As transformações de Avicena do De anima de Aristóteles: sobre a alma racional

Abstract

The following pages are about Avicennas transformations of Aristotles De anima. This research was moved by the necessity of demonstrating the relation between Avicenna, an author belonging de Medieval Arabic tradition, and his most important source, i.e, Aristotle. One of the attitudes about the Arabic Philosophy from the 20th century considered it as philosophically insignificant for being an intermediary between Greek and Medieval Latin Philosophy. So, is there any kind of originality concerning the Arabic thought? Some scholars as Gutas, Druart, Taylor, Hasse, Kaukua, Adamson and Kukkonen have already worked on this question and have demonstrated the originality of the Arabic thinkers, especially Avicenna, if compared to the Greek thinkers. However, a lot of scholars still reduce some concepts and arguments used by Avicenna in his works to the content of his sources. There are two examples that illustrate this approach: the treatment of souls substantiality through the investigation of its definition (De anima II.1) and the investigation of the agent intellects ontological status (De anima III.5). In both situations Avicennas interpretation is reduced to the interpretations of other thinkers. In the first situation, Avicenna critics the souls definition as form of a natural body in favor of the soul as the perfection of a natural body. So, Avicenna understands the term perfection as its best definition. Some contemporary scholars associate Avicennas understanding to the argumentation found in Aristotles Theology. As I am going to defend, this attitude neglects Avicennas critics of both definitions of th human soul, since they are not able to demonstrate the souls substantiality.According to the second situation, the ontological status of the agent intellect in Avicennas theory is reduced to the interpretations of it from Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias works. For the three thinkers assume that Aristotles productive intellect in III.5, 430a10-25 is a separated substance, some scholars understood that the Arabictradition has adopted the transcendental status of the agent intellect without questioning. In view of that, the purpose of this investigation is to demonstrate the originality of Avicennas thought, if compared to his sources, from the analyze of his transformations of the mentioned passages.