Celestial Souls in Ibn-Sina's Cosmology and Their Similarity with Human Souls

As opposed to intelligences, Celestial souls are abstract entities who need body for their act and effect; they are discussed in Ibn-Sina's philosophy. The significance of analyzing these entities is not just because of their position in ancient astronomy. It can be stated that, accepting these souls by Ibn-Sina and repudiating them by Ibn-Roshd has had an essential influence on the destiny of philosophy in Islamic and western world. In this article we are going to show the position of these souls in Ibn-Sina's cosmology; meanwhile we analyze his argument in favour of them; then, we show the way Ibn-Sina’s belief in celestial souls makes his philosophy different from peripatetic philosophy and takes him up to oriental philosophy. In fact, Ibn-Sina's theory of celestial souls has one of its origins in oriental philosophy. Finally, the similarity of celestial souls and human souls will be discussed. Here we have a hermeneutic circle; in other words, we can know celestial souls by self-knowledge or deliberation on our human souls; meanwhile, by knowing the celestial souls, our self-knowledge can be transformed too.