Project description
Uncovering Avicenna’s intellectual development
The course of Avicenna’s intellectual development remains remarkably unclear to this day, and understanding how his thinking evolved lies at the heart of the ERC-funded ALIVE project. Avicenna, the highly influential Persian polymath, is often likened to a Mozart-like prodigy. Yet, this image overlooks the rich intellectual environment in which he lived. Until now, research has failed to probe the depths of his personal interactions and their impact on his philosophy. By delving into four distinct and previously neglected source texts, ALIVE promises to unveil the intricacies of Avicenna’s intellectual upbringing, presenting a new paradigm for future investigations. Beyond Avicenna, the project will also foster an online platform for deciphering challenging textual corpora.
Objective
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037) is among the most influential philosophers in history and the most important philosopher of the Islamic tradition. He is described as a Mozart-type Wunderkind, who very early had completed his education and perfected his understanding of reality. Yet, throughout his life, Avicenna was also an eager student of his teachers or himself a dedicated teacher to his students – leading to the key-question of ALIVE: to what extent have Avicenna’s personal relations with his peers influenced the formation and formulation of his own philosophy? Did he reform or reformulate his thoughts in light of his personal interactions?
Modern scholarship on Avicenna has often evaded these questions, frequently referring to his autobiography, according to which he supposedly never added anything to his views after his eighteenth birthday. What is more, scholars appear either unaware of the existence of sources that allow the examination of Avicenna’s potential indebtedness to and interaction with his peers or deterred by the challenges involved in exploring them systematically. As a result, the immediate context of Avicenna’s intellectual formation remained a surprisingly understudied area of research in defiance of its enormous potential for new insights not only into particular parts of his oeuvre but into his philosophy as a whole.
ALIVE offers a radically new way of approaching Avicenna by studying four unique source texts that enable us to “circle in” on his intellectual upbringing and development, thereby providing an entirely novel paradigm for all future investigation in the field. At the same time, ALIVE will make an important contribution to the Digital Humanities by furnishing an online platform that will facilitate the study of diverse and difficult textual corpora for both ALIVE and future projects sharing these challenges.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences educational sciences didactics
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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44801 Bochum
Germany
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