Lecture: Silvia di Vincenzo

Abstract
Contrary to the popular belief that philosophy in Arabic declined around the 12th century, it has actually thrived in forms that are largely unexplored. Arabic philosophical manuscripts present a wealth of textual and visual annotations by students, teachers, and individual scholars who have kept selecting, manually copying, teaching, and studying philosophical texts until the 19th century. Well after the printing revolution, the margins of manuscripts served across the Arabo-Islamic world as material platforms for this choral philosophical enterprise. The views shared by professors, students, and scholars have most often remained on the uncharted margins of manuscripts and on the fringe of the global history of philosophy. The ERC Starting Grant Project, "The Uncharted Margins of Philosophy" (UnMaP), seeks to bring those contributions from the margins of manuscripts into the forefront of philosophical discourse. This presentation will showcase some case studies from the manuscripts of Avicenna's ( d. 103 7) most comprehensive philosophical work, The Book of Healing, particularly from the section on logic. These examples will offer valuable insights into the scholarly debates and school discussions that shaped the interpretation of this key text.

Silvia Di Vincenzo is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project U nMaP- "The Uncharted Margins of Philosophy: An AI-Enhanced Material History of Arabic Logic Across Time (l 2th-l 9th c.) and Frontiers (from Spain to India)", set to begin in March 2025 at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. Her research centers on the transmission of Aristotelian philosophy across Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin traditions, with a particular emphasis on logic, metaphysics, and the study of manuscripts.