São Paulo – For the first time, the “Book of the Soul,” written in Arabic by the doctor, politician and philosopher Ibn Sina, has been translated into Portuguese. The work took nearly three years of dedication from the professor at the School of Philosophy, Language and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo (USP), Miguel Attie Filho. In the book, the author sets out to describe human nature through the soul, although he avoids emphasizing the religious aspect. The work is also regarded as a “bridge” between the history of Greek and European thinking.
The “Book of the Soul” is part of an encyclopaedia entitled, in Arabic, Al Sifa (The Healing), written between 1,020 and 1,030. The “Book of the Soul” is the sixth book of the Natural Sciences section, one of the divisions that integrate “The Healing,” which also comprises Logic, Mathematics and Metaphysics. Avicenna, as Ibn Sina is known in the West, is also one of the forefathers of the falsafa, i.e. philosophy in Arabic. His thinking is influenced by the classical thinkers: Plato (to whom there are two realities: concrete and abstract), Aristotle (who believed that philosophy should take place in the realm of concrete reality) and Neo Platonism, developed by the thinker Plotinus, who in turn posits that evil does not exist, but imperfection does.
The history of thinking lies at the foundation of Miguel’s academic background, as does Avicenna’s body of work. His studies on the “Book of the Soul” began as the 50-year-old Attie was preparing his master’s thesis and then continued through his doctorate, postdoctorate and associate professorship. His interest in the work of this philosopher, who was born in the region now known as Uzbekistan and developed his work in the Persian world, dates back a long time. “As I pursued my master’s degree, I noticed that there was next to no reference to the Arab thinkers. They were nowhere to be seen. That encouraged me to do research on why they were so absent, even though there was a revival in the 1950s and 1960s,” the translator says.
When he was invited by the Globo publishing house to translate the book, shortly after earning his doctorate, in 2004, Attie was very familiar with the “Book of the Soul.” However, after starting to translate, he realized that he was in for an “adventure.” “The invitation to translate the book was almost a challenge because I was near my limit regarding what I knew about him and his expressions. In this case, it was not just about translating from Arabic into Portuguese. It is also about interpreting and translating the notions of philosophy,” he recalls. On several occasions, Attie had to consult expressions in Greek before finding the right word.
To the translator, in addition to bringing into being a philosophical work never before translated directly from Arabic into Portuguese, the “Book of the Soul” is a new piece of the puzzle of the history of thinking. The 9th century Arab thinkers are in the “middle of the road” in between the Greeks, such as Plato (427 BC – 347 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), and the Europeans of the centuries that followed. Attie claims that one of the main features of Avicenna is that he demonstrates that there are not two types of thinking: Eastern and Western. “That appeared in post-Renaissance Europe (in the 14th century). That is part of an ideology. That is why there is this split. The ‘Book of the Soul’ poses problems to those who believe in this division,” he says.
When he wrote the “Book of the Soul,”, Avicenna was not thinking of the soul from a religious perspective. “He was also a doctor. To discuss the soul, he discusses other areas of the body that do not involve the soul. First he addresses the body, and then he approaches the soul. He describegs the senses, the chambers of the brain, cognition. The way in which he designs the book is not through religion, but rather through reason. It is a book of science and philosophy,” sayas Attie. “He discusses the healing of the soul and he discusses things: man, society, nature and the universe,” he explains. Attie highlights that although it is not in itself religious, the “Book of the Soul” is interpreted “esoterically” in that are predominantly Shiite Muslim regions. “They emphasize the more spiritualistic part of the book, whereas the scientific interpretation is prevalent in Europe,“ he claims.
Attie, who is a descendent of Syrians, has translated three philosophers from the Arab world: Al-Farabi, Al-Kindi and Avicenna. He reveals that if there were more Arab philosophy books translated into Portuguese, he would venture into other translations of Avicenna’s oeuvre. But that is not the case yet. “Thus, I would like to translate the main work of each of the major authors,” he says. Of those, he has not yet translated the philosopher Averroes.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
