Avicenna. The Physics of The Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text in Two Volumes.

• Author: Belo, Catarina
• Position: Book review

Avicenna. The Physics of The Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text in Two Volumes. Translated by JON MCGINNIS. Islamic Translation Series. Provo, Utah: BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009. pp. xxxiv 259 259 arabic: xi 304 260 arabic. $49.95.

This edition, with introduction, notes, and a glossary, of Avicenna's Physics of the Healing by Jon McGinnis constitutes the first full English translation of this important work of the Avicenna corpus, and fittingly complements the edition and English translation of The Metaphysics of the Healing by Michael E. Marmura for the same series (2005). Prior series publications included fresh English translations and editions of important works of medieval Islamic philosophy such as Averroes's Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory and al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers.

The Avicenna specialist Jon McGinnis has long been engaged in the study of medieval physics, and this momentous task could not have been entrusted to a more qualified expert. In his introduction McGinnis notes that this is the first English translation of the Physics of the Healing alongside only two other modern-day translations, into Turkish and Persian, while Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing has been translated more widely, with available translatons in French, German, Italian (twice), and English. This renewed interest in the Physics of Avicenna is remarkable because both the Physics and the Metaphysics of al-Shift' were translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, although the metaphysical aspects of Avicenna's philosophical system were the most enduringly influential from the medieval period to modern times.

As McGinnis points out, this work sheds light on Avicenna's philosophy as a whole, for instance on his psychology and defense of "substance dualism," whereby "for Avicenna, the human intellect is not the form of the body, but an immaterial substance that is the perfection of the body and that uses the body as a tool" (p. xxii), which argument is made explicit in the Physics. While the Physics and the Metaphysics complement each other, a full account of certain metaphysical issues, such as causation, is to be found only in the Physics. We also find there modal proofs for the eternity of the world based on the concept of possibility. In providing an interpretative reading of Aristotle's Physics, Avicenna demonstrates knowledge of previous commentaries on the same work by the Stagirite, such as those by Alexander of...