An intertextual trajectory from Biblical times and Hellenistic antiquity to the Islamic and Babi-Baha'i positions. Some Notes  towards an Annotated Bibliography and Reading List for  Islamic  and Bābī-Bahā’ī  Studies.

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Stephen Lambden (UC-Merced)

REWRITE THIS 

When one begins looking into the history of the interrelated concepts of the human soul, spirit, mind and  intellect in the Abrahamic Religions and related Hellenistic and Graeco-Islamic religious and philosophical thought, one speedily realizes that this subject is immense. It is  often bewilderingly complicated spanning a massive range of texts in Semitic and other languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian and other languages. Its history is not yet fully mapped out and a multitude of seminal texts have only recently been published. Many await adequate  publication  in accurate critical edition(s) or in facsimile publication preliminary to the appearance of reliable critical editions.  There are numerous religio-philosophical texts that bear upon the subject of the nature, the spirit, the  soul-essence and mind of human beings and of realities beyond this. The existence of modes of "Spirit"  in the Universe(s) and of the operations of the "Holy Spirit" or the powers of the Divine Logos-"Soul"-"Mind"-"Intellect" are subjects about which must has been written in sacred books and religious treaises. 

Almost every major thinker from the time of Aristotle has penned a "Treatise on the Human Soul'  (Ar. Risala fi'l-nafs) or on the nature of the intellect (al-`aql).Such thinkers have often been devout members of the major Abrahamic religions or adherents of religious or philosophical offshoots of these religions. Among them   

 

 

Select  General Surveys and Bibliography …

 

 

MacDonald, Paul S. (2003)

• History of the concept of mind : speculations about soul, mind, and spirit from Homer to Hume,  Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2003.

• Ch. 1. Ancient Hebrew and Homeric Greek Life-Force -- 1. Hebrew Old Testament ideas about life and breath -- 2. Homeric Greek ideas about life and breath -- 3. The pre-socratic soul as property-like thing --

• Ch. 2. Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic Thought -- 1. Plato's twofold and threefold account of soul -- 2. Aristotle on soul as form and body as matter -- 3.  The Stoics, Epicurus and Lucretius on material spirit --

• Ch. 3. From the New Testament to St. Augustine -- 1. The New Testament and St. Paul's new vision --

• 2. Neo-Platonic teachings and Plotinus' One-Mind-Soul --

• 3. The Greek and Latin Church Fathers --

• 4. Augustine's Christian-Platonist synthesis --

• Ch. 4. Medieval Islamic and Christian Ideas --

• 1. Islamic concepts: Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes --

• 2. Theological summation: Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas --

• 3. Dante's soul in the service of love --

 Ch. 5. Renaissance Platonism, Hermeticism and Other Heterodoxies -- 1. The centrality and dignity of human being -- 2. The rediscovery of Plato, Plotinus and the Hermetica -- 3. Magic and occultism in the service of science -- Ch. 6. Mind and Soul in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare -- 1. The various senses of 'soul' from 1200 to 1500 -- 2. The various senses of 'mind' from 1200 to 1500 -- 3. The natural shape of 'soul' and 'mind' in Shakespeare -- Ch. 7. The Triumph of Rationalist Concepts of Mind and Intellect -- 1. Descartes: mind as simple, immaterial thinking thing -- 2. Spinoza: mind as the idea the body has of itself -- 3. Leibniz: soul as an infinitely small incorporeal automaton -- Ch. 8. The Empiricists' Advocacy of Matter Designed for Thought -- 1. Early attempts at a mechanical account of matter in motion -- 2. Locke, Berkeley and Hume for and against the materialist thesis -- 3. Summary overview and general conclusions

________________________

 

 

 

The Ancient Near East:  Mesepotamia & Egypt.

     

 

 Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh

`To the ancient Mesopotamians an afterlife offered nothing good. Humans persisted for a period in conditions of unhappiness, discomfort, and despair. Various texts give similar descriptions of the place of the afterlife, thought usually to be beneath the world.

It is a "house which none leave who have entered it. On the road from which there is no way back, to the house wherein the dwellers are bereft of light, where (lust is their fare and clay their food, They are clothed like birds, with wings for garments, and see no light, residing in darkness" (Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 7.3.34-39, quoted in Pritchard, 1969, p. 87).  

 Sullivan, Lawrence E.  (1987>)

• Death, Afterlife and the Soul… Selections from the Encyclopedia of Religion, Ed. Mircea Eliade, New York : Macmillan and Co. + London: Collier, Macmillain Pub., 1987,1989 . See esp., Pt. III = `Concepts of the Soul and its Destiny’ (pp.177-280). 

 Ancient Egypt

 "the culture of ancient Egypt was persistently and substantially concerned with tine fate of the soul after death. This concern led to conceptions of the soul that are of considerable complexity. If we take the definition of soul to  be that part (or those parts ) of a person that persists after death, the Egyptian concept of soul invoked several major factors, any of which might be termed the soul. They might be thought of as the

• "ka soul," loosely the `vital force' or the ability to act.

• "ba soul," afterlife transformation, animation, motion

• "akh soul," loosely,  the transfigured afterlife personna.

• "ab soul"... the "heart"-"conscience"...  

 "The ancient Egyptian conception of the soul contrasts strikingly with that of the Mesopotantians. The Egyptians were convinced that they would exist after death and that this state of existence would quite possibly he pleasurable. If the ka be defined as soul, Egyptians made of it a central philosophical abstraction, such that the universe could be said to be sustained by soul and religion to be focused on the mediation of soul between the gods/pharaohs, Horus and Osiris." (E-Rel Add.)

Ancient Israelite and Later Jewish concepts of “Soul”

 

In Hebrew Bible there are refs to an “underworld” which are closely related to ancient Near East concepts existing in Egypt and BabyIonia. Several terms are used to designate the “shadowy realm” of the `after life’ including She'ol … and Gei' Hinnom or (Eng.) Gehenna-- The historical Gehenna or Gei' Hinnom-`.Valley of hen Hinnom," or "Valley of the son(s) of] Hinnom" was located near Jerusalem “at the site of a cult in which children were sacrificed” known popularly as the "Valley of Slaughter" (Jer. 19:5-6). Later a place for burning the rubbish of the city. “In mythology, Gehenna was located beneath the earth or at the base of a mountain range (Jon. 2T) or beneath the waters of the cosmic ocean (Jh. 26:5). This realm is sometimes pictured as a horrifying monster with mouth agape (Is. 5:14), a realm where persons of all classes are treated as equals (Ez. 32:18-32).”

She'ol =

"the subterranean realm of the dead “where the destinies of the righteous and the wicked are the same”. the Septuagint (LXX) frequently translates she'ol as tharuitos ("death"). Heaven and She’ol are “the two farthest extremities of the universe”. “The Hebrew scriptures place the domain of the dead at the center of the earth, below the floor of the sea (Is. 14:13-15, jb. 26:5)…
“There is a strong suggestion in Psalm 73 that God will manifest his grace to the righteous by taking them to heaven, where they will exist eternally with him, The people of God will, therefore, be saved from She'ol to live with God forever, but the unrighteous will face a deprived existence in the chambers of the subterranean regions Ps. 49).

1 (Ethiopic) Enoch
“According to the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch (22:9-13), She'ol is not an abode of all the dead, where the souls merely exist as vague shadowy figures devoid of individual characteristics, but is a spacious realm with three subdivisions: one realm is allotted to the righteous who have been vindicated in life, one to sinners who were not submitted to divine judgment before death, and one to those whose deeds were judged during life and found wanting.”

Life after death in ancient Judaism.

 

Sullivan, Lawrence E.  (1987>)

• Death, Afterlife and the Soul… Selections from the Encyclopedia of Religion, Ed. Mircea Eliade, New York : Macmillan and Co. + London: Collier, Macmillain Pub., 1987,1989 . See esp., Pt. III = `Concepts of the Soul and its Destiny’ (pp.177-280). 

 

Ancient Greek-Hellenistic  Concepts of  Anima, Life force, “Soul”…  

 

Sullivan, Lawrence E.  (1987>)

• Death, Afterlife and the Soul… Selections from the Encyclopedia of Religion, Ed. Mircea Eliade, New York : Macmillan and Co. + London: Collier, Macmillain Pub., 1987,1989 . See esp., Pt. III = `Concepts of the Soul and its Destiny’ (pp.177-280). 
• ADD
•  

Ἐμπεδοκλῆς = Empedocles (c. 494- c. 434 BCE) 

Pre-Socratic philosopher from Agrigentum (Acragas) in Sicily. 

"Thus Empedocles declares that it is formed out of all his elements, each of them also being soul; his words are: For 'tis by Earth we see Earth, by Water Water, By Ether Ether divine, by Fire destructive Fire,   By Love Love, and Hate by cruel Hate."  from Aristotle De Anima

ADD HERE

 

"Empedocles... distinguished himself in philosophy" (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 144)

ADD

Wright, M. E.  (1995)

• Empedocles, the Extant Fragments. Bristol Classical Press, 1995. ISBN-10: 0872202895 ISBN-13: 978-0872202894

Kingsley, Peter  (1997).

• Ancient  Philosophy, Mystery and Magic : Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.  ISBN-10: 0198150814 ISBN-13: 978-0198150817 .
• "Using material never exploited before, this is the first full-scale study of Empedocles to situate his fragmentary writings in their original context of philosophy as a way of life, of mystery religion and magic, and of the struggle to realize one's own divinity. Peter Kingsley also presents fresh evidence which proves Empedocles was not an isolated figure and reveals new links between his work and ancient Pythagoreanism. The process of establishing these links now makes it possible to demonstrate, in detail, the Pythagorean origin of Plato's myths. The second half of the book re-examines problems regarding the connections between ancient magic, science, and religion. More specifically, it traces for the first time a line of transmission from Empedocles and the early Pythagoreans down to southern Egypt, and from there into the world of Islam. This neglected process of transmission is of profound significance for our understanding not only of Greek philosophy but also of the background to ancient alchemy, Sufism, and medieval mysticism " (Advertisement for Book).

 

Socrates Σωκράτης, Sōkrátēs (c. 469 BC–399 BCE).

Socrates  who related the types of nations to a tripartite division of the "soul": The body parts symbolize the three divisions of society:

• (1) Productive = the abdomen. = Workers — the labourers, etc = the "appetite" part of the soul.

• (2) Protective = the chest = Warriors /Guardians — brave armed forces =  the "spirit" part of the soul.

• (3) Governing = the head= Rulers / Philosopher Kings —  the intelligent, rational exercising love with wisdom = "reason" part of the soul.

 Only a few are fit to rule with reason and wisdom (See Republic 473c-d).  

"After him came Socrates who was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous. He practised self-denial, repressed his appetites for selfish desires and turned away from material pleasures. He withdrew to the mountains where he dwelt in a cave. He dissuaded men from worshipping idols and taught them the way of God, the Lord of Mercy, until the ignorant rose up against him. They arrested him and put him to death in prison... What a penetrating vision into philosophy this eminent man had! He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it. He had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well as of those which were veiled from their minds. Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters. He it is who perceived a unique, a tempered, and a pervasive nature in things, bearing the closest likeness to the human spirit, and he discovered this nature to be distinct from the substance of things in their refined form. He hath a special pronouncement on this weighty theme." (Baha'u'llah, Lawh-i Hikmat)

 

 

Plato,  Aristotle &  select later Hellenistic Philosophers and their concepts of  Life-force, “Soul”

 

Plato  (c.  427-c. 347).

 Pupil of Socrates 

There is a problematic complexity in the various presentations of tri-partition/bipartition of the soul in Plato's dialogues that in turn seems in a puzzling way to have had a curious effect upon the presentation of the tripartite soul some 700 years later by Christian Fathers of the 4th Century, Evagrius of Pontus and Gregory of Nyssa, a presentation that suggests more than one version of tripartition. On the one hand, there is the classic version of the tripartite soul in Republic 4, regarded as definitive of "Plato's thought" for nearly 2500 years: Plato, it is universally thought, believes in a tripartite soul: a "rational part" (τό λογιστικόν), a "spirited part" (θυμός), and a "desiring part" (τό έπιθυμητικόν).  (p.99)

Kevin Corrigan (Emory University), ` The Organization of the Soul: Some  Overlooked Aspects of Interpretation from Plato to Late Antiquity' in `Reading Ancient Texts vol. II Aristotle and Neoplatonism, Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 99-113.

In the same way Plato in the Timaeus fashions soul out of his elements; for like, he holds, is known by like, and things are formed out of the principles or elements, so that soul must be so too. Similarly also in his lectures 'On Philosophy' it was set forth that the Animal-itself is compounded of the Idea itself of the One together with the primary length, breadth, and depth, everything else, the objects of its perception, being similarly constituted. Again he puts his view in yet other terms: Mind is the monad, science or knowledge the dyad (because it goes undeviatingly from one point to another), opinion the number of the plane, sensation the number of the solid; the numbers are by him expressly identified with the Forms themselves or principles, and are formed out of the elements; now things are apprehended either by mind or science or opinion or sensation, and these same numbers are the Forms of things. Some thinkers, accepting both premisses, viz. that the soul is both originative of movement and cognitive, have compounded it of both and declared the soul to be a self-moving number." (From De Anima of Aristotle)

 "After Socrates came the divine Plato who was a pupil of the former and occupied the chair of philosophy as his successor. He acknowledged his belief in God and in His signs which pervade all that hath been and shall be" (Baha'u'llah, Lawh-i Hikmat).

Plato-Aristotle : Select Bibliography

Stern-Gillet , Suzanne and Kevin Corrigan,  Eds.

• Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism, Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien,  Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Finamore, J (2005)

• "The Tripartite soul in Plato's Republic and Phaedrus," in J. Finamore and R. Berchman (eds.), History of Platonism. Plato Redwivus, New Orleans, University Press of the South, 2005, 35-52; and for the view that Plato is hesitant about the tripartite division, see T.M. Robinson, Plato's Psychology, 2nd ed., Toronto, 1995, 119-122.

Corrigan, Kevin (2007) :

• `Organization of the Soul: Some Overlooked Aspects of  Interpretation from Plato to Late Antiquity’ in  Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism,  Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien  Ed.  Suzanne Stern-Gillet and Kevin Corrigan (Leiden: Brill,  2007) pp. 99-113. .

  

ARISTOTLE  (384-322 BCE).

 

GENERAL

 

ARISTOTLE  (384-322 BCE).

Writings

Arabic = "the Philosopher" or the "First Teacher"

ARISTOTELES ARABUS

The Legacy
Aristotle is called in Arabic philosophical texts "the philosopher," "the first teacher" (al-Farabi being the second), and is considered the ultimate in human perfection. The Arabic Aristotle is not a dogmatic authority, as he is often portrayed later in the West, but a seeker of truth, tentatively promulgating plausible theories. Aristotle held that philosophy begins with problems and puzzles, and thrives by unraveling difficulties. Following this line, the masters of arts in thirteenth-century Paris found in Aristotle a model scientist and researcher who poses questions qua hunter (Prior Analytics 1:30, 46a11), discoverer [Nicomachean Ethics 3:3, 1112b19), and investigator (Metaphysics 1:2, 983a23).
51
The Islamic context

The Arab translators rendered into Arabic the bulk of the Aristotelian corpus, except for the Politics, the Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia, and the dialogues. They translated the entire Organon and Porphyry's Isagoge, which was used as an introduction to it. The Rhetoric and Poetics were included in the logical works, so that rhetorical and poetical statements were treated alongside demonstrative and dialectical propositions.The Arabic Physics was transmitted intact with citations from classical commentators and glosses by members of the tenth-century Baghdad school of Aristotle studies. The Islamic philosophers also had access to the De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, Meteorology, De Partibus Animalium, De Anima, De Sensu, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle was studied along with his commentators, in particular Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, John Philoponus, and Themistius. Some of their writings not extant in Greek are preserved in Arabic.
Averroes wrote many commentaries on Aristotle, including a middle commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and long commentaries on the Metaphysics and the De Anima (the last extant only in Latin). Averroes' commentaries were done in three possible recensions, known as short, middle, and great, serving as a gradual initiation into Peripatetic thought. In the great commentaries (called tafsir), he comments on the text by paragraph and by citing lemmata in extenso, and using commentaries by predecessors like Alexander.

Responses to Aristotelianism

Aristotle's system contradicts the monotheistic revealed religions on the issues of creation, divine providence, and the hereafter. God is for Aristotle intelligence knowing intellection itself, noesis noseos. He is simultaneously thought (caql), thinking ['aqil) and object of thought (ma'qul). Aristotle's God is the final cause of the universe, not the efficient cause of its existence (although commentators dis¬agreed on this last point). The Aristotelian idea of an eternal universe and permanent world order - his belief that the universe is static, with no beginning or end - conflicts with the Islamic doctrine of God as Creator of the world by a free act of will (Qur'an 2:117, 3:47, 16:40, etc.)....  (J.L. Kraemer, CCMJP:CUP., 2003, pp.50-51)
 

DE ANIMA  (`ON THE “SOUL” )

[Gk.] Περὶ Ψυχῆς    = Perì Psūchês. =  Latin. De Anima

 

 

“ON THE SOUL” (c. 350 BCE)  Psychology: on faculties, senses, mind, and imagination...

Περὶ Ψυχῆς  (Perì Psūchês).

Aristotle, On the Soul (de anima)

  

CONTENTS

 The De Anima of Aristotle begins,

"All those, then, who had special regard to the fact that what has soul in it is moved, adopted the view that soul is to be identified with what is eminently originative of movement. All, on the other hand, who looked to the fact that what has soul in it knows or perceives what is, identify soul with the principle or principles of Nature, according as they admit several such principles or one only.

"Then came Aristotle, the well-known man of knowledge. He it is who discovered the power of gaseous matter" (Baha'u'llah, Lawh-i Hikmat).

Aristotle : Select Bibliography

Stern-Gillet , Suzanne and Kevin Corrigan,  Eds.

• Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism, Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien,  Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Vander Waerdt, P.A. (1985)

• "The Peripatetic Interpretation of Plato's Tripartite Psychology," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1985, 283-302 (286 n9).

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 De Anima (“On the Soul”)

ADD

ADD

Hicks, R. D.

• Aristotle De Anima - Aristotle/ (TRN)  $32.99

Robert Hicks (trans.) 1976.

• De Anima, Arno Press,   1976 ISBN-10: 0405072899 / ISBN-13: 9780405072895

Smith, J. A.

• `On the Soul’ [trans. of the De Anima of Aristotle] in The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes Vol. 1 (Princeton-Bollingen Series LXXI-2) Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984, pp. 641-692. *

D. Ross,

• Aristotle: De Anima,  $75.00
•  
• Essays on Aristotle's de Anima  Essays on Aristotle's De Anima  Oxford Univ Pr   Reprint  1995  ISBN-10:  019823600X / ISBN-13:  9780198236009     
• Aristotle de Anima Books II and III - Aristotle|.. e Anima - Aristotle 9780198240853
•  Aristotle's De Anima in the version of William of Moerb    

Zerahyah Ben Isaac Ben Shealtiel Hen

• Aristotle's De Anima: Translated into Hebrew by A Critical Edition With an Introduction and Index. Leiden : Brill Acadeic Pub., 1993. / ISBN-10: 9004099379 /  ISBN-13: 9789004099371

Durrant, M. (1993)

• Aristotle's De Anima in Focus. London, 1993.

Nussbaum M.  & A. O. Rorty,

• Essays on Aristotle's De Anima. Oxford, 1992.

Joe Sachs (trans.)

• Aristotle's On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection, Aristotle, Translated by Joe Sachs. Green Lion Press, 2001. ISBN-10:  1888009179  --  ISBN-13:  9781888009170.

Granger,  Herbert.

• Aristotle's Idea of the Soul, (Philosophical Studies Series)  Kluwer Academic Print on Demand,  1996. ISBN-10: 0792340337 / ISBN-13: 9780792340331

 Husain Kassim

• Aristotle and Aristotelianism in Medieval Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Philosophy, 1999.

Udo Reinhold Jeck (1994)

• Aristotle's Contra Augustinum: Zur Frage Nach Dem Verhaltnis Von Zeit Und Seele Bei Den Antiken Aristoteleskommentatoren, Im Arabischen Aristotelismu.  (= Bochumer Studien Zur Philosophie, 21), John Benjamins Pub Co., 1994.  ISBN-10: 9060323394 /  ISBN-13: 9789060323397

  

SELECT COMMENTATORS ON ARISTOTLE

 THEMISTIUS

· Aristotle's on the Soul by Aristotle, 1981. ISBN-10: 0960287086 - ISBN-13:  9780960287086

SIMPLICIUS

+   J. O. Urmson, J.O. Urmson, Peter Lautner

· On Aristotle's on the Soul 1.1-2.4. (The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Series ), Cornell Univ Pr. 1995.  ISBN-10: 0801431603 / ISBN-13: 9780801431609

JOHN PHILOPONUS

· On Aristotle on the Intellect, (The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Series)   Cornell Univ Press,  1991. ISBN-10: 0801426812 / ISBN-13: 9780801426810

XXXXX

·  Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence

·(The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle ). Cornell Univ Press  1990.  ISBN-10: 0801424321 /  ISBN-13: 9780801424328

Adam Burley, Dominus Walter Burley, Edward A. Synan, Gualterus Burlaeus, Walter Burley :

·         Questions on the De Anima of Aristotle (=  Studien Und Texte Zur  Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters)   Leiden: Brill Academic Pub.   1996.  ISBN-10: 9004106553 / ISBN-13: 9789004106550, 

M. Achard,

• Épistémologie et pratique de la science chez Aristote. Les Seconds Analytiques et la définition de l’âme dans le De Anima. Paris, 2004.

Barnes, J.; M. Schofield, & R. Sorabji,

• Articles on Aristotle, vol. 4, 'Psychology and Aesthetics'. London, 1979.

Dunstan, G.R.

• The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990.  ISBN-10: 0859893405/  ISBN-13: 9780859893404

F. Nuyens,

• L'évolution de la psychologie d'Aristote. Louvain, 1973.

Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Martha C. Nussbaum (eds.)

• Essays on Aristotle's de Anima. Oxford: OUP., 1995.

 Freudenthal, Gad (1999)

• Aristotle's Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul.  Oxford: OUP., 1999.

Wedin, Michael V. (1988)

• Mind and Imagination in Aristotle, ADD: Yale Univ Press, 1988.

  

PLOTINUS (204-270) AND NEOPLATONISM

 Alexandrian founder of Neoplatonism who studied Platonism under Ammonius Saccas

 

 

Bibliography

Thillet, Pierre (2007) :

• `Was the Vita Plotini  known in Arab Philosophical Circles?’ in  in  Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism,  Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien  Ed.  Suzanne Stern-Gillet and Kevin Corrigan (Leiden: Brill, 2007) pp. 199-210 . .

 

Stern-Gillet , Suzanne and Kevin Corrigan,  Eds.

• Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism, Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien,  Leiden: Brill, 2007.

  

The New  Testament & Christian Apologists

 

For the most part dating from the late first and early second centuries CE., the various books of the New Testament do not have a systematic terminology or supply any detailed materials about the nature of the human soul, spirit or mind. There exist varied and diverse statements within the NT about forms of the spirit,  human fate, bodily resurrection, etc

 

Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Trinity

The concept of the Holy Spirit

 

Greek and Latin Patristic Philosophers and Theologians…

 

Tertullian of Carthage ( d. c. 220 CE).

 Liber De Anima

• http://www.tertullian.org/latin/de_anima.htm

 

Gregory of Nyssa  (c.  335-394 CE).

 

 

 

Evagrius of Pontus (Ibora Pontus c.  345-399).

 

Ordained Evagrius deacon in Constantinople he became a prominent ascetic monk of the Christian monastic desert settlements of Lower Egypt and became one of the first great theologians of the ascetic life. He was an influential Greek writer who, according to Karen Rae Keck  “also believed that the original unity of God and His rational beings was broken by a fault of the beings, who became souls and were later joined to bodies. Conquering the flesh allows the souls to return to their primordial oneness with God. Evagrius taught that Christ was the only one of the rational beings to stay with God when the others lapsed and took a body to lead other souls to a similar unity with God. Gnostic Centuries, which propounds these ideas, was condemned in 553 at the Second Council of Constantinople, and the Praktikos, his work on prayer, has often been attributed to Nilus of Ancyra”

Citation from http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/glossary/evagrios.html

 

Wrote in Greek -- some of his writings are only extant in Syriac versions.

 Antoine Guillaumont & Claire Guillaumont, eds.,

• Évagre le Pontique, Traité Practique ou le Moine, Sources chrétiennes 170-171 (Paris: Édiions du Cerf, 1971). 

Praktikos  -- most important work:

Praktikos  (texts):

• French translation, introduction and extensive commentary, see A. and C. Guillaumont, Evagre le Pontique: Traite pratique ou k moine, 1971, vol. 2, 681-9;
• For the two Syriac versions with French translation of the Kephalaia Gnostica, see A. Guillaumont, Les six centuries des "Kephalaia Gnostica": edition critique de h version syriaque commune et edition d'une nouvelk version syriaque, PO 28, fasc. I, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1958.

 Kephalaia Gnostica (= CPG 2432).

For the two Syriac versions with French translation of the Kephalaia Gnostica, see Guillaumont,  A.

• Les Six centuries des `Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’ Evagre le Pontique’  (critical edition of the Syriac ), Patrologia Orientalis  28, fasc. I, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1958.

Antoine Guillaumont,

• Les <<kephalaia gnostica>> d’Evagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les grecs et chez les syriens, Patristica Sorbonensia 5 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962).
• Évagre Le Pontique: Le Gnostique ou a celui qui est devenu digne de la science, Sources Chrétiennes 356 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1989).

Sinkewicz, R.

• Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, Oxford, 2003, 91-114 and 260, notes 90-1.

 

Augustine of Hippo ( 354-430 CE)

  

 SOUL CONCEPTS IN ISLAM

 NAFS-EI2 by

“(A.), soul. Nafs, in early Arabic poetry meant the self or person, while rūḥ means breath and wind. Beginning with the Kur'an, nafs also means soul, and rūḥ means a special angel messenger and a special divine quality. Only in post-Kur'anic literature are nafs and rūḥ equated and both applied to the human spirit, angels and djinn. Since the two concepts of nafs and rūḥ are so closely connected, both will be considered here.

 I. The Kuranic uses.

 A. Nafs and its plurals anfus and nufus have five uses:

• 1. In most cases they mean the human self or person, e.g. III, 54: "Let us call ... ourselves and yourselves"; also XII, 54; LI, 20, 21.

•  

• 2. In six verses nafs refers to Allah: V, 116b, "Thou [Allah] dost know what is in myself [says Isa], but I do not know what is in Thyself (nafsika)"; also III, 27, 28; VI, 12, 54 and XX, 43.

•  

• 3. One reference, XXV, 4 (cf. XIII, 17), is to gods: "They [dliha] do not possess for themselves (anfusihim) any harm or benefit at all!"

•  

• 4. in VI, 130 the plural is used twice to refer to the company of men and djinn: "We have witnessed against ourselves (anfusina)".

•  

• 5. It means the human soul: VI, 93: "While the angels stretch forth their hands [saying,]. Send forth your souls (anfus)"; also L, 15; LXIV, 16; LXXIX, 40, etc. This soul has three characteristics: a. It is ammāra bi 'lsu', commanding to evil (XII, 53). Like the Hebrew nefesh, the basic idea is "the physical appetite", in Pauline usage ψυχή, and in the English New Testament "flesh". It whispers (L, 15), and is associated with al-hawd, which, in the sense of "desire", is always evil. It must be restrained (LIXXIX, 40) and made patient (XVIII, 27) and its greed must be feared (LIX, 9b). b. The nafs is lawwāma, i.e. it upbraids (LXXV, 2); the souls (anfus) of deserters are straitened (IX, 119). c. The soul is addressed as mutma'inna, tranquil (LXXXIX, 27). These three terms form the basis of much of the later Muslim ethics and psychology. It is noteworthy that nafs is not used in connection with the angels.

 B. Rūḥ has five uses:

•  1. Allah blew {nafakha) of His rūḥ, a. into Adam, giving life to Adam's body (XV, 29; XXXVIII, 72; XXXII, 8), and b. into Maryam for the conception of Isa (XXI, 91 and LXVI, 12). Here rūḥ equates with ADD and means the "breath of life" (cf. Gen. ii, 7), the creation of which belongs to Allah.

•  

• 2. Four verses connect rūḥ with the amr of Allah, and the meanings of both rūḥ and amr are [VII 880b] disputed. a. In XVII, 87, it is stated: "They ask thee [O Muhammad] about al-rūḥ; say: al-rūḥ min amr1 rabbi, and ye are brought but little knowledge". b. In XVI, 2, Allah sends down the angels with al-rūḥ min amrihi upon whomsoever He wills of His creatures to say: "Warn that the fact is, There is no God but Me, so fear". c. In XL, 15, Allah "cast al-rūḥ min amrihi upon whomsoever He wills of His creatures to give warning". d. In XLII, 52: "We revealed (awkaynd) to thee [O Muhammad] rūḥan min amrind; thou knewest not what the book was, nor the faith, but We made it to be a light by which We guide whomsoever We will of Our creatures". Whatever meanings amr and min may have, the contexts connect al-rūḥ in a. with knowledge; in b. with angels and creatures, to give warning; in c. with creatures, for warning, and in d. with Muhammad, for knowledge, faith, light and guidance. Therefore this rūḥ is special equipment from Allah for prophetic service. It reminds one forcibly of Bezalel, who was "filled with the spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding and in knowledge" (Exodus, xxxv, 30, 31). 3. In IV, 169, Isa is called a rūḥ from Allah.

•  

• 4. In XCVII, 4; LXXVIII, 38 and LXX, 4, al-rūḥ is an associate of the angels.

•  

• 5. In XXVI, 193, al-rūḥ al-amin, the faithful rūḥ, comes down upon Muhammad's heart to reveal the Kur'an. In XIX, 17, Allah sends to Maryam "Our rūḥ", who appears to her as well-made man. In XVI, 104, rūḥ al-kudus sent the Kur'an to establish believers. Three other passages state that Allah helps Isa with rūḥ al-kudus (II, 81; ii, 254; v, 109). This interrelation of service and title imply the identity of this angelic messenger, who may be also the rūḥ of 4. Thus in the Kur'an rūḥ does not mean angels in general, nor man's self or person, nor his soul or spirit. The plural does not occur.

 C. Nafas, breath and wind, cognate to nafs in root and to rūḥ in some of its meanings, does not occur in the K ur'an, but is used in the early poetry (F. Krenkow, The poems of Tufail and at-Tmmmak, London 1927, 32). The verb tanaffasa (sura LXXXI, 18) is derived from that meaning, while the only other Kur'anic forms from the same radicals are fa-l-yatanfas1 'l-mutandfisuna (LXXXIII, 26) and are derived in al-Taban, Djdmic al-baydn, Cairo 1321, xxx, 57, probably correctly, from nafisa "he desired".

 III. [ḤadĪth]

Of the early collections of traditions, Malik's al-Muwatta', Cairo 1339, i, 126, uses nasama, which does not occur in the Kur'an, and nafs (ii, 262) for the soul or spirit, while Ibn Hanbal's Musnad uses nasam (vi, 424), nafs (i, 297, ii, 364, vi, 140) and nafs and ruk (iv, 287, 296). Muslim, al-Sakik, Constantinople 1331, viii, 44, 162-3, and al-Bukhari, al-Sakik, Cairo 1314, iv, 133, both use ruk for the human spirit.

 

IV. Dictionaries-Lexica

The Tāj al-`arus (iv, 260) lists 15 meanings for nafs and adds two others from the Lisān al-Arab, as follows: spirit, blood, body, evil eye, presence, specific reality, self, tan, haughtiness, self-magnification, purpose, disdain, the absent, desire, punishment, brother, man. It states that most of these meanings are metaphorical. The Lisān (viii, 119-26) finds examples of these meanings in the poetry and the Kur'an. Lane's Lexicon faithfully reproduces the material (2827b). The lexical treatments of nafs disclose these facts: 1. Any attribution to Allah of nafs as "soul" or "spirit" is avoided. 2. In man, a. nafs and rūḥ are identified, or b. nafs applies to the mind and rūḥ to life, or c, man has nafsān1, two souls, one [VII 881a] vital and the other discriminative, or d. the discriminative soul is double, sometimes commanding and sometimes forbidding.

 V. The influences that affected the post-Kur'anic uses of both nafs and rūḥ were the Christian and Neo-Platonic ideas of rūḥ with human, angelic and divine applications, and the more specifically Aristotelian psychological analysis of nafs. These influences are clearly shown in the records of the religious controversies.

  See EQ.  volume

____________

 

 Early Imami Shi`i Thinkers from Imam `Ali d. 40/661

  Imam `Alī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/ 661 CE.), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, is said to have responded to a question about the nafs  which term in qur'anic and post qur'anic times  has a wide range of meanings; including,  "identity", "person" "soul" and  "Logos-Soul". He identified a variety of meanings for this Arabic term  nafs including the individual human soul and the Divine Universal Logos-Soul'  -- this latter sense being frequently associated in Babi-Baha'i scripture with  the "Reality" or "Identity"  of the (per.) mazhar-i ilahi or "Manifestation of God". This first Shi`i Imam equates this nafs  as the  Divine Logos-Soul  with (among other things) the Sidrat al-muntahā  or the  "Lote-Tree of the Extremity" (see Mulla Muhsin Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, Kalimāt-i-maknūnih cited Fayḍī, La'āli' : 247-9). This tradition ascribed to Imam `Ali is referred to and variously interpreted by both the Bāb and Bahā'-Allāh (refer ESW : 112; cf. the Bāb, Commentary on the Sūra of the Cow (Tafsīr Sūrat al-Baqara) Ms., 59-60).

Hadith from Imam `Ali - Bihar al-anwar   83: 85-6

مولانا أمير المؤمنين عليا عليه السلام فقلت :

 ياأميرالمؤمنين اريد أن
. تعرفني نفسي
قال : يا كميل ! وأي الانفس تريد اعرفك ؟ قلت : يامولاي ھل ھي إلا نفس
واحدة ؟ قال : يا كميل إنما ھي أربعة :

 النامية النباتية ، والحسية الحيوانية ،
والناطقة القدسية ، والكلية الالھية ، ولكل واحدة من ھذه خمس قوى
وخاصيتان ، فالنامية النباتية لھا خمس قوى : ماسكة ،

 وجاذبة ، وھاضمة ،
. ودافعة ، ومربية ، ولھا خاصيتان : الزيادة والنقصان ، وانبعائھا من الكبد
والحسية الحيوانية لھا خمس قوى : سمع وبصر ، وشم ، وذوق ، ولمس ،
 

. ولھا خاصيتان : الرضا والغضب ، وانبعاثھا من القلب
والناطقة القدسية

 لھا خمس قوى : فكر ، وذكر ، وعلم ، وحلم ، ونباھة ،
وليس لھا انبعاث ،

 وھي أشبه الاشياء بالنفوس الفلكية ، ولھا خاصيتان :
. النزاھة والحكمة
والكلية الالھية

 لھا خمس قوى : بھاء في فناء ، ونعيم في شقاء ، وعز في
ذل ، وفقر في غناء ، وصبر في بلاء

 
ولھا خاصيتان : الرضا والتسليم ، وھذه التي مبدؤھا من لله وإليه تعود 
قال لله تعالى : " ونفخت فيه من روحي ( 1 ) " وقال تعالى : " ياأيتھ ا
" ( النفس المطمئنة ارجعئ إلى ربك راضية ( 2
. والعقل في وسط الكل

Majlisi’s comment = أقول : ھذه الاصطلاحات لم تكد توجد في الاخبار
المعتبرة المتداولة ، وھي شبيھة بأضغاث أحلام الصوفية ، وقال بعضھم في
شرح ھذا الخبر : النفسان الاوليان في كلامه عليه السلام مختصان بالجھة
الحيوانية التي ھي محل اللذه والا لم في الدنيا والآخرة والاخيرتان بالجھة
الانسانية ، وھما سعيدة في النشأتين وسيما الاخيرة ، فإنھا لاحظ لھا من
الشقاء ، لانھا ليست من عالم الشقاء ، بل ھي منفوخة من روح لله
فلايتطرق إليھا ألم ھناك من وجه وليست ھي موجودة في أكثر الناس ى ،
بل ربما لم يبلغ من الوف كثيرة واحد إليھا ، وكذلك الاعضاء والجوارح
بمعزل عن اللذة والالم ، ألا ترى إلى المريض إذا نام وھو حي والحسن عنده
موجود والجرح الذي يتألم به في يقظته موجود في العضو ومع ھذا لا يجد
ألما ؟ لان الواجد للا لم قد صرف وجھه عن عالم الشھادة
________________________________________________
إلى البرزخ فما عنده خير ن فإذا استيقظ المريض أي رجع إلى عالم الشھادة
ونزل منزل الحواس قامت به الاوجاع والآلام ، فإن كان في البرزخ في ألم
كما في رؤيا مفزعة مولمة أو في لذة كما في رؤيا حسنة ملذة انتقل منه الا
. - لم واللذة حيث النتقل ، وكذلك حاله في الآخرة - انتھى
وقال العلامة الحلي - نور لله مرقده - في كتاب معارج الفھم اختلف

SELECT EARLY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS…

حنين بن اسحاق العبادي

 Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī (d. 260/873)

Translator from Greek into Arabic for the `Abbasid Caliphs. 

See URLs

• http://www.nestorian.org/hunein_ibn_ishak.html

•  http://www.archive.org/details/HunainIbnIshaqberDieSyrischenUndArabischenGalen-bersetzungen

 

Ḥunain Ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī (d. 260/873) : texts and studies

• Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī; Fuat Sezgin; Māzin ʻAmāwī; Carl Ehrig-Eggert; Frankfurt am Main : Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1999.

 

Isḥāq ibn Hunayn (9-10thcent CE)

 The Arabic translation of the De Anima of  Aristotle”

 ·       رسالة في الفرق بين الروح والنفس

• Risāla fī l-farq bain al-rūḥ wa’l-nafs by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī; ed. Louis Cheikho,  Article in Arabic  Publication: Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq (d.260/873) : texts and studies : Reprinted from al-Mashriq (Beirut), 14 (1911), pp. 94-109. pp. 245-260 [ed. by] Louis Cheikho.

Qusta Ibn Luqa al-Baʻlabakkī (820-d.      912 CE)

 Melkite Christian scientist, philosopher and translator from Greek and Syriac into Arabic. His sixty or more original works are listed in the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm. Ibn al-Nadim wrote of him, "He is an excellent translator; he knew well Greek, Syriac, and Arabic; he translated texts and corrected many translations. Many are his medical writings."  (ed. Flugel, 234).

• Risālah fī al-farq bayn al-Rūḥ wa al-Nafs, ed. L. Cheikho in the Maqālāt Falsafiyyah (Beirut, 1911; Reprint Cairo, 1985), pp. 117-13.
•  
• Ibn Sīnā. wa-yalīhā Kitāb al-farq bayn al-rūḥ wa-al-nafs / taʼlīf Quṣtā b. Lūqā ; ʻUniya bi-našrihi Hilmi Ziya Ülken.

Latin  trans.

•  De differentia spiritus et animae (On the Difference between the spirit and thje soul’) by Iohannes Hispanus (Ibn Da`ūd). Ed. C. Barach in Bibliotheca philosophorum mediae aetatis . Innsbruck, 1878.  

 This work “was one of the few works not attributed to Aristotle that was included in a list of ‘books to be 'read,' or lectured on, by the Masters of the Faculty of Arts, at Paris in 1254,’ as part of their study of Natural Philosophy, [2]. This translation was made by Joannes Hispalensis, (John of Seville, fl. 1140)” (Wiki QIL).

 LATIN TRANS.

Qusṭā Ibn-Lūqā al-Baʻlabakkī + Alfredus, Sereshalensis+ Johannes, Hispanus+.; Carl Sigmund Barach :  

 Johanne Hispalensi (=  John  of Seville,  fl,       ), Latin trans. 1877

• Excerpta e libro Alfredi Anglici de motu cordis item Costa-ben-Lucae de ifferentia animae et spiritus liber translatus a Johanne Hispalensi. Als Beiträge zur Geschichte der Antropolophieund Psychologie des Mittelalters nach hs. Ueberliefer. Hrsg. u. mit e. Abh. u. Anm. vers.  Innsbruck : Wagner, 1878. In the Series: Bibliotheca philosophorum mediae aetatis -Carl Sigmund Barach.

•  
• Risālah fī al-farq bayna al-rūḥ wa-al-nafs by قسطا بن لوقا Qusṭā ibn Lūqā; Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī; Muḥammad ʻAlī Isbir.  Damascus : Dār al-Yanābiʻ, 2006.
•  

 Rüdiger Arnzen, (1998)

• Aristoteles' De anima : eine verlorene spätantike Paraphrase in arabischer und persischer Überlieferung . Leiden, Brill, 1998:  ISBN 9004106995.

Kruk, R (1979)

• The Arabic Version of Aristotle's Parts of Animals. Royal Netherlands Academy of Verhandelingen Der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie Van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, 1979.  ISBN-10: 0720484677 / ISBN-13: 9780720484670

 Sydney H. Griffith,

• The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2008),

 Samir Khalil Samir and Paul Nwyia,

• Une correspondance islamo-chrétienne entre ibn al-Munaggim, Hunaym ibn Ishaq et Qusta ibn Luqa, Patrologia Orientalis, 40:4, no. 185 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981).

 

  Pseudo-Aristotle and Islamic Neoplatonism.

  Islamic Neoplatonism, the thought of Plotinus (c.205-270 CE), is succinctly defined by I. R. Netton as having "its classical emphasis on eternal emanation and hierarchy, an unknowable Divinity and a number of major emanated hypostases like Intellect and Soul". Netton, among other things, notes the centrality of the Theology of Aristotle  (Theologia Aristotelis) and that Neoplatonic thought influenced the Isma'ilis. To this it should be added that aspects of Islamic Neoplatonism  markedly influenced currents within forms of Imami Shi`ism, Shaykhism and the Babi and Baha'i religions (see Netton, Popular Dictionary of Islam, 2nd ed. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997, p.192-3).

The Islamic Plotinus and the “Theology of Aristotle”

Al-Kindi (d. c. 260/873])

Abū Yusūf Ya`qūb Ibn Ishāq al-Kindi ( d. c. 260 /873)

 al-Kindi's On the Definitions

Kitab al-Hudud On the Definitions exists in three known manuscripts which are found in Istanbul, London, and Lisbon.

1st ed. M. A. Abu Ridah 1952, based solely on the Istanbul  (Aya Sofiya 4832) manuscript.

 

Abū Yusūf Ya`qūb Ibn Ishāq al-Kindi ( d. c. 252 /866 [870] AH = 800- c. 870 CE)

 

He is known as the `Father of Islamic Philosophy’  for was a major figure in the development  of Islamic Aristotelianism and Neoplatonic philosophy and held to a harmony between Qur’anic thought and philosophical perspectives. He authored an Fī’l-Falsafa al-ūlā  (“Epistle on First Philosophy”) 

• Risāla fī al-`aql,  ed.  J. Jolivet in  `L’ intellect selon Kindi (Leiden, 1971), after pp. 158-160.

There is a double medieval version published by A. Nagy 33 due to the existence of two Latin  translations:

• Gundisalvus trans.  with the title De intellectu,
• Gerard of Cremona, trans. with the title De ratione. 34 Gerard's

 See  ADD   in Charles E. Butterworth and ADD Kessel eds. The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe (Leiden, New York, London: E. J. Brill, 1994) pp. 7-30.

Abu Naṣr Muhammad al-Farābī, ( 265-339 AH =870-950 CE )

 

Islamic Neoplatonic philosopher known as `The Second Master’ after Aristotle.  He was a major figure in the evolution of Islamic theology and metaphysics.  

Risala fi'l-aql ("Treatise on the Intellect")

• Risala fi'l-aql.

•  

• Exists in Medieval Hebrew translations.

• see Jewish Quarterly Review, 93 (2002): 29-115 + 34-6.

Risala fi mahiyyat al-nafs ("Epistle on the Quiddity of the Soul"),

• Risala fi mahiyyat al-nafs ("Epistle on the Quiddity of the Soul"), attributed to al-Farabi by Ibn Abi Usaybi‘a and al-Qifti 

 Freudenthal, Gad.

• LA Quiddite de l-Ame, Traite Populaire Neoplatonisant Faussement Attribute a al-Farābī : Traduction Annotee et Commentee'  in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, vol. 13 (2003) pp. 173-237.   

Davidson, Herbert A.

• Alfarabi, Avicenna, & Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, & Theories of Human Intellect  Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA 384pp. ISBN-10: 0195074238 + ISBN-13: 9780195074239

 Ibn Sina-Avicenna

 

  ابن سينا - Ibn Sīnā  = Avicenna.

Abu `Ali al-Husayn, Ibn Sīnā = Avicenna (b. Bukhara, 369- d. Hamadan  428 AH = 979-1037 CE).

He was a polymathic Islamic thinker who wrote much on Medicine including his Kitāb al-Shifā’ (Book of Healing / the Cure), metaphysics and  other aspects of Neo-Platonic philosophy.

 General:

Dimitri Gutas

• Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society (2Nd-4Th/8Th-10th Centuries), ADD: Routledge 1998, 230pp. ISBN -10: 0415061334 / ISBN-13: 9780415061339
• Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition. Ashgate Pub. Co. 2001.

•  Risāla fi [ma`ānī] al-`aql.  Ed. M. Bouyges 1938

Kitāb al-Shifā’ (“Book of the Healing”)

 An Arabic critical ed. directed by I. Madhkūr of Cairo in 4 main parts each with several books or subdivisions : I. Logic, II. Physics,  III. Mathematics,  IV. Metaphysics.

• al-Nafs = De anima 3.   an-Nafs = De anima by Ibn-Sīnā.; Ibrāhīm Madkūr; Ǧūrǧ Qanawātī; Saʻīd Zāyid Cairo: al-Haiʼa al-ʻĀmma li-Šuʼūn al-Maṭābiʻ al-Amīrīya, 1975.
• Ibn Sīnā wa-mad̲hab́uhu fi n-nafs by Fatḥallāh Ḫulaiyif,  1974

 

• al-Shifāʼ : ṭabīʻīyāt ʼal-Nafs 5.  by Avicenna; ed. Ibrāhīm Madkūr; Georges C Anawati; Saʻīd Zāyid  Cairo : al-Maktabah al-ʻArabiyya : ʼal-Hayʼah ʼal-Miṣrīyah ʼal-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1960 [1963]
• ublisher: Bairūt : Ǧāmiʻat Bairūt al-ʻArabīya, 1974.
• Ibn-Sīnā wa'n-nafs al-insānīya by Muḥammad Ḫair Ḥasan ʻIrqsūsī; Ḥasan Mullā ʻUtmān Beirut : Muʼassasat ar-Risāla, 1403/ 1982.  
• al-Nafs al-bashariyyah inda Ibn Sina  Beirut : Dar al-Mashriq, 1986.
• Naẓarīyat al-Nafs bayn Ibn Sīnā wa-al-Ghazālī 17.   نظرية النفس بين إبن سينا والغزالي /  by Jamāl Rajab Sayyid Sīdbī  Cairo : al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 2000.
• an-Nafs min kitāb aš-Šifā/ Ibn-Sīnā. ed. Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda al-Āmulī. Qum : Muʼassasa-i Būstān-i Kitāb, 1385h.s/ 2006-7. 
• Al- Sifa’ (Book of Healing), ed. Tehran 1886,
• ed. del Millenario, I–XXII, K 1952–1983;
• Avicenna latinus, I–VI, Lei 1972–1989);
•  
• Aḥwāl al-nafs : risālah fī al-nafs wa-baqāʾihā wa-maʻādihā / lil-Shaykh al-raʾīs Ibn Sīnā,  ed. and introduced by Aḥmad Fuʾād al-Ahwānī. [Cairo] : Ṭubiʻa bi-Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʻArabīyah, 1952. 203pp. 
• Al- Nagat (Book of salvation; ed. K 1913, 19382, ed. M. Danes Pazhuh, Tehran 1985; ed. M. Fajri, Beirut 1985);
• Danes Nameh ‘Ala’i (Book of knowledge [dedicated] ‘Ala’-[I-Dawla]; ed. M. Mo‘in, M. Meskar, I–III, Tehran 1952, repr. 1972;
• French trans. M. Achena, H. Massé, Avicenna. Le Livre de Science, I–II, P 1955–1986);
•  Kitab al-isarat wa-l-tanbihat (Book of indications and admonishments; ed. Forget, Lei 1892; ed. S. Dunya, I–III, K 1957–1960; repr. I–IV, 1968–1971;
• French trans. A. M. Goichon, Le livre des directives et remarques, P 1951; partial trans. in Spanish, M. Cruz Hernández, A. Tres escritos esotéricos, M1 1998);
• Kitab al- insaf (Book of justice and right division); ed. ‘A. Badawi, Aristu‘ ind al-
• ‘arab, K 1947, repr. Kuwait 1978; partial French trans. G. Vadja, Les notes d’Avicenne sur la Théologie d’Aristote, RThom 51 (1951), 346–406);
• Kitab al-hidaya (Guide of wisdom); ed. M. ‘Abduh, K 1974);
• Al-Mabda wa-l-ma‘ad (Book of the beginning and return; ed. A. Nurani, Tehran 1984);
• Mantiq al- masriqiyin (Eastern logic, ed. K 1910, repr. Beirut 1982);
• Kitab al- hudud (Book of definitions; ed. Goichon, K 1963; French trans. A. M.Goichon, Introduction à Avicenne: son Epître des définitions, P 1933);
• Al-Mubahatat (Discussions; ed. A. Badawi, in: Aristu ‘ind al-‘arab, K 1947, 122–239; ed. M. Bidarfar, Qom 1992; French trans. J. R. Michot, Bru 1994);
• Risala Hayy ibn Yaqzan (The story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan; ed. Mehren, in: Traité mystique d[…] A., Lei 1889–1899;
•  ed. H. Corbin, Avicenne et le Récit visionnaire, I—II Tehran- P 1952–1954, repr. Tehran 1987);
• al-Qanun fī-l-ṭibb (Canon of medicine), 1877; ed. Al-Qass, I–V, Beirut 1987).
•  

Ei² Nafs-bib.

“for the relation between Aristotle and Ibn Sīna, see

S. Landauer,

·         Die Psychologie des Ibn Sina, in ZDMG, xxix (1875), 335-418.

·         English tr. by A.E. van Dyck, Avicenna's offering to the Prince, Verona 1906

M. Horten,

·         Die philosophischen Systeme im Islam, Bonn 1912

T. J. de Boer,

·         The history of philosophy in Islam, London 1903.

·          

القصيدة العينية

 al-Qaṣīdah al-ʻaynīyah

• ابن سينا ومذهبه في النفس : دراسة في القصيدة العينية  = Ibn Sīnā wa-madhhabuhu fī al-nafs : dirāsah fī al-qaṣīdah al-ʻaynīyah   
• Ibn Sīnā wa-madhhabuhu fī al-nafs : dirāsah fī al-qaṣīdah al-ʻaynīyah by Fathalla Kholeif; Avicenna Beirut: Jāmiʻat Bayrūt al-ʻArabīyah, 1974.
•  
• النفس البشرية عند ابن سينا : …  = al-Nafs al-basharīyah ʻinda Ibn Sina; nusus jama aha wa-rattabaha wa-qaddama laha wa-allaqa alayha Albir Nasri Nadir.  Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq (al-Matba`a al-Kathulikiya) [1968]

• Naẓarīyat an-nafs baina Ibn-Sīnā wa-'l-Ġazzālī 8.   Naẓarīyat an-nafs baina Ibn-Sīnā wa-'l-Ġazzālī by Ǧamāl Raǧab Sīdbī. Cairo: al-Haiʼa al-Miṣrīya al-ʻĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 2000.
• Ǧawāb sitt ʻašar masʼila li-Abī Rayḥān ; aǧwibat masāʼil saʼala ʻanhā Abū Raiḥān [wa-rasāʼil u_krā by al-Ḥusayn b ʻAbd Allāh Ibn Sīnā; Hilmi Ziya Ülken; Qustā b. Lūqā. Isṭanbūl, 1953.

al-Ḥusayn b ʻAbd Allāh Ibn Sīnā; Hilmi Ziya Ülken; Qustā b. Lūqā.

• Ǧawāb sitt ʻašar masʼila li-Abī Rayḥān ; aǧwibat masāʼil saʼala ʻanhā Abū Raiḥān [wa-rasāʼil u_krā. Franse titel: Les opuscules d'Ibn Sina et le Livre de la différence entre l'esprit et l'âme / par Qosta b. Luqa. Description: [IV], 164, [46] p. : ill. ; in-8. Other Titles: Les opuscules d'Ibn Sina et le Livre de la différence entre l'esprit et l'âme, Kitāb al-Farq bayn al-rūḥ wa-al-nafs . (= Series: Ibn Sina risâleleri, 2; Istanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi yayınları, 1953.
•  
•   The canon of medicine of Avicenna    The Classics of Medicine Library, 612pp. ISBN -10: B00071 APKM,
•  

Avicenna-commentaries:

ʻAbd al-Raʼūf ibn Tāj al-ʻĀrifīn Munāwī

• Kitāb Sharḥ al-ʻAllāmah Zayn al-Dīn Muḥammad al-madʻū ʻAbd al-Raʼūf ibn Tāj al-ʻĀrifīn ibn ʻAlī ibn Zayn al-ʻĀbidīn al-Ḥaddādī al-Qāhirī al-maʻrūf bi-al-Munāwī al-mawlūd sanat 925, al-mutawaffá bi-al-Qāhirah ṣabīḥat yawm al-Khamīs, al-thālith wa-al-ʻishrīn min Ṣafar al-Khayr, sanat 1031 ʻalá Qaṣīdat al-nafs li-Ibn Sīnā, wa-fīhi taʻrīf al-rūḥ, muqābalan ʻalá naskhat al-muʼallif, raḥimahu Allāh. [Cairo] Miṣr : Maṭbaʻat al-Mawsūʻāt, 1900. Includes the text of Avicenna's poem al-ʻAynīyah. A commentary by al-Munāwī on Avicenna's poem on the soul; al-ʻAynīyah, also known as Qaṣīdat al-nafs. 119, 2, 2 p. ; 25 cm. 

Mazhar,  Shah

•  The General Principles of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine  ISBN -10: 0718922077 / ISBN -13: 9780718922078

Rahman,  F.

• Avicenna's Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with Historico-Philosophical Notes & Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition,  Oxford : ADD  ISBN 10: B0018A2GQ2,ISBN 13: B0018A2GQ2

Mamura, Michael E.  (2005)

• Avicenna. The Metahysics of the Healing. Provo: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 2005.

Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.)

• Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment.  Springer Verlag  2007, 345pp. ISBN -10: 1402060831, ISBN -13: 9781402060830

 Madelung, Wilfred:

• `An Isma’ili Interpretation of Ibn Sīnā’s Qaṣīdat al-nafs’ in  Todd Lawson (ed.) Reason and Inspiration in Islam, Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Islamic Thought. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.,  2005, pp. 157-168.

 

• Before and After Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group (Islamic Philosophy, Theology & Science: Texts & Studies) Brill,  2003. ISBN:9004129782

LATIN TRANSLATION

Latin trans. of Kitāb al-Shifā’  (“Book of the Healing”), Pt. II. Physics Bk. VI. = De Anima, `On the Soul’. 

 Latin trans. of Kitāb al-Shifā’  (“Book of the Healing”),   Pt. II. Physics Bk. VI. `On the Soul’.  the section `On the Soul’ /De Anima.

“The translation into Latin was begun early, but took a long time to be finished. By the end of the twelfth century, only the sections belonging to the Metaphysics and some parts of the Logic and Phys­ics, specifically, De Anima, had been translated. After many years of research by M-Th. d'Alverny, we have finally acquired a reliable and deep knowledge of the history of this translation.” (Joseph Puig,  in Butterworth and Kessel (eds.),  1994, p.17).

S. Van Riet (ed.)

• Avicenna Latinus :Liber de Anima I-III, ed. S. Van Riet. Louvain-Leiden, 1972.

Joseph Puig, in Butterworth and Kessel (eds.) 1994,  further writes:

 “As for the De Anima or Liber VI Naturalium, d'Alverny's above mentioned articles and the critical edition by S. Van Riet make possible an exact understanding of its transmission. We have already seen (above, note 18) in its introduction an illustrative example of the team-work of Ibn Da’ud and Gundisalvus, although Ibn Da’ud insisted that he had the main responsibility (nobis praecipiente).

It is known that between 1152 and 1166 this book was available in its Latin version. It is a systematic account of man, his soul, and his activities that takes its principles from Aristotle's De Anima. However it develops many new features and especially counters the materialist interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisia  that made it difficult to bring Aristotle and the Christian teachings on the soul into harmony.

S. Van Riet's exemplary edition of the De Anima includes as an appendix a fragment belonging to De medicinis cordialibus,  but the books of the section following in the Arabic original are not extant in Latin and we do not know whether Ibn Da5ud ever did translate them, as he apparently intended.

We can also read the Liber de Philosophia Prima sive Scientia Divina in Van Riet's edition.  Several of the manuscripts she has used for this edition name Dominicus Gundisalvus as translator; only one names Gerard of Cremona.  For the style we turn to Dominicus, but it is unclear whether he was helped by Ibn Da3ud or somebody else.

To sum up, the major sections of the Shifa' as represented by the Scientia divina and the De Anima could be read in Latin no later than 1190.

  Latin  trans.  probably by Dominicus Gundisalvus and John of Seville 1508 CE

• First printed with Avicenna's works in Venice in 1508.

Gilson

• ADD TITLE in AHDLMA (1929-30), pp. 5-158.
• Les sources Graeco-arabes del’augustinisme avicennisant, pp. 115-126 (with French translation) .

Dag Nikolaus Hasse,

• Avicenna's "De Anima" in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160-1300.    Warburg Institute. 320pp. ISBN-10: 0854811257;  ISBN-13: 9780854811250

 Select Early Islamic Thinkers – EI²

 A. Al-Ash'arī [q.v.] (H. Ritter, Die dogmatischen Lehren der Anhaenger des Islam von Abu Ί-Hasan All bin Ismā`il al-Asharī, Istanbul 1929) reports the Rafidiyya doctrines of the incarnation of rūḥ Allāh in Adam and its transmigration through the prophets and others (6, 46), as well as the conflicting positions that man is body [djism) only, body and spirit, and spirit (rūḥ) only (61, 329 ff.). His creed of the orthodox (290-297) omits any statement about the nature of man.

 B. Al-Baghdadī [q.v.] (al-Fark bayn al-firak, Cairo 1328) records the same heretical doctrines about man's nature (28, 117 ff., 241 ff.), says the transmigration theories were held by Plato and the Jews (254) and describes the incarnation beliefs of the Hululiyya sects [see hulul] among whom he includes the Halladjiyya (247). His position is "The life of Allah is without rūḥ and nourishment and all the arwāḥ are created, in opposition to the Christian doctrine of the eternity of the Father, Son and Spirit" (325).

 C. Ibn Hazm [q.v.] uses nafs and ruh interchangeably of man's soul (Kitab al-Fisal fi Ί-milal, Cairo 1317-21, v, 66). He excludes from Islam all who hold metempsychosis views, among whom he includes the physician-philosopher Muhammad b. Zakariyya' al-Razi (i, 90 ff., iv, 187-8). He rejects absolutely the doctrine of some of the Ash'ariyya of the continual recreation of the rūḥ (iv, 69). He taught that Allah created the spirits of all Adam's progeny before the angels were commanded to prostrate to him (sura VII, 171), and that these spirits exist in al-Barzakh [q.v.] in the nearest heaven until the angel blows them into embryos (IV, 70).

 D. Al-Shahrastanī [q.v.] (Kltabal-Milal waΊ-nlhal, ed. Cureton, i, London 1842), in his description of the belief of the pagan Arabs concerning survival after death, does not use the terms nafs or rūḥ, but says the blood becomes a wraith-like bird that visits the grave every hundred years. One of his most important sections (203-40) deals with the orthodox and heterodox doctrines of al-rūḥ. Al-Hunafā' [see hanīf], or true believers, debate with al-Sabi'a [q.v.], who are dualists, emanationists and gnostics. His account of the views of the Sabi'a faithfully reflects the doctrines of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā' (Rasa'll, Bombay 1305), who taught that man is a whole compounded of a corporeal body and a spiritual nafs (i/2, 14), and that the substance (djawhar) of the nafs descended from the spheres (al-afak). But al-Shahrastanī rejects the Neo-Platonic idea that human souls (nufus) are dependent upon the souls of the superhuman spirit world (al-nufus al-rūḥāniyyat) (210, 224-5), and the Hermetic doctrines that the nafs is essentially evil (236) and that salvation consists in the release of the ruh from material bodies (226-7). He applies the term rūḥānī to all spirits, good and evil (213). His description of the natural man (216 ff.) with three souls, vegetative, animal and human, each with its own source, place and powers, resembles that of the Ikhwan al-Safa' (Rasa'll, i/2, 48 ff.). Indeed, the Aristotelian analysis of the human soul as given in De Anima, and handed on by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Porphyry, had been adopted with little modification by the Muslim [VII 881b] philosophers, such as al-KindT [q.v.], al-Farabī [q.v.] each of whom wrote a Kitab al-Nafs, Ibn Sīna [q.v.] who wrote two, and Miskawayh [q.v.], whose Tahdhtb al-akhlak has the same immaterial (1) and functional (7) psychology for its ethical basis. Al-Shahrastanī  achieved the long-needed interpretation of the conflicting usages of nafs and rūḥ in the Greek and Christian heritage, and in the Kur'an and Muslim tradition. But the philosophers, even with his support, were not able to force the Greek psychology upon orthodox Islam. The mutakalllmun [see kalam] and the great majority of Muslims broadened the Kur'anic terminology, but retained the traditional views of the nature of the soul as a direct creation of Allah having various qualities.”

 

Abū Ḥamīd Muhammad Al-Ghazalī :  غزالي   

( b. Ṭūs. Khurāsān, 450-505 AH = 1058-1111CE).

Major Sunnī and Sufi thinker and theologian who opposed aspects of Shī`ī, especially Ismā’īlī thought, and of Islamic philosophy. His Iḥyā `ulūm al-dīn  (The Revival of Religious Sciences) remains a centrally important text which even exists in revised Shi`i forms such as that of 

 EI² Nafs- al-Ghazālī  

“VI. Aristotle's principle of the incorporeal character of spirit had nevertheless found a permanent place in Muslim doctrine through the influence of Islam's greatest theologian, al-Ghazalī [q.v.]. In al-Tahanawī's Dictionary of the technical terms, ed. Sprenger, Calcutta 1862, are extracts of the doctrines of al-Ghazalī on man's rūḥ and nafs. He defines man as a spiritual substance (ajawhar rūḥānī), not confined in a body, nor imprinted on it, nor joined to it, nor separated from it, just as Allah is neither without nor within the world, and likewise the angels. It possesses knowledge and perception, and is therefore not an accident (547 at top; cf. Tahafut al-falasifa, Cairo 1302, 72). He devotes the second section of al-Risāla al-laduniyya (Cairo 1327, 7-14) to explain the words nafs, rūḥ and kalb (heart), which are names for his simple substance that is the seat of the intellectual processes. It differs from the animal rūḥ, a refined but mortal body in which reside the senses. He identifies the incorporeal rūḥ with al-nafs al-mutma'inna and al-rūḥ al-amīn of the Kur'an. He then uses the term nafs also for the "flesh" or lower nature, which must be disciplined in the interests of ethics.

 [VII. – See Below Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razī

This position of al-Ghazalī's was that of the theistic philosophers in general, as well as some of the Mu'tazila and the Shī'a, but it has never dominated Islam. The great analytical philosopher and theologian, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razī [q.v.], could not bring himself to accept it. In his Mafātiḥ al-ghayb, v, 435, commenting on sura XVII, 85, he quotes as the opinion of al-Ghazalī the statement that is in the latter's Tahāfut (72; cf. also al-Razī's Mukassal, Cairo 1323, 164), but on 434 (l. 9 and 8 from below) of the Mafātiḥ, he acknowledges the strength of the corporeal doctrine, and in his Ma`ālim uṣūl al-dīn, on the margin of the Muḥassal, 117, he definitely rejects as baseless (bātil) the view of the philosophers that the nafs is a substance (djawhar) which is not a body (djism) and not corporeal.” ]

 Ghazālī Writings

 Iḥyā `ulūm al-dīn  (The Revival of Religious Sciences)

• ADD
• ADD

Translated by Mawlana Fazil Karim

• http://www.ghazali.org/ihya/english/index.html
•  

• Translated by T. J. Winter  (Abdul Hakim Murad). The Islamic Texts Society 1995

Al-Maḍnūn bihi `an [`alā] ghair ahlihi (loosely, "On the Soul")

 المضنون به *على غير أهله = Al-Maḍnūn bihi `an [alā] ghair ahlih.

("Miserly scrapings about it against other than its people" ["On the Soul"]). 

• Al-Maḍnūn bihi `an [`alā] ghair ahlihi, Cairo, 1303/1309 + In margin of ADD/ Maktabat al-Tujjariyya: Cairo, 1328/1910.

• Al-Maḍnūn bihi `an [`alā] ghair ahlihi in Majmu`at Rasa'il al-Imam al-Ghazali...  vol. 4  pp. 86-116 + 117-128 ( al-Maḍnūn al-saghir `Short version'). Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-`Ilmiyya, 1414/1994.

• Al-Maḍnūn bihi `an [`alā] ghair ahlihi, ed. Riyād Mustafa `Abd-Allāh, Damascus: al-Hikma, 1996. 

•  The Mysteries of Human Soul Being English translation of all-Ghazāli’s Al-Maḍnūn bihi `alā ghairi ahlihi; trans. Abdu’l-Qayyum “Shafaq” Hazārvi, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1981, 81pp. This seems to be a not very reliable translation of a `short version' of this text.

 Tahāfut al-falāsafa (“The Incoherence of the Philosophers”)

• ADD
• The Incoherence of the Philosophers by Imam Al-Ghazali,  Trans Michael M. Marmura

 معارج القدس في مدارج معرفة النفس    = Ma`ārij al-quds fi madārij ma`rifat al-nafs; 

(The Night Ascents of holiness respecting the gnosis of the soul")

• معارج القدس في مدارج معرفة النفس
• :  وتليها القصيدة الهائية والقصيدة التائية
• Maʻārij al-quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs : wa-tulīhā al-Qaṣīdah al-haʼīya  wa’l-
• Qaṣīda  al-tāʼīya. Cairo: Maktaba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubra, 1963
• Maʻārij al-Quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs. ADD  1975
• Maʻārij al-Quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs by Ghazzālī  1980 Beirut : Dār al-Āfāq
• al-Jadīdah, 1980.
• Maʻārij al-Quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs in Majmu`at Rasa'il al-Imam al-Ghazzali...  vol. 1 pp. 55-114. Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-`Ilmiyya, 1414/1994.
• معارج القدس في مدارج معرفة النفس = Maʻārij al-quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs
• Ed. Maḥmūd Bījū, Damascus: Dār al-Albāb. 1998.
•   معارج القدس في مدارج معرفة النفس = Maʻārij al-quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs
• Baghdād : al-Maktabah al-ʻĀlamīyah, 1990.
• Maʻārij al-quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs, ed. Yaḥyā A. Abū Rīshāh, Irbid, Jordan: Dar al-Ḥilal for Translation and Publication, 2001.
• On the soul = Maʻārij al-quds fī madārij maʻrifat al-nafs by Ghazzālī; Yaḥyá A Abū Rīshah.  Irbid, Jordan : Dar Al-Hilal for Translation & Pub. 2001.

 Shammas Yusuf E.

• The Ascent to the Divine through the Path of Self-Knowledge by Imam Al-Ghazali) Translated by Yusuf E. Shammas URL =
• http://www.ghazali.org/books/shammas.pdf

 Mishkat al-anwār (“The Niche of Lights”)

• Mishkāt al-anwār wa-miṣbāḥ al-asrār.  ed. Riyāḍ Muṣṭafá ʻAbd Allāh, Dasmasus + Beirut : Dār al-Ḥikmah, 1986.

• Mishkāt al-anwār wa-miṣbāḥ al-asrār in Majmu`at Rasa'il al-Imam al-Ghazzali...  vol. 4 pp. 3-83. Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-`Ilmiyya, 1414/1994.
• ADD

Kīmīyā’ al-Sa`āda  (“The Alchemy of Happiness”)

• Kīmīyā’ al-Sa`āda in Majmu`at Rasa'il al-Imam al-Ghazali...  vol. 5  pp. 121-155.  Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-`Ilmiyya, 1414/1994.
• The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam Al-Ghazali , Translated by Claud Field, London: Sufi Trust,  Octagon Press, 1980 + Armonk, New York: M.E, Sharpe, 1991.
• http://www.sunnah.org/tasawwuf/alchemy.htm
•  

Ahmed, Haseeb,

• `Al-Ghazali and The Pursuit of Perfecting the Soul’ : Online PDF at :
• http://www.hahmed.com/docs/Al%20Ghazali%20and%20The%20Soul.pdf

Abū Saʻdah, Muḥammad Ḥusaynī

• al-Āthār al-Sīnawīyah fī madhhab al-Ghazzālī fī al-nafs al-insānīyah. al-Ḥaram [Cairo] : : Dār Abū Ḥuraybah lil-Ṭibāʻah, 1991. 199 pp.

•  

 ابن العربي،  

Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al`Arabī   (b. Murcia, 560- d. Damascus,  638 AH = 1165-1240 CE).

 

• رسالة روح القدس في محاسبة النفس  = Risālat rūḥ al-quds fī muḥāsabat al-nafs
• Dimashq : Muʼassasat "al-ʻIlm" lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 1964.
• Risalat rūh al-qudus fī muḥāsabat al-nafs wa'l-Mabādī ̕wa-'l-ġajāt fī-mā tataḍammanuhū ḥurūf al-mǔʻǵam min al-ʻaǵai̕b wa-'l-ājāt : ṭabʻca muzajjada, munaqqaha, muṣaḥḥaḥa ʻalā nusḫa ʻalaihā tauqīʻ al-mua̕llif bi-ḫaṭṭihī ; ḥaqqaqahū wa-quaddama lahū [ed.]  ʻIzza Ḥuṣriyya,  Damascus:  Matba`at al-ʻIlm,  1389/1970.  2 Treatises of Ibn al-`Arabī  … روح القدس في محاسبة النفس /
• روح القدس في مناصحة النفس = Rūḥ al-Quds fī muḥāsabat al-nafs,  Ibn al-ʻArabī; ed.  ʻAlī bin Aḥmad Sāsī. Tūnis : al-Dār al-ʻArabīyah lil-Kitāb, 2004.
• روح القدس في مناصحة النفس = Rūḥ al-Qudus fī munāṣaḥat al-nafs
•  Ed. Ḥāmid Ṭāhir,  Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 2005.

 

Maḥmūd Maḥmūd Ghurāb -  Ibn al-ʻArabī,

• شرح رسالة روح القدس في محاسبة النفس من کلام الشيخ الأکبر محيي الدين بن العربي  = Sharḥ Risālat rūḥ al-quds fī muḥāsabat al-nafs min kalām al-Shaykh al-akbar Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʻArabī, Damascus : Maṭbaʻat Zayd ibn Thābit, 1986.
•  

Chittick, Willam C.  (2007)

• `The View from Nowhere: Ibn al-`Arabī on the Soul’s Temporal Unfolding’ in  Anna  Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life.  AA Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2007.

   

 فخر الدين الرازي

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razi ( d. 606 /1210 )

Tafsir

Muhammad ibn `Umar, Abū  al-Su`ud Muhammad ibn Muhammad,  Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (b. Rayy [= Rhagai near Tehran] c. 543-d. near Herat 606 AH = 1149-1210 CE).

“EI2

VII. [cf. above on al-Ghazzalī]

This position of al-Ghazalī's was that of the theistic philosophers in general, as well as some of the Mu'tazila and the Shī'a, but it has never dominated Islam. The great analytical philosopher and theologian, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razī [q.v.], could not bring himself to accept it. In his Mafātiḥ al-ghayb, v, 435, commenting on sura XVII, 85, he quotes as the opinion of al-Ghazalī the statement that is in the latter's Tahāfut (72; cf. also al-Razī's Mukassal, Cairo 1323, 164), but on 434 (l. 9 and 8 from below) of the Mafātiḥ, he acknowledges the strength of the corporeal doctrine, and in his Ma`ālim uṣūl al-dīn, on the margin of the Muḥassal, 117, he definitely rejects as baseless (bātil) the view of the philosophers that the nafs is a substance (djawhar) which is not a body (djism) and not corporeal.”

 كتاب النفس والروح وشرح قواهما

• Kitāb al-nafs wa l-rūḥ wa sharḥ quwā-humā (Book on the Soul and the Spirit and their Faculties)
• Kitāb al-nafs-wa-al-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhā by Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar Rāzī; ed. M Ṣaghīr Ḥasan Maʻṣūmī .  [Islamabad]: Maʻhad al-Abḥāth al-Islāmīyah [al-tamhīd 1968]
• Kitab al-nafs wa al-Rūḥ, ed by Muhammad Saghir Hasan al-Ma'sumī.  Islamabad, Pakistan : Islamic Research Institute, 1968  220 p.
• al-Nafs wa-al-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā., Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar Rāzī Islamabad : Maṭbūʻāt Maʻhad al-Abḥāth al-Islāmīyah, 1968.
•  Kitāb al-nafs wa-al-rūḥ wa-sharḥ quwāhumā.  Ed.  M Ṣaghīr Ḥasan Maʻṣūmī  [د.ن.]، Tihrān : [s.n.], 1406/ 1985-6.
•  

 English trans. of the above entitled Imām Rāzī's `Ilm al-Akhlāq with introduction and commentary by M. Saghir Hasan Ma`sumi. Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad Pakistan. Lahore: Ripon Printing Press, Mirza Mohammad Sadiq + Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute; Ijaz Ahmed Zuberi,   n.d. [c. 1969] xi +334pp.  *  

 

 بن رشد‎  : 

`Abu’l-Walīd Muhammad ibn Aḥmad Ibn  Rushd = Averroes.

( b. Cordoba   - d. Marrakesh  = 1126-1198 CE )

 

 13^th cent French ms. of the  Averroes” “Large Commentary on De Anima”.

 Prolific and polymathic Spanish-Andalucian, Maliki legal scholar, judge, medic, philosopher, theologian  and major commentator on Ibn Sina-Avicenna and many of the extant works of Aristotle (in Arabic translation).

 The three commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima:

• [1] Kitāb al-nafs =  "Book on the Soul"  =  “Short Commentary on De anima”
• [2] Talkhīṣ kitāb al-nafs = “Middle Commentary on De anima”
• [3] Sharḥ kitāb al-nafs or  Sharḥ kitāb al-nafs li-ʾArisṭūṭālīs. = “Large Commentary on the De Anima”

SEE : http://www.thomasinstitut.uni-koeln.de/averroes_db/bibliography_query.php

 Note also :

• Talkhīṣ al-ḥiss wa-l-maḥsūs = “Commentary on the Parva naturalia” dating to 1170 CE.  

Various `Treatises on the Intellect’

• Kitāb fī l-faḥṣ hal yumkin al-ʿaql ʾallaḏī fīnā wa-huwa al-musammā bi-l-hayūlānī ʾan yaʿqila al-ṣuwar al-mufāriqa bi-ʾāḫirihī ʾau lā yumkin ḏālika wa-huwa al-maṭlūb ʾallaḏī kāna ʾArisṭūṭālīs waʿadanā bi-l-faḥṣ ʿanhū fī kitāb al-nafs (Aka: ʾIggeret ʾefšarut ha-debequt) = “Enquiry whether the intellect in us, named the material intellect, is able to know in the end the separate forms or not”  or “Epistle on the possibility of conjunction”
• Maqāla fī ttiṣāl al-ʿaql al-mufāriq bi-l-ʾinsān (Aka: Masʾala fī ʿilm al-nafs suʾila ʿanhā fa-ʾajāba fīha; Epistola de connexione intellectus abstracti cum homine) = “Chapter on the conjunction of the separate intellect with man”
• Maqāla fī ttiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-l-ʾinsān (Aka: Maqāla ʾaiḍan fī ttiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-l-ʾinsān; Maqāla fī ḏālika ʾaiḍan) “Chapter on the conjunction of intellect with man”
• Maqāla fī l-ʿaql (Aka: Maqāla ʾuḫrā fī ʿilm al-nafs ʾaiḍan) = “Chapter on the intellect”
• Sharḥ maqālat al-ʾIskandar fī l-ʿaql  = “Commentary on Alexander's treatise on the intellect”
• Šarḥ risālat ittiṣāl al-ʿaql bi-l-ʾinsān li-bn al-Ṣāʾiġ = “Commentary on Avempace's epistle on the conjunction of the intellect with man”

 ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Rušd (son of Averroes)

• Hal yattaṣilu bi-l-ʿaql al-hayūlānī al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl wa-huwa multabis bi-l-jism “On whether the active intellect unites with the material intellect whilst it is clothed with the body” ed. Anonymous.
• De animæ beatudine / Tractatus Aueroys de perfectione naturali intellectus secundum mentem philosophi

  Butterworth, Charles E.

• Averroes' Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's "Topics," "Rhetoric," and "Poetics, (Studies in Islamic Philosophy and Science )   New York: State Univ of New York Press, 1977     ISBN-10: 0873952081 / ISBN-13: 9780873952088 

 

VIII.  `Abd-Allah al-Bayḍawī  (d. c. 1316 CE? )  EI²

^{Born at Bayḍā near Shiraz. Most famous as a Qur'an Commentator.}

“Al-Bayḍawī's [q.v.] system of cosmogony and psychology is given in his Tawali al-anwar (lithograph ed. with commentary by Abu 'l-Thana' al-Isfahanī and gloss by al-Djurdjanī, Istanbul 1305, 285 ff.; Brockelmann, I², 533, S I, 742-3).  He discusses

• 1. the classes of incorporeal substances;

• 2. the heavenly intelligences;

• 3. the souls of the spheres;

• 4. the incorporeality of human souls;

• 5. their creation;

• 6. their connection with bodies; and

• 7. their survival.

His cosmogony follows: Allah, because of his unity, created only one Intelligence (^cakl). This Second Intelligence, that emanated first (al-sddir) from Allah, is the cause (^cilla) of all other potentialities and is not body (djism), nor original matter (hayula) nor form (sura). It is the secondary cause (sabab) of another intelligence with soul (nafs) and sphere (falak). There emanates from the second a third intelligence and so on to the tenth (288) who is the ruk of sura LXXVIII, [vii 882a] 38 (cf. al-Baydawi's Anwar al-tanzil, ed. Fleischer, ii, 383, l. 4), whose effective influence is in the world of the elements and who is the producer of the spirits (arwah) of mankind. Below these intelligences are the high or heavenly angels, which the philosophers call al-nufus al-falakiyya, and the low nufus, which are in two classes: earthly angels, in control of the simple elements and the earthly souls, such as the reasoning souls (anfus ndtika) controlling particular persons. In addition (285), there are the incorporeal substances, without effect or control, who are angels, some good (al-kurubiyyun) and some evil (al-shayatin) and the djinn, who are ready for both good and evil. This is the classification he refers to in his comment on sura II, 28 (ed. Fleischer, i, 47, 25). His psychology resembles that of al-Ghazalī, whom he mentions (294).

For the incorporeality of the soul (tadjarrud al-nafs) he presents five arguments from reason, four Kur'anic verses and one tradition. His commentator remarks (300) that these prove only that the soul differs from the body. He then argues that all nufus are created when their bodies are completed. The nafs (303) is not embodied in and is not close to the body, but is attached as the lover to the beloved. It is connected with that ruh which comes from the heart and is generated from the finest nutritive particles. The reasoning nafs produces a force that flows with that ruk through the body, producing in every organ its proper functions. These functional powers are perceptive, which are the five external senses, and the five internal faculties of the sensus communis, imagination, apprehension, memory and reason, and the active (al-mukarrika) which are voluntary (ikhtiydriyya) and natural (tabiiyya, 308).”

 

IX. Ibn Qayyīm al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) (EI²)

 A Major pupil and expounder of the thought of Ibn Taymiyya he was a fairly prolific literalist Hanbalite jurist,  theologian and thinker.

 URL Writings:

al-Rūḥ ("The Spirit-Soul").

"On the state of the soul after death, composed in the form of replies to 21 questions".

• Matloob Ahmed (D. L. F Gurgaon)

• Kitab al-Rūh : fi al-kalam `alá arwah al-amwat wa'l-ahya* bi-al-dala'il min al-Kitab wa-al-Sunnah wa'l-athar wa-aqwal al-`ulama' al-akhyar. 1st ed. 1318/1900-1; 2nd ed. 1324/1906; 3rd ed. Haydarabad: Matba`at Majlis Dairat al-Ma`arif al-`Uthmaniyya, 1357/1938. 327+14+6 pp.

• Kitab al-ruh.  Haydarabad : Matba'at Majlis Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-'Uthmaniyah, 1357/1938.

• Kitab al-rūh fi al-kalam 'ala arwah al-amwat wa-al-ahya' bi-al-dala'il min al-Kitab wa'l-Sunnah wa'l-athar wa-aqwal al-'ulama wa'l-akhyar.  Haydarabad al-Dakkan, Matba'at Majlis Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-'Uthmaniyah, XXXX/ 1963. 18+460 pp.

•  

• al-Rūḥ li-Ibn al-Qayyim, 3rd ed. al-Riyad : Maktabat al-Haditha, 1966. 280pp. 

• al-Rūḥ : fi al-kalam *alá arwah al-amwat wa'l-ahya* bi-al-dala'il min al-Kitab wa-al-Sunnah wa'l-athar wa-aqwal al-`ulama' al-akhyar. Cairo: Muhammad `Ali Ṣabi`ah, 1966. 280pp.

• al-Ruh : fi al-kalam 'ala arwah al-amwat wa-al-ahya'.  2 vols. al-Riyad : Dar Ibn Taymiyah, 1986. 848 pp.

•  

• al-Rūḥ; ed. Kamāl `Alī al-Jamal. Beirut : Mu'assasat al-Tārīkh al-`Arabī, 1416/ 1996. ‬ 339pp.

• al-Rūḥ, li-Ibn Qayyim, fī al-kalām ālá arwāh al-amwāt wa'l-ahyā* bi'l-dalā*il min al-Kitāb wa'l-Sunnah wa'al-āthār wa-al-aqwāl al-ūlamā'. Cairo: Muhammad `Ali Sabi`a, 280pp.

• al-Rūḥ : fī al-kalām `alá arwāḥ al-amwāt wa-al-aḥyā' bi-al-dalā'il min al-kitāb wa-al-sunnah wa-al-āthār wa-aqwāl al-`ulamā' ; ḥaqqaqahu wa-qaddama lahu wa `allaqa ḥawāshīyah Muḥammad Iskandar Yaldā. Beirut : Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmīyah, 1401/ ‬1981. ‬ 374pp.

PARTIAL ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

• THE SOUL Ibn Q[a]yyem (The Condition of the Souls of the dead and Living According To the Book, the Sunnah and the Traditions and the sayings of the scholars;  according to Imam Ibn Qayyem al- Jawziah,  Trans: Ismail A Salaam, [Beirut]: Dar al Kotob Al- Illmiyah (2008). 344pp.

• The Soul Its Where about in the light of Qur'an and Hadith, Allama Ibn Qayyem. 162pp. Adam Publishers & Distributors, India Revised Edition Translated by

EI2 “The dominant Muslim doctrine concerning the origin, nature and future of al-rūḥ  and al-nafs is most fully given in the Kltab al-Rūḥ of Ibn Kayyim al-Djawziyya [q.v.] (Haydarabad ²1324). Of his 21 chapters, Ibn Kayyim devotes the 19th to the problem of the specific nature of the nafs  (279-342). He quotes the summaries given by al-Ash'arī (op. cit., 331-5), and by al-Razī (Mafatih al-ghayb, v, 431-4). He denies al-Razī's statement that the mutakallimun consider man to be simply the sensible body, and says all intelligent people hold man to be both body and spirit. The ruh is identified with the nafs, and is itself a body, different in quiddity (al-mahlyya) from this sensible body, of the nature of light, high, light in weight, living, moving, interpenetrating the bodily members as water in the rose. It is created, but everlasting; it departs temporarily from the body in sleep; when the body dies it departs for the first judgement, returns to the body for the questioning of Munkar and Nakir [q.v.], and, except in the cases of prophets and martyrs, remains in the grave foretasting bliss or punishment until the Resurrection. He rejects (256) Ibn Hazm's doctrine that Adam's progeny are in al-Barzakh [q.v.] awaiting their time to be blown into embryos. He presents 116 evidences for the corporeality of the rūḥ, 22 refutations of opposing arguments and 22 rebuttals of objections. He represents traditional Islam.

Ibn Ibn Qayyīm al-Jawziyya -- overview of Kitab al-Ruh.

"The doctrine of a purely immaterial soul, inherited from Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists, was dominant in an influential school of Muslim thought, which included al-Ghazáli, Islam's foremost theologian. On the other hand, non-philosophical Muslims of strictest orthodoxy, such as Ibn al-Qaiyim (d. 751/1350), rejected the immateriality of the soul, and maintained that it was corporeal. Ibn al-Qaiyim's view of al-ruh and al-nafs is important, for it represents the belief of the great majority of Muslims to the present day... He refutes the Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic doctrine of an immaterial soul, as accepted by al-Ghazáli, Ibn Siná, and other philosophical theologians." (Francis T. Cooke, MW 25 (1935), 129, 130).

 

MEDIEVAL AND LATER CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS…

 

Thomas Aquinas ( c.1225-1274 CE)

 

Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima by  Thomas Aquinas
Translation by Kenelm Foster, O.P., and Silvester Humphries, O.P.; Introduction by Ralph McInerny
298 pp. ISBN: 978-1-883357-10-8, ISBN: 978-1-883357-11-5. 1994.
Introduction, footnotes, cross-references to Aristotle’s text using Bekker numbers, index

He was influenced by De Anima  on which he wrote a commentary and cited Avicenna as "the Shaykh"...

 Thomas Aquinas

• A Commentary on Aristotle's de Anima - Thomas Aquinas.  ADD: St Augustine Pr Inc., 1999.   ISBN-10: 1883357101 /  ISBN-13: 9781883357108

  

SOME LATER SHĪ`Ī THINKERS, THEOLOGIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS

 

 Muhammad ibn Muhammad Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī ( d. 672/1274)

 

• Contemplation and action : the spiritual autobiography of a Muslim scholar by Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī; S J Badakhchani; Institute of Ismaili Studies. London : I.B. Tauris, 1999.

 Muhammad Tāqī Mudarris Raḍawī:

• Aḥwāl wa āthār Khwājah Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī. Tehran: Asāṭīr, 1370 + 3^rd ed. 1386.
• [No. 56, p. 460 =] Risāla dar baqā’-i nafs-i insānī -  baqā’ al-nafs ba`d fanā’ al-jasad.
• Printed Arabic [No. 140, p. 575 =] al-Risāla al-muntkhabat fī ma`ālim ḥaqīqat al-nafs wa mā

 

كفعمي، ابراهيم بن علي

Taqi al-Din Ibrāhīm ibn ʻAlī Kafʻamī;

• محاسبة النفس اللوامة وتنبيه الروح النوامة
• Muḥāsabat al-nafs al-lawwāmah wa-tanbīh al-rūḥ al-nawwāmah ed. Fāris Ḥassūn, Beirut: Muʼassasat al-Fikr al-Islāmī lil-Thaqāfah wa-al-Iʻlām, 1991. 198pp.

 

Muhammad Bāqir Astarābadī, Mīr Dāmād, Ishrāq, the "Third Master" (d.1041/1641)

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻIzz al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn ʻAbd al-Ṣamad ... al-`Āmilī al-Jubā'ī, (953-1030 = 1547-1621 CE)

= Baha' al-Din al-`Amili = Shaykh Baha'i

 The son of Shaykh Ḥusayn ibn `Abd al-Ṣamad al-`Āmilī (919-984 AH = 1512-1576 CE) who was appointed Shaykh al-Islam at the then Safavid capital Qazvin by Shah Ṭahmasb (930-984 AH =1524-1576 CE). He was born near Baalbek on the 27th Dhu'l-Ḥijja 953 AH = 18th February 1547 CE and died Isfahan 12th Shawwāl 1030 AH = 29th August 1621 CE. A polymathic and widely travelled individual Shaykh Bahā'ī is viewed by some as the Islamic Mujaddid ("Renewer") of the 11th/17th century. The elder Majlisi, Muhammad Taqi Majlisi, described him as follows in his al-Rawdat (22:1),"[He is] al-Shaykh al-A`ẓam ("the Supreme Shaykh"), al-Wālid al-Mu`azzam ("the Venerated Father"), Imam al-`Allāmah ("the Imam of the Most Erudite"), Malik al-Fuḍalā' wa'l-Udabā' wa'l-Muḥaddithīn ("Commander of the Most Eminent Ones, the Cultured Persons and the Masters of Tradition"), Bahā' al-millat wa'l-Ḥaqq wa'l-Dīn ("the Splendor of the Religious Community and of the Real One [God] and of Religion")" (cited introduction to the Miftah al-Falah [1422/2001 ed], 4). Shaykh Baha'i was an accomplished theologian, philosopher, mathematician, Sufi inclined mystic, architect, grammarian and more besides. Bahā' al-Dīn al-`Āmilī was the one-time supremely powerful Shaykh al-Islām under Shāh `Abbās I (r. 996/1588- 1038/1629) at his then Safavid capital Isfahan. See further Brockelmann, GAL II: 414-15; Supp. I:76, 741; Supp.

At one point in the following work Shaykh Baha'i comments on doctines of the human soul. See ADD HERE

al-Arba`ūn Ḥadīth ^an ("The Forty Ḥadīth Compilation").

        An annotated compilation of forty traditions ascribed to the prophet Muhammad

• Kitāb-i arba`īn. Muhammad ibn Husayn mashhur bi-Shaykh Baha'i, Sharḥ-i Khatun'abadi. n.p. n.d. = Reproduction of the lithograph ed., Tehran: XXX., 1275 / 1858 (509pp.).
• al-Arba`ūn Ḥadīth ^an  . Beirut: Dar al-Muḥajjat al-Bayḍā'. 1413/1992 (280pp.).*
• Arbaʻūn ḥadīthan ..
   

 

Bahā' al-Dīn al-`Āmilī, Shaykh Bahā'ī (d. Isfahan 1031/1622)

Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Ṣadr al-Dīn Shirazī, Mullā Ṣadrā (d.1050/1641)

al-`Alawī, Sayyid Aḥmad b. Zayn al-Ābidīn [`Āmilī, Isfahānī] ( d. c.1041/ 1650).

al-Fayḍ al-Kashānī, Mullā Muḥsin (d.1091/1680-81).

الحر العاملي

al-Ḥurr al-`Āmilī = Muhammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-`Āmilī (d. 1104/1693).

THE TWO MAJLISIS

Muhammad-Bāqir b. Muhammad-Taqī Majlisï (d. 1111/1699-1700).