From Faculties to Functions: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Critique of Internal Senses
Journal Title: Nazariyat İslam Felsefe ve Bilim Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi - Year 2018, Vol 4, Issue 2
Abstract
One of the basic questions of the classical theory of soul is the theory of internal senses. It is Avicenna who gave this theory its most elaborate form. While he effectively revised the theory of internal senses that he inherited as it was laid out, he expounded upon it along his own philosophical inclinations, making significant additions on intricate matters like the number and appellation of internal senses, introducing new distinctions and classifications. Over time, Avicenna’s novel framework concerning the theory drew several criticisms by his successors. An important critique against Avicennian theory of internal senses was leveled by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. The first point of al-Rāzī’s contestation would be the critique of the arguments for the existence of each internal sense as a separate faculty. Al-Rāzī supposes that soul could perceive all objects of perception without recourse to independent faculties each designed for a separate function. Second, he criticized the narrative that plotted the brain for internal senses. While Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s critique of the internal senses comprise the main subject of the current study, it will also try to clarify the aspects of this critique related to greater epistemological and psychological questions like the nature of the soul, the character of the relation and interaction of soul and body, the nature of perception, degrees of abstraction, the relation of the soul with the particulars and its bearing on them.
Authors and Affiliations
M. Zahit Tiryaki
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP450164
- DOI 10.12658/Nazariyat.4.2.M0051en
- Views 150
- Downloads 0
Between Reality and Mentality -Fifteenth Century Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Reconsidered-
Why did the members of the Samarqand Observatory School stand closer to the science of kalām for metaphysical principles in the fifteenth century and reserve more space to Mathematics in the description of the nature? Wh...
Musa Calinus’ Treatise on the Natures of Medicines and Their Use
This article introduces and presents a transcription and annotated translation of a medical text in Ottoman Turkish authored by Mūsā Cālīnūs (d. after 1542). The treatise is entitled Risāla fī Tabā’i‘ al-adviya va-isti‘m...
Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi and His Use of Ibn Sina‘s al-Hikma al-‘Arudiyya (or another work closely related to it) in the Logical Part of His Kitab al-Mu‘tabar
The last four sections of the first book of Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s summa, entitled Kitāb al-Mu‘tabar, deal with dialectics, sophistical refutations, rhetoric, and poetics in full line with Aristotle’s Organon. Howe...
Is it Possible to Speak of an Illuminationist Circle in the Ottoman Scholarly World? An Analysis of the Ottoman Scholarly Conception of Illuminationism
This article seeks to answer the questions of how Ottoman scholars perceived Illuminationist thought and Illuminationism and whether a milieu favorably disposed to Illuminationism existed. It first questions how and thro...
Reason and Morality: The Source of Morality in Aristotle and al-Fārābī, Hümeyra Özturan
Hümeyra Özturan, Reason and Morality: The Source of Morality in Aristotle and al-Fārābī [Akıl ve Ahlâk: Aristoteles ve Fârâbî’de Ahlâkın Kaynağı], London: Classic Publications, 2014, 254 pages, ISBN: 6055245221