Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Asadollah Falahi

Iranian Institute of Philosophy

Abstract

In Aristo-Avicennan logic, a distinction is made between the matter and modality of propositions. This distinction is not very clear in Aristotle's works, and although Al-Fārābī made the distinction between matter and modality, his distinction is neither stated nor defined clearly. Unlike these two great teachers of logic, however, in the Avicennan tradition, there are at least two clear but different approaches to the distinction between matter and modality: (1) Avicenna explicitly considers modality as verbal and defines matter as a non-verbal "state of the predicate in relation to the subject," or in other words, the modality is signifying. (2) Suhrawardī, however, considers matter to be the proposition itself without modality or without modality and negation. Logicians between Avicenna and Suhrawardī, such as Al-Ghazālī and Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, sometimes had ambiguous approaches that were probably not without influence in the formation of Suhrawardī's approach. This article provides a critical account of these two approaches. Since Muslim logicians after Suhrawardī, influenced by these two approaches, have presented very conflicting views on the distinction between matter and modality, and since the examination and criticism of their views far exceed the scope of one article, I have devoted a critical examination of their views and my final analysis of the history of developments on this subject to another article in this field.

Keywords

• Aristotle
• al-Fārābī
• Avicenna
• Al-Ghazālī
• Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī
• Suhrawardī

Main Subjects

• philosophy