ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Avicenna’s definition of truth or, more precisely, some aspects of it related to the theme of analysis or resolutio. Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) tends to rework elements of the two traditions that constitute the history of analysis (and more generally the alphabet of Arabic philosophy), that is, in a very broad sense, the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions. The doctrine of truth, in which logic and metaphysics are closely intertwined, clearly exemplifies this. Both senses of truth—the logical and the ontological—are based on the idea of permanence and primacy. A distinction is made between what is true or real in a proper (or absolute) sense and what is true or real in a derived (and relation-dependent) sense. As a foundation, truth is the truth of being and coincides with reality that cannot be analyzed further. At this level, being true comprehends the Necessarily Existent, the proposition expressing the existence of necessity, the principle of non-contradiction, and the quiddity or reality of the thing as such. Everything else—both at the level of truth or truthfulness and at the level of existing reality—is true because it is derived from some other thing and thus in itself is false, and is true only in virtue of its relation to some other thing.
