@inbook{b2abb438309c482785691d56ce137084,
title = "Sources of the Self in the Arabic Tradition: Remarks on the Avicennan Turn",
abstract = "Within the long history of Aristotelian psychological theorization, Avicenna stands out for his tightly argued and conceptually rich understanding of self-awareness. For Avicenna, a primitive and immediate form of self-awareness is explanatory of a range of phenomena, from the unity of our psychic functions to our very existence as cognizing individuals. The extent of Avicenna{\textquoteright}s influence is beginning to be recognized in the scholarship: it remains an open question what, if anything, might have influenced him. In this essay I point to Islamic theological discussions regarding immediate self-knowledge as a possible relevant parallel. The Muslim theologians{\textquoteright} interests lay elsewhere, however, and their ontology of the soul diverged sharply from the Aristotelian, being atomist and occasionalist. Through evoking earlier Sufi attempts to flesh out a formal presentation of the soul to match their commitment to character reformation, I suggest that the Avicennan presentation of self-awareness provided an access point for religious writers to begin employing an Aristotelian psychology, given that it responded to existing theoretical concerns.",
keywords = "Late Antiquity, Lower Impulse, Mass Noun, Moral Character, Theological Tradition",
author = "Taneli Kukkonen",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.",
year = "2016",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-319-26914-6_4",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind",
publisher = "Springer Nature",
pages = "37--60",
booktitle = "Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind",
address = "United States",
}