Abstract
Probably no chapter in the history of the cosmological argument is as significant—or as universally ignored—as that of the Arabic theologians and philosophers. Although we find in them the origin and development of two of the most important versions of the cosmological argument, namely the argument from temporal regress and the argument from contingency, the contribution of these Islamic thinkers is virtually ignored in anthologies and books on the subject.1 Furthermore, until quite recently the only articles on them had to be ferreted out of esoteric orientalist or Near Eastern journals. A paucity of English translations of primary sources exists; moreover, those works that have been translated are often available only through obscure publishing houses in far-off places, making it all the more difficult to obtain material. These obstacles notwithstanding, anyone desiring a basic knowledge of the history of the cosmological argument cannot afford to overlook the contribution of these Muslim theologians and philosophers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For example, Burrill makes no mention of the Arabic contribution (Donald Burrill, The Cosmological Argument [New York: Doubleday & Co., 1967]). On the other hand, Sturch devotes three chapters exclusively to Arabic developments of the cosmological argument (R. L. Sturch, ‘The Cosmological Argument’ [Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1970], pp. 59–120a).
Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, Mediaeval Philosophy: Augustine to Scotus (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1950), pp. 186–200.
See also his chapter in Frederick Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy (London: Methuen & Co., 1972), pp. 104–24. For an overview of the principal philosophers of the eastern group (al-Kindi, al-Râzt, al-Fârâbi, ibn Sinâ) and of the western group (ibn Bâjjah, ibn Tufayl, ibn Rushd)
see M. Mandi, ‘La philosophie islamique: les écoles orientale et occidentale’, Cultures 4 (1977): 37–50.
F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1968; London: University of London Press, 1968), pp. 135–6.
See also De Lacy O’Leary, Arabic Thought and its Place in History, rev. ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1939; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1939), p. 135.
Richard Walzer, ‘Early Islamic Philosophy’, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 648.
See D. B. Macdonald, ‘Continuous recreation and atomic time in Muslim scholastic theology’, Isis 9 (1927): 326–44.
W. D. Ross, Aristotle, 5th ed. (London: Methuen & Co., 1964; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964), p. 177.
Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), p. 30.
Al-Ghazali, Tahafut al-Falasifah [Incoherence of the Philosophers], trans. Sabih Ahmad Kamali (Lahore: Pakistan Philosophical Congress, 1958), pp. 185–96.
David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals 2d ed., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 17–24,42–7,79;
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature 2 vols., with an Introduction by A. D. Lindsay (London: Dent, 1968; New York: Dutton, 1968), pp. 11,81–5.
Ghaaali is compared to Hume by, for example, A. F. M. Hafeezullah Bhuyan, ‘The Concept of Causality in Al-Ghazzali’, Islamic Culture, April 1963, pp. 88–9.
Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion trans. Morris Ginsberg (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1923), pp. 177–201. For Malebranche God is the true and only cause of every event, so-called secondary causes being the mere occasions on which God acts (ibid., pp. 185–6, 189–90). See also Fakhry, Occasionalism pp. 9–14.
On the issue of divine attributes, the Asharites believed that God did possess the attributes ascribed to him in the Qurân, but that these ascriptions are entirely equivocal so that they do not mean the same thing when predicated of man. As for determinism, the Ash‘arites adhered to strict determinism by God, but also believed that God creates in man an accident whereby an act can be imputed to the alleged agent. For a discussion of these and other issues, see alAsh‘ari’s Kitâb al-Luma‘and Risâlat Istihsan al-Khawd ft ‘Jim al-Kalâm which are translated in Richard J. McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ash‘ari (Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1953).
Writing in the twelfth century, ibn Rushd distinguishes three schools of thought within Islam concerning the problem of God’s existence: (1) The literalists who disdain rational argument altogether and claim that God’s existence is known on the basis of authority alone, (2) the Ash‘arites (and implicitly, the Mutazilites) who contend that the existence of God may be rationally demonstrated from temporality (huduth) or contingency (jawaz) and (3) the Sufis who believe in a direct apprehension of God apart from speculative argument (Ibn Rushd, Al-Kashf ‘an Manahij al-Adillah cited in Majid Fakhry, ‘The Classical Islamic Arguments for the Existence of God’, Muslim World 47 [1951: 133–4).
We are considering the argumentation employed by the second group. For a good overview, see in addition to Fakhry ‘s article A. J. Wensinck, ‘Les preuves de l’existence de Dieu dans la théologié musulmane’, Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen 81 (1936): 41–67. According to Fakhry, prior to the rise of the Mu‘tazilites, the question of the demonstrability of God’s existence did not arise; belief in God was based on revelation or authority (Fakhry, ‘Arguments’, p. 135).
Ibid., pp. 362–3. See also Schmuel Sambursky, ‘Note on John Philoponus’ Rejection of the Infinite’, in Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition ed. S. M. Stern, Albert Hourani, and Vivian Brown (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 351–3.
For a general overview of the Islamic-Jewish treatment of the problem of infinity, see Louis-Emile Blanchet, ‘L’infini dans les pensées Juive et Arabe’, Laval théologique et philosophique 32 (1976): 11–21.
Simon Van Den Bergh, Notes to Tahafut al-Tahafut [The Incoherence of the Incoherence], 2 vols., by Averroes, trans. by Simon Van Den Bergh (London: Luzac & Co., 1954) 2: 2, 17–18.
Al-Suyûti, cited in The Encyclopaedia of Islam 1971 ed., s.v. ‘ilia’ by H. Fleisch and L. Gardet. This distinction was apparently not shared by the philosophers, for both al-Fârâbi and ibn Sinâ use sabab as a synonym of ‘ilia
(ibid.; A.-M. Goichon, Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn Siva [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938], pp. 149, 237–8). As a result they argued for the eternity of the universe. A cause in actuality cannot exist without its effect; therefore, as eternal First Cause God cannot but produce the world from eternity.
Ibid., p. 27. This the Arabic version of the more famous Buridan’s ass, the helpless animal which starved to death as it wavered indecisively between two equally appetising bundles of straw. The original problem is from Aristotle, De caelo B 13. 295b32, where a man equally hungry and thirsty is caught between food and drink at an equal distance. According to Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, everything even God’s choices, must have a reason; therefore, Buridan’s ass would have certainly starved (G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil trans. E. M. Huggard [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951], pp. 149–50; cf.
Gottfried Martin, Leibniz: Logic and Metaphysics trans. K. J. Northcott and Lucas [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960], pp. 9–10.), though such a situation could never occur in reality, Leibniz cautions, for two alternatives are never absolutely identical.
Cf. Leibniz’s principle of the best, which serves to solve the same problem in a different way (G. W. Leibniz, ‘Mr. Leibniz’s Fifth Paper: Being an answer to Dr. Clark’s Fourth Reply’, in G. W. Leibniz, The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz trans. George Martin Duncan [New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1890], pp. 255–6). Leibniz argued that God must always choose the best and that this is therefore the best of all possible worlds. Although some mutakallimûn would have agreed, most would have said that God’s will chooses without necessarily choosing the best and why He chooses one alternative rather than another is that it is simply His choice.
Al-Alousi, Creation, p. 252. See also Herbert A. Davidson, ‘Arguments from the Concept of Particularization in Arabic Philosophy’, Philosophy East and West 18 (1968): 299–314.
Al-Ghazali, ‘The Jerusalem Tract’, trans. and ed. A. L. Tibawi, The Islamic Quarterly 9 (1965): 98.
Ghazah’s statement of the proof is simply the culmination of the thinking of the Ash‘arite school, which argued in a similar fashion: ‘The world is contingent. Every contingent thing must have a cause, therefore, the world must have a cause, and as no contingent thing can be the cause, that cause must be God’ (M. Abdul Hye, ‘Ash‘arism’, in A History of Muslim Philosophy ed. M. M. Sharif [Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963], p. 238).
Lenn E. Goodman, ‘Ghazâlî’s Argument from Creation’, International Journal for Middle East Studies 2 (1971): 76, 83. Cf. Fakhry, History pp. 258–9.
See Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed & Ward, 1955), pp. 181–3; Fakhry, Occasionalism pp. 22–4.
D. M. Dunlop, Arab Civilization to A.D. 1500 (London: Longman, 1971), p. 175.
Al-Kindi, ‘On First Philosophy’ pp. 67–75. See two other treatises by alKindi which are translated in N. Rescher and H. Khatchadourian, ‘Al-Kindi’s Epistle on the Finitude of the Universe’, Isis 57 (1966): 426–33;
F. A. Shamsi, ‘Al-Kindi’s Epistle on What Cannot Be Infinite and of What Infinity May Be Attributed’, Islamic Studies 14 (1975): 123–44.
Cf. H. Minkowski, ‘Space and Time’, in Problems of Space and Time, ed. with an Introduction by J. J. C. Smart, Problems of Philosophy Series (New York: Macmillan, 1964; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964), pp. 297–312.
Ibid., p. 147. See also Miriam Galston, ‘A Re-examination of Al-Farabi’s Neoplatonism’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 15 (1977): 13–32.
Cf. A. -M. Goichon, Le distinction de l’essence et de l’existence d’apres ibn Sind (Paris: G. -P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1937), pp. 130–1.
Alfarabi, The Gems of Wisdom, in Collection of Various Treatises of Alfarabi ed. Muhammed Ismail (Cairo: 1907), pp. 115–25.
For this view, see Francis A. Cunningham, ‘Averroes vs. Avicenna on Being’, New Scholasticism 48 (1974): 185–218. ‘If these men were not talking about the real distinction, what, then, were they talking about? A mental difference’ (ibid., p. 202).
For a refutation of Cunningham’s case, see Beatrice H. Zedler, ‘Another Look at Avicenna’, New Scholasticism 50 (1976): 504–21. See also note 131.
Al-FârâbT, ‘Treatise on answers to questions asked of him’, in Alfarabi’s Philosophische Abhandlungen, ed. F. Dieterici (Leiden: Brill, 1890), p. 90.
Nicholas Rescher, Studies in the History of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963), pp. 40–1.
Al-Fârâbi, Fusil al-Madani [Aphorisms of the Statesman], ed. and trans. with an Introduction and Notes by D. M. Dunlop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), p. 58.
Soheil M. Afnan, Avicenna: His Life and Works (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), p. 117. Zedler concurs: What begins explicitly as a logical analysis of essence becomes in Avicenna’s system a metaphysical composition of essence and existence in “created being”’ (Zedler, ‘Another Look’, pp. 509–10).
William of Auvergne, De trinitate 7. See also Copleston, Augustine to Scotus p. 195; Albert Judy, ‘Avicenna’s “Metaphysics” in the Summa contra Gentiles’, Angelicum 52 (1975): 340–84, 541–86; esp. 554–86.
Ibn Sind, Al-Najüt Fi al-Hikmah al-Mantigiyyah wa al-Tabrah alIliihiyyah 2nd ed., ed. Muhie al-din Sabri al-Kurdi (Cairo: al-Saada Press, 1938), p. 224.
Ibn Sinâ, al-Risalat al-‘Arshiya, in Arthur J. Arberry, Avicenna on Theology (London: John Murray, 1951), p. 25.
Cf. translation of the same as well as a translation of ibn Sinâ s version of the proof from the al-Najaf in George F. Hourani, ‘Ibn Sinâ on Necessary and Possible Existence’, Philosophical Forum 4 (1972–3); 77, 81–2.
Ibn Sinâ, al-Shifa: al-Ilahiyÿat (I), ed. G. C. Anawati and Said Zayed (Cairo: Organisation Générale des Imprimeries Governmentales, 1960), pp. 37–9. (Basically Hourani’s trans.). Cf. Gilson, History p. 207; Fackenheim, ‘Possibility’, pp. 39–40.
W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim Intellectual: A Study of Al-Ghazali (Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, 1963), p. 58.
Michael E. Marmura, The Logical Role of the Argument from Time in the Tahâfut’s Second Proof for the World’s Pre-Eternity’, Muslim World 49 (1959): 306.
See George F. Hourani, ‘The Dialogue between al-Ghazzlr and the Philosophers on the Origin of the World’, Muslim World 48 (1958): 183–91.
Samuel Nirenstein, The Problem of the Existence of God in Maimonides, Alanus, and Averroes: A Study in the Religious Philosophy of the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1924), pp. 46–7.
Averroes, Die Epitome der Metaphysik des Averroes trans. S. Van Den Bergh (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), pp. 104–46; cf. Averroes, Tahafut 1:34, 237–8; Gilson, History pp. 221–2.
Bonaventure argued that the existence of God is incompatible with the eternity of the universe and marshalled several arguments to demonstrate that the universe had a beginning (Bonaventure, 2 Sententiarum 1.1.1.2.1–6): (1) because it is impossible to add to the infinite, the number of days elapsed till the present cannot be infinite; (2) because it is impossible to order an infinity of terms according to beginning, middle, and end, the series of temporal events in the world could not exist from eternity; (3) because an infinite cannot be traversed, the present day could never have arrived if celestial revolutions have been going on eternally; (4) because since the Intelligences know the revolutions of their respective spheres, an infinite number of revolutions would mean that the finite could comprehend the infinite, which is impossible; and (5) infinite time would necessitate an infinite number of souls of the deceased, which is impossible because an actual infinite cannot exist. (See Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure trans. Dom Illtyd Trethowan and F. J. Sheed [London: Sheed & Ward, 1938], pp. 190–4.)
See also Francis J. Kovach, ‘The Question of the Eternity of the World in St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas—A Critical Analysis’, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974): 141–72;
Bernardino Bonasea, ‘The Impossibility of Creation from Eternity according to St. Bonaventure’, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 48 (1974): 121–35;
Bernardino Bonansea, ‘The Question of an Eternal World in the Teaching of St. Bonaventure’, Franciscan Studies 34 (1974): 7–33.
One should also draw attention to the works of Van Steenberghen on Bonaventure, which are listed in Fernand Van Steenberghen, ‘Le mythe d’un monde éternel’, Revue philosophique de Louvain 76 (1978): 157–79.
Copyright information
© 1980 William Lane Craig
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Craig, W.L. (1980). Arabic Theologians and Philosophers. In: The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04993-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04993-6_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-04995-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-04993-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)