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tex

xi*on knowledge of particulars

by Peter Adamson

abstract Avicennas notorious claim that God knows particulars only in

a universal way is argued to have its roots in Aristotelian epistemology, and
especially in the Posterior Analytics. According to Avicenna and Aristotle
as understood by Avicenna, there is in fact no such thing as knowledge of
particulars, at least not as such. Rather, a particular can only be known by
subsuming it under a universal. Thus Avicenna turns out to be committed
to a much more surprising epistemological thesis: even humans know
particulars only in a universal way.

O ne of the most notorious positions taken in the Arabic

philosophical tradition was Avicennas claim that God
does not know particulars, except in a universal way.
Avicennas remarks on this point provoked a series of
discussions, usually critical, by later Arabic authors, and they
have received some attention in modern scholarship.1 But I
believe that Avicennas view is often misunderstood. This is in
part because of the context in which he presents it: the discussion
of Gods knowledge comes in the midst of the theological
section of the Metaphysics of his masterwork, al-Shifa
(The
Healing).2 It has thus, naturally enough, usually been interpreted
and criticized within a theological context: God cannot know
particulars because they are multiple and changing, whereas
Gods knowledge must be one and unchanging.3 This reading is
encouraged by Avicennas own emphasis, in the relevant passage,
on Gods atemporality and immutability; and as we will see it
contains much truth. Yet a much more fruitful way to approach
*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London,
on Monday, 25 April, 2005 at 4.15 p.m.
1. The classic study of the topic is Marmura 1962, which also surveys some Arabic
responses to Avicenna. I largely agree with Marmuras analysis though I place much
more emphasis on Avicennas theory of demonstration as the relevant background
for Avicennas theory. After writing the rst draft of this paper I discovered a recently
published paper on the issues dealt with below, Zghal 2004. In this rich paper, Zghal
places the question of Gods knowledge in the context of Avicennas logical works,
as I do below. This is not the place for a detailed engagement with Zghals paper,
but I will refer to both his and Marmuras studies in the notes below.
2. Edited in Avicenna 1960, with the discussion of knowledge of particulars at VIII.6.
3. This is, in particular, the focus of al-Ghazals famous criticism of Avicennas view
in the thirteenth discussion of his Tahafut al-falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers).
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Avicennas account of divine knowledge is to see it in the context

of his general epistemology. If we take account of this context,
we will realize that the reason God does not know particulars
is very simple: there is no such thing as knowledge of particulars.
This holds true for humans no less than for God. Humans may
be aware of particularswe may see them and touch them, for
instanceand we may even picture them in our imaginations
when they are not present. But it is, strictly speaking, impossible
for us to have knowledge of a particular object as such.
At rst sight, this thesis seems so implausible as to be hardly
worth discussing. Surely I can know that I am standing up
right now, or that I exist? And surely this is knowledge about
me, a particular object, not about the universal man? Surely,
nally, this sort of knowledge is, if anything, a candidate for
being the most secure knowledge we have? (It is no accident that
Descartes begins with an incorrigible piece of knowledge about a
particular object, namely himself.) For us these are undoubtedly
strong intuitions. Making sense of Avicennas position is thus
an uphill climb, and we are going to have do to some historical
and philosophical work if we are to overcome the temptation to
reject it out of hand.
We need to start with the text that, more than any other,
leads Avicenna to the position he takes on divine knowledge:
Aristotles Posterior Analytics (hereafter Post An). In this work
Aristotle sets out a surprisingly ambitious set of requirements
for knowledge (episteme). For our armation of a proposition
to count as knowledge, that proposition must be grasped through
a demonstration (Post An I.2). There can be demonstrations
only of propositions that are necessary, and only universal
propositions can be necessary (Post An I.4). (Aristotle adds even
more conditions that do not concern us directly, for example that
I can only know B on the basis of A if A is better known to me
than B.) This has the upshot that there can be no demonstrative
knowledge, which strictly speaking means no knowledge at all, of
particulars. For there can be no demonstration of propositions
that concern particulars. Aristotle argues for this explicitly in
Post An I.8:

It is clear too that if the propositions from which a deduction

proceeds are universal, then it is necessary for the conclusion of
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knowledge of particulars 275

such a demonstration, i.e. of a demonstration simpliciter, to be

eternal. There is therefore no demonstration of perishable things,
nor any understanding of them simpliciter but only incidentally,
because nothing holds of them universally but only at some time
and in some way. When there is such a demonstration, one of the
propositions must be non-universal and perishableperishable
because when it is the case the conclusion too will be the case,
and non-universal because its subjects will sometimes exist and
sometimes not exist.4

Aristotle arms in other works, too, that there can be episteme

only of the universal. For example, in the Metaphysics he twice
(at B.6 and M.10) raises the possibility that the principles
(archai) of all things are particular.5 One objection to this is
that the principles would be unknowable, because they will not
be universal, and knowledge is of the universal (he episteme ton
katholou). This is clear from demonstrations and denitions, for
there is no deduction that this triangle is equal to two right angles
unless every triangle is equal to two right angles, or that this man
is an animal, unless every man is an animal (M.10; 1086b3337).6
An important corollary is that there can be no demonstration
through perception, as Aristotle says explicitly in the Post An as
well (I.31).
Why does Aristotle think that knowledge needs to be of
necessary propositions, and that only universal propositions can
be necessary? The answer, as already suggested by the passage
from Post An I.8 (see also I.2 and I.4), is that knowledge
must be of that which cannot be otherwise, and that particulars
are inevitably able to be otherwise.7 Thus Aristotle speaks of
propositions about particulars as perishable, by which he seems
to mean that they are susceptible of falsehood, even when they
are true. But this need not mean that demonstrative knowledge
tells us nothing about particularsfar from it. For the sort of

4. Translation from Barnes 1993. See further Mansion 1981. For the Arabic text, see
Badaw 1949, pp. 3345.
5. On this see Leszl 1972/3.
6. Note however that this objection is dialectical; Aristotle is not arguing that the
principles do need to be universal. The point that knowledge must be of the universal
is, however, said to be the greatest puzzle for Aristotles own view (1087a13);
it is resolved by discussing the dierence between potential and actual knowledge
(1987a1516), on which see further below.
7. With the exception of celestial and immaterial particulars; see further below.
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universal that Aristotle has in mind is one that is instantiated in,

and only in, particular objects. And the sort of proposition he has
in mind is one of the form All As are Bs, where the As are a
class of particulars, such as men, horses or triangles. An example
to which he returns repeatedly is the eclipse: a demonstration
about eclipses is one that shows that all eclipses happen for such-
and-such a reason (the blocking of light by the earth). It follows
from this demonstration that any particular eclipse happens
for that reason (Post An I.8). Many commentators have seen
Aristotles theory as a theory of explanations designed to deal
with questions that are, in the rst instance, about particulars
(Why is this eclipse happening?). We explain a particular eclipse
by subsuming it under an explanation of eclipses in general.8
Such explanations always depend upon essential features of
what is explained: those features, in other words, that make
the particular fall under the relevant universal.9 Features that
hold only of a particular as such are always accidental, and
there is no explanation of such features, at least not in the sense
Aristotle is interested in here. In this strict sense of explanation,
I can explain why Socrates is mortal, but I cannot explain why
Socrates died at the particular time and place that he did or why
he died in the way that he did.10
The Aristotelian position as I have outlined still seems rather
unpalatable. If, on Aristotles strict sense of explain or know, I
cannot explain or know why Socrates died on the day he did, isnt
this reason enough to reject Aristotles strict sense of these terms?
Modern commentators have found ways to render his view
much more plausible, though. For instance Myles Burnyeat has
suggested that it would be less misleading to translate episteme as
understanding rather than knowledge.11 This would allow us to

8. See van Fraassen 1980.

9. Notice that this is in a sense the converse of the more well known question, dealt
with in Post An II.19, of how we come to have universal knowledge on the basis of
our experience of particulars. Here the question is rather, supposing that we already
have universal knowledge, how can this be informative about particulars? For the
contrast between these two issues, see Ferejohn 1988, p. 105.
10. At least not as such; of course I could explain why drinking hemlock is lethal,
and perhaps why certain forms of political rule lead to the execution of good men.
But Socrates falls under no universal such that it is essential to him that he die in
Athens by drinking hemlock.
11. Burnyeat 1981. Cf. Kosman 1973, pp. 3745.
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knowledge of particulars 277

interpret Aristotle as allowing for a wide range of dierent kinds

of knowledge, only the most perfect of which (demonstrative
knowledge) would count as complete understanding. This would
allow Aristotle to accommodate our intuition that we do know
facts about particulars, albeit in a less exalted fashion. But
as we will see, unlike many modern interpretations Avicennas
reading of the Post An strongly divorces strict knowledge
apprehension of universal, necessary truthsfrom any cognitive
state having to do with particulars. For him demonstrative
knowledge is not the highest end of a continuum of dierent
sorts of knowledge: it is, rather, the only kind of knowledge that
the human intellect is capable of.
There is a nal interpretative crux we need to consider
before returning to the Arabic tradition. As we have seen,
in I.8 Aristotle says that demonstration cannot be of what is
perishable (in the Arabic: laysa burhan ala l-ashya
al-fasida).
I have interpreted this as meaning that demonstration must
be of propositions that are always true. These propositions
would be universal, but still about particulars: All men are
animals is (for Aristotle) always true, even though it is about
individual men who come to be and pass away. A more
Platonizing interpretation would be to insist that there can
be demonstration or knowledge only of imperishable objects.
This is clearly not what Aristotle intends, but thanks to the
inuence of Greek Neoplatonism it became a dominant way
of understanding Aristotelian epistemology in the early Arabic
tradition. According to this view, we must distinguish between
intelligible and sensible objects, and recognize that human
knowledge, and the human intellect, grasp the former and not
the latter. For someone who holds this view it is convenient
that the contrast between knowledge (which is of intelligibles)
and lesser forms of apprehension (which are of particulars) is
reected in the contrast in Aristotles own De Anima between
intellection on the one hand, and sensation and imagination on
the other.
Al-Kind, the rst philosopher in the Arabic tradition, is
committed to just such a bifurcated epistemology, as I have
explained elsewhere.12 At one point he says explicitly that there

12. See Adamson 2005, pp. 4041.

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can be no knowledge of sensible particulars:

The stable, true, complete knowledge within the science of

philosophy is knowledge of secondary substance. Secondary
substances are those the knowledge of which is unceasing, due
to the stability of what is known and its not being subject
to change or ux. One can only reach [secondary substances]
through the knowledge of primary substance. Sensory knowledge
is the knowledge of primary substance, and is in ux due to the
uninterrupted ux of its object (which ends only when the [object]
is wholly destroyed in its substance), or because of the multiplicity
of sensible substance and multiplicity in number. For . . . [what
is numbered] is potentially innite in magnitude . . . but what is
innite cannot be comprehended by any knowledge.13

In this passage al-Kind argues for a metaphysical distinction

between intelligible and sensible objects: the latter are constantly
changing and are multiple, and thus literally unknowable in the
primary, or strict sense. If we are to know anything in this sense,
it must be an unchanging intelligible object.14

13. al-Kind, On the Quantity of Aristotles Books, ed. in al-Kind 1973, p. 372 lines
513, and in Guidi and Walzer 1940, V.1723. I have simplied the nal argument
slightly in my translation.
14. Despite portraying intelligible objects in such a Platonic way, al-Kind conates
them with Aristotelian universals, as is already implicit in the passage just quoted (the
term secondary substances comes from the Categories and refers to species, genera
and dierentiae). Similarly, he writes elsewhere: Perception is actually two things:
sensible perception and intellectual perception, because things are either universal or
particular. By the universal I mean the genera that belong to species, and the species
that belong to individuals. And by particulars I mean the individuals that belong to
species. Particular individuals are material and fall under the senses. On the other
hand genera and species do not fall under the senses, and are not perceived through
sensory perception, but rather fall under one of the powers of the complete, that is
human, soul, which is called the human intellect. Since the senses perceive individuals,
all of the sensibles that are represented in the soul belong to the power that uses
the senses. On the other hand every species concept, and what is above species, is
not represented by the soul using an image, because every image is sensible (On
First Philosophy, ed. in al-Kind 1997, vol. 2, p. 19 lines 1724; see also the English
translation in Ivry 1974. Cf. al-Kinds On Sleep and Dreams, in al-Kind 1973, vol.
1 p. 302 lines 39, and On Intellect, vol. 1, p. 345). Unfortunately he rarely tries
to explain how, if at all, knowing universals allows us to have any understanding
of particular objects. Normally, when he discusses particulars or sensibles in an
epistemic context, it is to emphasize their inaccessibility to the human intellect. (And
in one treatise, On Recollection, he argues explicitly that we cannot know intelligibles
on the basis of our grasp of sensible particulars: see Endress 1994. This tends to
increase our sense that there is an epistemic gap between the two realms.) The only
exception is the opening chapter of a work entitled On Rays, which is preserved only
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knowledge of particulars 279

Al-Kind probably reached these conclusions without the

benet of consulting the Post An, a work that had not yet
been translated in his time.15 His view depends, rather, on a
Neoplatonic interpretation of texts such as the Categories and
De Anima. His successor al-Farab, though, was able to read
the Post An and, at least in one passage, draws on it to set out
an equally stark bifurcation of human epistemology. Here he is
describing the function of the speculative faculty in humans:

The word knowledge is applied to many things, but the

knowledge which is a virtue of the speculative part is that there
comes to the soul certainty of the existence of the existents whose
existence and continuance do not depend on the contrivance of
man at all, what each of these is and how, from proofs composed
of true premises, necessary and universalrst principles in
which is certainty and which occur known to the intellect
naturally . . . Real knowledge is what is true and certain at all
times, not at some time rather than another, and (not) what exists
at a particular time and may not exist afterwards, for in that
case we should know something existing now, but when some
time has passed, it has possibly ceased to exist, so that we do
not know whether it exists or not and our certainty turns to
doubt and falsehood. And what may be so is not knowledge and
certainty. On that account the ancients did not make perception
of what may alter from one state to another knowledge, e.g. our
knowledge that this man is now sitting down. For it may be that
he will change and come to be standing up after he was sitting.
Rather they made knowledge certainty of the existence of a thing
which cannot change, e.g. that three is an odd number. For the
oddness of the number three does not change.16

Notice that, in the example that ends the passage, al-Farab

does not say that we have knowledge of particular humans
through the universal human, but contrasts humans as objects
of knowledge with numbers as objects of knowledge. The

in Latin; here al-Kind does claim that all knowledge originates in sensation, and
that universals are abstracted from our experience of particulars. For this text see
DAlverny and Hudry 1974. I will further pursue these issues in a forthcoming book
on al-Kind.
15. On the reception of the Post An in Arabic, see Marmura 1990.
16. Al-Farab 1961, Section 33; Dunlop translation.
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relevant dierence between the two is that humans change,

and numbers do not. This might be taken to imply that
knowledge dened in terms of the class of objects it deals with:
stable, unchanging, intelligible objects, as opposed to changeable,
sensible, particulars.17
With this historical context in mind, let us return to Avicennas
discussion of divine knowledge in the Metaphysics of the Healing,
VIII.7. There are several signs that Avicenna had the Post An
in mind when writing the passage in question. The most striking
such sign is his use of Aristotles example of the eclipse. But there
are other terminological indications, for example his speaking
of the knowledge of particulars as being absolute (mut.laq),
which comes from Post An I.1.18 But the Post An is most
important in understanding Avicennas formulation that God
knows particulars in a universal way (kull). Fortunately we
are very well-informed as to how Avicenna understood the Post
An, because an earlier section of The Healing, the Demonstration
(al-Burhan), is based closely on it.19 It turns out that explicating

17. Whether this is al-Farabs considered position is another matter, which cannot
be considered at length here. The problem is how to understand the intelligibles
that are, according to al-Farab, received in the human soul from the active intellect.
In a passage such as Attainment of Happiness 27 (see Alfarabi 2001), he contrasts
the single intelligible that we know (the example in this passage is Man) to natural
things in matter (e.g. individual men). But this does not settle the question whether,
to put it crudely, such intelligibles are more like Platonic Forms, separate objects of
knowledge, or more like Aristotelian universals. See further Davidson 1992, Ch. 3. In
fact I suspect that al-Farabs considered position was closer to that of Avicenna than
that of al-Kind; but this may emerge with clarity only from his logical works. In any
case other contemporaries of al-Farab and Avicenna were closer to al-Kinds point
of view, and seem to have maintained a starkly bifurcated epistemology. I argue
for this in a forthcoming paper entitled The Kindian Tradition: the Structure of
Philosophy in Arabic Neoplatonism, in a volume to be edited by Cristina DAncona.
18. It corresponds to haplos at 71a24 and reects the Arabic translation, Badaw
1949, p. 311, which has ala l-it.laq.
19. This part of Avicennas Shifa
has not received as much attention as it
deserves. An honourable recent exception is McGinnis 2003, which discusses the
Demonstrations treatment of induction and the extent to which Avicenna allows
experience to serve as a basis for demonstrative knowledge. Marmura 1990 also
includes some helpful remarks on the Demonstration. He briey sketches the
connection between the Post An and Avicennas view on divine knowledge in both
Marmura 1962 and Marmura 1990. And as mentioned the recent Zghal 2004 views
the problem of divine knowledge against the background of the logical works,
including the Demonstration. Unfortunately there is as yet no translation of the
Demonstration to make the work accessible to non-Arabists. (For the Arabic text
see Avicenna 1956, cited by page and line number.) Still, some very good work has
been done on Avicennan epistemology and logic, drawing mostly on his psychological
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knowledge of particulars 281

Avicennas discussion of divine knowledge becomes a far easier

task if we take into account his arguments in the Demonstration.
This is the task that will occupy us in the rest of this paper.
Though Avicenna was in general remarkably willing to depart
from Aristotle, in the Demonstration he adheres faithfully to
the Post Ans principal requirements for knowledgethe term
he uses for this is normally ilm, which is the standard Arabic
rendering of episteme, and which like episteme can also mean
a science (such as geometry or physics). In Demonstration
II.8, Avicenna devotes a long passage (170.17.) to defending
Aristotles requirement that demonstrations be universal. Like
al-Farab, he emphasizes the need for knowledge to possess
certainty (yaqn), which can be achieved only through the
universal judgment (bi-l-h.ukm al-kull), which embraces both
the individual and something else, namely other individuals of
the same species (171.1). He is more forthcoming than either
Aristotle or al-Farab, though, about what precisely this means:
he explains that the status of the premises and conclusions of a
syllogism corresponds to the nature of its subject matter. As a
result, there is no demonstration about particular and transitory
things except one that is likewise particular in its scope and
transitory (170.1720). So one cannot know particulars, except
in an accidental fashion (170.20171.1), and this always involves
doubt: Even with regard to essential features; for instance, is
Zayd animal? If he is dead or corrupted, then he is not animal
(171.45).20
This might seem to commit Avicenna to the sort of
Neoplatonizing view found in earlier Arabic authors: that
proper, demonstrative knowledge is simply about a dierent class
of objects from sensible particulars. If that were Avicennas view,
he would be open to the obvious objection that we can in fact be

treatises but also on the Demonstration to some extent. See especially Gutas 1998,
Gutas 2001, Hasse 2001, and Hasse 2000 which includes brief but incisive remarks
about Avicennas syllogistic theory on pp. 180181. Deborah Black has also explored
Avicennas logic and epistemology in several publications; see especially Black 1990.
I have tried to build on these studies in Adamson 2004a. For Avicennas syllogistic
logic as he developed it on the basis of the Prior Analytics, see now Thom 2003 and
Street 2004.
20. Stephen Menn has suggested to me that the requirement that certain knowledge
be of unchanging things makes more sense if certainty is understood as a stable
disposition rather than a momentary, occurrent state.
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certain about particulars, under the right circumstances. What

if, for example, Zayd is standing before me, so that I know
he is still alive? Surely I am then certain that he is an animal,
albeit temporarily. Moreover, I can formulate my knowledge
in the form of a syllogism (All men are animals, Zayd is a
man, therefore Zayd is an animal). Avicenna actually poses this
very objection to himself (172.14), imagining an opponent who
says that particular syllogisms do confer certainty, even if they
are not of the nobility of the necessary demonstration due to
their more restricted scope. He responds that in a case where we
achieve certainty with such a particular syllogism, this is because
we are making a judgement about it universally (ala l-kull).
In what follows he applies this to Aristotles example of the
eclipse. Although individual eclipses come to be and pass away,
the species eclipse is an intelligible, universal nature (t.ab a
ma qula kulliyya), so the demonstration and denition of that
specic nature are essential, eternal and certain (172.15). Since
every eclipse possesses this same nature, our universal knowledge
of the nature gives us certain knowledge that applies to every
eclipse.
Under what circumstances will I be in a position to apply
this knowledge? Avicenna addresses this question elsewhere
in the Demonstration, and in so doing makes clear how our
other cognitive capacities (especially sensation) interact with
intellectual knowledge. In the Post An Aristotle gives the example
of knowing that the internal angles of all triangles are equal
to two right angles, but not knowing that a given gure is a
triangle. Avicenna, following Aristotle, distinguishes in such a
case between the potentiality of universal knowledge as such
and the actuality of this knowledge when it is applied to a
particular. Avicenna says that one may know that all humans
are animal but not that Zayd is an animal, for one might not
be aware that Zayd exists and is human. (One might even never
have heard of Zayd, or not know what sort of thing he is, or not
know whether he is already deadAvicenna gives the example of
someone far away, in India, at 73.2.) When we are aware of this,
we are aware of it by sensation, and we must bring together this
awareness that Zayd is an existing human with our knowledge
that all humans are animals in order to produce the knowledge
that Zayd is an animal (73.16).
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knowledge of particulars 283

Two points are worth noting about this line of argument.

First, although Avicenna often speaks loosely of knowledge
(ilm) regarding particulars, in the passage just cited he is
careful to make a terminological distinction. On the one hand
there is knowledge or ilm, which is restricted to universal,
necessary, demonstrative knowledge. On the other there is what
I have translated as awareness: marifa. In the sort of case just
described, we only have marifa that Zayd exists and is a human,
whereas we have ilm that all humans are animals. Avicenna
explicitly says that marifa is what is from sensation, while ilm
is what is from intellect (73.89). But even in this context, where
he is being careful with his terminology, he is still willing to
speak of our ilm that Zayd is an animal: when we bring together
awareness of a particular case and knowledge of the universal,
the result is knowledge, not awareness. This, then, is what it
means to know a particular in a universal way (as opposed to
knowing a particular as such, with all its accidental features): it
is to realize that a particular, which we are aware of thanks to
sensation, instantiates a universal that we know demonstratively.
This brings us to the second point. Although, as we have just
seen, Avicenna is willing to be somewhat exible with the term
knowledge, he maintains an absolute divorce between sensation
and intellection as discrete cognitive faculties. We do not use
our intellect to grasp Zayds existence: this comes only through
sensation.21 Much later in the Demonstration he develops this
theme:

Sensation is not a demonstration, nor is sensation qua sensation

a principle of demonstration. For demonstrations and their
principles are universal, not peculiarized in time, individual, or
place. Sensation supplies a judgment about a particular, at a time
and place proper to it. Therefore. . . nothing from [sensation] is
universal knowledge (ilm bi-kull ) (249.1113).

He goes on to mention, yet again, the example of the eclipse.

Following Aristotle in imagining a case where we could just see
the reason eclipses happen (as we could do if we were on the
moon, Post An II.2), Avicenna points out that even in such a

21. See also Demonstration 220.17221.10, which argues that sensation does not
perceive the intelligible human when it grasps a human.
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case, it would still be impossible for us, on the basis of sense,

to judge universally that every lunar eclipse is such-and-such,
because we cannot sense every eclipse, or eclipse universally. And
individual eclipses are innite in potentiality; the universal eclipse
belongs only to the intellect (249.1618).
Without going into too much detail, it should be pointed out
that this strong distinction between what the intellect is capable
of (namely grasping universals) and what sensation, and hence
imagination, are capable of (namely grasping particulars), is
crucial to Avicennas psychology as well as his epistemology.
For one of Avicennas chief proofs for the immortality of the
human rational soul, that is, the human intellect, appeals to its
grasp of universals. What grasps a universal must be immaterial
and indestructible; what grasps a particular must be material and
destructible.22 This is one reason Avicenna is so determined to
ensure that our awareness that a particular eclipse is occurring,
or that Zayd is human, is not itself considered knowledge, though
it may make a contribution to our knowledge.23
By now it should be clear why the Demonstration is crucial if
we are to understand what is going on in Avicennas discussion
of divine knowledge. He begins that discussion by pointing out
that God is an intellect, indeed an intellect in a much more
exalted sense than the human soul: God is simple and grasps
all things at once rather than in a divided way, for example.24
As an intellect, for reasons we have just reviewed, God will
not be able to grasp particulars as such. For, every sensible
form and every imaginary form is only grasped, insofar as it is
sensible or imaginary, through a divisible organ. And just as the

22. On this see Druart 2000, Wisnovsky 2003, and Adamson 2004b. The canonical
presentation of his argument is in the psychological section of The Healing, paralleled
in the shorter Salvation: see Avicenna 1959 and 1912, respectively.
23. Having said this, it is important to bear in mind that once sensation has grasped,
say, that Zayd is human, the rational soul can entertain and accept the proposition
that Zayd is human. This is already clear from the process described above, in which
the rational soul subsumes a particular under a universal and thus knows it in a
universal way. Furthermore, as we will see below, the human intellect is capable of
kinds of rational thought that do not attain the rank of knowledge, such as opinion.
God, by contrast, engages in no form of intellection other than knowledge; and
this is, I take it, also true of the pure intellects lower than God, such as the Active
Intellect.
24. To some extent this echoes a contrast Avicenna makes between dierent grades
of human intellection: see Adamson 2004a.
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armation of a multiplicity of actions for the Necessary Existent

would ascribe a deciency to Him, so would the armation of a
multiplicity of intellections. Rather, the Necessary Existent only
intellects each thing in a universal (kull) way. Yet despite this no
particular thing escapes Him (Metaphysics VIII.7, 359.1013).
Most of the chapter is devoted to showing how it is, exactly,
that no particular escapes Gods knowledge. The answer is that
God knows all intelligible universals, and thereby knows all the
essential features of all particulars. Avicennas example is the
eclipse: by knowing the concept (mana) of the eclipse, God
knows all the individual eclipses universally. Perhaps startlingly,
Gods knowledge of particulars turns out to be precisely the sort
of knowledge that we humans have of particulars: it is better
in its completeness, simplicity, and simultaneity, but it is not
dierent in kind.
What God lacks, however, is what I have above called
awareness of particulars, because He has no cognitive faculty
akin to sensation or imagination that is designed specically
to grasp particulars. It is only in arguing for this subsidiary
thesis that Avicenna needs to bring in the points having to
do with Gods unchanging and simple nature. These points are
not required to answer the question: does God have proper,
intellective knowledge of particulars as such? For the answer to
this question, as we have seen, is Of course not, and neither do
we. Rather, Gods immutability and simplicity become relevant
when we begin to consider whether God might, as we do, have
some other non-intellective means for being aware of particulars
as such. And Avicennas answer is that He does not, because if
He did, then through that faculty He would be subject to time,
change, and multiplicity. God is thus superior to us in that He
has only the best kind of cognitive grasp of particulars, namely
knowledge: a grasp that is universal, necessary, unchanging and
certain, and hence only incidentally applicable to particulars. His
superiority does not consist in having a cognitive capacity we do
not, but in having fullled this capacity completely (He knows
all the universals), and in lacking the inferior cognitive capacities
we have (sensation and imagination). These inferior faculties are
epistemically valuable for us, after all, only insofar as we use
them partially to attain the intellection that God enjoys always
and completely.
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Critics of Avicennas view have emphasized that for him,

God has no grasp of particulars as such, and pointed out the
apparently disastrous theological consequences of this (how can
God watch over the fall of every sparrow if He isnt even
aware of the individual sparrow?). But in light of the preceding
discussion, we can now see that Avicenna is actually taking the
most conciliatory position he could have taken towards divine
knowledge of particulars. For, if we bear in mind the sort of
positions we have seen taken in the previous tradition, we can
see that once Avicenna had identied God as an intellect, he
had only two options. Option one was to hold that God has
no knowledge that is even applicable or relevant to particulars;
rather God would know a class of separate intelligible objects
and be entirely ignorant of particulars. Option two was to nd
a way to explain how it is that God knows particulars despite
having only intellectual, universal knowledgeor rather knows
particulars by having universal knowledge. Avicenna chooses the
latter option, and it is the epistemology he has discovered in
Post An that allows him to do so. Thus it is unfair to suggest
that Avicennas pious armations and Koranic quotations to the
eect that God does have an omniscient knowledge of particulars
are somehow disingenuous.25 Avicenna is sincere in holding that
God is omniscient, as the Koran would have us believe. It is just
that the way in which God is omniscient becomes clear only in
the light of the Aristotelian theory of demonstration.
It is also unfair to suggest that Avicenna has somehow
cheated in selecting the eclipse as his example.26 This suspicion is
provoked by the fact that heavenly bodies are the only members
of their species. The sun is the only thing that instantiates the
universal sun, a point Avicenna himself underlines in this chapter
when he says that the intellect will have access to an individual
so long as that individual is unique in its species, with nothing

25. As Marmura 1962, 311 does.

26. See again Marmura 1962, 3056, 311. Actually Marmura does not quite accuse
Avicenna of this. Rather he holds that, for Avicenna, God can only know individuals
as such if they are unique in their species. But though Marmura is right that God
can know the species sun and also, perhaps, that there is only one instantiation of
this species (because it may be essential to the sun that it be unique), it is still not
the case that this means God knows the individual sun as such. I will address this
at the end of the present paper.
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knowledge of particulars 287

comparable, like the sphere of the sun for example (360.89). So

it might seem that he has chosen the eclipse to illustrate divine
knowledge because it is an unusual case where God can know
the particular fully by knowing the universal.27 This accusation
is unfair, rst, because Avicenna must have chosen the eclipse
example largely because of its prominence in the Post An. It
is also unfair because an appreciation of Avicennas dialectical
situation shows how well-chosen the example is. For Avicennas
argument, I have suggested, is not aimed at someone who
assumes that God will have full knowledge of every particular
as such. Rather it is aimed at someone who cannot understand
how God could have even incidental or indirect knowledge of
particulars, if He is an unchanging intellect. It is aimed, in other
words, at the sort of Platonizing Aristotelians that preceded
Avicenna in the Arabic philosophical tradition. If this is the
sort of opponent he has in mind, all Avicenna needs to do is
show that there is at least one particular that God can know
incidentally by dint of universal knowledge. So he is right to pick
the eclipse example, which is an especially plausible example of
such incidental knowledge.
Let me now say what I think is the greatest strength,
and the greatest weakness, of the position Avicenna takes on
knowing particulars in a universal way. Its greatest strength
is that it provides a clear separation between knowledge and
mere opinion. This is a distinction already highlighted by
Aristotle in the Post An. In I.33, he denes opinion (doxa) as
being concerned with what is true or false but can also be
otherwise.28 Because opinions are beliefs in propositions that are
not necessary, opinion is unstable, presumably because even
true opinions grasp propositions that can change their truth

27. As mentioned in the previous note, even this is rather misleading: the intellect
has no knowledge of the particular sun as such (cf. Aristotles discussion of dening
the sun at Metaphysics VII.15, 1040a27b4). Rather it knows everything there is
to know about the sun by knowing its species, because the sun has no accidental
characteristics. In any case, Avicennas chief example is not the sun or moon, but
the eclipse. And he emphasizes both here and in the Demonstration that an eclipse is
not the only member of its species: there are many lunar eclipses, and knowledge of a
single universal covers all of them. For an in-depth discussion of the eclipse example
see Zghal 2004, pp. 704.
28. Cf. the Arabic version, Badaw 1949, p. 403; it contrasts opinion (z.ann) to aql
and ilm, corresponding to nous and episteme.
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value. Opinion (doxa) is thus dened in opposition to knowledge

(episteme), not only in terms of the subjective state of the opiner
and the knower,29 but at least in part in terms of the dierence
in the propositions concerned.
Avicenna again follows Aristotle on this point in his
Demonstration, especially in Chapter III.9, which is devoted
in part to the contrast between opinion (z.ann) and knowledge
(ilm), the two subspecies of belief (ray). He says that, whereas
knowledge deals with the necessary, The subject of opinion
is matters of truth regarding things that are [merely] possible,
subject to change, and do not hold fast (257.11). But unlike
Aristotle, Avicenna is clear in dening opinion and knowledge
partially in terms of the degree of subjective conviction that they
confer. Thus certainty, the hallmark of knowledge, has both a
subjective and objective component. He brings these components
together when he says we are certain when we have conviction
that something cannot be otherwise than it is (256.89), and
even more clearly when he says, In general, knowledge diers
from opinion in the degree of conviction and also with regard
to the things that knowledge primarily deals with (258.7). Of
course, one might cavil at the claim, made by both Aristotle and
Avicenna, that there can only be certainty in the sense required
for knowledge if the propositions involved are necessary and
universal.30 But the claim is neither absurd nor unsupported. It
rests, as indicated above, on a complex theory of knowledge as
explanation. To know something is to grasp the essential cause
of that thing, and to grasp this cause within a wider, scientically
arranged system of knowledge. These requirements may be more
robust than we would like, and also depend on a metaphysics
we do not accept. But they do present a sophisticated answer to
the problem, posed by Plato, of how to dierentiate knowledge
from true opinion. In applying his theory to the case of divine

29. As pointed out by Barnes 1993 in his commentary (p. 198). He incidentally
suggests that the instability of opinions could also be because those who hold mere
opinions rather than having knowledge are liable to change their minds.
30. Note again that this does not mean that the propositions in question cannot
concern things that are only contingently existent. As Marmura 1990, pp. 945,
points out, the necessity in question attaches to the truth of the proposition, not the
objects the proposition concerns. For example it is necessarily true that all men are
animals, even though there are no necessarily existing men.
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knowledge of particulars 289

knowledge, Avicenna has further shown how we can ensure

that God possesses complete and perfect knowledge, rather than
opinions.
This brings me to what is, in my view, the greatest weakness
of Avicennas theory of divine knowledge. We have seen that
for both Aristotle and Avicenna, universal knowledge remains
in a sense merely potential until it is deployed in application to
a particular case.31 This presents no diculties in epistemology
concerning humans, because we have the lower faculties that
allow us recognize a particular as falling under a universal (by
noting, for example, that this is a man). Lacking these faculties,
God is in danger of being like a mathematician with perfect
knowledge of geometry, but a total inability to recognize any
particular gure as a triangle. His complete universal knowledge
will remain potential unless He possesses some way of being
aware of particulars. Yet this is something Avicenna seems to
rule out by insisting that God is a pure intellect.32 Not even in the
apparently congenial case of the heavenly bodies will God be able
to apply His knowledge to particulars. For Avicenna says himself
in the Demonstration that, even if there is only one member of
the species sun, there is a world of dierence between grasping
this species and grasping the particular sun in the heavens. A
demonstration regarding the sun has to do not with this sun as
such, but with a nature that would also apply to other suns, if
there were any (see 144.1011, cf. 146.15, 172.1819). So God
cannot formulate a particular syllogism such as: If something
is a sun then it is eternal; this bright body is a sun; therefore this
bright body is eternal. For God cannot, it would seem, have any
access to the second premise.33
This presents a considerable obstacle to Gods knowing
particulars in a universal way. It is here that Avicenna could
usefully invoke a point I have not touched on at all yet, despite

31. For Aristotle see Metaphysics M.10, De Anima II.5.

32. As noted by Zghal 2004, p. 687.
33. It has been objected to me that this way of framing the issue suggests that God
thinks by means of syllogisms, which is false, because Gods thought is simple and
thus would not be divided into the multiple propositions of the syllogism. On this
issue I would refer the reader to my discussion in Adamson 2004a, which argues that
for Avicenna purely intellectual, non-discursive knowledge can still be structured
syllogistically, even if the premises of the syllogism are grasped all at once.
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his emphasis on it, which is that God knows all things by

knowing Himself insofar as He is their ultimate cause.34 Take
for instance Gods universal knowledge of humanity. To deploy
this knowledge with respect to Zayd, all God needs to know is
that Zayd exists and that Zayd falls under the universal man. In
general, He need only be aware that universals are instantiated
in the very particulars that exist. This awareness might seem
to be available to Him indirectly, insofar as the particulars
existence results from an unbroken chain of causation that begins
with God, is transmitted through the heavens, and ends with
the Active Intellect and its bestowal of forms on matter in the
sublunary world. Because God initiates these causal chains, He
knows the particulars that result from them, simply by knowing
Himself.
I think this is quite likely how Avicenna intended to solve
the problem of how God applies His universal knowledge.
Certainly there are historical reasons why Avicenna might have
found it plausible that eects are contained virtually within their
causes and thus known through knowledge of their causes: this
is a standard principle of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Assessing
whether it is a successful solution philosophically is a question
beyond the scope of this paper, but I will conclude by making
three points that might help towards such an assessment. First, it
bears repeating that what God needs to know about particulars
by virtue of knowing Himself is not nearly as much as we
might have supposed: only that the particulars exist, and what
species the particulars belong to. Given Gods omniscience with
regard to universals, which Avicenna assumes as uncontroversial
here, this added information will allow Him to apply universal
knowledge to every created particular. Second, we should note

34. In passages such as the following: Because He is the Creator of all existence, by
His essence He intellects that which is created by Him. He is the Creator of perfect
existents [sc. things in the heavens] in themselves, but [is the Creator] of generated
and corrupted existents through their species, in the rst instance (awwalan), and as
individuals through the intermediary of [the species] (359.12); Nothing exists that
has not somehow come to be necessary through its cause; we have already shown
this. So these causes, through the impacts they have, give rise to particular things
existing from them. And the First knows the causes and what conforms to them,
so He knows necessarily what they give rise to. . . For it is impossible that He know
those [sc. the causes] but not these [sc. the eects] (359.16360.2). The question of
how God even knows universals, never mind particulars, would presumably also be
answered with reference to knowing the universals in Himself as cause.
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knowledge of particulars 291

that in Avicennas account God certainly knows at least one

particular directly: Himself. How this is possible raises yet further
questionsfor surely Avicenna does not mean that God grasps
the species God which He also instantiates. (Dealing with this
problem would probably require us to invoke the fact that in
Avicennas system, Gods essence and existence are identical.)
Third and nally, on the view I am ascribing to Avicenna, it
will still be the case that for Avicenna, as I have interpreted him,
God is completely unaware of the accidental features belonging
to particulars. For when He knows Zayd through Zayds species,
He will grasp only Zayds essential features: those features Zayd
has in virtue of being human.35 So He will not know or even
be aware that Zayd is pale, for example. Given that, as I have
argued, Avicenna would deny that there is anything to know
about the accidental features of things,36 I do not think Avicenna
need see this as a diculty. His notion of omniscience is simply
limited, in accordance with his strict understanding of what
knowledge is.37 But if one insists that he must see it as a diculty,
there seems to me to be only way out. Remember that Avicenna
requires that knowledge be universal because it is only in this way
that it can be certain. That is, for Avicenna (as for Aristotle) if
we are to know that P, then P must be a necessary truth, and
only universal truths are necessary. But perhaps this last claim
is false: perhaps some, or all, truths about particulars are in fact
necessary. This would follow for Avicenna, if we suppose that
he is a strict causal deterministthat is, that for him all actual
events and properties, even in the sublunary world, are ultimately

35. A question arises here with respect to common accidents, i.e. accidents belonging
to all members of a species. Would God know, for instance, that Zayd is able to
laugh, since all humans can laugh, even though this does not belong to our essence?
Jon McGinnis has pointed out to me a passage in the Demonstration (I.8, pp. 8586)
where Avicenna says that the ability to laugh is an eect of our rationality, though
one could still coherently imagine a human who is unable to laugh. It seems to me
that if such a common accident is a consequence of essential features in this way,
God could know that every species member has that accident.
36. Except, that is, generically: for example even though the paleness of my
skin is accidental, and unknown to intellect as such, one could have intellectual,
demonstrative knowledge of paleness in general. For instance one could know that
paleness is a skin colour, or that paleness results from not being out in the sun.
37. Thus, when Avicenna speaks of Gods attribute of knowledge, he means not (for
instance) that for every true proposition P, God knows that P. Rather he means
that for every proposition P such that P can be known, God knows that P.
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necessitated by Gods causal activity. Then God could know with

certainty a proposition like Zayd is pale. For such propositions
would be necessarily true, despite not being universal.38 I myself
would not follow this interpretation, for two reasons. First, we
have seen that in Avicennas most important discussion of these
issues, his solution revolves around Gods knowing particulars
by means of universals. This rules out knowledge of accidents,
since these cannot be grasped in a universal way, at least as I
have understood this phrase. Second, I am in any case sceptical
about the claim that Avicenna accepts causal determinism for
accidental features in the sublunary world.39 But that is an
argument for another day.40

Department of Philosophy
Kings College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS
peter.adamson@kcl.ac.uk

References
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38. I take the interpretation proposed by Zghal 2004 to be a sophisticated version

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