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Richard Sorabji, in his book, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death,1points out many similarities between what Ibn Sina says about self-knowledge and what Augustine says in his De trinitate, Book 10, about the mind's knowledge of itself. These similarities, according to Sorabji, cannot have been the result of any direct influence Augustine had on Ibn Sina since Ibn Sina had no access to any of Augustine's writings. Sorabji surmises that it may instead be the result, or at least partly the result, of both thinkers having read, and been influenced by, some earlier philosopher, perhaps a Neo-Platonist. 'Gilson noticed the general similarity between Augustine's use of the Cogito here and Avicenna's (Ibn Sina's) Flying Man', Sorabji writes,
...and appears to suggest as common sources Plotinus and Proclus, but this cannot have been his intention [Sorabji adds, with characteristic generosity] since Proclus is too late to have influenced Augustine. If there is a common source [he adds], I think it is likely to be Porphyry. 2
Sorabji has quite a bit to say about the similarities between Augustine and Ibn Sina on self-knowledge. One very important similarity is that they both use a claim about self-knowledge to underwrite an argument for soul/body, or mind/body dualism. I am going to discuss their arguments in a moment. However, Sorabji also points out what is apparently an important difference between Ibn Sina and Augustine. The soul/body dualism that self-knowledge underwrites for each philosopher presents a challenge for Ibn Sina that seems not to have concerned Augustine. That challenge concerns the individuation of souls in the afterlife. According to Sorabji, Ibn Sina thinks he must account for how it is that separated souls are individuated in the afterlife and he is not sure how to do this. In fact, in one important passage, Sorabji suggests, he presents no fewer than six different suggestions for how separated human souls are individuated, but is unable to settle on any one of them. By contrast, Augustine, again, according to Sorabji, is ambivalent about whether it would even be good to survive bodily death by existing as a separated soul; perhaps it would be better for the righteous human...