Avicenna on Philosophical Concepts: Primary or Secondary Intelligibles

The present article tries to provide a new classification of intelligibles (primary and secondary intelligibles) in Avicenna’s philosophical system and tries to show the real place of philosophical concepts like existence, unity, necessity and etc. in his thought based on this classification. In current scholarship the intelligibles are divided into primary and secondary intelligibles. The second intelligibles are divided into philosophical and logical. This division is widely accepted after Nasir al-Din Tusi. In current scholarship usually this theory is attributed to Avicenna as if he also divided the second intelligibles into philosophical and logical intelligibles. The present research tries to show that Avicenna does not consider the philosophical concepts as second intelligibles but more primary than any other primary concepts. According to him, among the concepts there must be primary concepts on which all other concepts rely. These concepts are present in the mind from childhood and in the level of the intellect in habitu (al-‘aql bi’l malakah). So the first intelligibles, for Avicenna, are divided into two categories: the essential ones or the intelligibles from quiddities and the philosophical ones like existence, unity and necessity which are present for us primarily. The second intelligibles for Avicenna are just logical ones.