The After Avicenna project conducts a historical study of Avicenna's (Ibn Sina, d. 1037 CE) metaphysics and its Islamic reception, and develops its results into original contributions to the contemporary debate over metaphysical essentialism, grounding, and the possibility of reductive modal analysis. It is thereby intimately related to the emerging neo-Aristotelian movement in metaphysics and theory of science, but instead of a vague notion of Aristotelianism, it builds on historically rigorous work on a context, the problems of which were strikingly similar to those today. The project addresses questions such as Avicenna's distinction between essence and existence, his definition of the modalities (necessity, contingency or possibility, and impossibility) by means of that distinction, his introduction of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and his reconciliation between necessitarianism and a robust concept of contingency.

2021

2025