Reading Aristotle with Avicenna: On the Reception of the Philosophia Prima in the Summa Halensis, in The Summa Halensis: Sources and Context, ed. L. Schumacher, De Gruyter, Berlin 2020, pp. 135-154

The present paper aims to provide some methodological tools for obtaining a more precise understanding of the way Avicenna’s metaphysics contributed to shaping the metaphysical views expressed in the Summa. More specifically, it will try to offer a detailed assessment of the ways in which the authors of the Summa quoted, contextualized, and employed for their own purposes the only metaphysical work by Avicenna available to them, namely, the Liber de Philosophia prima sive Scientia Divina, which is the Latin translation of the metaphysical part of Avicenna’s magnum opus, the Book of the Cure (or: of the Healing). The general aim is coherently to situate the Summa within the framework of the Latin reception of Avicenna’s metaphysics in the 13th century, and to document its full significance as a remarkable specimen of one of the possible ways of using it as a source, i. e. what has been labelled elsewhere the ‘Philosophia prima and Metaphysics’ pattern of joint reception of Avicenna and Aristotle.