This article aims to reconstruct part of Book IV of Galen's lost treatise On Demonstration. This reconstruction is based on testimonies transmitted by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 925) in the Doubts About Galen, as well as on a source that until now has never been studied, namely the Solution to the Doubts About Galen of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Zuhr (d. 1131). This paper argues that, in Book IV, Galen maintains that no one can reach any certain conclusion regarding the eternity of the world, and that he consequently criticizes Aristotle's treatment of the subject in On the Heavens. Galen approves only of one of the arguments used by Aristotle in On the Heavens I, 3 (270b12–17), because it is based on empirical evidence. Al-Rāzī focuses on Galen's commentary on this passage. Our hypothesized reconstruction resolves some of the contradictions between the fragments of Book IV that are transmitted in al-Rāzī's report and Philoponus’ Against Proclus On the Eternity of the World. Finally, this article shows that al-Rāzī's interest in this passage from On Demonstration can be explained with reference to his own philosophical-theological goals. As my examination will make clear, al-Rāzī objects to Galen's arguments because he considers that Galen's teleology is based on a framework where the world is eternal (although Galen does not state this view explicitly), and that this framework does not allow Galen to understand that theodicy is prior to both cosmology and biology.

This paper provides an analysis and translation of a previously edited, but otherwise unstudied work by Miskawayh (d. 1030) entitled On Pleasures and Pains (Fī al-Laḏḏāt wa-al-ālām). After a brief orientation regarding the Aristotelian account of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics, which is Miskawayh's main source, the theory of pleasure set out in On Pleasures and Pains is compared to the discussion of pleasure in Miskawayh's better known Refinement of Character (Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq). Despite considerable harmony between the two texts, their treatments of pleasure differ in that the Refinement accepts, whereas On Pleasures and Pains rejects, the “restoration” theory of pleasure of Plato's Timaeus.

Ever since the rediscovery of Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddima in modern times, debates have been ongoing regarding his identity as a scholar: was he a revolutionary thinker in the modern sense of the word, breaking away from classical and medieval modes of thinking, or was he in fact a conservative Muslim scholar who did not venture far from his traditional Muslim horizons? Through a careful examination of the preface to the Muqaddima, this article shows what he thought about the nature of his project and why he thought it necessary. Accordingly, it builds the case that Ibn Khaldūn is indeed a revolutionary – but not in the modern sense of the word – who did not shy away from challenging tradition in order to reform society's moral and political horizons. An examination of the preface alone will not provide a definitive answer to the question of Ibn Khaldūn's radical vs. conservative thought, but it does put his conservatism (apparent and real) in context.

In an article published in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 22 (2012), pp. 217–87, by Gad Freudenthal and Mauro Zonta, “Avicenna among Medieval Jews: the reception of Avicenna's philosophical, scientific and medical writings in Jewish cultures, East and West,” the authors promise to present “a preliminary but comprehensive picture of Avicenna's reception by medieval Jewish cultures.” As such, it seemed to offer the “comprehensive study” referred to as a desideratum by Zonta at the conclusion of his groundbreaking and very important survey, “Avicenna in medieval Jewish philosophy” (2002). Zonta explained that such a future “comprehensive study of the many and different interpretations given to his doctrines by Jewish thinkers would allow us to evaluate the real role played by [Avicenna] in medieval thought.” Surprisingly, the recent article adds little that is new to the previous studies of Zonta and others on the subject, and omits useful information found in them. The main point of the present notes is to try to correct several oversimplifications, questionable assumptions, and misleading statements in the article under consideration. Its purpose is to help readers of the article to attain a fuller and more accurate – although certainly not comprehensive – picture of the reception of Avicenna among medieval Jews.

The notion of a “World of Images” located somewhere between the immaterial and the material world was a mainstay of eschatological speculation in late medieval Islam. As has been recognised before, the concept was launched by al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191). However, its more properly philosophical underpinnings, in particular the notion of “suspended” images – images which somehow have an objective, rather than just a mental or subjective, status – merit further clarification, which this article attempts to provide. Since the concept of “suspended forms”, while applied to eschatological matters in the last treatise of the Philosophy of Illumination, makes its first appearance in a discussion of mirror vision, I examine in some detail Avicenna's understanding of mirror vision as presented in the Shifāʾ, to which al-Suhrawardī reacts. I then undertake a detailed reconstructive analysis of two paragraphs of the Philosophy of Illumination, paying particular attention to the question of the ontological status of “suspended” or “self-subsistent” images as well as to the idea that mirrors serve, not as loci in which images inhere, but as loci at which they become manifest (singular maẓhar).