General Concepts in Avicennism Philosophy and Its Impact on Medieval Philosophy

The fundamental question in the realm of epistemology is the quality of origin and how the mind achieves general concepts. In this study, we seek to answer the question: How is it possible to know the general principles through the partial principles? In the history of philosophy, two important currents, Platonic and Aristotelian, have been formed in this regard. The leader of the Aristotelian movement in the Islamic world is the Avicennism and in Western thought, influenced by Ibn Sina is medieval philosophy. The present study, with an analytical-comparative approach, deals with the perception and types of general concepts from the perspective of Ibn Sina and medieval philosophers. Findings show that both philosophical branches in achieving the mind to the first intellects, have often accepted the theory of abstraction and have also considered the rational intellects to be based on the essential concepts and their accident. In the field of philosophical concepts, although he did not use the term of secondary intelligible, but he considered these concepts to have originated from outside and at the same time he has distinguished the quality of their origin with the first and second intellects.