Did Ibn Sina Write a Monograph About the Thanatophobia?

• Main Author: Hamed Arezaei
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Imam Sadiq University 2020-09-01
• Series: حکمت سینوی
• Subjects: ibn sina; thanatophobia (death anxiety); abū ʿalī miskawayh; avoiding the grief of death; healing from the thanatophobia and treating death anxiety disorder; tahdhib al'akhlaq wa taṭhir al'araq
• Online Access: https://ap.journals.isu.ac.ir/article_75574_298bb0ea9de8b6b1fa1832b0d9cc9c65.pdf

Throughout history, the fear of death or thanatophobia has preoccupied philosopher’s ideas and medical issues and ethics. Since ancient times, philosophers have expressed their ideas about death and fear of dying in their books, alongside literary texts, stories, mystical and gnostic texts. In ancient Greece, in addition to Socrates and Plato, the Epicureans and Stoics played an important role in philosophizing death and thanatophobia. In the realm of Islamic philosophy, thinkers like Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī (Rhazes), Abū ʿAlī Miskawayh, and Mulla-Sadra have commented on death and thanatophobia. Nevertheless, the only monograph which deals with death and death anxiety in detail is Philosophical Approaches to Thanatophobia and its Treatments, the authorship of which is attributed to the great philosopher and physician of the Islamic world, Avicenna. The work, which is published in the collection of Avicenna’s treatises, has been translated under different titles. As an eminent philosopher and competent physician, Avicenna has aptly philosophized death and thanatophobia, the authenticity has been acknowledged by the numerous references scholars and academicians have made to the work. However, the work, as this study suggests, is wrongly attributed to Avicenna. This treatise is, originally, a part of Abū ʿAlī Miskawayh’s Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq wa Taṭhir al-Aʿaraq (Refinement of character and purification of dispositions), wrongly attributed to Avicenna, whether intentionally or inadvertently. Examining different aspects of this wrong attribution, this study textually demonstrates that the treatise is written by Miskawayh.