The Ontological Link between Body and Soul in Bahmanyār's Kitāb al‐Taḥṣīl

Abstract

Focusing on the discussion of the soul in Kitab al-Tabsil, the philosophical summa of Avicenna's student Bahmanyar ibn al-Marzuban, Sebti shows that although he preserves the ontological underpinnings and overall structure of his teacher's theory of the soul, he nonetheless introduces certain significant modifications. Sebti argues that Bahmanyar "confers greater importance to the topic of sense knowledge, and also that he reduces the strict separation made by Avicenna between sense and intellectual knowledge," a stance that hinges on his view that the foremost perception of the soul is self-consciousness, that is, the reflexive act through which the soul knows itself as the center of all cognitive activity, both intellectual and sensory.