Avicenna's Healing and the Metaphysics of Truth

In this essay, I present and explicate Avicenna's doctrine of truth in his Metaphysics of the Healing. I begin by discussing the way Avicenna introduces his doctrine of truth within his presentation of the first principles of metaphysics and their integration with his innovative appropriation of Aristotle's four senses of being. I then canvass the doctrines of truth found in Aristotle and al-Kindi and show how they influenced Avicenna's novel division of truth found in the first book of his Metaphysics of the Healing. In the final sections of the paper, I illustrate the ways Avicenna applies and amplifies his division of truth within the ontological, aitiological, theological, and epistemological parts of his metaphysics. I show that Avicenna developed a systematic and hierarchical doctrine of truth that culminates in God as the First Truth that causes all contingent truths to exist.