In this updated edition of his classic work, Lenn E. Goodman provides a concise introduction to the life and thought of Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, known as Avicenna, who was born in the year 980 C.E. near Bokhara in what is now Uzbekistan and died 1037 C.E. in Hamadan, now in Iran.

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Anyone who is at all familiar with the writings of the medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna recognizes him as a philosophically penetrating and original thinker who deserves a place alongside the more familiar major figures in the history of Western philosophy.... This book presents the reader with an overview of the principal tenets of Avicenna's philosophy that both sets them in their own historical context within medieval Islam and brings them to bear on perennial themes in the history of western philosophy.