be) a priori; but he surely does
not believe that mathematical judgments are innate. As a result, that a
judgment is not innate does not entail that it has a non–a priori justification.
It indicates that the a priority of the justifications of primary data and fit.rīyāt
cannot be rejected by the mere fact that these propositions are not innate
and pre-given. Quite the contrary, it seems that if we endorse the
aforementioned criterion for the a priority of justifications, then we should
say that both Avicennian primary data and fit.rīyāt have a priori justifications.
In order to acknowledge the truth of these principles no empirical
information is required. After grasping the conceptual components of these
judgments, we can acknowledge their truth without the aid of sense-
perceptual experiences. In his discussion of the fit.rī proposition ‘four is even’
Avicenna argues that after grasping the concepts ‘four’ and ‘even’ we do not
need any further thing (which a fortiori includes any extra empirical
information) to acknowledge the truth of the proposition that four is even: “It
will be represented to everyone who understands [the concepts] ‘four’ and
‘even’ that four is even.”33 Assenting to the truth of fit.rīyāt is internal to the
intellect and does not depend on the empirical information we grasp
through our senses. So it seems that, contrary to what Gutas suggests,
according to Avicenna fit.rīyāt are justified in an a priori way.
Now, one might object that the a priority of justifications and the a
priority of judgments are two different things, and that Gutas has discussed
the latter but not the former. So we should clarify Kant’s position on the a
priority of judgments. According to Kant, we have three different kinds of a
priori judgments. All of them have a priori justifications. Therefore, it is not
possible for a judgment to be a priori without having an a priori justification.
The first group of a priori judgments are constituted from innate concepts
(e.g., time, space, the categories). They are pure a priori judgments that form
the categorical bases of our experiences. The second group of a priori
judgments are constituted from a priori, but not innate, concepts. Mathemat-
ical judgments are the best-known representatives of this group.34 The third
group of a priori judgments are constituted from non–a priori concepts (but,
as I said, they have a priori justifications). The proposition ‘bachelors are

824 Philosophy East & West

unmarried’ is an example of such judgments. These are impure a priori
judgments.35
It should be noted that Kant scholars insist that he “agrees with Locke
that we have no innate knowledge, that is, no knowledge of any particular
propositions implanted in us by God or nature prior to the commencement
of our individual experience.”36 Therefore, the first group of aforementioned
a priori judgments are surely not declarative propositions that acknowledge
the truth of something. They just form a categorical ground or framework for
understanding the world through experience.37 This means that in the
discussion of the a priority of declarative judgments—for example in the
discussion of the a priority of Avicennian principles of syllogism—we should
restrict ourselves to the last two groups of propositions. In this sense, it is
very difficult to deny that Avicennian primary data and fit.rīyāt are a priori.
These principles, though possibly constituted from non-innate concepts, are
a priori, since they have a priori justification. Now then, we can discuss the
analyticity of Avicennian primary data and fit.rīyāt.38

IV. Avicennian Fit.rīyāt Are Synthetic

Gutas believes that “both kinds of propositions [i.e., primary data and
fit.rīyāt] would be analytic, in Kantian terms.”39 I disagree. There is some
evidence that Kant proposed three different definitions for the notion of
analyticity.40 One of them is based on the notion of containment, the
second one on contradiction, and the last one on amplification. According
to the first definition, a thought is analytic if and only if its predicate is
contained in its subject. According to the second definition, a thought is
analytic if and only if its negation is contradictory. Finally, according to the
third definition, a thought is analytic if it is an amplification (not only a
clarification). Discussing these definitions and clarifying their principal
differences is beyond the scope of this article. Here, I rely on the first
definition, since it has been argued, convincingly in my opinion, that it is
more fundamental for Kant and that the two other definitions finally reduce
to this definition.41 Therefore my criterion for evaluating the analytic status
of Avicennian primary data and fit.rīyāt would be the following:
(D) A subject-predicate judgment is analytic if and only if its predicate is
contained in its subject. A subject-predicate judgment is synthetic if and only if
it is not analytic.
This definition is based on the notions of ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’. But it can
easily be paraphrased in another way, more familiar to Aristotelian-
Avicennian logicians:
(D*) A judgment is analytic if and only if its major term is contained in its minor
term. A judgment is synthetic if and only if it is not analytic.

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour 825

 Now, based on (D*), we can see that primary data are analytic, and fit.rīyāt,
contrary to Gutas’ proposal, are synthetic. Gutas says that “[t]he difference
between these propositions with built-in syllogisms and the primary ones
mentioned above is that the former, according to Avicenna, can be verified
by a syllogism whereas the latter require only understanding the terms of the
propositions and their combination.”42 In other words, a primary judgment
has no middle term but a fit.rī judgment has a middle term. If a person
considers a primary judgment, as soon as he understands its term he will
find out that the major term is contained in the minor term. Therefore he
can immediately acknowledge the truth of this proposition. This means that,
based on (D*), primary data should be considered as analytic propositions.
On the other hand, understanding the terms of a fit.rī judgment is not
sufficient for acknowledging its truth, as its major term is not contained in its
minor term: it has a middle term. Of course, if one considers a fit.rī
judgment, immediately after understanding the terms of the judgment the
middle term will appear in her mind by the fit.ra of her intellect. Then she
can immediately acknowledge the truth of that proposition. But the major
term of a fit.rī judgment is not contained in its minor term, and this is
sufficient for them to be synthetic, based on (D*).

V. Conclusion

An oversimplified picture of the Kantian notions of a priority and analyticity

may take us into adopting an inaccurate view about the status of fit.rīyāt.
Regarding the issue of a priority, I showed the following: (1) A priority and
innateness are two distinct notions. Every innate concept or judgment is a
priori, but not vice versa. Therefore, the non–a priority of a concept or
judgment cannot be concluded from its non-innateness. (2) The a priority of
a judgment is entirely independent from the a priority of its conceptual
components; neither entails the other. Consequently, even if we accept that
fit.rīyāt are not innate and are constituted from non–a priori concepts, we
cannot conclude that they are non–a priori judgments. In contrast to Gutas’
view, fit.rīyāt are a priori, since after grasping their conceptual components
we can acknowledge their truth without the need to appeal to our sense
perceptions of the external world. In other words, although the conceptual
components of fit.rīyāt may be formed non–a priori, their justification is a
priori. On the other hand, fit.rīyāt are synthetic, since they have a middle
term and their major term is not contained in their minor term. Hence,
Avicennian fit.rīyāt are synthetic a priori in the Kantian sense.
The disagreement between empiricism and rationalism is not restricted
to the issue of whether or not we have pieces of innate knowledge. The
belief that we have innate and pre-given knowledge is sufficient but not
necessary for being non-empiricist or rationalist. The real challenge between
these two camps lies in the issue of how to justify (or acknowledge the truth

826 Philosophy East & West

of) judgments. Empiricists believe that no non-analytic judgment (even after
forming or grasping all of its conceptual components) can be justified a
priori. This is what we must show regarding Avicenna’s epistemology if we
want to tag him as an empiricist.

Notes

I am thankful to Tony Street and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for
extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

1 – Dimitri Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” Oriens 40, no. 2 (2012):

391–436.
2 – In this article I follow Gutas’ terminology as far as is possible and
plausible.
3 – Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” p. 394.
4 – Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifā’, al-Mant.iq, al-Burhān, ed. Abū l-‘Alā’ ‘Afīfī (Cairo: al-
Mat.ba‘a al-amīrīya, 1956), I.4, pp. 63–67.
5 – Ibn Sīnā, al-Naǧāt, ed. Muhammad Taqī Danišpažūh (Tehran:
Entešārāt-e Dānešgāh-e Tehrān, 1985), pp. 112–123.
6 – Ibn Sīnā, al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt bi-šarh. al-T.ūsī, al-Mant.iq (Remarks and
admonitions: With commentary by Tusi), ed. Sulaymān Dunyā, 3rd ed.
(Cairo: Dār al-ma‘ārif, 1983), I.6., pp. 341–364.
7 – These types include propositions based on (1) imaginative data
(mu ḫ ayyalāt), (2) sense data (mah.sūsāt), (3) data of reflection (i‘tibār-
īyāt), (4) tested and proven data (muǧarrabāt), (5) data provided by
finding the middle term of a syllogism (h.adsīyāt), (6) data provided by
sequential and multiple reports (mutawātirāt), (7) estimative data
(wahmīyāt), (8) primary data (awwalīyāt), (9) data with built-in
syllogisms (qad. āyā qiyāsātuhā ma‘ahā or muqaddamāt fit.rīyāt al-qiyās),
(10) equivocal data (mušabbahāt), (11) conceded or admitted data
(musallamāt or taqrīrīyāt), (12) absolute endoxic data (mašhūrāt
mut.laqa), (13) limited endoxic data (mašhūrāt mah.dūda), (14) data
approved on authority (maqbūlāt), (15) initially endoxic but unexa-
mined data (mašhūrāt fī bādī al-ra’y al-g_ayr al-muta‘aqqab), and (16)
suppositional data (maz.nūnāt). See Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avi-
cenna,” pp. 396–398. For two other studies on Avicenna’s account of
the principles of syllogism, see Deborah L. Black, “Certitude, Justifica-
tion, and the Principles of Knowledge in Avicenna’s Epistemology,” in
Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays, ed. Peter Adamson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 120–142, and Ricardo Stro-
bino, “Principles of Scientific Knowledge and the Psychology of (Their)

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour 827

 Intellection in Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Burhān,” in Raison et Démonstra-
tion: Les Commentaires Médiévaux sur les Seconds Analytiques, ed.
Joël Biard (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2015), pp. 31–45.
8 – In the Kantian framework, non–a priority is equivalent to a posteriority.
Nonetheless, Gutas prefers not to use the latter notion. He states only
that the principles of syllogism are not a priori. To be more faithful to
the subtleties of his view, I avoid using the terms ‘a posteriori’ and ‘a
posteriority’.
9 – Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” p. 397.
10 – Ibid.
11 – Ibid., p. 408.
12 – Ibid., p. 409.
13 – Ibid., p. 404. It can be plausibly inferred from this quotation that for
Gutas something is innate only if we have it upon birth.
14 – Ibid., pp. 417–418.
15 – Ibid., p. 392.
16 – For instance, Black argues for the innateness of self-awareness. See
Deborah L. Black, “Avicenna on Self-Awareness and Knowing that
One Knows,” in The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition, ed.
Shahid Rahman, Tony Street, and Hassan Tahiri (Dordrecht: Springer,
2008), pp. 63–87. Marmura defends the innateness and a priority of
the concept of existence. See Michael E. Marmura, “Avicenna’s Proof
from Contingency for God’s Existence in the Metaphysics of the
Shifā’,” Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980): 337–352, and “Avicenna on
Primary Concepts in the Metaphysics of his al-Shifā’,” in Logos
Islamikos, ed. R. M. Savory and D. A. Agius (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), pp. 219–239.
17 – Ibn Sīnā, al-Naǧāt, pp. 117–118. The first phrase in brackets has been
added by me, the second one by Gutas.
18 – For studies on Avicenna’s view regarding the connection between
conceivability and metaphysical/logical modalities see, among others,
Peter Adamson and Fedor Benevich, “The Thought Experimental
Method: Avicenna’s Flying Man Argument,” Journal of the American
Philosophical Association 4, no. 2 (2018): 147–164, and Taneli
Kukkonen, “Ibn Sīnā and the Early History of Thought Experiments,”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 52, no. 3 (2014): 433–459.
19 – See Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” pp. 398–399.
20 – Ibid., pp. 409–410. For a more detailed discussion on this feature of
fit.rīyāt, see Michael E. Marmura, “Plotting the Course of Avicenna’s

828 Philosophy East & West

 Thought,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111, no. 2 (1991):
333–342.
21 – Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” p. 410 n. 41.
22 – Here I do not discuss the details of Avicenna’s account of primary
propositions. For a recent study on this topic, see Seyed N. Mousavian
and Mohammad Ardeshir, “Avicenna on Primary Propositions,” History
and Philosophy of Logic 29, no. 3 (2018): 201–231.
23 – Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” p. 392.
24 – See, e.g., texts [L5], [L7], [L8], and [L13] in Gutas’ article.
25 – Ibid., pp. 409–410.
26 – The latter case, i.e., a priority of justifications, is discussed in Philip
Kitcher, “A Priori Knowledge,” The Philosophical Review 89, no. 1
(1980): 3–23.
27 – Konstantin Pollok, “The ‘Transcendental Method’: On the Reception of
Critique of Pure Reason in Neo-Kantianism,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 361.
28 – Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: With
Selections from the Critique of Pure reason, ed. Gary Hatfield
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), sec. 10, p. 35.
29 – I think that there are some phrases in the texts quoted by Gutas that
can be considered as evidence for the existence of some innate ideas.
However, Gutas simply ignores them. For example, his text [L7] quoted
from Avicenna’s al-Ta‘līqāt is: “One mode (nah.w) of intellects is that it
is potential in all aspects, like the human intellect [i.e., the material
intellect], because the intelligibles are potentially in it except the
primary [intelligibles] which come about in it as he grows up.” Gutas
simply ignores the phrase “the intelligibles are potentially in it” (my
italics) in this text. See Ibn Sīnā, al-Ta‘līqāt, ed. A. Badawī (Cairo: al-
Hay’a al-mis. rīya al-‘āmma li-l-kitāb, 1973), p. 27.
30 – These are conceptual components of the proposition ‘four is even’,
which is the best-known example of Avicennian fit.rīyāt. I do not claim
that these mathematical concepts are a priori. I just emphasize that
Gutas has not shown that they are non–a priori. Indeed, although there
is textual evidence that mathematical concepts for Avicenna are non–a
priori and cannot be formed independently from our sense-perceptual
experiences, Gutas has not addressed this evidence. I have elsewhere
discussed Avicenna’s epistemology of mathematical concepts in detail;
see Mohammad Saleh Zarepour, “Avicenna on Grasping Mathematical
Concepts,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, forthcoming. Nonetheless,

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour 829

 as we will see shortly, my main disagreement with Gutas’ account
concerns the epistemic status of fit.rī propositions, rather than the
epistemic status of their conceptual components.
31 – See Marmura, “Avicenna on Primary Concepts in the Metaphysics of
his al-Shifā’.” Gutas rejects Marmura’s view (Gutas, “The Empiricism of
Avicenna,” p. 416 nn. 64 and 66). I think, however, that they have
two different understandings of the notion of a priority and that
Marmura’s analysis is more accurate and more faithful to the Kantian
sense of this notion.
32 – See Kitcher, “A Priori Knowledge,” and his The Nature of Mathematical
Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
33 – Ibn Sīnā, al-Šifā’, al-Mant.iq, al-Burhān, p. 64.
34 – As I previously mentioned, mathematical concepts for Avicenna are
neither innate nor even a priori (i.e., independent from sense
perception). So his view regarding the epistemic status of mathematical
concepts explicitly differs from Kant’s. Nonetheless, similarly to Kant,
Avicenna believes that for assenting to the truth of mathematical
propositions we do not need any sense-perceptual experiences.
35 – See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen
W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): B 2–3, A
86–87/B 119, A 95.
36 – See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, editors’ introduction, p. 6.
37 – If we interpret categorical judgments in this way, then they may be
acceptable even for Avicenna. In fact, what Avicenna says in al-Naǧāt
(p. 170) about the role of the intellect in forming concepts seems to
me very similar to what Kant says about the role of categories:
In forming concepts, sense perception and imagination . . . assist the
intellect . . . . The intellect . . . discriminates among them [i.e., those things
presented to the intellect by sense perception and imagery], breaks them
down into parts [i.e., categories], takes up each one of the concepts
individually, and arranges [in order] the most particular and the most
general, and the essential and the accidental. (See text [L6] of Gutas, “The
Empiricism of Avicenna,” p. 406.)

38 – The moral of my discussion in this section is that the epistemic status

of a proposition is not reducible to the epistemic status of its
conceptual components. In particular, the epistemic source through
which we form the concepts of a proposition is not necessarily
identical to the epistemic source based on which we assent to the truth
of that proposition. Considering the fact that the primary propositions
are the first premises of which the dispositional intellect acknowledges

830 Philosophy East & West

 their truth, Gutas argues that “[t]he question of the source of knowl-
edge by the intellect in Avicenna . . . then becomes, how the disposi-
tional intellect arrives at the concepts which form the primary
premises, and what this investigation consists of” (Gutas, “The Empiri-
cism of Avicenna,” p. 405). But as we saw, even if the conceptual
elements of a proposition come from an empirical source, the
proposition itself can still be a priori. So, contrary to what Gutas seems
to suggest, the question of the source of knowledge cannot be reduced
to the question of the source of concepts.
39 – Ibid., p. 410 n. 41.
40 – The evidence is extracted from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 6–7/B
11.
41 – See, among others, Anthony Manser, “How Did Kant Define
‘Analytic’?” Analysis 28, no. 6 (1968): 197–199; John Divers, “Kant’s
Criteria of the A Priori,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80, no. 1
(1999): 17–45; and R. Lanier Anderson, “The Introduction to the
Critique: Framing the Question,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), pp. 74–92.
42 – Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” pp. 409–410.

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The Myth of a Kantian Avicenna

Dimitri Gutas
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
Yale University
dimitri.gutas@yale.edu

In my Oriens article on Avicenna’s empiricism (Oriens 40 [2012]: 391–436),

I present what Avicenna calls the principles of syllogism, which are the
different types of propositions that form the irreducible and axiomatic
starting points of syllogisms and definitions. As Avicenna states both
explicitly and implicitly in numerous passages that I cite, these are all based
on experience. Two of these are the primary propositions (awwaliyyāt) and
those with built-in syllogisms (muqaddamāt fit.riyyat al-qiyās), literally,
“premises of fit.ra syllogisms,” fit.ra being the natural operation of the
intellect—thus, “premises whose syllogisms are constructed by the natural
operation of the intellect.” In his “Note” on my article, Mohammad Saleh
Zarepour disagrees with me and claims that, according to Avicenna, these
two propositions are not based on experience but are a priori.
To build his case, Zarepour engages in an extensive discussion of the
notion of a priori, in particular that of Kant. This seems odd, for in the entire
article I never discuss the concept, and the very few times that I use the
term “a priori” it is never as the focus of the main argument; in particular I
never use either the concept or the term in section V (pp. 404–410), where
I deal with those propositions whose analysis Zarepour disputes. The reason
I do not use it is because Avicenna himself never uses a term that could be
so translated in his epistemological discussions: it does not appear in
Avicenna, nor do I present it as appearing in Avicenna. The concepts of a-
priority and a-posteriority, if one were to insist, are treated by Avicenna in
totally different terms through his description of the constitution of the

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