Ibn Sina's Foundationalism

The present article consists of two main sections. In the first section the writer tries to deal with the topics which in contemporary epistemology has been advanced about tradional foundationalism, and in the meantime to show both the weaknesses and strengths of these theories briefly. Following this preliminary discussion, in the second section besides the review of Ibn Sina's point of view about the problem of foundation and principles of knowledge, it has been shown that this theory can be included in the foundationalist theories but with a special reading. This theory, with its characteristic features (including, its being foundation of higher beings in relation to lower beings in all kinds of knowledge from observation to certainty, foundational mode of concept for assertion, foundational mode of axioms of every science for the problems of that science, foundational mode of higher sciences in relation to lower sciences and also foundational mode of immediate perceptions for other kinds of knowledge and at the top of immediate perceptions foundational mode of basic self – evident propositions both potentially and complementary for all kinds of indirect knowledge) neither follows the present – day traditional foundationalism that we deal with in the first section nor is susceptible to the many difficullies of traditional foundationalism of today.