Revising Avicenna's Ontology of the Soul: Ibn Kammūna on the Soul's Eternity a Parte Ante

Muehiethaler highlights what philosopher Ibn Kammuna considers to be problems in Avicenna's proofs for the eternity and non-physicality of the rational soul. He argues that these proofs can be sustained only if another premise is conceded, namely that the rational soul is pre-eternal, rather than generated in time as Avicenna had maintained. He contextualizes Ibn Kammuna within earlier critical approaches to Avicenna, explores the reasons that led him to abandon the consensus of his predecessors and contemporaries by taking this unconventional view, and outlines the proofs that he adduces for it.