Studying and Analyzing the Relationship between Self-Consciousness and Metaphysical Foundations in Avicenna's Philosophy

Abstract

The problem of self-consciousness is one the most controversial issues in the history of philosophy. Avicenna is one of the first philosophers who discussed the issue in a philosophical and not merely  moral or religious approach. In his Flying Man, he puts forward an intuitional situation. Some scholars have compared Avicenna’s Flying Man with Descartes’ Cogito and attempt to show close resemblance between them. Even some of them maintain the former influenced indirectly on the latter. In this paper we will show that Avicenna's Flying Man is in close relationship with his ontological foundations specially the one which is usually called the metaphysical distinction between being and quiddity. Using this distinction, in his philosophical analysis of self-consciousness, Avicenna opens a new sphere of the “self ” to philosophers, the sphere which he calls it Innyyah of “self ” and we call it existential sphere of the self. Since we don’t face such a distinction in Descartes’ philosophy, we can claim Avicenna has gone beyond Descartes in his analysis of self-consciousness.