Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Avicenna أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن الحسن بن علي بن سينا

(Ibn-Sīnā)

980 – 1037 CE

Persian polymath, spur to the Islamic Golden Age, poet, doctor, scientist, philosopher and one of the most significant thinkers and writers of his time; Avicenna wrote over 450 books one of which became the standard medical text for European universities up until as late as 1650. With influence from Plato and Aristotle, he clarified the distinction between the words and the sense, taught a spiritual path beyond motivations of hope and fear, reconciled the conflict between reason and faith, and his works according to Will Durant, “mark the apex of medieval thought and constitute one of the major syntheses in the history of the mind.”

Eras

Unlisted Sources

Avicenna on Theology

Katib al-Najat

Quotes by Avicenna (3 quotes)

“Man has three souls—an animal soul he shares with animals, a physical soul that links him to plants, and a human, rational soul that is a bond between him and angels.”

from Avicenna on Theology

Themes: Know Yourself

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“Man's relationship to the world of Spirit is established by reasoning; speech follows after it. If a man possesses no knowledge of reasoning, he is incapable of expressing truth.”

from Katib al-Najat

Themes: Reason

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“The noblest functions of the human soul begin with reflecting on art and meditating on things of beauty. Rather than fixating on fame, fortune, pleasure, and power; it waits for the revelations of truth.”

from Avicenna on Theology

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Quotes about Avicenna (2 quotes)

“Avicenna achieved as well as any man the ever-sought reconciliation between the faith of the people and the reasoning of the philosophers marking the apex of medieval thought and constituting one of of the major syntheses in the history of the mind.”

Will Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
Philosophy apostle and popularizer of history's lessons
from Age of Faith

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“Avicenna spent his life in the sort of places that one used to think only exist it poetry. Even more famous in medicine than in philosophy and with a passion for wine and women, he was suspect to the orthodox but befriended by princes on account of his medical skill




Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”
from History of Western Philosophy

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