Rosabel Ansari

Rosabel Ansari received her PhD from Georgetown University in 2020. Her research involves the transmission of Ancient Greek philosophy into Arabic, Arabic and Islamic metaphysics in both the classical and post-classical periods, the philosophy of language, and the relationship between rational and supra-rational forms of knowledge in Islamic philosophy. 

Abstract: This project consists of a book manuscript that explores the philosophy and genesis in al-Fārābī (d. 950) of the Arabic rendition of Aristotle’s pros hen homonymy of ‘being’. A key theory in Arabic logic and Islamic metaphysics, pros hen homonymy was rendered as a theory of “amphibolous” predication (taškīk) that is neither fully equivocal nor fully univocal. As an amphibolous term, ‘being’ causes us to be unsure of its meaning(s) and hence how we construct the reality of the world. This theory is developed in Fārābī’s logical works and would go on to permeate Islamic metaphysics as a response to Sufi monism up to the contemporary period.