Subject, Definition, Activity

This book offers for the first time a comprehensive study of the reception and reworking of the Peripatetic theory of the soul in the Kitb al-Nafs (Book of the Soul) by Avicenna (d. 1037). This study seeks to frame Avicennas science of the soul (or psychology) by focusing on three key concepts: subject, definition, and activity. The examination of these concepts will disclose the twofold consideration of the soul in Avicennas psychology. Besides the general approach to the soul of sublunary living beings, which is the formal principle of the body, Avicennas psychology also exhibits a specific orientation towards the soul in itself, i.e. the human rational soul that, considered in isolation from the body, is a self-subsistent substance, identical with the theoretical intellect and capable of surviving severance from the body. These two investigations demonstrate the coexistence in Avicennas psychology of a more specific and less physical science (psychologia specialis) within a more general and overall physical one (psychologia generalis).