Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics

Altıntaş opens with a philosophical anthropology: by nature, man is a being forever thirsting for "the most beautiful, the best," and that thirst drives him to search for what lies behind what is sensed. In ancient times philosophy contained all the sciences within itself — mathematics, logic, natural science, medicine, music all sprang from the same root. As the sciences gradually split off from philosophy, the belief arose that philosophy was no longer needed — a belief the author argues is mistaken.

He supports this with an appeal to modern physics: even the most advanced sciences still leave behind them an unknown, hidden side. The black points where galaxies vanish, the edges of the universe — these are, in effect, metaphysical questions translated into the language of physics. Philosopher and scientist thus meet at the same point: metaphysics (theology).

He then traces the term historically: "metaphysics" comes from the title Aristotle gave the book he wrote after his Physics, and gained its proper scientific meaning in the West only after Ibn Rushd (Averroes). As Muslims adopted this Greek concept they arabized it — with phrases like "ma ba'd al-tabi'a" (what comes after nature) — before settling more on the terms "al-Falsafa al-Ula" (First Philosophy) and "Ilahiyat" (Theology).

Altıntaş's central thesis is that, although it carries Greek (Aristotelian, Platonic, Neo-Platonic) elements, Islamic metaphysics is its own, independent system. It insists on the distinction between essence and existence, between necessary and contingent being, and grounds itself in the Qur'an, building on the theory of the ten intellects and the celestial spheres. In the author's words, this metaphysics is "dogmatic and spiritual": faith governs at the foundation, reason at the summit.

The most striking concept in this section is the theory of emanation (südûr): from God the First Intellect emanates, from it the second, and so on down a chain to the tenth — the Active Intellect. The first nine intellects govern the celestial realm, while the Active Intellect directly governs the sublunar world, from which the elements and matter themselves emanate — bridging the intelligible (ma'qulat) and the material (mahsusat).

Comparing this to Aristotle's own metaphysics, the author argues that Islamic metaphysics is more methodical and systematic, forming a single "ONE" in which the parts are tightly bound together. He also recalls the four main currents in Islamic intellectual history: the Mu'tazila, the Maturidiyya, the Ash'ariyya, and the philosophers' own metaphysics — even noting that al-Ghazali, describing the subject of kalam, effectively described the subject of metaphysics itself: "it is being, insofar as it is being."

This introductory chapter does more than define terms — it maps out the entire transition from Aristotelian philosophy to Islamic metaphysics. In the chapters that follow, the book narrows from this general framework to Ibn Sina's own life, and then to his specific metaphysical system (necessary/contingent being, the theory of emanation, the theory of the soul, and more).