Study of Avicenna’s Approach towards Metempsychosis with Reliance on Al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiya

Metempsychosis is one of the Common approaches to justify and explicate eternality and Perennial Life. Although different viewpoints have been brought up in its definition and elucidation, Avicenna introduces any belief in the incarnation of the soul in a body other than the original body as a metempsychosis belief.  From his point of view, although the believers in metempsychosis may have some disagreements concerning the cause, the manner, or the kind of body in which the soul after separation enters, all of them share the same opinion in decisive distinction of the soul and the body and primordial existence of the soul in relation to the body. By his interpretation of the essentially cogent connection between the soul and the body and the creation of the soul with the body, Avicenna deals with two types of critique of the opinions of those believing in metempsychosis. In the first critique, by accepting the premises of those believing in metempsychosis, he shows that the theory of metempsychosis is incompatible and unjustifiable even with his own preconceptions;  and in the second critique, he considers metempsychosis as an improbable notion according to the principles of Peripatetic philosophy. With a descriptive method, the present research with reliance on Avicenna's works, especially “Al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiya”, tries to explain his specific viewpoint concerning metempsychosis on the one hand and coherently express his critiques of this viewpoint, on the other.