Avicenna’s Discussion of the Meaning of Predication as a Background of the Essential Primary Predication

Abstract

Predication is one of the important and significant issues in Islamic philosophy. “Essential Primary Predication” is one of the types of predication that is mainly seen in late Islamic philosophers. The historical background of this predication is one of the controversial topics among post-Ṣadrīan thinkers, but it seems it must be sought in the Avicenna’s discussions about the meaning of predication. To show this, I will focus on two positions in which Avicenna talks about the meaning of predication. In a proposition like “A is B”, what we mean is that “What is A is B”, not that “The ḥaqīqa of A is the ḥaqīqa of B”. Avicenna tells this in Ishārāt. Perhaps because the meaning of the word ḥaqīqa is a bit obscure here, post-Avicennan thinkers preferred to connect this to what he says in Manṭiq al-Mashriqīyyīn, in which it is declared that when saying “A is B” we don’t mean that “the meaning of A is the meaning of B”. There is a long history of discussion about what exactly Avicenna wants to exclude here. Quite contrary to what Avicenna says here though, late Islamic philosophers clearly talks about a kind of predication, i.e. “Essential Primary Predication”, which, in propositions like “A is B”, is to be interpreted as “the meaning or concept of A is the meaning or concept of B”. Obviously there is a gap here; a gap that I am going to fill on part be showing some of the historical discussions which led to this shift.