Abstract

According to the common wisdom, among both contemporary scholars and classic interpreters, Avicenna is committed to ‘Co-origination’: The human soul is temporally originated with the human body. Against the common wisdom, we will argue that Co-origination is ambiguous and vague and thus its attribution to Avicenna is in need of clarification and precisification. The problem is broken down into two sub-problems: First, the problem of the origination of different souls/powers, namely the vegetative, animal and rational, in humans, and second, the problem of the relationship between these souls/powers. Based on our solutions to these two sub-problems, we will offer our own reading of Co-origination according to which Avicenna is not committed to the view that the human soul is originated with the ‘human body’ in its ordinary sense.