Dr Wahid Amin presents at the British Society for the History of Philosophy Annual Conference

The British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP) annual conference is one of the most highly anticipated events in the yearly calendar among philosophers and historians in which academics from around the world showcase their research on various past philosophers and philosophical movements. The conference convened over three days (24-26 April 2019) at Kings College London.

AMI scholar and senior research fellow Dr Wahid Amin participated on the Arabic Philosophy Panel in which he presented his forthcoming paper on the problem of universals in the later Islamic philosophical tradition, charting how Avicenna’s realist conception of the natural universal was subjected to a powerful critique by the understudied figure of the fourteenth-century, Qutb al-Din al-Razi. Al-Razi’s criticisms of Avicenna were not only well-known to his contemporaries but also widely circulated and debated in the logical and theological tracts all the way through to the modern period, and as such provides a crucial link to thinkers such as Mulla Sadra who defended a realist conception of extramental natures. Dr Amin’s paper thus fills an important lacuna in our ongoing historical appreciation of Avicenna’s philosophy and its development through the writings of post-Avicennan thinkers in the following centuries.