Joseph Pallattil

The believing philosopher as well as the philosophising believer, Ibn- e- Sina, also known as Avicenna was an Islamic scholastic philosopher. He was arguably the greatest master of Aristotelian thought in the Muslim world. He was both a philosopher and a physician, who began studying both medicine and philosophy at the age of thirteen. He was a rationalist, who studied rationally ‘the nature of God’ and ‘nature of being.’ Avicenna was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His aim was to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic.
The symbolical ‘Poem on the Soul’ (Qasidat al- nafs), which portrays all earthly human souls as in temporary exile from heaven, is traditionally attributed to him. It depicts the human soul as a strayed dove, which can only return home after retrieving awareness of its celestial origin. The text therefore expresses metaphorically the need for a philosophical perspective in life and for philosophy as a path to salvation. Avicenna’s theory on the soul portrays destination of the rational soul in the afterlife and its bliss and misery; real happiness is the perfection of the rational soul through knowledge. In addition to that, Avicenna wrote his famous ‘Floating Man’ (literally falling man), a thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality and immateriality of the soul. The thought experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argued that one would still have self-consciousness. Because it is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut off from sense experience, would still be capable of determining his own existence. The thought experiment points to the conclusions that the soul is perfection, independent of the body, and an immaterial substance.
Presentation of the soul as a strayed dove, independent of body, retrieving awareness of its celestial origin stretches out to different dimensions of understanding of human life. First of all, the life of the rational soul is consubstantial with the celestial intellects and the origin of the rational soul is from God; it is our cosmic duty to enable our intellects to reach their full potential and behave like the celestial ones. Hence, the quality or value of life is uplifted. Secondly, this allegory of the soul tells us that we are not owners of the earth, rather custodians. The earth in which we are living is a temporary shelter for human beings. Hence, an ecological responsibility of human being is upheld. Thirdly, retrieving awareness by the human soul is like removing scales from our own eyes, so that we may be able to see the reality as it is. Hence, all our epistemological quest as a whole is pointed towards this purpose of attaining perfection.