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If there is one word that can sum up Ibn Sīnā's al-Ilāhiyāt, it is without doubt intentionality. It is present everywhere and it is intentionality that enables Ibn Sīnā to present science as a product of the creativity of the mind. He was so much impressed by the powerful creativity of the human mind that he wrote his famous poem The Soul in its praise, the belles-lettres of Arabic literature, to ensure the immortality of human mind's creative thought. He developed powerful arguments and subtle analyses to show us to what extent our mental life depends on intentionality: intentionality as mental existence, as reference to extra-mental entities as well as to previous experiences, as combinative unity by linking what otherwise seems separate (and, of course, to separate what otherwise seems indivisible), as the construction of new object by the discovery of a new meaning, as a predictive act by going beyond the actual intentional object.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-25238-4_6

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