Coherence of the Incoherence: Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature and the Cosmos 9781463244989

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Introductions
Chapter Two. Basic Cosmological Concepts
Chapter Three. Second Proof of Cosmic Preeternity
Chapter Four. Imaging Creation: Ghazālī’s First Objection to the First Proof
Chapter Five. Time, Space, and the Imagination
Chapter Six. The Ontological Argument for Cosmic Pre-Eternity
Chapter Seven. The Matter of Possibility
Chapter Eight. Cosmic Post-Eternity
Chapter Nine. The Act and the Agent
Chapter Ten. The Nature of Nature
Chapter Eleven. Two Approaches
Chapter Twelve. Between the Agent and the Act
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Coherence of the Incoherence

Islamic History and Thought

33 Series Editor Series Editorial Board

Peter Adamson Beatrice Gründler Beatrice Gruendler Ahmad Ahmad Khan Khan

Jack Tannous Isabel Toral-Niehoff Manolis Manolis Ulbricht Ulbricht

Jack Tannous

Advisory Editorial Board Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic areaUlbricht within the expansive Islamic Manolis Binyamin Abrahamov Konrad world, stretching from the Mediterranean to Hirschler China, and dated to Asadthe Q.eve Ahmed Howard-Johnston any period from of Islam untilJames the early modern era. This Jan Just Witkam Mehmetcan Akpinar Maher Jarrar(Arabic, Persian, series contains original monographs, translations Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes. Abdulhadi Alajmi Marcus Milwright Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi Harry Munt Arezou Azad Gabriel Said Reynolds Massimo Campanini Walid A. Saleh Godefroid de Callataÿ Maria Conterno Jens Scheiner Farhad Daftary Delfina Serrano trice Gruendler Wael Hallaq Georges Tamer Bea Ahmad Khan

Jack Tannous Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research Isabel Toral-Niehoff on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any Manolis Ulbricht period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. This series contains original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Jan Justand Witkam Greek, Latin) and edited volumes.

Coherence of the Incoherence

Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature and the Cosmos

Edward Omar Moad

gp 2023

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2023 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܝ‬

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2023

ISBN 978-1-4632-4497-2

ISSN 2643-6906

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to all who have believed in God and wondered – those who came before us, and those yet to be.

‘But if the nature of oneness is denied, the nature of being is denied, and the consequence of the denial of being is nothingness.’

Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ....................................................................... vii Acknowledgments ....................................................................... xi Introduction .............................................................................. xiii Chapter One. Introductions .......................................................... 1 Section 1.1. Taqlīd of the posers .......................................... 3 Section 1.2. Ghazālī’s method and parameters .................. 17 Section 1.3. An ‘imperfect refutation’ ................................ 24 Section 1.4. Ibn Rushd’s rationale, disclaimers, and methods ...................................................................... 30 Discussion 1 Chapter Two. Basic cosmological concepts ................................ 43 Section 2.1. Agents and causes........................................... 44 Section 2.2. First proof of cosmic pre-eternity: Possibilities and eternities .......................................... 50

Chapter Three. Second proof of cosmic pre-eternity ................. 59 Section 3.1. Time and eternity in the second proof ........... 60 Section 3.2. Time, eternity, and the wahm ......................... 68 Section 3.3. A ‘naïve’ philosophical position ..................... 72

Chapter Four. Imaging creation: Ghazālī’s first objection to the first proof ..................................................................... 79 Section 4.1. Ibn Rushd vs. Ghazālī on ‘eternal will’ .......... 82 Section 4.2. The efficient cause of a no-fault divorce ........ 84 Section 4.3. The has-been that could be forever ................ 92 Section 4.4. On Divine Will and blind dates .................... 108 Section 4.5. Under a different heaven.............................. 119 Section 4.6. Roundabout .................................................. 130

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Chapter Five. Time, space, and the imagination ..................... 133 Section 5.1. Two models of time ...................................... 134 Section 5.2. Space-time analogy ...................................... 140 Section 5.3. The direction of time .................................... 144 Section 5.4. Some interesting implications ...................... 147 Section 5.5. Time and possible worlds ............................. 153

Chapter Six. The ontological argument for cosmic preeternity ............................................................................. 163 Section 6.1. Third proof of cosmic pre-eternity ............... 163 Section 6.2. Possibility as potency ................................... 168 Section 6.3. Possibility in itself ........................................ 172 Section 6.4. Equivocating between possibilities .............. 176

Chapter Seven. The matter of possibility ................................. 183 Section 7.1. Fourth proof of cosmic pre-eternity ............. 184 Section 7.2. Possibility and intellect ................................ 189 Section 7.3. Argument from impossibility and accidents ................................................................... 192 Section 7.4. Argument from the possibility of souls ........ 198

Discussion 2 Chapter Eight. Cosmic post-eternity ........................................ 205 Section 8.1. Revisiting the eternal past ............................ 208 Section 8.2. The identity of indiscernible eternal recurrences ............................................................... 214 Section 8.3. Ibn Rushd’s faith-based science .................... 215 Section 8.4. The substance of annihilation ...................... 218

Discussion 3 Chapter Nine. The act and the agent ....................................... 227 Section 9.1. The act: a stirring analogy (or: the substance of annihilation, part 2) ............................ 228 Section 9.2. The agent: semantics and responsibility ...... 236

Discussion 17 Chapter Ten. The nature of nature........................................... 247 Section 10.1. Miracles, resurrection, and natural science ...................................................................... 248 Section 10.2. Necessity, causation, and agency ............... 254 Section 10.3. Induction .................................................... 259 Section 10.4. Beyond naturalism ..................................... 264

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Section 10.5. Nature, necessity, and the conditions of being ......................................................................... 270

Chapter Eleven. Two approaches ............................................. 281 Section 11.1. The first approach ...................................... 282 Section 11.2. The second approach.................................. 290 Section 11.3. Mission impossible ..................................... 298 Section 11.4. Multiple realizability .................................. 304

Discussion 3 Chapter Twelve. Between the agent and the act ..................... 313 Section 12.1. One from one.............................................. 315 Section 12.2. Emanation and its discontents ................... 318 Section 12.3. The true one and its possibility .................. 324 Section 12.4. The true one and its knowledge ................. 332 Section 12.5. Some plausible premises ............................ 336

Conclusion ................................................................................ 345 Bibliography ............................................................................. 355 Index......................................................................................... 363

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Reprinted by permission from Springer Nature Customer Service Centre GmbH: Springer Nature. SOPHIA. (Al-Ghazali’s Position on the ‘Second Proof’ of the ‘Philosophers’ for the Eternity of the World, in the First Discussion of the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Edward Moad). COPYRIGHT (2014).

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INTRODUCTION Narratives of the history of Islamic philosophy usually dedicate at least a chapter to the philosophical debate recorded in the Tahāfut al-falāsifah (‘Incoherence of the Philosophers’), by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (b. 1053–1111), and the Tahāfut al-tahāfut (‘Incoherence of the Incoherence’) by Abū al-Wālid ibn Rushd (1126–1198). The basic story will be familiar to most readers of either the history of Islam or the history of philosophy. Ghazālī, a leading Muslim theologian of his time and defender of a version of Sunni orthodoxy based on the ʾAshʿarī school of theology, composed Tahāfut al-falāsifah in response to what he viewed as the threat posed to Islam by Greek influenced Muslim philosophers like Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (870–950) and Abū Alī ibn Sīnā (980–1037). Ibn Rushd, himself both a jurist of Islamic law and a student of Greek philosophy, rose to its defense in his memorably titled response. That simple summary says little other than to locate the event, rightly, as part of the long, rich encounter between Greek philosophy and Abrahamic revealed religion, beginning centuries before Islam and continuing long after the Tahāfut debate. One might alternatively describe this encounter, in terms amenable to a Qur’anic view of religious history, as one between Greek philosophy and Islam, extending centuries before the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad. In either case it is, among other things, an episode of the controversial and complicated relation between ‘Athens and Jerusalem,’ which for the Muslim is between ‘Athens and Mecca,’ as well. As for what other things this debate represents, opinions differ widely among both Muslims and non-Muslims, often

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depending on their various sectarian and political as much as theological or philosophical inclinations. The magnitude and nature of the historical impact of the debate is consequently a subject of some controversy. Whether it was as pivotal to the course of Muslim intellectual history (and either for good or ill) as some claim, it has played a significant role in the course of my own intellectual journey as a Muslim individual. That role has been to provoke contemplation over the questions it raises about whether and how we might comprehend the relation between God and the world in which we live and think. Thus I am primarily interested here in what we might learn from it in that respect, and not in debating its role in the course of Muslim history or the current condition of the collective Muslim ‘world’ or ‘mind.’ This book is first an exercise in philosophical theology, an intellectual history only secondarily and insofar as that serves its first purpose, and is in no sense whatsoever another indictment or ‘diagnosis.’ Its subject is worth the attention of anyone similarly interested, for in the Tahāfut debate one finds rigorous scrutiny of several of the main problems of philosophical theology, from the vantage of at least three different theoretical paradigms, by some of the sharpest minds in the classical tradition of philosophical theology. Ghazālī himself, being trained in, and perhaps at the time the leading representative of, the ʾAshʿarī school of systematic Islamic theology (al-‘ilm al-kalām), was nevertheless so innovative a thinker that to this day discussion continues over whether he in fact remained ‘true’ to its standard doctrine. He divided Tahāfut al-falāsifah into twenty ‘discussions,’ each dedicated to an exposition and critique of proofs offered for a specific doctrine held by the ‘falāsifah.’ These are Ghazālī’s representations, primarily of Ibn Sīnā and Fārābī, the leading figures of Islamic peripatetic philosophy at the time, who brought their own unique synthesis of Aristotelian and neo-Platonic ideas to bear on questions pertaining to the existence, nature and attributes of God, His relation to the cosmos, and the possibility of human knowledge thereof. Ibn Rushd, expressing fundamental differences with Ibn Sina as well as Ghazālī, followed the latter’s arrangement in his point by point response. He applies what he

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views as a more purely Aristotelian approach, which nevertheless includes a number of innovative ideas in response to problems raised in the encounter between Greek philosophy and Abrahamic theology. Others more capable than I have made valuable contributions related to this subject. These include (among others) Frank Griffel, Ebrahim Moosa, Alladin Yaqub, Jon McGinnis, Richard Frank, Oliver Leaman, Lenn Goodman, Charles Butterworth, Richard Taylor, and of course, the authors of the two translations I depend on here: Michael Marmura and Simon Van Den Bergh. I acknowledge the audacity involved in plunging into this without first mastering the classical Arabic of the original texts, but take some comfort in recalling that the key figures in the Tahāfut debate itself depended on translations for what they brought into it from Greek philosophy. Like theirs, mine is a primarily philosophical rather than historical or philological interest. That is not to say that I do this in complete ignorance of the debate’s linguistic and historical context, or under any illusion that much of philosophical value is accessible from it in complete isolation from these contexts. I attend to them, however, not for their own sake but only or the purpose of clarifying ideas that may inform a living Islamic philosophical theology, continually developing and responsive to the questions from which these ideas rose, and those they raise. Capable scholarship already exists on the life, works, and context of the participants in this debate. Questions over their intentions, genuinely held positions, and the impact (or lack thereof) of the debate on Muslim history are highly contested. While all this is undeniably important, I refrain from wading far into that pond and instead refer the interested or unfamiliar reader to the existing literature. It may be, as some have claimed, that everything Ghazālī says in this debate is solely for the sake of argument, and reflects nothing of his positively held views. It may be, as others have claimed, that everything Ibn Rushd says in response is merely in the dialectical mode of discourse, and not reflective of his genuine philosophical position. I do not agree with either of these theses, taken categorically, but I do not aim to argue here over what the ‘genuinely held’ views are of either

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party, or what he went to his grave believing. Aside from its being beyond my capacity, I am not sure how such a question could be definitively resolved, or what relevance it has outside of the presumption that appealing to the authority of one or another party is the proper method of approaching the issues they debated. I intend to focus instead on the content of the debate itself, and to analyze the actual arguments deployed therein in order to discover the basic philosophical suppositions at its roots. I do not intend to make a final judgment as to which of these disputants ‘won’ the debate, and certainly not to advocate for any of the politicized proclamations regarding the fate of the ‘Muslim world’ for which it has often been made a foil. While at points I do argue that one or another side has the stronger argument, I am most attracted to the prospect, wherever possible, of arriving at productive syntheses or theoretical alternatives by working through the real or apparent opposition of compelling philosophical considerations. Short of that, I want to explain as clearly as possible the conceptual roots of the conflict, hoping in the process to discover, in the details of these arguments, some ideas useful either for the solution of philosophical problems or simply for the expansion of the philosophical imagination. That is one reason I have chosen the subtitle Coherence of the Incoherence. The other is that, it being only a matter of time until someone wrote a book with that title, why not me? I fully expect – and sincerely hope – that someone else will write a book (or at least a review) entitled ‘Incoherence of the Coherence of the Incoherence.’ If each book should have just one thesis, then mine here would be that the Tahāfut debate is a genuinely philosophical and philosophically interesting event. It is not reducible, as many have construed, to just another episode of conflict between ‘religion and philosophy’ sharply differentiated, or even as some have claimed, a devastating attack on reason in Islam. These portrayals overlook the sophistication and depth of the contributions of its participants (contributions which I seek to expose and appreciate), as well as the Muslim philosophical tradition as a whole. One can support such a thesis only by

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exhibiting the philosophical dynamic operative in the debate, which I will do throughout the twelve chapters of this volume. In the process, I wish to reinforce the correction currently being made to the orientalist habit of equating ‘philosophy’ and ‘philosophers’ in the Muslim context with falsafah and the falāsifah. For the effect of this habit is to suppose that, while a European the likes of a Kierkegaard or Nietzsche can be a ‘philosopher’ (so that even disavowal does not absolve you), a non-European Muslim of the pre-modern period must show due allegiance to Aristotle to deserve such branding. Obviously, ‘philosophy’ has a completely different sort of connotation from falsafah, which refers to a specific school of thought rather than a mode of thinking. Given that philosophy is typically considered, and for good reason, to be the mode of thinking by which one approaches intellectual autonomy, the implications of this orientalist presumption is to a priori exclude Muslims from that possibility. For that reason, I will be using the terms ‘philosophy’ and ‘philosophers’ differently from falsafah and falāsifah. We will use the latter specifically to refer to the school of Fārābī and Ibn Sina. That, as we will find, is how Ghazālī used the terms. I by no means intend that to imply that they were not genuine philosophers, somehow lacking in intellectual autonomy under the influence of ‘Greek’ ideas. That is far from the case. I simply intended to avoid a discursive trap similar to what would occur if we were to use the term ‘rationalist’ synonymously with ‘philosopher’ and then try to discuss the philosophical merits of the arguments of the early modern British empiricists. Falsafah is a school of philosophy, not philosophy as such. While the twenty discussions of the Tahāfut debate are entangled in a delicious web of metaphysical and epistemological problems, they can nevertheless be usefully (though roughly) classified according to whether they pertain to nature and the cosmos on one hand, or to God and the soul on the other. With an abundance of argumentative material to analyze, and from three different philosophical perspectives, the task proved too large for one book. I have thus divided it into two parts, corresponding respectively to these two categories of problems. The subject matter of this book, therefore, is the ‘coherence of the

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incoherence’ between Al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd over nature and the cosmos. Its sequel, God willing, will address the coherence of the incoherence between them over God and the soul. This volume consequently focuses on the first, second, third, fourth, and seventeenth of the twenty discussions. In chapter 1, I will examine the largely neglected introductions with which Ghazālī prefaced his book, and the implications of the lack of attention Ibn Rushd pays to those introductions in his response. In the process, I will make my initial case for treating the debate as a genuinely philosophical exercise. Chapters 2–7 are dedicated to the first discussion of the Tahāfut, over whether the falāsifah have successfully proven that the cosmos is necessarily ‘preeternal.’ Covering four of their ‘proofs,’ this is the longest discussion in the debate, for the reason (as we will see) that Ghazālī uses it in several places as a heuristic vehicle, to isolate and examine a number issues pivotal in other discussions, crucially including the nature of time and modality, as well as the proper methodology for metaphysical inquiry. Chapter 2 will begin by examining part of the fourth discussion, before introducing the falāsifah’s ‘first proof’ of cosmic pre-eternity, in order to introduce some of the key cosmological concepts (e.g. causation, agency, and eternity) on which the first discussion turns. We will postpone a detailed examination of that discussion’s ‘first proof,’ however and Chapter 3 will focus instead on the ‘second proof,’ and Ghazālī’s position, expressed there, on the relation of time to both God and the cosmos, the clarification of which is necessary for properly understanding the aims of his objections to the first proof. Chapter 4 will then return to the debate over the first proof, and examine the several issues raised therein, including whether the notion of an eternal will is coherent, and whether cosmic pre-eternity entails the absurdity of an actual infinite magnitude. Chapter 5 will return once again to the debate over the second proof, drawing from it some interesting implications over the nature of time. Chapters 6 and 7 focus, respectively, on the third and fourth proofs, both premised on the priority of the possibility of the cosmos to any hypothetical cosmic beginning. There, we will examine the various notions of possibility involved, their relation to time and matter, as well as

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the role here of Ibn Sina’s distinction between existence and essence. The second discussion, covered in chapter 8, is over the falāsifah’s proofs for cosmic ‘post-eternity,’ which Ghazālī claims is not, like its pre-eternity, rationally impossible. I argue, on the contrary, that Ghazālī’s argument against the possibility of cosmic pre-eternity also precludes the possibility of its post-eternity. Aside from that, this chapter will do a number of things. Since Ibn Rushd opens his response to the second discussion with a final defense of cosmic pre-eternity, I will take the occasion of reviewing that to summarize my own case that the proofs in question fail, as Ghazālī claims, to demonstrate its rational necessity. I will follow that with an original argument, based on premises deployed by both the falāsifah and Ibn Rushd in the first discussion, that cosmic eternity in either direction is impossible. We will then review the debate over an empirical argument for cosmic post-eternity, followed by the last and most interesting argument, centering on the question over what annihilation means in relation to the cosmos and by implication, the ontological status, in relation to its motion, of the cosmos itself. The third discussion is over whether, and in what sense, we can understand the cosmos as an act of God, and thus closely relates to the fourth discussion, which centered on Ghazālī’s critique of Ibn Sina’s unique version of the cosmological proof, ultimately poses the same question. Chapter 9 will examine the first two of three parts of the third discussion, regarding the nature of the act and that of the agent. The first part follows up on the problem introduced in the last part of the previous chapter, leading to a conception of the cosmos as a ‘continual creation’ or ‘perpetual becoming,’ as Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd, respectively, express it. We will consider the degree to which their positions converge here, in contrast to Ibn Sina’s. Then, we will review and evaluate their disappointing debate over the concept of the ‘agent.’ The seventeenth discussion, finally, is where Ghazālī famously (or infamously) refutes what he takes to be the falāsifah’s denial of the possibility of miracles, and where our discussion over the nature of the cosmos and nature itself leads

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to questions about the nature of knowledge and the possibility of natural science. In chapters 10 and 11 we examine this discussion in detail, clarifying the concepts of causality involved, the epistemological and ontological concerns it raises with respect to the possibility of miracles and natural science, as well as the question arising from the apparent ambiguity of Ghazālī’s dual ‘approach’ to the issue. I will offer an interpretation of Ghazālī’s argument, which reconciles his two approaches as alternative perspectives rather than mutually exclusive positions while accounting for Ibn Rushd’s most serious objection. All these discussions raise theological questions. For the nature of the cosmos, for all of the participants in this debate, turns on the nature of its relation to God as its single First Cause, and in turn then on the nature of God Himself. This connection comes out most explicitly, however, in a part of the third discussion, over the ‘relation between agent and the act,’ in which the participants grapple over how God’s unity can be reconciled with the plurality of a cosmos of which He is the single ultimate cause. We will cover this topic, as a fitting segue to the second volume, in the last chapter of this one. For it leads us from questions about the nature of the cosmos to questions about God’s unity, attributes, and knowledge, all interestingly related to questions raised over the nature of the soul, the two categories of problems to explore in the sequel to this book.

CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS As Ghazālī vividly describes in the preface to the Tahāfut alfalāsifah, the problem that directly motivated it was not philosophy, falsafah or the falāsifah as such. Instead, it was a group of imitators who he says misunderstood the falāsifah, adopted a posture of blind allegiance (taqlīd) toward this misguided image of them, and consequently abandoned Islamic belief and practice, thinking that this made them superior. We may call them ‘philosophical posers’. The two problematic misconceptions Ghazālī says they held were that the falāsifah alone were capable of certain knowledge in metaphysics, and that they rejected religion. His two stated purposes for writing the Tahāfut are thus to demonstrate both that the most prominent falāsifah did not possess infallible metaphysical insight, and that they did not reject the ‘fundamental principles of religion’ (2000 pp. 1–3). In Section 1.1, we will examine Ghazālī’s description of the posers in the context of the interplay between the two rival socioepistemic frameworks directly pertinent to Ghazālī’s thought – that of the mutakallimūn and falāsifah, respectively. We will see that the philosophical posers, as Ghazālī describes them, are functionally equivalent, epistemologically and socially, to the mutakallimūn as described by al-Fārābī. Moreover, the problem Ghazālī thinks the posers pose is similar to that which Fārābī thinks the mutakallimūn pose; that is, they threaten the integrity of the public religion. That is one side of the problem. The other side of the problem, which I suggest motivates Ghazālī as much

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as it does Fārābī, is that they threaten the integrity of true philosophy. Consequently, Ghazālī has not written this book to dissuade people from philosophy, but to help philosophical posers become more genuinely philosophical. Secondly, we will consider an apparent contradiction between Ghazālī’s preface and his conclusion. In the preface, as we will see, he asserts that the leading falāsifah did not deny the fundamental principles of Islam, and promises to demonstrate this fact in the course of the book. In its conclusion, however, he lays down a verdict of apostasy against them for three of their doctrines. This contradiction cannot be resolved. I suggest that we can explain it, however, by entertaining yet another parallel between Ghazālī and Fārābī. That is, that given Fārābī’s political model, it would be reasonable to deal with the problem of philosophical posers in a similarly contradictory manner; that is to demonstrate theoretically that the problematic positions are not apostasy, while declaring legally that they are. In Section 1.2, we will examine the implications of Ghazālī’s denying that mastery of arithmetic and geometry are necessary for understanding metaphysical argument, while affirming that a mastery of logic is required, including questions it raises about the possibility of metaphysical knowledge and its relation to natural science (both of which remain open philosophical issues). I argue that, in explicitly accepting the falsafah standard of logical demonstration as the epistemic framework of the discussion, and making that transparent and available to the reader, Ghazālī is adopting a genuinely philosophical method. This is not, however, simply by virtue of his accepting the falāsifah’s standard, but rather by his empowering the reader to evaluate the result of the debate (including the epistemic standard under which it is conducted) independently. Then, we will review Ghazālī’s clearly defined parameters, limiting the debate to the arguments of Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, and only those for positions posing what Ghazālī calls a substantial contradiction to principles of religion, with the objective of showing that they fail to meet their own standards of logical demonstration. As we will see, Ghazālī adopts a hermeneutic that effectively defines a ‘religious principle’ as a metaphysical claim

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consequently immune to falsification by any demonstratively proven natural fact. This presents the strongest case for disputing my construal of Ghazālī’s ambitions as philosophical. That case is neither that he disagreed with a specific group of Greekinfluenced thinkers dubbed the falāsifah, nor that his motive is to defend the veracity of certain ‘religious’ ideas. Rather, it is, as Ibn Rushd complains, that his project is purely negative – to refute, rather than to prove any positive position of his own. Whether that objection is sustainable is a question about the proper method of philosophy, and not just its aim. In Section 1.3, we will examine the indications and implications of Ibn Rushd’s apparent ignorance of Ghazālī’s extensive introductions. Ibn Rushd’s own minimal statement of purpose (to show that the arguments in the Tahāfut are inconclusive) allows me space to proceed on the working hypothesis that he was motivated by genuine philosophical concern over the questions Ghazālī raised. I will make the case for viewing his objectives as ultimately similar to Ghazālī’s rather than diametrically opposed; not so as to erase their fundamental disagreement, but to render it philosophically useful. In Section 1.4, we will examine another section of Ibn Rushd’s text, wherein he expresses his objectives and method in more detail. On that basis, I will argue for approaching the Tahāfut debate as a philosophically productive dialectic of the sort Fārābī describes in his Book of Letters.

SECTION 1.1. TAQLĪD OF THE POSERS

After opening his preface with a supplication, Ghazālī lodges his complaint. ‘I have seen a group who, believing themselves in possession of a distinctiveness from companion and peer by virtue of a superior quick wit and intelligence…have entirely cast off the reigns of religion through multifarious beliefs’ (2000 pp. 1–2). In spite of their self-image, Ghazālī insists, There is no basis (mustanad) for their unbelief other than traditional, conventional imitation (taqlīd), like the imitation of Jews and Christians, since their upbringing and that of their offspring has followed a course other than the religion of Islam, their fathers and forefathers having [also] followed

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By insisting that this group’s unbelief is based on either ‘imitation’ (taqlīd) or speculative investigation (baḥth naẓarī), Ghazālī of course means to imply that they have no basis in knowledge. The basic meaning of taqlīd is, ‘the unquestioning acceptance of the guidance of others or the uncritical acquiescence to the opinions of people whom one holds in esteem’ (Frank, 1989). The one who so acquiesces is muqallid. For the mutakallimūn, taqlīd came to be understood in opposition to taṣdīq , a term that literally means to assent to the truth of something (and therefore opposite of takdīb, or ‘denial’), but which underwent an extensive process of technical precising within the Ash‘ari school (Frank, 1989). In the logic of the falāsifah, meanwhile, taṣdīq was used to connote propositional content (to which one can ‘assent’ or deny), as opposed to tasawwur (or ‘conception’); that is, simply the understanding of the meaning of a term or concept, outside of any proposition. Aside from being muqallid, according to Ghazālī, this group’s misguidance was a result, specifically, of two false conceptions they had about the falāsifah. First, they took them to be uniquely capable of real knowledge, especially with regard to metaphysics. Secondly, they believed that the falāsifah denied religion altogether. This makes it clear that Ghazālī is not referring here to the falāsifah themselves, but to a type of deluded philosophical poser. The source of their unbelief is in their hearing high-sounding names such as ‘Socrates,’ ‘Hippocrates,’ ‘Plato,’ ‘Aristotle,’ and their likes and the exaggeration and misguidedness of groups of their followers in describing their minds; the excellence of their principles; the exactitude of their geometrical, logical, natural, and metaphysical sciences – and in [describing these as] being alone (by reason of excessive intelligence and acumen) [capable] of extracting these hidden things. [It is also in hearing] what [these followers] say about [their masters – namely,] that concurrent with the sobriety of their intellect and

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the abundance of their merit is their denial of revealed laws and religious confessions and their rejection of the details of religious and sectarian [teaching], believing them to be manmade laws and embellished tricks (2000 p. 2).

The philosophical posers appear to have made a valid inference from false premises. For, if the philosophers both enjoyed certain knowledge (especially of metaphysics) and denied revealed religion then it follows that revealed religions are false. The question then is why did they believe the premises, especially the first? What evidence could lead them to believe that the falāsifah were in command of such knowledge? According to Ghazālī (as we will see), the writings of the philosophers themselves reveal differences between them, indicating uncertainty. Thus, Ghazālī asserts, pathological rather than epistemological factors move the posers to these extreme claims. When this struck their hearing, that which was reported of [the philosophers’] beliefs finding agreement with their nature, they adorned themselves with the embracing of unbelief – siding with the throng of the virtuous, as they claim; affiliating with them; exalting themselves above aiding the masses and the commonality; and disdaining to be content with the religious beliefs of their forebears. [They have done so] thinking that the show of cleverness in abandoning the [traditional] imitation (taqlīd) of what is true by embarking on the imitation of what is false is a beauteous thing, being unaware that moving from one [mode of] imitation to another is folly and confusedness (2000 p. 2).

In Ghazālī’s assessment, there is no epistemic difference between the poser philosophers and the common religious believer, inasmuch as they are both engaged in taqlīd. The former only differ with respect to the morality of their motives; and this is what inspires Ghazālī’s disgust. ‘The imbeciles among the masses stand detached from the infamy of this abyss,’ he writes, ‘for there is no craving in their nature to become clever by emulating those who follow the ways of error’ (2000 p. 3). In what follows, we will examine the concept of taqlīd in the context of the interaction between the rival epistemic frameworks of the mutakallimūn and falāsifah.

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For the mutakallimūn of the ‘Ash‘arī school, the concern begins with the question of the conditions of imān (that is, of being a ‘true believer’ in Islam), understood traditionally as assent (taṣdīq ) in the mind, profession with the tongue (of the testimony of faith), and action (in accordance with Islamic imperatives) in the limbs (Frank, 1989). Since for the ‘Ash‘arī the core of the matter lay in taṣdīq, they naturally raised the question of precisely what that is. Abu Hasan Al-ʾAshʿarī, the founder of the school, differentiated taṣdīq from mere verbal profession, as an internal, psychic act. The sort of taṣdīq necessary to validate true belief, specifically, entails knowledge. The line of thought, in brief, is something like the following. Merely reporting what others have said (‘they say there is one God’) does not constitute real assent. Sincere assent involves taking ownership of it – saying it yourself rather than reporting that someone else has. This, however, is not achieved simply by omitting the verbal ‘they say’ or ‘so and so says’ from the statement. An internal element must make the difference, and this cannot simply be an emotional attachment. The promise of a reward or threat of punishment can provoke an emotional attachment with assent to a proposition the meaning of which one has no idea, but there is no sincerity in that. Understanding the proposition is necessary, and not only the meaning but also its truth. For this, it is necessary for the assenter to have considered the evidence or justification. This evidence must moreover be of the right sort. For taṣdīq in God cannot be tentative. That is, it cannot be subject to any possibility of change, given any change of conditions that might raise doubts therein. An extreme example of such a situation is given in a prophetic forecast of the coming of al-Masīh al-dajjāl (‘false Messiah’), according to which he would make a bedouin’s deceased parents appear in front of him and implore him to worship the false messiah as God (Sunan Ibn Majah, 4077). A person would only be secure from such a tribulation to the extent that their conviction is rooted in something more firm than the teaching of their parents. In general, to the extent that one’s assent is tentative, it is not truly assent to God as such, but to

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those contingencies on which it depends (whether or not one is aware of this dependence). Taṣdīq must therefore be indefeasible. The way to this, for the mutakallimūn, is rational demonstration immune to all such contingency. This ultimately leaves three sources: 1) necessary knowledge (al-‘ilm al-ḍārūrī), that is, self-evidently certain first principles, 2) the immediate reports of the senses, and 3) inferential or ‘acquired’ (iktisābi) knowledge. The aim of al-‘ilm al-kalām, then, is to produce or preserve proper taṣdīq in the fundamental principles of Islam, through inferential knowledge of them, arrived at by inference from premises that are ultimately either self-evidently certain or given by the senses. This will result in a faith that is not tentative in any way, but would constitute complete, unreserved, and indefeasible commitment. This is not just a process of constructing proofs, but also one of defending them and their premises from various objections. As the real and imagined objections arise, the scale of the task consequently expands, the envisioned certainty becomes inevitably more elusive and exclusive, and the section of the Muslim community one can reasonably expect to attain it decreases. This naturally raises the question of its status as a requisite of true belief. This could be a question of what counts as ‘knowledge’ of something (e.g. must one be cognizant of a sound, complete proof with answers to all possible objections?). Alternatively, it could be a question of whether (or to what degree) ‘knowledge’ is a requirement of ‘true belief’ (at least for the common people, unschooled in systematic reasoning). ‘Unschooled’ people tend less often to experience doubts about the basic beliefs of their respective communities, in spite of their lack of rational justification. This fact seems not to have escaped the notice of the mutakallimūn. Conversely (thanks no doubt to peer review), the condition of certain knowledge, free of any taqlīd, appeared ever more elusive for even the best of the mutakallimūn. Thus, there was a tendency toward hardening the standard for ‘knowledge’, while softening the minimal standard of ‘true belief’, at least for the common people (for whom only some kind of subjective certainty is then required, rather than ‘true’ knowledge). For the unfortunate intellectuals, all too aware

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of their own epistemic condition, and who thus suffered doubts of the sort to which the uneducated are immune, there was no such relief. The requisite subjective certainty could not be achieved without objective certainty; that is, apodictic proof. A Cartesian ‘evil genius’ was at the door, as indicated by the events of Ghazālī’s autobiographical narrative in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl. There, Ghazālī famously recounts his journey ‘from the lowlands of taqlīd to the highlands of taṣdīq’ (1980 p. 53). This began he says, with a realization that children of Jews, Christians, and Muslims generally grew up holding whatever beliefs they were raised with, and a consequent desire to distinguish on independent grounds the true from the false in what he was taught. As we saw, Ghazālī was not the first to note that the majority of Muslims, no less than others, base their belief on some degree of ‘blind faith.’ Here in the Tahāfut (written earlier), he mentions only the taqlīd of Christians and Jews, probably on account of the presumption, not that Muslims do not also engage in taqlīd, but that only a Muslim could fully escape that condition while remaining committed to his faith. Indeed, as we saw, the mutakallimūn posited true imān as the aim and outcome of pure taṣdīq. What results in Ghazālī’s reported case is a process of hyperbolic doubt showing even the senses and ‘necessary knowledge’ to be defeasible, leaving him in a state of global skepticism until being delivered by a divine ‘light’ that Ghazālī describes as cast into his heart by God. There is a corresponding shift in Ghazālī’s epistemology, from the earlier ʾAshʿarī framework (Frank, 1991). For one, he expands the application of the concept of taqlīd beyond that of religious belief to belief in general. He is also more empirically cognizant of the phenomena of individual belief and belief-formation and its dependence on the social context. This leads him to a more acute awareness of the extraordinary, almost miraculous nature of the condition ultimately entailed by the ʾAshʿarī notion of taṣdīq. Seen in that light, Ghazālī’s labelling of his philosophical posers as muqallid is not a grave insult so much as an assertion that they are no different from the vast majority of humankind, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, sophisticated intellectuals or

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common believers. For in relation to this standard, in fact, the vast majority even of the mutakallimūn are muqallid in some form. If not to the beliefs of their parents, then they are in abeyance to the positions of the schools and teachers of their respective allegiances; and if not that, then to unfounded commitment to the very premises on which their sophisticated proofs rest. All of these are ultimately forms of taqlīd, even if they deploy systematic reasoning to greater or lesser degrees. The standard of true knowledge for Ghazālī remains strict. It requires not only that one has no doubt in what one knows, but also that doubt is altogether inconceivable (1980 p. 55). A paradigmatic example he gives is our knowledge that ten is more than three. A logical demonstration that can secure such a prize must be perfectly valid, every premise proven, and its terms clearly defined, removing any possibility of equivocation, ‘all the way down’ to its certain foundations in the first principles, themselves ultimately given by divine illumination, as he says (1980 p. 57). The person whose knowledge of things is comprehensively of this nature (that is whose entire belief system is a knowledge system on this standard) is exceedingly rare. Conversely, Ghazālī’s standard for true belief does not require true knowledge. It requires only sincere assent to the fundamental principles of Islam, with a basic understanding of their meaning. One need not be able to offer systematic proofs. The exact extent to which these developments in his epistemology were a result of Ghazālī’s engagement with the falāsifah is an interesting question, but one we will not pursue here. In the Tahāfut itself, we find him deploying elements of their epistemic framework in the course of his argument against them. We see it already here, in his description of this group of apostates, as ‘deceived by embellished imaginings (khayālāt).’ This alludes to the influence of the epistemology of the falāsifah on Ghazālī’s keen sensitivity to the prevalence of subtle forms of taqlīd on belief-formation, in even the most rigorous thinkers. To appreciate this influence, we briefly review some relevant aspects of the epistemic framework of the falāsifah, in comparison to that of the mutakallimūn. This is the framework developed by Fārābī, based on Aristotle with a touch of Plotinus.

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Like that of the mutakallimūn, this framework is also centered on an ethical objective, but whereas for the mutakallimūn the purpose of knowledge was to attain true belief, for Fārābī it was to achieve happiness, conceived as a comprehensive perfection of four types of virtues: theoretical, reflective, ethical, and political. The theoretical is the basis of all the others, and encompasses ‘those sciences whose ultimate aim is to gain knowledge of existing entities as intelligibles only’ (Fakhry, 2002 p. 92). These divide into the primary and the acquired, where the latter are acquired through valid inferences from the former, which are certain and self-evident. True knowledge being the knowledge of the causes of things, the highest knowledge is the knowledge of the First Cause of all things, it being the noblest object of knowledge. The human soul is uniquely suited for this in virtue of its capacity to grasp pure intelligibles; that is the rational soul, which stands at the top of a hierarchy of faculties. These are the nutritive, desiderative, sensible, imaginative, and rational. The last three are directly relevant to our present purposes. The sensible faculty (which we share with animals) is the principle of our capacity to perceive particular material objects through the five senses. Only the rational soul is capable of grasping the pure intelligibles necessary for arriving at real knowledge of things, and ultimately of the First Cause of all things. This, then, is an upward process ascending from the senses and material things, through their intelligible forms, eventually culminating in a union or connection with the Active Intellect, understood as an emanation from the First Cause that bestows the intelligible forms (and thus reality, order, and intelligibility) to the objects of the material world. The imaginative faculty plays a mediating role between the sensible and rational. Its lowest function is to enable us to retain sensible images in the mind, recall them, and modify them (separate, combine, etc.) at will. On the other side, imagination enables us to form sensible representations of abstract ideas. In this capacity, it has a tendency to deceive, leading us to believe that if something is true of the sensible representation it must therefore be true of the thing itself, for example, or by leading us to form associations between images that we mistakenly take for logical

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connections between things themselves. Fārābī understood a prophet, in brief, as a philosopher whose soul is not only connected to the Active Intellect (and thus able to grasp the intelligible forms of all things), but also endowed with a uniquely powerful imagination, by means of which he is able to express these abstract realities in symbolic forms with optimal accuracy and effectiveness. By this means, he communicates them to other human beings, the vast majority whom are not able to rise above the sensible and imaginative in their understanding of things (Rahman, 1958). The prophet has such a role precisely because human beings, by nature or circumstance, are disparately endowed with regard to their epistemic faculties and secondly, because happiness is a collective pursuit, man being not only a rational but also a social animal as Aristotle taught. Attaining human happiness therefore requires a social and political order modeled in such a way that the truth of things is impressed in the souls of its members, at whichever level they are capable of grasping it. ‘True religion’, then, is a system of symbols and practices engineered to bring the masses of society to as close an understanding of the truth as they are able. To each class there is a corresponding form of discourse arranged hierarchically. The vast majority are limited to that of rhetoric, capable of being moved to assent to the truth through persuasive and imaginative means. Only the philosophers, properly trained and naturally endowed, are capable of engaging in genuine logical demonstration, the only means by which one acquires true knowledge. Between the philosophers and the masses, however, is a third class who engage in rational argumentation and the interpretation of the public religious symbols, and yet are incapable of fully grasping the philosophical truth behind them. These are the mutakallimūn. Their level of discourse is that of dialectic; that is, they are capable of rational inference and argument, yet their reasoning does not start from a grasp of first principles but merely from premises that are common belief or conjured in the imagination. In comparison to true philosophers, they are mere imitators. Their proper role in a well-ordered society is therefore to defend the public religion against sophistical challenges that might upset the

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public order. They must, however, be carefully regulated lest they step out of bounds thereby posing such a threat themselves, through ungrounded speculative attempts at interpretation. Ghazālī himself holds the mutakallimūn (or at least the vast majority of them) in a similar status – able to engage in rational argument, yet falling short of certain knowledge by virtue of the subtle forms of taqlīd that shape their thought. Like Fārābī, he says their proper role is to defend orthodoxy in the public sphere. ‘But in so doing they relied on premises which they took over from their adversaries,’ he reports ‘being compelled to admit them either by uncritical acceptance, or because of the Community’s consensus, or by simple acceptance deriving from the Qur’ān and the Traditions’ (1980 p. 59). Their level of discourse is thus dialectical, according to Ghazālī, just as Fārābī had assessed it. Only after some development, he explains, their effort to defend the creed led them to study the ‘true natures of things…substances, accidents, and their principles,’ but ‘since that was not the aim of their own science, their discussion of the subject was not thoroughgoing.’ Consequently, he concedes that kalām has been effective for some, ‘but in a way vitiated by servile conformism (taqlīd) in some matters which are not among the primary truths’ (1980 p. 60). The epistemic position of the philosophical posers he describes in Tahāfut corresponds to this description of the mutakallimūn. The key difference is that while the mutakallimūn are in some degree or another of uncritical abeyance to the postulates of their respective schools, these philosophy posers are in abeyance to exaggerated profiles of famous falāsifah, and ideas they do not clearly understand. Functionally speaking, they are the mutakallimūn ‘gone rogue’ as described in the socio-epistemic model of the falāsifah we summarized, above. They exhibit the same epistemic abilities and liabilities and consequently pose the same threat to the public order by openly questioning the narrative and practice of the public religion, placing themselves above it and declaring it a merely symbolic representation for the consumption of the masses. If Ghazālī had fully agreed with Fārābī’s political philosophy, he would have written a book just like the Tahāfut to deal with

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this public menace, even if it meant publicly opposing that very philosophy. That book, on the other hand, may have differed in an important respect. For the aim of the actual Tahāfut is to help the posers become more philosophical about philosophy, and less religious about it; that is, if we take him at his word. When I perceived the vein of folly throbbing within these dimwits, I took it upon myself to write this book in refutation of the ancient philosophers to show the incoherence of their belief and the contradiction of their word in matters relating to metaphysics; to uncover the dangers of their doctrine and its shortcomings, which in truth ascertainable are objects of laughter for the rational and a lesson for the intelligent… (2000 p. 3).

Read in the spirit of philosophy, this passage reflects a deep respect for the ancient philosophers. For the proper way to engage philosophy is critically, and as every philosophy teacher knows, motivating students to do so often requires refuting and even ridiculing precisely those philosophers one holds in the highest esteem, and whose ideas, therefore, are most deserving of critical engagement. Any student who comes away from philosophy class with nothing more than the belief that Socrates was a wise and good man whom we should emulate has simply failed philosophy. What Ghazālī has promised to do here with the ancient philosophers is just what any good philosophy teacher would do. It is an approach that seeks to empower rather than overpower the ‘philosophical posers’ for whom he is writing, since it would involve clearly laying out the arguments and allowing them to examine the matter themselves. Of course, whether he has succeeded in this regard depends on whether his critique is logical and penetrating (not necessarily whether he is right). It also depends on whether his accounts of the arguments and positions of the falāsifah are accurate. This he also promises, but for an additional reason. He will be ‘relating at the same time their doctrine as it actually is,’ he writes, ‘so as to make it clear to those who embrace unbelief through imitation that all significant thinkers, past and present, agree in believing in God and the last day; that their differences reduce to matters of detail extraneous to those two pivotal points’

14

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(2000 p. 3). For according to Ghazālī the leading philosophers are ‘innocent of the imputation that they deny the religious laws…they believe in God and His Messengers; but that they have fallen into confusion in certain details beyond these principles’ (2000 p. 3). This interesting claim raises the question, who are these ‘leading philosophers’ who supposedly all believe in God and His Messengers? They are Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, effectively. For as Ghazālī specifies in his next introduction, he will be confining himself here to the refutation of these two. The reason, he says, is that they are ‘the most reliable transmitters and verifiers among the philosophers of Islam’ of the system of Aristotle, considered by the falāsifah generally (and apparently also by Ghazālī) as ‘their leader, who is the philosopher par excellence and ‘the first teacher’ (2000 p. 4). Apparently, then, it is not the true falāsifah, but only the posers who, failing to actually understand the falāsifah abandon religion out of a misguided attempt to imitate them. Yet as Frank Griffel notes, there is an apparent contradiction on this point (Griffel 2005). For in the conclusion of this same book, Ghazālī charges the falāsifah with unbelief (kufr) on three counts: their assertion that the world is eternal, their denial that God knows particulars, and their denial of bodily resurrection. In fact, that makes two apparent contradictions. One is simply over whether the falāsifah are guilty of unbelief. The other is over the criteria for that verdict. What does ‘belief’ consist of in this context? For as we saw, in the preface Ghazālī implies that the two fundamental principles of religion (which the leading falāsifah allegedly hold to) are belief in God and the last day, whereas now, he seems to imply that belief requires three different views. The second contradiction can be resolved. For each of the three positions labelled in the conclusion as unbelief, according to Ghazālī, entails the denial of one of the two requisites specified in the introduction. In Discussion 4, he argues that though the falāsifah claim to have proved the existence of the world’s Creator, their position that the world is eternal actually precludes its having a Creator (2000 p. 78). In Discussion 13, he argues that

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the denial that God knows particulars ‘uprooted religious laws in their entirety,’ since it entails that He cannot judge individuals (2000 p. 136). Consequently, this precludes belief in the last day, understood as the Day of Judgment, as does the denial of bodily resurrection inasmuch as the Qu’ran describes the Day of Judgment as involving just that. In Discussion 19, Ghazālī argues that, since the impossibility of bodily resurrection is not logically demonstrable, it is impermissible to interpret these descriptions figuratively (2000 p. 214). Yet in the conclusion, he justifies his verdict on all three only by the following. ‘The one who believes them believes that the prophets utter falsehoods and that they said whatever they have said by way of [promoting common] utility, to give examples and explanation to the multitudes of created mankind’ (2000 p. 226). That leaves the other contradiction: are the falāsifah unbelievers or not? The falāsifah, at least as Ghazālī will represent them, do not agree that the three problematic positions entail denying either of Ghazālī’s two requisites of belief. They think these three positions are consistent with belief in God and the last day. If, as is reasonable, one distinguishes the explicit denial of one of the requisites, on the one hand, from merely holding positions that, in spite of oneself, entail their denial, then we could reconcile the contradiction. We could say that while the falāsifah themselves do not deny the requisites, their three problematic positions, according to Ghazālī, entail such a denial. In that case, however, he should have merely described the three positions as entailing unbelief. Unfortunately, however, he leveled the charge against the falāsifah themselves. Thus, the contradiction between his first introduction and his conclusion remains. As for the conclusion, it is very brief and reads like a rather unenthusiastic response to what Ghazālī might have anticipated as an inevitable question: ‘do you then say conclusively that they are infidels and that the killing of those who uphold their belief is obligatory?’ Ghazālī’s answer is that ‘pronouncing them infidels is necessary in three questions’ (2000 p. 226). He does not seem enthusiastic here. Arriving at a legal judgment on the falāsifah is not one of the objectives he laid out in the introduction, but it is

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reasonable to presume that many of the interested parties were more interested in legality than philosophy. For whatever reason he felt obliged to include a legal verdict here, he would have had to make such a verdict in light of existing law, and not philosophy. In the introduction, he said he would verify to the self-styled followers of the falāsifah that their leaders are innocent of unbelief. He did not say he would verify this to anyone else. It seems that Ghazālī wrote the conclusion for a different sort of audience, whom he addresses only reluctantly. ‘We, however, prefer not to plunge into [the questions] of pronouncing those who uphold heretical innovation to be infidels and of which pronouncement is valid and which is not, lest the discourse should stray from the objective of this book’ (2000 p. 227). At the risk of straying from the objective of this book, I suggest that the most plausible way of explaining this contradiction is to see it from the view of the falāsifah themselves. For the problem of ‘philosophical posers’, as alluded above, was known to them. Proper philosophical education in Fārābī’s utopia is only for the intellectual elite. For the common folk, only education through persuasive methods is appropriate. In stark contrast with the ʾAshʿarī aspiration, then, taṣdiq is only for the few. For the rest, its taqlīd, not to the falāsifah themselves but, interestingly enough, to public religion. For Fārābī, again, true public religion is the ‘imitation of philosophy’, a symbolic scheme of images and practices engineered by a prophet (who is a philosopher with a powerful imagination and rhetorical skill), in order to bring the masses of society in line with philosophical truths that are beyond their ability to comprehend on their own terms. Hence, Ghazālī’s description of their claim, that the prophets ‘said whatever they have said by way of utility, to give examples and explanation to the multitudes of created mankind.’ Yet if the multitudes were to see it that way, it would defeat the virtuous purpose of the whole façade. Thus, no true faylasūf would publicize this truth. The Imam / Philosopher King would have to deal with any pretenders who try. Ghazālī, then, does not differ from the falāsifah in what he

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sees as the problem posed by philosophical posers. For both, it is the threat to public religion. If they differ here, it would not be on whether the doctrine should be suppressed or not, but only on why it should. Perhaps for Ghazālī we should suppress it because it is false. For Fārābī we should suppress it precisely because it is true. Thus, the public response of his Imam would bear the same contradiction we see Ghazālī appearing to make here. He would declare the falāsifah believers in one context and condemn them as unbelievers in another. If this also explains Ghazālī’s apparent contradiction here, then it follows that, even though he did not think these doctrines, properly understood, constitute unbelief, it was nevertheless in the public interest for common people to view it as such. That of course does not mean that he secretly agreed with these three doctrines. He may disagree with them without believing that they constitute unbelief, properly understood. It simply means he thought a certain class of people are better off thinking these doctrines constitute unbelief (because their inevitably mistaken conception of the doctrines would in fact constitute unbelief), and yet another group (who can properly understand them) are better off knowing that they do not. He wrote this book for the latter group who, if able follow the line of argument, would also be able to understand why the verdict in the conclusion is necessary. That may not explain the contradiction; but if not, I know nothing else to say other than that he changed his mind in the process of writing and neglected to re-write his preface.

SECTION 1.2. GHAZĀLĪ’S METHOD AND PARAMETERS

Perhaps the falāsifah would deal with philosophical posers by trying to convince them that, by either nature or lack of education, they are incapable of independent thought and so should (so to speak) go back to their day jobs. A weakness of that approach is that the poser can just as easily throw the same line back, claiming that his critic is the one out of his depth. Who then is the real philosopher, and who is the poser? In his fourth introduction, Ghazālī mentions this tactic, as a way either the falāsifah – or their posers – try to shield their arguments from scrutiny.

18

COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE One of the tricks these [philosophers (?)] use in enticing [people] when confronted with a difficulty in the course of an argument is to say: ‘These metaphysical sciences are obscure and hidden, being the most difficult of the sciences for intelligent minds. One can only arrive at knowing the answer to these difficulties through the introduction of mathematics and logic.’ Thus, whoever imitates them in their unbelief when confronted with a difficulty in their doctrine would think well of them and say: ‘No doubt their sciences include a resolution of [this difficulty]; but it is difficult for me to apprehend it, since I have neither mastered logic nor attained mathematics’ (2000 p. 8).

To whom is Ghazālī referring here, as using the ‘trick’: the faylasūf or the poser? Marmura (from his translation above) appears to assume the former, but the matter is as ambiguous as that of whether they are unbelievers. His description of the second speaker as the one who imitates might at first seem to imply that the first speaker is one of the falāsifah whom the posers are imitating, but that’s not necessarily so. For one imitator can imitate another. Furthermore, the second speaker here is described as imitating the first in their unbelief, so if we take Ghazālī on his word in the preface above, that the true falāsifah were not unbelievers, then the first speaker; that is, those who play the ‘trick’, must be the posers. Likewise, if we apply Fārābī’s standard, a true faylasūf would not be engaging in a metaphysical debate with an unqualified person in the first place. Whoever the ‘trickster’ is, Ghazālī summarily calls him out. As for mathematics, he explains, its object is either discrete quantity (arithmetic), or continuous quantity (geometry), neither of which are relevant to metaphysics. As for arithmetic, he simply dismisses as nonsense the claim that metaphysics requires it. As for geometry, he associates it with investigating the shape and structure of the cosmos (the number and arrangement of the spheres and their movements). This, he claims, is also irrelevant for metaphysics. For this is as if someone were to say that the knowledge that this house came to be through the work of a knowing, willing, living builder, endowed with power, requires that one knows that the house is either a hexagon or an octagon and that one

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knows the number of its supporting frames and the number of its bricks, which is raving, its falsity obvious; or that one does not know that this onion is temporally originated unless he knows the number of its layers and does not know that this pomegranate is temporally originated unless he knows the number of its seeds…’ (2000 p. 9).

This raises a question that we will have occasion to consider later. The contention, essentially, is that natural science has no bearing on metaphysics. The analogous metaphysical question, drawn from the first example, would be whether the cosmos and its contents came to be through the work of a knowing, willing, powerful Creator. The apparent implication here is that we cannot arrive at an answer to that question by inferring from what we know about the natural structure of these things. This would seem to preclude any teleological ‘design’ argument, premised on observations of the order in that structure. Yet in other works, Ghazālī does just that. In his major theological text, al-Iqtisād fī al-I‘tiqād (Moderation in Belief), he argues that, since the world is a wellordered act, and every well-ordered act proceeds from a knowing and powerful agent, then the world proceeds from a knowing, powerful agent. Part of the evidence he produces for the first premise, moreover is based on the observation that the compartments of a beehive are hexagonal and therefore optimal for fitting the round shape of the bee without wasting space (2013 p. 91). Knowing that a house is hexagonal may not be necessary for knowing it had an intelligent designer, but knowing that a beehive is hexagonal is apparently sufficient for knowing it did. Unless we can know the world is a well-ordered act without knowing anything about its natural structure, it is hard to see how one can maintain that natural science has no connection to the question of whether the world has a knowing, willing, powerful Creator. Logic, Ghazālī affirms, is a pre-requisite for metaphysics. This raises another crucial question. Does Ghazālī here mean to imply, positively, that we can arrive at metaphysical knowledge through logic, or does he merely mean that logic is necessary for systematically engaging in discussions of metaphysics? This is

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important because the latter interpretation is compatible with the position that metaphysical knowledge is not possible through the exercise of ‘unaided reason’ at all. In either case, while affirming that logic is necessary for metaphysics, Ghazālī emphasizes that it is neither exclusive to the falāsifah, nor limited in its expression to their technical terminology. Theologians and jurists also understand and practice this discipline, albeit under a different name. He will thus confine himself, he says, to the logical terminology of the falāsifah, not only to avoid any semantic obfuscation, but also in order to judge their arguments according to their own rules. We will make it plain that what they set down as a condition for the truth of the matter of the syllogism in the part on demonstrating [their] logic, and what they set forth as a condition for its form in the book of the syllogism, and the various things they posited in the Isagoge and the Categories which are parts of logic and its preliminaries, [are things] none of which they have been able to fulfill in their metaphysical sciences (2000 p. 9).

Ghazālī promises to make it plain that the arguments the falāsifah offer for their metaphysical claims have failed to meet their own epistemic standards, but this requires that the reader understand these standards. Thus, he included a primer on logic at the end of the book. He also refers the reader to his Mi’yār al-‘ilm (‘Standard of Knowledge’), a separate book on logic. Logic is ‘concerned with examining the instrument of thought in intelligible things,’ he explains, ‘there is no significant disagreement encountered in these’ (2000 p. 11). In that case, we have a shared set of clearly defined ‘ground rules’ for the debate. So long as Ghazālī’s exposition of his opponents’ arguments is complete and accurate, it should be a straightforward procedure to determine whether they meet the standards of proof laid out by their own logic. If so, then Ghazālī will have equipped the reader with the means to judge the outcome of the debate for herself. What he promises is empowering, respectful of the readers’ intellect, and genuinely philosophical. It remains for us to evaluate the degree to which he has fulfilled that promise.

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Having clarified Ghazālī’s proposed methodology it remains to review the parameters of the discussion, which he lays out in the first three introductions. As we saw, for his purposes here, the falāsifah are effectively al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. For based on the premise that they are the most reliable transmitters of Aristotle among the Muslims, Ghazālī specifies that he will be limiting himself to the review of their arguments. Ibn Rushd is often critical of the reliability of that transmission (especially in the case of Ibn Sīnā). Hence, we will often find him rejecting one of their arguments as inconclusive, while disavowing it as not representing the thought of the ‘ancient’ philosophers, while at other times he cites the diversity of their views. In light of Ghazālī’s specific claim (as expressed in the introductions), these moves only seem to support his case. For Ghazālī explains the limit of his scope of inquiry, by the very fact of this diversity of views among the philosophers, recounting how Aristotle differed even from his teacher, Plato. This difference, he says, is itself proof for his position. We have transmitted this story to let it be known that there is neither firm foundation nor perfection in the doctrine they hold; that they judge in terms of supposition (ẓann) and surmise (takhmīn), without verification (taḥqīq) or certainty (yaqīn); that they use the appearance of their mathematical and logical sciences as evidential proof for the truth of their metaphysical sciences, using [this] as a gradual enticement for the weak in mind. Had their metaphysical sciences been as perfect in their demonstration, free from conjecture, as their mathematical, they would not have disagreed among themselves regarding [the former], just as they have not disagreed in their mathematical sciences (2000 p. 4).

This implies that the posers of Ghazālī’s ire had been claiming that the falāsifah were capable of mathematical certainty in questions of metaphysics, or at least a level of certainty that should result in unanimity around a settled, monolithic doctrine. Only then would the fact that they differed on metaphysical questions constitute a refutation. Did the falāsifah themselves claim as much; and if not, did they give their admirers any reason to?

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In the second introduction, Ghazālī divides disputes with the falāsifah into three types: those that reduce to semantics, substantial disputes that do not contradict any religious principle, and those that do. Only the third sort, according to Ghazālī, require objection. The example of the first category is the falāsifah reference to God as a ‘substance’ (jawhar), understood as ‘selfsubsisting’. In the kalām milieu, this term referred to that which occupies space. Thus, they would object to the notion that God is a substance, since He does not occupy space. Yet the falāsifah and the mutakallimūn both agree that God is self-subsistent and does not occupy space. Thus the dispute, according to Ghazālī, is only over the proper use of the term for God, which is a matter for religious law. ‘You must not, however, allow the true nature of things to become confused for you because of customs and formalities,’ he writes, thus neatly categorizing the semantic as ‘conventional’ as distinct from the ‘natural’ (2000 p. 5). Yet the question of just how to draw this line animates much of the debate to come. The example of the second category is the falāsifah explanation of the eclipses. There is no purpose in disputing this, says Ghazālī, because it does not contradict religious doctrine. In fact, those who dispute it in the name of defending religion actually harm religion. ‘For these matters rest on demonstrations – geometrical and arithmetical – that leave no room for doubt,’ he writes, ‘Thus, when one who studies these demonstrations and ascertains their proofs…is told that this is contrary to religion, [such an individual] will not suspect this [science, but] only religion’ (2000 p. 6). Then what if we find something demonstratively proven that does contradict religion? In that case, according to Ghazālī, we must interpret the religious text figuratively. The discussion here deserves careful attention. The first thing Ghazālī does, is to consider an objection raised, on account of a hadith narrating a description by the Prophet Muhammad of the eclipses as God’s signs, where he denied that they happen because of the birth or death of any person and commanded people to pray if they see one. Nothing in this, Ghazālī says, contradicts the explanation of the eclipses demonstrated by the

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falāsifah. Understanding natural phenomenon as signs of God, we may infer, is compatible with them also having natural explanations. Note here Ghazālī’s opposition to any pretense to a monopoly on the sources of knowledge by self-styled defenders of religion. One version of the hadīth in which this prophetic saying is narrated concludes with the statement, ‘But, if God reveals himself to a thing, it submits itself to Him.’ Ghazālī considers the objection that with this addition the text does indeed contradict the falāsifah explanation of the eclipses. The transmission of this version, he argues, is unsound. ‘For if the transmission [of the addition] were sound, then it would be easier to interpret it metaphorically rather than to reject matters that are conclusively true’ (2000 p. 7). There are many cases of metaphorical scriptural interpretation (ta’wīl), he points out, to resolve contradictions with things proven less decisively than the explanation of the eclipses. There are two important things to take from this. First, there is the implied rule that when a scriptural text contradicts something demonstratively proven we should interpret the former metaphorically. Secondly, there is the implication that the statement, ‘if God reveals Himself to a thing, it submits (khaḍa‘a) itself to Him,’ taken literally, is incompatible with a natural explanation of the eclipses. It seems that Ghazālī takes the literal sense of ‘submits’ here as pertaining to the natural. For he proceeds to explain all this in terms of the same analogy he uses above for the lack of relation between the natural and the metaphysical. This is because the inquiry [at issue] about the world is whether it originated in time or is eternal. Moreover, once its temporal origination is established, it makes no difference whether it is a sphere, a simple body, an octagon, or a hexagon; [it makes] no difference whether the [highest] heavens and what is beneath are thirteen layers, as they say, or lesser or greater. For the relation into [these matters] to the inquiry into divine [matters] is similar to the relation of looking at the number of layers of an onion [or] the number of seeds in a pomegranate. What is intended here is only [the world’s] being God’s act, whatever mode it has (2000 p. 7).

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This seems to imply that in Ghazālī’s view the term ‘submits’, applied literally to an object of nature, entails that some specific physical description applies. Then when this physical description contradicts another one the truth of which we can logically demonstrate, we interpret the former as a metaphor for a metaphysical truth. Since there is no relation between the physical (e.g. the number of seeds in a pomegranate) and the metaphysical (e.g. the contingency of the pomegranate) then a logically demonstrated physical fact can never contradict a metaphysical truth. As we noted above, it seems to follow (problematically, perhaps) that a physical fact (or facts) can never entail a metaphysical truth. Consequently, Ghazālī must understand all non-negotiable religious principles as metaphysical principles, and it is only in defense of these that he deems it necessary to oppose the falāsifah. The third part is one where the dispute pertains to one of the principles of religion, such as upholding the doctrine of the world’s origination, [or] demonstrating the resurrection of bodies, all of which [the philosophers] have denied. It is in this topic and its likes, not any other, that one must show the falsity of their doctrine (2000 p. 7).

In the third introduction, Ghazālī announces that, since his objective is only to dispel the image that the falāsifah are ‘free from contradiction, by showing the [various] aspects of their incoherence,’ he will not enter the argument ‘except as one who demands and denies, not as one who claims [and] affirms’ (2000 p. 7). By this, he obviously intends to relieve himself of the burden of proof with respect to any alternative doctrine. This is generally valid. Showing that one theory suffers from internal contradictions or inconclusive evidence does not itself require positive proof that some alternative theory is true. At most, one may question the value of such an exercise, as Ibn Rushd does.

SECTION 1.3. AN ‘IMPERFECT REFUTATION’

Ibn Rushd did not include Ghazālī’s introductions with the text that he copied into his Tahāfut, nor does he address them. He briefly states his objective in writing it before launching straight into his review of the opening argument of Discussion 1. ‘The aim

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of this book,’ he writes, ‘is to show the different degrees of assent and conviction attained by the assertions in the Incoherence of the Philosophers, and to prove that the greater part has not reached the degree of evidence or truth’ (1930 p. 3 / 1954 p. 33). The first argument he proceeds to criticize is, not Ghazālī’s, but the falāsifah argument for the eternity of the world that Ghazālī presents there. Though he does not reject its conclusion, the issue for him (as for Ghazālī) is whether the argument in question is demonstrative. Indeed, he is often as critical of the falāsifah arguments Ghazālī presents as he is of the objections Ghazālī raises against them. If we interpret his statement of intent according to what he actually does, then we should conclude that Ibn Rushd is not targeting only Ghazālī’s arguments, but all (or at least most) of the arguments for any of the assertions made in the Tahāfut, whether by or against the falāsifah. Yet as we saw, Ghazālī explicitly says he will not be making or defending any positive assertions. His aim is strictly to show that the falāsifah are not able to prove with the demonstrative certainty they claim, their own assertions on the twenty topics. This does not require proof of any contrary assertion. Thus, Ghazālī can conceivably succeed in his aim, even if all the assertions he makes (or at least all the remotely controversial ones) are unproven. Technically then, Ibn Rushd’s stated aim here is not necessarily in opposition to that of Ghazālī, but actually in accord with it. The two would be coherent in their objectives (or at least, in their explicitly stated objectives). Ibn Rushd seems to feel otherwise. This, among other features of his response raise the question whether he was aware of Ghazālī’s introductions and his stated purpose there. For example, he often targets ‘Ash‘ari positions that Ghazālī does not commit himself to in the book, as if that were relevant to the soundness of the falāsifah arguments in question. Here, we will explore some indications and implications of Ibn Rushd’s apparent ignorance of Ghazālī’s introductions. Ibn Rushd’s own minimal statement of purpose (to show the arguments in the Tahāfut are undemonstrative) allows me the space to proceed on the working hypothesis that he was motivated by genuine philosophical concern for meeting the

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challenge of the questions Ghazālī raised. So also does the fact that, in his own writing, he does not generally reflect the same degree of inordinate arrogance toward Ghazālī often displayed by his modern partisans. There are, however, places in the body of the work where Ibn Rushd provides more detail about his objectives and method, of which we will review one key instance here. On that basis, I will make a case for approaching the Tahāfut debate as a philosophically productive dialectic of the sort described by Fārābī in his Book of Letters. In Ibn Rushd’s reproduction of the text, Ghazālī’s assertion of a purely critical stance first appears – seemingly ad hoc in the absence of his introduction – at the end of the first discussion. There, the falāsifah note that Ghazālī has posed problems for their argument ‘without solving any of the problematic [the philosophers] have brought with them’ (2000 p. 46). He replies that his objections have achieved their sole aim, which is not to defend a specific doctrine but just to show that they have failed to demonstrate the pre-eternity of the cosmos. He will defend the true doctrine, he says, in a future book that he will name Qawā‘id al-‘aqā’id, or ‘Principles of Belief’ (2000 p. 46). As fate would have it, this is the title of a brief summary of creed found in Ghazālī’s voluminous Iḥyā’‘ulūm al-dīn. Outside of this chapter, the Iḥyā’ is rife with the influence of falsafah. It is thus one of several works which some have argued indicate that Ghazālī was an adherent of Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine, either secretly (Gairdner, 1914, Abrahamov 1988) or openly (Frank 1992). Others who argue instead that Ghazālī remained a committed ʾAshʿarī, typically identify the Iqtisād fī al-I‘tiqād (‘Moderation in Belief’), his most extensive defense of that school’s creed, as the exposition of true doctrine Ghazālī promises in the Tahāfut (Marmura 2004). Ibn Rushd himself raises this question. But this book has not yet come into my hands and perhaps he never composed it, and he only says that he does not base this present book on any doctrine, in order that it should not be thought that he based it on that of the ʾAshʿarīs. It appears from the books ascribed to him that in metaphysics he recurs to the philosophers. And of all his books this is most truly

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proved in his book called The Niche of Lights (1930 p. 117 / 1954 p. 69).

I will here advance the working hypothesis that, as Ibn Rushd suggests, Ghazālī never did compose his book of true doctrine. This suits our present aim, which is not to ascertain what of Ghazālī’s corpus reflects his heart of hearts, but rather to examine his debate with the falāsifah as part of an active philosophical exploration. We will assume that in his encounter with the falāsifah he was searching, so that we might join the search, using the debate as a platform for speculating, in a sense, over what the content of his book of the final truth would be, were he to have written it. We thus need not ponder here over whether the Iqtisād expresses his true belief, whether he actually wrote Mishkāt alAnwār (‘Niche of Lights’) and so forth. For we do not intend to use any of that to impose conclusive limits on where the argument of the Tahāfut could lead us. It may be that problems remain with the arguments of both the falāsifah and their opponents. Ibn Rushd, it seems, would object to such a procedure. ‘To oppose difficulty with difficulty does not bring about destruction, but only perplexity and doubts in him who acts this way’ he says of Ghazālī’s purely critical posture, ‘for why should he think one of the two conflicting theories reasonable and the opposite one vain?’ (1930 p. 116 / 1954 p. 68). Ibn Rushd apparently understands Ghazālī’s objective here simply by the term ‘destruction’ (tahāfut), taken from the book’s title rather than its introduction’s extensive statement of purpose (again, absent from his own reproduction). He assumes that as an outcome, this ‘destruction’ of a theory entails the positive demonstration of an opposing theory, and that simply showing that the arguments for the theory are not demonstrative or even that the theory is internally contradictory is for him not sufficient for that. This requires a ‘perfect refutation.’ ‘Most of the arguments with which this man Ghazālī opposes the philosophers are doubts which arise when certain parts of the doctrine of the philosophers come into conflict with others,’ he informs us, again, as though he were unaware that Ghazālī had clearly specified as much at the outset. ‘But this is an imperfect refutation’ (1930 p. 116 / 1954 p. 68). A perfect refutation would

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be one that succeeded in showing the futility of their system according to the facts themselves, not such a one as, for instance, Ghazālī’s assumption that it is permissible for the opponents of the philosophers to claim that possibility is a mental concept in the same way as the philosophers claim this for the universal. For if the truth of this comparison between the two were conceded, it would not follow that it was untrue that possibility was a concept dependent on reality, but only either that it is false that the universal exists in the mind only, or false that possibility exists in the mind only (1930 p. 116 /1954 pp. 68–9). As we will see, the falāsifah argue here that since possibility has a substrate in mind-independent reality, any hypothetical beginning of the cosmos entails the prior existence of the cosmos, since its prior possibility entails a pre-existing material substrate. Comparing possibility to universals, which the falāsifah, following Aristotle over Plato, claim exist only in the intellect (and ultimately the Divine Intellect), Ghazālī objects that possibility may also require no material substrate. The possibility of the cosmos prior to its coming to be may simply subsist either in our own estimative imagination or in God’s knowledge. As Ibn Rushd points out, this does not prove positively that the falāsifah are wrong, but only the possibility that they are. Yet that alone means that their arguments fail to be demonstrative, which again as Ghazālī specifies in his introduction, is all he has set out to do. It therefore is a refutation of their system according to the ‘facts themselves’ as Ibn Rushd put it, inasmuch as their system involves the claim to have achieved demonstrative knowledge of these matters while in fact it has not. Had Ibn Rushd read Ghazālī’s introduction or taken it seriously, we would expect him to address the crucial question whether the ‘true’ falāsifah as he puts it (i.e. Aristotle as opposed to Ibn Sīnā) really do, as Ghazālī represents them, claim demonstrative metaphysical knowledge. We would also expect him to comment directly on Ghazālī’s specification of Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā as his sources and the most authentic transmitters of Aristotle among the Muslims. He would also have had much to say, for example, about Ghazālī’s denial of the relation between physics and metaphysics and his denial that the falāsifah have a

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monopoly over the mutakallimūn in logic. The fact that he did not address these in a specific rejoinder to Ghazālī’s introduction indicates that he did not have it available, and one wonders how his approach to the book would have differed if he had. Most intriguingly, one wonders how Ibn Rushd would have responded to Ghazālī’s description of the problem of philosophical ‘posers’ who are led astray from religion by misunderstanding philosophy. For the problem Ibn Rushd has with Ghazālī’s book is in fact that it will create philosophical posers led astray from religion by a misunderstanding of philosophy. ‘Indeed, it would have been necessary for him to begin by establishing the truth before starting to perplex and confuse his readers,’ he writes’ for they might die before they could get hold of that book, or he might have died himself before writing it’ (1930 p. 117 /1954 p. 69). Conspicuously, this implies that the readers can be untouched by ‘confusion’ prior to the ‘establishment’ of the truth. Only then could Ghazālī have been responsible for confusing them without its being already established. Thus by their ‘confusion,’ Ibn Rushd does not mean their ignorance, but their awareness of their ignorance. This reflects Ibn Rushd’s own iteration, expressed in his Faṣl al-maqāl, of Al-Fārābī’s social hierarchy mentioned above, (2008 pp. 24–29). For the masses, the antidote to ‘confusion’ is not knowledge, of which they are incapable, but trust in and compliance with the public religion. The proper way to promote that is to provide persuasive positive arguments based as far as possible on a literal interpretation of scripture. Simply raising points of doubt in the arguments of heretics, as Ghazālī claims to be doing here, does not contribute to confidence in the official creed, but rather the opposite. It habituates the population to skepticism and questioning the law. In this place, he specifically accuses Ghazālī of risking this by having inserted scriptural interpretations into rhetorical or dialectal books (2008 p. 26). It is not clear if he has the Tahāfut in mind, for the points of doubt Ghazālī is raising here are not against the public religion or apparent interpretation of scripture, but rather against the claimed demonstrative nature of the falāsifahs’ arguments for their supposedly ‘true interpretation’ of

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its symbols. The only people at risk of dying in ‘confusion’ before getting ahold of Ghazālī’s mysterious final book of positive truth on that account are perhaps those whose faith in Aristotle he has shaken. Since Ibn Rushd’s brief introduction informs us that, like Ghazālī, his purpose is also purely critical, to show that most of the arguments in the Tahāfut are inconclusive, this raises the question whether he has already written a book of final truth, giving him the license he denies to Ghazālī? If so, in which works would he have understood himself as meeting that requisite? It may be his book on dialectical theology, Al-Kashf ‘an manāhij aladillah (‘Exposition of the Methods of Proof’) intended for the general public, or his commentaries on Aristotle, taken to be his ‘demonstrative’ work for philosophers (Taylor 2012 pp. 296–9). This turns on what, in his mind, should have been the function of Ghazālī’s book of ‘final truth.’ Justified or otherwise, in his Tahāfut he has done exactly what he accused Ghazālī of, by writing dialectically on matters that according to his own standards should not be. As in Ghazālī’s case, and for the same purpose, we will assume the hypothesis that Ibn Rushd has no book of final truth, and would thus sincerely like to have known what Ghazālī’s book on that would have said. We may imagine that he is annoyed that Ghazālī has raised questions in his own mind, and now he may die before he gets his hands on such a book. For our purpose, that is, we approach them as both genuinely searching (as we aspire to here) in response to challenges mutually raised between their respective encounters with intellectual adversity. Yet both also have stated aims that we will not ignore, portrayed as paternalistic concern for the intellectually or religiously vulnerable members of the public.

SECTION 1.4. IBN RUSHD’S RATIONALE, DISCLAIMERS, AND METHODS

In lieu of any substantive introduction, expressions of Ibn Rushd’s rationale appear in the course of his argument, specifically where he expresses a reluctant compulsion to provide a more comprehensive account of falsafah reasoning in order to correct what he

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says are Ghazālī’s misrepresentations or misunderstandings. Here we will examine three related places this happens. The first is at the end of Discussion 3, where Ghazālī argues that the falāsifahs’ emanation theory ultimately contradicts the strict notion of God’s unity it aims to defend. The second is in Discussion 6, where he charges them with inconsistency in denying God’s attributes on grounds of His absolute simplicity, while affirming that He knows. In Discussion 11, he demands proof of their assertion that anything immaterial is pure intellect. In all of these challenges, notably pertaining to God’s unity and knowledge, Ibn Rushd presents himself as compelled, by the circumstances Ghazālī has imposed, to provide a more extensive explanation of the topic than normally appropriate in such a context. Since God is absolutely one, and only one can proceed from one, according the falāsifah in Discussion 3, then the diversity of the cosmos can only proceed from God through the mediation of a series of immaterial intellects. This begins with a ‘First Intellect’ proceeding directly from God. This intellect knows its source, itself, and its intrinsic contingency. That, according to the theory, is an internal plurality from which cosmic plurality ultimately arises, thus safeguarding God’s absolute unity. If the First Intellect’s knowledge of itself and its principle constitutes a plurality, Ghazālī argues, the same plurality is in God, since He knows Himself and others. He then considers their reply that God does not know other than Himself. ‘His intellectual apprehension (‘aqluhu dhātuhu) of Himself is identical with Himself, intellect, intellectual apprehension, and what is apprehended being one’ (2000 p. 70). Ghazālī mentions here that Ibn Sīnā, trying to distance himself from this infamous position, held that God knows all as proceeding from Him, both universals and particulars ‘in a universal way.’ For the implication of this is that God’s effect would be superior: while God knows only Himself, the First Intellect knows itself and others (including God). Secondly, Ghazālī argues, if knowledge of another would entail plurality in God, so also it would in the First Intellect. In that case, its knowledge of God is other than its knowledge of itself. It thus requires a cause, and there is no candidate for this position other

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than God. Yet the First Intellect itself is already the effect of God and, as the falāsifah say, only one can proceed from one. The cosmos being plural, that rule is false and God’s unity is not such as to preclude His being the direct Creator of many. This marks a turning point in the discussion for Ibn Rushd, who has at that point already effectively stated that God knows all things, and yet nothing other than Himself. From his perspective, Ghazālī has broached a topic over which he has the falāsifah at an unfair disadvantage, for to understand their position on this topic requires a clear explanation of the reasoning behind it, but this is difficult. One who wants to enter deeply into these speculations must know that much of what is firmly established in the speculative sciences seems at first sight, and compared to the opinions the common man holds about them, like the visions of a dreamer…indeed there is no other way for anyone to become convinced of their truth than that of comprehending by logical proof and evidence…Therefore if a lover of truth finds a theory reprehensible and does not find plausible premises which remove its reprehensible character, he must not at once believe the theory is false, but must inquire how he who puts it forward has arrived at it, must employ much time in learning this, and follow the systematic order corresponding to the nature of the topic (1930 p. 207 /1954 pp. 124–125).

Ghazālī, as we mentioned above, anticipated this sort of response in his preface. When faced with a challenge, he said, the falāsifah claim that only those properly trained in logic could understand their reasoning. Thus, he promised to deal with their own arguments according to their own method and standards for demonstration. The options for opposing him would be either to show that in spite of his claims the argument in question is demonstrative, or to show that he has failed to represent the argument accurately in its full demonstrative form. In the latter case, the appropriate move would be to represent the argument correctly, showing that its form is valid and its premises certain. Then he can show that any reprehensible implications Ghazālī draws from it do not actually follow or that, absurd and

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reprehensible as they seem are nonetheless demonstrably true. To shift dialectically to a critique of the ʾAshʿarī school would be immaterial here. Moreover, it would be religiously illegal on Ibn Rushd’s own standards. For, as he says, ‘dialectics is useful and permissible in the other sciences, but forbidden in this,’ and so ‘may God judge him who discusses these questions with common opinions and who argues about God without scientific knowledge’ (1954 pp. 125–6). He nevertheless marks out a gray area for himself by presenting what he is about to do as a violation of that strict rule. ‘But in any case,’ he says, ‘we shall try to show some plausible premises and true propositions’ (1930 p. 209 / 1954 p. 126). That is, he will engage the question in a manner falling short of logical demonstration, and yet somehow superior to dialectics. For his excuse is that, by misrepresenting metaphysics, Ghazālī had ‘denied people the possibility of attaining happiness through excellent acts’ (1930 pp. 209–210 / 1954 p. 126). Whatever follows, then, should aim at removing the obstacle Ghazālī placed between the reader and this happiness. Short of logical demonstration, it should still somehow facilitate the reader in arriving there. From his associating it with philosophy, we may safely assume Ibn Rushd understands happiness here in Aristotelian terms, in which case we must remember that happiness is a contemplative activity (Nicomachean Ethics X-7). His aims, Ibn Rushd specifies, are to explain: 1) ‘the motives which moved the philosophers to believe these theories,’ 2) ‘the limit which the human understanding can reach in this matter,’ 3) ‘the doubts which beset these problems,’ and 4) to ‘show all this in respect to the Muslim theologians and indicate how far their wisdom attained’ (1930 p. 210 / 1954 p. 126). As we will see, he is in general agreement with Ghazālī on 2), that human understanding is limited in this matter. They may differ on the where and why of these limits, but Ghazālī’s defined objective here is not to define the scope of human comprehension. Again, he has set out to refute the claim that the falāsifah had attained demonstrative certainty in specified metaphysical questions. For Ibn Rushd to acknowledge limits on human comprehension here is no less a concession to Ghazālī on this then is his

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acknowledgment of the doubts he promises to explain. For, if we have reached demonstrative certainty then how are there remaining doubts? It may be that more is actually demonstrable than what Ghazālī would lead us to believe. In that case, providing the premises and clarifications will indeed ‘help the lover of knowledge to find the truth,’ as Ibn Rushd hopes (1930 p. 210 / 1954 p. 126). Yet refuting false claims to demonstrative certainty is equally necessary and instrumental in that regard. This recommends our approach of reading the two together as a productive dialectic; i.e. one that potentially produces philosophical fruit, as Fārābī expresses it in The Book of Letters, where he says philosophy uses dialectic as a tool. ‘Dialectic and sophistry precede philosophy,’ he says, ‘just as the nourishment of the tree precedes the fruit, or the flower of the tree precedes the fruit’ (Fārābī 2005 p. 2). The aim of philosophy is demonstrative knowledge, which requires a grasp of first principles, and thus a clear understanding of our primary concepts. Do we receive these from above, discover them in the depths of our souls alone in a cave, or take them rote from the books of Aristotle? As Fārābī seems to be saying here, we arrive at first principles the same way Aristotle himself did, by starting with the various ways terms are actually used, and refining our understanding through a critical analysis of questions and problems their actual usage raise. With that in view, we intend to separate the valuable elements of this debate from what is merely rhetorical or unproductively dialectical. The former will be those elements that discover, or potentially lead to the discovery of ‘plausible premises and true propositions,’ as Ibn Rushd has it. His summary and comparative evaluation of the ‘theologians’ wisdom’ is an example of the latter sort. For aside from the fact that Ghazālī’s intention, as he repeatedly asserts, is not to defend a specific doctrine, it is clear from his Al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl that he considers the mutakallimūn less capable of demonstrative certainty in metaphysics than the falāsifah (1980 pp. 59–60). Since the question at hand is over whether the falāsifah are right in their claim to demonstrative knowledge, then how the reasoning of the mutakallimūn compares is irrelevant, unless

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Ghazālī brings some part of it up himself as a refutation. Otherwise, it is simple ad hominem by association. For to argue, that Ghazālī is wrong to claim the falāsifah have failed to prove their position because the reasoning of the mutakallimūn is inferior, is as fallacious as arguing that the falāsifahs’ proofs fail because they drink wine and skip prayers. Of course, Ghazālī does not argue that the falāsifahs’ proofs fail, because they drink and skip prayer, though what he claims to motivate him is the fact that their followers’ false pretense of demonstrative metaphysical knowledge leads them to neglect religious rules. The question whether that pretense is false is to be resolved by examining their arguments, and not their religious practice, the arguments of kalām, the jurisprudence on what constitutes kufr, or the universal declaration of human rights. The only thing relevant here is whether Ibn Rushd is able to show that these arguments are in fact demonstrative. If, in this context he is unable, as he says, to lay them out in such a form as to show that, then our only option is to fill in the blanks as well as we can. Simply conceding to his authority based on his assertion that we are in over our heads does not advance the cause of philosophy but the opposite. In this and similarly important sections, therefore, we will piece together as closely as possible whatever portions of the falāsifahs’ ‘true’ argument he condescends to disclose to us. Thus we should disobey him when, in Discussion 6, he forbids discussing the nature of God’s knowledge, since it would destroy the faith of the masses who he says are incapable of understanding it, and for the salvation of whom belief in the allegorical language of revelation are sufficient. This problem indeed is reserved for the men versed in profound knowledge to whom God has permitted the sight of the true realities, and therefore it must not be mentioned in any books except those that are composed according to a strictly rational pattern, that is, such books as must be read in a rational order and after the acquisition of other sciences the study of which according to a demonstrative method is too difficult for most men, even for those who possess by nature a sound understanding, although such men are very scarce (1930 p. 357 / 1954 p. 215).

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What is poison to one sort of person, however, is nourishment to another sort, he continues. For the special few, free inquiry is nourishment, and to forbid it from them would be as wrong as allowing it for the masses. When introduced (as Ghazālī has presumably done) to the masses for whom it is poison, then according to Ibn Rushd a ‘physician’ is called for to heal the affected victim. Ibn Rushd is this physician. ‘And for this reason we have allowed ourselves to discuss this problem in such a book as this’ (1930 p. 358 / 1954 p. 216). In any other situation, he says, it would be the greatest evil on earth for which the shariah punishment is well known. It thus being impossible to avoid discussing the problem, he says, ‘let us treat it in such a way as is possible in this place for those who do not possess the preparation and mental training needed before entering upon speculation about it’ (1930 p. 358 / 1954 p. 216). Ghazālī deploys a similar analogy in his discussion of the harms of falsafah in Al-Munqidh, which include both accepting and rejecting it wholesale. ‘Just as an unskilled swimmer must be kept away from slippery river banks,’ he says, ‘so men must be kept from perusing those books.’ Yet ‘when a skilled snake charmer takes a snake and separates the antidote from the poison and draws forth the antidote and renders the poison harmless, he is not free to withhold the antidote from anyone in need of it’ (1980 p. 70). He thus advocates here a similar restriction on the study of philosophy and yet justifies his own discussion of it on similar grounds as Ibn Rushd. The skill each requires for licensing such an endeavor is also the same: logical demonstration. Yet whereas Ghazālī, as we saw, refers the reader to his own primer on logic in order to understand the content of his Tahāfut, Ibn Rushd refers his readers to the unnamed ‘books of demonstration.’ In Discussion 11, after explaining what the falāsifah mean by divine ‘will,’ he makes his disclaimer. All this is the theory of the philosophers on this problem and in the way we have stated it here with its proofs, it is a persuasive not a demonstrative statement. It is for you to inquire about these questions in the places where they are treated in the books of demonstration. If you are one of the people of perfect eudaimonia, and if you are one of those who

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learn the arts the function of which is proof (1930 p. 427 / 1954 p. 257).

His Tahāfut, like Ghazālī’s, is dialectical, for it contains arguments but is not demonstrative. For Ghazālī’s purpose, he need only inform his readers what the standards of demonstration are, so that they can independently evaluate whether he is right to claim that the falāsifahs’ arguments fail to meet them. If Ibn Rushd takes as his task to defend the falāsifahs’ claim to demonstration in these matters, then his reader must not only know how to evaluate arguments properly, but also what the falāsifah arguments are, including all the premises and the meanings of all the terms therein, all the way down to first principles. That is a tall order. The books of demonstration to which he thus invites (if you are qualified) are not the manuals of logic such as Ghazālī has included on his syllabus. The qualified to whom his invitation applies have already finished that course. These must be the books in which the actual demonstrations appear, presumably throughout the Aristotelian corpus including Metaphysics along with De Anima and Physics. However, as Halper (2016) reminds us, ‘syllogisms are notoriously difficult to find in Aristotle’s writings, and may be even more elusive in Averroes commentaries.’ Indeed, by contrast to the strictly legal function of the discursive categories (demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical) as Ibn Rushd describes them in the Faṣl al-maqāl, Halper notices that in their natures, as Ibn Rushd describes in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the demonstrative and dialectical are not strictly separate. Ibn Rushd describes them both as scientific studies of being (using the term ‘dialectical philosophy’), thus differing, neither by subject matter (being) nor aim (knowledge of the truth), but by whether it begins from certain premises pertaining to being itself (and is thus demonstrative), or a critical examination of commonly held notions about being (and is thus dialectical). That is how we saw Ibn Rushd assess Ghazālī, above, as making an ‘imperfect refutation’ since the subjects of its premises are elements of the falāsifah’s theory rather than the things themselves. In what is probably one of the ‘books of demonstra-

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tion’ to which he refers the qualified reader, however, we find concession that this dialectical method of Ghazālī’s can in fact be philosophical, and that philosophy can legitimately be pursued in such a fashion. Consequently, in spite of Ibn Rushd’s disclaimer, this response to Ghazālī can be of philosophical value. ‘Nothing of what we have said in this book is a technical demonstrative proof; they are all non-technical statements, some of them having greater persuasion than others, and it is in this spirit that what we have written here must be understood,’ he says. ‘So this book of Ghazālī might be best given the name of the ‘Incoherence of both parties together’ (1930 p. 428 / 1954 pp. 257–8). Yet as we saw, the non-demonstrative may nevertheless be philosophical, so long as the aim is knowledge of the truth of being. Consequently, we take license to read the two parties together in the true spirit of philosophy, rather than the spirit of religious and political-ideological polemics to which past scholarship has often reduced them. We will examine the arguments on each side, isolate the philosophically useful from the merely useless and merely rhetorical, identify the weakness and gaps by which the interesting pieces of reasoning fail to demonstrate, and ascertain the underlying questions that need answering in order to fill in those gaps. On that basis, we will allow ourselves freedom to speculate over the theoretical possibilities that might emerge from the aftermath of this storm with a view toward fulfilling the demands of both reason and revelation as the antagonists would have understood them, and as we might understand them. We will search out the coherence in the ‘Incoherence of both parties together.’

DISCUSSION 1 Ghazālī organized the debate into twenty discussions, the first and longest of which pertains to the falāsifah’s claim to have proven that the cosmos is pre-eternal; that is, that it had no temporal beginning. Here, he critically examines four of their proofs. The first turns on the premise that it is impossible that anything temporal in that sense has an eternal cause. Since God is the eternal cause of the world, as all the parties agree, the world must also be eternal. Thus, the central issue in this proof is the nature of causality. The second proof rests on the nature of time, while the third and fourth proofs turn on the ontological status of possibility. In his Kitāb faṣl al-maqāl (‘Decisive Treatise’), Ibn Rushd expresses his view that the difference between the ‘ancient sages’ (al ḥukumā’ al-mutaqadimīn) and the ʾAshʿarī school on this question almost reduces to a terminological one (2008, p. 14). Both parties, he says, agree that all existing things fall under one of three categories. The first is that which comes to be both from something else and by something else, and whose existence is preceded by time. This includes all the material constituents of the world, which both parties call ‘generated’ (muḥdath). The second is that whose existence does not come to be, either of or by anything else, and which no time precedes; that is, God, whom both parties call ‘eternal’ (qadīman). The third is that not made from something else, and which time does not precede, but which does come to be by something else. Both parties agree that this third category describes the cosmos as a whole, but differ on whether to name it ‘eternal’ or ‘generated,’ he explains, for in some sense it resembles the former,

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and in another it resembles the latter. While the cosmos comes to be by an agent, as do generated things, unlike them it is not made of anything or preceded by time. The difference between the opposing parties on this question, he says here, is merely one over which resemblance is emphasized. Yet they are technically both wrong, according to what he says here: the cosmos is neither truly generated nor truly eternal. ‘For what is truly generated is necessarily corruptible, and what is truly eternal has no cause’ (2008 p. 15). This is quite different from the stance he takes on the matter in the Tahāfut. There, as we will see, he repeatedly presses the argument that opposition to cosmic pre-eternity implies the anthropomorphic absurdity of change in God, despite encountering Ghazālī ’s position on time there, which he lists here as a key point of agreement between the parties on the nature of the cosmos. For the dialectical theologians admit that time does not precede it – or rather, that is a consequence of their holding that time is something joined to motions and bodies. They also agree with the Ancients about future time being infinite and, likewise, future existence. And they disagree only about past time and past existence. For the dialectical theologians are of the opinion that it is limited, which is the doctrine of Plato and his sect, while Aristotle and his faction are of the opinion that it is infinite, as is the case with the future (2008 p. 15).

When he says that which is ‘truly generated’ is necessarily corruptible, he is referring to that the existence of which is preceded by time. In other words, given that time is something joined to motions and bodies, the position that past time is finite but future time is infinite is ultimately self-contradictory. As I will argue below, this does cut against Ghazālī . The position on the nature of time he takes in the course of the debate does seem to entail the finitude of time in both ‘directions,’ though the tension need not necessarily be resolved by accepting the infinity of past time. Meanwhile, the proposition, as Ibn Rushd puts it, that ‘what is truly eternal has no cause’ is (as we see in the next section) the core of Ghazālī ’s initial objection to Ibn Sīnā’s innovative proof of God’s existence. Here again, his position on time threatens to

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deprive this argument of its traction. For if the cause of the cosmos need not precede it in time, then whether it has a cause or not has no bearing on whether past time is finite or infinite. The question instead is how many causes the cosmos has. For as we will see, the argument for cosmic pre-eternity, for both the falāsifah and Ibn Rushd, ultimately relies on the premise that nothing, including the cosmos as a whole, comes to be except from pre-existing matter. Thus, in apparent contradiction with what Ibn Rushd claims here, the cosmos does come be from as well as by something. That is, along with its agent or efficient cause, it seems, an independently existing material cause on which the Agent (God) depends for bringing the cosmos to be. The trick, of course, is that this pre-existing matter is nothing other than an earlier phase of the cosmos itself. That is, indeed, the matter on which this discussion turns. Shortly thereafter in the same treatise, Ibn Rushd delivers his legal ruling on Ghazālī, that it is obligatory for the imams of the Muslims to ‘ban those of his books that contain science from all but those adept in science, just as it is obligatory to ban demonstrative books from those not adept in them’ (2008 p. 22). Yet alas, it is too late. We already got our grubby hands on them, and will now proceed to plunge headlong into the thick of it.

CHAPTER TWO. BASIC COSMOLOGICAL CONCEPTS In order to place the First Discussion in context, however, it will be useful first to examine the beginning of the Fourth Discussion, where Ghazālī rejects the falāsifah’s claim to prove the existence of the ‘maker of the world.’ Doing so will provide us the opportunity to introduce and clarify some of the key theoretical suppositions and concepts on which the First Discussion turns. For many of those, deployed to infer the existence of God from features of the world, determine how the parties involved understand the nature of both, including in the case of the world, whether or not it is eternal. Moreover, Ibn Rushd deals directly here with the different interpretations of basic concepts (regarding agency, causation, and modality) underlying the debate. In the Fourth Discussion, Ghazālī distinguishes ‘the people of truth’ from the materialists (al-dahriyya). The former, he says, view (rā’ū) the world as having come to exist after not existing; that is, as temporal (hādath). Knowing necessarily (‘ilmū ḍarūrah) that what comes to be requires a maker, they have concluded that the world has one. The materialists take the view that the world has not come to exist, but has existed from eternity; that is, it is ‘pre-eternal’ (qadīm), and so have not inferred that it has a maker. The materialists differ with the creationists only in their view that the world is pre-eternal rather than temporal, but not over whether whatever comes to be requires a maker, for that is selfevident. The premise that the world is temporal requires an argument. Therefore, though the materialist position is demonstrably false, Ghazālī says, it is at least intelligible. The falāsifah,

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on the other hand, view the world as pre-eternal and still claim it has a maker. ‘This doctrine is, as it stands, contradictory,’ he says, ‘there being no need for a refutation’ (2000 p. 78). This is of course wrong. It does not follow, from the proposition that everything temporal has a maker, that a preeternal world with a Maker is a contradiction. That would require the proposition that only the temporal has a maker. More important for our present purposes, however, is Ibn Rushd’s critique of how the concepts of agency and causality operate here. We will review this in Section 2.1. In Section 2.2 we will continue to review divergent concepts of possibility and eternity underlying the discussion, by way of introducing what Ghazālī lists as the ‘first proof’ of the falāsifah for cosmic pre-eternity.

SECTION 2.1. AGENTS AND CAUSES

Ghazālī has the falāsifah clarify that in saying the world has a maker, they do not mean an ‘agent (fā‘il) who chooses, who acts after having not acted, as we observe in the different kinds of agents such as the tailor, the weaver, and the builder,’ but rather ‘the cause (‘illah) of the world’ (2000 p. 78). One distinction they are making here is that between the ‘voluntary’ cause (who chooses) and the ‘natural.’ Another distinction here is that between a temporal agent (which acts after having not acted) and an eternal cause. These are different distinctions. For Ghazālī, as we will see, God is an agent (acting by choice), but not one who acts after having not acted. While we will find him insisting (in the Third Discussion) that an ‘agent’ is only a cause that acts by choice, the falāsifah use the term ‘agent’ interchangeably with one of four types of cause (i.e. the efficient cause), whether or not it is voluntary. Ibn Rushd conveniently provides review of these four, in the course of his critique of the proof for God that Ghazālī relays here in the name of the falāsifah. The world (with its existents) either has a cause or does not have a cause. If it has a cause, then [the question arises]: “Does this cause have a cause or is it without a cause?” [If it has a cause,] the same [question] applies to the cause of the cause. This would either regress infinitely, which is impossible, or terminate with a limit. The latter, then, is a first

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cause that has no cause for its existence. We call this the First Principle (2000 p. 79).

A recurring complaint that Ibn Rushd levels against Ghazālī ’s representation of the falāsifah, as well as Ibn Sīnā, is that they often ignore important technical distinctions established by Aristotle. Hence, he criticizes this proof’s equivocal use of the term ‘cause,’ which as every Aristotelian knows comes in four flavors rather than only one: efficient, formal, material, and final. The failure to distinguish these, he says, can lead to confusion about the first cause in more than one way. For Ibn Rushd and the falāsifah, again, the term ‘agent’ refers to the efficient cause. That, as he defines it elsewhere, is ‘what causes some other thing to pass from potency to actuality, and from non-existence to existence’ (1930 p. 150 / 1954 p. 89). The first cause of the world, he says, is not any agent, but one ‘whose act is uncreated and everlasting, and whose object is identical with its act’ (1930 p. 266 / 1954 p. 157). Take note of what follows here. If the cause of the world is its agent, then the world is some other thing, distinct from the agent; and if the world, as the object of its act, is identical to this act, then the act itself must be other than the agent. It also follows that the world is eternally passing from potency to actuality, and from non-existence to existence, an implication we shall examine later. The world’s cause is also a formal cause, according to Ibn Rushd, with the proviso that it is a form separate from matter. The formal and material causes explain, in the Aristotelian system, the possibility of change. Every individual thing subject to change – that is, every corporeal substance (the marble, statue, and sculptor) – is in this system a unity of form and matter. When a slab of marble is carved into a statue, for example, the matter of the marble receives the form of the statue, at the hands of the agent (the sculptor), thereby actualizing the potential in the marble, of becoming that statue. Matter does not actually exist without form, for in itself it is pure potentiality. That is, marble is not absolute matter. It is itself a substance (with the form of marble) that is in this case the matter of the statue (that having the potential to be the statue), inasmuch as it is the passive recipient of the form of the statue,

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where that reception through the act of the agent (the sculptor) culminates in the actuality of the statue. Matter is thus also the principle of individuality, since another exact copy of the statue would be distinct from the first by being in a different piece of marble. Form, then, is the principle of actuality and universality: that through which both these individually distinct blocks of marble can actually be copies of the same statue. There is an important difference to note between the form of the marble and that of the statue in this example, roughly indicated by the fact that the latter is artificial while the former occurs by nature. Marble is not by its nature shaped in the bust of Socrates. When it receives that form at the hands of the sculptor, it does not cease to be in essence marble, as it would if through some chemical process the object loses the very form of marble. Hence, the distinction between the accidental and the substantial form, where the latter constitutes the very essence of the substance in question. While they are both causes of the statue, the latter is an essential cause, while the former is merely an accidental cause, of the contingent fact that this marble is in this particular shape. Note that unlike the efficient cause, the formal and material causes are not distinct from, but constitutive of their effects. Having proved the existence of a First mover which is the cause of all motion (i.e. change), yet itself unmoved, Aristotle concluded that it must be pure act (not subject to change) and thus immaterial. Thus, as Ibn Rushd asserts here, this cause of the world cannot be its material cause, nor its formal cause in the sense just described. That is, God is neither the matter of which the world is formed, nor the form that any such matter takes on in becoming the world. He is wholly separate from matter. Using the term ‘cause’ in this proof, without these specifications, Ibn Rushd worries, leaves the way open to fatally misinterpret the falāsifah’s understanding of God. God is the formal cause of the world, not in that sense of His being the form of the world, but rather in being the source of the forms of things in the world. The last of the four causes is the final cause. Ibn Rushd affirms that God is a ‘cause which acts for an end’ (1930 p. 266 /1954 p. 158). This, however, also requires a caveat that he does

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not provide here but will be a vital point later in the discussion. For the end that a final cause normally represents, is the actualization of a potential understood as proper to the natural function of the substance in question. Thus, an apple seed has as its final cause to become an apple tree. The human being, famously for Aristotle, has as a final cause the activity of philosophical contemplation. God, again, as pure act has no potential to fulfill. While the sculptor as an agent acts for an end in the production of the statue, thus realizing his potential as an artist, we obviously cannot understand God as a cause acting for an end in this sense. Rather, as the first principle of actuality itself, He is in that sense the end toward which all natural change occurs, as the process by which each changing thing seeks to actualize its own potential, thus fully becoming what it is, insofar as that is possible for it. We will later have the occasion to examine how Ibn Rushd deploys this for what he considers a philosophically acceptable interpretation of the notion of God’s acting for an end. Ibn Rushd also faults this proof of God for failing to distinguish, among efficient causes, the essential from the accidental. The difference here, as he puts it, is that while the essential cause is a condition for the existence of its effect, the accidental cause is not (1930 pp. 268–269 / 1954 pp. 158–9). Thus, the effect may continue to exist in the absence of its accidental cause, but not so in the absence of its essential cause. For example, Ibn Rushd compares the father of a son to the sun. The son can continue to exist after the father passes away, but cannot exist without the sun. One explanation of this we will find, is that while the essential cause imparts to the substance its essential form, the accidental cause merely prepares the matter of the substance to receive its form prior to its existence. The important implication for this context is that while an infinite regress of essential causes is impossible according to Ibn Rushd, an infinite regress of accidental causes is not. The falāsifah’s proof, as relayed above by Ghazālī, rests on the premise that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, without distinguishing which sort. Thus, Ibn Rushd is well aware of its vulnerability to the objection that Ghazālī will raise, that since

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the falāsifah hold that the world is pre-eternal, they cannot consistently deny the possibility of such a regress. Since the accidental cause is not a condition of the existence of its effect, the relation between them can be circular. To take Ibn Rushd’s example, rain comes from clouds, which come from vapor, which comes from water, which comes from rain, etc. If the existence of one were the condition for the other, then neither would be possible. By contrast, none of these cycles (cloud-rain, father-son, etc.) can exist without the sun, which is therefore an essential cause, ‘and it is clear that the sun leads upwards to its mover and its mover to the First Principle’ (1930 p. 268 / 1954 p. 159). Thus the proof of God’s existence rests not on denying an infinite regress of accidental causes, but instead on the impossibility of an infinite regress of, and hence the necessity of a first, essential cause. This distinction between essential and accidental causes is very similar to another which Ibn Rushd elaborates earlier in terms of ‘agents,’ and which explains what he means by saying there, that for the first cause the object is identical with its act. One type of agent is that ‘to which the object which proceeds from it is only attached during the process of its becoming,’ after which the object no longer needs that agent for its continued existence, for example the builder of a house. Another type is ‘the agent from which nothing proceeds but an act which has no other existence but its dependence on it’ (1930 p. 264 / 1954 p. 156). In his Metaphysics (IX-8), Aristotle distinguishes between the actuality in the product (e.g. the built house) and the actuality in the act itself (Aristotle’s example is sight, as the actuality of seeing). This resonates with Ibn Rushd’s description. ‘The distinctive mark of this act is that it is convertible with its object, i.e. when the act does not exist the object does not exist, and when the act exists the object exists – they are inseparable,’ he writes. ‘This kind of agent is superior to the former and is more truly an agent, for this agent brings its object to being and conserves it, whereas the other agent only brings its objects to being, but requires another agent for its further conservation’ (1930 p. 264 / 1954 p. 156).

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The world, according to Ibn Rushd, is the object of this sort of act, for its existence is ‘only perfected through motion,’ and ‘is thus of the things whose existence consists only in their movement.’ It is therefore, the very actuality of the act (not of a product of the act) of a mover, such that ‘if the agent refrained for only one moment from its action, the world would be annihilated’ (1930 p. 264 / 1954 p. 156). This makes the utter dependence of the world on God more complete and permanent than were it understood as a product eventually existing independently from God as a house does from its builder. Note that it also has the effect of rendering any distinction between God and the world utterly dependent on that between God and His act, for it erases the difference between His act and the world. With this, we are at least in a position to understand Ibn Rushd’s own description of the three groups (creationists, materialists, and falāsifah), to which Ghazālī referred in opening this discussion. The man who regards it as necessary that the act which proceeds from the agent of the world should have begun in time says: The world is temporal through an eternal agent. But the man for whom the act of the Eternal is eternal says: the world has come into being from an eternal agent having an eternal act, i.e. an act without beginning or end; which does not, however, mean that the world is eternal by itself, as people who call the world eternal imagine it to be’ (1930 pp. 264–5 / 1954 pp. 156–7).

These last people are the aforementioned materialists. By contrast, the falāsifah, for whom the act of the Eternal is eternal, as he implies, hold the world eternal, not by itself but through the eternal act of the eternal Agent, an understanding made possible by identifying it as the actuality of the act itself; that is, as essentially motion and change rather than as an intrinsically static product. Yet then he baldly says ‘the world has come into being’ while the act is eternal, resulting in an apparent contradiction starker than Ghazālī’s own construal of the matter.

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SECTION 2.2. FIRST PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY: POSSIBILITIES AND ETERNITIES

Ghazālī’s objection to the falāsifah’s proof for God is, as Ibn Rushd anticipates, that by asserting the pre-eternity of the world, they have conceded an infinite regress, and therefore cannot consistently deny its possibility in order to prove a first cause. The falāsifah in fact argue that an infinite regress would ensue if the world were not pre-eternal. We thus turn briefly now to the first of their four proofs of cosmic pre-eternity, which aims to demonstrate that ‘it is absolutely impossible for a temporal to proceed from an eternal’ (2000 p. 13). For if we suppose the Eternal without, for example, the world proceeding from Him, then it would not have proceeded because existence would not have had that which gives [it] preponderance (murajjiḥ); rather, the world’s existence would have been a pure possibility. If thereafter it were to come into existence, then a giver of preponderance would have come into existence anew or would not have come into existence anew. If no giver of preponderance had come into existence anew, the world would have then remained in the state of pure possibility as it had been before. If [on the other hand] a giver of preponderance did come into existence anew, then [the question arises]: ‘Who originated this giver of preponderance and why did it originate now and not earlier?’ The question regarding this giver of preponderance persists (2000 p. 13).

Ibn Sīnā gives this argument in both the Physics (3:11) and the Metaphysics (9:1) of al-Shifā. There, he also used the term murajjiḥ. In the terminology of earlier kalām debates over the same problem, the murajjjḥ is that factor (whatever it is) the existence of which is called for in explanation of the fact that one rather than another possibility is actual (e.g. existence rather than nonexistence) (Craig 1980, 54). Once that is established, the question arises as to its nature. Ibn Sīnā answers this through his theory of efficient causality, which informs the key premise of this proof. That is that ‘if no giver of preponderance had come into existence anew, the world would have remained in the state of pure possibility as it had been before.’ The underlying principle is that

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the coming to be of anything requires a cause which itself comes to be. As Ibn Sīnā put it, ‘motion does not come into being after non-existence except because of a temporal occurrence’ (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 301). Thus the core of this argument is: 1) Every temporal thing comes to be through a cause that comes to be. 2) The eternal does not come be. Therefore, no temporal thing can come to be through an eternal.

Applying this, the falāsifah ask why the world was not created earlier, and entertain a number of possibilities, each essentially involving the absence of one or another sort of required murajjiḥ, and all of which are either incompatible with the nature of the Eternal (that is, God), or lead to an infinite regress. It cannot be that God lacked the ability, purpose, or means to create the world and then later gained it. Nor can it be that He simply did not will to create it earlier, and then did. All of this would entail the coming to be of either a condition or a will that did not exist before, which involves God in change and imperfection. Furthermore, since anything that comes to be requires a cause that comes to be, any such change would require the coming to be of yet another condition or will to explain the coming to be of the first, leading to an infinite regress. Consequently, either the world eternally exists or not at all. For Ibn Rushd this proof also suffers from equivocal terminology. Aside from the agent again, the key problematic concepts here are possibility and eternity. The ‘possible’, he says, ‘is used in an equivocal way of the possible that happens more often than not, the possible that happens less often than not, and the possible with equal chances of happening, and these three types of possible do not seem to have the same need of a new determining principle’ (1930 p. 5 / 1954 p. 1). This is a puzzling statement, for none of these three senses of the term ‘possible’ match the way it used in this argument, where it says that had it no cause for existence, the world as a whole would have remained a ‘pure possibility’. Obviously this has nothing to do with whether the world exists more often or less often than not (whatever that could mean).

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That is apparently the point. For by limiting the senses of ‘possible’ to these three, he is imposing his own theory of modality, based on his interpretation of Aristotle (1983 pp. 146– 7). Recent scholarship refers to this as the ‘statistical’ or ‘temporal-frequency’ model (Kukkonen 2000a). Simply put, a thing’s being possible just means that it is sometimes the case and sometimes not. Otherwise it is necessary (always the case), or impossible (never the case). There is no space here either for that which may be but never is, or for that which always is but might not have been. In saying that the world in the absence of a cause would have remained a ‘pure possibility’, however, Ibn Sīnā is deploying the notion of a possibility that never becomes actual. For Ibn Rushd, there is no such thing. It is merely a philosophical confusion on the part of Ibn Sīnā, brought on as he says, by introducing ‘common notions’ into the discussion. To explain this difference in more detail, we turn again to the Fourth Discussion, where Ibn Rushd elaborates on it in response to Ibn Sīnā’s innovative proof of God’s existence. The mark of this proof emerges in the voice of Ghazālī’s falāsifah in response to his objection that they have already conceded an infinite regress by asserting cosmic pre-eternity. In his objection, Ghazālī alludes to the same distinction between essential and accidental causes that Ibn Rushd faulted him for ignoring. With reference to the cause the most that can be said about it is that it is by nature prior to the effect, just as it is said that it is above the effect in essence, not in place. If, then, [the infinite] is not impossible in the real temporal “before” it ought not to be impossible in the essential, natural “before.” And why is it that they do not allow bodies on top of each other infinitely in space, but admit events temporally preceding each other ad infinitum? (2000 p. 81).

First, note that Ghazālī refers here to Ibn Rushd’s ‘essential cause’ (that is ‘by nature prior to the effect’) simply as ‘the cause.’ Ibn Rushd’s ‘accidental causes’ are by implication subsumed under what Ghazālī describes here as the temporal ‘before.’ We may thus infer that he does not recognize the distinction, and that for him anything deserving the name ‘cause’ is an essential cause. This will be important later in the game. What directly concerns

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us at this point is his question why an infinite series of causes is impossible, if an infinite temporal series is not. This reflects a recurring theme of the dispute. Both Ghazālī and the falāsifah agree that an actually infinite magnitude is impossible, but the falāsifah only consider a simultaneously existing infinite spatial magnitude as actually infinite, not an infinite temporal series. Thus, the falāsifah hold that the cosmos must necessarily be spatially finite (as Ghazālī put it here, they do not allow bodies on top of each other infinitely in space); but also that it is temporally infinite, in the sense that it has existed and will continue to exist for eternity. Ghazālī disagrees and argues vigorously that an infinite temporal series constitutes an actual infinity as well, and is therefore impossible. We will have occasion to examine this controversy in more detail below. The third matter is what concerns us here; that is the prospect of an infinite series of causes (or ‘essential’ causes if you like). For this is neither a spatial nor a strictly temporal series. It is ‘above’ the effect, Ghazālī says, in essence and not in place, the spatial allusion being metaphorical. Likewise, the essential cause is ‘before’ the effect ontologically rather than temporally. Indeed, according to Ibn Sīnā, since the existence of one is the condition of the other they must exist simultaneously. The causal series is a third sort of order, distinct from either spatial positon or temporal series. Ghazālī’s point here is that, if proof only shows, as the falāsifah claim, the impossibility of an infinite spatial magnitude and not that of a temporal series, then how do we know this also applies to an infinite causal series? On the other hand, if an infinite series of this sort were impossible for reasons unique to this sort of series, the debate over either the possibility of an infinite temporal series or an infinite spatial magnitude would be irrelevant to proving the existence of God. This is one of the functions of Ibn Sīnā’s own proof, which Ghazālī’s falāsifah advance as follows. The conclusive demonstration for the impossibility of infinite causes is to say: “Each one of the causes is in itself possible or in itself necessary. If [it is] necessary, then it would not need

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Ibn Rushd recognizes this as a proof that Ibn Sīnā brought into the discourse of falsafah, from that of kalām. According to him, it mistakenly assumes two things as self-evident. One is a ‘dichotomy of existence into possible and necessary,’ which according to him, Ibn Sīnā understood respectively as ‘what has a cause and what has no cause.’ Another is that the cosmos as a whole is ‘possible’; that is, it has a cause. The text in which Ibn Rushd reads the first assumption appears early in the Metaphysics of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifā (1:6). The things that enter existence bear a [possible] twofold division in the mind. Among them there will be that which, when considered in itself, its existence would be not necessary…There will also be among them that which, when considered in itself, its existence would be necessary’ (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 29–30).

Later, we will scrutinize more closely what Ibn Sīnā means by and draws from this. Our aim now is to see how, for Ibn Rushd, this introduces problematic ambiguity into the discussion. For this, we must tentatively accept Ibn Rushd’s assumption that Ibn Sīnā means, by ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’ respectively, to have and not have a cause. Further, what has a cause can be divided into what is possible and what is necessary. If we understand by ‘possible’ the truly possible we arrive at the necessary-possible and not at the necessary which has no cause; and if we understand by ‘possible’ that which has a cause and is also necessary, there only follows from this that what has a cause has a cause and we may assume that this cause has a cause and so ad infinitum (1930 pp. 276–7 / 1954 p. 164).

By the ‘truly possible’ here, Ibn Rushd means the possible in the statistical sense, as that which sometimes is and sometimes is not; or in other words, the temporal. By the ‘necessary-possible,’ which otherwise appears contradictory, he means that which is necessary in the statistical sense (that which always is, or eternal

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in one sense of that term), but possible in the sense that it has a cause. Thus, he is saying that if we begin with the premise that something exists which is ‘truly possible,’ combined with the premise that everything temporal must have a cause, the resulting proof only demonstrates the existence of something that always exists, but not that something exists without a cause. On the other hand, if we start with the premise that something ‘possible’ exists in the sense of ‘something that has a cause,’ so as to include eternal things that have a cause, then the next premise, that everything possible has a cause, simply amounts to saying that everything with a cause has a cause. This alone cannot rule out an infinite regress of such causes. His point, then, is that Ibn Sīnā’s use of the modal terms (‘possible’ and ‘necessary’) in an equivocal sense renders his proof undemonstrative. We will postpone a fuller examination of this argument, for our present purpose is only to introduce some of the different notions of ‘possibility’ at work here, and their impact on the discussion by way of this example. Turning back to the proof of cosmic pre-eternity, we are now in a position to notice the relation between differences regarding the possible, and those regarding the second term Ibn Rushd complains about in relation to that proof. As for ‘eternal’, he says, some use the term to refer to both the ‘eternal by itself’ and the ‘eternal through another’. These are, in the terms he used above, the ‘necessary-possible’ and the necessary without a cause. For Ibn Rushd, that is the world and God, respectively. His complaint is rather pedantic however, in relation to the proof for cosmic preeternity, for it is clear which one ‘the Eternal’ refers to there. Nevertheless, he goes on to catalogue a range of different views on the matter. The Karramiyya (an early group of Muslim ascetics with ‘anthropomorphic’ views), he says, allow change in the Eternal; but this is pointless to mention since no party in this debate (least of all Ibn Rushd himself) agrees with that. The ancients, he says, allow generation and corruption in prime matter, as well as new ideas in the possible intellect, both of which are eternal. While the question whether prime matter is eternal will be relevant later, it is not here, for the ‘Eternal’ in this proof clearly does not

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refer to prime matter. Aside from that, he says, the ancients disagree over what sorts of changes are possible in these eternals. All of this only helps Ghazālī’s case, inasmuch as his aim is to show that the falāsifah are not capable of certainty in metaphysics. There is, however, another point of equivocation over the ‘eternal’, that does affect this discussion, but which Ibn Rushd fails to mention here. It may be understood either as the everlasting or ‘sempiternal’ (i.e. that which exists all the time), or as the timeless (that which exists without time) (Kukkonen 2012). The ʾAshʿarī school understood God’s eternity in the latter sense, insisting that He stands in no temporal relation whatsoever (Frank 2008). Ibn Sīnā himself accepts this distinction and likewise understands God as timelessly eternal. In the Physics of al-Shifā, he considers an argument that time does not exist, on the ground that if it did, it would have to exist at some time. Time does not exist at any time, he says, because it simply is time itself (Ibn Sīnā 2009 pp. 249–250). Later, he explains that nothing is prior to time and motion but God (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 359). This priority is obviously not temporal (there is no time before time), but by essence. God exists independently of time. As with time itself, there is no ‘when’ for God. This will be crucial, for it follows from Ghazālī’s first substantive assertion in the course of this debate; that is that time itself begins with the creation of the world. As for the term ‘agent,’ Ibn Rushd writes: Then there is the agent who acts of his will and the agent which acts by nature, and the manner of actualization of the possible act is not the same for both agents, i.e. so far as the need for a new determinant is concerned. Further, is this division into two agents complete, or does demonstration lead to an agent which resembles neither the natural agent nor the voluntary agent of human experience? (1930 p. 6 / 1954 p. 2).

As we will see, he seems to suggest that the answer to this question is yes, and that God is an agent different from either the natural or the voluntary. Ghazālī will say that God is an eternal voluntary agent, indeed the only true agent, and thus unlike either the natural or the temporal voluntary ‘agents’ like

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ourselves. We will thus have occasion, later, to examine whether they substantially disagree on this question, and if so how? ‘All these are multifarious and difficult questions which need, each of them, a special examination, both in themselves and in regard to the opinions the ancients held about them,’ Ibn Rushd concludes. ‘To treat what is in reality a plurality of questions as one problem is one of the well-known seven sophisms, and a mistake in one of these principles becomes a great error by the end of the examination of reality’ (1930 p. 7 / 1954 p. 3). This is a methodological objection regarding the relation between dialectic and demonstration (the latter being the primary aspiration of philosophy). Ibn Rushd seems to mean that the basic concepts (e.g. possibility, eternity, and agent) informing larger issues (e.g. the pre-eternity of the world) must first be independently clarified before considering the larger questions that involve them. Against this one might argue that there is simply no way to clarify our concepts other than by critically analyzing how we actually use the terms. That entails seeing how they function in larger networks of meaning. In the course of the first discussion, as we will see, points of conflict between Ghazālī and his falāsifah become occasions for isolating and analyzing basic notions of agency, time, and possibility, leading to a gradual refinement of the discussion. That Ghazālī himself should arrive here at demonstrative truths on the questions involved is not a necessary condition for it to precede philosophy productively in the way Fārābī, as mentioned above, says it can. For it is enough if he succeeds in showing that the proofs deployed by the falāsifah are not demonstrative. Dispelling the false impression of a demonstration is a necessary part of the process of arriving at one. Ibn Rushd’s objection only stands on the assumption that the key concepts involved are already clear; that is that the task of philosophy is already complete and is not an ongoing process.

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PREETERNITY

As previously mentioned, Ghazālī will assert that time itself begins with the creation of the world. However, he does not explain this until he launches his refutation of the second proof for cosmic pre-eternity. In the process of objecting to the first proof, he proceeds as if time does precede the world’s beginning. To understand why, we must first understand the reasons and implications of his assertion that it did not. For that reason, in this chapter we will explain the second proof, the position Ghazālī takes against it, and Ibn Rushd’s response, examining the cosmological implications thereof before returning to examine the debate over the first proof. In Section 3.1, I will explain the second proof, drawing attention to the role that concepts of God’s eternity and the nature of causality play therein. Second, I will clarify the nature of Ghazālī’s position in relation to the second proof, explaining why he cannot adopt what I refer to as the ‘naïve’ theological position, according to which God temporally preceded the world. Ghazālī concurs with the falāsifah that time is the measure of motion; but asserts that time was created with the world, both having a beginning before which there was no time. God, on the other hand, is not temporally prior to the world, but neither is he simultaneous, as the second proof supposes. As timelessly eternal, God bears no temporal relation to the world at all. In Section 3.2 I will explain Ghazālī’s argument that the supposition of a time during which God exists ‘before’ the world

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is not a rational inference, but a result of deploying the estimative imagination (wahm) beyond its proper, spatiotemporal domain. In Section 3.3, I describe what I refer to as a ‘naïve’ philosophical position, which is entailed by the second proof. Ibn Rushd agrees, as we will see, with Ghazālī’s critique of the proof; arguing alternatively, that the real issue is not the priority of God’s existence to a cosmic beginning, but the priority of the nonexistence of the cosmos to its existence. This, he says, must be temporal. Ghazālī, I argue, would have to respond by arguing that the non-existence of a temporal cosmos is, like God’s existence, only ontologically and not temporally prior to its own existence. This seems to undermine his charge that the falāsifah are inconsistent in claiming that the world is both pre-eternal and has a Maker.

SECTION 3.1. TIME AND ETERNITY IN THE SECOND PROOF

The second proof is one that Ibn Sīnā deployed in the Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 305). It begins with a dilemma: either God’s priority to the world is essential and not temporal, or temporal and not essential. This separates the argument into two sections, which together form a disjunctive syllogism. The first section concerns the consequence of God’s essential priority to the world. Essential priority is the priority of the essential cause to its effect, which are simultaneous. This supposition accounts for the exclusivity of the disjunction between the two sorts of priorities. ‘If this, then, is what is meant by the Creator’s priority to the world, it follows necessarily that both are either temporally finite or eternal, it being impossible for one to be eternal and the other temporally finite’ (2000 p. 31). Since both parties agree that God is eternal, it follows that the world must also be. The argument breaks down as follows: 1) God’s priority to the world is either, essential and not temporal, or temporal and not essential. 2) The essential cause is simultaneous with its effect. 3) Therefore, if God’s priority to the world is essential, then either, both God and the world are eternal, or neither is eternal. (2) 4) God is eternal.

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 61 5) Therefore, if God’s priority to the world is essential, then the world is eternal. (3 and 4)

The second section of the argument is an inference from the other horn of the disjunction; that God’s priority to the world is temporal and not essential. If, on the other hand, it is meant that the Creator is prior to the world and time – not essentially, but in time – then, before the existence of the world and time, a time would have existed in which the world did not exist, since nonexistence precedes existence; and God would have preceded the world by a very lengthy duration, limited in the direction of its ending, but having no limit in the direction of its beginning. Thus, before the existence of time, infinite time would have existed, and this is contradictory; for this reason, the affirmation of the finitude of time is impossible. If, then, time, which is the expression of the measure of motion, is necessarily preeternal, motion is necessarily pre-eternal, and that which is in motion and through whose duration time endures is necessarily pre-eternal (2000 p. 31).

The last section of this passage incorporates an argument from Aristotle, based on the premise that time is the measure of motion. ‘And how can there be time if there is no motion?’ he writes, ‘If, then, time is in fact the number of motion or itself some sort of motion, it follows that if there is always time, motion must also be everlasting’ (Aristotle, Physics vii-i). Thereafter, he proceeds to argue that time has no beginning because it logically entails the ‘now.’ Since the now is just the midpoint between present and future, its very existence anywhere (at any time) entails a time (a potential ‘now’) before that. Thomas Aquinas objected to both halves of this argument (Summa Contra Gentiles, ii-36). As for the first half: if time is ontologically dependent on motion, then the eternity of the former depends on the eternity of the latter, and so to infer the eternity of motion from the eternity of time would be circular. Hourani (1958) noted this circularity, but interpreted the second proof, as though it were merely a reproduction of the Aristotelian argument. Marmura (1959) pointed out, however, that this argument differs from Aristotle’s in two important ways.

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The first is that the eternity of time, as Marmura puts it, ‘is not deduced from the argument that time must always have a ‘before’ and an ‘after,’ but ‘is deduced from the premise that God is eternal and the supposition of His temporal priority to the world’ (Marmura, 1959 p. 309). This is clearly correct, as in the passage above we are told that, were God temporally prior to the world, He ‘would have preceded the world by a very lengthy duration, limited in the direction of its ending, but having no limit in the direction of its beginning.’ Continuing where we left off, our formulation of this section of the argument is as follows:

6) If God were temporally prior to the world, then there would have been an infinite period of time before the world existed. (4) 7) Time is the measure of motion. 8) Therefore, there is no time without motion. (7) 9) Motion requires a substratum (that which is in motion). 10) Therefore, there is no motion without a world. (9) 11) Therefore, there is no time without a world. (8 and 10) 12) Therefore, if God were temporally prior to the world, then there would have been an infinite period of time before there was time, which is absurd. (6 and 11) 13) Therefore, God is not temporally prior to the world. (12) 14) Therefore, God’s priority to the world is essential. (1 and 13) 15) Therefore, the world is eternal. (5 and 14)

The ‘second proof’ is not, then, liable to the same charge of circularity lodged against Aristotle’s, since it does not infer the eternity of the world from the eternity of time. Instead, the eternity of the world is inferred from the eternity of God, along with His essential priority to (and by inference therefrom, His temporal simultaneity with) the world. ‘Thus,’ Marmura concludes, ‘the central metaphysical issue in the proof is the nature of God’s causality rather than the nature of time’ (Marmura, 1959 p. 307). In his insightful, comprehensive examination of Ghazālī’s argument from creation, Lenn Goodman (1971) discussed the second proof, but focused mainly on Ghazālī’s response to it, inasmuch as it concerns the nature of time, without any close

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 63 examination of the second proof itself. The same holds for Oliver Leamann’s (2002) more recent study. Raja Bahlul (1992) noted the difference between the ‘second proof’ and the Aristotelian argument, inasmuch as the former does not seek to prove the eternity of time from the nature of the ‘now’. However, he overlooked the role that God’s causality plays, and thus treated the ‘second proof’ as focused mainly on the nature of time. In effect, then, the ‘second proof’ has often been reduced to just one of its two halves. In what follows, we will see that the resulting neglect of the role that the issue of God’s causality plays in the second proof, has led to some neglect, in the analysis of Ghazālī’s position, of the important role of another issue, connecting both the issue of the nature of God’s causality and of time; that is, the nature of God’s eternity and His relation to time. Finally, we will argue that, though the proof is not liable to the charge of circularity, it is liable to a charge of internal incoherence. Specifically, the premise 2), that the essential cause is simultaneous with its effect, entails the falsehood of the premise 7), that time is the measure of motion. It will be useful here to consider a possible position we will call the ‘naïve theological position,’ which Ghazālī does not take, but that he advances for the sake of argument in the course of discussing the first proof. There are two reasons for this. First, a correct understanding of Ghazālī’s position, and his aims in discussing the first proof, requires a careful differentiation between his own view and the naïve theological position. Secondly, an understanding of the problematic ramifications of the naïve theological position will help to understand what motivates, at least partially, the position that Ghazālī does take. Understood as a response to the ‘second proof’, the ‘naïve’ theological position would be, to avoid the conclusion that the world is pre-eternal by denying the premise (13) that God is not temporally prior to the world, thus taking the position that God is temporally prior to the world. To make this move, one would have to deny premise (12), in order to avoid the absurd implication, imposed by that premise, of a ‘time before time.’ And to deny premise (12), one would have to deny premise (7), that time is the measure of motion.

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Denying premise (7) would entail adopting a non-Aristotelian position with respect to the nature of time, taking time to be ontologically independent of motion. In this case, God’s temporal priority to the world would entail a time before the world, but not a time before time. Such a line of argument would maintain what the falāsifah would indeed have considered a ‘naïve’ theological picture, against which the ‘second proof’ in fact aims, according to which the moment of the world’s creation is preceded by a period of time during which God refrained from creating it. Against this, in the course of the ‘first proof’, the falāsifah pose the question: why did God create the world at this moment in time, and not before? Ghazālī cannot adopt this ‘naïve’ position, but for a different reason. That is that, if he were only to deny premise (7), that time is the measure of motion, and accept premise (6), that God’s temporal priority to the world entails an infinite time before the world existed, then he would undermine his own positive philosophical argument against the pre-eternity of the world. If the world is pre-eternal, then an infinite time will have elapsed, and since it is impossible for an infinite time to elapse, the world cannot be pre-eternal. The ‘naïve’ theological position undermines this argument, since it seems to suppose an infinite elapsed time prior to the world. Ghazālī considers this problem in the course of discussing the first proof. Is the time that passed before the creation of the world finite or infinite? ‘If you say that it is finite, then the existence of God would be of a finite beginning,’ the falāsifah argue. ‘If you say that it is infinite, then a period wherein there are infinite possibilities would have elapsed’ (2000 p. 20). Ghazālī’s response neutralizes the second horn of this dilemma, blocking the inference, from the finitude of time to the finitude of God. ‘According to us, duration and time are both created,’ he writes, ‘We will be clarifying the true answer to this when we dissociate ourselves from their second proof.’ (2000 p. 20). The inference, that if past time is finite, then the existence of God is finite – presupposes that God is ontologically dependent on time, in the sense that His existence requires the existence of a time during which He exists. If time is created, however, then

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 65 it is ontologically dependent on God, rather than the reverse. That is, the existence of God does not require the existence of a time during which He exists. Therefore, the finitude of time does not entail the finitude of God. By asserting that time is a finite creation, Ghazālī can maintain the premise, central to his argument, that the lapse of an infinite period of time is impossible, without implying God’s finitude, and so denying His eternity. Ghazālī takes the same stance in al-Iqtisād fī al I‘tiqād (‘Moderation in Belief’), his major work on kalām. God’s preeternity just means that His existence is not preceded by nonexistence. ‘Do not think that being pre-eternal is something additional to the essence of the pre-eternal,’ he argues. ‘Otherwise, you will be required to say that this thing is itself [preeternal] and that its pre-eternity is additional to it, and this would regress ad infinitum’ (Ghazālī, 2013 p. 41). That is, were the eternity of God to entail the existence of an eternal duration of time in which He exists, the eternity of that duration would entail another eternal duration of time in which it exists, ad infinitum. Thus, such an entailment is impossible. God’s eternity – His existence being unpreceded by non-existence – is to be distinguished from the (false) supposition of His existence being, at any given time, preceded by His existence during an infinite prior time. As promised, Ghazālī opens his response to the ‘second proof’ with the assertion that, ‘time is originated and created, and before it there was no time at all’ (2000 p. 31). In relation to this proof, the immediately apparent implication of the assertion that time is created, is only to deny premise 6) of the ‘second proof’, that God’s temporal priority to the world entails an infinite period of time before the world’s creation. It might seem, then, that so long as one also denies premise 7), that time is the measure of motion, one would be free to entertain a modified version of the ‘naïve’ theological position, in order to maintain that God temporally precedes the world. That would be, by asserting that God created time, as something ontologically independent of motion, and then created the world at some later point. God would then be temporally prior

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to the world in virtue of His existing during that (finite) time that He created before creating the world. Such a hypothesis might even include two ‘kinds’ of time: acknowledging one which is the measure of motion, and so depends on the existence of the world, and another kind of time (perhaps something akin to a Newtonian theory of ‘absolute’ time, which is not dependent on motion), that is created by God and precedes the world and its motion. Yet there are good reasons for Ghazālī not to adopt such a position. First, it would be inelegant and, in this context, ad hoc. Secondly, it would raise the troubling question, posed by the philosophers in the course of the ‘first proof’: why did God wait to create the world? Third, it would seem to serve no purpose other than to maintain God’s temporal priority to the world. Then what is the importance of asserting the existence of a time prior to the world, during which God exists, other than to raise the aforementioned troubling question? Denying the premise that time is the measure of motion would thus hold no advantage for Ghazālī. On the other hand, as Leaman (2002) notes, accepting it would appear to. Doing so, he can push Aristotle’s argument in reverse: instead of inferring the eternity of the world from the eternity of time, he can infer the finitude of time from the finitude of the world. In response to the ‘second proof’, therefore, it is preferable for Ghazālī to accept its premise (13), that God is not temporally prior to the world, along with the premise (7), that time is the measure of motion. God’s priority to the world, then, is not temporal, but essential. So in order to avoid the conclusion that the world is eternal, Ghazālī must deny the premise (5) that, if God’s priority to the world is essential, then the world is eternal. This means that he must also deny premise (2), that the essential cause as such is simultaneous to its effect. God, being timeless, is the essential cause of the world, but is neither temporally prior to, nor simultaneous to it. By asserting that time is created, this is the actual position that Ghazālī assumes. The proposition that time itself is created with a beginning before which there was no time carries just these implications, which are the bases of his position. In relation to premise (1) of the ‘second proof’, it entails that, indeed, God’s priority to the

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 67 world is essential and not temporal. Yet this does not grant the proof a victory, because it negates its premise (2), that the essential cause is simultaneous with its effect. Where time itself is the effect, as we noted above, the cause will be ontologically independent of time, and so of any relation dependent on that, including simultaneity. Therefore, God’s essential priority to the world entails neither temporal priority, nor simultaneity; and the central implicit premise of the ‘second proof’, that God is either temporally prior to the world or simultaneous with it, is a false dilemma. While God stands in an ontological relation to the world and time, being that upon which both depend for their existence, this is not a temporal relation, and the denial of any temporal relation precludes, rather than entails, simultaneity. Thus Ghazālī’s position is that time is created with the world. This becomes clear where, after asserting that time is a finite creation, Ghazālī begins to draw out its logical implications. ‘We mean by our statement that God is prior to the world and time,’ he writes, ‘that He was and there was no world and that then He was and with Him was the world’ (2000 p. 31). To say that the statements, that ‘God is prior to the world and time,’ and that ‘He was and there was no world,’ have the same meaning – with no mention of time in the second statement – is to say that priority to the world entails priority to time. This is only reasonably justified on the presumption that time is ontologically dependent on the world, as it is on the theory that it is the measure of motion. On the other hand, to say that Ghazālī treats time as the measure of motion, in this context, does not mean that he accepts the Aristotelian theory of time wholesale. As Goodman (1971) writes, ‘while accepting Aristotle’s conception of time, Ghazālī rejects his analysis of motion as demanding its own eternity.’ Additionally, Ghazālī is committed to reject the argument that a first moment of time is impossible, an issue that is of central importance, as we will see, later in his discussion of the ‘second proof.’

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SECTION 3.2. TIME, ETERNITY, AND THE WAHM

After confirming that priority to the world and priority to time are equivalent, Ghazālī proceeds to argue that God’s existence does not entail the additional existence of a time during which He exists. The meaning of our statement, ‘He was and there was no world,’ is only [the affirmation of] the existence of the Creator’s essence, and the non-existence of the world’s essence. And the meaning of our statement, ‘He was and with Him was the world,’ is only [the affirmation of] the existence of two essences. Thus, by priority we only mean the appropriation of existence to Himself alone…From this, the supposition of a third thing is not necessary, even though the estimative faculty does not refrain from supposing a third thing. But one must not heed the errors of estimative thoughts (2000 p. 31).

The ‘third thing,’ the supposition of which is not necessary, is time. By the ‘estimative faculty,’ Ghazālī is referring, here, to the faculty psychology that the Muslim philosophers, culminating with Ibn Sīnā, had modified from Aristotle. The wahm is one of the internal apprehensive faculties of the animal soul. A complete picture of the function of wahm in Ibn Sīnā’s psychology requires piecing together material from a number of his writings on various topics, but recent work by Deborah Black (1993) and Frank Griffel (2012) has provided a rich and comprehensive account. In the context of this psychology, wahm is distinct from imagination, in that the latter simply retains the representations of concrete particulars apprehended by the external senses. On the other hand, it is also distinct from the human rational soul, which apprehends pure intelligible universals, independent of material embodiment. Inasmuch as it represents in bodily form, it is very similar to what we understand by the term ‘imagination’. But on this theory, wahm is distinguished from the other sort of ‘imagination’ by the type of object that it represents – what contemporary philosophers would probably refer to as ‘abstract particulars.’ Ibn Sīnā used the term ‘meanings.’ Later, where Ghazālī summarizes this psychological theory, he defines them as,

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 69 ‘that whose existence does not require a body, but which happens to be in a body’ (2000 p. 179). The paradigmatic example is the danger or hostility that, according to the theory, is not itself bodily, but is ‘in’ the body of a wolf, and perceivable as such by (for example) a lamb, via the lamb’s faculty of wahm. It’s being a bodily faculty of the animal soul, on the theory, is intended to explain how animals, as well as humans, can perceive these abstract elements embodied in the particular objects of their environment, without the former having the rational capacity, exclusive to humans, to apprehend universals. Aside from its perceptual function, at least in human beings, the wahm also operates representationally, to bring objects of the imagination under the voluntary control of the intellect, allowing us to form objects in the imagination at will. Thus, we may form in our ‘mind’s eye’, so to speak, a mythical creature, a distant place, a historic event, or an anticipated future event. We might also attempt to form an image of the cosmos as a whole, and the hypothetical event of its coming to be or its annihilation. In any case, the wahm can ultimately only form these images based on our experience of sensible objects, which is its proper domain. All this is closely related to its role in forming, or suggesting on that basis, compelling and often deceptive universal propositions. Human beings, endowed with intellect, are capable of forming universal propositions. In our case, the wahm leads us to affirm certain universal propositions on the basis of our experience of sensible objects, which are not arrived at by inference, but taken as immediately given, prima facie undeniable ‘first principles’, much like the ‘primary intelligibles’ of the rational intellect. When these propositions are limited in their scope to sensible objects, they are valid. Thus, for example, we are led by the wahm to affirm that the whole is greater than any of its parts. This is a proposition that is both impossible for us to deny sincerely, and that, judged by the rational intellect, is found to be necessarily true. Yet the wahm is deceptive in this capacity because it leads us to affirm universal propositions that extend, in scope, beyond the sensible objects that are its proper domain, to that of the purely intelligible, a domain exclusively proper to the rational intellect.

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One example Ibn Sīnā gives is that, based on the fact, apparent through the wahm, that every sensible object is spatially determined we conclude that being itself is spatially determined. Another is that based on the fact that beyond the spatial extension of any sensible object there is space (either filled or void), we conclude that there must be space beyond any hypothesized limit of the cosmos itself. According to Ibn Sīnā, the scope of both of these propositions extends beyond the domain of sensible objects proper to the wahm, and to the domain of the intelligible. When judged by the rational intellect, freed from the deceptive influence of the wahm, these propositions are known necessarily to be false. A reference of this sort occurs earlier in the course of discussing the first proof, where Ghazālī asserts that the will is a faculty that can distinguish one thing from another, which is similar in every respect. The ‘philosophers’ object that this is inconceivable, to which Ghazālī replies: Rather, this is akin to someone’s statement, ‘An essence existing neither outside nor inside the world, being neither connected nor disconnected with it, is inconceivable because we cannot conceive it on our own terms,’ to which it would be then be said, ‘This is the work of your estimative faculty – rational proof has led rational people to believe this. (2000 p. 23).

That is, God’s existence is not conditioned by space. While the wahm can only represent spatio-temporally (either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’), rational proof shows that God is neither inside nor outside the world, and reason trumps the limitations of the imagination. Returning to the second proof, in the reference to wahm under consideration here, there are two connections to make. Since the wahm only represents in bodily form, it can only represent its object as temporally related. Thus, for example, it can only represent the beginning of the world as an event that occurs after a previous time during which the world did not exist. Yet it does not follow from this limitation that the beginning of the world necessarily entails the existence of a time prior to its beginning. However, Ghazālī is not only connecting the limitations of this faculty to the relation between a hypothesized

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 71 first moment in time and a prior time, but also to the relation between God and time. Simply put, the existence of God, without the world, and without any time during which God exists without the world, is not something that can be conjured in the ‘mind’s eye.’ It does not follow from this, however, that it is rationally impossible. ‘He thus argues that before the creation of the world God existed, but not in time,’ Oliver Leaman explains, ‘and if we wonder what it means to say that before the creation there was no time, if we wonder how we can use temporal terms to refer to a non-temporal period, then Ghazālī suggests that we are being misled by imagination.’ (Leaman, 2002 p. 66). The use of the term ‘non-temporal period’ carries the unfortunately misleading sense of a (contradictory) non-temporal time, which does not reflect Ghazālī’s position. While Leaman notices the implication here, for the relation between God and time, he does not see the relevance of Ghazālī’s reference to wahm. It is not clear, though, why he thinks imagination is involved here. The opponent of his view would presumably argue that there exists a conceptual connection between the notion of change and the notion of time, such that we cannot make sense of talking about the one without implicitly mentioning the other. Ghazālī suggests that time just pops up in people’s minds when they are thinking about change as though it were an idea merely associated with change. (Leaman, 2002 p. 66).

On the contrary, Ghazālī is not denying a conceptual connection between time and change. He is denying a conceptual connection between, on the one hand, time and the priority of God to the world, and on the other, between a first moment of the world and time, and a preceding time. What the opponent would argue is not just that there is a conceptual connection between time and change (to which Ghazālī would agree). It is that, despite what Ghazālī might think, his assertion of a first moment of the world and time, and his denial of any conceptual connection between that and a preceding time, actually does entail the denial of a conceptual connection between time and change. That may well be the case, but to interpret Ghazālī as directly denying any conceptual relation between time and change is another thing

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entirely, and there is nothing in the text to suggest that this is his position. Of course, the question, whether his position does come into conflict with the relation between time and change, along with the nature and role of the wahm in this respect, plays a central role in the argument that ensues over the second proof. A full analysis and evaluation of that argument will call for a deeper examination of both. Again, our focus here is limited to clarifying Ghazālī’s counter-position, in response to that proof. To this end, it is important, not to overlook the distinct, though related, connection Ghazālī makes between the wahm and his assertion that God is ontologically independent of time. That is, as we saw above, arguments that are based on the fallacious presumption of a necessary temporal relation between God and the world, as the ‘second proof’ is, result from a failure, ascribed to the epistemic limitations of the wahm, to fully understand the implications of God’s eternity. That is, as timeless existence, as opposed to existence for an infinite duration of time.

SECTION 3.3. A ‘NAÏVE’ PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION

Ibn Rushd, of course, opposes Ghazālī on the larger question of the world’s eternity, but for him the issue turns on the nature of time and modality, and not God’s causal relation to the world. In response to the second proof, he seconds Ghazālī’s objection. The mode of their reasoning, which he reproduces, does not constitute a proof. It amounts to saying that the Creator, if He is prior to the world, must either be prior not in time, but in causation, like the priority of a man to his shadow, or prior in time, like a builder to a wall. If He is prior in the same way as the man is prior to his shadow, and if the Creator is eternal, then the world too is eternal…But this proof is unsound, for it is not of the nature of the Creator to be in time, whereas it belongs to the nature of the world to be so; and for this very reason it is not true that He is either simultaneous with it or prior to it in time or in causation (1930 pp. 64–5 / 1954 p. 37).

This is a rare point on which Ibn Rushd actually agrees with Ghazālī, blaming the ‘later philosophers of Islam’ and absolving

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 73 the ‘Ancients’ of the mistake of comparing the priority, of the unmoved to the moved, to the prior and posterior among things in motion. ‘So the priority of this one being to the other is the priority of the unchanging timeless existence to the changing existence which is in time, and this is an altogether different type of priority,’ he writes, ‘It is therefore not true of these existences that they are simultaneous, or that the one precedes the other, and Ghazālī’s observation that the priority of the Creator to the world is not a temporal priority is true’ (1930 p. 68 / 1954 p. 39). Though Hourani noted Ibn Rushd’s objection here he, failed to see the point. ‘But it is not obvious how his objection is relevant,’ he writes, ‘For it has been readily possible to state the main outlines of the discussion without referring to God’ (Hourani 1958 p. 190). This is linked to his misunderstanding, noted earlier, of the full import of the second proof, namely, the essential role that reference to God as essentially prior to the world, and the inference to His simultaneity with it, plays in the structure of the whole argument. Without that, the second proof would be simply a reproduction of the Aristotelian argument for the eternity of the world based on the eternity of time, the circularity of which Hourani noted. Perhaps the motivation for this ‘second proof’ came, partially, by concern on the part of Ibn Sīnā over that apparent circularity, and the need to supplement the Aristotelian argument with another. The relevance, for Ibn Rushd, of distancing himself from the second proof is clear; that is, to absolve the ‘ancient’ philosophers of its fallacious implications, and to clarify their position from the threat of misrepresentation that the second proof poses it. Earlier, we distinguished Ghazālī’s position from what we referred to as the ‘naïve theological position’, according to which God created the world at a point in time preceded by a time during which the world did not exist. We can now distinguish Ibn Rushd’s position from what we might refer to as the ‘naïve philosophical position, entailed by the second proof. On this position, God is ontologically dependent of time. He necessarily stands in some temporal relation to the world – either that of priority or simultaneity, with the second proof proceeding to argue that, since it cannot be priority, it must be simultaneity. On

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this question, then, the respective positions of both Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd appear closer to each other than to either of these ‘naïve’ positions. Like the ‘naïve’ theological position, interestingly, this ‘naïve’ philosophical position also violates the Aristotelian understanding of time as the measure of motion. This is because, if God is temporally related to the world, then time must be a measure of something that God and the world have in common. Yet God is uncaused and unchanging. Therefore, if God is temporally related to the world, by either priority or simultaneity, then time is not the measure of motion, but something ontologically independent of motion. The ‘second proof’, then, is actually incoherent. Its premise 2), that the essential cause as such is simultaneous with its effect, along with its implication that 3) if God’s priority to the world is essential, then either both God and the world are eternal, or neither are eternal, both stand in contradiction to the premise 7), that time is the measure of motion. What Ghazālī has done, then, is to accept that time is the measure of motion, and to reject the premise that, if God is eternal then the world must be eternal. God’s eternity is His ontological independence of time, and His transcendence of any temporal relation, which follow on His being unmoved, while time is the measure of motion. Time, then, is created along with the world, both having a beginning prior to which there is no time. Ibn Rushd quickly qualifies his previous agreement with Ghazālī’s observation. ‘But the posteriority of the world to the Creator, since He does not precede the world in time, can only be understood as the posteriority of effect to cause, for posteriority and priority are opposites which are necessarily in one genus, as has been shown in the sciences,’ he writes (1930 p. 68 / 1954 p. 39). The posteriority of the world to God must belong to the same genus as the priority of God to the world, yet the priority of God to the world is not temporal. Therefore, we can only understand the posteriority of the world to God as that of effect to cause. The implicit premise here is that the posteriority of the world to God is either temporal, or that of effect to cause, which

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 75 is no problem, so long as we do not assume that necessarily, every cause is simultaneous with its effect. ‘Since therefore this priority is not in time,’ he continues, ‘the posteriority also cannot be in time, and we have the same difficulty all over again: how can the effect be delayed after the cause when the conditions of acting are fulfilled?’ (1930 p. 68 / 1954 p. 39). The doctrine of the world’s eternity, he explains, avoids this difficult. Yet it seems there just is no difficulty to avoid. There is obviously no question, either of the effect being delayed after the cause, or simultaneous with it, unless the two are understood as temporally related. Ibn Rushd had just stated, and in the same sentence no less, that neither the priority of the one nor the posteriority of the other are in time. As Van Den Bergh noted, this appears as a flagrant contradiction (Van Den Bergh 1954 p. 30). Fortunately, Ibn Rushd has a second, more interesting objection to consider. We have defined a temporal thing as that whose non-existence precedes its existence. Now, if the world is a temporal thing, and there is no time before its creation, then it follows that the priority of a temporal thing’s non-existence is not necessarily a temporal priority, simply in virtue of its temporality. The temporality of the world as a whole must consist in a nontemporal priority of its non-existence to its existence. After reaffirming Ghazālī’s position on the timelessness of God, and the tense-less sense of the word ‘was’ in that context, Ibn Rushd writes: This relation is, however, unquestionably real when we compare the non-existence of the world with its existence, for if the world is in time, the non-existence of the world has to be in time too. And since the non-existence and the existence of the world cannot be in one and the same time, the nonexistence must precede; the non-existence must be prior and the world posterior to it, for priority and posteriority in the moving can only be understood in this relation to time (1930 p. 71 / 1954 p. 41).

Taking the most obvious part of this line of reasoning first, the world cannot exist and fail to exist at the same time: that would be a contradiction. The only way to avoid contradiction is to

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assert the existence and non-existence of the world at different times, its nonexistence preceding its existence. Therefore, if the world came to be – if there is any sense in which it could be true that the world has both existence and non-existence – then it could only be because the world was non-existent at a time before its existence, because it very well cannot be both existent and non-existent at the same time. This may appear to beg the question against Ghazālī’s position that there was no time before the existence of the world, but consider his two statements: ‘God was and there was no world,’ and, ‘God was and there was a world.’ They cannot both be true, because that would be a contradiction; unless we say that at some time God was and the world was not, and at another time God was and the world was, where time introduces the dimension of difference that resolves the contradiction. If there was no time before the existence of the world, as Ghazālī holds, then we must say that its non-existence is only ontologically prior to its existence. That is, we must say both that the world is timelessly non-existent and that it exists for a limited time. If this is an incoherent proposition, then we can understand why, as Ibn Rushd asserts, the non-existence of the world must also be in time. Since the supposed timeless non-existence of the world is not something that could fail to obtain during the time when the world exists, there is reason to suspect a contradiction. On the other hand, we should not understand the timeless nonexistence of the world as simultaneous with its existence. Like God, the non-existence of the world would stand in no temporal relation to the world’s existence at all. Thus it does not mean the world both exists and does not exist at the same time. Yet this raises a potential problem. If there is no contradiction between the timeless non-existence of the world and its temporal existence, then there should be no contradiction between the timeless existence of God and the supposition of His temporal non-existence. If the timeless existence of God is supposed to entail that He exists at all times, there appears to be a contradiction. Likewise, the timeless non-existence of the world should entail that it is non-existent at all times, which contradicts the supposition of its temporal existence.

CHAPTER THREE. SECOND PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY 77 An answer might be that, on the contrary, the proposition that God is timeless means just that He does not exist temporally, and not that there is some period of time (i.e. the period that is time) during which He does not exist. Nor does it mean that he exists at all times. Again, His existence does not stand in any temporal relation (which is not to be confused with the proposition that He stands in no relation to the temporal). Likewise, the timeless non-existence of the world means just that the world does not exist timelessly. This does not mean there is no period of time during which it exists, but only that its existence is temporal. Indeed, it exists for all time. The only issue between Ghazālī and the falāsifah, then, is whether time (that is, the temporal dimension of the world) is finite or infinite, Ghazālī’s position being that the supposition that the world has existed for an infinite duration of time is incompatible with the supposition that its non-existence precedes its existence. Yet the falāsifa can argue that there is no contradiction between the world’s pre-eternity and its temporality, in the sense specified above, that its non-existence precedes its existence. For just as Ghazālī, in denying any time before the beginning of the world, must conceive its prior non-existence as non-temporal, so the falāsifa, in denying any temporal beginning of the world, can also conceive the priority of its non-existence as non-temporal. This is how Ibn Sīnā defends the position that the world, though pre-eternal, is nevertheless contingent and dependent on God for its existence. If the supposition of a timeless non-existence of the world can avoid contradiction with the supposition of its finite temporal existence, in virtue of the fact that the two stand in no temporal relation; then the same should apply to the supposition of its infinite temporal existence. They could argue this way, if it were not the case, as Ibn Rushd asserts, that since the existence of the world is in time, then its non-existence must also be in time. For if the non-existence of the world must be in time, and the world is pre-eternal, then there is simply no time during which the non-existence of the world could precede its existence. In order to maintain that the nonexistence of the world precedes its existence non-temporally, the falāsifah would have to reject Ibn Rushd’s assertion that its non-

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existence must be in time. That would mean abandoning his main line of argument against Ghazālī’s position that the world’s existence had a beginning before which there was no time. Conversely, since Ghazālī has asserted that the non-existence of the world precedes its existence non-temporally, he cannot argue that a pre-eternal yet temporal world is incoherent on the premise that there would be no prior time during which its nonexistence could precede it. The cost of defending the coherence of his position, that there was no time before the world’s existence, would be to forfeit that line of argument. There must, then, be some other reason that the existence of a pre-eternal world cannot be preceded by a timeless non-existence, and which does not apply to a temporally finite world, if the ‘philosophers’ are to be charged (as we saw, Ghazālī charged them in the fourth discussion) with contradiction in asserting that the world is both pre-eternal and has a Maker.

CHAPTER FOUR. IMAGING CREATION: GHAZĀLĪ’S FIRST OBJECTION TO THE FIRST PROOF

We return now to the first proof. This, recall, was that it is impossible for a temporal to proceed from an eternal. Ghazālī launches two objections against this proof. The second (we will see later) is that the falāsifah themselves cannot avoid concluding that the temporal proceeds from the eternal. The first is to challenge them as to what they would say against an opposing hypothesis, which he describes as advanced by someone else because, as we explained above, it does not reflect his own position. With what [argument] would you deny one who says: ‘The world was temporally created by an eternal will that decreed its existence at the time in which it came to be; that the [preceding] non-existence continued to the point at which [the world] began; that existence prior to this was not willed and for this reason did not occur; that at the time in which [the world] was created it was willed by the eternal will to be created at that time and for this reason it was created then?’ (2000 p. 15).

In spite of his earlier ‘technical’ complaints, Ibn Rushd now expresses his support for the substance of the first proof, and calls Ghazālī’s response ‘sophistical.’ For, he says, ‘although it is not allowable for him to admit the possibility of the actual effect being delayed after the actual cause…, he regards it as possible

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that the effect should be delayed after the will of the agent.’ (1930 p. 7 /1954 p. 3). Ghazālī, he says, faces the dilemma of either claiming that the act of the agent does not imply a change in the agent, or that a change can happen without cause. Of course, where the agent is eternal, Ghazālī will choose the former. There are two parts to this hypothetical response. The first is that the world came to be when it did, through an eternal will, which decreed that it come to be at that time. The second is to describe the preceding non-existence of the world as continuing up to the time at which it came to be. In attributing the creation of the world to an eternal will, Ghazālī is denying the central premise of the first proof, that everything that comes to be requires a cause that comes to be, halting the vicious regress of temporal causes before it begins. This is Ghazālī’s own position. In describing its preceding non-existence as continuing until the time it comes to be, he is granting for the sake of argument, that a beginning of the world would be preceded by a time in which it did not exist (an infinite period of time, as the falāsifah emphasize), for this is something that he later denies. He is therefore probing as to how the falāsifah would respond to what he takes to be an ultimately inaccurate, imaginative notion of creation, with the aim of locating key metaphysical suppositions on which their theory depends and which, for Ghazālī, are either undemonstrated, or do not carry the implications they claim. In Section 4.1, we will examine Ibn Rushd’s objection to Ghazālī’s assertion of an ‘eternal will,’ and how they differ with respect to what ‘will’ entails. In Section 4.2 we will examine the falāsifah’s proof that it is impossible for a temporal effect to proceed from an eternal cause, and Ibn Sīnā’s theory of efficient causation, on which it is based, along with two analogies that Ghazālī uses the falāsifah to introduce alongside it. I will argue that what results is a multi-tiered discussion. On one level, Ghazālī dialectically defends the imaginative notion of the act of creation described in his counterhypothesis. On another, deeper level, he argues that the falāsifah model of efficient causality is merely another flawed analogy for the divine act of creation, based on a misunderstanding of God’s eternity. In Section 4.3, we will examine Ghazālī’s counterargument, that supposing a pre-

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eternal world entails the absurdity of an actually infinite magnitude (the duration of past time), along with the objections (as expressed variously by Ghazālī’s falāsifah, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Rushd) that that past time is only potentially infinite. I will argue that, on the only clear interpretation of that claim available, it implies that time itself is merely imaginary. Thus Ghazālī’s argument, while strong, is nevertheless indecisive in the absence of a proof that past time is an objective reality. In Section 4.4, we will examine the falāsifah’s argument that, as moments of time before a hypothetical cosmic beginning are indiscernible, it cannot have occurred at one moment rather than any other. As Ghazālī has already denied the existence of time before the world, I argue, his true aim here is to use the imaginative hypothesis of such a beginning as a heuristic for explaining and demonstrating the existence of Divine will as an attribute that can distinguish one from among similar possibilities. On one level, the debate is over whether a choice between practically equivalent options is possible (for example, whether a person can choose one of two dates exactly similar with respect to satiating hunger). Ibn Rushd argues that one who does so actually chooses the option of satiation over the very different option of hunger. This only succeeds in reinforcing Ghazālī’s eventual point, echoing somewhat Ibn Sīnā’s theodicy, that in order to create an optimal world God must choose one between alternative options that are equivalent in relation to that objective. On a deeper level, Ghazālī uses the falāsifah to introduce the premises of an implicit argument based on the identity of indiscernibles, similar to one advanced by Max Black (1952). In Section 4.5, we will examine Ghazālī’s continued argument for his conception of Divine will, based on contingent observable features of the cosmos (the direction of the heavenly rotations), and his response to the falāsifah’s objection, that every feature of the cosmos is necessary for the optimal perfection of its order. Ghazālī’s response, I argue, implies that this is a ‘best possible world’, yet not the only one. We will also examine Ibn Rushd’s twofold response. One is to defend a teleological brand of methodological naturalism against a notion of Divine will that

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renders every possibility equivalent (which is not, I argue, Ghazālī’s position). The other is to argue that the hikmah in the direction of heaven’s rotation, the location of its poles, and all of its features rests in its own necessary nature, each heaven being an organism and species unto itself. The explanatory strength of this, I argue, lies in his theory of modality. For it entails that the heaven that is, with its intrinsic teleological nature, is the only possible heaven. Its particular motion is thus necessarily for the best, since it corresponds to and fulfills its necessary nature. For his part, Ghazālī must then answer the question, given that he thinks the world is one of a number of possible optimal worlds, what determines and defines these possibilities. In other words, what is the ontological basis of the conditions on Divine creativity that they entail? Finally, in Section 4.6 we review the debate over falāsifah’s claim that the temporal proceeds from the Eternal through the mediation of the heavenly motion, which as circular is somehow both temporal and eternal.

SECTION 4.1. IBN RUSHD VS. GHAZĀLĪ ON ‘ETERNAL WILL’

According to Ibn Rushd, the confusion in Ghazālī’s response is that the terms ‘eternal will’ and ‘temporal will’ are contrary. The empirical will (the temporal will we experience), is ‘a faculty which possesses the possibility of doing equally one of two contraries, and then of receiving equally one of two contraries willed’ (1930 p. 9 / 1954 p. 4). He draws from this a definition of will, involving three elements that he says are incompatible with the eternal: lack, change, and contingency. The will, he says, is the desire of the agent toward the action. Desire entails deficiency. When the agent acts and the thing willed is accomplished, the desire for it ceases. This entails change. All parties to this debate agree that deficiency and change are both impossible in God. Lastly, the desire and act ‘are equally related to both the contraries’; that is, it is possible either to desire or not, and to act or not. This entails contingency. Here the disputants differ, as we will see. For Ibn Rushd, contingency is incompatible with the eternal, whether eternal by itself or through another, for eternity

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just is necessity. Thus, God exists necessarily, acts as He does necessarily, and the world as a whole exists necessarily. For Ibn Sīnā also, God exists and acts as He does necessarily. The world, however, is necessary through God, but possible in itself. While eternal, it nevertheless has a limited sort of contingency in the sense that it depends on God to exist. However, since God acts as He does necessarily, he cannot have done differently, and so the world is effectively necessary. It could not have been other than it is. For Ghazālī, God exists necessarily but acts freely. His will is eternal yet contingent: contrary acts are equally possible for Him. Thus the world, while not eternal, is necessary through God, and yet contingent in a stronger sense. God could have acted otherwise, and thus the world really could have been otherwise, or not have existed at all. ‘But when one says, ‘there is a Willer who eternally wills one of two contraries within Himself’, the definition of the will is abandoned,’ Ibn Rushd insists, ‘for we have transferred its nature from the possible to the necessary’ (1930 p. 9 / 1954 p. 4). His equation is evident: the eternal is the necessary and the possible is the temporally actual, following his interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the possible is that which sometimes happens and sometimes does not. The necessary is that which is always the case, and the impossible is that which never obtains. There is no place, then, for the possible which never does exist, but might have. Consequently, there is no place for that which eternally exists, but might never have, for the eternal is by definition necessary. On another conception of modality, which admits possibilities that are never in fact actual, one might conceive an eternal will, willing something from eternity, which it could nevertheless have willed otherwise. Ibn Rushd does not consider such an alternative here, but he does consider an objection related to temporality. That is, that since an eternal will has no beginning, it is not temporally determined by the temporality of the object willed, and thus does not cease (like desire) when the object is realized. “This is not obvious,’ he objects, ‘unless we say that demonstrative proof leads to the existence of an agent endowed with a power which is neither voluntary nor natural, which, however, the Divine Law

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calls ‘will’, in the same way as demonstrative proof leads to middle terms between things which seemed at first sight to be contrary, without being really so, as when we speak of an existence which is neither inside nor outside the world’ (1930 p. 10 / 1954 p. 4). This, as we will see, is a roughly accurate description of Ghazālī’s position. The devil, however, is in the details, and in sorting out the substantive from the merely semantic (supposing it can be). Thus, for instance, if we say with Ibn Rushd, that the eternal will is a power that is ‘neither voluntary nor natural,’ what do we mean by ‘voluntary’, and what, consequently, do we intend to rule out by denying that it is ‘voluntary’? For Ghazālī, ‘will’ entails neither change, desire, nor temporality, but it does entail contingency (from which it follows that contingency does not entail temporality). If ‘voluntary’ simply means contingent, then, the eternal will is voluntary. Though it cannot change, it could have been other than it is. If, as Ibn Rushd holds, contingency entails temporality, then an eternal will cannot be contingent; for to say that it could have been different simply means that it can change. Since, apparently, he takes ‘voluntary’ as entailing all three aforementioned elements of the ‘empirical will,’ an eternal will cannot be voluntary. Neither, he says, can it be natural, raising the question, why can it not be natural, and what precisely makes it a ‘will’?

SECTION 4.2. THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF A NO-FAULT DIVORCE

Ghazālī had challenged the falāsifah to refute the hypothesis that the world was created by an eternal will. The response Ghazālī imagines from the falāsifah against this is based on the premise that, ‘it is impossible for that which necessitates [a thing] to exist with all the conditions of its being necessitating, [all the conditions] of its principles and causes fulfilled, and then for the necessitated [effect] to be delayed’ (2000 p. 15). For Ibn Sīnā, this is impossible by virtue of the very nature of efficient causation. The efficient cause (that is, the cause of the very existence of its distinct effect) renders its effect necessary (‘necessary through another,’ to be precise, as opposed to that which is necessary in itself). Thus, it is impossible for the efficient cause to exist while

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its effect is delayed. For, if the effect is delayed then some condition required for its existence is absent. In that case, its essential cause does not yet exist. Of course, some elements might exist of what would later become its cause when the missing condition obtains. When it does, along with whatever else is required to form, together, the sufficient condition of the effect, then the essential cause exists and the effect necessarily follows (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 124–130). To put it simply, if given some set of conditions it remains possible for some effect not to be, then that set of conditions is not its cause. It is for this reason that Ibn Sīnā insists that the cause must be simultaneous with its effect (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 201–5). If the cause existed before the effect, then it would exist without the effect, and would therefore not be its cause. Conversely, if the cause does not exist at the same time as the effect, then the existence of the effect would have a cause that is itself non-existent. The non-existent, however, cannot be a cause of anything. In this way, Ibn Sīnā makes a clear distinction between the ‘essential cause’ and the ‘accidental cause.’ The former, by virtue of its essence, is the cause of the very existence of its effect. The latter is only a cause by virtue of its relation to the effect, by bringing about changes in existing things that prepare the conditions for its existence. Heat, for example, is an essential cause of fire, while the striking of a match is an accidental cause. While the latter may precede the effect in time, the former must exist at all and only the time in which its effect exists. In this case, the world is the effect. If it came to be from an eternal cause then it will have been delayed for a time (an infinite period) during which its cause existed, which is impossible. Since the cause of the world is eternal, then the world must also be. Ghazālī proceeds to argue, in the voice of the falāsifah, that the same impossibility applies in two other categories of phenomena: the ‘conventional’ and the ‘habitual.’ The example given of the first is that of a man who pronounces a divorce of his wife. If such a pronouncement does not immediately result in divorce, they argue, it is inconceivable that it should do so later, unless the husband pronounced it conditional on some future

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event. In that case, the delayed effect is due to the occurrence of that condition (along with the social conventions that sanction it). Apart from such a condition, however, the effect of the pronouncement is either immediate or else it has no effect at all. That is, if the husband pronounces divorce without any such condition and it does not take effect immediately, but then sometime later he finds himself divorced, then clearly his pronouncement was not what effected the divorce. ‘If then, we are unable by our own desire to posit [such a delay] and cannot conceive it,’ the falāsifah argue, ‘how are we to conceive it in what is necessitated [in the realm] of essential, rational, necessary things?’ (2000 p. 16). When speaking of God’s creative relation to the world, then, we are speaking of ‘essential, rational, necessary’ things, and not ‘conventional’. By the ‘habitual,’ Ghazālī seems to mean the empirical, understood by the ʾAshʿarīs as the purely spatio-temporal pattern of events that are themselves causally unrelated, manifesting therefore only the ‘habit’ of God’s creative action. At any rate, the example here is our own introspective experience of voluntary action. The act is not delayed after our intention to act, the falāsifah observe, unless there is some impediment. Once that is removed (so that there is both intent and ability) the delay of the act is only conceivable in terms of resolve. That is, we may resolve to do something later or under specific circumstances. In such a case, however, when the resolved upon time or situation arises, executing the action requires some ‘renewal’ of intent, described here as a ‘renewed upsurge of motive within the human at the time of the act’ (2000 p. 16). ‘If the eternal will belongs to the same category as our intention to act,’ they argue, ‘then, unless there is an impediment, neither the delay of what is intended nor the [temporal] priority of the intent are conceivable’ (2000 p. 16). Of course, there can be no impediment for God. Furthermore, any ‘renewed upsurge of motive’ at the appointed time of the world’s creation would constitute a change in God, and would also require a new cause, which itself would require another new cause ad infinitum. Both consequences, for the falāsifah and Ghazālī, are absurd. Furthermore, as we saw, for the falāsifah the eternal will does not

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belong to the same category as our intention to act, for it belongs to the category of essential causes and effects. The examples from the categories of the conventional and habitual are only precarious, ultimately false, analogies. Ibn Rushd sees in all this a kind of ruse on the part of Ghazālī to confuse the falāsifah’s defense by way of misrepresentation. The example of divorce, he claims, actually lends persuasion to the ʾAshʿarī case. For they can argue that the conditional decree of divorce is in fact the cause of the divorce, and not the occurrence of the condition for which it was delayed. Intuitively, we would say that the man who made such a decree is the one who divorced his wife, and not the event on which he conditioned it. So if he says to his wife, ‘I will divorce you if your mother calls again,’ and then her mother calls, we would say he divorced his wife, and not that his mother in law divorced them. Likewise, Ibn Rushd fears, the ʾAshʿarīs could persuasively argue, based on that analogy, that God’s eternal decree that the world begin to exist on the arrival of a specific moment is the cause of the world’s coming to be, and not the arrival of the appointed time. The eternal cause can thus exist with the delay of its effect, just as the cause of divorce can exist while the actual divorce is delayed. Ibn Rushd calls the proponents of such an argument ‘literalists’, implying that they wrongly take God’s creative act as literally similar to a decree of divorce in some aspect. Yet Ghazālī does not make this move. Instead, he takes the falāsifah to task, as he promised, according to their own standards of demonstration. Do they know that it is impossible for a temporal to proceed from an eternal, by the necessity of reason, or by an inference grounded ultimately in premises known by the necessity of reason? In other words, do they know it with or without a middle term, connecting the temporal to the impossibility of proceeding from an eternal, with the logical certainty of a demonstrative syllogism? They cannot know it by the necessity of reason, he argues, because of the sheer numbers of people who actually believe the world came to be from an eternal will. They must then produce an argument. ‘For, in all that you have stated there is nothing but [an expression] of

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unlikelihood and the drawing of an analogy, with our resolve and will, this being false, since the eternal will does not resemble human intentions’ (2000 p. 17). The falāsifah then insist that ‘we know through the necessity of reason that a necessitating [cause] with all its conditions fulfilled is inconceivable without a necessitated [effect].’ Earlier, the claim was that the delay of the effect is impossible, once the cause exists. Reference to a ‘delay’ here, however, is notably absent. Ghazālī’s response to this is to shift to an apparently unrelated issue; that is, the debate between the falāsifah and the ʾAshʿarīs over the divine unity, attributes, and knowledge. Against the ʾAshʿarīs, the falāsifah hold that God’s attributes are not distinct from His essence, since this would entail that God is composite, compromising His unity. One of these attributes (the primary one for them in fact) is knowledge. Yet the falāsifah also hold that God knows all the universals, and then deny that this entails a multiplicity of knowledge and therefore a multiplicity in the essence. Speaking for the ʾAshʿarīs, Ghazālī insists, ‘we know this is impossible through the necessity of reason’, asking ‘what would you say to that?’ Though this seems, as Ibn Rushd claims, an evasive attempt to force a dialectical stalemate, the real aim is to provoke the falāsifah to respond philosophically. Ghazālī had argued that the impossibility of a temporal proceeding from an eternal is not a necessity of reason, by the sheer numbers who believe in it. Surely they are not all stubbornly insisting on something which they are certain is impossible. Ibn Rushd called this a very weak response, saying ‘it is not a condition of objective truth that it be known to all’ (1930 p. 13 / 1954 p. 7). Conversely, the fact that everyone agrees on something means only that it is a common notion, not that it is true. Ghazālī agrees on this. In al-Mustaṣfa min ʿilm al-uṣūl, he argues similarly against the Muʿtazilah. They held that certain moral propositions are known by the necessity of reason, based on the alleged fact that all humanity agree on them. Ghazālī replied that all humanity might agree on a falsehood (Ghazālī 2010). The question here however, is not whether universal agreement on something would be proof of its being either a

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necessity of reason, or an objective truth. Nor is it whether something being objectively true entails that everyone knows it. It is whether being a necessity of reason entails everyone’s knowing it. For Ghazālī’s argument is that the numbers of people who believe that a temporal world proceeded from an eternal will proves that its impossibility is not a necessity of reason. Ibn Rushd’s response, then, either misses the point, is evasive, or (most charitably) is simply sloppy with the terms, so that by ‘objective truth’ here he really means ‘necessity of reason.’ Let us then assume the latter and consider that claim. Can something be a necessity of reason and yet unknown to masses of people? According to the agreed upon criteria of demonstration, that which is a necessity of reason – the primary rational premise – is the proposition which the mind necessarily accepts, once its terms are properly understood (Ghazālī 1961). Ibn Sīnā had divided the primary rational principle into those that are evident to all, and those that are not. The obscurity of the latter sort, however, is always because of a failure to understand the terms properly. Once their meaning is clear, the mind necessarily assents (Ibn Sīnā 1984 pp. 119–20). Ghazālī accounts for this difference by building proper understanding of the terms into his definition as a condition. The two definitions are thus effectively equivalent. This means, however, that Ghazālī must concede that universal assent is not a condition of a proposition being a necessity of reason. For there may be those who do not properly understand the terms. Therefore, if it is a necessity of reason that a temporal cannot possibly proceed from an eternal, then it must be that the masses of people who think it did fail to understand properly, either the temporal, the eternal, or what it means for the former to proceed from the latter. On the other hand, if the falāsifah are wrong, then they must be failing to understand these terms correctly. The proper philosophical response to Ghazālī’s challenge would then be to elucidate these terms to determine whether one of the alleged primary premises is genuine while the other is fool’s gold, neither are genuine, or both are (and perhaps we have arrived at an antimony of reason). Ghazālī may appear to be trying to claim an antinomy, but he has also invited further

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examination. It depends on the reader to accept. To respond, as Ibn Rushd does, by simply insisting that claims to necessity of reason are valid only for those ‘qualified’ to make them, threatens to reduce the whole philosophical enterprise (at least insofar as it is a collective enterprise) into a game of competing appeals to authority (1930 pp. 15–16 / 1954 p. 8). Ghazālī understands that not all the self-evident is self-evident to all. The true philosophical test of self-evidence is not taqlīd (blind allegiance) to either epistemic populism or epistemic elitism, but the interrogation of the key terms, the temporal and the eternal. When we do, we may realize that the falāsifah had entertained not just two but three analogies here. One was drawn from the relations between acts and results under a framework of social or legal conventions, a second from our own internal experience of intentional action, and the third from a specific theoretical entity the falāsifah are referring to as the ‘essential’ cause. For as we saw, they have defined this entity as being simultaneous with its effect. To stand in such a temporal relation is therefore a necessary condition of its being what it is. It is therefore a temporal thing. Indeed, Ibn Sīnā arrived at the theory by observing temporal things. The movement of Zaid’s hand causes the movement of the key, he says, even though the movements are simultaneous (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 126). God, however, is eternal and not temporal. He is therefore not simultaneous with anything. Consequently, the first proof does not represent the unvarnished truth about God and His relation to the world as they really are, standing as it were in a privileged position in relation to the other crude analogies of the common believers. On the contrary, it is yet another analogy drawn between the temporal and the eternal. Yet what Ghazālī has the falāsifah claiming the second time is in fact a necessity of reason. That is, ‘a necessitating [cause] with all its conditions fulfilled is inconceivable without a necessitated [effect].’ For what else does it mean to be a necessitating cause, if not to have a necessitated effect? Importantly, what is missing from this version of their proposition (but present in the previous version) is any mention of ‘delay’, and in general, any reference to temporality. In this form, it is as self-evidently certain

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as the fact that a multiplicity of knowledge identical to an essence devoid of multiplicity is impossible. The limit of imagination and analogy rather than that of reason, then, is what Ghazālī is getting at here. For in response to his denial of the coherence of the falāsifah’s theory of divine knowledge and unity, he notes their plea. ‘But then they say: ‘Eternal knowledge is not be compared with created [knowledge]’ (2000 p. 18). His point is clear. Eternal will is not to be compared, either to temporal will (i.e. our internal experience of volition) or to temporal nature (apparent or observed natural causal relations). For good measure, he throws in the fact that the falāsifah differed from one another on this conundrum of divine unity and knowledge, leading some to the scandalous conclusion that God knows only Himself, and is ignorant of His creation. Explaining Ghazālī’s position here, Ibn Rushd writes: This amounts to saying that the theologians do not gratuitously and without proof deny the admitted impossibility of a delay between the effect and its cause, but base themselves on an argument which leads them to believe in the temporal creation of the world and that they therefore act in the same way as the philosophers, who only deny the well-known necessary plurality of knowledge and known, so far as it concerns their unity in God, because of a demonstration which, according to them, leads them to their theory about Him (1930 p. 14 / 1954 pp. 7–8).

Ibn Rushd has this wrong, as we saw. Ghazālī does not admit the possibility of a delay between the effect and cause at all. His underlying point, for the discerning reader, is that a temporal proceeding from an eternal does not entail such a delay. For there can only be a delay between two temporal things, and the Eternal is not temporal. It is indeed a necessity of reason, that a necessitating cause without a necessitated effect is impossible. Perhaps the delay of the effect after the cause is also impossible. The procedure, however, of a temporal from the Eternal entails neither of these impossibilities. Thus the argument Ghazālī will advance in the next section, to demonstrate the temporal creation of the world, is not one by which he is led to deny a necessity of reason. He is not, therefore, merely pleading to ‘act in the same

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way’ as the falāsifah as Ibn Rushd has it. For as Ibn Rushd correctly points out here, if something really is necessarily true, and not a mere supposition, no demonstrative proof can be had to contradict it. The rest of what Ibn Rushd says here reduces to a brute appeal to authority. ‘If there is a controversy about questions like this,’ he says, ‘the final criterion rests with the sound understanding (fitrah) which does not base itself on prejudice and passion, when it probes according to the signs and rules by which truth and mere opinion are logically distinguished’ (1930 p. 15 / 1954 p. 8). Though fitrah typically connotes some notion of a natural moral or epistemic capacity normally innate to all, Ibn Rushd goes on to draw an analogy to questions over distinguishing poetry from prose, which only the specialists of that science can decide. In place of actual philosophy, which again, would involve examining the terms of the competing claims to the necessity reason, Ibn Rushd is effectively arguing for taqlid and arbitrary deference to his verdict. As Goodman puts it, ‘he renounces the claim of his tradition to the title of philosophy’ (Goodman 1971 p. 169).

SECTION 4.3. THE HAS-BEEN THAT COULD BE FOREVER

Against the falāsifah’s claim to know by necessity that the world is pre-eternal, Ghazālī poses a counter-argument to demonstrate that its pre-eternity is impossible. This section will examine the argument and the falsafah objections as Ghazālī represents them, along with Ibn Sīnā’s response to earlier versions of the same argument and Ibn Rushd’s response to Ghazālī. It will show that Ghazālī’s representation of the objection is clearer than both these two, for it avoids an obscurity that ensues in their use of the term ‘potential infinite,’ which for Ibn Sīnā seems to entail that time is imaginary and in the case of Ibn Rushd becomes outright incoherent. Furthermore, Ghazālī successfully shows that so long as we take the past as having actually occurred, the pre-eternity of the world entails an actual infinite, which all parties in the debate agree is impossible. This conclusion can only be resisted (that is, the past can only be taken as ‘potentially infinite’), on pain of

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denying the actuality of the past altogether and rendering time imaginary. The argument is thus strong but not decisive in the absence of a proof of the reality of the past. All of this, of course, applies to the argument in Ghazālī’s pre-Cantorian intellectual context, and we do not intend it as an evaluation of the argument in light of modern mathematical theory regarding transfinite numbers, on which well-known work has already been done (Craig 1979; Nowacki 2007). ‘The world’s past eternity is impossible because it leads to affirming circular movements of the heavenly sphere whose number is infinite and whose individual units are innumerable, even though they [divide into] a sixth, a fourth, a half [and so on],’ Ghazālī writes. ‘For the sphere of the sun rotates in one year, whereas Saturn’s rotates in thirty…just as the number of rotations of Saturn is infinite, the number of the solar rotations, although a third of a tenth [of the latter] is [also] infinite’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 18). All the spheres rotate at various rates (Ghazālī also mentions that of Jupiter and the ‘outermost sphere’ of the fixed stars), but the argument can be simplified by limiting reference to two. We can reconstruct it as follows. 1) There are 30 solar rotations for each Saturn rotation. 2) The total number of elapsed Saturn rotations is 1/30 that of the total number of elapsed solar rotations. (from 1) 3) If the universe is pre-eternal then the total number of all heavenly rotations is infinite. 4) If the universe is pre-eternal then the total number of solar rotations is both equal to and greater than the total number of Saturn rotations. (2 and 3) Therefore, the universe is not pre-eternal.

This is a central component of what we now call the ‘Kalam Cosmological Argument’ (Craig 1979; Nowacki 2007). Obviously, key premises here presume a geocentric cosmos, but the reference to spherical rotations is intended merely to demonstrate by example that cosmic pre-eternity reduces to the absurdity of a whole that is both equal to and greater than its part. When Ibn Sīnā considers the argument, he describes his opponents drawing their example by reference to history rather than astronomy. ‘Now this requires that you maintain that there have been an

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infinite number of motions in the past,’ they say. ‘In that case, the motions up to the Flood would be less, while those up to our time would be greater; but, undoubtedly being less than infinite is to be finite, and so what is infinite would be finite’ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 365). That is, again, a whole that is both equal to and greater than its part. Aristotle argued that an actual infinite quantity is impossible because it entails just such an absurdity (Aristotle Physics 3:5). Though Ghazālī does not explicitly refer to an ‘actual infinite quantity’ here, this argument is a version of one that originated with John Philoponus [d. 580], and was substantially modified by Al-Kindī [d. 873]. It essentially involves reinforcing Aristotle’s proof for the impossibility of an actual infinite, and then showing that his own doctrine of cosmic pre-eternity entails its possibility (Philoponus 1987, 2006; Al-Kindī 2012). This appears above, in premise 2), in the form of a total number of heavenly rotations that is infinite; and the clearest way to define an ‘actual infinite quantity’ is just that: a total number that is infinite. This is important, for the falāsifah, following Aristotle, distinguish an actual infinite, which is impossible, from a ‘potential infinite,’ which is possible. The term ‘potential infinite’ is not very clear, however, for it conveys the sense that what it describes has the potential to be infinite, which seems to mean that an actual infinite is possible after all. The term ‘infinite potential’ indicates the intended meaning more clearly, for the ‘potentially infinite’ in this context simply means a quantity for which an increase is always possible (that is, whose potential for increase is infinite). Ghazālī deploys the concept himself in alIqtiṣād. ‘We mean by saying that the possible things are infinite,’ he says, ‘simply that the successive creation of one occurent after another does not reach a limit beyond which the intellect cannot conceive of the occurrence of another occurent’ (2013 p. 84). Hence, number is potentially infinite by addition, since no matter how high you count, you can keep on counting. This, even though you can never actually ‘reach infinity’, because again, an actual infinite (a total number that is infinite) is impossible. According to Aristotle, space is potentially infinite not by addition but by division, since in principle you can always continue dividing it,

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but without ever ultimately rendering it into an infinite number of infinitely small units (i.e. an actual infinity by division). A natural way to think of the difference may be that an actual infinity is one that exists all at once, while a potential infinity is one that exists only successively, one part after another. 1 Thus, Aristotle held that the cosmos is spatially finite, since otherwise it would constitute an actually infinite magnitude. Cosmic pre-eternity, however, entails only a potential infinity, since the entirety of its infinite past does not exist simultaneously, but only successively, part by part. Yet to say of something, that it is finite but its potential for increase is infinite is different from saying that it is infinite, but that its parts exist successively rather than simultaneously. Cosmic pre-eternity, according to the argument at hand, does entail the existence of an actual infinite quantity, for it means that at any point in time, a total amount of time has elapsed, which is infinite. Ghazālī deploys a second argument to this end, also based on the premise that cosmic pre-eternity entails an infinite number of elapsed rotations. An infinite number, he argues, could be neither even nor odd, since the odd becomes even (and the even odd) simply by adding one, and the infinite always has one more. Cosmic pre-eternity therefore entails a number of elapsed cosmic rotations that is neither even nor odd. The falāsifah’s first response is that ‘odd’ and ‘even’ simply do not apply to the infinite. The underlying general assertion (which also applies to Ghazālī’s first argument), is that proportionality does not apply to the infinite. For proportionality entails totality and therefore limit, while infinity is the absence of any limit. By implication, there is no total number of elapsed heavenly rotations, and thus no ‘infinite number’ of them, which is the essential point of insisting that odd and even do not apply. Ghazālī’s response overlooks this point. ‘An aggregate (jūmlah / ‘totality’) composed of units having, as has been mentioned, a sixth and tenth, which is not yet described as either even nor odd,’ he insists, ‘is something whose falsity is known by Aristotle Physics 3:6 ‘…one thing is always being taken after another, and each thing that is taken is always finite, but always different.’

1

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necessity without theoretical reflection’ (2000 p. 19). That is just to insist that an infinite totality (an actual infinite) is impossible, begging the question: do the elapsed cosmic rotations form such a totality? Only here does Ghazālī register the fālasifa’s denial, ‘for these rotations are non-existent, the past having ceased to exist, the future not yet existing; the ‘aggregate’ refers to existents that are present, but here there is no such existent.’ (2000 p. 19) This corresponds roughly to an argument Ibn Sīnā gives in AlShifāʾ (Physics 3:11). Against this, Ghazālī insists that number is either even or odd, whether the enumerated things exist or not. If we suppose a number of horses, for example, then their number is either even or odd, and continues to be so even if we suppose those horses cease to exist. If I once had ten horses that no longer exist, then it remains a fact that I had ten. The non-existent horses do not become innumerable, and therefore neither odd nor even, just by ceasing to exist. This is the case whether I have had ten horses one at a time, or at some time had ten horses all at once. In either case, the number of these past horses is countable and their number is even. Finite sets of non-existent things or events are therefore numerable, whether or not they exist. The reason, therefore, that a hypothetical infinity of past events is innumerable (and therefore cannot form a numeric totality) is neither that they are nonexistent, nor that they were realized successively. The only reason that they would not form a totality is simply that they are infinite, which is the very question at hand. Neither the fact that they no longer exist nor that they existed successively, are proof that they are. On the other hand, the fact that a specific subset of past things (e.g. a number of horses supposed to have existed) are numerable does not prove that the past as such forms a numerable totality. What Ghazālī needs to show is that a thing having existed (or an event’s having happened) itself renders it part of a totality. The argument from the proportionality of parts and wholes does not quite do the job. For if past rotations as such do not form a totality, then they are not wholes, in which case it will not be true that each Saturn rotation (or finite number thereof) is a ‘part’ of any such whole,

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whereby the sought after contradiction would follow, between the proportionality of parts and wholes. Ghazālī’s presentation of the falāsifah line of argument is nevertheless clearer than that given by either Ibn Sīnā or Ibn Rushd. This is due to the degree of obfuscation in their use of the terms ‘actual’ and ‘potential’ infinity. The corresponding objection, as Ibn Sīnā presents it in the Physics of al-Shifāʾ, is thus slightly different from Ghazālī’s version. ‘The response to it is that, when [those motions] are considered now, they have absolutely no existence and, instead, are nonexistent,’ he writes. ‘So, when they are said to be infinite, it is not as some actually existing infinite quantity, but, rather, as whatever number our estimative faculty imagines to belong to the motions, we find a number that was before it’ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 366). Whereas Ghazālī represented the falāsifah as arguing simply that past rotations do not exist, Ibn Sīnā says here that they do not exist when considered now; but since anytime they are considered will be now, this makes no difference. As in Ghazālī’s version, Ibn Sīnā gives their non-existence as the reason they do not form an ‘actually existing infinite quantity’. If by this, he just means an infinite totality, again, their non-existence per se does not preclude past existents from forming a totality. It is therefore only their supposed infinity that prevents that. If by ‘actually existing’ he means, ‘existing in the present’, then he has simply inferred that past rotations do not exist in the present because they do not exist. We have already mentioned that it does not follow, from the fact that something does not exist in the present, that it does not form a totality (that is, that it is infinite). If that were so, again, anyone who ever owned even one horse will have owned an infinity of horses. The most significant difference from Ghazālī’s version is that here, Ibn Sīnā explains the presumed potential infinity that past rotations do form, as the infinite potential of the estimative imagination (wahm), to imagine rotations preceding any imagined past rotation. According to this line of reasoning, however, past motions do not exist because they are merely figments of our estimative imagination. They are ‘infinite’ only in the sense that no matter how far into the past we imagine, for example, a

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‘first’ motion we can always imagine a preceding motion. This renders a concept of cosmic ‘pre-eternity’ very different from the one we are likely to have taken for granted at the outset. For instead of meaning by this, that for every motion there really has been a preceding motion (and thus that the cosmos really is preeternal), it only means that we cannot but imagine such a motion. Consequently, the cosmos is only imagined as pre-eternal, since the past itself does not exist other than as something potentially imagined and there is no natural limit to how far back we can imagine events preceding each other. This notion of the ‘potential infinity’ of past events effectively turns Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine that the universe is pre-eternal, into the very different doctrine, that the universe cannot but be imagined as pre-eternal. One hesitates to draw this conclusion, in light of arguments Ibn Sīnā made against the position that time is a product of the estimative faculty (Al-Shifāʾ, Physics 2:10), but this is just what follows from the assertion. It also follows from the implication of his ensuing argument, that the past is nonexistent in the same sense in which the future is nonexistent. Since [the motions] are nonexistent, then, necessarily, either it can be said of nonexistent things that they are more and less and finite and infinite, or it cannot. On the one hand, if it is not possible then the objection disappears. If, on the other hand, it is possible, then, necessarily, there can be an infinite number of nonexisting things at the same time, with some being less than others, just like nonexisting future things, such as eclipses of the Moon, for they will be less than the periodic rotations of the Moon…Yet they will be infinite (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 366).

The first horn of this dilemma is the very objection Ghazālī relays of the falāsifah, that past motions do not exist, and consequently do not constitute a totality to which proportion applies. On the other hand, if quantitative proportionality does apply to nonexistent things, Ibn Sīnā asserts, then an actual infinite follows – an infinite number of non-existing things, with all the absurdities that entails. How does this follow? It seems Ibn Sīnā is considering a question such as ‘how many non-existent horses are there?’ If there is a meaningful answer to such a question (if more, less,

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finite, and infinite apply to the nonexistent), then it must be infinite, for how can there be a limit to the nonexistent? Since such an answer is absurd on many levels, goes the argument, quantitative proportionality does not apply to the nonexistent, and Ghazālī’s objection disappears. Ghazālī does not mention this argument himself. How, then, would he respond? Most likely, by asserting that some ‘nonexistent things’ can be more, less, and finite, (that is, they can be enumerated) though none can be infinite. Specifically, these are the nonexistent things, which once existed but have since ceased to exist. Recall his statement that ‘the future does not enter at all into existence, either successively or concomitantly, whereas all of the past has entered into existence successively, even though not concomitantly’ (2000 p. 48). In other words, the operative question is (for example), ‘how many horses have passed away,’ rather than ‘how many non-existent horses are there?’ It is at least not obvious that, if a coherent answer is possible for the first question it must also be for the second and that consequently, the answer in both cases must be an infinite number. Compare the proposition that exactly a thousand horses have passed away, to the proposition that there are exactly a thousand nonexistent horses. They are both wrong, but for very different reasons. The first is wrong because more than a thousand horses have passed away, so ‘more’ and ‘less’ certainly do apply in the case of history’s horses. The second, however, is wrong not because there are more, or less, than a thousand nonexistent horses, but because the non-existent as such is not quantifiable. What has ceased to exist, on the other hand, is quantifiable. Otherwise, using Ibn Sīnā’s argument, I might deny that my wife has changed more diapers than I have, because past dirty diapers are nonexistent and ‘more’ or ‘less’ do not therefore apply. That would be unjust, not to mention foolhardy. Yet Ibn Sīnā strongly rejects this. ‘It is simply unforgiveable of the apologist who says that the past entered into reality and, thus, it is impossible that it be infinite, while the future is not [similarly constrained],’ he writes. ‘In fact, we do not concede to him that the past is realized, but, rather, that each one of the past

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[events] is realized, where the status of each one is not that of the whole of the past’ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 367). Now, apparently (and in contrast to what he said above), each past event has been realized, though not the whole. They have existed independently of the imagination, only successively rather than concurrently. We must therefore also understand differently their being ‘potentially infinite’. For the infinite potential in question cannot simply be our potential to imagine preceding events. Ibn Sīnā’s argument begins by pointing out that what is true of each part of a whole is not necessarily true of the whole. For example, each part is a part of the whole, but the whole is not a part of itself. More to the point, assuming that the world continues eternally into the future, it is possible for each future thing to exist, but it is not possible for the whole of the infinite future to exist. Likewise, he argues, the fact that each past event has been actual does not entail that the whole past has been actual in its entirety. There is a fallacy here. What is true of each member of a set is of course not always true of the whole set; but sometimes it is. Whether it is or not depends on the predicate in question. Yes, each part is a part while the whole is not a part. On the other hand, if each member of a set is possible, the whole set is indeed possible. It may be impossible for each member of the set to exist simultaneously with all the other members, but that is an entirely different question. If I have visited each of the Seven Wonders of the World, then I have visited all of them. There is no question here of my having visiting all of them simultaneously. Likewise, if I have watched each of an infinite series of sunsets, then I have actually watched an infinity of sunsets, and this does not amount to saying I watched them all at once rather than one by one. According to Ghazālī’s argument, it is nonetheless logically impossible since it entails that the number of sunsets I have actually watched increases by one while remaining the same on a daily basis. The fact that they are successive rather than concurrent is beside the point. The relevant question is whether on this supposition there is or is not a number of sunsets I have actually watched. If I would have actually watched a number of sunsets, then it is a number that increases by one while remaining the same daily.

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On the other hand, if I would not have actually watched a number of sunsets, does this entail that I have not watched any sunsets? If so, then we are back to Ibn Sīnā’s initial assertion that past events do not exist, but we cannot interpret this to mean only that they do not exist simultaneously. All past sunsets are, as he indicated, merely potential projections of the estimative imagination, just as future sunsets are. Cosmic pre-eternity seems again to amount to nothing other than the fact that I can always imagine an event preceding any imagined first event. Past and future are ontologically symmetrical, in which case it is not true that a potentially infinite number of events have elapsed. Rather, no events have elapsed at all. The only thing potentially infinite here is our capacity to imagine that they have. The third alternative is that I really would have watched sunsets, but just not any number of sunsets, because I would have watched a potential infinity of sunsets. Yet what does that mean? An infinite potential for watching sunsets is at least conceivable, as is an infinite potential for imagining past sunsets. Here, however, we must make sense of an infinite potential for having watched sunsets. This entails either giving up our idea of the potential as that which is yet to be realized, or our idea of the past as having already been realized. The assertion that only a potential (and not an actual infinite) is possible is just that the infinite does not form a totality. Thus, in his response, Ibn Rushd should argue that past heavenly rotations do not form a totality. Instead, however, he argues that they form totalities between which there is no proportion because they are ‘potential.’ If, however, there is no proportion between two movements in their totality, because they are both potential (i.e. they have neither beginning nor end), but there exists a proportion between the parts, because they are both actual; then the proportion between the wholes is not necessarily the same as the proportion between the parts, although many think so, basing their proof on this prejudice, for there is no proportion between two magnitudes or quantities which are both taken to be infinite. (1930 pp. 18–19 / 1954 p. 10).

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This targets the inference, from premise 1) to 2) in our formulation of Ghazālī’s argument. That is, from the fact that (for example) there are 30 solar rotations for each Saturn rotation, it does not follow that the totality of Saturn rotations is 1/30 of the totality of the solar rotations. Yet what does he mean here to say the movements are ‘potential’? Apparently, he means ‘infinite’ (‘they have neither beginning nor end’), but it is self-contradictory to claim that the movements in their totality are infinite. Totality entails limit and infinity is the negation of limit. That is all it means to say that an actual infinite is impossible. ‘Potential’ does not mean the same as ‘infinite’, nor are they co-extensive. Not all potency is infinite. If I can only run 5 kilometers, then my potential to run is finite. Neither is everything finite actual, though all actual quantities are finite. Thus, when Ibn Rushd says that there exists a proportion between the parts of heavenly rotations because they are actual, he must mean because the parts are finite. Proportion exists between quantities in virtue of their determined limit, not because they exist ‘concurrently’ or ‘in the present’. For there is proportion, as he acknowledges here, between finite units of heavenly motion, and they exist neither concurrently nor in the present. Yet then he says that the proportion between the wholes is not the same as the proportion between the parts, when the wholes are ‘taken to be infinite’, which is just to posit infinite totalities – that is, actual infinities, with finite parts. ‘Our adversaries believe that, when a proportion of more and less exists between parts, this proportion also exists for the totalities, but this is only binding when the totalities are finite’ (1930 p. 19 /1954 p. 10). Thus, there are infinite totalities. It seems his use of these terms have been detached from any clear meaning, for he is essentially affirming that past movements do constitute an actual infinite quantity, and then simply denying that proportionality applies to them, using the term ‘potential infinite’, vested of its original meaning, to explain this peculiarity. The admission in such a case of the proportion of more and less brings with it another absurd consequence, namely that one infinite could be greater than another. This is only absurd when one supposes two things actually infinite, for then a

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proportion does exist between them. When however, one imagines things potentially infinite, there exists no proportion at all (1930 p. 19 / 1954 p. 10).

If we ask, what it means to imagine things, ‘potentially infinite’, he has said that it is to imagine them without beginning or end. If we ask how this is different from the ‘actual infinite’ the clear answer should be that the actual is not infinite, for the phrase is self-contradictory. The actual is a limited totality while the infinite is without limit. The infinite just is infinite potential and never a totality. Yet Ibn Rushd’s answer here appears to be that the potential infinite is an infinite totality to which proportion does not apply. It seems these terms became so slippery with philosophical grease that he lost his grip on them. If we wipe away the grease, we are back to the same question. How to understand the past as an infinite potential for movements to have happened? This and this alone will make sense of the claim that the past does not form a totality because it is ‘potentially infinite’. In pursuit of his defense of the eternalist position, in fact, Ibn Rushd ends up effectively arguing that the actual infinite is objectively possible, its apparent absurdity being due to limits of the human intellect. ‘For the number which exists only potentially, i.e. which has neither beginning nor end,’ he asserts, ‘it cannot be truly be said that it is even or uneven, or that it begins or ends; it happens neither in the past nor in the future, for what exists potentially falls under the law of non-existence’ (1930 pp. 23–24 / 1954 p. 12). This sounds rather mystical: that which exists potentially does not exist. It either does or does not. If we say it does not, and that past events are ‘potentially infinite,’ then what follows is the same implication we found following from Ibn Sīnā’s argument: the past does not exist outside the imagination, its ‘potential infinity’ being just the capacity of the imagination to suppose events prior to any imagined event. Ibn Rushd ultimately tries to resolve this dilemma the other way. ‘But an unlimited aggregate existing outside the soul cannot be other than limited so far as it is represented in the soul, for the soul cannot represent unlimited existence,’ he explains. ‘Therefore also this unlimited aggregate, as being limited in the soul, can be called even or uneven; insofar, however, as it exists

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outside the soul, it can be called neither even nor uneven’ (1930 p. 24 / 1954 p. 13). Thus, the unlimited aggregate objectively exists, but since we can only imagine limited existence, we falsely believe otherwise. This unlimited aggregate is, presumably, the ‘potential infinite’, including that of past events. ‘Equally, past aggregates which are considered to exist potentially outside the soul, i.e., which have no beginning, cannot be called even or uneven unless they are looked upon as actual, i.e. as having beginning and end’ (1930 p. 24 / 1954 p. 13). Then, however, he reconfirms what we already knew, that to be an aggregate just is to be limited. ‘No motion possesses totality or forms an aggregate, i.e. is provided with a beginning or an end, except in so far as it is in the soul,’ he says, ‘as is the case with time’ (1930 p. 24 / 1954 p. 13). Thus, we have it that an unlimited limited thing – an actual infinity, no less – exists outside the soul, and we only think this is impossible because our soul cannot represent that. Since this is self-evidently absurd, the most reasonable conclusion would be that Ibn Rushd is using ‘aggregate’ equivocally here; if that is, another sense of the term were available that would make sense of what he means by an unlimited aggregate. In lieu of that, we can only interpret him as contending that what exists outside the soul is unlimited, infinite (and therefore ‘potential’); while limit, finitude (and therefore actuality) are provided to things only inasmuch as they are in the soul; that is, as they are represented in the imagination. If so, however, then it follows for Ibn Rushd that everything outside the soul is merely potential and thus falls, as he puts it, ‘under the law of nonexistence’. The contradictory expression, ‘unlimited aggregate’ indicates ambivalence on this question. It expresses a futile attempt to conceive unlimited potential outside the soul as an actually existing thing. After having just explained that we get misled into believing that an unlimited aggregate cannot exist because the soul can only represent limited existence, Ibn Rushd then claims that imagination leads us to believe that future events are infinite. ‘And as the circular movements of the future are regarded by the imagination as infinite, for it represents them as a sequence of part after part,’ he says, ‘Plato and the ʾAshʿarītes believed that

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they might be infinite, but this is simply a judgment based on imagination, not on proof’ (1930 p. 25 / 1954 p. 13). Why should the imagination lead us to believe that the past is finite, but that the future is infinite? In the former case, presumably, it is because the imagination represents past events as such as forming totality. In the case of the future, it must be because this very fact, that is that we represent each motion as limited, means that we can always imagine a motion following every motion. That is the ‘potential infinity’ of the future, which is, as Ibn Sīnā explained it, the infinite potential of the imagination to suppose motions posterior to any imagined motion. As Ibn Rushd says here, this is not proof because it pertains only to imagined future motions. If it were, then it should also prove (contra Plato and the ʾAshʿarīs) that past motions are infinite. Granted that imagination cannot provide proof of either the infinity or finitude of either the past or the future, the question remains, given that it represents both past and future motions as limited, why it leads to opposite conclusions about the finitude of each. A natural answer is that we regard the past, and not the future, as forming a totality, because former has existed while the latter has not. Though the past no longer exists, the fact that it has existed seems to give it a finality, totality, and actuality that the future lacks, at least on one common conception of time. That is, that time has an intrinsic direction associated with the fact that the past in some sense already exists, or has been, while the future both does not and has not. The past is actual while the future is potential. Another possible conception is that neither past nor future exist. Only the present is actual, while past and future are both potential, their potentiality being just that of the imagination to suppose events prior or posterior to other imagined events. Not only does this seem to render time itself imaginary, but it also raises the question of just what we are imagining. What makes imagined priority different from posteriority, and the imagined past different from the imagined future? On the previous conception of time, one could explain the difference by the fact that past is actual while the future is potential, but this explanation is not available here. Yet a third conception could be

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that past, present, and future events all actually exist. In this case, the difference between them, and thus the potentiality involved in change, would have to be explained in terms of our position, in some sense, in relation to the events. Furthermore, as Ibn Rushd argues, the same proof, from the impossibility of an actual infinite, would demonstrate the finitude of both past and future, and disprove the post-eternity of the universe as demonstratively as its pre-eternity. Ghazālī closes this section with an argument intended to show that, even if past events do not exist concurrently, cosmic pre-eternity nevertheless entails the possibility of a concurrently existing infinite quantity. ‘According to your own principles,’ he argues, ‘it is not impossible that there should be existents, present here and now, which are individual entities varying in descriptions and which are infinite’ (2000 p. 19). That is, Ibn Sīnā’s theory of the immortality of the individual soul, in combination with his position on the pre-eternity of the world (along with that of the species), entails the concurrent existence of an actual infinity of individual souls (see Marmura 1960). Thereafter some discussion ensues on the soul. The falāsifah suggest an alternative theory, attributed to Plato, that there is only one pre-eternal soul divided in bodies. While this avoids the problematic implication of an actual infinite quantity of individual souls, Ghazālī argues, it leads to other absurdities. We will return to this issue later, for the present point Ghazālī makes remains regardless of what theory of the soul one adopts. That is that even if past events do not exist at present, cosmic pre-eternity entails the possibility of a presently existing infinite quantity. Whether it entails the actuality of such a quantity is irrelevant. He makes this clear later, in the fourth discussion, in the process of arguing that the falāsifah undermine their own proof for God’s existence, by admitting an infinite regress of past events. Again, the falāsifah argue that past events do not exist, and ‘what does not exist is not characterized by being either finite or infinite, unless their existence is supposed in the estimative faculty’ (2000 p. 82). The only remaining problem, they say, is the problem of souls, for which alternative theories of the soul are again proposed. Here, Ghazālī specifies that he only

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deployed that argument against Ibn Sīnā, Fārābī, and Aristotle whom he says held that the soul is self-subsisting. Whether or not it is, he argues, it is nevertheless conceivable that something begins in time and then remains in existence permanently. If we suppose the temporal occurrence and endurance of one thing in each day, there would necessarily accrue for us, up to the present, existents that are infinite. For, even though the [past celestial] circular motion ceases to exist, the occurrence in it of an existent that endures and does not cease to exist is not impossible. With this possibility considered [in the mind], the difficulty becomes firmly established (2000 p. 83).

Ibn Rushd responds by noting his opposition to Ibn Sīnā’s position that past events are non-existent and therefore neither finite nor infinite, denying that any philosophers hold the problematic theory of souls, and accusing Ghazālī of committing sophistry by the ‘transference of one problem to another’ (1930 p. 286 / 1954 pp. 169–70). He thus misses or ignores the point that this argument is in fact independent of any theory of the soul. The problem here is not another but the same. If the past is both real and infinite, how does it not follow that an actual infinite, even of the concurrently existing sort, is possible? This concludes Ghazālī’s objection to the falāsifah’s claim to know that a temporal proceeding from an eternal is impossible by the necessity of reason. He says at the end of this that his only intention is to show that they are equally susceptible to similar claims against their own doctrines. Yet he clearly believes the impossibility of cosmic pre-eternity is demonstrable, in contrast to its post-eternity, as he claims in the beginning of the second discussion. Furthermore, as argued above, his following assertion that time is created obviates his opponents claim to know by necessity of reason that a temporal cannot proceed from an eternal. Ghazālī makes this assertion in response to the claim that his own argument turns against him. For, if the world began, ‘then a period wherein there are infinite possibilities would have elapsed’ (2000 p. 20).

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SECTION 4.4. ON DIVINE WILL AND BLIND DATES

Having dealt with the falāsifah’s claim to know by the necessity of reason that the coming to be of anything from an eternal will is impossible, Ghazālī proceeds to consider a proof they deploy, based on the premise that every moment in time would be equally suitable as the moment in which the world began. Considered before the world’s existence, when there is only an unchanging God, all moments of time are similar. This raises the question why it began when it did, rather than earlier or later. ‘We know by necessity of reason,’ they assert, ‘that a thing is not distinguished from what is similar to it except through that which specifies (mukhaṣṣaṣ)’ (2000, p. 21). If it were otherwise, the world could have come to be without a murajjiḥ. For again, existence and non-existence are equally possible for it, just as are its coming to be at one time rather than another. If we admit the possibility of the world having come to be at one time rather than another without something that specified that time over any other, they argue, then we must admit the possibility of the world existing without anything that specifies its existence over its non-existence. The claim that divine will is what specifies the time of its beginning, they argue, merely begs the question why the will specified the time it did, rather than otherwise. ‘If you say that the “why” is not said of the eternal,’ they argue, ‘then let the world be eternal and let there be no demand for its maker and cause – for “why” is not said of the eternal’ (2000, p. 21). If, on the other hand, one asserts that God wills one over another equally possible alternative purely at random, then we could conclude that everything about the world is random. Ibn Sīnā poses this very question. ‘Moreover, how is it possible to differentiate in non-existence between a time of refraining [to act], and a time of beginning [an action]?’ he asks. ‘And with what would one moment of time differ from another?’ (Ibn Sīnā 2005, p. 304). Ghazālī’s portrayal of the falāsifah follows him closely here, but with a slight difference. ‘There is no sense in saying that this question is vain, because the [self-same] question recurs with respect to every moment in time,’ Ibn Sīnā writes. ‘On the contrary this question is true [precisely] because

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it is recurrent and necessary with respect to every [moment] of time’ (Ibn Sīnā 2005, p. 304). In Ghazālī’s portrayal, the troublesome question does not extend only to every moment of time, but to everything whatsoever. ‘If you say that this question is superfluous because it can refer to anything the Creator wills and reverts to anything He decrees, we say, “No! On the contrary this question is necessary because it recurs at all times and attaches to those who oppose us with every supposition they make!’ (2000, p. 21). Ghazālī has already asserted his position that time was created, and this obviates the question why the world came to be at one time rather than another. For Ibn Rushd, that question is obviated either way. ‘A definite moment cannot be assigned for the creation of the world,’ he says, ‘for either time did not exist before it, or there was an infinite time, and in neither case could a definite time be fixed to which the Divine could attach itself’ (1930 p. 55 / 1954, p. 32). Therefore, he says, we should just call this book ‘Incoherence.’ Yet Ghazālī’s real issue here is not the temporal creation of the world but the locus of the mukhaṣṣaṣ, or specifier - whether it is God’s will or a feature of what He wills, which accounts for His willing it rather than otherwise. Ghazālī’s falāsifah raise the general specifier problem immediately following the question of equivalent moments. “Indeed, in the case of whiteness and blackness, motion and rest, you theologians say: ‘Whiteness is created by the eternal will when the receptacle is as receptive of blackness as it is of whiteness.’” (2000, p. 21) To understand this, it will be helpful to consider a digression Ibn Sīnā makes in the Metaphysics (6:5), where he distinguishes between purpose and necessity, arguing that an act without purpose is impossible. The purpose, or ‘essential end’ is that which is sought after for its own sake, whereas the necessary end is not sought after for its own sake, but rather entailed in some way by the purpose. For example, it may be an instrument in pursuing the purpose, or it may just be a necessary side effect of it. Know that the existence of the principles of evil belong to the second part of these divisions. Thus, for example, it is necessary within divine providence (which is munificence)

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COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE that every possible existent should be given the good existence [proper to it]; and [since] the existence of composites derives from the elements (it being impossible for the composites not to be formed from the elements); and [since] the elements belonging to the composites cannot be other than earth, water, fire, and air; and [since] it is impossible for fire to exist in the manner that leads to the good end for which it is intended unless it burns and disintegrates [things], it follows necessarily from this that [fire] is such that it would harm good people and corrupt many composites (Ibn Sīnā 2005, pp. 225–226).

God necessarily gives to every possible thing the good existence proper to it. What is good and proper to it depends on its nature. All change is reception of a form by one thing (the patient or receptacle) from another (the agent), and it receives the form in the way it does due to what it is. Thus, it functions as the material cause for change and its product. Constitutive of a thing’s nature, is its telos, or as Ibn Sīnā puts it here, ‘the good end for which it is intended.’ For fire, as in this example, the telos is to burn. Only through this natural action, can it fully realize itself and play its role in the composites that, along with other elements, it comprises. As a necessary concomitant of fulfilling this purpose, it also results in harm to good people and other evils. This is part of Ibn Sīnā’s theodicy. While that is relevant to the current discussion, our direct interest is to note how the intrinsic nature of a thing is a factor in determining what changes are realized for it under given conditions, specifically in light of what is needed to optimally realize the good of the whole. If the intrinsic nature of the patient (here, the created world) is taken as given (as in the nature of the basic elements), then everything that happens can be explained in terms of the divine imperative to realize the most perfect order of things compatible with their natures. This will be the case whether what happens is something that itself exemplifies that perfection or is a necessary condition thereof (even if a necessary evil). By saying ‘the receptacle is as receptive of blackness as it is of whiteness,’ the mutakallimūn, as portrayed here by Ghazālī’s falāsifah, are simply asserting that things do not have intrinsic natures independently of God’s agency. Thus, even the elements

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like fire are as they are only because God made them thus. How can the fact, that they are what they are, be what determines God’s action? In relation to God, everything is equally possible. Thus, on one hand, the falāsifah argue that the mutakallimūn render everything random. There is no possible reason for God to act as He does, and therefore no reason for anything to be as it is. The falāsifah on the other hand seem to beg the same question. For, if the nature of the world is ultimately explained by the intrinsic nature of the basic elements of which they are composed then we are simply saying that the nature of the world is a brute fact. In the hylomorphic terms of Ibn Sīnā’s system, the problem is that these elements are formed substances, not prime matter. A thing’s nature (and thus any factor determining what is possible for it, following from what it is) is a result of its form. Prime matter is pure potentiality without form, and all possibilities are therefore equivalent for it. God is (through mediators) the giver of forms, but if something has a nature that could determine what God gives a thing, it must be a form not given by God in the first place. If the specifier is in the receptacle, then ultimately there is no reason for its having the nature it has. On the other hand, if it is divine will, then the buck stops with God, and there is ultimately no reason for His specifying the thing with this nature rather than another. The question is whether the nature of the world explains God’s act, or the reverse. ‘The world came to existence whence it did, having the description with which it came to exist, and in the place in which it came to exist, through will (al-arādah),’ Ghazālī declares, ‘will being an attribute whose function is to differentiate (tamyiz) a thing from its similar (mithlahu)’ (2000, p. 22). The relation of divine power to contrary possibilities, he explains, is equal. God can do anything possible, but only some are actual. His power alone is, therefore, not sufficient to explain it. This requires an attribute additional to power ‘that has as its function to specify one thing from its similar’ (2000, p. 22). Asking why will specifies one rather than another, he argues, is like asking why knowledge knows. It does so because to do so is what it is.

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Importantly, he does not claim that all things are equivalent in relation to divine will, as in his falāsifah’s construal of the position of the mutakallimūn. That its function is to specify one from among similar alternatives does not entail that every alternative is similar for it, as they are for power. It may be that only some are. There may be, for example, alternative possibilities that are equivalent in relation to the perfection of cosmic order, and between which an arbitrary selection is required for the realization of the most optimal order possible in the same way certain evils are in Ibn Sīnā’s theodicy. The first response of the falāsifah to this proposition is that an attribute that distinguishes between similar things is contradictory by way of a principle that modern philosophy has come to know as the identity of indiscernibles. For to be similar means to be indiscernible, and to be discernible means that it is dissimilar. One should not think that [instances of] blackness in two places are similar in every respect. For one is in one place, the other in another. And this necessitates differentiation. Nor are two [instances] of blackness in the same place at two different times absolutely similar. For one differed from the other in terms of time – how could it be similar in every respect? If we say that the two [instances] of blackness are [two] things similar to each other, we mean by it [similar] in blackness related [to the two instances] in a special, not an unrestricted sense. Otherwise if place and time are unified and no otherness remains, then neither the [instances] of blackness nor duality itself is conceivable’ (2000, p. 22).

Discernibility then, at least in terms of time and place, is a metaphysical condition of duality. This threatens to obviate the original problem the falāsifah raised over why the world began at one time rather than another. For that problem presupposes that multiple times exist before the world, which must then be discernible one from another. How, in the absence of any world, are they discernible? Aside from the fact that one time is supposed to be before or after another, there would be nothing to differentiate them. Yet to say that one time is before or after another is just to say that the two times are at different times.

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This will lead to an infinite regress where times are discernible by being at different times, which are themselves discernible by being at different times, and so forth. Neither Ghazālī nor his falāsifah explicitly mention this problem. Instead, the falāsifah go on to offer what they present as a proof of the metaphysical condition of duality they had just asserted. Yet this is puzzling, for the ‘proof’ is conspicuously irrelevant. It involves only the supposed impossibility of choosing between two things that are in fact numerically distinct but similar only in respect to one’s purpose. This is shown to be true by [the fact] that the expression “will” [as applied to God] is a borrowing from our “will.” It is inconceivable of us that we would differentiate one thing from its similar. Indeed if in front of a thirsty person there are two glasses of water that are similar in every respect in relation to his purpose [of wanting to drink], it would be impossible for him to take either (2000, p. 22).

Ghazālī, through the falāsifah, has thus raised two distinct claims. One is that discernibility is a metaphysical condition of plurality itself. The other is that choosing between options that are equivalent in relation to one’s objectives is impossible. He has alerted us to the distinction between them, by having his falāsifah relate them in an obviously fallacious manner, presenting the latter as a proof of the former. Then he raises his first of two objections without specifying to which of the two claims he is objecting. ‘The first is regarding your statement that this is inconceivable: do you know this through [rational necessity] or theoretical reflection?’ he demands, arguing that neither is possible (Ghazālī, 2000, p. 23). Which alleged inconceivability does ‘this’ refer to here? Is it the inconceivability of two indiscernible things, or the inconceivability of someone selecting one of two relatively equivalent glasses of water? We should consider both. If the first, then Ghazālī is denying that the identity of indiscernibles is logically demonstrable. Yet where we would hope for a positive argument to that effect, he turns to the comparison of human and divine will. ‘Moreover, your using our will as an example constitutes a false analogy that parallels the

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analogy [between human and divine] knowledge,’ he argues. ‘God’s knowledge differs from human knowledge in matters we have [already] established’ (2000, p. 23). This gives pause: in precisely what matters, have they already established that God’s knowledge differs from human knowledge? That was above, where Ghazālī rejected the falāsifah claim to know by necessity that a temporal cannot possibly proceed from an eternal. He challenged them as to how they would respond to their ‘opponents’ who claim to know by necessity that it is impossible that God know all the universals without any multiplicity in His essence, when His knowledge, as they claim, is none other than His essence. This is where they answer that Eternal and created knowledge are not to be compared. Ghazālī thus agrees that Eternal and created knowledge fundamentally differ in this matter. Drawing conclusions about divine will by analogy to created will is likewise invalid. ‘Rather, this is akin to someone’s statement, “An essence existing neither outside nor inside the world, being neither connected nor disconnected with it, is inconceivable because we cannot conceive it on our own terms,” to which it would be said, “This is the work of your estimative faculty (wahm) – rational proof has led rational people to believe this’ (2000, p. 23). Without offering the proof here, he again challenges the falāsifah as to how they would deny those who claim to have proved an attribute whose function is to differentiate a thing from its similar. He dismisses as superfluous and terminological, the issue of whether to call this attribute ‘will’, acknowledging that in conventional usage ‘will’ connotes one who has as an objective the fulfillment of a need, which he agrees does not apply to God. ‘What is intended is the meaning, not the utterance’ (2000, p. 23). Aside from that, Ghazālī rejects the claim that a human being cannot select one from among alternatives similar in relation to his objective. Suppose, he says, a hungry person faced with two dates that are equivalent with respect to any factor possibly related to his choosing one over the other. The falāsifah must deny that such an equivalence is conceivable or conclude that such a person would simply have to go hungry, both of which are self-

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evidently false. ‘It is hence unescapable,’ he concludes, ‘for anyone engaged in theoretical reflection on the true nature of the voluntary act, whether in the realm of the observable or the unseen, but to affirm the existence of an attribute whose function is to render one thing specifically distinct from its similar’ (2000, p. 24). Ibn Rushd sees in this only the dialectical assertion that divine will differs from created will. Demonstrating an attribute that differentiates one from its similar, he argues, requires assuming things willed that are similar. The willed is, however, the opposite of what is not willed. They are therefore not similar and such a demonstration is impossible. The mutakallimūn will clarify that they mean only that these things are similar in relation to God, who being self-sufficient has no desire; desire being what differentiates, for us, one outcome as preferable to another. In answer to this, Ibn Rushd distinguishes between ‘desires whose realization contributes to the perfection of the willer, as happens with us,’ from ‘desires which belong to the essence of the things willed’ (1930 p. 39 / 1954, p. 22). The first are impossible for God, for He is perfect in Himself. Realization of the second sort of desires, however, benefit only us, the things willed. ‘It is the second way that the Primal Will is related to the existing things, for it chooses for them eternally the better of two opposites, and this essentially and primally’ (1930 p. 39 / 1954, p. 22). The problem is, this second sort of desires, as Ibn Rushd says, belong to the essence of the things willed. They are not then God’s desires after all, but ours. That means they are really just the first sort of desires: our desires whose realization contributes to our perfection, as the willers. This is not, then, an explanation of how the ‘Primal Will chooses’ the best for existing things. In the final analysis, it only expresses the very assertion of the mutakallimūn, to which Ibn Rushd is supposedly responding: God, being perfect in Himself has no desire. The rest is a clever piece of sophistry designed to present the appearance of having explained, in spite of that fact, how various alternatives are not equivalent in relation to Him. All it does, however, is to establish that things are not equivalent in relation to the perfection of creatures.

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As for the dates, Ibn Rushd argues that when the hypothetical grazer chooses one of two supposedly similar dates, he is not distinguishing one thing from its similar, for he is really choosing the option of eating over the distinct option of going hungry. To ‘distinguish’ he argues, means to ‘prefer’, and the person in question is not preferring one date over another, but the prospect of eating to that of going hungry (1930 p. 40 / 1954, p. 23). Distinguishing does not mean preferring, however, for what we are debating here is precisely whether a distinction is possible without a preference. We can satisfactorily express his very reasonable explanation of the matter, by saying that such a person distinguishes one date from another without preference for one date over the other, because this is necessary for him to eat, which he prefers to going hungry. On the other hand, we need not quibble about which term to use, for Ibn Rushd has conceded that the man can eat one rather than another date for no reason having to do with any difference between the dates themselves, but only because choosing between them is a condition of the preferable action of eating one. Likewise, to follow the analogy, a best possible universe is preferable to an inferior one. In order to realize the former, however, God must realize certain features over others that are equivalent with respect to the overall good. This entails, of course that there is more than one best possible world. If God is to realize one of them, then He must have the capacity to select one from among equally optimal possibilities – that is, ‘will.’ Returning to the dates, Ibn Rushd steps back from his previous analysis. For ‘in their existence as individuals they are not similar, since each of two individuals is different from the other by reason of a quality exclusive to it’ (1930 p. 41 / 1954, p. 23). This is, again, the identity of indiscernibles. To choose one over another, there must in fact be two things rather than only one, and therefore some qualitative difference, for example their being in different places. Thus in choosing, one must choose the one on the left, or the right, etc. In so choosing, Ibn Rushd argues, the will attaches itself to this difference and not to the one inasmuch as it is similar to the other. This is correct, but the conclusion he draws from it is dialectical.

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‘If, therefore, we assume that the will attaches itself to that special character of one of them,’ he ventures, ‘then it can be imagined that the will attaches to the one rather than the other because of the element of difference existing in both’ (1930 p. 41 / 1954, p. 23). Of course, we can imagine that. According to the hypothesis in question, however, this difference makes no difference in relation to the objective. Thus, while the fact that there is a difference between the two (i.e. that there are in fact two options) is a necessary condition for the possibility of choosing between them, it does not follow that the difference must be the reason for choosing one over the other. The fact that we can imagine that the difference in question does make a difference in relation to one’s objective has little argumentative value, for we can just as easily imagine that it does not make such any such difference. Ghazālī had taken a position on the possibility of rendering one thing specifically distinct from its similar in two distinct senses: that of choosing one from practically equivalent alternatives and that of distinguishing between indiscernible things. If there he meant that theoretical reflection in both ‘realms’ leads in both these senses to an attribute that does it, he has only presented his reflection with regard to the first, without elaborating his reasons for denying the identity of indiscernibles. In the observable, he has claimed that reflection shows that a human being can render one thing specifically distinct from what is similar in relation to his objective. The counterpart of that in the unseen is that God, who has no objective in any sense implying a need, can also render one thing specifically distinct from its similar. One way of conceiving this, which we will consider shortly, is that the alternatives in question are similar with respect to the needs of creation. Yet this is only a matter of distinguishing between practically equivalent alternatives. The possibility of a distinction between indiscernibles, which Ghazālī’s falāsifah have carefully defined and denied, is another matter. This problem is raised in the unseen, by the fact that ‘before’ (or rather conceived in the absence of) the existence of the world, one supposed moment in time is objectively indiscernible from

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another. If indiscernibles are identical, then it follows that a plurality of times prior to the world is impossible. Ghazālī gave us two and two and left us to put it together. Temporal creation does not entail God choosing one from among a number of actually distinct moments each of which is equally deserving of the honor of being the birth moment of the cosmos. For either there is only one time prior to the world or, as Ghazālī has it, no time at all. If only one time, however, then that time and no other is the time in which the world began, in which case it is not after all prior to the world. Thus, if indiscernibles are identical and the world began, there is no time prior to its beginning. Of course this is also the case if, as the falāsifah hold, the world had no beginning. The counterpart of this in the observable is, as the falāsifah observed, that two instances of blackness, for example, exactly similar in every way require at least a distinction in time or place in order to be in fact two, rather than one. If we eliminate the difference of time or place, as they said, neither the two objects nor duality itself is conceivable. Then suppose the objects are in different times or places. In that case the times or places must be discernible. We have already seen that ‘empty’ times – times conceived as prior to the world, and therefore during which nothing happens – would not be discernible from one another and therefore could not be plural. The same holds for places, for in space conceived as empty, no place is discernible from any other (and thus according to the falāsifah there is no empty space). In the case of otherwise indiscernible objects, we cannot discern the place or time of one from that of the other by reference to the object occupying it, for these objects are otherwise indiscernible. That is, the complete description of the object occupying time / place x will precisely match that of the object occupying time / place y. The times and places will not be discernible, and the two objects in question will therefore not be discernible with respect to time or place after all. The only way a spatio-temporal difference between two otherwise indiscernible objects is possible, is if the time / place of each object were discernible in terms of their differing relations to additional, discernible objects. One need only add another instance of

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blackness, for example, at different distances from each of the other two, and they all become discernible in terms of location. The hypothetical scenario the falāsifah presented, however, included only two completely similar instances of blackness, effectively leading us to conceive a scenario including just these two. By now, the reader may have recognized in this the outline of a similar, more developed argument by Max Black (1952). Black asks us to conceive a world in which only two indiscernible iron spheres exist, exactly one mile apart. The problem of course is that while they are supposed to be discernible by place, the place of each one is indiscernible from the other: they are both one mile from an iron sphere. Such a state of affairs, that is, a possible world in which exactly two otherwise similar objects exist, discernible only with respect to time or place, is only possible if either the objects themselves, or their times and places, are distinct yet indiscernible. If such a world is possible, Ghazālī might add, we must affirm a divine attribute whose function is to distinguish between them.

SECTION 4.5. UNDER A DIFFERENT HEAVEN

‘You in your own doctrine have not been able to dispense with the rendering of one of two similars [distinct],’ Ghazālī argues,’ for [you hold] the world to have come into being through its necessitating cause, having specific configurations (hayʾāt) similar to their opposites’ (2000 p. 24). The falāsifah hold that rendering similars distinct is impossible, whether through a voluntary agent (al-fāʿal), nature, or logical necessity. Thus their supposition that the world is at is it is by nature and necessity, and not by agency, does not excuse them from accounting for these hayʾāt in their cosmology. Ghazālī imagines the falāsifah responding that the ‘universal order of the world’ (al-nizām al-kulī al-ʿālam) is in every detail as it must be in order to be complete. Its various possible configurations (e.g. the number of spheres and stars there could have been) differ with respect to how well they would facilitate this completeness. Its actual configurations are necessary because of all the possibilities they are the most optimal in this respect. None

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then need be selected from among equivalent alternatives, for there are no alternatives as optimal as the actual, ‘except that the human faculty falls short of apprehending the modes of wisdom (al-hikmah) pertaining to their quantities and details’ (2000 p. 24). The hikmah of some feature in nature, therefore, is properly understood in this context as the explanation of why it is necessarily as it is, for the sake of the perfection of cosmic order. It is thereby amenable to scientific knowledge (episteme) according to the Aristotelian standard. Our ignorance of the hikmah in a given case does not mean there is none, say the falāsifah. ‘It is not unlikely that a thing is differentiated from its opposite by reason of its relation to the established order’ (2000 p. 24). In the case of hypothetical times prior to the world’s existence, on the other hand, they claim to know by rational necessity that these are equivalent, so that any hikmah in the world’s beginning at one rather than other time is impossible. Ghazālī points out that one could argue likewise that our ignorance of the hikmah in the time the world began is not proof there is none. It is just as well that he does not, for such an argument would be weak. Actual features of the existing world (such as the poles and directions of cosmic rotations) co-exist with other features of it, any of which might be a factor explaining why one feature is more optimal than any alternative, whether we are aware of the explanation or not. In the absence of any known explanation, the most one can say is that the existence of a hikmah in these things is unproven. On the other hand, of hypothetical times prior to the world, we know ex hypothesi (since there would be no world) that nothing at all would exist that could explain why one time would serve better than others for the world’s birthday. In this case, by contrast, the falāsifah can claim positive proof that a hikmah in it is impossible. Furthermore, arguing that there is an unknown hikmah in the world’s beginning at one time among others will not support Ghazālī’s actual contention, which is not that time can have preceded the world but rather that God can select one from equivalent alternative possibilities. In this case, the burden

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of proof lies with the falāsifah, since they are claiming that this is impossible for God on the ground that everything has a hikmah. Hence, Ghazālī will instead show that the falāsifah cannot avoid conceding, consequent on their own cosmological theory, that there are things about the world that could just as well have been otherwise and that the cause of the world must therefore have an attribute that distinguishes between equivalent alternatives. In other words, their cosmology contains ineliminable contingencies; that is features for which they have been unable to explain the necessity in terms of a hikmah, and for which any such explanation would be incompatible with the terms of that cosmology. If that is the case, and their cosmology includes the necessity of a ‘first cause’ for the world as a whole, then according to their own theory, this cause must have the attribute of ‘will’ as Ghazālī has defined it. For in bringing about the world, it will have brought it about with specific features that may as well have been different with respect to any possible hikmah. A third possible line of argument is important for the fact that Ghazālī did not mention it. That is to call into question not only the premise that the cosmic order is ‘the best’ or ‘complete’, but also what this even means. Such an argument would according to the falāsifah’s previous construal, be in perfect accord with worldview of the mutakallimūn. Ghazālī, however, notably proceeds on the implicit assumption that the world order is optimal, while simply arguing that there is more than one way it could have been so. For his argument is that there are ways the world could have been other than it actually is, without compromising the completeness of the existing order. Thus above, when he reports the falāsifah as saying that, ‘it is not unlikely that a thing is differentiated from its opposite because of its relation to the existing order,’ he is actually expressing his own view. That is, as this section will show, in this discussion Ghazālī does hold that this is a best possible world, yet not the only best possible world (for more on this issue see Ormsby 1984). This, however, entails conditions on divine creativity in relation to cosmic optimality, that is, ways in which God must create in order to realize an optimal world, raising the question what could constitute such a condition. Ghazālī as we will see provides an

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example. In order to create a temporal world, the heavens must rotate in different directions, in which case of course God must choose one direction for each over its equivalent opposite. Ibn Rushd, meanwhile, responds in two ways. One is to defend a teleological brand of methodological naturalism against a notion of Divine Will that renders everything equivalent in relation to God, which is not, however, Ghazālī’s position. The other is to argue that the hikmah in the direction of heaven’s rotation, the location of its poles, and all of its features rests in its own necessary nature, each heaven being an organism and species unto itself. The explanatory strength of this lies in his theory of modality. For it entails that the heaven that is, with its intrinsic teleological nature, is the only possible heaven. Its particular motion is thus necessarily for the best, since it corresponds to and fulfills its necessary nature. For his part, Ghazālī must then answer the question, given that he thinks the world is one of a number of possible optimal worlds, what determines and defines these possibilities. In other words, what is the ontological basis of the conditions on Divine creativity that they entail? Thus, Ghazālī also holds that most things (not all) are determined according to a hikmah. Here he mentions only two that are not. These are, specifically 1) that the poles, along which the heavenly spheres rotate, might have been aligned to a pair of points on the sphere other than those they actually are; and 2) that the directions of their rotation might have been the opposite of what they are. As for the poles, Ghazālī says that each point on the highest sphere (since it is devoid of stars) is exactly similar to any other, yet two of them form the stationary pole around which the rest rotate. The falāsifah speculate that perhaps those points have some special feature rendering them uniquely suitable for being stationary. Ghazālī, of course, rejects this suggestion as incompatible with the falāsifah’s own theory. For they explain that the cosmos is necessarily spherical in shape precisely because of the fact that every point on a sphere is homogenous. Any other shape would entail an inequality explainable only by something external to the heaven itself. The sphere, being the simplest shape, is the only shape it could have from its own nature. In sum, Ghazālī’s contention is that the assertion that there is hikmah in

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the location of the poles of the universe is incompatible with their explanation of the hikmah of its shape. Yet even if we grant a special feature making one pair of points uniquely suitable as poles, is it not possible for any other points of the sphere to have had this feature? It must have been, Ghazālī reasons, for each point is necessarily similar in being simply ‘a body receptive of forms,’ with therefore no difference between one or another that could explain why only this pair of points is capable of bearing this hypothetical polar suitability feature. This leaves us, again, with the question why these points have the feature and no others. We must conclude either that it is arbitrary, or that it is explained by a cause that specifies one thing from among equivalent alternatives. ‘For, just as it is legitimate for them to say that the [temporal] states are equal in their receptivity of the world’s occurrence,’ Ghazālī argues, ‘it is legitimate for their opponents to say that the parts of heaven are equal in terms of the receptivity of the idea due to which precedence is given to the fixity of [one] position [for the pole] as against its replacement’ (2000 p. 26). To Ghazālī, again, the equivalence of times prior to the world is not an issue, for his position is that there is no such prior time. This is only relevant for those ‘opponents’ of the falāsifah who have advanced the hypothesis in question; that is, that the world began after a time during which it was not. Yet to Ghazālī the fact that this hypothesis is false is secondary to the question of divine will. For in his view, belief in divine will, as he understands it is essential to believing that God is the world’s Maker, which is essential to one’s faith. One who believes that God created the world by an act of will, while wrongly imagining a time prior to that, without the world, still does believe that God is the world’s Maker. His only fault is that this way of imagining creation is incoherent, and his realization of this may threaten his belief in creation itself. Only then is it necessary for him to understand that there is no time prior to the world. It is therefore necessary to defend the logical space for belief in divine agency (which Ghazālī sees as essential to the idea that God is the Maker), even for those who imagine time to have preceded the world. Thus, Ghazālī proceeds as if time did precede

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the world in order to use the hypothesis as a heuristic to clarify and defend his notion of divine will. This space is dialectically defensible against the objection of the falāsifah, for the reason that a selection between supposed equivalent times serves this heuristic purpose as well as the selection between equivalent points on the sphere, or equivalent directions of rotation, which are, according to Ghazālī, entailed by the falāsifah’s cosmology. We therefore have a treatment of the matter of divine will in connection to the world’s existence, which is suitable both to the sort of reader who persists in imagining a creation event preceded by time as well as the sort who understands Ghazālī’s assertion that there is no such prior time. As for the direction of the spheres’ rotation, Ghazālī initially only questions why they are not otherwise. The falāsifah respond that, if they were to all rotate in the same direction, then the relations between the heavenly bodies would not change. ‘The whole would then be in one state, without any differentiation at all, when [in fact] these [diverse] relationships are the principles of temporal events’ (2000 p. 27). In such a condition, one ‘time’ would be indiscernible from any ‘other’ (just as they would be prior to the world), and there would then be no time. As a response to Ghazālī’s argument, this is a superfluous objection (which of course he raised against himself). It is not as if the spheres must either rotate in just the way they do, or else all rotate in the same direction, he points out. They might all have rotated in exactly the opposite of their actual direction. This alternative arrangement would have produced all the same change in relations that the actual arrangement does. The two alternatives are, he argues, as similar in relation to any possible hikmah (‘in relation to the possibility of existence and every beneficial end in existence whose conception is supposed’) as imagined times prior to the world would be (2000 p. 27). Ghazālī could have more efficiently pre-empted this objection by clarifying his true proposal at the outset. Yet raising it serves two purposes. One of them, as we will see in connection with the second proof, is to plant the idea, that cosmic motion is relative, into the soil of the Aristotelian theory that time is its measure. Another purpose is to provide a case study of the kind

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of condition in terms of which we may understand a hikmah. For, if there is a hikmah in any given feature of the cosmos then it must be the case that the cosmic order could not have been complete without it. That amounts to a condition on God’s ability, since it means He could not have accomplished the same purpose without that feature. This raises the crucial question of exactly what can constitute such a condition. By raising the objection and answering it in the way he did, Ghazālī has indicated that indeed, if nothing in the cosmos changed position in relation to anything else (as would be the case if all the spheres rotated in the same direction) then there would be no change or time at all. For God to create a temporal world, by implication, he must necessarily arrange the cosmos so that things do change in relation to each other. By contrast, it is not necessary for that purpose that the changes occur in the direction they do rather than the opposite direction. Rather, they must change in one direction or another. Thus, in order for a temporal world to exist, one among equivalent possibilities must be realized in the absence of any hikmah and God, therefore, must be able to act without sufficient reason. All of this, according to Ibn Rushd is rhetorical. ‘For many things which by demonstration can be found to be necessary seem at first sight merely possible’ (1930 p. 44 / 1954 p. 26). He then briefly summarizes why the cosmos must be as it is according to Aristotelian cosmology. This account starts with the five elements (heaven, fire, air, water, and earth) with their ‘proven’ specific natures. That is, earth is ‘absolutely heavy,’ fire is ‘absolutely light,’ water and air are relatively heavy and light respectively, while heaven is neither heavy nor light. He then goes on to explain why the cosmos necessarily consists of concentric spheres. ‘He who understands this knows that every possible world imaginable can only consist of these bodies, and that bodies have to be either circular – and then they are neither heavy nor light – or rectilinear – and then they are either heavy or light…’ (1930 p. 46 / 1954 p. 27). He then goes on to explain that all sublunary bodies proceed in a continual cycle of generation and corruption, and that for the sake of this, the motion of the spheres must be just as it is. None of this, however, explains why this order would

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be disrupted, had another pair of points on the highest heaven have been the poles, or had the spheres rotated in the opposite direction. Of course, what Ibn Rushd is asserting here as demonstrably necessary is an archaic cosmology that we now know is demonstrably false. While he was not in a position to realize that, he at least acknowledges that what he offers here does not amount to a demonstration. ‘Do not ask here for a proof for all this, but if you are interested in science, look for its proof where you can find it,’ he writes. ‘Here, however, listen to theories which are more convincing than those of the theologians and which, even if they do not bring you complete proof, will give your mind an inclination to lead you to proof through scientific speculation’ (1930 p. 47 / 1954 p. 27). There is a point here that deserves consideration independently of the veracity of his science, and which resonates with a common defense of methodological naturalism. For we might read Ibn Rushd here as subtly acknowledging that the details of Aristotelian natural science have not all been demonstrated, while insisting that this is beside the point. For these theories are based on the guiding supposition that everything in nature can be explained scientifically; that is, they can be demonstrated to be as they are by necessity, in terms of the nature of the world itself. As such, they incline the mind to lead one to proof, as he says. Thus, when he exhorts the reader to look for its proof where you can find it, perhaps he does not mean only the books of Aristotle where the proofs are already given. Perhaps he means to look to nature itself, guided by the methodological supposition that such proofs are discoverable. By contrast, consider the supposition that nothing about the world is ultimately explicable in terms of its own nature, and is therefore either ultimately random or explicable only in terms of an inscrutable agent external to the world that could just as readily have made it any other way. This precludes any discernible order in nature, thereby inclining the mind against scientific research. Furthermore, and importantly, for an ostensibly religious thinker like Ibn Rushd, it obviates the notion that wisdom in the order of nature is a sign of the wisdom of its

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Creator. Yet again, Ghazālī has not proposed that nothing in the world has a hikmah, but only that not everything does. The scientifically inclined mind, one might argue, requires one not only to entertain the supposition that everything has a hikmah but also to subject it to systematic doubt; that is, by demanding a demonstration and viewing every proposed explanation with a critical eye. Ghazālī has raised this challenge with two specific features of the cosmos, and nothing in Ibn Rushd’s general exposition so far touches on these. Hence, his second answer to Ghazālī is that heaven is an animal. For ‘insofar as it possesses a body of a definite measure and shape and moves itself in definite directions, not at random…through its own power, not through an exterior cause, and…in opposite directions at the same time, we are sure that it is a living being’ (1930 pp. 47–48 / 1954 pp. 27–8). It therefore has particular points that are poles by nature, and not by accident, just as terrestrial animals have organs in the arrangement necessary for their bodies to function. Just as my feet could not perform their function if they were located where my ears are, so the poles, which are the organs of locomotion for the heavenly spheres, cannot be other than where they are. Two key differences, Ibn Rushd emphasizes, between spherical and terrestrial animals play a role in this argument. The individual terrestrial animal is but one of a species including multiple members which may differ one from another in accidental features. Each individual heaven is a species of one, so that every feature of it is essential and determined by its nature. The location of the pole is therefore analogous to the location of a human’s feet rather than, for example, the color of one’s hair. Secondly, in non-spherical animals the organs differ with respect to both shape and power, while in the spheres, the poles differ from other points only with respect to power. To say that the poles of heaven could have been any other points is then to say that it could have rotated on a point without the power to rotate. The argument is similar in the case of the direction of the spheres’ rotation, which Ibn Rushd insists follows from their natures. Everything that moves in a definite direction rather than randomly is, again, an animal whose motion follows from its

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nature. The difference being, again, that for terrestrial animals, motion differs in shape and power, while in the spheres it differs only in power. ‘You might as well say that the crab could be imagined as having the same direction of movement as man,’ he writes. ‘But as a matter of fact, such a thought will not occur to you about men and crabs, because of their difference in shape, whereas it might occur to you about the heavenly spheres, since they agree in shape (1930 p. 51 / 1954 p. 29). The key here is that, for Ibn Rushd, neither the power of a specific organ nor its definite motion, are reducible to its shape. It is intuitive to think that the power of my feet, for example, does not merely depend on, but is also explained by, their location on my body in relation to its shape. Likewise, the power of a crab’s unique organs and definite locomotion are a result of its peculiar bodily shape. Thus, the notion that points on a sphere would differ with respect to power but not shape as Ibn Rushd claims, seems to beg the question just what this difference in power consists in. Yet for Ibn Rushd, following Aristotle, the shape of men and crabs does not determine their motion. Rather, the determinate motion determines the animal’s shape while its nature determines its motion. That is, when on Ibn Rushd’s paradigm we refer to the ‘nature’ of the animal to explain why its organs have the powers they do, it is not the shape of the animal (the location of the organs, for example), but its telos. This determines its motion, and thus the shape which best conforms to that motion. Ibn Rushd’s answer to the question, why does the heaven rotate on the pole, and in the direction it does, is simply that to do so is what the heaven is. In the final analysis, it is ‘for the best’ because what is for the best just is for a thing to do that which makes it what it is. This is interestingly similar to certain assertions Ghazālī has already made. As to why the will differentiates between similars, his answer was that to do so is what will is, just as to know its object is what it is to be knowledge. Again, to be temporal is to undergo change. If will could be will without differentiating, knowledge without knowing, and the temporal without change – that is if there is nothing that is necessary for these things to be what they are –

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then there is simply no reality to these things whatsoever. If there is a heaven, there must be something there is to be heaven. How could Ghazālī answer Ibn Rushd’s assertion that to be heaven just is to rotate on this pole in this direction, exactly as heaven actually does? He must dispute the contention that heaven is a species unto itself, insisting that it is only a specimen, an individual member of a species. The position, that heaven could have been otherwise with respect to its pole or direction, and yet still have been heaven, entails as much, for it entails a distinction between features such as these, which are accidental, and other essential features that heaven must have in order to be in fact a heaven. Otherwise, if heaven is a species unto itself, his assertion must be that it is possible for God to have created some other spherical outermost body with a different pole and direction of rotation, and which would be a different species unto itself, but not ‘heaven.’ Ultimately, Ibn Rushd would have to reject either suggestion for the same reason, based on his concept of possibility. The possible is that which is sometimes the case and sometimes not. This is precisely why heaven for him is a species unto itself. For if it were merely a specimen, other distinct members of the same species must be possible, which for Ibn Rushd simply means that at some time there actually are other heavens. The possibility of horses of a different color, for example, is just the actual existence, at times, of horses of different colors. Since there is only one heaven however, no other heaven is possible. This heaven is the only possible heaven, and is thus a species unto itself. To be heaven is to rotate in the way that it does, on the pole that it does, because this is what the one actual heaven does. Likewise, there is no sense in arguing that possibly some other thing may have existed instead of heaven, because there simply is no such ‘other thing’ to be possible. For his part, Ghazālī would have to answer one or another of two questions. If heaven is not a species unto itself, but only one of a number of ‘possible different’ heavens, then what is it to be a heaven, and more importantly what makes it the case that to be a heaven is just that (whatever it is)? Alternatively, if

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‘something else’ other than heaven might have existed, then what is that ‘something else,’ and what makes that the case? Ibn Rushd has a comparatively straightforward answer. What it is to be something (a horse or heaven) is a matter of what the thing actually is. The possible variation involved in distinguishing a species (and the essential features thereof) from its members (and the accidental features that distinguish them) is for him straightforwardly explainable in terms of the actual variation we can observe among them. Ghazālī cannot avail himself of this sort of explanation, for he has asserted the possibility of a different heaven, of which in actuality there is only one. He is thus committed to there being a fact about what it is to be a heaven, but which is nevertheless independent of the heaven that actually is. The question this raises for Ghazālī then, is as Richard Frank puts it, that of the ‘ontological origin of the essences as such, i.e. of the origin or the being of the possibles as possible essences’ (Frank 1992 p. 63). This question is crucial to whether and how one might make sense of the proposition that the existing world is one of equally optimal possible worlds, the realization of any one of which would require an act of divine will.

SECTION 4.6. ROUNDABOUT

The second objection that Ghazālī mounts against the falāsifah’s first proof is that they must concede, in spite of themselves, that the temporal proceeds from an eternal, simply because there are temporal events. Were they not to proceed from the Eternal, an infinite regress would ensue, the impossibility of which leads the falāsifah themselves to assert the existence of an eternal first cause. The falāsifah, of course, reply that rather than deny the procedure of any temporal from an eternal, they merely deny that of a first temporal event, for the reason already given. A first temporal event cannot have any prior condition that could explain its coming to be at that time. A temporal event can proceed from an eternal, only if another temporal event precedes it, which prepares the conditions for its occurrence in its time. This effectively entails an infinite regress of temporal events, as Ghazālī points out (2000 p. 28).

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This is an infinite regress of accidental causes, as Ibn Rushd pre-emptively explains. Such a regress is not an actual infinite for again, the passing away of each previous thing in the series is a condition for the coming to be of each subsequent thing. What is impossible is an infinite regress of essential causes, which necessarily co-exist with their effects (1930 pp. 58–60 / 1954 pp. 33–34). As Ghazālī’s falāsifah explain, heavenly spheres are not temporally created but eternal, as are their circular motions. These motions, rather, are eternal in one respect as they are the eternal acts of the eternal souls of the heavens. They are in another respect temporal, as they are ever renewed, giving rise to recurrent astronomical changes that arise from their motion in relation to one another. These changes in turn give rise to all terrestrial changes in their complicated causal interdependence. All of this chain of motion essentially terminates with the eternal circular heavenly motion. Thus, a temporal event can only proceed from the Eternal through the mediation of the eternal circular motion, since it is in a sense both eternal and temporal (2000 pp. 28–9). The question, Ghazālī insists, is whether the eternally renewed circular motion is the principle of temporal events inasmuch as it is eternal, or inasmuch as it is renewed? If the former, then the temporal proceeds from the eternal after all. If the latter, then what is the cause of the renewal? For the renewal is a temporal event that requires a cause, which will be either temporal (the previous rotation) or eternal (the soul of the sphere). The circular motion does not therefore provide a way to avoid concluding that the temporal proceeds from the Eternal after all (2000 p. 29). Ibn Rushd vainly labels this ‘sophistical,’ for his response is just to repeat the falāsifah’s explanation in such a way as to reinforce Ghazālī’s point. ‘The temporal does not proceed from the eternal insofar as it is eternal, but insofar as it is temporal;’ he argues, ‘it does not need, however, for its arising anew a cause arising anew, for its arising anew is not a new fact, but is an eternal act, i.e. an act without beginning or end’ (1930 p. 63 / 1954 p. 36). Its arising anew is not a new fact, but an eternal act.

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There is probably no way to express more clearly the contradiction Ghazālī sees in this theory.

CHAPTER FIVE. TIME, SPACE, AND THE IMAGINATION

As we saw above, the position Ghazālī takes against the falāsifah’s second proof is that time was created with the world, before which there was no time at all, and the notion that God’s existence prior to creation entails a time prior to creation in which He existed, is a fallacy resulting from the deceptive function of the estimative imagination. Ghazālī’s falāsifah respond just as Ibn Sīnā when he made this argument (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 305). If we consider the future annihilation of the world, it would be correct to say, ‘God will be and the world will not be,’ rather than ‘God was and the world was not;’ the difference being between ‘was’ and ‘will be,’ which is the difference between the past and the future – that is, time. The proposition that ‘God was and the world was not,’ therefore, does entail a past time at which God exists without the world, and thus, a ‘time before time’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 31). In Section 5.1, below, we will examine Ghazālī’s counterargument, that ‘was’ and ‘will be’ connote a relation ‘necessary with respect to us.’ I will argue that Ibn Rushd’s interpretation of Ghazālī’s argument is incomplete, and that a close analysis of the text will show that Ghazālī’s argument raises the distinction between what, following John McTaggart (1921), have become known as the ‘A-series’ and ‘B-series’ conceptions of time; and that, indeed, Ghazālī’s argument for the subjectivity of A-series time is interestingly similar to McTaggart’s. In Section 5.2 we will examine a second argument Ghazālī offers for this position by

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drawing an analogy between time and space, along with Ibn Rushd’s objections. I will argue that these objections remain indecisive in light of questions Aristotle had raised, and left open, over whether time exists independently of the soul. In Section 5.3, I will show that Ghazālī uses the falāsifah to hypothesize the objectivity of a ‘B-theory’ conception of time, and then to point out, following from the analogy between them that, like space, time has no intrinsic direction. Like ‘above’ and ‘below’, the relations ‘before’ and ‘after’ are relative to the position of the subject. Thus, the outermost limits of the world’s temporal dimension (that is, the beginning and end of the world) are, like its outermost spatial limits, objectively interchangeable. Section 5.4 will revisit some points from earlier in the discussion, in light of our analysis of Ghazālī’s argument from the space-time analogy. In the process we will discover some interesting implications, including the notion of spatiotemporally selfenclosed possible worlds, and the relativity of motion and rest to a subjective point of reference (effectively, an inertial frame), imposed by the estimative imagination, or wahm. Finally, in Section 5.5, we will review another argument for cosmic pre-eternity that Ghazālī’s falāsifah deploy, also from Ibn Sīnā, and based on his innovative analysis of time as the measure of possible motion. After reviewing Ghazālī’s objection and Ibn Rushd’s response, I will argue that the former is ultimately unsatisfying, proposing an alternative response Ghazālī should have made by drawing more fully on the ramifications of the notion of spatiotemporally self-enclosed possible worlds implicit in this argument.

SECTION 5.1. TWO MODELS OF TIME

Let us start with Ibn Rushd’s construal of Ghazālī’s response to the second proof. There are two parts to this objection: the first is that when we imagine the past and future, i.e. the prior and the posterior, they are two things existing in relation to our imagination, because we can imagine a future event as becoming past and a past event as having been future. But if this is so past and future are not real things in themselves and do not possess

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existence outside the soul; they are only [actions] of the soul (tafʿalahu al-nafs). And when movement is annihilated, the relation and measure of time will not have sense anymore (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 73 / 1954 p. 42).

Ibn Rushd’s reading of Ghazālī seems to be that the relation of past and future are acts of the soul, and that therefore, movement depends on the soul indirectly in virtue of its dependence on the relation of past and future, and that time depends on soul in virtue of its dependence on movement: 1. We can imagine a future event as becoming past, and a past event as having been future. 2. Therefore, past and future do not exist independently of (are constructs of) the soul. 3. Without the relation of past and future, there is no movement. 4. Without movement, there is no time. Therefore, time does not exist independently of the soul

This account of Ghazālī’s objection recalls a hypothesis, considered by Aristotle and adopted by some of his commentators, that since time is the number of motion with respect to before and after, and only the soul can enumerate, it would follow that time (and perhaps also motion) could not exist without the soul (Sorabji 1983 p 28–9, 59, 91). A puzzle arises about whether there would be time if there were no soul. For if it is impossible for there to be anyone who counts, it is also impossible for there to be anything countable, and so plainly there will be no number either; for number is either what is counted or what is countable. If nothing else besides soul, and (more specifically) the understanding in the soul, is naturally capable of counting, then it is impossible for there to be time if there is no soul. All there would be would be the subject of time, if, that is to say, it is possible for there to be motion without soul. Before and after belong to motion, and time is these insofar as they are countable (Aristotle Physics IV-14).

The Aristotelian suggestion here is that time might depend directly on the enumerative function of the soul, and then that

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motion might depend on the soul indirectly via its dependence on time. Here is Ghazālī’s assertion, in his own words: The third thing, by virtue of which there is a difference between the two expressions, is a relation necessary with respect to us [only]. The proof of this is that if we suppose the nonexistence of the world and suppose for it another existence, then we would say, ‘God was and the world was not,’ this statement being true regardless of whether we mean the first nonexistence or the second nonexistence, which is after existence. The sign that this is relative is that the future can become a past and is expressed in the past tense (Ghazālī 2000 p. 32).

This does not match Ibn Rushd’s account. The conclusion here is not explicitly about time as such. It is about ‘that in virtue of which there is a difference between the two expressions’ (‘was’ and ‘will be’). Secondly, the first premise of Ibn Rushd’s version is nowhere in Ghazālī’s passage, which offers a ‘proof’ and a ‘sign.’ The ‘sign’ is that the future can become a past, and not just imagined as becoming a past. The ‘proof’ is that events (in this case, hypothetical annihilations of the world) that are related to one another in the order of before and after can both be past, and correctly referred to as ‘past’ ‘whether we mean the first nonexistence or the second non-existence which is after existence.’ Importantly, even as the future event becomes a past, it remains later in relation to earlier events, in a relation of before and after distinct, therefore, from the order of past and future. Yet Ghazālī continues to describe these past events as earlier and later, even while he concludes that the order of past and future is ‘a relation necessary only to us.’ What Ibn Rushd missed, then, is that Ghazālī has distinguished between two distinct conceptions of temporal order: that of before and after, and that of past and future. Based on the fact, that the latter changes while the former does not, he has made the objectivity of the latter, and not the former, the target of his argument here. There is, moreover, no explicit inference here from the premise that past and future are relative, to the denial of time and movement. The distinction drawn in this objection recalls the nineteenth century British idealist, John McTaggart, who famously distin-

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guished between two conceptions of time, for which he coined the terms ‘A-series’ and ‘B-series’, respectively (McTaggart 1921). The A-series orders events as ‘past’, ‘present’, ‘and ‘future.’ On the A-series, events are always changing their position. An event that is presently in the future will eventually be in the present, and then recede into the past. This is because on the A-series, time is conceived in reference to a ‘now’, understood as a point in time that is intrinsically distinct from the past and future, and as moving in an intrinsic direction ‘away’ from the past and ‘toward’ the future. This idea of a constantly moving ‘now’ is analogous to the way a boat floats downriver, toward that which is ahead of it and away from that which is behind. The B-series, on the other hand, orders events as ‘before’ and ‘after’ each other, rather than in reference to any intrinsic ‘now.’ Events retain their position on this order permanently. The year 2010 is after 2009, and before 2011. Likewise, the year 3010 is after 3009, and before 3011. In both cases, the order is fixed. On the B-series, there is no reference to any intrinsically ‘present’ point in time, and therefore no ‘past’ or ‘future’ away from, or toward which time is moving. Positions of events on the B-series, therefore, are fixed, like those represented on a timeline in a history book. Returning to the falāsifah argument, from the difference between ‘was’ and ‘will be’, it is clear that it presupposes, in McTaggart’s terms, an A-series conception of time. To articulate, in these terms, what we noted just above, Ghazālī’s response involves a distinction and relation between the A-series and Bseries. The proof that the difference between the past and the future is ‘a relation necessary with respect to us’ he says, is that if we consider the future annihilation of the world, followed by its re-creation, then it would be correct to use the same expression, in the past tense, to refer to either the earlier or later annihilations – ‘the first nonexistence, or the second nonexistence which is after existence.’ These two annihilations, though in the order of before and after, would both be past. That is, the events can change their positions on the A-series while retaining them on the B-series.

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‘The sign that this is relative,’ he writes, ‘is that the future can become past and is expressed in the past tense’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 32). What is to be unpacked from this elliptical statement? Just how is this fact, that the future can become a past, a sign that past and future are relative? Compare Ghazālī’s statements here to McTaggart’s own argument that time is, as he puts it, ‘unreal’ (McTaggart 1921 p. 9). This argument turns on showing that the A-series conception is contradictory and thus cannot correspond to an objective reality. McTaggart argues that time requires change, since it is the measure of change (as Ghazālī and the falāsifah agree). Yet on the B-series conception, McTaggart argues, there is no change, since every event is fixed in a static order of ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Change is only possible given the Aseries conception of time, with its intrinsic ‘now’, perpetually plunging ‘into’ the future. The A-series, therefore, is essential to the notion of time (McTaggart 1921 pp. 11–18). Since it is contradictory, time is, therefore, ‘unreal.’ The latter part of this argument is parallel to what Ibn Rushd attributed to Ghazālī: without past and future there is no change; and without change there is no time. However, the fact that we can imagine a future as becoming past, and the past as having been future, does not immediately show that the A-series is contradictory. McTaggart’s argument is based on exactly the observation Ghazālī makes in saying ‘the future can become a past.’ McTaggart starts by pointing out that being past, present, and future are mutually incompatible. That is, if an event is past, it cannot also be present or future; if it is present, it cannot be past or future; and if it is future, it cannot be past or present. Yet on the A-series every event is past, present, and future, which is contradictory (McTaggart 1921 p. 20). The obvious objection is that the A-series does not entail that any event is simultaneously past, present, and future. It only entails that events are successively; first future, then present, and then past. While it would be contradictory to suppose an event being past, present, and future at the same time, this is not what the Aseries entails. Rather, an event that was future at a past time, can be present in the present, and will be past at a future time, and so forth (McTaggart 1921 p. 21). Ghazālī said the ‘sign’ is that the

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future can become a past, not that the future is a past. There is no contradiction in that. So how is this a sign of its relativity? There is a contradiction, according to McTaggart, even in this apparently obvious solution; and one which may explain why Ghazālī’s ‘sign’ is that ‘the future can become a past,’ and not ‘the future event can become a past event.’ That is, to offer this solution is to suppose that moments in time also have an order on the Aseries. To say that this event was future at a past moment in time, but will be past at a future moment in time, entails that the different moments in time at which an event is past, present, and future, are themselves past, present, and future. This poses the same contradiction, posed earlier with respect to events: we must suppose each moment in time as past, present, and future (McTaggart 1921 pp. 21–2). To resolve the contradiction in the same way, by insisting that moments in time are not past, present, and future simultaneously, but only successively, entails reference to a second set of moments. We must say, for example, that at a past moment in time, this moment was future, but at a future moment, this moment will be past, etc. Then, this second set of moments must also be past, present, and future. We therefore face a dilemma between a contradiction and an infinite regress. Either way, the A-series reduces to absurdity. Something like this, I suggest, is what lies behind Ghazālī’s ‘sign,’ in the fact that the future can become a past, that the pastfuture relation is relative. However, we cannot assume, here, that, like McTaggart, Ghazālī means to conclude that time per se is unreal. We have seen that he distinguished the past-future relation (the ‘A-series’) from the before-after relation (‘B-series’), and has argued only that the former is a relation necessary to us, but without making that relation essential to time as such. In fact, his ‘proof’ that the past-future relation is relative to us was precisely that the ‘B-series’ order between events remains fixed while they shift positions on the A-series. Sorabji has noted Ghazālī’s anticipation of the claim that the past-future relation is ego-centric, but does not see – in Ghazālī or elsewhere among medieval philosophers – a full anticipation of McTaggart’s distinction between the ‘A and B- series’ (Sorabji 1983 pp. 44–5). Obviously, I am making a stronger claim, in

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suggesting that Ghazālī, here, has not only anticipated McTaggart’s distinction, but also, to a degree, his argument against the objectivity of the A-series. Of course, in virtue of Ghazālī’s elliptical style, he does not spell out the argument in the same detail as McTaggart, and this makes my case weaker than it would otherwise be. Earlier, however, we noted a statement from Ghazālī’s alIqtisād, which adds strength to it. He argued that were the eternity of God to entail the existence of an eternal duration of time in which He exists, then the eternity of that duration would entail another eternal duration of time in which it exists, ad infinitum. That is, to postulate a time at which a time exists, leads to an infinite regress. This is the essence of McTaggart’s argument, against the proposal of saving the A-series by postulating that, for example, a future moment becomes past at a future moment. Below we will see more evidence that, at least, a full-fledged distinction between the A-series and B-series is operative, in the discussion involving the second (and to Ibn Rushd, the most important and ‘malicious’) part of Ghazālī’s answer to the falāsifah contention that the term ‘was’ entails a past time, before the world’s existence.

SECTION 5.2. SPACE-TIME ANALOGY

The ‘A-series’ relations (those expressed by ‘was’ and ‘will be’) are necessary only to us, and not the order of events themselves. Therefore, a first creation does not rationally entail, as the falāsifah argue, an objective ‘past’. They have mistaken the limits of the estimative imagination for rational impossibility. ‘All this is due to the inability of the estimative [faculty] to comprehend an existence that has a beginning except by supposing a ‘before’ for it,’ Ghazālī writes. ‘This ‘before’, from which the estimation does not detach itself, is believed to be a thing realized – namely, time’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 32). The inability to imagine a beginning of time without a ‘before’ is similar, he argues, to the inability to imagine a finite heaven with no space ‘above’ it (either filled or void). In spite of our inability to imagine the latter, the falāsifah have a rational demonstration proving with logical certainty (as

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Ghazālī grants) that the universe is a finite body beyond which there is no space at all. This is just the Aristotelian argument, that an actual infinite magnitude is impossible, which John Philoponus (and later Al-Kindi and the ʾAshʿarīs) turned against the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity. Here, rational demonstration outstrips the limits of what we can imagine. Likewise, the mere fact that one cannot imagine a beginning of the world with no ‘before’ does not constitute an objection in the face of a rational proof of the finitude of motion. Ghazālī poses this space-time analogy argument in two stages. First, he argues that, ‘just as spatial extension is a concomitant of body, temporal extension is a concomitant of motion.’ Therefore, ‘just as the proof of the finitude of the dimensions of body prohibits affirming a spatial dimension beyond it, the proof of the finitude of motion prohibits affirming a temporal extension before it’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 33). In the next stage of the argument, he draws an analogy between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ relation, and that of ‘above’ and ‘below.’ ‘There is no difference between temporal extension that in relation [to us] divides verbally into ‘before’ and ‘after’ and spatial extension that in relation [to us] divides into ‘above’ and ‘below’, he writes. Therefore, ‘if it is legitimate to affirm an ‘above’ that has no above, it is legitimate to affirm a ‘before’ that has no real before, except as an estimative imaginary [one] as with the ‘above’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 33). The additional point of analogy made here is that the divisions ‘above-below’ and ‘beforeafter’ are both verbal divisions in relation to us. In the former case, then, where there is an ‘above,’ it signifies a relation between the position of one using that term and that of some real (or imagined) objects in the spatial order. In the latter case, where there is a ‘before,’ it signifies a relation between the position of one using the term and that of some real (or imagined) events in the temporal order. On the other hand, with reference to the heaven, ‘above’ signifies only an imagined relation to an imagined object; just as, in reference to the beginning of the world, ‘before’ signifies only an imagined relation to an imagined event. Ibn Rushd objects vigorously to this analogy between time and space, explaining the fundamental differences between the

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two according to Aristotle (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 76–80 / 1954 pp. 43–46). While the spatial limit does not logically entail a space beyond itself, he argues, the temporal limit, the instant, does logically entail a prior and posterior time. Since the instant is the ‘now,’ which does not subsist in itself but is only the end of the past and beginning of the future, the supposition of a temporal instant without any preceding time (a first moment of time) is, not merely unimaginable, but actually a genuine logical contradiction. As he puts it, there cannot be a ‘now’ before a future, without its being the end of a past. This only indicates the paradoxical nature of the concept, which Aristotle famously noted but that Ibn Rushd seemingly evades. For why not assert a first present, which is the beginning of the future, without being the end of any past? The answer is that if it were the beginning of the future it would be part of the future, and therefore would not be the present. Yet for the same reason, it makes as little sense for Ibn Rush to say that any present must be the end of the past. Hence the classic Aristotelian paradox of time (Aristotle Physics IV-10). The present, as merely the limit between past and future is nothing in itself, and yet the past and future only exist in relation to that limit. It seems to follow that neither past, present, nor future are real in themselves. Aristotle does not ultimately offer a proof that time is independently real. Rather, he goes on to explain how we perceive time. But we apprehend time only when we have marked motion, marking it by ‘before’ and ‘after’, and it is only when we have perceived ‘before’ and ‘after’ in motion that we say that time has elapsed…When we think of the extremes as different from the middle and the mind pronounces that the ‘nows’ are two, one before and one after, it is then that we say that there is time, and this that we say is time (Aristotle Physics IV-11).

The commentators of late antiquity certainly had good reason to differ on how real Aristotle took time to be. For the ‘now’ here seems very much like a limit which the imagination imposes on the continuity of motion, in which case past, present and future are actions of the soul, which would explain their tenuous existence under examination. Ibn Sīnā holds that the instant is the product of the wahm, and yet that we know the instant from

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knowing time, rather than the reverse (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 237). Ibn Rushd also takes a realist stance on the question. ‘The answer is that the necessary connection of movement and time is real, and time is something the soul constructs in movement, but neither movement nor time is annihilated,’ he insists, ‘they are only abolished in those things which are not subject to motion, but in the existence of moving things or their possible existence time inheres necessarily’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 74 / 1954 p. 42). The question here may then be which things are subject to motion. In any case, if the instant is itself only a limit imposed by the mind, then to assert that it necessarily entails a prior time amounts only to the assertion that one cannot imagine a first instant. It should also lead us to question whether the denial of cosmic pre-eternity actually entails the existence of a first instant. A second fault in the analogy, Ibn Rushd explains, is that the relation between time and motion is different from that between the spatial limit and magnitude. The spatial limit is actually an attribute inhering in the magnitude, and is therefore individuated by it. Thus, ‘this’ space is the space of ‘this’ object. Time is the number of motion, and number is not individuated by what it enumerates. That is, there is not one ‘ten’ for ten horses, and another ‘ten’ for ten cows, but the same number ten for both. There is therefore one time for all motion, and not an individual time for each. The occurrence of a numbered thing does not bring its number into existence, he argues. Rather the existence of number is a necessary condition for the existence of the numbered. Thus, the occurrence of a movement entails the prior existence of time (which is its number). This analogy, however, actually works against him. The existence of number is a necessary condition for the existence of ten horses. Does this mean that the number ten must exist before the horses in time? When did the number ten come to be? It seems, rather, to mean that there must be enumeration for there to be an enumerated. Likewise, we should conclude that time is a necessary condition for motion, but this does not imply that time exists before motion in time. The priority of time to motion is essential rather than temporal. Therefore, while Ibn Rushd is correct in pointing out this difference between time and space, it

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is not relevant to the question at hand. Moreover, his argument only pushes against his realism about time from another classic angle that Aristotle considered. If enumeration is a necessary condition for the enumerated, then it seems so also is the existence of an enumerator. Hence, Aristotle’s question, mentioned earlier, as to whether time exists independently of the soul. Of course, if time is the necessary condition of motion, as Ibn Rushd claims, then this question also applies to that.

SECTION 5.3. THE DIRECTION OF TIME

Ghazālī, for his part, does something very interesting here. He proceeds to point out – in the falāsifah voice – that his own analogy is false, though for different reasons. Since the world is spherical, it has no intrinsic ‘above’ or ‘below’. The meanings of these terms are simply relative to the position of the speaker, so that as the heavens rotate, what was ‘above’ becomes ‘below’, and vice versa. ‘‘Above’ and ‘below’ [constitute] a relation purely to you in terms of which no change in the parts and surfaces of the world is affected’ (Ghazālī 2000 pp. 33–4). Yet while ‘above’ and ‘below’ are relative and interchangeable in the way described, ‘before’ and ‘after’ are not. ‘Thus, the two limits of the world’s nonexistence, one being the first, the other second, are essential, established limits whose interchange through the change of relations is utterly inconceivable’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 34). That is, the beginning of the world cannot become its end, and vice versa, simply by a shift in perspective. The direction in the order of ‘before’ and ‘after’ is (unlike that of ‘above’ and ‘below’) intrinsic to the order itself, and not relative to some third thing. Thus while the spatially finite world has no real ‘above’ and ‘below,’ one could not similarly claim that a temporally finite world has no real ‘before’ and ‘after.’ ‘If, then, the ‘before’ and ‘after’ have been established,’ the falāsifah say, ‘there is no meaning for time except in terms of what is expressed by ‘before’ and ‘after’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 34). Here, the indication of a shift from the A-series conception of time to the Bseries is most explicit. Put in these terms, Ghazālī is using the voice of the falāsifah to raise the following hypothesis. While the A-series conception of time may be relative (so that an event’s

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apparent position on that order will alter in relation to the position of a subject, as in ‘above’ and ‘below’) time is in fact an objective order corresponding to the B-series conception. On this order, positions are not interchangeable in relation to the position of the subject, for if they were, then the beginning of the world could become its end, and vice versa, through some change in perspective. Yet the beginning and end of the world are essentially distinct, due to the essential difference in direction between the relations ‘before’ and ‘after’. While space has no intrinsic direction, goes the argument, time does. Therefore, the analogy between the two is invalid. Here, Ghazālī simply shifts terminology. ‘This makes no difference,’ he writes, ‘There is no [particular] object in assigning the utterance ‘above’ and ‘below,’ but we will shift to the expressions ‘beyond’ and ‘outside’ and say, ‘The world has an inside and an outside: is there, then, outside the world something which is either filled or empty space?’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 35). Of course, the interlocutors must reply that there is not, and that the world has no ‘outside’ except in the sense of its ‘outermost surface’ – the limit of its extension. Likewise, Ghazālī argues, there is no ‘before’ for the world, other than in the sense of a ‘limit in which it began,’ and this is not anymore ‘incomprehensible’ than the notion of a ‘finite bodily existence that has no outside.’ The apparent incomprehensibility, in both cases, is merely the effect of the limits of the estimative imagination, and not due to any rationally demonstrable impossibility (Ghazālī 2000 p. 35). Ghazālī sums up his argument on the ‘second proof’ by asserting that God has an existence without the world, and that this does not entail the existence of any time during which He exists ‘before’ the world. ‘What proves that [affirming another thing] is the work of the estimation,’ he says, ‘is that [this faculty] is specifically related with time and space’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 36). The estimation is always equally capable of imagining either a temporal beginning of the world (as a body), or its temporal extension before any imagined first moment (and by implication, its eternity). However, it is equally incapable of imagining either the spatial finitude of space, or the temporal finitude of time. Thus, we are unable to imagine an outer spatial limit of the

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universe without imagining a ‘beyond’ it of either filled space or void, and we are unable to imagine a first moment of time without imaging it being preceded by a ‘before.’ For the estimative faculty, never being acquainted with a finite body except its having beside it another body or air, which it imagines to be a void, is unable to grasp [its contrary] in the unseen. Similarly, the estimative faculty has never had acquaintance with an event except its occurring after something else. It is thus incapable of supposing a temporal event that has no ‘before,’ this being [for it] an existing thing that has passed (Ghazālī 2000 p. 36).

But this argument could have been made more straightforwardly by making the analogy between the suppositions of a ‘before’ of time and an ‘outside’ of space, at the outset, rather than making the detour through the terms ‘above’ and ‘below.’ This raises the question, why was that detour made? Ghazālī writes that there is ‘no particular object’ in it. However, this would render the entire exchange of nearly two sections of text pointless, and such verbal inefficiency is not like him. His object, I believe, was to provide a kind of heuristic device to prepare the perceptive reader for the following implication of shifting to the ‘inside’ / ‘outside’ analogy. Unlike ‘above’ and ‘below,’ a finite universe does have an essential ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ in the sense specified (where ‘outside’ is the outermost limit). The essential distinction between the two is that, for any point on the inside there is something beyond it (between it and the circumference), whereas there is nothing beyond the outermost limit. On the modified analogy, the relation ‘before,’ of the world’s existence, corresponds to its ‘outside,’ as a ‘limit in which it began.’ Yet ‘after’ the world’s existence also corresponds to ‘outside’ on this analogy, which raises the question: are we to understand it as the limit in which it ended? This would beg the question as to what differentiates between the limit in which the world begins and the limit in which it ends. That is, on the modified space-time analogy there is still no essential difference between ‘before’ and ‘after,’ just as there is no essential difference between one and another point on the outermost limit of the world in virtue of which one is ‘above’ and

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the other is ‘below.’ In substituting the terms ‘above’ and ‘below’ for ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ Ghazālī both affirms that space has no intrinsic directionality and maintains his argument on the basis of the space-time analogy, entailing that time also has no intrinsic directionality, with the surprising implication that there is no essential distinction between the beginning of the world and its ending. On the resulting picture, it seems, the ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’ of the universe are both intrinsically similar ‘points’ at the outermost temporal limit of the world. In this case, they would be interchangeable, the beginning becoming the end and vice versa, by a mere shift in relations. Lenn Goodman has pointed out the resonance between Ghazālī’s earlier assertion of the relativity of time, and a discussion, in his ‘Jerusalem Letter,’ of God’s transcendence of directionality (Goodman 1992 p. 18). All directions – up and down, right and left, forward and behind – are meaningful only in relation to the structure of creatures’ bodies. ‘Up’ is ‘above the head and ‘down’ is ‘below the foot,’ so that ‘of an ant crawling on the ceiling: what is down in relation to its position is still up in relation to ours’ (Ghazālī 1965a p. 101). Likewise, right and left are derived from the two-sidedness of our bodies, and forward behind, from the position of the eyes in our heads. ‘All directions are therefore originated through the fact that man is originated,’ he writes, ‘But supposing that man was created after a different fashion, such as round like a sphere, these directions would never have existed’ (Ghazālī 1965a p. 102). It seems natural for Ghazālī to conclude, then, that the direction of time – the difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’ – is also relative to some aspect of the structure of the human being; though not, of course, to the outward physical structure of the body.

SECTION 5.4. SOME INTERESTING IMPLICATIONS

Recall when, above, the falāsifah assert the impossibility of Divine will, understood as a capacity to specify one among similar possibilities. Ghazālī’s response there (which represents his first explicit reference to the difference between rational proof and the limits of the estimation) is worth re-reading at this point.

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Under the presuppositions of the first proof, where time is taken to transcend the world (and ultimately, God), one could only understand ‘an essence existing neither outside nor inside the world’ in terms of the world’s spatial dimensions. The discussion over the second proof, however, has delivered a concept of time as a dimension of creation, analogous to space, and of the world as a finite spatio-temporal object. Consequently, an essence (i.e. God) existing ‘neither outside nor inside’ of the world, must now be understood in terms of both the spatial and temporal dimensions of the latter. Another point to recall is Ghazālī’s argument for the relativity of A-series time, involving the supposition of the annihilation of the world followed by its recreation. ‘The proof of this is that if we suppose the nonexistence of the world and suppose for it another existence,’ he wrote, ‘then we would say, ‘God was and the world was not,’ this statement being true regardless of whether we mean the first nonexistence or the second nonexistence, which is after existence.’ Based on the theory of space and time that has emerged above, this supposition ultimately resolves into the concept of two distinct, self-contained worlds bearing no spatio-temporal relation to one another whatsoever. Each of these logically possible worlds is neither outside nor inside the other. Yet, we can only represent them in the imagination as either following one another in a temporal succession of before and after, or else as simultaneously occupying separate but spatially related locations. Recall again Ghazālī’s argument that the falāsifahs’ own cosmology entails the differentiation of a thing from its similar, the very thing that, according to their version of the principle of sufficient reason, is impossible. According to that cosmology, the universe is enclosed by a series of spheres, each of which rotates

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around two poles, the outermost being simple and homogeneous throughout. Given this homogeneity, each point on the sphere is exactly identical to every other. Yet two of these points have been differentiated from the rest as the fixed poles around which the world rotates. To argue that these two points are differentiated as the poles in virtue of some unique property they alone possess only begs the question as to why just these points, among the rest, have that property. It is thus the inescapable conclusion that assigning [a particular place] with a specific characteristic is either arbitrary or else [realized] through an attribute whose very function is to render one thing [more] specific than its exact similar. For just as it is legitimate for them to say that the [temporal] states are equal in their receptivity of the world’s occurrence, it is legitimate for their opponents to say that the parts of heaven are equal in terms of the receptivity of the idea due to which precedence is given to the fixity of [one] position [for the pole] as against its replacement (Ghazālī 2000 p. 26).

The reference to the ‘fixity’ of the position differentiated as the pole draws attention to its function, in this model, as an absolute stationary point in a universe otherwise in constant motion. In contemporary terms, it fixes the inertial frame around which motion, velocity, and therefore time, are determined. Given that there is such an essential pole of the universe on this model, there is an absolute inertial frame, and thus, an absolute determination of motion, velocity, and time. Yet as Ghazālī points out, there are no points in the universe intrinsically privileged, among others, for ‘receptivity of the idea’ due to which such precedence is given. Any point in space could serve equally well as the fixed point of reference upon which the inertial frame is established, in relation to which the motion and velocity of other objects is determined. To differentiate one point as fixed is to differentiate one among others, which are intrinsically similar, though they may be different in terms of their relation to other objects. For example, as a group of such objects in space, we typically take a nearby point on the Earth as fixed in order to establish the

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inertial frame within which we measure motion, velocity, and the passage of time. This point is similar to any other in absolute terms, but different in respect to its relation to our own bodies – it is nearby, and moving in the same velocity and direction. Such a selection on our part is, therefore, not an act of pure will, in the sense of a differentiation of one from among exactly similar possibilities. Rather, it is like a man taking one of two intrinsically similar dates, or glasses of water, because of its being nearer to his right hand. Yet with respect to God, who is neither outside nor inside the world, there is no such relative difference. Now, the Aristotelian assumption that there is an absolute fixed pole around which rest of the universe turns will indicate a principle that differentiates something from its similar in the sense of establishing that point, from among others, as an absolute inertial frame. We know, however, that what the Aristotelian paradigm conceived as the fixed pole of the universe is in fact only a feature of our experience of the motion of the heavens because of the motion of our planet in relation to that of the observed heavenly bodies. The second feature of the Aristotelian cosmos that, according to Ghazālī, requires the differentiation of one thing from its similar is the direction of the rotations of its spheres. Since there is no intrinsic difference between one direction and another, it is not possible to explain, in terms of the directions themselves, why the spheres rotate in the specific directions they do. Again, Ghazālī compares this equivalence of possible directions to the equivalence of possible moments at which the world might have begun, to turn the falāsifahs’ own objection against them. Yet in light of Ghazālī’s declared position that there were no moments before the world began, this line of argument is ultimately irrelevant. What this leaves for the context of this discussion, is just the observation of equivalence between possible directions of rotation, and the opportunity for Ghazālī to use the falāsifah to suggest the following. If all the whole [of the spheres] were to rotate in one direction, then their positions would not differ, and the relationships between the stars in terms of their being triune, sextine, having conjunction, and the like would not come

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about. The whole would then be in one state, without any differentiation at all, when [in fact] these [diverse] relationships are the principles of temporal events in the world (Ghazālī 2000 p. 27).

Ghazālī’s response was again that proposing the possibility that directions of rotation could have been different than they are does not commit one specifically to the position that they could have been all the same. If the direction of each sphere were reverse, he argues, this would accomplish everything the current arrangement does just as well. The ‘objection’ Ghazālī raises through the falāsifah is so superfluous, and his reply so obvious, that it raises a familiar question: why include it in the exchange at all? Why did Ghazālī not simply base his argument on the specific possibility of an exact reversal in the direction of the spheres from the outset? Since he did not accomplish anything by this detour with respect to the explicit line of argument, we should look again at he did accomplish. To the discerning reader, keeping in mind the implications of his position on the nature of time, he will have brought attention to the following related observations. If all the spheres did rotate in one direction, then the positions of heavenly bodies in relation to one another would never change. In this case, the entire universe would remain in a single state. Yet changes in the relations between the bodies in the universe are (as the falāsifah remind us) the ‘principles of temporal events.’ If there were no change, then there would be no temporally ordered events, and therefore, no time. This much is explicitly stated. In the context of the discussion of the second argument, reflection on the hypothetical scenario (which it is clearly the aim of this otherwise aimless passage to evoke) indicates more. If all the spheres’ ‘moved’ in the same direction, all points in space would be ‘at rest’ in relation to one another. Therefore, there would be no ‘poles’. It would be the case, then, that the objects in the universe are neither moving in the same direction, nor at rest in relation to each other. They would be neither in motion nor at rest. Therefore, there would be no ‘before’ and no ‘after.’ What Ghazālī has accomplished with this odd passage is to conjure an image in the estimative imagination of the reader, the

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role of which is to liberate the reader, to some degree, from the limits of that very faculty. When we arrive, through this image, to the realization that a universe so imagined is devoid of both motion and rest, it is only a short step to realize that it is also devoid of ‘before’, ‘after’, and ‘simultaneity.’ This is not because we are able to imagine such a universe directly, but only because we can realize that the universe we are imagining is not the one that we are conceiving. Ghazālī uses the voice of the falāsifah to introduce the rationally conceivable possibility of a universe wherein all motion is similar in direction and velocity. Yet such a world can only be imagined as a large group of objects moving in the same direction and velocity in relation to an inertial frame which the imagination irresistibly imposes on the scenario; a fixed position beyond the universe – either ‘filled space or void’ – in relation to which the whole is imagined as moving. When it is realized that this inertial frame is not itself part of the concept of the universe that we are attempting to imagine, but rather an added feature from which the imagination cannot refrain, then the distinction between the object of reason and the objects (and limits) of the estimative imagination stands clarified. In the ‘Book of Fear and Hope,’ from his Revival of the Religious Sciences, Ghazālī references the temporal categories in an interesting way in his conceptual analysis of hope. Its exposition is that everything that confronts you is either what is abhorred or what is desired, and is divided into what is existent at the moment, what has existed in the past, and what is expected in the future. When what has existed in the past occurs to your mind, it is called remembering and recollecting; if what occurs to your mind is existent at the moment, it is called finding and tasting and perceiving. It is called finding because it is a state which you find for yourself. And if the existence of something in the future occurs to your mind and prevails over your heart, it is called expectation and anticipation (Ghazālī 1965b p. 2).

This relation of the temporal relations to respective psychological states recalls Augustine’s Confessions, where he resolves Aristotle’s paradoxes of time by explaining the temporal fully in terms

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of the psychological. ‘So the future, which does not exist is not a long period of time. A long future is a long expectation of the future,’ he writes, ‘And the past, which has no existence, is not a long period of time. A long past is a long memory of the past’ (Augustine 1991 p. 243). It is not clear whether Ghazālī intends the same thing in his exposition of hope. The language could be interpreted either way, and Ghazālī is not the sort to explicitly inject a metaphysical discussion of time into an exposition of spirituality, though he is the sort to use language in such a way that multiple purposes can be served simultaneously for various sort of audience. Yet he did assert that the difference between the past and future is a relation to us. We know that, for Ghazālī, they cannot be relations to our position on the ‘B-series’ because, ‘before’ and ‘after’ are also relative. We cannot objectively define the past as ‘before our temporal position’, nor the future as ‘after our position’, without knowing when our temporal position is. Assume, then, that when Ghazālī relates past, present, and future to the respective psychological states of recollection, finding, and expectation; he would (if pressed, in the appropriate company) give a full metaphysical account of the temporal states in terms of the psychological states, broadly in the way Augustine did before him. In that case, the direction of the ‘B-series’; that is, the difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’, and that between the beginning of the world and its ending, would be relative to, and fixed by, the difference between the past and future. And, the difference between the past and future, in its turn, is based on the respectively related psychological states through which everything ‘confronts’ us as either past, present, or future.

SECTION 5.5. TIME AND POSSIBLE WORLDS

Whereas Aristotle had raised the question of the reality of time without attempting directly to demonstrate it, Ibn Sīnā offered an explicit proof of the objective reality of time, and in the process, according to McGinnis (2010 pp. 71–5), arrived at a new conception of its nature. On Ibn Sīnā’s analysis, time is not simply the measure of motion, but the measure of possible motion. This analysis, in turn, enables him to pose a novel argument in favor

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of the eternity of the world. This section will review Ibn Sīnā’s theory of time, and this argument as deployed by Ghazālī’s falāsifah. Then it will examine Ghazālī’s response, closing with a proposal on how he might have responded more effectively. Ibn Sīnā’s argument starts with the evident fact that objects moving at different velocities, and which begin and end their movements together, will end up travelling different distances (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 229). Those travelling at a higher velocity will travel longer distances than those travelling at a lower velocity. Take an object, x, which travels at velocity V for a distance of length D. Now consider a possible object y, which begins its motion with x and ends its motion with x, but which travels at an uninterrupted velocity twice that of x: V x 2. Thus, the motion of object y has a determinate possible distance of D x 2. Likewise, a motion of a possible object z, which begins and ends a motion with x, but which travels at an uninterrupted velocity V x 4, has a determinate possible distance of D x 4. With objects y and z, we have two possible motions of determinate magnitude, one of which is twice that of the other. The possible motions of each object have magnitude that is divisible and therefore measurable. The next step in the argument is to ask, what is this measurable magnitude of possible motion? Ibn Sīnā argues that it is not distance, because in that case every object similar with regard to distance travelled would be similar with regard to this magnitude. But if object z, for example, traveling at twice the velocity of y, were to travel the same distance as object y, it would end its motion before y, and the magnitude of its possible motion – that is, the magnitude of motion possible for it were it to end its motion with y - would still be twice that of y. For similar reasons, Ibn Sīnā dismisses a number of other candidates for what the magnitude could be. If it were velocity, then every object travelling at the same velocity would have possible motions of equal magnitude, whether or not their motions begin and end with each other. If it were the magnitude of the moving object, then every object of equal magnitude would have possible motions of equal magnitude, regardless of velocity. If it were motion itself, all possible motions would be equal in magnitude. The magnitude of possible motion, Ibn Sīnā con-

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cludes, is time. If we accept, then, that objects y and z in our hypothetical scenario really do have possible motions of determinate magnitudes as described, then we are committed to accept that these magnitudes are real. Then time, which is the magnitude that measures possible motion, is real. A difficulty emerges here, when we ask what it means for these objects to begin and end their motions ‘together.’ The inevitable answer is ‘at the same time,’ but this would render the account circular. Ibn Sīnā argues to the contrary, distinguishing between the ‘before and after’ in distance from that of time, and pointing out that his account explains the latter in terms of the former, and not of itself (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 232). Yet it is unclear what a ‘before and after’ in distance means divorced from time. On Aristotle’s account it seems, we ‘mark’ motion by imaginatively imposing instants into its continuity, which we then judge to be before and after one another, using the resulting units to enumerate motion, thus ‘keeping time’. For Ibn Sīnā it seems, before and after are already there in the motion in itself. Yet then he argues that since the things in motion are not essentially but only accidently before and after, motion is not itself time, but temporal in virtue of its relation to something that is essentially before and after, which is time. This seems to explain the before and after in motion in terms of that in time, rather than the reverse. The appearance at least of circularity in the account remains strong. Nevertheless, Ibn Sīnā used it to formulate a unique argument for cosmic pre-eternity, which the falāsifah deploy here (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 306). Time is the measure of motion and so came into being with the world, according to Ghazālī, before which there was no time at all. Thus, when the falāsifah argue, at the end of their discussion of the ‘second proof’, that God’s ability to create the world earlier than He did entails the existence of time before the world, they are arguing from a premise that he apparently cannot deny. No doubt, according to you, God was able to create the world before He created it by a year, a hundred years, a thousand years, [and so on] and these hypothesized [magnitudes] surpass each other in measure and quantity. Thus, there is no

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But the position, which Ghazālī has taken with respect to the ontology of time, forces the falāsifah to articulate the premise, of God’s ability to create earlier, in terms of alternate possible worlds. If you say, ‘one cannot apply the expression ‘years’ except after the heavens’ creation and its rotation,’ we will abandon the expression ‘years’ and put the matter in a different mold, saying: ‘If we suppose that since the world’s first existence its sphere up to the present has made, for example, a thousand revolutions, would God, praised be He, have been able to create before it a second world, similar to it, such that it would have made up to the present time eleven hundred rotations?’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 36).

According to the falāsifah, Ghazālī must concede that God could have made such a world, on pain of either imputing impotence and change to God, or a change in the modality of the world (from being impossible to being possible), either of which is absurd. That being the case, it follows that God could also have created ‘a third world that would have rotated up to the present twelve hundred times’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 36). Thus, we are to suppose three worlds. World 1 (the actual world) is supposed at present to have completed 1000 rotations, world 2, is supposed to have completed at present 1100 rotations, and world 3 is supposed to have completed at present 1200 rotations. All three worlds are supposed to be exactly similar, aside from the difference in the number of rotations completed at present. It would be impossible for world 2 and world 3, so described, to come into existence at the same time. For if the circumference of the spheres and the velocity of their motions are equal, then the number of revolutions completed at present could not be different, unless they began at different times. Thus, world 2 is a possible world beginning 100 rotations before the actual world, and world 3 is a possible world beginning 100 rotations before world 2 (and 200 rotations before the actual).

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The duration of world 2, preceding the actual world, is therefore double that of world 3. The possibility preceding the world is, therefore, of a measurable quantity, but quantity is an attribute of a quantifiable existent. Non-existence is not quantifiable. Thus if the world is preceded by sheer non-existence, then nothing preceding the world of a measurable quantity is possible. Yet we have proposed, on pain of imputing impotence to God, that a measurable quantity prior to the world is possible. That measurable quantity is motion – 200 rotations – of which time is the measure. Therefore, if the actual world has a temporal beginning as described, and God could have created world 2 and 3, then time existed before the world. Ghazālī’s response is to affirm that God could have created the alternative possible worlds the falāsifah suppose, but to deny that this implies the existence of time before the world (Ghazālī 2000 37–8). The main thrust of his objection is a dialectical move he used earlier in the discussion, based on drawing a parallel between space and time. According to the falāsifah, the world is of a finite spatial magnitude, beyond which is nothing – neither filled space nor void. Earlier, Ghazālī has drawn a parallel between our inability to imagine a spatial limit with nothing beyond it, and our inability to imagine a first moment of time with no time before it. The Aristotelian argument, based on the impossibility of an actual infinite magnitude, proves the rational necessity of the finitude of space, in spite of our inability to imagine it. Here, Ghazālī asks, could God have made the world larger than He did by a cubit, or two cubits? If so, then there appears a measurable quantity outside of the spatial limit of the actual world, which is either filled space, or void; but since we have rationally proven that this is impossible, we must conclude that this is only a creature of the imagination. Likewise, the measurable quantity, that the falāsifah argue follows from God’s ability to create older worlds, is also merely a creature of the imagination. The falāsifah respond by denying that God could have made the world larger, because its being any other size is impossible and the impossible is not within God’s power. Ghazālī’s response

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to this is threefold. First, he straightforwardly rejects the claim that a larger world is impossible, for there is no contradiction in supposing it. ‘The impossible consists in conjoining negation and affirmation,’ he says, ‘All impossibilities reduce to this’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 38). Against this, Ibn Rushd argues that, though it is not immediately self-evident the impossibility of a larger world is nevertheless demonstrable. That is, while the supposition of a larger world is not directly self-contradictory, it eventually entails self-contradiction (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 90–91 / 1954 p. 53). If the world could be larger than it is, he argues, then there must be either filled or empty space outside of it. If there were empty space, then a self-subsisting void follows. If there were filled space, then there would be another world existing outside the world at the same time as this one. Physics has proven the impossibility of both, he claims, so look for the proof there. This obviously falls short of demonstrating the impossibility of a larger world, but because the possibility he is denying is of a different sort from the possibility Ghazālī is affirming. The premise that it would require external space (either a void or an external object to displace) follows from a notion of the possibility of a larger world that entails an actual change in size of the existing world. Yet to suppose God having made the world larger than it is, as Ghazālī has it, does not entail such a change. Secondly, Ghazālī argues, if it were impossible for the world to be larger or smaller than it is, then ‘its existence as it is would be necessary,’ in which case it would need no cause, in contradiction to the doctrine of the falāsifah (Ghazālī 2000 p. 38). As Ibn Rushd points out, Ibn Sīnā (2009 p. 364) would respond that the world as it is, is necessary through another and not in itself, and thus remains in need of a cause (the other through which it is necessary). Ibn Rushd disagrees with that distinction. The correct response according to him is that the world’s size is necessary in order for it to function as a world, just as a saw must necessarily have certain features in order to function as a saw, though a saw is not a necessary existent. Likewise, it could be possible either for the world to exist or not and yet still be the case that, if it is to function optimally it must necessarily be the size it is (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 92–93 / 1954 pp. 53–54). The point

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holds against Ghazālī’s objection, but the analogy is false in the hands of Ibn Rushd, for according to him the existence of the world is necessary. It needs a cause, according to him only because he means something different from what Ghazālī means by the term ‘necessary.’ Ghazālī’s third response is to point out that ‘the opponent is not unable to oppose this false [argument] with its like,’ by arguing that ‘the world’s existence prior to its existence was not possible, but existence coincided with possibility – nothing more, nothing less’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 39). Every objection the falāsifah bring against that, he argues, is applicable to their own denial of the possibility of a larger world. Ibn Rushd interprets Ghazālī here as advancing the ʾAshʿarī position that the possible just is the actual. Yet Ghazālī has described this argument, which the opponent can deploy, as like the falāsifahs’ own false argument. This is not then his own position, but one that he clearly opposes yet equates with the falāsifah. For they also base their argument on the premise, that existence is co-extensive with possibility; that is, if the world was possible before, then it existed before. The falāsifah follow this premise by saying the world was possible before, and therefore it existed before. The ʾAshʿarīs on the other hand, argue that since it did not exist before, it was not possible before. The falāsifahs’ modus ponens is the ʾAshʿarīs’ modus tollens. Ghazālī has implied that he does not accept the first premise. The verification in answering [them] is [to say that] what they have mentioned regarding the hypothesized possibilities is meaningless. What one [must] admit is that God, exalted be He, is eternal and powerful. Action is never impossible for him, if He wills it. In all this there is nothing that necessitates affirming [a limitless] extended time, unless the estimative faculty, in its confusion, adds [to God’s eternity and power] some other thing (Ghazālī 2000 p. 39).

It is meaningless, that is, to speak of a temporal relation between possible sizes or ages of the world. In the absence of any elaboration, however, his argument is unsatisfyingly dialectical. Perhaps this is because he does not want to oppose, openly, the falāsifah premise that God could have made another, earlier

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world. In what follows, I will propose an alternative response that Ghazālī could have made, by denying that God could have made an earlier world, for reasons which neither compromise God’s omnipotence, nor Ghazālī’s position that the impossible reduces to logical contradiction. First, we need to clarify the possibility that the falāsifah are proposing. It is of a world, similar to the actual in every way, except that by the present time, it has completed 1100 rotations, whereas the actual world has completed 1000. We can show this to be impossible in itself by a rather simple argument. Supposing that the actual world has just completed 1000 rotations, and that time is the measure of motion, it follows that the present time is the completion of the 1000th revolution of the world. Therefore, a possible world just like the actual, expect for having completed 1100 rotations at the present time, is a world which has completed 1100 rotations at the completion of 1000th rotation. It is in itself impossible that a world complete 1100 rotations at the completion of the 1000th rotation. It reduces to a contradiction. To clarify the force of the argument, consider the counterclaim. The possible world the falāsifah are supposing is not, one might insist, a world that has completed 1100 rotations at the completion of its 1000th rotation. Rather, it is a world that has completed 1100 rotations at the same time at which the actual world has completed 1000 rotations. Consequently, the present time is not the 1000th rotation of the actual world. Instead, it is some third thing ‘at which’ the actual world has completed 1000 rotations, and ‘at which’ the possible world would have completed 1100. Therefore, it must be ontologically independent of the world’s motion. So, if there is a possible world, which up to the present time has completed 1100 rotations, whereas the actual world has completed 1000, then time is not the measure of motion. For the falāsifah, time is the measure of motion. Indeed without this premise, their argument collapses. Thus while there is a possible world that has completed 1100 rotations, there is no possible world that has completed 1100 rotations at the present time. This, of course, does not compromise God’s omnipotence,

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since omnipotence is the ability to do anything that is in itself possible, whereas the world that the falāsifah propose here is ultimately self-contradictory and therefore in itself impossible. Ibn Rushd’s final word here is that even if the eternity and power of God do not entail an eternal time, it does entail that nothing can prevent His act from being eternal. Otherwise, He would be powerful sometimes and powerless others. Whether the world is eternal thus remains an open question, he claims, irresolvable by reason. Yet then he goes on to argue that God cannot perform an inferior act, for that would constitute imperfection. Since a finite and limited act is an imperfect one, such an act can only proceed from an imperfect agent, whereas a perfect eternal agent can only have an infinite, unlimited act (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 95–97 / 1954 p. 56). This of course leads straight to the conclusion that God can create nothing other than Himself, for He alone is perfect. The impossibility of an actual infinite magnitude is, again, the selfcontradiction of an unlimited limited being. The argument against cosmic pre-eternity based on that aims to preclude the possibility of a creature unlimited in any quantitative dimension. Thus, to declare God free of anything constraining Him to a limited act, as Ibn Rushd does, is simply to declare Him free not to create anything at all, to which Ghazālī would agree. Yet God has freely chosen to create a limited world; that is, something other than Himself.

CHAPTER SIX. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY As we saw above, given a theory of time as the measure of possible motion, the argument against creation based on the entailment of a prior time eventually turns into one based on the possibility of a prior creation. It thus segues into the ‘third proof,’ where the argument centers squarely on the possibility of the world’s existence. In Section 6.1, we will analyze this proof. In Section 6.2, I will explain the sense of possibility as potency according to Ibn Sīnā, and in Section 6.3, his distinct sense of possibility in itself. In Section 6.4, I will show how the premises of the third proof deploy the term ‘possible’ equivocally between these two senses, resulting in a fallacy which also affects Ibn Rushd’s defense of the proof.

SECTION 6.1. THIRD PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY

The ‘third proof’ of the falāsifah for cosmic pre-eternity starts with the argument that the world’s existence (assuming it came to be) was possible before its existence. For it is impossible, they argue, that it be impossible and then become possible. The existence of the world is moreover, possible from eternity, ‘since there is no temporal state whatsoever (ḥal min al-āḥwāl) in which the world’s existence can be described as impossible.’ Then comes a key premise. ‘If then [this] possibility never ceases, the possible in conformity with possibility also never ceases (Ghazālī 2000 p. 39). This ‘possible’ is the thing that is possible, that is the world, which according to the argument therefore exists

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eternally. Following up, the falāsifah argue that to say the world’s existence is possible just means that it is not impossible; so if it is eternally possible then it is eternally not impossible. If it were ever impossible then its possibility had a beginning before which God was powerless to create it. The key premise raises the question: why should the ‘possible’ exist ‘in conformity with’ its possibility? Initially it rings of an Aristotelian idea more recently dubbed the principle of plenitude (Hintikka 1973 pp. 93–113). This is the idea that every genuine possibility is actual at some point in time, and follows straightforwardly from the ‘temporal frequency’ or ‘statistical’ model of modality briefly mentioned above. For, if the possible is defined extensionally as that which is sometimes and sometimes not, the impossible being what never is and the necessary what is eternally, then everything genuinely possible will exist at some time. Note that the converse is not the case: from plenitude, the realization of every possibility at some time, it does not necessarily follow that possibility just is realization at some time, as the statistical model has it. In either case, the world’s eternal non-existence is effectively equivalent to its impossibility. Conversely, its possibility entails its existence at some time, but does not directly entail its eternal existence. If this is the idea, then in addition at least to assuming plenitude, the proof has also conflated the eternal possibility of the world’s existence, asserted in the premises, with the possibility of the world’s eternal existence. For, if the eternal existence of something were possible, then from plenitude the realization of this possibility follows at some time. Since the possibility in question is just that of an eternal thing, then its realization at any time entails its eternal existence and thus, on the statistical model of modality, its necessary existence. That inference would be straightforward if we begin with the premise that the existence of an eternal world is possible. This argument however starts with the different premise, that the possibility of the world’s existence is eternal. Either way, a statistical interpretation of the term ‘possible’ can make sense of neither an eternal possibility nor a possible eternity.

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Consider Marmura’s (1959 p. 133) reading of the proof. From the world’s eternal possibility before its existence, he says, the proof infers a prior eternity of its non-existence, from which it further (and falsely) infers that the world never exists, which on the statistical model means it is impossible. Since the world is not impossible (for it now exists), it cannot have been eternally non-existent and therefore cannot have come to be (since its coming to be, according this, entails a prior eternity of its nonexistence). On this reading, however, the proof uses the term ‘possible’ equivocally, for otherwise its first premise, on the statistical interpretation of possibility, reads that the world existed occasionally (existing at some time, but at another time not) before it existed. Furthermore, it renders impossible the existence of anything not eternal, for if past time is infinite, then everything that comes to be will have been non-existent for eternity. That is effectively an argument against cosmic preeternity. If, as Marmura maintains, the main inference is false, it is because ‘never existing’ entails non-existence for not just the past but also future eternity. Likewise, to exist forever (or to exist eternally, as distinct from having existed for a past eternity), would presumably require one to exist for infinite past and future time. Consequently, nothing could ever meet the conditions of necessity or impossibility on the statistical model. Therefore, if time is infinite, as the falāsifah maintain, either nothing is possible, or everything is. Statistical possibility is inadequate here. Furthermore, as Marmura (1959 p. 135) notes, the proof asserts the eternal co-existence of the world with its own possibility, and it of course makes no sense to say that the world exists eternally with its occasional existence. Van Den Bergh, among others (Hourani 1958, Goodman 1971, and Bello 1989), says the proof depends on assuming the world’s eternity from the outset, as evident if we substitute ‘the world’ for ‘Socrates’ to prove his eternal existence (Van Den Bergh 1954 p. 43). The logic of this experiment is that if the same argument is incapable of proving that Socrates exists eternally, it cannot prove that the world exists eternally. This depends on there being no way to infer the possibility of the world’s eternity

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from the eternal possibility of the world, based on some feature of the world (other than its presumed eternity) not shared by Socrates. That is, granting the argument’s validity and without assuming the conclusion, each premise that is true of the world will be true of Socrates. We will carry out Van Den Bergh’s experiment, not only to test his claim but also to elucidate other operative senses of possibility. The original argument is as follows:

1) It is impossible that the world be impossible and then become possible. 2) Therefore, if the world came to be, then it was possible before it existed (1). 3) There is no temporal state in which the world’s existence is impossible (2). 4) Therefore, the world’s existence is eternally possible (3). 5) The possible (the world) in conformity with its possibility is also eternal. Therefore, the world exists eternally (4,5).

Substituting Socrates for the world, we get:

1) It is impossible that Socrates be impossible and then become possible. 2) Therefore, if Socrates came to be, then he was possible before he existed (1). 3) There is no temporal state in which Socrates’ existence is impossible (2). 4) Therefore, Socrates’ existence is eternally possible (3). 5) The possible in conformity with possibility is also eternal. Therefore, Socrates exists eternally (4,5).

Contra premise 3), there are times at which we can plausibly describe Socrates’ existence as impossible. They are times during which conditions necessary for his existence are absent (e.g. before his parents exist). When all these conditions obtain then, despite 1), Socrates’ existence will become possible after having been impossible, and thus his existence is not eternally possible. Whether he was possible before he existed pertains to the

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question whether in his case the possible ‘conforms to’ possibility. Recall that according to Ibn Sīnā’s theory of efficient causality, the existence of all the conditions necessary for Socrates’ existence render his existence necessary. If his existence is impossible prior to that, then it follows that he is possible if and only if he is actual. The possible conforms to possibility in this case (though neither are eternal), but then he was not possible before having come to be. On this analysis, applied to Socrates, the argument’s premises cannot all be true. Though false of Socrates, 3) is true of the world. There can be no time at which its existence is impossible. This does not follow from any simple assumption of its eternity, but from the fact that external to it, there are no temporal conditions on which any such change in modality might supervene. It is thus impossible, as the first premise claims, that the world change from being impossible to possible, as can Socrates. It does not follow, however, that the world would have been possible before it came to be, for again unlike Socrates there is no time before the world; and for this reason it’s not having been possible before it came to be does not entail its impossibility. Remember, the falāsifah agree that time before the world is impossible but argue that a cosmic beginning entails a prior time and so reduces to that absurdity. This returns us to the argument of the second proof. In either case, if the world is possible at any time, then unlike Socrates, it is possible for all time. Indeed, as both parties agree, it exists for all time. Thus, it ‘conforms’ to its possibility in the sense they intend here: it exists whenever possible. The question is whether it has existed for an infinite amount of time, taking us back to the first proof, with Ghazālī arguing that this leads to the absurdity of an actual infinite, and the falāsifah insisting it is only a potential infinity. The key assumption in the third proof is thus not simply that the world is eternal, but that a cosmic beginning entails a prior time, that an infinite amount time has consequently elapsed, and that this amounts to a potential rather than actual infinity. That a cosmic beginning entails a prior time follows according to their argument, however, from the fact that the world would have been possible before it came to be. Thus, Kukkonen (2000a) is right in

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observing that this proof depends on understanding possibility in terms of potentiality; that is, what we have broadly referred to above as conditions of a thing’s existence that are external and temporally prior to it.

SECTION 6.2. POSSIBILITY AS POTENCY

We considered the ‘possibility’ of Socrates’ existence in this sense, when we said that whether his existence is possible before he exists seems to depend on which condition we relate it to, leading finally to his actual existence. Prior to his parents’ existence we might say either that Socrates’ existence is impossible or that it is possible on the condition that his parents exist. Subsequent to the existence of his parents, it seems as correct to say that his existence is still impossible, as to say that it is possible on condition of their meeting, and so on. This raises the question, whether any non-arbitrary univocal answer is available to the question whether or not he is possible, until we eventually arrive at the point at which all the conditions of his existence obtain, and there is no longer any condition lacking in relation to the absence of which we can describe his existence as impossible. Recall that according to Ibn Sīnā, Socrates’ existence at this point becomes necessary, but through another, not in himself. That is, through the essential cause of his existence, which is now complete. In himself, as we will find later, conceived solely in terms of what he is and in abstraction from any external conditions, according to Ibn Sīnā, Socrates’ existence is merely possible. We thus have two distinct ways of considering this man’s possibility; either in relation to or in abstraction from external temporal conditions of his existence. In the latter sense, it is true that Socrates cannot change from being impossible to possible. His possibility in this sense is therefore eternal, not however in that the external temporal conditions of his existence obtain at all times, but in that this sense of possibility is independent of any such conditions, in the same way the world must be, if understood as possible before its existence. We have understood the eternal here as that which exists for infinite time. While the falāsifah of course are not interested in asserting that the world is timelessly eternal, there is nevertheless

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reason to consider reading the second premise as asserting that the possibility of its existence is timelessly eternal. For (on this reading of the proof) they infer that its possibility is eternal from the fact that there cannot be any time at which it is impossible, there being no time external to the world at all. There is then no sense in speaking of the world being possible at this or that time, as there is in the case of Socrates, by reference to temporal conditions of his existence. In relation to external circumstances understood as conditions of its existence, a thing can change from being impossible to possible, in the relative sense we described. Yet if the possibility of something simply consists in the fulfillment of all the conditions of its existence, then the possible and the actual are the same, so that in this sense of the term, there cannot be unrealized possibilities. Ibn Sīnā seems to make room for these, however, while distinguishing between remote and proximate potency (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 134–5). Naming the specific potency of a substance to receive a specific form its ‘passive power,’ he explains that ‘the passive power that, upon encountering the agent, makes necessary the enactment in these things is the complete passive power’ (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 134). Again, when the complete cause of a thing obtains, it becomes necessary through that cause. The passive side of that equation is the complete ‘preparedness’ of one thing (the patient) to be affected by the action of another (the agent), so to realize the effect. The completeness or incompleteness of the passive power is a function of whether it is proximate or remote. For example, Ibn Sīnā presents the potential of both sperm and boy to become a man. For the sperm to become a man, it must first become a boy, but the boy can become a man without first needing to become any other intermediate thing. Thus, the sperm only has a remote potential, while the boy has a proximate potential to become a man. In reality, the true passive power is this. As for the sperm, in reality it still does not have a passive power. For it is impossible for the sperm, while still a sperm, to be acted upon so as to become a man. But since it has the potency to become something through that which is not sperm and then, after

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A tree, for another example, is not potentially the key, but requires the effect of some other action of a substance (sawing, cutting, etc.) to render it something that is a potential key (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 135). Based on this distinction between remote and proximate potentiality, we can understand an unrealized possibility as the object of a proximate potentiality. That is, any nonactual x is possible so long as some distinct y exists, which has the proximate (rather than remote) potential to become x. Barbara Vetter, in a more recent development on this theme, defined the possible by contrast as the object of an ‘iterated potentiality.’ That is, x is possible so long as there is either something that has the potential for x to be the case, or something that has the potential to have the potential…etc., for x to be the case (Vetter 2015 p. 197). This is roughly the same as saying it is the object of either a remote or a proximate potential. The difference is that when the potential for x is proximate, all that awaits is the action of the active cause, whereas otherwise further ‘preparation’ is necessary in the receptive cause. Vetter treats this as the difference between the ‘immediate’ and ‘ultimate manifestations’ of an iterated potentiality, where the former is one of the iterations of the potential for x, while the latter is x itself (Vetter 2015 p. 136). In either case, the possibility of x entails the previous existence of something with the potential of x. For possibility is reducible on this account to potentiality. We call the possibility of existence the potentiality of existence. And we term the bearer of the potentiality of existence, which has the potentiality of a thing’s existence, ‘subject,’ ‘hyle,’ ‘matter,’ and other [names] according to the various ways of considering [things]. Hence, every temporally originated thing is preceded by matter (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 140).

That matter is the bearer of potentiality that precedes every originated thing drives the fourth proof of the world’s eternity. Above, however, we saw Ibn Sīnā speak of sperm and boys bearing potential to become a man. This raises a question we will revisit in the fourth proof. Is matter some one thing distinct from

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the particular substances (e.g. boys or sperm) bearing the potential to become succeeding substances (e.g. men)? If so, then it precedes every originated thing, while particular substances only precede some things and not others. Matter would then be elemental in relation to these others, such that in a constitutional sense of remoteness (rather than a temporal one), the iterations of potentiality would ultimately terminate in it. That is, matter would be the most remote and hence universal seat of the potentiality of everything. If matter is instead one relation that different particular things stand in with each other, then the iterations of potentiality are potentially infinite (in the clear sense of the term clarified earlier). Something at least must precede any originated thing because actuality, according to Ibn Sīnā, is prior to potentiality. With corruptible particulars, he says, it is true that their potential precedes their actuality in time. Yet with incorruptible universals, potential does not precede their actuality at all. Thus, the potential to become Socrates exists before Socrates in something (e.g. a particular sperm and egg) capable of becoming Socrates. The actuality of humanity as such, however, is not preceded by potential, but precedes the potential of all particular individual humans. That is, the form of humanity does not come to be, but only particular humans do. Furthermore, potential is not selfsubsistent, but is always born by an actual thing. The potential to become Socrates is not an independently existing thing, but a passive power that the actual sperm and egg have, to be acted upon by each other so to become Socrates. Actuality as such, therefore, precedes potency. By way of explaining further ways in which actuality is prior, Ibn Sīnā writes: Moreover, in conception and definition, the act precedes the potential. This is because you cannot define potency except as belonging to act, whereas, in defining and conceiving the act, you do not need [to maintain] that it belongs to potency. Thus, you define and intellectually apprehend a square without there occurring to your mind the potentiality of its receptivity, but you cannot define the potentiality to become a square except by mentioning the square either verbally or mentally, making this part of your definition (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 142).

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SECTION 6.3. POSSIBILITY IN ITSELF

This priority of act to potency, in conception, alludes to another concept of possibility. For in defining the object of potentiality (that of which it is a potential) we are conceiving the possibility of the thing in itself, in abstraction from any temporal conditions necessary for its realization. This is a sense of possibility in which it is true that there is no time in which Socrates’ existence is impossible, and in terms of which nothing can become possible after being impossible. Ibn Sīnā discusses this more basic sense of possibility in the first book of Metaphysics, where he explains that ‘thing,’ ‘existent,’ and ‘necessary’ are primary concepts, conceived in themselves and not analyzable in terms of better known, constituent ideas by way of definition. The concept of the necessary brings with it that of possibility and impossibility, for none of the three is definable without reference to one of the others. Any such definition is therefore ultimately circular. We will inevitably define the necessary as, that the nonexistence of which is not possible, the impossible as that the existence of which is not possible, and the possible as that which is neither necessary nor impossible (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 27–8). This concept of possibility is thus distinct from, and logically precedes the one defined above in terms of potentiality. In the next chapter, he writes: The things that enter existence bear a [possible] twofold division in the mind. Among them, there will be that which, when considered in itself, its existence would not be necessary. It is [moreover] clear that its existence would also not be impossible, since otherwise it would not enter existence. This thing is within the bound of possibility. There will also be among them that which, when considered in itself, its existence would be necessary (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 29–30).

What do we consider, of the thing considered in itself, which determines its possibility? Ibn Sīnā tells us in the course of explaining why the existence or non-existence of that which is possible in itself is due to a distinct cause. This is because the thing’s quiddity is either sufficient for this specification or not. If its quiddity is sufficient for either of the two states [existence or nonexistence] to obtain, then that

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thing would be in itself of a necessary quiddity, when [the thing] has been supposed not to be necessary [in itself]. And this is contradictory. If [on the other hand] the existence of its quiddity is not sufficient [for specifying the possible with existence] – [the latter] being, rather, something whose existence is added to it – then its existence would be necessarily due to some other thing (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 31).

The possibility of a thing, then, is determined by considering whether its quiddity (māhiyya – literally ‘what-ness’) is ‘sufficient to specify’ its existence or non-existence. If so, then it is either in itself necessary or impossible. If not, then its existence is ‘added’ to it, and necessarily due to something other than itself. Ibn Sīnā’s claim to fame, of course, is having distinguished this (commonly termed ‘essence’) from a thing’s existence (Marmura 1984). The nature of this distinction (and controversies surrounding it) play a central role in discussions to come. Hence we must pause here to explain it in some detail. Whatness, Ibn Sīnā explains, is the reality (haqīqa) proper to each thing. For, to everything there is a reality by virtue of which it is what it is. Thus, the triangle has a reality in that it is a triangle, and whiteness has a reality in that it is whiteness…It is evident that each thing has a reality proper to it – namely, its quiddity. It is known that the reality proper to each thing is something other than the existence that corresponds to what is affirmed (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 24).

The proof of the logical distinction between a thing’s māhiyya, or what-ness, and its existence is, according to Ibn Sīnā, the fact that it is not tautological to claim that a thing’s reality (e.g. the horse) exists either externally or in the mind (or both). It does not reduce to saying that the horse is a horse (of course). That is, it is one thing to consider what a thing is, and another to consider the question whether it exists, or indeed, how. Considering the whatness of a horse in strict distinction from the existence of a horse, either in the mind or in external reality renders it logically ‘pure’ in a crucial sense. We must remove from it everything associated with either sort of existence, including the universality (of the existing concept of ‘horse’), as well as the individuality, unity, and substantiality (of the externally existing horse).

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Hence as Shehadi (1982 pp. 77–83) explains it, existence is indeed logically included in the whatness of the horse qua substance, since the very meaning of its being a substance is that it exists by itself (as opposed to an accident), but not simply inasmuch as it is a horse. In other words, existence is logically entailed in what it is for a horse to exist, but not in what it is for the existing thing to be a horse. ‘Horse-ness’ considered strictly in itself is logically distinct from existence. For in considering it so, we are not to be considering it qua anything other than horseness itself, whether that be as an externally existing substance (an individual horse) or as an idea in the mind, etc. According to Shehadi among others, overlooking this subtlety led Ibn Rushd, Thomas Aquinas and others to misunderstand Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine, as implying that existence is accidental to the existing thing in the same way an accident like color is accidental to a substance; in other words, that it is metaphysically rather than merely logically accidental. Ibn Sīnā distinguishes the latter in his work on logic, where he rejects defining the ‘essential’ simply as whatever is inseparable from its subject in either existence or the imagination. Many things, he says, have this relation of necessary concomitance to their subject without being essential to it. As an example, he presents the fact that the sum of the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. While this is necessarily true of all triangles, it is not part of what it is to be a triangle. We understand what a triangle is prior to arriving at this fact. ‘Rather,’ he says, ‘the essential is such that, if the meaning [of the subject] is understood and occurs to the mind and if the meaning of what is essential to it is understood and occurs to the mind at the same time, it would be impossible for the essence of the subject to be understood unless first the meaning [of that which is essential to it] is already understood to belong to it’ (2011 p. 6). Likewise, existence is accidental to the whatness of a thing in a logical sense (it is not included in the very concept of that whatness), but not accidental in a metaphysical sense, for it is a necessary concomitant of any existing thing. The whatness is thus not a kind of ‘non-existent’ thing. That, at least, would contradict Ibn Sīnā’s expressed position against a

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doctrine attributed to some theologians of the Muʿtazila school, according to which the ‘thing’ is defined as that about which information is given, and that consequently there are non-existent things, which have existence added to them when they come to be (Marmura 1984). On the contrary, he argues, the nonexistent is not a thing. Things that do not exist outside the mind – that is, conceived yet unrealized possibilities – must nevertheless exist in the mind. Their quiddities constitute the content of these ideas (or images) by which they are differentiated and either correspond or fail to correspond to external objects. It follows that conceived yet unrealized possibilities actually exist in the mind. They are neither nonexistent, nor somehow neither existent nor nonexistent. These [people] have fallen into [the error] that they have because of their ignorance [of the fact] that giving information is about ideas that have an existence in the soul – even if these are nonexistent in external things – where the meaning of giving information about [these ideas] is that they have some relation to external things. Thus, for example, if you said, ‘The resurrection will be,’ you would have understood ‘resurrection’ and would have understood ‘will be.’ You would have predicated ‘will be’ which is in the soul, of ‘resurrection,’ which is in the soul, in [the sense] that it would be correct for this meaning, with respect to another meaning also intellectually apprehended (namely, one intellectually apprehended in a future time), to be characterized by a third meaning (namely, [the object] of intellectual apprehension: existence) (Ibn Sīnā 2005 pp. 26– 7).

The possible in itself, therefore, is that the what-ness of which is conceived as existing either in the soul alone or externally, while the necessary in itself cannot be conceived other than as existing externally, and the impossible is not conceived at all. While everything possible is conceivable in principle and vice versa, this is not the definition of possibility. For that would be circular ‘conceivable’ means ‘possible to conceive’. Again, according to Ibn Sīnā, this sense of possibility is a primary concept. Since it corresponds solely to the what-ness of the possible thing, it is independent of any peripheral temporal conditions.

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There is a difficulty, though, in clarifying the relation between the thing’s possibility and what-ness, for which reason we used this vague term ‘correspondence.’ For to say that its possibility depends on its what-ness seems to grant the what-ness a kind of potency for existence, based on what it is, implying in turn in its actual thing-hood, which Ibn Sīnā denies. It would also mean that this concept of possibility is after all not basic and unanalyzable, as he says. It seems a thing’s possibility in this sense just is the thing’s what-ness considered in itself. In this sense, it is impossible for the same thing to change from impossibility to possibility. It is, at least, in this sense alone that we can understood something as eternally possible.

SECTION 6.4. EQUIVOCATING BETWEEN POSSIBILITIES

In this sense of possibility, however, it is clearly not the case that ‘the possible in conformity with possibility never ceases’ for then everything possible in itself would be eternal. This premise is only sustainable if we understand the possible as the object of potentiality. It follows for the world, from the fact that any prior bearer of the required potential would be an earlier phase of the world itself, so that its eternal possibility would entail its eternal existence. The third proof therefore depends on an equivocation between these different senses of possibility, as does Ibn Rushd’s defense of it. He who concedes that the world before its existence was of a never-ceasing possibility must admit that the world is eternal, for the assumption that what is eternally possible is eternally existent implies no absurdity. What can possibly exist eternally must necessarily exist eternally, for what can receive eternity cannot become corruptible, except if it were possible that the corruptible could become eternal (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 97–98 / 1954 p. 57).

The first premise here is that ‘the assumption that what is eternally possible is eternally existent implies no absurdity.’ That is, having established that the world is eternally possible, it follows that it is possibly eternal. Kukkonen (2000c p. 334) reads this based on a definition of the possible from Aristotle’s Prior Analytics (I-13), as ‘that which is not necessary and from which

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no impossibility follows if assumed realized.’ There is no essential reference here to the possible thing’s actual existence at any time. It does not entail plenitude. This sense of something’s possibility consists simply in the fact that assuming it implies no absurdity, as Ibn Rushd puts it. It is different from that of the statistical model, on which this premise would mean, ‘there is no absurdity in assuming that what eternally exists sometimes and not others, sometimes exists for all of infinite time.’ That is absurd indeed. Ibn Rushd is asserting, instead, that it is not absurd to suppose, that what can be coherently supposed to exist at any time can be coherently supposed to exist eternally. That is, if the eternal existence of the world is impossible, there must be some time during which its existence cannot be coherently supposed; but if its possibility is eternal, then there is no such time. Thus if the possibility of its existence is eternal, then its eternal existence is possible. On its own, this appears a simple fallacy of composition. For from the fact that the world’s existence is possible at any point in infinite time considered individually, it does not follow that its existence for all of infinite time is possible. For Ghazālī again, the latter constitutes an actual infinite, which all parties here agree is absurd. Yet for the falāsifah (and Ibn Rushd) there is no composition involved, for time forms a potential infinite. Thus, the inference is, instead, from the possibility of the world’s existence at any point of infinite time considered individually, to its existence at every point in time, considered not collectively but individually. The necessity of its eternal existence follows from its mere possibility, he says next, because ‘what can receive eternity cannot become corruptible.’ The sense of possibility here has clearly shifted. For having established the possibility of the world’s eternity in terms of a notion of possibility as that which while not necessary, is not absurd to assume, he now argues that this possibility entails necessity. This would follow on the statistical model, for then as mentioned above, if an eternal thing is possible it exists some time, and if it exists at all, it exists eternally, and is therefore necessary. This seems to be how Kukkonen (2000c) reads it.

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On the other hand, Ibn Rushd describes this ‘possibility’ of the world’s eternal existence as its ability to ‘receive eternity,’ while failure to exist eternally is to ‘become corruptible.’ Marmura (1959 p. 135) observes two interesting things here. The first is that he now treats possibility as the potential of an existing thing; that is as its capacity, in virtue of its own existing nature, to ‘receive eternity.’ This is not merely statistical possibility. The nature a thing must already have in order to receive eternity is incorruptibility, he says; otherwise, the corruptible could become eternal. Plenitude plays a role here. For to be corruptible is to be possibly corrupted, entailing that it will be corrupted at some time, in which case at some time it would not exist and therefore not be eternal. The question remains why it plays a role. If the possibility operative in this inference is statistical, plenitude follows directly. If instead it is potentiality, the question is whether there can be eternally un-actualized potential. Either way, the possibility Ibn Rushd is pulling plenitude from here is not the same possibility he had established for the world’s eternal existence. Marmura’s second observation is that Ibn Rushd seems to treat existence here as a predicate, since to ‘receive eternity’ means to receive existence for eternity, as a substance receives an accident in the process of change. That is strange, for elsewhere he consistently affirms that ‘existence is not an attribute additional to the essence’, but ‘a quality which is the essence itself, and whoever says otherwise is mistaken indeed’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 331 / 1954 p. 198). For Ibn Rushd, however, eternity in the sense relevant here, is potentially infinite motion. To receive eternity, then, is to receive potentially infinite motion. Motion is of the very essence of the moved, for each temporal thing is a specific kind of finite motion, one giving way to the next in procession whenever it undergoes change in its very essence. That which can receive potentially infinite motion must be immune to such substantial change. The world as whole, in Ibn Rushd’s conception, is incorruptible precisely because it essentially is potentially infinite motion, for it is nothing over and above the perpetual succession of one temporal thing after another. This

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will become clear in the course of his discussion of the fourth proof. Though he has not treated existence as a predicate, the third proof is something of an attempt at an ontological argument for the pre-eternity of the world. The ontological argument for the existence of God famously attempts to prove that God exists, from the premise that a perfect Being is conceivable. Likewise, as we have seen, the third proof starts with the premise that an eternal world is possible in the sense of its being conceivable, a sense of possibility from which plenitude does not follow. It then concludes that such a world exists, by shifting to a different sense of possibility, which does carry the implication of plenitude. Ghazālī’s objection thus targets the premise asserting the ‘conformity’ of the world’s existence to its possibility. He argues that the temporal origination of the world (not its eternal existence) is eternally possible, since there is no moment in time in which we cannot conceive it to have occurred. That is, it is eternally possible in itself. If we suppose with them that the world is eternal, he argues, none of the possibilities of its coming to be would be realized, in which case what is would not be, as they claim, in conformity with the possible. This is similar, he claims, to the falāsifahs’ own position that there is no limit to how large the world could be in spite of the fact that it must necessarily have some limit. That is, their distinction between the potential infinite and the actual infinite itself entails affirming unrealized possibilities, negating their key premise here that the possible in conformity with possibility never ceases. Likewise, there is no limit to how far in the past it is possible for the world to have begun. Its age is ‘potentially infinite,’ as they say, but it cannot be actually infinite. ‘The beginnings of existence are not specified with respect to priority and posteriority, but [it is only] the principle of being temporally created that is specified,’ he concludes. ‘For that is the possible – no other’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 40). In his mind, the impossibility of the eternal existence of the world follows from the impossibility of an actual infinite magnitude. Ibn Rushd construes Ghazālī as affirming an ‘infinite number of possibilities of worlds before the world,’ and argues that this

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entails the actual existence of an infinite series of worlds before this one. In that case, he argues, each ‘world’ would actually be part of one eternal world (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 99 / 1954 p. 58). This follows from his statistical notion of possibility, according to which every possible world must actually exist. It also follows from his notion of possibility as potentiality, according to which each possible world must conform to a temporally ordered series each bearing the potential for the next, since ‘the perishing of the earlier is the necessary condition of the existence of the later’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 99 / 1954 p. 58). They would constitute parts of one world in virtue of their being so ordered; and as we will see in the next proof, in virtue of the fact that the possibility of each requires a common pre-existing substratum in which they inhere. The root of the matter, then, is the difference between the concepts of possibility mentioned above. While the third proof trades, as we saw, on obscuring the difference and equivocating between them, the fourth proof will engage the question directly. Concluding here, we should note that Ghazālī has left us with a problem, even if we grant the possible in itself (the conceivable) as the appropriately operative sense of possibility in this context. On the one hand, he claims to have proven that an eternal world is impossible in itself, for supposing it entails logical absurdities following from the actual infinite. On the other hand, he asserts that we can conceive the temporal creation of the world at any time. An awareness of the absurdities to which that leads, however, is definitive of the tradition of thought inherited by the falāsifah. For as Parmenides surmised, what is not cannot be. Between being and non-being there is no ‘middle term’. It apparently follows that, not only the coming to be of the world, but change itself, is impossible. Either, what we experience as change is somehow an illusion (and there is only one unchanging Being) or nothing really is at all. The hylomorphic system of Aristotle, arguably the most sophisticated solution for this problem in ancient Greek philosophy, tries at least to explain change as the actualization of what already is potentially. Accordingly, we cannot coherently conceive the coming to be of the ‘world’ other than as its emergence from some prior existing

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thing. To conceive it as Ghazālī claims we can, amounts they would argue, to conceiving the being of that which is not. Obviously, the ‘coming to be’ of the world, as Ghazālī has it, is not a change in the normal sense, for time does not precede it. Indeed, his argument regarding time in response to the second proof comes close to implying that change (at least in the ‘normal’ sense) does not exist. Still his insistence on the finitude of the world, as we saw, means that somehow the world both does and does not exist. The priority of God’s solitary existence to that of the world entails no less. That it is a non-temporal priority, following on God’s timeless eternity, prohibits us from softening the blow of that enigma by locating the world’s existence and non-existence in different times. The falāsifah, following Aristotle, seek to account for time and change by postulating, in the potential, a bridge over the impossible middle term between being and non-being. For Ghazālī, it seems, the world (everything other than God) is that middle term. While we might describe the world of the falāsifah as temporally eternal, that of Ghazālī is eternally temporal.

CHAPTER SEVEN. THE MATTER OF POSSIBILITY The fourth proof for cosmic pre-eternity also begins with the premise that everything that comes to be is preceded by its own possibility, along with the key assertion, that possibility is a ‘relative characterization’ (waṣf idāfī), which is not self-subsistent but requires a receptacle (muhal) in which to inhere (Ghazālī 2000 p. 41). This receptacle is ultimately matter, in accord with the hylomorphism of the falāsifah. In Section 7.1, we will examine this proof and interrogate the concept of matter, supposed therein as the substratum of possibility, necessarily preceding the genesis of anything (including, hypothetically, of the cosmos), and thus necessary pre-eternal. The key question, I argue, is whether the ‘matter’ in question exists in act or potency. If its pre-eternity is considered equivalent to that of the cosmos, then it must be understood (contrary to Ibn Sīnā and yet not, apparently, to Ibn Rushd) as an actually existing thing which, consequently, will actually be what it is not. This, however, is precisely the absurdity to which, according to the falāsifah, the notion of a cosmic beginning reduces. In Section 7.2 we will examine the debate ensuing over Ghazālī’s assertion that possibility, at least in the sense pertinent to this argument, is like the universal merely an intellectual judgment in need of no external substratum. I will argue that Ibn Rushd’s objection, based on explaining how universals exist ‘potentially’ outside the mind, ultimately only strengthens Ghazālī’s case. In Section 7.3, we examine the debate over Ghazālī’s arguments from impossibility and from accidents, along

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with Ibn Rushd’s extensive response, providing occasion to focus more closely on his theory of potentiality. I argue that the fourth proof suffers the same fallacy of equivocation (between two senses of possibility) which we found in the third. Nevertheless, since (as we see later) Ghazālī agrees that change entails preexisting matter, he must of course deny that the cosmic genesis constitutes a change. Rather, it must be a coming to be ‘from nothing,’ which like the falāsifahs’ notion of pre-eternal matter, entails the existence of the non-existent – an absurdity to which both sides thus appear forced. Finally, in Section 7.4 we examine Ghazālī’s dialectical argument from an apparent misrepresentation of Ibn Sīnā’s theory of the soul, and some interesting comments Ibn Rushd makes in response, regarding the soul – body relation. I argue that Ghazālī’s argument here is weak and irrelevant to the question at hand.

SECTION 7.1. FOURTH PROOF OF COSMIC PRE-ETERNITY In standard form, the ‘fourth proof’ is as follows.

1) For every temporal thing (anything that comes to be), its possibility precedes its existence. 2) Possibility is an attribute. 3) Every attribute subsists a substratum. 4) Possibility subsists in a substratum (2, 3). 5) There is no substratum for possibility other than matter. 6) Possibility subsists in matter (4, 5). 7) Matter precedes every temporal thing. (1, 6). 8) If matter came to be, its own possibility would precede its existence (1). 9) If the possibility of matter precedes its existence, then possibility would be self-subsistent and not inhere in a substratum (5). 10) The possibility of matter does not precede its existence (4, 9). 11) Matter does not come to be, but is eternal (8, 10).

The falāsifahs’ argument here partially reflects Ibn Sīnā’s analysis of the concept of possible existence from the Physics of al-Shifāʾ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 pp. 359–60). He also argues here that 1) the possibility of any temporal thing’s existence precedes it

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(otherwise, it would be impossible and never exist). Its possibility is determinate; that is, the possibility of a specific what-ness. It is therefore something raising the question for Ibn Sīnā whether possibility is self-subsisting (a substance, like ‘the apple’) or subsists in something else (as ‘the color of the apple’ subsists in the apple). Possibility is not self-subsistent, he argues, for it is only intelligible as correlative to the what-ness of that of which it is the possibility. Thus, before the apple exists, its existence is possible. There is, therefore, the possibility of the apple, which is a determinate possibility of a specific thing (the apple) to which it correlates. A possibility that is not a possibility of something is unintelligible. A self-subsisting substance is not correlative in the same sense. An apple is intelligible in itself without being of something else. Thus, Ibn Sīnā concludes, possibility is not selfsubsisting. He next considers whether possible existence might yet be a substance standing in some relation other than possibility, ‘where the two, taken together, would be possibility’ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 360). That is, the possible existence of the apple might be the apple itself in a certain relation rendering it possible. That, however, would suppose that the possible apple exists prior to its actuality, in some state called ‘possibility’, whereas we understand the possible thing (as opposed to its possibility) as not existing then. Possible existence, he concludes, is the relation itself, and not a property of a non-existent, but possible thing. In other words, 2) it is an attribute and so 4) subsists in a substratum. Then we arrive at the reasoning behind what we have rendered above as premise 5) of Ghazālī’s version of the proof. Possibility, Ibn Sīnā argues, is also not a property of the ‘efficient principle,’ that is, the active cause of the existence of the possible thing. For if so, then the possible existence of something would be the same as the power of something else to bring it into existence. In that case, to say ‘what which is impossible cannot be brought into existence,’ would just mean, ‘that which cannot be brought into existence cannot be brought into existence,’ an uninformative tautology. On the contrary, Ibn Sīnā argues, the

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first statement is genuinely informative, for we determine whether a thing can be brought into existence by inquiring whether it is possible, and not the reverse. Having laboriously eliminated what he takes to be all the alternatives, he concludes that ‘the possibility of existence – that is the potential to exist – subsists in a substance other than the mover and its power.’ It subsists instead in the substance ‘which is of the character to be moved’ (Ibn Sīnā 2009 p. 361). Thus (as he also argues in the Metaphysics) possibility inheres in a preexisting substance as the potential of that substance to undergo a change realizing the possibility (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 139–43). That is, 6) it subsists in matter. Ghazālī’s falāsifah deploy the same argument against reducing possibility to being within Divine power, for then to say that God can do everything possible would reduce to saying that He can do everything He can do. Reducing possibility to Divine knowledge of a thing’s possibility would likewise be circular. ‘For knowledge requires a knowable,’ they argue. ‘Hence, the possibility that is known is necessarily other than the knowledge’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 41). Ruling out power and knowledge presumably leaves matter as the remaining substrate for possibility, which therefore 7) precedes every temporal thing. In a general sense, matter is what receives forms in a process of change and becoming, and is therefore that in which the potential for the process and/or its product subsists (Aristotle Physics, I-7). A piece of wood carved into a key, for example, is the matter of the key, but not pure matter. It is itself a substance – a unity of form and matter exhibiting a specific nature. In the last section, we raised the question whether matter is one sui generis thing, or just whichever pre-existing substance bears the potential to produce a particular thing. This proof makes it clear how it stands for Ghazālī’s falāsifah. ‘Possibility thus becomes a description of matter,’ they explain. ‘But matter does not have matter [receptive of it], and it is, hence, impossible for it to originate in time’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 41). For 8) if matter originated, it would be possible before its existence, entailing something else with the potential to become matter. Matter is therefore something over and above (or under)

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any of the temporal substances bearing the potential of bringing about their successors, for all of these originate in time. If the world came to be, goes the argument, it was possible before that, and so there was something preceding the world with the potential to become the world. Yet this just means ‘the world’ did not come to be, but only a current phase that came to be from a previous phase, and that from a previous, etc. Underlying all this change is matter – unoriginated and eternal. Ibn Rushd agrees with the falāsifahs’ argument as Ghazālī presents it, adding in his own gloss an emphasis on the difference between the possibility in the agent and that in the patient. The direct aim is to explain why the possibility of possible things cannot inhere in only God’s power. Possibility, he explains, specifically requires as a substratum the patient ‘which receives that which is possible’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 100 / 1954 p. 59). These two are not interchangeable, he explains, for it is one thing to say that Zaid, the agent can do something (light a match), and quite another to say that something else, the patient can have something done to it (be lit). The possibility of the patient is a necessary condition for the possibility of the agent. For every change is the actualization, by an agent, of the potential of some patient. Action is thus impossible in the absence of anything with the potential to be affected. The agent, furthermore, cannot be the substratum of the possibility of the possible thing, because the thing itself ceases to be possible when it becomes actual, whereas the agent retains its possibility of acting (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 101 / 1954 p. 59). A carpenter has the power to build a shelf, and some pieces of wood have the potential to become one. Once he is finished, the shelf is no longer possible but actual; but the carpenter still has the power to build shelves. Only the patient – an existing thing that the agent acts upon – can be that which bears the possibility of the thing it can become. This patient, he argues, must ultimately be something that does not come to be. For otherwise there would be an infinite regress of essentially related things, bearing the potential of others, and from which they come to be. Therefore, ‘the forms must be interchangeable in the ingenerable and

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incorruptible substratum, eternally and in rotation’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 60 / 1954 p. 60). Matter thus is eternal and unchanging. This raises the question, what actually is matter itself? The only answer seemingly available is that it is actually nothing, but potentially anything. Ibn Sīnā argues extensively in the Metaphysics (2:3) against the actual existence of prime matter; that is, matter in itself rather than as a dimension of a substance. Thus, it is ‘impossible that matter should exist in actuality unless it is rendered subsistent in corporeal form’ (2005, 59). If it were actually something, then rather than matter, it would be a substance with its own essential form. Thus, it only ever actually is something other than matter. Matter in itself is not actually a thing, but an abstraction from individual substances, or more precisely from the relation some substances bear to others in being the particular substrate of the process by which they come to be. ‘Thus, when matter is abstracted [from form] in the estimative faculty, then what was done to it is [something] that does not hold in external existence’ (2005, 63). It should follow that the supposed ‘matter’ necessarily preceding any cosmic beginning is merely an imaginative projection, just like time. For how are we to understand this ‘ingenerable and incorruptible substratum,’ as Ibn Rushd is describing it? All that actually could precede the existence of anything else (including the world) are according to Ibn Sīnā particular substances. Any such substance either came to be or not. If it came to be, its own possibility will have preceded it, according to Ibn Rushd, and hence another substance in which that possibility subsists, leading to an infinite regress. If it did not come to be then it is an eternal substance. That is, an actual something that nevertheless becomes all things, thus being what it is not. Yet if it is not an actual substance, then how is it the existing thing in which possibility, according to the argument, must ultimately subsist? If, by asserting the prior eternal existence of matter we mean prime matter, that amounts to asserting that possibility is indeterminate and self-subsisting after all.

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Ghazālī’s objection is that ‘the possibility they have mentioned’ is merely an intellectual judgement and thus requires no external thing in which to inhere. He thus seems to refer specifically to the possibility of the world’s existence. That is, we need not read him as denying the concept of potentiality as such, but only as insisting that the possibility of the world’s existence is not a possibility of that sort, and therefore does not entail a prior existent. It is possibility of the thing in itself, defined as Ibn Sīnā defined it (extensionally, since as he holds it is a basic concept), and as mentioned by Aristotle in the Prior Analytics. Writes Ghazālī, ‘anything whose existence the mind supposes, [nothing] preventing it’s supposing it, we call ‘possible’; and, if prevented, we call it ‘impossible’; and if unable to suppose its non-existence, we name it ‘necessary’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 42). He is in fact consistent here with Ibn Sīnā, in asserting the independence of possibility in this sense, from ‘matter’ or any other thing. For as a basic concept no other thing can enter into any definition for it. The falāsifah reject this assertion on the ground that an intellectual judgment of possibility would be knowledge of possibility. Knowledge depends necessarily on a distinct, independently real object. We thus cannot know that something is possible unless its possibility exists independent of the mind. If therefore, possibility is something known, then it cannot merely be an intellectual judgment (Ghazālī 2000 p. 43). Ibn Rushd adds that the consequence of Ghazālī’s position is that no modal judgment can be true. For truth, he argues, is ‘the agreement of what is in the soul to what is outside’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 103 / 1954 p. 60). If the judgment that something is possible is true, then there must be something independent of the mind functioning as the truth-maker. If possibility is merely an intellectual judgement with no external object, as Ghazālī insists, then the judgment can have no truth-value. This argument seems to imply, however, that true judgments about the mind itself or its contents are impossible. Ghazālī agrees that modal judgments have objects, but of precisely the same sort which according to the falāsifah, are the objects of true knowledge. For the objects of intellectual know-

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ledge are the universal forms (genus and species) which, according to most of the falāsifah do not exist external to the mind. What exists, instead, are particular substances that we perceive through the senses, and from which the mind abstracts the universal forms. These forms are the objects of genuine knowledge, and yet exist only the mind. There is thus no ground for the falāsifah to object to the assertion that possibility, as the object of modal judgment, also exists only in the mind. We can treat the ontological status of universals and that of modality in similar fashion. Would universals like the genera and species of things still exist in a world without intellects to apprehend them? The falāsifah may either say that, no, all concepts and categories would then cease, leaving only concrete individuals; or they may say yes, these intelligible forms would continue to subsist eternally in God’s knowledge. In either case, Ghazālī argues, the same applies for possibility; the point being that the falāsifah have no grounds to assert that possibility requires a material substratum. As for which it is, Ghazālī unfortunately does not say, for again ‘what is intended is to show the contradiction of their words’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 45). We might then consider that question as an aside. For without the Divine Intellect, all parties here agree, nothing would exist at all. If there were no intellect other than His, then, how would things stand? Would there exist only concrete individuals, only intelligible forms, or both? This leads into the question of the nature of Divine knowledge, and the focus of the 13th Discussion. Here, we may simply take note that Ghazālī’s assertion that possibility is an intellectual judgment requiring no external thing in which to subsist, is compatible with its being a judgment of either Divine or created intellect, so long as by ‘external’ we mean external to whichever of the two intellects we intend. Ghazālī’s mistake, according to Ibn Rushd, is to think that because possibility is a universal it therefore does not depend on individuals. Yet universals, he says, have independently existing individuals on which they depend, and therefore subsist in matter. For knowledge is not of universals, he argues, but of

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individuals through universals. The independently existing individual, not the universal, is the ultimate object of knowledge. Ghazālī, he says, has misunderstood the matter by interpreting the philosophers as denying that universals exist outside the mind. On the contrary, they do exist outside the mind, but potentially, whereas in the mind they exist actually. If this were not the case, then our knowledge would be false. For truth, again, is the correspondence between what is in the soul and what is outside it. Thus, he explains, the object of knowledge – which is the individual – is only accidently individual, but essentially universal, and thus the mind in abstracting the universals can know it. If it were essentially individual, then this would not be possible. Possibility likewise, exists actually only in the mind, but outside the mind potentially (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 110–11 / 1954 pp. 65–6). What then does it mean here for universals to exist ‘potentially’ outside the mind? The dangerously ambiguous phrase cannot mean they have the potential to exist (that is, that they can exist) outside the mind. For that is just what the theory means to deny, while explaining how they nevertheless do so exist, so to save the possibility of knowledge of the external world. It means, rather, that their potential to exist subsists in something outside the mind (though their actual existence subsists only in the mind). The idea is that the intellect has the potential to be affected by our outer senses’ experience of externally existing individuals, so that through abstraction from them comes about the actual existence of universal concepts in the mind through which we know those individuals. The potential for this thus rests, at least in part, in the actual existence of the external individuals. This is the sense, then, in which universals ‘exist potentially’ outside the mind. Yet here Ibn Rushd has almost made Ghazālī’s case for him. For if possibility exists actually only in the mind, as Ibn Rushd concedes, then the possibility that supposedly would precede any cosmic beginning also actually exists only in the mind. The assertion that it nevertheless exists ‘potentially’ in the external does not help here. For it only entails that the possibility of this conceived possibility, as it were, subsists in a concrete individual

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object. That could be any temporal object of our experience, from which we grasp the concept of possibility in itself, and which we then apply to the cosmos as a whole in the act of imagining its creation. It need not be any eternally existing matter prior to the world. Another question this raises is, whether the process of abstracting the forms from the individuals is a matter of pulling something into the mind from the outside, or a matter of giving rise to something within, in response to something else existing outside. If the former, then a kind of Platonism follows. For the forms are independently real and the true objects of knowledge, while the individuals of sense experience are mere appearance. If the latter, then we have a form of representative realism. For the direct object of knowledge is internal, distinct and of a wholly different order of being from the external world, connected only through a precarious supposed causality, threatening skepticism. The Aristotelian tradition met the challenge of this dilemma with a delicate balancing act. Ibn Rushd’s talk of the external existence of the universal ‘in potency’ is an expression of this style of fence riding. He finds himself forced to argue, as we saw, both that the object of knowledge is not the universal but the individual, and that the individual is ‘essentially universal’ and only ‘accidently individual.’ That Ghazālī is touching on the weak, sensitive point of the system here explains Ibn Rushd’s strong reaction, calling Ghazālī’s argument an ‘ugly and crude sophism’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 111 / 1954 p. 66).

SECTION 7.3. ARGUMENT FROM IMPOSSIBILITY AND ACCIDENTS

Ghazālī offers three arguments that possibility reduces to an intellectual judgment: from impossibility, from the possibility of accidents, and from that of immaterial souls. Regarding the first, if possibility requires a substratum, he argues, so does impossibility. Since the impossible does not exist, impossibility does not require an existing substratum. Therefore, neither does possibility (Ghazālī 2000 p. 42). His falāsifah respond that the impossible is for opposites to be true of the same thing simultaneously (e.g. for one thing to be both black and white). It

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therefore requires an existing thing of which one of these opposites is true (e.g. black), and of which it is then impossible for the other to be true thereof (Ghazālī 2000 p. 43). This is not always the case, Ghazālī replies, for the existence of an equal to God is impossible without there being any such equal in which this impossibility inheres. If his falāsifah object that this impossibility just means the necessity of God’s solitary uniqueness, which inheres in Him, Ghazālī says that would contradict their claim that the world co-exists eternally with Him. If they seek to clarify, that what they mean by God’s necessary uniqueness is only His being without an equal, Ghazālī argues, this crucially differs from His being without the world. For unlike His being without an equal, His being without the world is not necessary, but possible, for the world is contingent. ‘We thus undertake relating possibility to Him by this device,’ Ghazālī concludes, ‘as they have undertaken it returning impossibility to His essence by changing the expression ‘impossibility’ to ‘necessity’, then relating singularity to Him using the qualification ‘necessary’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 45). That is, we can understand the possibility of the world, prior to its existence, in relation to God rather than any pre-existing matter, so that the existence of the world is a possibility for Him. This, goes the argument, is no less valid than the falāsifahs’ own interpretation of the impossibility of an equal as the necessity of God’s uniqueness. The upshot here is that impossibility either requires a substratum or not. If not, then neither does possibility (including the prior possibility of the world’s existence). If it does, then we must interpret the impossibility of an equal to God as the necessity of His uniqueness, in which case we can interpret the possibility of the world’s existence, as God’s possibility of being alone, so that this possibility subsists in Him rather than matter. Ibn Rushd cuts Ghazālī short here, and omitting Ghazālī’s last rejoinder calls it ‘vain talk.’ For again, he argues, intellectual judgment has value only in relation to external things and if possibility and impossibility are not out there, then there is no difference between reality and illusion (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 113 / 1954 p. 67). Yet if the possibility of the world subsists in God, as Ghazālī suggests here, this is external to the intellectual

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judgment, at least of any created intellect. As for Divine knowledge, it differs from created knowledge, according to Ibn Rushd himself, precisely in that it does not depend on its object but rather the reverse. God’s knowledge is the cause of its object, the nature of the object being an effect thereof (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 532 / 1954 p. 325). That, for him, does not negate the difference between reality and illusion, but ultimately defines it. Thus, while his objection cuts against the position that (at least objective) possibility is only a judgment of created intellect, it does not carry the same weight against the suggestion that the possibility of the cosmos as a whole subsists in Divine knowledge rather than in the cosmos itself. Ghazālī’s second argument is from the possibility of accidents, using the example of ‘blackness and whiteness.’ These are possible prior to their existence, though as accidents, they are not self-subsistent and instead inhere in substances. If their possibility also requires an existing substratum, as the falāsifah maintain, then we can only say that an existing body is possibly black (for instance), but not that blackness itself is possible. That is, accidents would not be possible, but only the substances in which they inhere. Yet, Ghazālī insists, considered in themselves, the mind judges them possible (Ghazālī 2000 p. 42), this possibility not therefore requiring a substratum. On the contrary, argue the falāsifah, the existence of black, white, or any such accident without a substratum is impossible. An accident in itself is not a thing and can only exist in something else (Ghazālī 2000 p. 43). Ghazālī agrees that accidents are not self-subsistent in external existence. That was a premise of his argument. Yet in the mind, he argues, it is otherwise. ‘For the mind apprehends universal blackness and judges it to be in itself possible’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 45). Ghazālī does not mean that the mind judges it possible that blackness exist in itself (as self-subsistent). Rather, he means (as does Ibn Sīnā by the ‘possible in itself’) that considered in itself, it is possible. For ‘the mind apprehends it.’ That is, it is of a conceivable what-ness. The implication is that the world’s preexistent possibility, on which the falāsifah base their argument, is of this sort and thus does not entail a pre-existing substratum as

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they claim. The issue here is not so much a conflict between two mutually exclusive positions on what possibility is, but rather of the relation between two otherwise compatible but distinct senses of possibility, one drawn ultimately from Aristotle’s Physics and the other from Prior Analytics. Having made the latter a basic concept, Ibn Sīnā set the stage for its independence from the former. Thus, when we consider whether ‘any impossibility follows if a thing is assumed realized,’ as Aristotle put it, we may do so in reference solely to the whatness of the thing itself, apart from any necessary external conditions (for example, the existence of suitable matter) natural science might discover for it. On the other hand, if possibility in this sense cannot be determined independently of those conditions, then it is not a basic concept after all, but ultimately definable in terms of the elements of natural philosophy regarding the conditions of change and becoming. Ibn Rushd calls this a sophism, and in an exceedingly obscure passage explains that both substratum and their inherent qualities are ‘possible’ in different ways. The possibility of a substratum is apparently not potency, for according to Ibn Rushd it does not ‘abandon’ its possibility when it is actualized, while the inherent quality does, since it is ‘only described by possibility insofar as it is in potency’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 104 / 1954 p. 61). The ‘opposite’ of the former is the ‘impossible’, he says, while that of the latter is the ‘necessary.’ I will leave the reader to decipher why the opposite of a mango’s possibility, for instance, is its impossibility, while the opposite of the possibility of its ripeness is its necessity. All this is evident, he explains, from the definition of the possible as ‘the non-existence which is in readiness to exist or not to exist’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 105 / 1954 p. 61). Its possibility lies in neither its non-existence nor its existence, but its potency. For as non-existence and existence are opposites, one cannot become the other. The fact of change, in which one succeeds the other in turn, proves that there must be ‘a third entity which is the recipient of both of them’ – that is the matter (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 106 / 1954 p. 62). Neither does the non-existent become, for it is not; nor does the existent, for it already is. The becoming must therefore be through a third thing, bridging the two so to speak,

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which is the substratum of possibility, but to understand this as having its own actuality would render change impossible, for the actual already is and does not come to be. Hence, Ibn Rushd explains, the Muʿtazilah agree that there must be such a thing. That is, they believe in the thing-hood of the non-existent. The falāsifah differ from them only in holding that the non-existent must always subsist in an actual existent as a privation thereof, for otherwise it would be an actual existent in its own right and again change would be impossible. We can perhaps clarify the difference between them by saying that one postulates an actual non-existence and the other a non-existent actual. That which is not completely obscure in all this seems to not only miss the point, but also contribute to Ghazālī’s case. One of these is Ibn Rushd’s explanation of the concept of existence in potency (the existent non-existence), and how it solves the old problem posed by the fact that change entails the existence of non-existence. That may be as good a solution as one can expect, but is immaterial because Ghazālī has not here denied any of that. Instead, he has only denied that possibility as such requires a substratum. By asserting that possibility as predicated of substance is not existence in potency, Ibn Rushd seems only to have affirmed that. The cosmos is either a substance or collection of substances, but it is not an inherent quality. Thus, the possibility that according to this proof, must precede any beginning of its existence is not, by Ibn Rushd’s own assertion, that of existence in potency, and there is no reason to infer that it requires a pre-existing matter in which to subsist. The possibility in itself of change entails the possibility of a substratum, for change just is the replacement in a single thing of one attribute for its contrary. Ghazālī indicates as much (as we shall find) in the 17th Discussion. This certainly means that in order for a truly temporal (i.e. changing) world to exist, there must be some such substratum. This possibility does not however entail its actual existence. To perform that feat of ontological magic requires, again, equivocating on the operative sense of possibility by switching out possibility in itself for existence in potency. For the first sense of the world’s possibility is the only one which can precede its existence, as the proof’s first premise

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asserts. Existence in potency cannot possibly precede the world’s existence, for as the proof later asserts, it in fact entails that the world already exist. Unlike the third proof, this one involves some argument for the equivocation, based on the premise that possibility is an attribute thus requiring a substratum. Ibn Sīnā’s argument for this, again, was that possibility is always determinate, a possibility of something, but since that something is non-existent its possibility has to subsist in something else. That this has to be matter, he concludes only after ruling out the efficient cause. Ghazālī has asserted that possibility needs no material substratum, since it is only an intellectual judgment, leaving us with the option of referring that to Divine or created knowledge. The objection of the falāsifah that he relays (and which Ibn Rushd repeats), that knowledge of possibility requires an independent object, leads us toward the former, since in that case the causal relation between object and knowledge is reverse. We then have a strong case that possibility as such does not require a material substratum. It remains to argue that a cosmic beginning constitutes a change, whereby the cosmos comes to be. Since the possibility of change itself entails pre-existing matter, then a cosmic beginning does. Ghazālī must obviously deny that a cosmic beginning constitutes a change, no less because he has denied time prior to that, and its being a change would entail prior time. To this one may well object that this entails its coming to be ‘from nothing’ and hence, the existence of the non-existent. We have already remarked that to conceive a created cosmos as one the nonexistence of which precedes its existence non-temporally seems to entail a world that both exists and does not. Yet in the final analysis, as we saw, the alternative proposal of the falāsifah of eternally pre-existing matter is also to propose the existence of the non-existent. That is so whether posited in the form of the existing non-existence of a feature of an actual specific substance, leading to an infinite regress, or in the form of underlying ‘pure matter,’ which, again, amounts to the postulation of possibility as self-subsisting and indeterminate.

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SECTION 7.4. ARGUMENT FROM THE POSSIBILITY OF SOULS

The third argument rests on Ibn Sīnā’s theory of the soul, according to which souls (as Ghazālī expounds it) are selfsubsisting immaterial substances created in time. They must then be possible before their existence, Ghazālī argues, but there is no matter in which that possibility inheres. Since (he seems to agree) their possibility is not reducible to God’s power to create them, it must therefore be an intellectual judgment requiring no external substratum (Ghazālī 2000 p. 42). Ibn Rushd objects that only Ibn Sīnā said souls have a beginning ‘in the true sense of the word’ while ‘all other philosophers agree that in their temporal existence they are related to and connected with the bodily possibilities’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 107 / 1954 p. 63). By beginning in the ‘true sense of the word,’ he presumably means an absolute beginning, not preceded by existence in potency. Their connection with the bodily possibilities must then mean their prior existence in potency, subsisting in matter. Thus, actualized, the soul should be an accident of the body; that is, ‘imprinted in matter.’ According Ibn Rushd, however, the souls on this theory ‘receive this connection [to bodily possibilities] like the possibilities which subsist in mirrors for their connection with the rays of the sun’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 107 / 1954 p. 63). The possibility of the soul’s relation to a body, he says, is not like that of the relation of passing forms to matter, and its substratum is not like matter. Ibn Rushd is quite sensitive about this topic. Only those with a sharp mind who have read the books on this theory (presumably including Aristotle’s de Anima) under the tutelage of a learned master can understand it, he says, and Ghazālī should not have broached the subject in this way. He was either writing out of ignorance or intentionally misrepresented it, Ibn Rushd says, but since he holds Ghazālī in too high esteem for either of these accusations, he suggests that Ghazālī’s circumstances forced him to write it (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 108 / 1954 p. 63). His criticism is valid, for Ghazālī seems to have misrepresented Ibn Sīnā’s theory. While Ibn Sīnā holds that individual souls are (or can be) eventually separable from matter, they are dependent on matter in coming to be. For matter is the

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principle of individuation, and therefore an individual soul can only come to be as a perfection of a suitable body. In the process of its relation to its body, the soul may develop an individuality independent from body. Thus, while it is correct in a sense that Ibn Sīnā held souls are immaterial substances created in time, it is not accurate to say that, on his theory, they can come to be without matter. Ghazālī’s falāsifah, in contrast with Ibn Rushd, respond by referring to the diversity among their theories of the soul. Some believe souls are eternal, and so the problem of their pre-existing possibility does not arise. Others think the soul is an accident of body, and thus its possibility inheres in that matter. As for Ibn Sīnā’s theory, they say, although the soul is not an accident of body, it can govern the body. The body, therefore, has the possibility to be governed by its specific soul. The possibility of the soul thus inheres in the body in this way. This is indeed Ibn Sīnā’s theory (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 137), which amounts to identifying the possible existence of the soul with the possibility of a body to be governed by it. That, for Ghazālī is as plausible as identifying it with the possibility for God to create it, which the falāsifah have rejected. They argued, again, that if we define the possible as that which God can do then it would be meaningless to say that He can do everything possible. Likewise, by this line of reasoning, if we define the possibility of a soul as the ability of a body to be governed by it, then saying a body can be governed by its soul reduces to saying that a body can be governed by that by which it can be governed. It is interesting that Ghazālī does not here suggest identifying the soul’s possibility with God’s knowledge of it. Ibn Rushd reads Ghazālī as arguing that, if the soul is not imprinted on matter, then the recipient possibility (that of the body to be governed by the soul) is the same as the agent possibility (that of God to create the soul). For a soul not imprinted on matter is distinct from the body just as the agent is distinct from the act. Thus, if we can postulate that the possibility of the soul subsists in the body, we can just as well postulate it as subsisting solely in God. This, Ibn Rushd says, is ‘shocking.’ For the consequence is that ‘the soul would come to the body as if it

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directed it from outside, as the artisan directs his product, and the soul would not be a form of the body, just as the artisan is not a form of his product’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 114 / 1954 p. 67). The problem here is how to understand the soul as both separate from, and intimately related to the order of the body. ‘The answer,’ he says, ‘is that it is not impossible that there should be amongst the entelechies which conduct themselves like forms something that is separate from its substratum as the steersman is from his ship’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 114 / 1954 p. 67). If the body is like the instrument of the soul, then the soul is a separate form, he argues, in which case the possibility of the body, to be governed by the soul in this way is different from that of the agent to create the soul. For the body in this case is, like any instrument, both a recipient and an agent. It follows that supposing the soul separate from the body does not entail that the possibility of the agent and that of the patient are equivalent. The idea here seems to be that, since the soul and body are reciprocally related, each being agent and patient in relation to the other, then the possibility of the soul depends on the body, even though it is not merely an accident subsisting in the body. The instrument is both recipient and agent, in that while it receives the act of its user, it also determines that act. Thus, the steersman acts on the ship, while the nature of the ship itself is a cause of the act of the steersman. In order to steer the ship to the right, for example, the steersman must turn the wheel in that direction. While the steersman is not an accident of the ship, the possibility of being a steersman nevertheless depends on and is defined by the existence and nature of the ship. The suggestion is that the relation between soul and body is similarly reciprocal. This is an unfortunate line of argument for Ghazālī to take. For aside from misrepresenting Ibn Sīnā’s theory, his making use of this lofty mystery for dialectical purposes does seem philosophically inappropriate. Furthermore, the argument is immaterial. For even if souls were completely dependent on bodies, their possibility, in the relevant sense for Ghazālī’s argument, does not subsist in matter. For again, it is one thing to say that the possibility in itself of a soul entails a body, given what it is to be a soul. That is, a soul without a body may be impossible.

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It is quite another to say that the possibility of a soul requires the actual existence of a body; that is, that if a soul is possible then a body actually exists. For even if there were no body, a soul (along with its entailed body) is still in itself possible. Ghazālī only needs to argue here that the possibility of the existence of the world does not itself entail the existence of matter (and thus, the world). He does not need to argue that a world existing without matter is possible. Thus, the question whether a soul without a body is possible is irrelevant. This concludes our analysis of the First Discussion, and it would be suitable to close with a summary review of it here. Yet we will delay that, for in his response to Ghazālī in the Second Discussion, over post-eternity of the cosmos, Ibn Rushd delivers a closing argument for its pre-eternity, our treatment of which, in Section 8.1, below, will provide occasion for a summary ‘final word’ on the topic.

DISCUSSION 2

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CHAPTER EIGHT. COSMIC POST-ETERNITY In the second discussion, Ghazālī deals with the question of cosmic post-eternity, for the falāsifah also hold that it is impossible that the universe as a whole cease to exist. Each of the four proofs they deploy to prove its pre-eternity also apply here, he says, with a similar response available in each case. The first proof of pre-eternity rests on the premise that any change in the effect entails a change in the cause. The world’s annihilation is as much a change in the effect as its beginning, they would argue, but change is not possible in God. Just as they assert, in the second proof, that time would precede the world’s beginning, here they assert that there would be time after its annihilation and thus (given that time is the measure of motion) a time after time, which is contradictory. As before, the response turns on the assertion that time, as the measure of motion, is something God creates with the world. Time therefore does not exist before or after the world. Since God exists independently of time and is therefore not simultaneous with His effect, a change in the latter entails no change in Him. The matter changes, according to Ghazālī, with respect to the third proof, which applied to post-eternity would infer the world’s continued existence from that of its possibility after any hypothetical annihilation. This proof, he says, lacks traction here since, unlike its pre-eternity, it is not rationally impossible for the world to be post-eternal. God can make it endure in perpetuity, and we only know from revelation that He will not. It is unclear why he thinks this means the third proof does not apply, however,

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for like the others, the proof asserts not just that the world’s posteternity is possible, but that it is necessary. Since Ghazālī is committed to the possibility of the world’s annihilation, he is as obliged to resist the proof in the context of the world’s posteternity as he was in the context of its pre-eternity. His intent here is apparently only to clarify the difference he takes there to be, between pre and post-eternity. The only one, he says, who held that the world must necessarily end was the leading Muʿtazilī of Basra, Abū alHudhayl al-ʿAllaf (c.a. 840), who took an infinite number of future cosmic rotations to be as impossible as an infinite number of past rotations. ‘But this is false,’ he claims, ‘because the future does not enter at all into existence, either successively or concomitantly, whereas all of the past has entered into existence successively, even though not concomitantly’ (2000 p. 48). Thus, only an infinite quantity of past rotations would constitute the impossible actual infinite magnitude, while an infinite amount of future rotations really is merely potentially infinite. Therefore, while we can rationally apprehend the impossibility of the world’s pre-eternity the same does not hold for its post-eternity, he says, and so we need not engage the latter issue on rational grounds. Yet again, if that is so it only means that Ghazālī need not deploy his argument from past rotations, to prove that posteternity is impossible. His previous objection to the third proof is as necessary (and applicable) here as it was there. There is, however, a more interesting problem. The difference he asserts here between the possibilities of infinite past and future rotations presupposes a strong ‘A-series’ conception of time, and ontological asymmetry between the past and future. What is past has ‘entered existence’ while the future has not. This is an objective difference: being (at least created being) is past and does not transcend the horizon of an absolute ‘now.’ Recall, however, that in response to the second proof of the first discussion, Ghazālī argued that the difference between past and future is ‘necessary only in relation to us.’ The analogy he drew there between space and time, we saw, entails not only that the past and future are ontologically symmetrical, but perhaps even objectively interchangeable. Future events in that case exist as

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actually as do past events, differing only in relation to our temporal position. A post-eternity of ‘future’ cosmic rotations, then, is as much an actual infinite quantity, and therefore as impossible as a pre-eternity of ‘past’ rotations. Some will be tempted to suppose here that Ghazālī only denied the absolute ‘now’ (and hence any intrinsic difference between past and future) for the sake of argument. That is unlikely for the same reason it is irrelevant to us, for to accept such a difference in the interest of affirming the possibility of cosmic post-eternity would undermine his argument against that of its pre-eternity. As he clearly acknowledged, it would commit him to affirming that an eternal past had already entered into existence prior to the cosmos. Since denying the intrinsic now is essential to Ghazālī’s position regarding cosmic pre-eternity, it is less likely that he did so only for the sake of argument than that he simply failed to notice here its implication. That is, that the impossibility he asserts, of cosmic pre-eternity, entails that of its post eternity; or in other words, that Abu al-Hudhayl was right after all. According to Ibn Rushd, on the other hand, while everything that begins indeed has an end, the necessity which he asserts, of cosmic pre-eternity entails that of its post-eternity. ‘The temporal which has occurred in the past is finite in both directions, i.e. it has a beginning and an end,’ he writes, ‘but the eternal which has occurred in the past has neither beginning nor end’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 120 / 1954 p. 71). Ghazālī by implication is logically obliged to hold that post-eternity is impossible, though according to Ibn Rushd it is necessary. Yet where we would expect the latter to provide an argument to that effect, he instead uses the occasion to summarize and give something of a parting defense of the argument for cosmic pre-eternity. An examination of this, in Section 8.1, will therefore serve us well as a closing summary evaluation of that debate. In Section 8.2, we will consider the application of the ‘fourth proof’ of cosmic pre-eternity to its post-eternity. I will argue that, understood as Ibn Rushd has it, and combined with the core falsafah principle that nothing occurs without a cause, the proof leads to the conclusion, much like Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘eternal

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recurrence,’ that the history of the cosmos repeats itself in precise detail without end. Applying another core falsafah principle we previously encountered, in the identity of indiscernibles, we are led back to the conclusion that there is but one finite cosmic history. In Section 8.3, we review Ghazālī’s critique of a ‘weak’ empirical argument advanced by Galen. I argue that Ibn Rushd’s defense of the argument ultimately rests on suppositions that are ‘theological,’ in contrast to Ghazālī’s more ‘scientific’ objections, placing the two in roles quite opposite of those in which they are normally cast. In Section 8.4, we examine the falāsifah’s argument, that since cosmic annihilation is pure non-existence and thus not a thing, it cannot be God’s act. I argue that Ibn Rushd’s position, expressed in the Fourth Discussion (and noted above), that the world’s existence is ‘perfected through motion’, ultimately supports Ghazālī’s argument here that cosmic annihilation, while neither a thing itself nor the opposite of an existing thing, is nevertheless intelligible and thus in itself possible. In light of that, however, all parties in the debate should rethink what subsistence means, as regards the temporal.

SECTION 8.1. REVISITING THE ETERNAL PAST

Ibn Rushd begins by deploying an argument that is an apparent synthesis of the third and the second part of the second proof, describing its first two premises as something ‘conceded’ to the falāsifah. These are 1) that the possibility of the world has no beginning, and 2) that its possibility has a ‘condition of extension’ by which it is measured, from which it follows that 3) this measurable extension has no beginning. This extension is, again, time, he says, ‘and to call this timeless eternity is senseless’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 120 / 1954 p. 70). Time, therefore, has no beginning. In light, though, of his expressed agreement with Ghazālī’s response to the second proof, that God is timelessly eternal, he cannot sincerely mean that the very concept of timeless eternity is senseless. He must only mean it is senseless to understand the eternity of the possibility of the world as timeless. Yet he provides no argument for that, nor does it seem there is one to give.

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That the possibility of the world has no beginning, which he describes here as ‘conceded’ was, recall, intuitive in precisely that sense of ‘possible’ that we would describe as timelessly eternal; that is, possible in itself. For we would not so immediately agree that its possibility, understood as the potency of another actual existing substance, is without beginning. Yet the connection between possibility and time is crucial for Ibn Rushd’s case. ‘And since time is connected with possibility, and possibility with existence in motion,’ he argues, ‘existence in motion has no first term either’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 120 / 1954 p. 70). That is, since time is the measure of possible motion, then possible motion also has no beginning, and since motion is not possible without the existence of a mobile thing, the latter is pre-eternal as well. Recall that Ibn Rushd’s response to Ghazālī’s proof from past cosmic rotations was that their pre-eternity constitutes only a potential and not an actual infinity. This, we argued, only has sense as the claim that we can imagine a rotation prior to any past rotation. For the alternative, that of understanding this to mean that past events themselves only potentially exist, would be to embrace the absurdity involved in saying that past events have not actually occurred, but may yet occur. Likewise, if we concede here the possibility of motion prior to any hypothesized beginning of the world, it is only as something conceivable. Thus, the measure of this that follows is likewise, as Ghazālī argued, merely an intellectual judgment. It is only the possibility in itself of time conceived as the comparative measure of imaginatively projected past motions. If we are to call this possibility eternal, then timeless eternity, far from being senseless, is the only sensible way in which we can describe it. Ibn Rushd must dismiss this out of hand as senseless because he needs real time, rather than merely time conceived as a possibility, in order to pull possibility as potentiality out from the magic hat, along with the existential import by which he can infer the existence of actual pre-eternal motion. His introduction of the prior possibility of the world as ‘conceded,’ along with his offhand dismissal of timeless eternity as ‘senseless’ gives the distinct impression that he is aware of this

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problem of equivocation and the consequently sophistical nature of the argument. This is on display even more explicitly when he argues that, since God exists eternally in the past and future, having no beginning, the ‘theologians’ assertion, that ‘everything which existed in the past has a first term, is futile’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 120 / 1954 p. 70). For Ibn Rushd, again, had already expressed his agreement that God is timelessly eternal and is therefore not before, after, or simultaneous with anything, thereby leveling his criticism against Ibn Sīnā’s portion of the second proof, which asserted God’s necessary simultaneity with His effect. His describing God as existing ‘in the past and future’ is thus a misrepresentation of His eternity. Moreover, Ghazālī did not claim, as Ibn Rushd put it, that whatever existed in the past had a beginning. His claim, rather, was that an infinite quantity of past motions constitutes an actual infinite magnitude, which is impossible. Even if we describe God as existing eternally ‘in the past,’ this constitutes neither an actual nor a potentially infinite magnitude, for magnitude does not apply to God at all. Thus, we cannot rightly say God’s age is ‘potentially infinite’ in the only sense there is for that phrase, that no matter how old we imagine Him to be, we can imagine Him older than that. Ibn Rushd would be the first to deny that God has an age, which is why he had correctly affirmed God’s timeless eternity. He then takes aim at ‘those who make a distinction between past and future, because what is past is there in its totality, whereas the future never enters into existence in its totality (for the future enters reality only successively)’ (1954 p. 71). Ghazālī, of course, claimed that the totality of the past has existed successively, not concomitantly, while the future never exists at all. We mentioned that this contradicts the position on the nature of time implied by his response to the second proof. Likewise, in his argument against Ghazālī’s distinction here, we find Ibn Rushd adopting the same spatial analogy to time for which he castigated Ghazālī there. The argument goes: 1) what is in reality past is that which has entered time, and 2) what has entered time has time beyond

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it in both directions [i.e. before and after] and forms a totality, so that 3) what is in reality past has time beyond it in both directions and forms a totality. What does not have time beyond it in both directions (the eternal) and does not form a totality, is therefore not in reality past, but Ibn Rushd says, only equivocally so. That is, ‘it is infinitely extended with the past, rather than in the past, and possesses no totality in itself, although its parts are totalities’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 121 / 1954 p. 71). Extension is spatial, however, and an infinite extension is an actual infinite magnitude. A consequence of Ibn Rushd’s earlier resistance to the spatial analogy for time is that it allowed him to argue that the past exists potentially rather than actually. Here we might pose the question: is the eternal actually or only potentially extended with the past? For Ibn Rushd, the answer should be that it is only potentially extended with the past, meaning that when we imagine things, by analogy to space, extended in time, the eternal is such that we can imagine it extended with a time prior to any time we imagine. This potential, again, subsists in our imagination. To construe the eternal as actually extended with the past is simply to construe it as an actually infinite magnitude. Yet for Ibn Rushd, time itself (not just imagined time) has no beginning. For each temporal beginning is a present, he argues, and each present is preceded by a past. It follows that both time and ‘that which exists commensurable with time…must necessarily be infinite’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 121 / 1954 p. 71). This is the old Aristotelian argument again. The problem is that the temporal beginning of a thing is objective, a limit of the thing itself. The sense in which every temporal beginning is a present, however, is subjective. For according to the theory, it is a point existing not actually but potentially in the continuum of motion, which we imaginatively posit therein in order to ‘mark’ it with respect of before and after, so to measure time. There is nothing here to show that the past, which according to the claim precedes each present, as it’s ‘before’, is anything more than imaginary. As Ghazālī had argued, if we imagine an earlier point as the present then what was ‘past’ will be ‘future.’ If on the contrary, there is only one objective present, then the premise that every temporal beginning is a present, is questionable. The beginning of time

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might not be a ‘present,’ understood as the differentiation of before from after in the continuum of motion. Even if we grant that time is eternal, the argument that motion is commensurate with it is inconsistent with Ibn Rushd’s objection to the proof from past rotations. For there, he argued that there is no proportion between infinities. Thus, the fact that Saturn rotates once for every 30 solar rotations does not, given cosmic pre-eternity, entail an infinity thirty times more than another infinity. It should follow that nothing can be commensurate with the eternal. Motion as such cannot then be commensurate with infinite time. Only finite motions can be commensurate with finite units of time. More precisely, in terms of Aristotle’s theory, finite motions are commensurate with other finite motions, thus making possible the units (that is, time) by which we measure motion. To say time is ‘potentially infinite’ just means that there is no natural logical limit to how much motion we can measure. Actual time is measured, and thus finite. Therefore, the only way something can have time beyond it in either direction, as Ibn Rushd described the temporal, is by having measured ‘parts’ of time – totalities – beyond it. Outside of that, we can only describe as timeless eternity. In spite of Ibn Rushd’s dismissal of this as senseless, it is the only way to make sense of his ‘potential infinity’ as applied to time. We can summarize what has emerged from our critique here with the following argument. Time is the measure of motion. Therefore, the immeasurable is timeless. The infinite is immeasurable. Therefore, the infinite is timeless. Yet motion entails time. Therefore, infinite motion is impossible. ‘Potentially infinite motion’ can only mean timeless eternity. ‘For of the circular movements, only those that time limits enter into represented existence,’ Ibn Rushd proceeds to argue. If ‘represented’ existence here means actual existence, then only finite motion actually exists. That is clear enough. Yet then, he says ‘but those that are simultaneous with time do not afterwards enter past existence, just as the eternally existent does not enter past existence, since no time limits it’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 122 / 1954 p. 72). Which circular motions are these, which are ‘simultaneous with time’? We know it cannot be the single

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rotation of any specific sphere, for even that of the outermost sphere is temporally limited. Nor can it be any finite set of rotations, for any such set is also limited by time. It cannot be the totality of all rotations of any sphere, for according to Ibn Rushd there is no such totality (for the eternal has no totality). It certainly does appear that these mysterious rotations ‘simultaneous with time’ do not enter past existence, as Ibn Rushd says, but because they do not exist at all. Yet these three do not exhaust the options, for we have the trusty old fallback. The answer Ibn Rushd would give, no doubt, is that the eternal circular motions in question are the ‘potentially eternal’ circular motions. They do not enter past existence, simply because they do not actually exist. Thus, no time limits them, which again just means they are timelessly eternal, not ‘simultaneous with time.’ We may therefore conveniently relieve ourselves of trying to make sense of being ‘at the same time as time.’ Ibn Rushd’s next argument is a version of the first proof. God is eternal, he argues, and therefore does not enter past time. This is of course true, because God is timeless. He cannot, for reasons explained above, be ‘eternally extended with’ past time. If God’s acts entered past time, Ibn Rushd argues, then they would be finite; but if they are finite, God would be eternally inactive, which is impossible (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 122 / 1954 p. 72). Therefore, God’s acts are not finite, and do not enter past time; that is, the world has no beginning. The conclusion that really follows from this, given what I have argued above, is that the world is timeless, for that is the only coherent sense for this notion of it not entering past time. Yet the world is not timeless. What has gone wrong here is, of course, the premise that if God’s acts are finite, then he is eternally inactive. For its main presuppositions are false: that is, that infinite time, ‘extended’ with God must precede any cosmic beginning. God is timeless, as Ibn Rushd knows, and this pushes the argument in a different direction. For in conjunction with the fact that God is eternally active, it follows from His timelessness that there is no time prior or posterior to the world during which He would be inactive, whether or not the world is finite. Therefore, the temporal infinity of the world does not follow. The fact that it would constitute an

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actual infinite magnitude (assuming we are talking about the actual rather than a ‘potential’ world) rules that out.

SECTION 8.2. THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLE ETERNAL RECURRENCES

The fourth proof for cosmic pre-eternity, according to Ghazālī, applies similarly to its post-eternity. If the world ceases to exist, then the possibility of its existence will remain. Since possibility is an attribute, it must subsist in matter. If the world ends, then matter and the elements would remain, which of course means the world does not really end (2000 p. 48). Ibn Rushd clarifies that this proof is valid only on the understanding that ‘the forms succeed each other in one substratum in a circular way and that the agent of this succession is an eternal one’ (1954 p. 73). For to suppose an infinite number of either forms or matters in succession, leads to the absurdity of an actual infinite magnitude. The two step argument that follows will show first, that the fourth proof so understood, combined with the core falsafah principle (already encountered in the first discussion) that nothing occurs without a cause, leads to a conclusion much like Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘eternal recurrence.’ that the history of the cosmos repeats itself in precise detail without end (Nietzsche 1974). Secondly, if we apply to this consequence another core falsafah principle previously encountered, the identity of indiscernibles, we are led back to the conclusion that there is but one finite cosmic history. Begin with Ibn Rushd’s assertion that there are a finite number of forms. It follows that the number of ways in which these forms can succeed each other is also finite. Given an eternity, then, no unprecedented order of events can occur. Therefore, everything must recur, for otherwise one of two things must obtain. One possibility is that there is an algorithmic order of events, such that with each cycle something novel emerges according to a recurring pattern. The other is that novel things occur in each cosmic cycle without any ordered pattern at all. If the latter, then things happen without any cause, defying the very premise on which the whole system of falsafah rests.

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If the former, then the cosmos must have a beginning. For any algorithmic order in the occurrence of novelty entails a sequential ordering of cosmic cycles. Imagine, for instance, that each cycle of cosmic history differs from the last only in that one more human being exists. In this case, the total number of human beings in any cosmic cycle must correlate to a total number of cosmic cycles that have occurred, rendering the entire series finite. One might counter this with the hypothesis, for instance, that once the population of humans in a cosmic cycle reaches a certain point, it returns in the next cycle to zero, one, or some other base level. In that case, the population of humans in any cosmic cycle need not correlate to a finite total number of elapsed cycles. This sort of suggestion, however, simply amounts to conceding that everything recurs. For the falāsifah, there is no cosmic beginning and nothing happens without a cause. Novelty can therefore not arise, either randomly or according to any algorithmic order, and so there is no way for them to avoid the doctrine of eternal recurrence. This means there are an infinite number of qualitatively identical cosmic historical cycles. For everything ultimately happens in exactly the same way and order, repeatedly, for eternity. Each of these cosmic histories is indiscernible from any other. Recall that the falāsifah had argued against the possibility of a cosmic beginning on the premise of the identity of indiscernibles. Based on this principle, it follows that these infinite cosmic historical cycles all reduce to just one which, in light of the impossibility of an actual infinite magnitude must be finite.

SECTION 8.3. IBN RUSHD’S FAITH-BASED SCIENCE

Ghazālī begins his consideration of proofs specifically of cosmic post-eternity with an empirical argument he cites from Galen, with the expressed purpose merely of providing an example of weak arguments. According to this, the sun is incorruptible, for if it were then it would have suffered gradual decay (‘withered’) over the course of its existence. That this has not happened is evident from the fact that in the long history of astronomical observation we have not detected any such decay. Ghazālī’s objection is that the first premise is not admissible without first

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establishing the more general premises that first, anything that is corrupted must be so through withering, and second that all such corruption by withering must happen gradually over a long period. On the contrary, Ghazālī argues, not all corruption is through withering. A thing might destruct suddenly while in a state of perfection. Moreover, it may be that the sun has been undergoing gradual decay imperceptible to us. Astronomical measurements of the sun are only approximations, and due to its massive size and distance, it may have decayed an amount the equivalent of mountains without our knowing. We know that gems decay, he says, at such a gradual rate that after a century there is no perceptible difference in a ruby. The same might be the case with the sun (2000 p. 49). Galen’s argument is therefore inconclusive at best. In its defense, Ibn Rushd says we should understand the argument not just in light of the observation premise, but also in light of certain theoretical suppositions of natural science, which he takes to be well established. Thus, it is sound on the assumption that any such corruption would occur naturally rather than through violence. For heaven is an animal, he argues, and all animals suffer corruption only naturally and after decay. That by itself is a strange assertion for anyone who has visited a butcher, but his next argument is somewhat more interesting. If the heaven were to destruct, he argues, it would either disintegrate into its constituent elements, or lose its form and receive another. If the first, then the constituent elements into which it would disintegrate could not be any of the elements of the terrestrial world (earth, air, fire, and water), for he says, in comparison to heaven the amounts of these terrestrial elements are infinitely small. For Ibn Rushd, heaven is itself a fifth element, additional to the four terrestrial elements. If heaven, then, were to lose its form and receive another, it must be a sixth element, which is impossible since no such element exists. Furthermore he argues, even a directly imperceptible decay of the sun would have effects in the terrestrial plane. For any such decay would mean a disconnection from it of some of its parts, which would remain in existence in some form or another. We

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would thus be able to detect it indirectly through detectible changes on Earth that would inevitably result. In this way, we can falsify the suggestion that the sun undergoes decay through a kind of hypothetical deduction. Ultimately, however, Ibn Rushd relies here on theoretical suppositions that are empirically unfalsifiable, and in fact theological in nature. “To imagine therefore, a dissipation of the heavenly bodies,’ he concludes, ‘is to admit a disarrangement in the divine order which, according to the philosophers, prevails in this world’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 129 / 1954 p. 76). That leaves open the question whether such a process of decay might not be a feature rather than a disruption of that prevailing order. In the Fourth Discussion, relaying the falāsifah proof for the existence of God, Ghazālī describes their argument that the first cause cannot be heaven or any heavenly body, because as bodies they are composed of form and matter, whereas the first cause cannot be composite. Ibn Rushd disavows this as an Avicennan heresy. The heavens are not composed of matter and form, for everything that is so has a beginning, since matter is the cause of corruption. The only reason we postulate matter, he says, is that we observe corruption in terrestrial things. If we did not, we could conceive terrestrial bodies as simple rather than as composites of matter and form. In that case, their annihilation would be impossible. But the fact that the body of the heavens does not suffer corruption shows that its ‘matter’ is actual corporeality… According to the philosophers, there is no change in the heavenly bodies, for they do not possess a potency in their substance. They therefore need not have matter in the way generable bodies need this, but they are either, as Themistius affirms, forms, or possess matter in an equivocal sense of the word (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 271 / 1954 p. 161).

One way to make sense of this is that the ‘matter’ of the heavens is the essential form of corporeality itself. Yet this raises the question, touched on above, of how there are more than one. For matter is not only the cause of corruption but also the principle of individuation. ‘And I say that either the matters of heavenly bodies are identical with their souls,’ he says, ‘or those matters

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are essentially alive, not alive through a life bestowed on them’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 271 / 1954 p. 161). There is of course no sense in any of this. What we see is Ibn Rushd stumbling into an incoherent effort to conceive the heavens as incorruptible, in order to maintain the doctrine of cosmic eternity. He bases this all on the very weak empirical premise, that we have not observed heavenly corruption. When pushed, however, he falls back on unfalsifiable assumptions about divine order. In the real meaning of the terms, then, he is playing the role of dogmatic theologian here and Ghazālī is the philosopher, pushing against assumptions and weak arguments in order to maintain the possibility that the heavens may not be incorruptible animals after all.

SECTION 8.4. THE SUBSTANCE OF ANNIHILATION

Ghazālī presents, as a ‘second’ proof of the falāsifah for cosmic post-eternity, in fact two proofs. The first is mostly a repeat of their first proof for pre-eternity. The world’s annihilation is its non-existence, which is the opposite of existence, and would therefore require a cause other than the cause of its existence. This cannot therefore be God because He is eternal and does not change. The next and, according to the falāsifah more difficult, problem has to do with the act of annihilation itself, which they argue would necessarily come into existence after non-existence. This is actually Ghazālī’s own assertion regarding the nature of an act as such, as we will see in the next discussion. For the falāsifah, however, God’s act necessarily exists but does not come into existence. For the purpose of this proof, it amounts to the same thing, for the consequence is that His act is an existing thing. Yet non-existence is not a thing, they argue, so the world’s annihilation could not be His act (2000 p. 50). Next, the falāsifah review four alternative explanations of the possibility of cosmic annihilation, attributed to the Muʿtazilah, the Karrāmmiyah, and the ʾAshʿariyyah, showing in each case where they fail. For, claim the falāsifah, the annihilation of a selfsubsistent thing is not conceivable in an absolute sense, but only as the shedding and replacement of a form by matter. This doctrine of the ‘conservation of being’ is motivated by the ancient

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insight we mentioned, that the existence of non-existence, or vice versa, is absurd. Ghazālī claims to be able to ‘defend’ each of these four positions by showing that the falāsifahs’ own theory suffers the same malfunction. While that of course would be a critique of the falāsifah rather than a defense of their rivals, it would be interesting to know the malfunction he has in mind. The reader must put that together herself, however, for Ghazālī here abandons all four (including the ʾAshʿarī) positions, to defend one of his own. According to the Muʿtazilah, God’s act of annihilation is an existing thing. He will create it (but not in any place) and by it, the world will cease to exist all at once, after which it will cease to exist by itself without requiring another annihilation. This is incoherent, the falāsifah object, because annihilation is nonexistence and so not a thing, and if it were it would need another annihilation itself through which to be annihilated (2000 pp. 50– 51). This is the most direct postulation of the existence of nonexistence among the four positions. Ibn Rushd calls it ‘too foolish to merit refutation’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 135 / 1954 p. 79). For the Karrāmmiyah, also, annihilation is an existing act, but which subsists in God’s essence, just as does His act of creation. Through these acts subsisting in His essence, things come to be and cease to exist. The falāsifah object that God being eternal and unchanging is not something in which temporal things subsist. Moreover, the concept of an act of bringing about an existent is just that the existent relates to will and power, eternal attributes of God. An additional created ‘act’ other than the existent itself, is unintelligible (2000 p. 51). This last objection sounds like the sort an ʾAshʿarī would make, though Ghazālī presents it in the falāsifah voice. Ibn Rushd expresses sympathy with the Karrāmmiyyah here, explaining that their theory involves three factors: the agent, the act, and the object of the act. Though they hold that the act inheres in the agent, he explains, this does not entail that God changes, for the act is a relation and not intrinsic to God. Thus, the coming to be of the act does not constitute a change in God Himself, but merely an external change of relations. This, he says, is their only mistake. For the act is only a relation between the

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agent and the object, which is called ‘act’ in relation to the agent and ‘passivity’ in relation to the object. His real aim here is to make the point that the ʾAshʿarīs more than the Karrāmmis are guilty of making God subject to change, by saying ‘he acts after having not acted,’ which entails an external cause affecting Him (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 136 / 1954 p. 80). We have already shown why this is not an accurate representation of Ghazālī’s position. The two ʾAshʿarī positions the falāsifah review are similar to each other in contrast to the previous two, in that they do not take the act of annihilation to be a thing. They both hold that accidents cease to exist by themselves. As Ibn Rush puts it, accidents ‘do not persist for two moments’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 139 / 1954 p. 82). Thus, they require constant recreation by God, and cease to exist simply by His refraining from creating them. If it were otherwise, goes the reasoning here, they would be selfsubsistent and not accidents after all. Substances also do not endure by themselves, but only through accidents that subsist in them. The two positions differ on which accidents are required. According to the first, the accident is endurance itself, which God creates in a substance whereby it endures until God stops creating endurance in it, at which point it ceases to exist. According to the second, the required accidents are the pairs, motion / rest, and combination / separation. No substance can be without one or another of each pair, they explain, so when God refrains from creating either one in the substance (so that for example it is neither in motion nor at rest), it ceases to exist. Ghazālī’s falāsifah object that this contradicts the evidence of the senses, since we do not observe their constant recreation, but rather their endurance through time. Besides, if the enduring thing endures through a separate accident of endurance, God’s attributes must also endure through a separate endurance, requiring another, ad infinitum (2000 pp. 51–2). Ibn Rushd, meanwhile, raises the more crucial objection. If substances are a condition of the existence of accidents (since accidents subsist therein), and there are accidents (e.g. endurance) that are a condition for the existence of substances, as the ʾAshʿarīs hold, then substances are a condition of their own existence, which is impossible. Moreover, if the accident

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‘endurance’ does not itself endure for two moments but is recreated every instant, then it cannot be that through which a substance endures across time. Without admitting matter, he argues, one must conceive the existent as simple and therefore not liable to corruption, since that would amount to the nonexistence of the existent (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 140 / 1954 p. 83). As mentioned above, Ghazālī refrains from defending any of these four positions, adopting instead the following: The bringing about of existence and annihilation obtains through the will of the one endowed with power. Thus, if God wills, He brings about existence; and, if He wills, He annihilates. This is the meaning of His being powerful in the [most] perfect [sense]. In all this, He in Himself does not change, what changes being only the act (2000 pp. 52–3).

What proceeds from God is His act of annihilation, Ghazālī says, is non-existence, which he affirms, is not a thing. To say that nonexistence proceeds (ṣaḍūr) from Him simply means that ‘what occurs (waqʿa) relates to His power’ (2000 p. 53). Since the mind can apprehend the occurrence of non-existence, it can apprehend it as occurring by God’s power, without it being a thing. Denying this on the ground that non-existence is not something that can occur, he argues, is equivalent to denying change itself. For change entails the occurrence of the non-existence of previously existing forms and accidents. On the contrary, the falāsifah respond, what is described as the ‘annihilation’ of accidents in change is in fact only the occurrence of their opposites, not the occurrence of nonexistence. Thus, when hair turns white it is the existence of whiteness that occurs rather than the non-existence of blackness. For again non-existence is not something that can occur. Against this Ghazālī deploys two arguments. The first is as follows. Whiteness entails the non-existence of blackness (and in general, the existence of anything entails the non-existence of its opposite). The entailed is other than that which entails it. Furthermore, the entailed is intelligible (otherwise, we would not comprehend it as entailed by that which entails it). Therefore, the non-existence of something is intelligible in itself. It is temporally

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originated and therefore an occurrence. The occurrence of nonexistence is thus intelligible, and therefore can be an act of God. Ibn Rushd departs from Ghazālī’s representation of the falāsifah at the point where he has them deny that the existent can cease to exist. According to him, they only deny that the act of the destroying agent is ‘attached to’ the non-existent inasmuch as it is absolutely non-existent rather than inasmuch as it has been changed from actual to potential being. The ‘primary and essential’ attachment of the act, he explains, is always to the existence of something, while its attachment to the entailed non-existence of its opposite is only ‘secondary and accidental.’ Thus, when fire turns into air, what is primary and essential is the existence (receipt by matter of the form) of air. The non-existence of fire is neither itself the occurrence nor essential to what occurs, but merely the logical implication of what occurs (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 142 / 1954 p. 84). Ghazālī’s argument is therefore misleading, for in asserting that non-existence is intelligible he overlooks the difference between the essential and the accidental. It is intelligible, but not essentially (that is, in and by itself). Cosmic annihilation is crucially different from black hair turning white, for in that case there is no remaining existent from which we might understand cosmic non-existence to follow. To posit it is therefore to posit the non-existence of the world essentially, as something itself rather than only a logical outcome of something else existing, and thus to represent non-existence as an existing thing which is, on the contrary unintelligible. Ibn Rushd responds quite adequately, then, to Ghazālī’s first argument. Yet he completely ignores a second, which is as follows. According to Ghazālī, the falāsifah hold there are certain accidents that cease to exist without the occurrence of their opposites. Motion is one of them, since on their theory rest is nothing over and above the privation of motion. Additionally, there is sight, or the ‘imprinting of the images of sensible things on the moist humor of the eye,’ and thought, or the ‘impression of the forms of the intelligibles in the soul.’ For these amount to the commencement of an existence without the ceasing to exist of its opposite. If these are annihilated, this means the ceasing of existence without its being

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followed by its opposite. Their ceasing to exist then represents a pure privation that has occurred. Hence, the coming about of the occurring privation is apprehended intellectually. And [in the case of] that whose occurrence as such (even though not a thing) is apprehended intellectually, its relation to the power of the one endowed with power becomes [likewise] apprehended intellectually (2000 p. 54).

Considering the privation of motion in relation to the cosmos calls to mind Ibn Rushd’s assertion from the Fourth Discussion (already discussed above), that the world is not an independently existing object of an act, but the very actuality of the act itself, and thus a thing whose existence consists only in its movement. ‘The philosophers,’ he writes, ‘believing that movement is the act of a mover and that the existence of the world is perfected through motion, say that the agent of motion is the agent of the world, and if the agent refrained for only one moment from its action, the world would be annihilated’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 264 / 1954 p. 156). This is only an imaginary hypothesis for Ibn Rushd, for as he said, God cannot refrain from acting. Ghazālī would have to agree, but because to ‘refrain’ means to stop acting at a time, for a time of inactivity, and thus simultaneous with the activity or motion of something else. This is impossible because it would entail the existence of something in motion independent of His act. In other words, God is timeless and so cannot refrain, but this has nothing to do with whether things other than He can change or cease to exist. Ibn Rushd’s argument from God’s eternity has no traction on this matter. In light of his argument given here, from the nature of the world, he should have said that, if God were to refrain from acting, the world would still be possible and thus there would be matter, etc. Yet if so, then the world exists independently, just as the materialists hold. Perhaps to say that God’s refraining to act would result in the world’s annihilation was useful then in order to claim that the falāsifah make the world more thoroughly dependent on God than do the ʾAshʿaris, who supposedly think God makes the world as a builder makes a house. Yet it follows that rest is indeed merely the privation of motion and thus at the cosmic level, annihilation. Consequently, Ghazālī’s second argument here stands

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vindicated. The privation of all motion, along with that of sight and thought (which are themselves sorts of motion), is equivalent to cosmic annihilation. While nothing in itself, this annihilation is nevertheless intelligible. Its intelligibility does not require being related to an existing thing, as its entailed opposite, but simply to the ‘power of one endowed with power.’ Moreover, it seems the second of the two ʾAshʿarī positions on annihilation was essentially correct. For if rest is only the privation of motion, a substance without motion and one with neither motion nor rest are logically equivalent and in both cases entail annihilation. Conversely, Ibn Rushd’s position is liable to the same critique he leveled against the ʾAshʿarī position that substances cannot exist without the accidents of motion or rest. That is, it renders the substance a condition of its own existence. If the world would cease to exist without motion, as Ibn Rushd says, this being the perfection of its existence, then we cannot distinguish between motion, the ‘accident’ and the mobile, the ‘substance’ simply by saying that the motion subsists in the mobile while the mobile itself is ‘self-subsistent’ in the sense that it exists independently of motion. For apparently, it does not. Yet if motion is a condition of the existence of the mobile, and the mobile a condition of the existence of its motion, then the mobile is a condition of its own existence.

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CHAPTER NINE. THE ACT AND THE AGENT In the third discussion, Ghazālī sets out to show that the falāsifah’s claim that God is the ‘maker’ (ṣānaʿ) and ‘enactor’ (fāʿal) of the world is obfuscation. For, he claims, their own theory entails that at best, this is the case only metaphorically. Ghazālī makes his case, and divides the discussion, with respect to the nature of the agent, the act, and the relation between the agent and the act, treating them in that order. Since, as we will see, the ensuing debate over the nature of the act pivots on the same issues as did the last of the falāsifahs’ proofs of cosmic post-eternity, we will examine that debate first, before moving on to the debate over the agent. In Section 9.1 we will examine the debate over the ontological implications of describing the cosmos as an act. Both Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd reject Ibn Sīnā’s argument that the agent necessarily relates to the existence, rather than the non-existence, of its act, agreeing that it relates instead to its coming to be, that being a necessary condition of its being an act. While Ghazālī describes this as ‘continuous creation, and Ibn Rushd as ‘eternal becoming,’ I argue that on closer examination, their consequent views on the ontological status of the cosmos are quite similar. In Section 9.2, we examine Ghazālī’s effort to push the debate over the meaning of ‘agency’ beyond mere semantics. I argue with Dougherty (2008) that, contrary to some misconceptions, Ghazālī’s point here is to defend a distinct sense of ‘agency’ involving moral responsibility. He has not successfully shown, however, that this is the only proper use of the term.

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While Ibn Rushd continues to construe Ghazālī as attributing to God an ‘empirical will,’ Ghazālī has misrepresented Ibn Sīnā’s theory of God’s agency. They are thus both engaging straw men on this issue. As for the discussion over the relation between the agent and act, we will delay its examination until the end of this volume, for it leads directly to questions that pertain to the nature of God Himself (His unity, attributes, and knowledge) and so will serve as a suitable segue to the second volume of this commentary.

SECTION 9.1. THE ACT: A STIRRING ANALOGY (OR: THE SUBSTANCE OF ANNIHILATION, PART 2)

Action, Ghazālī asserts, is the ‘bringing forth of the thing from non-existence to existence by creating it’ (2000 p. 60). Since the pre-eternal always already exists, it cannot be brought into existence. Therefore, the falāsifah, who hold that the world is preeternal, cannot hold that it is God’s act. In response, the falāsifah agree that to be created means to exist after non-existence. Yet the agent, they argue, must have a relation to its object, which is either to the existence of its object, or to its non-existence. If this object is eternal, then the relation is as well, in which case the agent is eternally its agent, and thus more fully an agent than if it were only temporarily. If the object relates to its agent only inasmuch as it is created, as Ghazālī insists, then its prior nonexistence would be a condition of this relation. Since this prior non-existence is not an effect of the agent, it follows that such an agent would not be sufficient for its act, since there would be a necessary condition of its being the act of the agent (its prior nonexistence), which the agent cannot bring about. Contrary, then, to the premise of Ghazālī’s argument, only the existent can be brought into existence. Ghazālī’s assertion that it cannot, they say, can mean one of two things. If he means the existent cannot begin to exist after non-existence then he is correct, since it already exists. If, however, he means that in the state of existing it cannot be something brought into existence while it exists, then he is wrong. It can only be something brought into existence when it exists, for when it does not exist it cannot be something at all.

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Bringing into existence is concomitant with the agent’s being that which brings about existence and the thing enacted being that which is brought into existence. [This is] because it is an expression of the relation of the thing that brings about existence to the thing whose existence is brought about. All [this obtains] with existence, not before it (2000 p. 61).

The world is an eternal act and God the Eternal Agent, and the existence of the former is continually dependent on this relation. The falāsifah distinguish this from the notion they construe their opponents as holding, that God’s relation to the world is like that of a builder to a building, where the latter does not need the former for its conservation in existence, but only for its beginning. Ibn Rushd recognizes this as Ibn Sīnā’s argument, and is in his assessment sophistical for its reliance on a false dilemma. The agent does not connect to only either the existence or the nonexistence of the object, but to its ‘existence in a state of nonexistence, that is, its existence in potentiality’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 164 / 1954 p. 98). It is true that absolute non-existence is not something to which an agent can relate, but neither is it related to the actual existence of its object. As Ghazālī argued, whatever actually exists cannot be brought into existence, for as Ibn Rushd puts it, ‘whatever has reached its perfection of existence needs neither causation nor cause,’ yet ‘existence that is always linked up with non-existence only exists as long as the producer exists’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 164 / 1954 p. 98). The ontological status of the cosmos is the matter at hand. It is never fully actual but always in the process of changing; that is, becoming something that it is not, but has the potential to be, as per the Aristotelian solution to the problem of change. If everything strictly either exists or does not, then change is a puzzle, for the non-existent is not a thing that can be or come to be, and that which is cannot become nothing. ‘The only way to escape this difficulty,’ Ibn Rushd explains, ‘is to assume that the existence of the world has always been and will always be linked together with non-existence, as is the case with movement, which is always in need of a mover’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 164 / 1954 p. 98).

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Some things, he explains, are such that being an effect of their agent is of their very essence, while in other cases it is accidental. As a paradigmatic example of the former sort, we might consider a shadow. Since it is essentially an effect of its object, it will cease to exist if that relation is severed. In such a case, he points out, ‘the effect actually exists without this actuality’s having any insufficiency and any potency’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 166 /1954 p. 99). That is, such a thing is always all it ever can be. A shadow’s destiny is always already fulfilled. That which has an essence other than its being an effect of its agent, by contrast, does not necessarily cease to exist when its relation to the agent ends. Since a house is a house independently of whether it is the product of this or that builder, it remains in existence after that production ceases, having its own material nature and specific potency for change. The cosmos, for Ibn Rushd, is of this second sort, because it is its own substance and its being an effect is accidental; that is, something about it additional to what it is. The cosmos is not simply God’s shadow; that is, at least not its body. Perhaps what Ibn Sīnā says is true concerning the forms of the celestial bodies, in so far as they perceive separate immaterial forms; and the philosophers affirm this, because it is proved that there are immaterial forms whose existence consists in their thinking, whereas knowledge in this sublunary world only differs from its object because its object inheres in matter (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 166 / 1954 p. 99).

If so, then heavenly intellects are not acts. For according to Ibn Rushd, Ghazālī’s response to Ibn Sīnā is correct: the act is related to the agent neither in its existence nor its previous non-existence, but only in the moment of its creation. This is the moment of its being brought from non-existence to existence, outside of which it is not meaningfully the act of the agent. As Ghazālī concedes to the falāsifah, this indeed entails that its prior non-existence, which is not itself the effect of the agent, is a condition of its being a creation and thus, its act. Yet this, he argues, is not a problem, for not every condition of being an act must be an effect of the agent. Such, for instance, are the agent’s essence, power, and will (2000 p. 62). For Ibn Rushd, however, this does not mean that

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the world is not eternal, but only that it is eternally becoming rather than, as Ibn Sīnā implies, eternally being. This ‘moment’ of creation, of which Ghazālī speaks, is for Ibn Rushd, effectively the eternal duration of the world itself. The act of the agent is only connected with the effect, insofar as it is moved, and the movement from potential to actual being is what is called becoming. And, as Ghazālī says, nonexistence is one of the conditions for the existence of a movement through a mover. Ibn Sīnā’s argument that when it is a condition for the act of the agent to be connected with the existence, the absence of this connection implies that the agent is connected with its opposite, that is non-existence, is not true. But…the heavens and sublunary bodies belong to the genus of existents whose existence lies in their movement, and if this is true, then they are eternally in a continual becoming (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 100 / 1954 p. 100)

The coming to be of the world is not a single event in the past. Rather, the world itself is the continual event of its coming to be, and thus it is more truly coming to be than if it had come be at only one time. As such, it is all the more thoroughly in need of its constant Creator. This need, Ibn Rushd explains, is twofold: material and formal. Materially, it is in need for its constant creation, since its substance is in continual motion, from potentiality to actuality, for which it needs the constant act of its First Mover. Formally, on the other hand, the world is in need for its being, since its substantial form is a relation of apprehension from the First Intellect. The falāsifah, meanwhile, launch their final argument, on the premise that the act exists either with or after the agent. If it exists with the agent, then an eternal agent has an eternal act, and a temporal act only a temporal agent. It is impossible, however, for the act to exist after the agent. For consider a finger stirring water, they argue (evoking the circular motion of the heavens); if the water moves after the finger, the finger and water would occupy the same space at the same time, which is impossible. If the water moves before the finger, it would leave empty space behind it, which is also impossible. The water therefore moves with the finger, and if we imagine the motion of the finger as eternal, then

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the motion of the water will also be, but remains an act nonetheless. This applies to the world, Ibn Rushd agrees, inasmuch as it is, as he explained, essentially and continually in motion; but it does not apply to unchanging existents, if there are such things (e.g. the heavenly intellects). Ghazālī replies that the act can be either with or after the agent, but must be created, since only an eternal act is impossible. By contrast, an eternal cause and effect are possible. For instance, God’s knowledge is an eternal cause of His eternally knowing, but the question here is over agent and act rather than cause and effect. Furthermore, he argues that the stirring analogy is false, for the agent is not the finger, but the one who wills its motion. Then he makes this interesting statement. ‘If we suppose him to be eternal (qadīman), the movement of the finger would [still] be an act of his, inasmuch as each part of the movement is a temporal creation out of nothing (faḥādith ʾan ʿadam). Considered in this way, it would be an act. As for the movement of the water, we might not say that it is a result of his action, but of the action of God. But in whatever way we take [the water’s motion to be caused], it is an act inasmuch as it is created, except that it is eternally being created (dāʾamun al-ḥudūth) – it being an act inasmuch as it is created’ (2000 p. 63).

Ghazālī’s debate with the falāsifah concludes with them pointing out that he has agreed that the agent-act relation is a kind of cause-effect relation, and that a permanent cause-effect relation is conceivable. What they mean by the world being an act is that it is a permanent effect of God, and if Ghazālī disapproves of using that term then there is no issue so long as the meaning is clear. Ghazālī then closes by declaring his point proven. According the true meaning of the word, he says, the falāsifah do not believe the world is God’s act. Of greater interest here is that, in response to the ‘stirring analogy,’ Ghazālī has introduced the notion of what Marmura translated as an ‘eternally created’ act (as distinct from an ‘eternal act,’ which he has argued is absurd), understood as one each part of which is a ‘temporal creation out of nothing.’ This indicates that for Ghazālī there is no logical contradiction between being

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an act, and being ‘eternally created’ in that sense. Of course, if an ‘eternally created’ act is one which has existed for an infinite period of time, then Ghazālī should reject the proposition as absurd, but for the different reason (as he argued in the First Discussion), that it entails the existence of an actually infinite magnitude. The relevance of the idea here lies not, however, with the temporal duration of the act, but rather with its being such that each part is, as he said, a temporal creation out of nothing. It follows from this that there is no time within the duration of its existence, during which it is not in the process of being created. For were there, then it would already exist at that time, and according to Ghazālī, could not be the act of an agent, since what already exists cannot be brought into existence. For this reason, I suggest that the term daʾamun al-ḥudūth, is better translated as ‘constant creation’ here, rather than as ‘eternal creation.’ Note that in the same passage, Ghazālī used the term ‘qadīman’ for the supposition that the agent is eternal. Ibn Rushd’s final word on this is an explanation of how the ‘true’ philosophers (the Aristotelians, as opposed to Ibn Sīnā), believe that God is the agent of the world. First, since the heavens subsist through their motion, their Mover is the Agent of their existence. Secondly, since the existence of any composite (including the world) is conditional on the unity of its parts, then God, who is the source of unity, is the agent of its existence. Thus, he explains, the cosmos has indeed come to be, as Ghazālī has rightly insisted an act must, for it is itself movement and thus constantly coming to be. By applying the term ‘eternal’, the falāsifah mean ‘only that it has no first or last term,’ and not that ‘the world is eternal through eternal constituents’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 172 / 1954 p. 103). While nothing in the cosmos is eternal, the cosmos itself is the eternal process of one temporal constituent coming to be from another. Hence, he says, the term ‘eternal becoming’ is more appropriate to describe the cosmos than ‘eternity.’ Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd both, then, view the cosmos as a perpetual ‘work in progress,’ ontologically speaking, rather than as a static accomplishment, while apparently differing over

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whether it has a ‘first term,’ and whether each part of it is being created out of nothing or coming to be from prior matter. Yet the latter proposition, according to Ibn Rushd, entails that the cosmos is perpetually ‘linked together with non-existence,’ for the prior matter from which something comes to be is the potentiality, and not the actuality, of that which precedes it; that is, the existent’s ‘state of non-existence.’ In that sense, it is a coming to be ‘out of nothing’, albeit not out of absolutely nothing, but the relative nothing of that which is not, yet could be, given what actually is. This raises the question as to whether Ghazālī is committed to insisting that an act as such be created from absolutely nothing, and thus to denying that anything comes to be from prior matter. The proposition, that every act necessarily comes to be from prior matter, would appear to carry problematic implications for Ghazālī, one of which is that God’s power would be limited by that prior matter; that is, to the specific potencies of what actually exists at any time. This is an issue to explore below, in relation to Discussion 17. Another apparent implication is that the cosmos would not have a first term and thus be pre-eternal, as the falāsifah and Ibn Rushd argued above, in the First Discussion. For if every temporal constituent of the cosmos comes to be from prior matter, then for every part of the act (as Ghazālī puts it), another preceding part actually exists. We might therefore conclude that while Ghazālī need not deny that any constituent of the cosmos comes to be from prior matter, he cannot accept that they all do. If the cosmos has a first constituent or constituents, then at least they must be preceded by absolute non-existence, and not just the relative non-existence of a temporally prior existent’s un-actualized potency. That, however, depends on the supposition, that denying cosmic preeternity entails affirming that it has a ‘first term;’ a supposition which itself depends on supposing further that to the term ‘term’, there answer actually existing, quantitatively distinct cosmic constituents ordered in such a manner as to have a ‘first.’ If, on the other hand every such ‘first’ is potentially divisible into constituent terms, themselves ordered after another potentially divisible ‘first,’ then it is not clear, either that the temporal finitude of the cosmos entails a ‘first term,’ or that the

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infinite divisibility of its temporal magnitude in this way entails its pre-eternity. Ghazālī, recall, did not assert any such ‘first term’ for the cosmos in his critique of the proofs for its pre-eternity, but only a ‘limit in which it began.’ That is, a limit between the existence and non-existence of the cosmos, and not necessarily between its non-existence and any ‘first term’ thereof. Therefore, he is not after all committed to denying that every constituent of the cosmos comes to be from prior matter. He is of course committed to denying that the cosmos as a whole comes to be from prior matter; and since for him the cosmos as a whole is an act, he is committed to denying that every act comes to be from prior matter. It may nevertheless be distinct from any of its constituents in being limited by absolute and not merely relative non-existence. Again, since according to Ghazālī there is no time prior to the cosmos, this absolute non-existence could only be ontologically, and not temporally prior to it (which is just to say that it is an act of God, rather than an independently existing thing upon which He acts). For the same reason, though according to Ibn Rushd matter is temporally prior to any cosmic constituent, the non-existence to which he says the cosmos is perpetually related, also cannot be temporally prior to the cosmic process itself. The question is whether its non-existence is ontologically prior to it. That its existence cannot be ontologically prior seems to follow from Ibn Rushd’s strategy of explaining the cosmos as an act, by identifying its very existence with its motion in order to avoid the problem Ghazālī raises, of how it can come to be if it always already is. For if its existence were prior, then it would be a thing which, albeit in motion, fully exists independently of its motion, while its potential for motion (its relative nonexistence) would be posterior and dependent on the prior existence of the moving thing. The cosmos itself would not then be an act, for it would always already exist. While its motion would be an act, this would be other than its existence. If on the other hand the existence of the cosmos is its motion, as Ibn Rushd has it, then the priority of actuality to potency must lead ‘upward’ rather than ‘backward,’ since the actual existence of every constituent in the temporal

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series is preceded by the relative non-existence of its potential being. The actuality that truly precedes potency cannot be that of an act. If, therefore, the cosmos as a whole is an act, then its existence must be preceded, ontologically, by its absolute nonexistence. For if it were ontologically preceded only by the relative non-existence involved in the potency of pre-existing matter, then it would not be the cosmos as a whole under consideration here as an act, but merely a constituent thereof. Worked out in this way, the two positions turn out to be more similar than they appear on the surface.

SECTION 9.2. THE AGENT: SEMANTICS AND RESPONSIBILITY

Ghazālī defines ‘agent’ as ‘one from whom the act proceeds, together with the will to act by way of choice and the knowledge of what is willed (Ghazālī 2000 p. 56). Ibn Rushd responds that this definition of ‘agent’ is not self-evident, and we therefore cannot apply it to the world’s maker without proof, unless ‘one is justified in inferring from the empirical to the divine’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 148 / 1954, 87). By this, he must mean inference by simple analogy to the empirical, for the very proof that he holds of God’s existence is itself an inference from the empirical in the broader sense, though not, at least as he sees it, by analogy. As we just saw, Ghazālī’s argument for God’s ‘will’ is also a nonanalogical inference, drawn from contingent features of the world like the poles and the direction of the heavenly rotations. Ibn Rushd apparently ignores that argument here, for he proceeds to argue, by analogy to the empirical no less, that God cannot have will. He then claims that God has will after all, only different from empirical wills, and that Ghazālī is using this to misrepresent the falāsifah as denying that He acts. Having carefully examined the First Discussion, however, we know that Ghazālī’s claim is not that God has a will like empirical wills. Ibn Rushd classifies all empirical agents as either natural or voluntary. The natural agent is that which performs exclusively and essentially a single act. Warmth, for example, only produces heat, simply because that is what it is. The voluntary agent may perform a certain act at one time and its opposite at another, not essentially but out of knowledge and deliberation. God is neither

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of these. As for the voluntary, Ibn Rushd argues, the one who wills lacks what he wills, while God lacks nothing. The willer always wills what he perceives as better for himself, but all conditions are equal for God, who is self-sufficient. When the willer accomplishes the object of his will, he stops willing it. This is a change in the willer, but there is no change in God. Yet God is even farther from being a natural agent, he says, ‘for the act of the natural thing is a necessity in its substance, but is not a necessity in the substance of the willer, but belongs to its entelechy’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 148 / 1954 p. 88). Furthermore, he says, while the natural act does not follow from knowledge, God’s act does. Ghazālī represents the falāsifah’s notion of Divine ‘agency’ as ‘natural’ in an apparently similar sense of the term: they think the world proceeds from God ‘as the effect from the cause, as a necessary consequence, as the shadow is the necessary consequence of the individual, and light of the sun’ (2000 p. 56). They both agree that God is not a natural agent. Their point of difference, aside from the question of whether Ghazālī has accurately represented the falāsifah here, would seem to be over whether God’s act follows from His knowledge alone, rather than His will. Yet, as it turns out, Ibn Rushd’s God also wills. ‘The way in which God becomes an agent and a willer has not become clear in this place, since there is no counterpart to His will in the empirical world,’ he says, ‘How is it therefore possible to assert that an agent can only be understood as acting through deliberation and choice’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 149 / 1954 p. 88)? Since there is no counterpart to Divine will in the empirical, we cannot understand it by analogy, and (on one reading of this) therefore have no grounds here to define agency by deliberation and choice. On what grounds, then, do we define agency? Do we simply assume that God is an ‘agent’ and then discard all the ingredients of our original concept of agency deemed incompatible with divinity? In that case there is no question whether God is an agent or not. If so, then why not assume God acts by ‘deliberation and choice,’ and then revise our concept of that in light of what is compatible with divinity?

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For Ibn Rushd, to say that God acts by deliberation and choice entails that He acts in a way objectionably analogous to the empirical voluntary agent, whose choices are changes in response to needs. Ghazālī obviously does not think God’s choices are changes in response to needs. As we saw above, he has a novel concept of ‘will’ shorn of these objectionable implications. Yet Ibn Rushd insists on beating this straw man, apparently in retaliation for what he sees as Ghazālī’s own straw man. The falāsifah do not agree with applying to God a conception of ‘agency’ drawn from the empirical, he explains, but this does not mean they deny that He acts. Yet he has already acknowledged that Ibn Sīnā, as we saw, does just this in the second proof of cosmic pre-eternity, falsely assuming, by invalid analogy from the empirical efficient cause, that God must be simultaneous with His effect. Of course, to Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sīnā does not represent the falāsifah, but in fairness, a single slip in argument may not necessarily represent Ibn Sīnā’s overall position. In fact, Ibn Sīnā also denies that God is a natural agent, for the same reason Ibn Rushd gives here, that God’s act proceeds from knowledge (2005 p. 327). Yet he affirms, as Ghazālī relates of the falāsifah, that God’s act proceeds necessarily from His existence. That is the core of Ghazālī’s complaint here. For an agent, Ghazālī argues, is not just any cause but specifically a cause by will and choice. Thus, ‘the inanimate is not an agent, action being confined to animals’ (2000 p. 89). For Ibn Rushd also, the agent is only one kind of cause, but the efficient cause, which ‘causes some other thing to pass from potency to actuality, and from non-existence to existence’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 150 / 1954 p. 89), and which is further divisible into the natural and voluntary. He insists, however, that God does not act out of any necessity, either internal or external to Himself, but ‘through His grace and His bounty,’ for ‘He is necessarily endowed with will and choice in their highest form,’ since He is free of the deficiencies of empirical agents (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 151 / 1954 p. 90). He gives no explanation how ‘will and choice in the highest form’ follow from the lack of these deficiencies, nor what will, choice, grace, and bounty are supposed to mean here.

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After some pious rhetoric which Ibn Rushd dubiously ascribes to Aristotle, he follows up with what he describes as ‘the way in which according to the falāsifah this question must be understood, if their system is truly explained to the student’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 152 / 1954 p. 91). Composite existence, he explains, is of two types: that of which the composition is distinct from the thing composed and that of which it is not. The example of the first is (again) the composition of a house from its various materials, which continues to exist after the act of composition is finished. The example of the second is the unity of form and matter composing a substance, which is an act continuous with and not temporally prior to the existence of the substance. Since God is the cause of this sort of composition, He is the cause of existence in this sense, and since the cause of something’s existence is its agent, He is the agent in this continuous sense. While this is a concise explanation of how God’s agency does not entail His temporal priority to the world, the issue is irrelevant here, for Ghazālī has not argued that the agent must be temporally prior to its act. Meanwhile, Ghazālī has his falāsifah insist that action is a genus dividing into the natural and the voluntary. If choice were essential to action, they argue, it would be contradictory to say ‘he acted by nature’ and repetitive to say ‘he acted by choice.’ Since neither consequent is the case, choice is not essential to action as such, but only to a species of action. Ibn Rushd approves this response, as long as they mean ‘agent’ in the technically accurate sense, as a kind of cause rather than cause as such. For again, describing God as the wrong sort of cause may imply that His act is not separate from Himself. He only objects that this creates the wrong impression that the falāsifah deny that God has will (though he himself took some pain to explain why God does not have an empirical will, but none to explain what kind of will God has, other than ‘in the highest sense’). Ghazālī argues that ‘he acted by nature’ is a contradictory statement in reality, just not when taken metaphorically. Since the natural cause and the agent are both kinds of causes, sometimes we call the former ‘act’ metaphorically. Since this is so, the contradictory nature of the statement is not immediately

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apparent. It is likewise with the statement ‘he acted by choice,’ which we say to emphasize when the term, ‘act’, is not intended metaphorically (as in the statement ‘he saw with his eye’). Ibn Rushd’s response to this alludes to the ultimately semantic nature of the dispute. For it depends, he says, on which definition of ‘agent’ one chooses. If by ‘agent’ you mean the willer, then the inanimate only acts metaphorically; but if you mean that which actualizes another thing, then the inanimate truly acts. One might argue, he says, that use of the term ‘voluntary act’ must be metaphorical for ʾAshʿaris, since they deny any free will or potency to creaturely ‘agents’ whatsoever. For where, then, do they get the notion that God is an agent with knowledge and will? We will face this compelling question in the famous 17th Discussion. Ghazālī, through the mouth of the falāsifah, also recognizes that the dispute has reduced to semantics. It is rationally evident, they assert, that ‘cause’ divides into the voluntary and involuntary. Whether to use the term ‘agent’ is thus only a question of language. Since the Arabs use the term ‘agent’ for both, it is arbitrary to claim that using it for the involuntary is merely metaphorical. Ibn Rushd agrees, but notes that it is merely a dialectical point, depending only on common usage rather than the reality of the matter itself. Ghazālī also recognizes this, for as Dougherty (2008 p. 405) observes, he explicitly introduces his next move as more than dialectical, by calling it ‘proof’ (dalīl). ‘Proof of this,’ he says is that if we suppose a temporal event depends on two things, one voluntary and another not, reason relates the act to the voluntary’ (Ghazali 2000 p. 58). If for example person A pushes person B into a fire and B dies, then person A (who is the willer) is called the killer, and not the fire (which is in fact the proximate cause of death). The fire would not be called the killer except metaphorically. Therefore, ‘the agent is the one from whom the act proceeds through his will’ (Ghazali 2000 p. 59). On the contrary, Ibn Rushd argues, the man is the killer not because he is the willer, but because he is the first mover whereas the fire is merely an instrument. The act and agency belong to the first mover in such a case. When someone is burned without being pushed, he argues, nobody says the fire

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burned him metaphorically (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 160 / 1954 p. 95). Either he entirely misses the point of Ghazālī’s argument, which is not that the fire burns only metaphorically but that it is an agent metaphorically; or he simply assumes what is in question, that every efficient cause is an agent. Later readers have suffered from mistakenly conflating the two in this context (Gwekye p. 1987). Kogan consequently interpreted the question here as being over ‘to whom efficacy may legitimately be ascribed,’ and Ghazālī’s objective to prove that ‘voluntary agents are causes in an unqualified sense while natural causes are not’ (1985 p. 40). He led himself down this road by a dubious interpretation of Ghazālī’s statement, that natural causes are causes ‘in a certain way,’ as meaning that they are not causes at all or only in a sense derivative from that of the voluntary agent. Thus, he has subsumed the discussion here under the more famous 17th discussion, but they are quite different. For an analysis of the meaning and relation between the concepts of agency and causation, as we have here, is one thing, and the question of whether anything in reality exemplifies such a concept is another. Ghazālī’s aim here is not to argue that only agents are causes, but that only voluntary causes are agents, and he has clearly asserted that the ‘agent’ means a specific kind of cause – the voluntary – as distinct from the natural. Ghazālī may well deny the existence of natural causes (we will examine that question later), but he certainly does not argue (contradictorily) that ‘natural causes are not causes.’ If, in fact, Ghazālī holds that the only real cause is an agent (i.e. God), it need not be because ‘cause’ just means ‘agent’, or as Kogan suggests, that to be a ‘natural cause’ is just to be a possible means by which a voluntary agent could bring about an affect, as in Gasking (1955). Since nothing of the sort is going on here, Kogan’s objections are irrelevant. As Dougherty explains it, Ghazālī has deployed ‘a reductio which shows that denial of the division of ‘cause’ into the agent and the natural denies the possibility of ethical judgements’ (2008 p. 405). The use of the term ‘agent’ is secondary here. For there is a salient, distinct sense of cause, by which one who voluntarily pushes another into the fire is morally responsible for the act,

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which does not apply to the sense in which fire causes the burning, nor to any involuntary ‘first mover’ one might imagine as having pushed him in the fire (say, a strong gust of wind). To deny this as a distinct sort of cause, as Dougherty points out, is to deny the reality of ethical responsibility. Nevertheless, the separate fact that the ʾAshʿarīs have denied causal efficacy of anything other than God lends salience to an objection of Ibn Rushd’s. Since they also deny that moral responsibility applies to God, this for them cannot be the significance of distinguishing God as a voluntary agent from mere natural causes. Yet while Ghazālī, along with his ʾAshʿarī colleagues, would not presume to hold God morally obligated, there is a morally salient sense of responsibility that Ghazālī would wish to retain for God, for which agency as he conceives it would be essential. That is, our obligation to relate with praise and gratefulness to His creative act. This is not possible for one conceived as acting out of sheer necessity. Only agency in the truly voluntary sense can give meaning to Ibn Rushd’s otherwise rhetorical assertion that God acts, not through necessity but through His ‘grace and bounty.’ Ibn Rushd is trying to preserve some meaning for this himself. ‘The falāsifah do not deny that God wills,’ he persists, ‘for He is an agent through knowledge and He performs the better of two acts, though both are possible; they only affirm that He does not will as man wills’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 160 / 1954 p. 95). Yet nobody here is asserting that God wills as man wills. The question for Ibn Rushd here is whether it is possible for God to perform the lesser of two acts, and if not how both are ‘possible’ as he claims. If He can only perform a single best act, then only one is possible, His act is necessary, and He cannot perform one of two equally good but mutually exclusive acts. If on the other hand He can perform the lesser act, but never does, then His act is not necessary and thus He can choose between two equally good but mutually exclusive acts. Hence, Ghazālī’s operative definition of will, and his effort to prove it by way of contingent features of the world that could have been otherwise, without any compromise in the optimality of the cosmic order.

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Ghazālī’s falāsifah, in conclusion, abandon the semantic argument, saying that they mean by God’s being an ‘agent’ only that He is the cause of everything else, upon which all is permanently dependent. ‘If the opponent refuses to call this meaning ‘action’, there is no need to squabble about names, once the meaning is clear’ (Ghazali 2000 p. 59). Ghazālī retorts that his purpose was to show that this is not the true meaning of ‘agent’ and ‘action,’ which is ‘that which truly proceeds from the will.’ All he has really shown, however, is that there is a distinct sense of ‘agency,’ which the falāsifah deny of God, the denial of which has profound theological implications. He has not shown that this is the only correct use of the term, at least not conclusively enough to underwrite his accusation that they ‘have denied the true meaning of ‘action’ and have uttered its expression to endear yourselves to Muslims’ (2000 p. 59). When it comes to accusations of deception, however, Ghazālī is not immune, for he has declined here to relay Ibn Sīnā’s clear and explicit explanation of how he conceives God’s will (Ibn Sina 2005 p. 327). This does not come until the Fifth Discussion, where Ghazālī extensively recounts how the falāsifah interpret divine names in light of their strict conception of God’s unity. If it is said, ‘Willer,’ we do not mean by it other than that He is not oblivious of what emanates from Him and is not averse to it, but rather that He knows His perfection consists in having the whole emanate from Him. It is thus permissible to say of the One Satisfied that He is a Willer. Thus, Will would be nothing other than Power itself, Power nothing other than Knowledge itself, Knowledge nothing other than the Essence itself (2000 p. 92).

Ibn Rushd (1930 p. 310 / 1954 pp. 185–6) affirms the accuracy of this account by Ghazālī of Ibn Sīnā’s position. Yet we cannot avoid concluding that Ghazālī’s failure to provide this fuller account here in the Third Discussion, in the course of allegedly unmasking the falāsifah’s ‘deception,’ is itself deceptive.

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CHAPTER TEN. THE NATURE OF NATURE In his introductory summary of the natural sciences, Ghazālī specifies just four points of disagreement with the falāsifah in this area. As the last three of these pertain to their doctrines regarding the soul, I will leave their examination for the second volume of this commentary. ‘The first is their judgment that this connection between causes and effects that one observes in existence is a connection of necessary concomitance,’ he writes, ‘so that it is within neither power nor within possibility to bring about the cause without the effect’ or vice versa. Refuting this, he says, is required in order to affirm the possibility of miracles ‘that disrupt [the] habitual [course of nature], such as changing the staff into a serpent, revival of the dead, and the splitting of the moon,’ for ‘whoever renders the habitual courses [of nature] a necessary constant makes all these [miracles] impossible’ (2000 p. 163). Thus, as he famously opens the 17th Discussion: ‘The connection [al-aqtirān] between what is habitually believed [yaʾqtadu fi alʾadat] to be a cause [sabab] and what is habitually believed to be an effect [musabbab] is not necessary [ḍarūri] according to us’ (2000 p. 166). Controversy has surrounded the issue of what precisely Ghazālī asserts in what follows, often over the vaguely stated question whether he ‘denies causality.’ Ibn Rushd accuses Ghazālī of ‘sophistry’ for denying ‘the existence of efficient causes which are observed in sensible things.’ Some textual ambiguities, such as Ghazālī’s apparent acknowledgement (above) of a connection between causes and effects observed in existence, have led others

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to conclude that he does not deny them as such, but only any necessary connection between them. On the other hand, he may only intend to use the terms as shorthand for what, as we just saw, he refers to as ‘what are habitually believed to be’ causes and effects. Does Ghazālī understand by cause, that which renders an effect necessary, and thus mean to claim that what we observe are not real, but only habitually believed to be causes, or does he accept that there are observed causes, while only denying that they necessitate their effects? The question, as well known, is made more complicated by the fact that Ghazālī offers two different ‘approaches’ [muslikān] in this discussion to defending the possibility of miracles. In Section 10.1, we will introduce Ghazālī’s two approaches, as he applies them to the question of bodily resurrection in the 20th Discussion, explaining the problems of their interpretation and their compatibility with the possibility of natural science. In Section 10.2, we will examine notions of necessity, causation, and agency operative in the debate. In Section 10.3 we will comparatively analyze elements of the epistemology of natural science relevant to the debate, as variously understood by Ibn Sīnā, Ghazālī, and Ibn Rushd. In Section 10.4, we examine Ghazālī’s objection to the first ‘naturalist’ position on causal necessity, and the line of reasoning leading to the second, ‘metaphysical’ position, which is in fact the position to which his two approaches respond. We will raise the question whether Ibn Rushd is correct in viewing the second approach as a reversal by Ghazālī, in light of the realization that by denying essential natures the first approach leads, as Ibn Rushd argues, to nihilism. In Section 10.5 we will analyze, evaluate and modify this argument to retain its compelling ontological insight, removed from its unjustified epistemic assumptions, and consider how Ghazālī might respond.

SECTION 10.1. MIRACLES, RESURRECTION, AND NATURAL SCIENCE

The dual approach to miracles emerges in the 20th Discussion, where Ghazālī defends the possibility of the specific miracle of bodily resurrection, eventually understood as a return of im-

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material souls to new bodies created from pre-existing or newly created matter. The falāsifah object that human bodies cannot emerge directly from simple elements, but must pass through a complex series of preparatory phases (sperm, blood, clot, fetus, infant, etc.), each prerequisite for the next. Ghazālī concedes that such a process is required. ‘We admit that ascending through these stages is necessary for [the earth] to become a human body, just as it is necessary for iron to become a turban,’ he writes. ‘For if it remains iron, it would not become a garment.’ He insists, however, that this does not render resurrection impossible, since the length of time this might take poses no special problem. The question, he says, is whether the process ‘occurs purely through [divine] power, without mediation, or through some cause or another’ (2000 p. 222). Both [explanations] according to us, are possible, as we have mentioned in the first question in the natural sciences when discussing [God’s] making [all events] run according to a habitual course. [There we stated] that the connection of connected things in existence is not by way of necessity, but that habitual [patterns] can be disrupted, whereby these matters would come about through God’s power without the existence of their causes. The second [view] consists of our saying that this is due to causes, but it is not a condition that the cause [here] would be one which we have experienced (2000 p. 222).

These are summary statements of the two approaches developed in Discussion 17, but they do not clarify them. Since only the first explanation explicitly denies the necessity of the habitual course of natural events, it gives the impression that the second accepts such necessity, with the proviso that sometimes (in the case of ‘miraculous’ events) we are simply not privy to all the operative causes involved. Yet as we just saw, Ghazālī has univocally asserted that we must deny natural necessity. The causes to which, according to the second view natural processes are due, cannot then be such as render those processes necessary. Furthermore, the first statement describes the possible disruption of the habitual course of nature – that is, the miraculous event – as one that God brings about without the exis-

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tence of its cause. This implies that in normal cases, when the habitual course of nature is uninterrupted, things come about with the existence of their causes. Since again, these cannot be such as render their effects necessary, we might interpret Ghazālī’s use of ‘cause’ here as shorthand for what he refers to as what is ‘habitually believed to be a cause’ in the opening statement of the 17th Discussion. We cannot however interpret those ‘causes’ that according to the second view are always involved in the natural process, in the same manner. For the unknown cause that we have never experienced but which, according to the second view, is operative in a miraculous event, cannot be one that we habitually believe to be a cause. Nor can it be such as necessitates an effect. What sort of cause can it be? Adding to the perplexity, Ghazālī has univocally conceded here that certain natural processes are necessary in the change, for example, of earth into a human body, or iron into a turban. This is not in question, with respect to whether it happens directly through divine power, or through the mediation of some sort of cause. That is, the first explanation does not suggest that God changes earth into a human body without passing it through what Ghazālī admits are the requisite stages. That raises the question how he understood the necessity of these stages, one for the next. For he does not apparently view his admission of that as an admission of necessity in the habitual course of nature. Ghazālī’s univocal assertions (or concessions as it may be) effectively set parameters for any approach to nature compatible with a nest of related theological, metaphysical, and epistemological commitments. With Halevi (2002), I agree that whether Ghazālī is an ʾAshʿarī is less relevant here than how his encounter with the falāsifah gives shape to what Halevi describes as alternative possibilities. Marmura (1981) rightly asks in what sense they are supposed to be possible. According to him, the two explanations cannot both be true for they differ on whether inanimate things exercise causal efficacy. Ghazālī certainly means that each is possible in the sense that it is consistent internally, as Marmura says, and with the possibility of miracles. However, as I will argue, the two are in fact compatible, for they do not ultimately differ with respect to how they account for the miracle,

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but rather with respect to the frames of reference from which each approaches the question. Clarifying what Ghazālī has in mind requires carefully distinguishing what is a theoretical option from anything that is for him a categorical, non-negotiable commitment. Examples include, as we just saw, that the habitual course of nature is not necessary, and that changes nevertheless occur in necessarily ordered phases. Neither of the alternative possible models of nature should contradict these. Griffel (2009) has helpfully listed a number of other such commitments that constitute conditions for any acceptable Ghazālīan philosophy of nature. Aside from the possibility of miracles, he lists as its conditions, that it accommodate creation ex nihilo (cosmic origination), God’s will (alternative possibilities for acting), and God’s omniscience (including knowledge of individuals). It must also ‘account for our coherent experience of the universe and must allow predictions of future events, meaning that it must account for the successful pursuit of the natural sciences’ (2009 p. 185). This raises the question what such success consists of. Constructive empiricists among contemporary philosophers of science define this purely in terms of ‘empirical adequacy,’ roughly, the ability to make accurate predictions based on a theory and some data (van Fraassen 1980). Accordingly, it is not the proper aim of natural science to provide an accurate description of the way things are in an ultimate sense, explaining thus why it enjoys its empirical adequacy. All that matters is that the theories work; that is, they allow predictions of future events, but without accounting for our coherent experience of the universe. It may seem natural and perhaps even necessary that one who denies natural necessity should take that position. Yet if Ghazālī is denying natural necessity, it is to affirm God’s providence over all, including our coherent experience of the universe. In the preface, recall, Ghazālī affirmed that the falāsifah’s explanations of the lunar and solar eclipses rest on demonstrative proof. Yet as he describes them, they seemingly involve causal relations between created things. The lunar eclipse is ‘the obliteration of the moon’s light due to the interposition of the earth between it and the sun’ (2000 p. 6). The prophetic

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statement that ‘the sun and moon are two of God’s signs’ does not, he says, contradict this explanation. ‘For the relation of the inquiry of [these matters] to the divine is similar to the relation of looking at…the number of seeds in a pomegranate’ to the question whether it is temporally originated. ‘What is intended here is only being God’s act, whatever mode it has’ (2000 p. 7). The eclipse is thus God’s act, whereas its scientific explanation, even as due to the positions of the heavenly bodies, identifies only the mode of that act, and not its agent. His core argument for that in al-Iqtiṣād rests on the premises that ‘every well-designed product is produced by a powerful agent’ and that ‘the world is a well-designed product.’ The second premise, he says is proven empirically. ‘He who examines his organs – the external and internal – would become aware of wonders of exquisiteness, which would take very long to enumerate’ (2013 p. 83). The first premise, he says is known by the necessity of reason. At the very least, natural science delivers a premise necessary for providing this account of the coherence of our experience. The number of seeds in a pomegranate may then be more relevant to some divine matters than Ghazālī portrayed, and consequently his definition of scientific success may need to demand more than that of the constructive empiricist. The falāsifah standard of scientific success, drawn primarily from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (I:2), clearly does demand more, for here genuine knowledge of something entails knowing the specific cause in virtue of which it could not be other than in it is. The truth obtained thereby is thus necessary (I:4). On the statistical-frequency model of modality most often attributed to Aristotle, this should simply mean that it is never otherwise. Here, however, he carefully distinguishes an essential attribute from one ‘true in every instance of its subject.’ Whereas the latter is ‘truly predicable of all instances,’ this alone does not qualify it as essential. An attribute is essential in one of four ways. Either (a) the attribute belongs to the very nature of its subject, (b) the subject belongs to the definition of the attribute, (c) the attribute is predicated only of itself (as in ‘the walker is walking’), or (d) the connection to its subject is consequential rather than merely

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coincidental. For (d), which is most relevant for what is to come, the example given is the connection between the death of an animal and the cutting of its throat. Of the four, it is only here that the attribute and subject are distinct (i.e. the animal’s death may occur without the throat cutting). For Ibn Sīnā, by contrast, that which is a consequence of the essential nature of a subject is not, strictly speaking, essential, for the essential describes the very quiddity of the subject (2011 p. 6). It is too broad a definition of the essential, he asserts, even to say that it is inseparable from its subject in the estimative imagination. It is impossible, for example, to imagine that the sum of the angles of a triangle not equal two right angles (and since a triangle is a proper object of the estimative imagination, its judgment is correct in this case). Yet this is not essential to a triangle for it is not what a triangle is, since one may understand what a triangle is without yet understanding this fact. In either case, the object of science is not simply the universal that belongs to its subject in every instance, but the ‘commensurate universal,’ which belongs to it essentially (I:4). It follows from this not only that the premises of scientific demonstration must be necessary (I:6), but that the conclusion is true eternally, so that strictly speaking scientific knowledge of the perishable is impossible (I:8). Nevertheless, Aristotle clarifies that scientific knowledge does not imply the existence of Platonic forms. Its only ontological requirement is ‘the possibility of predicating one of many;’ that is, that a ‘single term is univocally predicable of a number of individuals’ (I:11). We acquire these universal terms, according to Aristotle, by generalizing from and systematizing our sense experience of multiple similar particulars (that is, by induction), eventually arriving through this process to the primary premises on which scientific demonstration rests (II19). Both the approaches to miracles Ghazālī has described threaten the possibility of natural science meeting this standard, assuming that its primary object is to discover consequential connections. For if these connections are not necessary, as his first approach asserts, then there simply are no commensurately universal truths about them, even if there are materially universal

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truths. Assuming that his second approach concedes the necessity of these connections (an unsafe assumption at this point), there remains an epistemic problem. For as he correctly says, it is not a condition of any event that we have experienced all its causes. Yet on this model of science, we discover the premises of a scientific demonstration through experience. It is therefore not a condition of any event that we know all its causes. Consequently, it would be impossible for us to know whether any such connection is true in all instances. For Ghazālī’s position to account for the successful pursuit of the natural sciences, then, it must include an alternative conception of what that involves. We will have occasion to explore this below.

SECTION 10.2. NECESSITY, CAUSATION, AND AGENCY

Following up his denial of any necessary connection between what we habitually believe to be causes and effects, Ghazālī expresses the following general principle on the conditions of necessity. But [with] any two things, where ‘this’ is not ‘that’ and ‘that’ is not ‘this’ and where neither the affirmation of the one entails (mutaḍamman) the affirmation of the other nor the negation of the one entails the negation of the other, it is not a necessity of the existence of the one that the other should exist, and it is not a necessity of the nonexistence of the one that the other should not exist…Their connection is due to the prior decree of God, who creates them side by side, not to its being necessary in itself, incapable of separation (2000 p. 166).

Where ‘this’ is ‘that’ they are not two things, but one. It follows that a necessary connection holds between two things if and only if the affirmation of one entails the affirmation of the other, or the negation of one entails the negation of the other. This is the counterpart of Ghazālī’s assertion from the first discussion, that possibility and impossibility are rational propositions. Anything the mind can suppose, he said, is possible. It seems the impossible is that the supposition of which involves self-contradiction, and the necessary is that the denial of which involves selfcontradiction. Yet this raises a question.

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When Ghazālī says the connection between distinct things is due to the prior decree of God, are we to understand by this that the existence of the connection follows necessarily from God’s decree? Aside from the strong implication of the text to that effect, the alternative is the theologically unacceptable possibility that God’s decree fail. Yet then it should follow, according to Ghazālī’s own assertion, either that the prior decree is the decreed connection (‘this’ is ‘that’), or that the affirmation of the prior decree entails (mutaḍamman – literally, ‘includes’) the affirmation of the connection. He presents these as distinct relations, differing in two distinct ways. One difference is that, while the first is essentially a symmetric relation (this is that), the second relation can be asymmetric (one includes the other). This is that, if and only if that is this; but A might entail B without B entailing A. Another difference is that the first relation pertains to the thing (its identity with itself) while the second relation pertains to intentional attitudes toward things. The affirmation of one, he says, includes that of the other. The first difference is not, by itself, a significant difference for Ghazālī’s purposes. For wherever ‘this is that’, the affirmation of the one entails that of the other. In that case, he would have made his point just as well in terms of entailment alone. Unless he was wasting words, then, we should understand him as differentiating analytic entailment (including co-entailment) from simple identity; where this is that, without the affirmation of either being included in that of the other. To use Frege’s (1892) famous example, from the fact that I saw the morning star, it follows necessarily that I saw the evening star (because this is that). Yet it is not a contradiction in terms to propose that I saw one without the other, because the affirmation of one is not included in the other. ‘Morning star’ does not entail ‘evening star.’ Likewise, the proposition that God decree something that does not come to be is not a contradiction in terms. The affirmation of one is not included in that of the other. If Ghazālī is to remain consistent with his assertion about the conditions for necessitation, and if God’s decree of something necessitates that thing, then the decree must be identical to the thing, in something

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like the way the morning star is identical to the evening star. The only alternative to this interesting implication is that Ghazālī, by holding that God’s decree necessitates the existence of the decreed thing, is contradicting his expressed rule on necessitation. This applies generally to Ghazālī’s stance on efficient causation visa vie the falāsifah. Recall that according to Ibn Sīnā every genuine efficient cause necessitates the existence of a distinct effect. For again, any existing thing, conceived in itself, is either necessary in itself or possible in itself. If the latter, then given what it is in itself, it may either exist or not exist. Something other than itself is required to determine that it does; that is, the cause of its existence. If it were possible that a supposed cause a, exist without its effect e, then e would remain a mere possibility requiring something else, b additional to a, to determine its existence, such that the composite (a & b) is the cause of e. Yet since the cause does not necessitate its effect, it remains possible for (a & b) to exist without e, in which case e remains a mere possibility requiring yet another additional factor for its existence. This leads either to an infinite regress, or finally to an existing factor (or composite of factors), that render the existence of e necessary. In that case, e being possible in itself is necessary through another, that other being the existing factor (or composite thereof) which ultimately determines that it exist rather than not. This, then is the genuine ‘complete’ cause. If it is a composite, then the individual insufficient (even if necessary) members of the composite are not by themselves true causes. The cause of a given effect is just that factor (individual or composite) the existence of which the existence of the effect is a necessity; and in the case of an efficient cause of course, that effect is distinct from its cause (Ibn Sīnā 2005 p. 31, 127). This is an analytic argument about the concept of efficient causation as such. As McGinnis (2006) notes, Ghazālī nowhere mentions it in the discussion, though as we will see, he opposes a similar argument of Ibn Sīnā’s that differs, however, by being an empirical argument that efficient causes among observable things necessitate their effects. Thus, Yaqub (2017 p. 34) reads Ghazālī

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as agreeing with Ibn Sīnā, that to be an efficient cause is to necessitate an effect, and then arguing that since there is no necessity in nature there is no natural causation. It is at least clear that, based on Ghazālī’s conditions of necessitation, if a cause necessitates its effect, as Ibn Sīnā claims, it must either be identical to or include that effect. Yet the efficient cause is distinct from its effect, and so cannot of course be identical with it. Can affirmation of the efficient cause nevertheless entail the affirmation of its effect? If not, then Ghazālī’s conditions of necessitation rule out the existence of Ibn Sīnā’s efficient cause, and perhaps problematically, not only among observable things, as Ibn Rushd has it. As mentioned above, Ibn Rushd’s opening assertion here is that ‘to deny the existence of efficient causes which are observed in things is sophistry… for he who denies this,’ he argues, ‘can no longer acknowledge that every act must have an agent’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 519 / 1954 p. 318). This construal of Ghazālī’s denial of necessary connection between observable things as a denial of observable efficient causes implies that, for Ibn Rushd also, the ‘efficient cause’ necessitates its effect. Yet then he writes, ‘the question whether these causes by themselves are sufficient to perform the acts which proceed from them, or need an external cause for the perfection of their act…is not self-evident and requires much investigation and research’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 519–20 / 1954 p. 318). Thus, for him, the efficient cause is not in fact that which necessitates its effect, for otherwise, the question of its sufficiency would be self-evident. Yet Ghazālī has so far not denied the existence of observed ‘efficient causes’ in any sense other than this. Why would denying efficient causes in observed things preclude acknowledging that every act has an agent? Every act has an agent. Otherwise, it would not be an act. Denying efficient causes of observed things, on the other hand, would entail that not every observed thing has an agent, but only if every agent is an efficient cause. Ghazālī may have effectively denied Ibn Sīnā’s notion of efficient cause altogether (whether observed or otherwise) but has not denied any agent of observed things, for as he says they are due to God’s decree. At most, he has denied

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agents among (at least inanimate) observed things. What Ibn Rushd means to say is that denying observable efficient causes precludes knowing that every observable (and thus, temporal) thing has a cause. For according to him, such knowledge depends on the existence of observable efficient causes. We can only know that every event has a cause through observation. For us, this raises the question how that is possible without being able to observe the cause of every event. Ghazālī concentrates on a single empirical case. The contact of fire with cotton is possible, he maintains, without its subsequent burning, and vice versa. This example, McGinnis (2006) notes, recalls another of Ibn Sīnā’s proofs for causal necessity, premised on the claim that we know, from repeated observation of cotton burning on contact with fire, that fire has an active power to burn and that cotton has a passive power, or disposition, to be burned. If on such contact burning were not necessary, then it would be possible that it not happen. In that case, either fire would lack the active power to burn cotton or cotton would lack the passive power to burn, both of which contradict what we know to be true. This appears to be Ghazālī’s target. To resist it, he must either deny the active or passive powers of fire or cotton (and consequently that repeated observation proves these powers), or deny that the possibility of cotton failing to burn on contact with fire negates these powers. Ghazālī actually addresses two positions on the causal role of fire in this process, which he opposes in stepwise fashion, the refutation of the first leading to the second. The first is what we may call a naturalist position, that ‘the agent of the burning is the fire alone, it being an agent by nature [and] not by choice-hence incapable of refraining from [acting according to] what is in its nature after contacting a substratum receptive of it’ (2000 p. 167). The second (we will call ‘metaphysical’ position), is that the observed agent (e.g. fire) merely prepares its patient (e.g. cotton) to receive a form by necessity from a metaphysical agent or agents, which are the ‘principles of temporal events.’ After arguing, contra the first position, that there is a metaphysical agent (God) behind all natural events, Ghazālī faces the problematic implication of the second. That is, that God does not

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determine the nature of His act by will, for the nature of the preexisting matter on which He acts determines the form it receives by necessity. This also means that He cannot have enacted certain reported miracles without changing the essences of the things involved. It is in response to this that Ghazālī proposes his two ‘approaches’ to miracles. In the Third Discussion, recall, Ghazālī insisted that ‘agent’ just means a cause by will and knowledge. Hence, after asserting against the naturalist position that God enacts the burning (‘without or without the mediation of angels’), he reaffirms, ‘as for fire, which is inanimate, it has no action’ (2000 p. 167). While this solely applies to his own conception of agent (i.e. a cause by will), he follows up with an argument that also applies to the falāsifahs’ sense of ‘agent’ (as efficient cause). For what proof is there that it is the agent? They have no proof other than observing the occurrence of the burning at the [juncture of] contact with the fire. Observation, however, [only] shows the occurrence [of burning] at [the time of the contact with the fire], but does not show the occurrence [of burning] by [the fire] and that there is no other cause for it (Ghazālī 2000 p. 167).

This ultimately entails that we cannot identify the efficient cause of any event through observation. Generalizing, we observe only spatio-temporal relations between events (e.g. burning of cotton at the time of contact with fire). Ghazālī refers to these proximities variously as ‘occurrence with,’ ‘existence with,’ and, as we just saw, the ‘connections’ between observable things ‘habitually believed’ to be cause and effect. These do not amount to evidence of any agent among observable things, as, in Ghazālī’s words, ‘existence ‘with’ a thing does not prove that it exists ‘by’ it’ (2000 p. 167). Aside from being willing, then, the agent for Ghazālī is also that ‘by which’ something exists and, as we will see, to exist ‘by’ another means to be necessitated by it.

SECTION 10.3. INDUCTION

The problem for induction that Ghazālī is raising is not new to the falāsifah. McGinnis (2006 p. 447) informs us that the ʾAshʿarī mutakallim, al-Bāqillānī, deployed the same argument, but to

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refute their claim to know that fire is a cause at all, rather than to deny that it is the only agent, as Ghazālī does here. The reason, however, is not that Ghazālī thinks fire is one among other agents. Since the inanimate has no act, remember, Ghazālī cannot concede that the fire is an agent at all. He may at most be open to the prospect that the fire is a (non-agent) ‘causal’ factor that, together with others cause burning. Yet given his univocal opening assertion, in order for any such composite of factors to render its effect necessary (and thus be its cause), it seems the composite must somehow be either identical to the effect, or entail it. This brings us to an appropriate place to explore the question we introduced above, as to Ghazālī’s conception of scientific success. For this, we look to his Miʿyār al-ʿilm (Standard of Knowledge), which he mentions in the Tahāfut (2000 p. 10), and for which we here depend on Marmura’s thorough analysis (1965). Ghazālī agrees with the falāsifah that scientific demonstration provides certain knowledge, derived deductively from certain and universal premises. He also agrees of course that all necessary knowledge is certain. A key difference, as we will see, is that he does not agree that all certain knowledge is necessary. Like the falāsifah, Ghazālī follows Aristotle (Posterior Analytics 1:13) in distinguishing a demonstration of fact (burhān inna or ‘proof that’) from the demonstration of ‘reasoned fact’ (burhān līma or ‘proof why’). In the former case, we infer simply that something obtains, from the observation of its effect. Intuitively, ‘there is smoke, so there is fire.’ In the latter case, the proof is also the explanation. We infer the existence of the effect from the observation of its cause: ‘there is fire, so there is smoke’ (Marmura 1965 p. 189). Hence, Ibn Sīnā gives burhān līma the name of burhān muṭlaq (absolute demonstration), and calls the middle term in the burhān inna, the ‘sign.’ While the sign gives ‘only the cause of the coming together in the mind of the two extremes in the conclusion, and your assent to it,’ the absolute demonstration gives ‘the cause of the coming together of the two extremes of the conclusion in existence’ (Ibn Sīnā 2011 pp. 96–7). Smoke causes you to conclude that there is fire, but does not cause the fire, while fire

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causes both the smoke and your conclusion. Of the latter, Ghazālī also follows Ibn Sīnā in distinguishing between two types. Sometimes the middle term is the cause of the very existence of the major term, and other times it is only the cause of its existence ‘for the minor term’; that is for its predication in the conclusion. For example, that every man is bodily follows from the premises that every man is an animal and that every animal is bodily, but animality does not cause bodies to exist. It only causes it to be the case that every man is bodily. Cristina Cerami has persuasively argued that Ibn Rushd, out of concern that any dependence of physics on metaphysics might leave natural philosophy vulnerable to subversion by ʾAshʿarī occasionalism, devoted his greatest philosophical effort to ‘ascertaining that natural philosophy is a real autonomous science, insofar as it meets all the epistemological criteria of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics.’ That, in turn, meant resisting Ibn Sīnā’s model, which makes demonstrative physics ultimately dependent on a priori metaphysical principles, by showing that natural philosophy can establish its own first principles from within, through purely empirical means (Cerami 2019 pp. 179–80). Ibn Rushd’s contention that the burhān inna (or ‘sign’) does avail de re necessary knowledge is a centerpiece of that resistance since, as he recognizes, the first premises of physics can only be established through this sort of argument, inferring the cause from the observation of its effect. Its premises, he says, involve a predicate that belongs necessarily to its subject (and is therefore commensurately universal) in the second of the four ways Aristotle listed: the definition of the predicate contains the subject. With this form of argument, physics is able to establish its own principles with demonstrative certainty, without depending on metaphysics (Cerami 2019 pp. 185–7). Crucially, according to Ibn Rushd, one can establish these premises empirically. For his part, Ghazālī also distinguishes two sorts of burhān inna, just one of which is to infer the existence of a cause from its effect. The other is when we infer one thing from the premise that its type is in constant correlation to another type, a specimen of which we know to obtain (Marmura 1965 p. 190). As Marmura

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points out, it is natural to assume that an occasionalist, taking God as the only cause of any event, would only accept this last form of burhān inna based solely on constant conjunction, as valid. Ghazālī, however, presents all of these as valid forms of demonstrative proof. Moreover, he accepts that all four of the Aristotelian causes may function as the terms therein, including most problematically the efficient cause. If Ghazālī is committed to the position that God is the only agent (as Marmura is convinced he is), then how can this be? Marmura argues that Ghazālī accepts the Aristotelian standards of demonstration he explains here, while rejecting the metaphysical explanation of the certainty of demonstrative premises. As he notes, in Miyār, Ghazālī explains the validity of a syllogism by saying God creates the conclusion in the mind suitably prepared by the presentation of its premises in the correct order (1965 p. 193). What, then, explains the certainty of the primary premises that render it demonstrative? For Ghazālī, these are either rational or empirical. The rational are self-evident or follow demonstratively from self-evident premises. In Ibn Sīnā’s scheme, the first sort (such as ‘the whole is greater than the part’) are such as the mind necessarily assents to immediately upon conceiving its terms (e.g. ‘whole’ and ‘part’) by abstraction from the deliverance of the senses and imagination (Black 2013 pp. 125–6). For Ibn Rushd, importantly all such propositions are empirical in spite of their immediacy, since their terms are never conceived independently of experience, though we are not aware of when or how we acquired them (Black 2019 pp. 97–8). According to Ghazālī, empirical premises are such as we acquire through immediate sensation, ‘experience’ (mujabbarāt), or intuition (hadsiyāt). In this, he also follows Ibn Sīnā, who argued against Aristotle that simple induction (istiqrāʾ) provides only probable belief, and not the certain, universal premises required for demonstration. Even a ‘complete’ induction referring to all the members of a class, as opposed to the majority, rests nonetheless on the mere enumeration of particulars, from which the direct extraction of a universal is impossible (McGinnis 2003 pp. 308–16). Acquisition of the mujabbarāt thus requires an implicit syllogism (usually inferred unconsciously) combining the

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observation of empirical regularities, with the premise that such a regularity cannot be due to chance, to infer an underlying essential relation between the kinds of things involved in the conjoined events as the cause. ‘If this thing, such as the loosening of the bowels due to scammony, were something arbitrary and accidental and not due to some requirement of nature,’ goes Ibn Sīnā’s example, ‘then it would not occur consistently and in most cases.’ Consequently, ‘if this does not happen, the soul considers it to be rare and seeks a cause due to which it did not happen.’ (2011 p. 88). Ibn Rushd, significantly, disagrees. Since an unconscious inference is not actually but only potentially in the mind, he argues, it cannot account for the actual certainty we have of the proposition we allegedly infer therefrom (Black 2019 p. 102). Furthermore, an inductive inference of the sort Ibn Sīnā describes, even if conscious, would not be scientific but merely dialectical, since it depends on an assumed premise. That is not only that a regular correlation between things cannot be due to chance but also that it must be due to an essential relation between the natures of the things themselves. Ibn Sīnā himself acknowledges that while tajriba demonstrates that there is a necessary relation, it does not provide an explanation of just what that relation is or why it holds (McGinnis 2003 p. 326). It will not suffice, for instance, to establish that fire (or any other observed material substance) is alone the agent of the burning of cotton (or any other observed event), for that would require not only certainty that there is a necessary relation between them, but a complete explanation why the relation holds. For Ibn Sīnā, in fact, material substances like fire are not, alone, the agents of natural processes strictly speaking. Yet they do have essential active and passive powers (or dispositions) by which matter is set into the proper motion and thus prepared to receive the forms from metaphysical agents through which the consummate substances come to be. He thus acknowledges, as he must, the possibility of tajriba leading to false generalizations. For instance, one who has only ever observed black people may falsely conclude that procreation between humans always produces black children. The solution he offers is that the natural

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scientist should take careful note of the specific conditions of his observation, and limit the domain of his generalizations accordingly (here, that procreation between black people always produces black people) (McGinnis 2003). Given his own position on the necessity of metaphysical agents for the existence of natural processes, he should plausibly view the claim that fire is alone the agent of burning as a similar failure to take into account the metaphysical conditions underlying natural processes (like burning cotton), consequently mistaking the merely predictive certainty of the conclusion for a genuine explanation. Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd both realize that tajriba as conceived by Ibn Sīnā can establish universal premises suitable for predictive, but not for explanatory certainty. Both see that this leaves open the way for kalām to claim that a regular correlation does prove a necessary relation, but between the events and God’s will rather than between the natures of things themselves. Thus, in Miyār, Ghazālī explains that the theologian, on hearing of someone’s decapitation, lacks no certainty that the person is dead, but only questions the reason for the connection between the two things (Marmura 1965 p. 195). For Ibn Rushd, if explanatory knowledge is not possible through experience, then we cannot demonstrate that God exists in the first place. Thus, true scientific induction must confirm, directly through observation of every species of the class of a subject, a predicate of which that subject is included in the very definition (Cerami 2019 p. 188). Consequently, he insists that true tajriba is an explanatorily demonstrative form of empirical knowledge independent of any hidden inference.

SECTION 10.4. BEYOND NATURALISM

Indeed, as Marmura points out, in Miʾyār Ghazālī agrees with Ibn Sīnā that tajriba avails certain knowledge that the relation between constantly correlated things is not arbitrary, but not that it is a necessity of nature (1965 p. 195). His argument that existence ‘with’ something does not prove existence ‘by’ it turns similarly on the problem of how one can be certain, through observation, to have taken account of all the salient conditions. Moreover, he models this argument on Ibn Sīnā’s defense of his

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own upgraded version of the Aristotelian intromission theory of vision against the competing extramission theory, as well as his use of that as an analogy for the relation between human souls and the Agent Intellect (McGinnis 2010 pp. 102–10; 131–2). Indeed, we will show this by an example. If a person, blind from birth, who has a film on his eyes and who has never heard from people the difference between night and day, were to have the film cleared from his eyes in daytime, [then] open his eyelids and see colors, [such a person] would believe that the agent [causing] the apprehension of the forms of the colors in his eyes is the opening of his sight and that, as long as his sight is sound, [his eyes] opened, the film removed, and the individual in front of him having color, it follows necessarily that he would see, it being incomprehensible that he would not see. When, however, the sun sets and the atmosphere becomes dark, he would then know that it is sunlight that is the cause for the imprinting of the colors in his sight (Ghazālī 2000 p. 167).

Note that this confirms that for Ghazālī, to say that one thing exists ‘by’ another means that the first follows necessarily from the second, where it not doing so would be incomprehensible. Secondly, the false generalization in this case results from failing to take account of the fact that the observation took place in daylight, a condition the salience of which will not have been noticeable until the sun sets. Then, according to Ibn Sīnā’s recommendation, one should adjust the generalization, inferring that all instances of a colored object before a healthy eye in daylight necessitate vision. Yet according to Ghazālī’s position, the sun should be no more an agent than the eye. It is only a ‘cause’ in the sense that it is ‘habitually’ connected with vision. The observation of the sun setting ‘with’ the cessation of vision no more proves that the sun was the agent ‘by’ which the colors were seen, than replacing the film on the eyes ‘with’ its cessation would prove that the eye is the agent. At most, this shows that the sun is a necessary condition of vision, but not sufficient. For Ghazālī however, given his stated position that God can create, for example, satiety without eating or decapitation without death, neither the removal

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of film from the eye nor the presence of light should, strictly speaking, be even necessary conditions of vision. This calls into question whether God can create vision even without, as he puts it, the imprinting of the forms of colors on the eye. That should depend, according to his expressed formula, on whether, this (vision) is, or entails, that (the imprint of color on the eye). Some modern empiricists, inspired (correctly or otherwise) by Hume might use this reasoning to infer that the observed relations between healthy eyes, sunlight, and vision are not due to any separate cause (whatever ‘cause’ means, they might add); or as their critics construe them, that everything is due to pure chance (Strawson 1989). This is certainly not Ghazālī’s position, for everything is due to God’s creative act of will. He thus agrees with Ibn Sīnā, that the existence of the observed spatiotemporal relations between events is necessary through that necessitating cause. He does not agree, however, that all similar unobserved events are by necessity similarly related. For example, when cotton burns on contact with fire, its burning is necessary by God’s will. This does not mean that necessarily, every time any sample of cotton contacts fire, God wills it to burn. God’s will necessitates, but is not itself necessitated. That every event has an agent that is not itself an event is demonstrable precisely because the premise that every event has an agent is self-evident and not dependent on observation. Thus, Ghazālī’s argument here against the naturalist is not only one from ignorance. That is, it is not simply that one cannot through observation rule out the possibility of a metaphysical agent. It is that observation positively proves the existence of such an agent. For everything contingent needs an agent, and everything observed is contingent. Whence can the opponent safeguard himself against there being among the principles of existence grounds and causes from which these [observable] events emanate when a contact between them takes place – [admitting] that [these principles], however, are permanent, never ceasing to exist; that they are not moving bodies that would set; that were they either to cease to exist or set, we would apprehend the dissociation [between the temporal events] and would understand that there is a cause beyond what we observe?

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This [conclusion] is inescapable in accordance with the reasoning based on [the philosophers’ own] principle (Ghazālī 2000 p. 168).

That reasoning, as Goodman (1978 p. 90) points out, has its origin in the Aristotelian proof of the Prime Mover, from which eventually evolved, under neo-Platonic influence, the emanative scheme of the falāsifah. Nothing moved is so except by the action of something else in motion. Since the regress of moved movers cannot be infinite, it must terminate in an unmoved mover – one that is not a moving body that would ‘set’, and the efficacy of which cannot therefore be eclipsed by any changing condition. Thus the ‘exacting’ among the falāsifah, according to Ghazālī, agree that temporal events – that is, changes in the natural relations between material substances – only prepare matter for the reception of forms ultimately proceeding from a metaphysical agent, the ‘bestower of forms’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 168). Yet the argument Ghazālī offered here is unique, based as it is on considering a hypothetico-deductive procedure starting with the hypothesis that opened, clear eyes directed toward a colored object necessarily results in vision. The hypothesis is falsifiable in Popper’s (1963) terms. We can describe conditions that would disconfirm it: clear open eyes directed at a colored object without vision. A change in observable conditions peripheral to these (the setting of the sun) guides the formulation of a new hypothesis which, however, is also falsifiable. Something else, hitherto unknown, might set over the sun, eclipsing its power to reveal colors to clear eyes. Now, either an ultimate explanation of vision is in principle possible or not. If not, then things ultimately do occur by pure chance and the whole enterprise of searching systematically for explanations is futile. Otherwise, there are unchanging and in principle unobservable conditions which, in conjunction with (or on the ‘occasion’ of) contingent observable circumstances render the phenomena necessary. Consequently, there is a hypothesis that is both true and unfalsifiable (that is, the hypothesis that the phenomena is necessary under just those conditions), since it is impossible that the conditions be observed to obtain while vision fails.

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Whether to call such a hypothesis ‘unscientific’ is not the primary question here, but it seems to turn on whether the objective of ‘science’ is to arrive at real explanations or simply to perpetually test hypotheses under the presumption that there ultimately are no real explanations. Ghazālī’s point here is that, unless natural events are ultimately due to pure chance (in which case any explanation is in vain), they are due to unobservable, eternal agents. He thus offers a somewhat novel path to a proposition he shares with the ‘exacting’ falāsifah. Problematically, though, these exacting among the falāsifah are perhaps too exacting. While professing to have proved the existence of an Uncaused Cause, they apparently cannot tolerate one. For they maintain, that even this ‘agent’ acts by necessity (and thus, as Ghazālī argued in the Third Discussion, is not an agent at all). The second position belongs to those who admit that these temporal events emanate from the principles of temporal events, but that the preparation for the reception of the forms comes about through these present, observed causes – except that these principles are also [such that] things proceed from them necessarily and by nature, not by way of deliberation and choice, in the way [light] proceeds from the sun, receptacles differing in their reception because of the differences [of] disposition…the principle is one but…the effects differ because of the differences of the disposition in the receptacle (Ghazālī 2000 pp. 172–3).

The example given is that of light, which is one thing proceeding from the sun, the effects of which differ due to the differences in the affected substances. Some things reflect light while others absorb it, some are hardened by it and others softened, some blackened and others whitened. The action of the metaphysical agent is therefore homogenous, the diversity in its effects due to the variety of the essential natures of material substances. Again, to be fire is to have a nature that includes the active power to burn cotton on contact, and to be cotton is to have a nature including the passive power to burn on contact with fire. Fire and cotton existing in contact with one another thus entail the

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burning of the cotton, so that fire burns cotton on contact, according to Ghazālī’s own expressed standard, by necessity. ‘Based on this notion,’ writes Ghazālī, ‘they denied the falling of Abraham in the fire without the burning taking place, the fire remaining fire, and claimed that this is only possible by taking the heat out of the fire – which makes it no longer fire – or changing the essence of the body of Abraham into stone or something over which fire has no effect’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 169). Ghazālī’s central objective in what follows is nothing but to defend the possibility of God preventing Abraham from burning in the fire without changing the essence of either. We can do this, he says, by either one of two approaches. Commenting on these later, Ibn Rushd assesses the matter as follows. When Ghazālī saw that the theory that things have no particular qualities and forms from which particular acts follow…is very objectionable and contrary to common sense, he conceded this in this last section and replaced it by the denial of two points: first that a thing can have these qualities, but that they need not act on a thing in the way they usually act on it, e.g. fire can have its warmth but need not burn something that is brought near to it, even if it is usually burnt when fire is brought near to it; secondly, that the particular forms have not a particular matter in every object (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 537 / 1954 p. 330).

He thus reads Ghazālī’s first approach as a denial that things have particular qualities and forms from which particular acts follow. Simply put, Ibn Rushd’s question here is over the relation between what a thing is and what it does. Does the behavior of a thing follow from what it is, or does it follow solely from God’s will? If the latter, then what it is has nothing to do with what it does, and is consequently inscrutable. If, for example, the burning of a flammable object on contact with fire does not follow from what fire is, then what is it to be fire after all? Clearly, Ibn Rushd sees the second approach as a reversal, inasmuch as it involves the concession that things have ‘these qualities’ – that is, qualities which characterize what they are, from which follows what they do. While Ibn Rushd agrees, as we

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will see, with Ghazālī’s first point of denial (that the same thing need always behave in the same manner), he disagrees with what he takes to be Ghazālī’s second point of denial. In this example, that would amount to claiming that any one thing can burn on contact with fire, just as readily as any other thing. Whether the second approach amounts to a reversal of the first depends on whether, in the first approach, Ghazālī does in fact deny ‘these qualities,’ understood (by Ibn Rushd) as qualities from which the behaviors of things follow, and if so whether he concedes them in the second. For there are alternatives. It may be that the qualities of things that characterize what they are follow instead from their behavior. In other words, what it is follows from what it does, which follows from God’s will. Expressed this way, however, the suggestion poses a problem. For that a thing behave in a specific way presupposes that there is a thing behaving in that way, and hence that there is something that it is, prior to its behavior, and which therefore cannot follow from its behavior.

SECTION 10.5. NATURE, NECESSITY, AND THE CONDITIONS OF BEING

‘What do the theologians say about the essential causes, the understanding of which alone can make a thing understood?’ Ibn Rushd asks. ‘For it is self-evident that things have essences and attributes that determine the special functions of each thing and through which the essences and names of things are differentiated’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 520 / 1954 p. 318). In spite of its alleged self-evidence, he offers an argument that the denial of essential natures entails nihilism. If a thing had not its specific nature, it would not have a special name nor a definition, and all things would be one, indeed not even one; for it might be asked whether this one has one special act or passivity or not, and if it had a special act, then there would indeed exist special acts proceeding from special natures, but if it had no single special act, then the one would not be one. But if the nature of oneness is denied, the nature of being is denied, and the consequence of

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the denial of being is nothingness (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 520– 21 / 1954 p. 318).

Let us unpack this in relation to Ghazālī’s proposition, that God enacts the burning of cotton in conjunction with its contact with fire. For such a proposition to be intelligible, Ibn Rushd may argue, we must understand what fire is. This requires there to be something which fire is, differentiating it from other things, such as the cotton. This difference between fire and cotton is the specific nature or essence of each, distinct by virtue of respective attributes that determine that, on contact, fire does the burning and cotton burns. We come to know what fire and cotton are, precisely through distinct patterns of behavior that follow from the respective attributes that ‘determine the special functions of each thing, and through which the essences and names of things are differentiated.’ As Kogan correctly notes in the course of his extensive explanation of this argument, the problem it raises is not merely epistemological but ontological (1985 p. 119). In general, the being of something entails its being something; that is, it having a special nature or essence. This, in turn, entails it having one special act or passivity. This cannot mean, of course, that every piece of cotton burns in virtue of being cotton. Rather, it means that every piece of cotton, insofar as it is cotton, must be such that it would burn on contact with fire, regardless of whether or not it actually ever does. That is, the essence of something like cotton qualitatively distinguishes it from other things by determining for it a specific, uniform set of dispositional properties, which Ibn Rushd refers to here as its special act or passivity. If this entails that, necessarily, cotton burns on contact with fire, then Ghazālī’s denial of that would be a denial of essential natures and thus (according to the argument) nihilism. Yet Ibn Rushd proceeds to make an exception, effectively implying that perhaps Ghazālī’s position does not entail the denial of essential natures. For, he tells us, a thing can have its essential nature, though no such proposition about its behavior follows necessarily from it. Further, are the acts which proceed from all things absolutely necessary for those in whose nature it lies to perform them, or

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Here, we should ask whether Ghazālī has denied fire its ‘burning power.’ If this means to affirm the possibility of fire without burning per se, then one might argue he cannot. For such a possibility entails that fire is something other than the act of burning, while it just is the act of burning; that is, the very process of burning in a thing. Thus, the proposition that fire burns meets Ghazālī’s conditions of necessity: this is that. So long as there is fire, then necessarily something is burning. To postulate that fire possibly not burn amounts to asserting that fire is possibly not fire, and so to assert that God can create fire without it burning anything is simply to assert that God can cause a thing to burn without that thing burning. Ghazālī has denied that fire has an act, which is effectively to deny that it is the agent of its own existence. The real question then is whether it is necessary of anything else that it burn on contact with fire. Both Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd say no, and for the same consideration. That is, in any such case of ‘causally’ related pairs (fire burning cotton on contact, vision ensuing after the removal of a cataract, etc.) there may be necessary background conditions (or the necessary absence of a condition) without which the two would not be conjoined. Yet even in such cases, where an act is not ‘performed,’ by a thing, according to Ibn Rushd, it may nevertheless be the act which ‘proceeds’ from it, and ‘in whose nature it lies to perform it.’ Thus, for example, when cotton is covered with talc or otherwise rendered inflammable, so that it does not burn on contact with fire, there is an act which ‘proceeds’ from, or which it is in the

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nature of the fire to perform, but which nevertheless is not performed. What act is that exactly? In this case, it cannot simply be the act of burning, since that is just what fire is. Necessarily then, if there is fire, there is burning. Burning per se cannot be the unperformed act that nevertheless proceeds. In this example, the unperformed act in question is that of burning cotton covered in talc. However, we would not say that it proceeds from the nature of fire to burn cotton covered in talc, if it never does. We might say instead that it is the nature of fire to burn cotton on contact, unless impeded by something external to the essential nature of the cotton. Yet then, the act it fails to perform would still not be the same act that proceeds from its nature. For the unperformed act will always be the burning of cotton covered in talc, for example, which does not proceed from the nature of fire. The act proceeding from the nature of fire is simply that of burning, for that is just what fire is. Where that act is unperformed, there is no fire. Cotton, on the other hand, is not itself the act of burning on contact with fire. Rather, we are to understand it as a substance with various potencies, for various acts under various conditions. How are we to ascertain its one special act? Ibn Rushd is asserting that it proceeds from the nature of cotton to burn on contact with fire, even when prevented from burning by some mitigating factor like talc. Yet he certainly does not mean to say that the one special act of cotton is just to burn on contact with fire. Rather, it is a set of specific behaviors under different circumstances, unified by their proceeding from the essential nature of cotton. That is, again, a set of essential dispositional properties, one of which is to burn on contact with fire. It thus proceeds from its nature to burn on contact with fire, even though in some cases it does not. Yet we cannot simply say that it proceeds from the nature of cotton to burn on contact with fire, except when it does not, for so described such an act follows from the essential nature of everything, including that which never burns on contact with fire. If it follows from the essence of cotton to burn on contact with fire, then its failure to will always be because of something external to the essence of the cotton in

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that instance (either an accidental feature thereof or a separate substance like talc). We might then say that it proceeds from the nature of cotton to burn on contact with fire, understanding by this that it will do so unless obstructed by something external to the nature of cotton. This might save us from simply saying, vacuously, that it proceeds from the nature of cotton ‘to burn on contact with fire, except when it does not.’ Yet how do we distinguish what is external to the nature of a thing, from what is internal to it? Presumably, this would be by observing its behavior under various conditions. That is, by observing that cotton always burns on contact with fire in the absence of any external impediment, and only fails to when prevented by one, we infer that burning is what proceeds from its nature in such a circumstance, even when it fails to do so. Such an observation, however, entails our already being able to distinguish the nature of cotton from what is external to it, and cannot therefore be the basis for such a distinction. The only clear alternative method would be to resort, as Ibn Rushd does above, to the simple frequency with which we observe the performance of the act. What proceeds from the nature of a thing in a given circumstance is the act it performs in such a circumstance, as he says, ‘in most cases, or only half the cases.’ Accordingly, a thing’s behavior in the minority of cases is attributable to the influence of something external to its nature. This attribution follows from the premise that the thing has a unitary essence manifest in a specific pattern of behavior. To say that it proceeds from the nature of cotton simply to burn on contact with fire most of the time would mean that it only has its nature most of the time, and is not, always, what it is. To say that it always proceeds from its nature to burn on contact with fire, even when, for external reasons it does not, secures both its unitary essential nature, and the possibility of discovering that nature by observation. This method, however, is relative to our experience, and therefore can only demonstrate the nature of a thing on the assumption that phenomenal patterns in our spatio-temporal corner of the cosmos necessarily resemble those of the cosmos as a whole. That is of course more plausible on the premise that our

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corner is in fact the center of a circular cosmic system eternally recycling substances of the same species. Only then might we have reason to assume that what we perceive as a thing’s behavior in most or half the cases is proportional to its total pattern of behavior. The possibility that it is not so proportional entails the possibility that the apparent nature of a thing and its real nature differ. Suppose that in relation to all the instances of cotton contacting fire, taken together throughout the history of the cosmos, it burns only in a minority of cases. Again, nothing behaves in isolation from any background conditions. Even if we could ascertain objectively what the statistically most common circumstances are, there is no reason to think that something’s behavior under those reflects its essential nature any more than its behavior under unusual circumstances. The simple fact that we observe something acting in a certain way in most cases fails, then, to demonstrate that this act is uniquely the one that ‘proceeds from its nature.’ At most, it may determine how we conceive its nature. Yet the force of Ibn Rushd’s initial argument remains independent of this epistemological problem, if we acknowledge that it rests on a priori metaphysical premises. That is, that a natural being, inasmuch as it is a being, must have a real nature that distinguishes it qualitatively from other things, by determining for it a specific, uniform pattern of behavior it exhibits consistently across time and space. Whether we do, or even in principle can fully comprehend this pattern is a separate question. If we abandon, then, the assumption that nature as a whole reflects our experience thereof, we might rearticulate the compelling core of Ibn Rushd’s argument as follows. Everything inasmuch as it is something, will necessarily exhibit similar behavior under similar circumstances, such that changes in its behavior under varying circumstances taken together form a unified pattern, which Ibn Rushd refers to here as one special act or passivity. We might call this its ‘behavior profile.’ To be is to be some one thing, which entails it having a behavior profile to which it conforms at every time or place it appears in the cosmos.

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Indeed, one might additionally argue that the fact that anything has an apparent nature at all demonstrates that something has a real nature (though not necessarily the same as the apparent nature). On the kind of representative realism that follows, the possibility of natural science would depend on the existence of real natures, regardless of whether we are capable of fully comprehending them by empirical methods. We need not then, distinguish the act that proceeds from a thing’s nature from what it actually performs, even in a minority of cases. For its behavior in what we take to be ‘unusual’ circumstances, reflects its nature as much as its behavior under what we take to be ‘normal’ conditions. We need only abandon the pretense of having thoroughly inferred the essential natures of things straightforwardly from our own limited experience of their behavior profiles. As that experience expands, our conception of the natures of things would change as our understanding of them deepens. Thus, it is not necessary that cotton burn on contact with fire, if the behavior profile of cotton includes circumstances in which it does not. Yet we may still ask whether a thing necessarily has its behavior profile in virtue of being what it is. That is, when cotton does burn on contact with fire, does its doing so follow necessarily from its being cotton under those circumstances (and likewise for all various behaviors under different conditions)? For Ibn Rushd, it must be so, for this is the very manifestation of the essential nature that distinguishes it as one thing among others. For Ghazālī, following again from his conditions of necessity, if something necessarily has its behavior profile in virtue of what it is, then its behavior is either identical to what it is, or entailed by it. If they are identical then everything just is its act, and not anything distinct that performs it, or from which it proceeds. Everything other than God is an act, one might propose, of which He is the agent (and we saw where that apparently leads on Ghazālī’s conditions of necessity). If the behavior of a thing is not identical to, but entailed by what it is, then its nature must include both its behavior and something additional. If not, then nothing at all about what it does follows from what it is.

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If not, Ibn Rushd might ask, does its being the thing it is entail anything at all? For, he argues, the mutakallimūn believe in causes in spite of themselves. What they acknowledge as the condition or substratum of a thing is simply the material cause; and what they refer to as ‘psychological quality’ is the formal cause. By asserting that life is a condition of knowledge, and knowledge a condition of will (a key element of their theological argumentation), they recognize that things have conditions of existence determined by their realities and definitions. By asserting that the order in the world indicates the intelligence of its agent, they recognize necessary consequences following from these realities. All this amounts to acknowledging the existence of essential natures and hence causes, without which nothing would be intelligible and all their theological argumentation futile (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 522 / 1954 p. 319). The crucial difference here is that the material and formal causes, as Ibn Rushd points out, ‘form of a part of the effect’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 521 / 1954 p. 319). The efficient cause does not. Will entails knowledge and life, Ghazālī would no doubt argue, but contact with fire does not entail the burning of cotton. The former relations therefore meet his conditions of necessity while the latter does not. How, though, do we know this? Ibn Rushd’s answer is implied in his remark that, in basing theological arguments on these relations, the mutakallimūn ‘judge the visible and the invisible according to one and the same scheme’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 522 / 1954 p. 319). He might have said (as elsewhere) that they judge the temporal and eternal similarly. Visibility is the relevant difference here, because his point is that we discover the relations between will, knowledge, and life empirically. By applying these concepts in theology, the ʾAshʿarī are therefore drawing analogies between God and creatures. It is particularly problematic to Ibn Rushd that some of these concepts (e.g. ‘living’) are the genus of which others (e.g. ‘knowing’) are species, and consequently, according to him, amount to material causes in the observable. Our observation that willing beings are knowing proves, for the mutakallimūn, that knowledge is essential to will with such a degree of certainty and universal necessity that they can apply

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this reasoning beyond the observable to the will of God Himself. How then, Ibn Rushd seems to ask, can they deny that the same observation demonstrates an essential relation between a piece of burning cotton and its contact with fire? Ghazālī’s position is, of course, that no necessary relation between distinct things is empirically demonstrable. It is natural for us moderns assume from that this that for him, knowledge of the essential relation between will, knowledge, and life must be strictly a priori. This overlooks the sort of necessary a posteriori operative in the falsafah paradigm, whereby the intellect grasps the essences of things from the deliverance of the senses and then ultimately the primary propositions through an involved process of abstraction. Thus while denying that one demonstrates real efficient causes through this empirical process (since there is no essential relationship between distinct things), Ghazālī might affirm that we grasp the other sorts of causes, and also argue that with a sufficient degree of abstraction we arrive at concepts of life, knowledge, and will suitably applied to God. A case in point would be Ghazālī’s special notion of eternal will. Whichever way we acquire these concepts they must be applicable beyond the material, if we deploy them in theology. The same holds, for instance, of the relation between the ordered act and intelligent agency. Resistance among mutakallimūn to identifying these conditions in Ibn Rushd’s terms as ‘material’ and ‘formal’ causes, may have been motivated by their perceived connotation of empirically discoverable features of the things themselves that determine their behaviors independently of God. Ghazālī, as mentioned above, expresses no resistance to those terms and affirms their use in demonstrative proofs. Yet if these conditions are not features of the things themselves then what are they? ‘Now, intelligence is the perception of things with their causes,’ Ibn Rushd writes. He might have just said (what for him is equivalent) that it is the perception of what things are in themselves, and not simply what our concepts entail or what words mean. This requires that causes are empirically discoverable features of those things. ‘Denial of cause implies the denial of knowledge, and denial of knowledge implies that nothing in this world can be really known, and that

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what is supposed to be known is nothing but opinion, that neither proof or definition exist, and that the essential attributes which compose definitions are void’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 522 / 1954 p. 319).

CHAPTER ELEVEN. TWO APPROACHES In this chapter, we will continue our examination of the 17th Discussion, and present an interpretation that seeks to reconcile Ghazālī’s two approaches to the problem of causality and miracles. In Section 11.1, we explain his first approach in light of our analysis, from the First Discussion, of Ghazālī’s conception of God’s eternity and his effective distinction between A and B-series conceptions of time. This, I argue, limits the sense in which one may appropriately describe Ghazālī’s position as either ‘occasionalist’ or ‘predeterminist.’ It also renders two distinct ways to describe a ‘miracle,’ depending on the model of time with which we frame the description, and informs the debate over our knowledge of non-actual possibilities. In Section 11.2, we explain Ghazālī’s second approach. I argue that understood correctly the two are compatible with each other, as well as with a conception of essential nature compatible with Ghazālī’s position that God acts voluntarily. In Section 11.3, we examine Ghazālī’s response to the falāsifah’s challenge of defining the impossible. We will show that it is also compatible with his two approaches to nature and miracles, and does not constitute a third, distinct theory thereof. Finally, in Section 11.4, we examine Ibn Rushd’s closing construal of Ghazālī’s second position, and his final analysis of the nature of their disagreement. I argue that it is not as he says, over whether particular forms have particular matters. Rather their difference is understood more precisely in terms of the contemporary functionalist concept of multiple realizability, with Ibn Rushd denying its possibility and Ghazālī accepting it. It may also

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be understood in terms of how they conceive the realization of human intellect itself in relation to nature. While for Ibn Rushd this consists in the final arrival at a comprehensive understanding of the order nature as a closed system, I suggest that for Ghazālī it is a perpetual process for which the possibility of discoverable order is inexhaustible.

SECTION 11.1. THE FIRST APPROACH

In Ghazālī’s words, his first approach is to deny ‘that the principles [of temporal events] do not act by choice and that God does not act voluntarily’ (Ghazālī 2000 p. 169). Ghazālī claims to have refuted this position in the first discussion, and thus to have proven that God acts through will. Since this is one of his nonnegotiable commitments then, however the second approach might differ from this first one, it cannot be in respect to this assertion, from which it follows, he says, that God can refrain from creating burning in cotton when in contact with fire. If metaphysical principles of existence act by choice then they either act by or are simply equivalent to God’s voluntary choice. Later, as we saw, he describes this approach as the assertion that God can bring about such a disruption of the habitual pattern ‘without the existence of their causes.’ The ‘causes’ in question here are those which we habitually believe to be causes, based on our experience of such disruptions. The example here would be talc, as Ibn Rushd mentioned, which we know from experience to prevent burning. That alone, he conceded, means that the burning of cotton on contact with fire (for example) does not follow necessarily from the essential natures of cotton and fire. What Ghazālī is effectively denying here, is something more; that is, that a failure of cotton to burn on contact with fire requires, as a necessary condition, the presence of talc or any other condition which we believe on the basis of experience to be a cause of such failure. Through the voice of the falāsifah, Ghazālī objects against himself that ‘if one denies that the effects follow necessarily from their causes and relates them to the will of their Creator, the will having no specific designated course but [a course that] can vary and change in kind,’ then a host of absurdities follow (Ghazālī

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2000 p. 168). The gist of them is that it renders empirical knowledge impossible, for two main reasons. One is that it negates the causal connection taken to hold between experience and its objects. At any time, ferocious beasts and the like might be surrounding you without your knowledge, they say, because God has not created vision of them. The second is, again, that it negates the essential natures of things, which determine what sort of changes are and are not possible under given conditions. Thus, anyone you meet in the street could just as likely have been a fruit in the market as to have been a baby born of human parents. The underlying argument is that, given the position so described, nothing would be as it is, necessarily through another; in which case anything possible in itself is possible in the fullest sense. Since real knowledge is of that which is as it is necessarily, then of any conceivable possibility, we can never know that it is not actual. We need to clarify what Ghazālī’s position is, or at least should be in light of what he says in the First Discussion. For it is not accurate to say that he is simply denying that effects follow necessarily from their causes. Every effect does follow necessarily from its cause, even if that cause is always only God’s will. For the moment we shall set aside the problem raised earlier about his conditions of necessitation, for Ghazālī certainly holds that, given that God wills that the world be such as it is, it follows necessarily that it be so. That God wills it in this rather than another way, however, is not necessary. He could have willed it otherwise. Conversely, it is not impossible that His will had been otherwise, but it is impossible that things be other than as He wills. Nothing follows necessarily from anything other than God’s will, so His will does not follow necessarily from anything else. As for the proposition that God’s will has no specific designated course, but can vary and change in kind, we must remember that for Ghazālī, God’s will is eternal. It therefore does not change. The question whether it has a designated course is ambiguous. If it means that something else designates the course of Divine will, such as the essential nature of things, Ghazālī must deny it. If it means that natural events take a course designated by Divine will, then he cannot deny this. It may be clarifying at this point to consider an issue that Yaqub (2017) brings. In the

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process of affirming Ghazālī’s commitment to occasionalism, he distinguishes that from predetermination: whereas the latter holds that God has determined all events beforehand, the former holds that God wills them at the time of their occurrence. It should be clear why Ghazālī would not hold either of these doctrines, at least as opposed to the other. The only difference between them is the temporal relation they suppose between God’s determination and the event itself. Occasionalism, as Yaqub conceives it here, imagines God’s will as simultaneous with His act, while predetermination imagines it preceding His act. Neither of these relations apply to God’s timeless eternity. Strictly speaking, they are both false. Taken as metaphor they are both simply attempts to imagine the unimaginable. Just as we can use ‘before’ (as Ibn Sīnā and Ghazālī both hold) in a non-temporal sense to express the priority of the Eternal, so we can also use, ‘on every occasion’ to express the eternity of the First. Understood as distinct doctrines, as Yaqub defines them, Ghazālī holds neither. With this in mind, there are two models of the miracle to consider. On one model, we may describe the occurrence of the miracle by saying that, while in the past God has willed that flesh burn on contact with fire, He now wills (in a particular case) that it not do so. This description represents God’s will as changing. For it represents the content of the will in each case as a universal generalization, related to a position on the A-series of time. In the past, fire burned flesh, but here and now, it does not. Since God’s will, according to Ghazālī is timelessly eternal and thus unchanging, this cannot be the model he has in mind. Instead, we must describe the miracle by saying that God wills (timelessly, not from the temporal ‘beginning’) that, for all specific times and places, when and where fire contacts flesh, the flesh burns, with the exception of times t and places p, where it does not. Here, we express the content of the will by a proposition ranging over specific instances, each occurring at fixed positions on B-series time. The miracle does not then constitute any change in God’s will. Rather God’s unchanging will designates the course of the whole from eternity. The temporal observer may experience a change in the course of events, in relation to a generalization she has made over prior particular events, experienced relatively as past.

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Thus, while no change is possible in what God timelessly wills, difference is always possible between that and any generalization (e.g. ‘cotton burns on contact with fire’) we have made based on prior experience. These two models thus correspond to two distinct frames of reference: one of human experience and the other of a conceptualization of the cosmos as a whole. We may consider the event of the miracle from within either frame, but to draw conclusions about the constancy of God’s will from the reference frame of human experience is of course mistaken. Nevertheless, from the human frame of reference, we can describe the miracle as a change in the course of events, since here that is nothing other than the historical pattern of our experience in A-series time. From the cosmic frame of reference, on the other hand, we conceive the course of events as laid out in B-series time, as known and willed by God from eternity. In this case, the miracle is not a change in the course of events, but simply a part of the cosmic event. This is important to keep in mind in relation to the falāsifahs’ construal of the position in terms of variation in the course of God’s will, but does not itself answer their objection. For it is just this perpetual possibility that God’s eternal determination of the cosmos differ from our own empirical estimation that motivates it. Ghazālī’s response here is effectively to deny the falsafah standard of knowledge, the object of which is the necessity of what is (and conversely the impossibility of what is not). For the absurd consequences of causally relating everything to the voluntary will of God only follow, he says, ‘if the possible is such that there cannot be created for man knowledge of its nonbeing’ (2000 p. 170). On the contrary, he insists, God creates our knowledge of the possibilities he does not enact. Yet then he offers what seems to be a more naturalistic explanation of our knowledge of contingent things. ‘But the continuous habit of their occurrence repeatedly, one time after another, fixes unshakably in our minds the belief in their occurrence according to past habit’ (2000 p. 170). The simple proposition that God creates the knowledge is consistent with the claim that God is the only cause, negating any causal relation between that knowledge and its object. Yet to

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explain such knowledge as a belief fixed unshakably in our minds by previous experience of their constant conjunction reasserts that relation. For whether we regard it as knowledge, or as merely a psychological habit (as Hume famously proposed centuries later), the upshot is that the prior experience does the unshakable fixing. The explanation supposes not only the causal efficacy of prior experience, but also that of the mind’s intrinsic nature. Such is the gist of Ibn Rushd’s compelling objection. Since truth is the conformity of belief to reality, he argues, any knowledge created in us must conform to the nature of the real. Knowledge of un-actualized possibilities must therefore refer to some aspect of either the actual contingent things, the agent, or both (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 531 / 1954 p. 325). Thus, the ʾAshʿarīs refer to ‘habit,’ which, Ibn Rushd complains, is ambiguous. Is it a habit of the agent (God), the existing things, or our judgments about those things? Habit, he argues, is an acquired disposition to act according to a repetitive pattern, and thus cannot describe God but only the contingent animate. In the inanimate, it is not a habit but a nature, the essential disposition that determines the thing’s behavior uniformly and necessarily. This, which for Ibn Rushd no doubt means ‘always or for the most part,’ is what we reconceived above as its behavior profile. ‘If they mean our habit of forming judgments about things,’ he writes, ‘such a habit is nothing but an act of the soul which is determined by its nature and through which intellect becomes intellect’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 523 / 1954 p. 320). Importantly, Ghazālī has not ascribed ‘habit’ to God, in the clearly temporal sense Ibn Rushd construes here. Without using the term ‘habit,’ he referred to God’s creating connected things ‘side by side,’ such that they exist ‘with’ but not ‘by’ each other. He has used the term (just above) to refer to the regular pattern in our experience of past events, so that some are ‘habitually believed’ to be causes and effects. Nevertheless, to interpret this latter ‘habit’ consistently with what Ghazālī has just asserted, one must say that the unshakable belief in the continuity of experience occurs with, but not by, the pattern of that experience, for both occur by God alone. That is no explanation of our knowledge of contingent things; not, at least, in the sense of a

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demonstration that such knowledge is necessarily as it is. It is rather a description of the pattern of God’s act of creating it. In modern parlance we might say its truth conditions ultimately reduce to the history of particular, non-causal facts (or events) in the world (including in this case, our minds), as natural laws are according to some ‘Regularity’ theories of causation (Tooley 1993 p. 172). Ibn Rushd seems to consider this idea. For ‘if it [habit] is analyzed, it means only a hypothetical act; as when we say ‘so and so has the habit of acting in such and such a way,’ meaning that he will act in that way most of the time,’ he says. ‘If this were true, everything would be the case only by supposition, and there would be no wisdom in the world from which it might be inferred that its agent is wise’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 523 / 1954 p. 320). This resonates with modern objections against the Regularity theory of causation, to the effect that it renders the phenomenal order an uncanny fluke (Strawson 1989). The implication is that wisdom in the order of nature requires ultimate, underlying metaphysical necessity. That is, God’s being wise entails there being only one possible way for Him to manifest wisdom. For Ghazālī, there must be more than one possible way for God to manifest wisdom, given his concept of divine will. Again, it does not follow from this that any sort of creation would, so long as there is more than one equally most optimal possible world on the menu. This raises the question, whether it is not the case that all such possible manifestations of God’s wisdom include the existence of a created intellect, understood as something, in Ibn Rushd’s terms, the nature of which is to form judgments in such a way as to conform to the real. Ghazālī refers to what he takes to be the falāsifah’s own theory to explain our knowledge of unrealized possibilities. ‘Indeed, it is possible for one of the prophets to know through the ways [they] have mentioned that a certain individual will not arrive from his journey tomorrow when his arrival is possible, the prophet [knowing, moreover] the nonoccurrence of this possible thing’ (2000 p. 171). This raises the question, in what sense is this thing possible? For, if it does occur, the prophet cannot have

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known that it will not. Conversely, then, if he knows that it will not occur, then it cannot. Ghazālī’s answer, again, is that the mind can suppose it without contradiction. It being possible is therefore compatible with it being determined from eternity not to occur. For Ibn Rushd, the possible must be undetermined. God’s knowledge, he says, is the cause of the existence and nature of its object. The non-actual possibility is not even an object of knowledge, ‘for knowledge qua knowledge can only refer to something that has an actualized nature’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 532 / 1954 p. 325). It is therefore incoherent to propose the idea of alternative possible worlds that God knows He can have made but did not. The actual existence of such any such world is entailed by the proposition that God knows it. Eternal knowledge of a thing’s nature, and not will, determines necessarily its behavior under any given temporal circumstances. If it were not so determined, so that opposite behaviors were always equally possible for any given thing, then there would be no fact of the matter as to what happens. By contrast, temporal knowledge of a thing is a consequence of its nature. Thus our own ignorance regarding its existence or otherwise at any time is due not to it being undetermined, but to our ignorance of its nature, which determines this necessarily (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 532 / 1954 p. 326). None of this touches Ghazālī’s position, since for him the possibility of something does not mean that it is not determined from eternity to occur, but rather that God in His eternal will can have determined otherwise. We can explain this by considering the way in which the falāsifah, according to Ghazālī, have mentioned the possibility of this sort of knowledge, as summarized in his introduction to the natural sciences, just prior to this discussion. There, he mentions three ways they accept miraculous disruptions of the habitual course of nature, each relating to one of the three faculties of the soul (the imaginative, rational, and practical), specifically in the case of a prophet. The relevant one in this case is the imaginative. ‘For they maintain that once it becomes dominant and strong and does not become absorbed by the senses and preoccupation [with them], it sees the preserved tablet, the forms of future particular events becoming

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imprinted in it,’ he explains. ‘This happens to prophets in their waking hours, to the rest of people in their sleep’ (2000 p. 164). The difference between Ghazālī and the falāsifah, of course, is in what this preserved tablet represents. For each, it represents God’s eternal knowledge of what is to be, as well as (but in different senses) the content of His eternal will. We might say it contains the ‘behavior profile’ of everything in the cosmos. For Ghazālī, as we saw in the First Discussion, to say it is the content of His will means that it might have been otherwise. For Ibn Sīnā, however, this means only that God knows that it necessarily proceeds from Him for the best. For Ghazālī, then, the content of the tablet is possible in itself, and necessary only in relation to the fact that God wills it from eternity to be so. For the falāsifah, it is absolutely necessary, and God cannot have ‘willed’ it otherwise, for to do so would entail the possibility that what is less than the most optimal possible thing proceed from Him, which according to them is impossible. Thus for Ghazālī, the knowledge miraculous imagination would receive from its contact with the Tablet can be of something truly possible, while for the falāsifah it would be of that which is as it must necessarily be. The question then is simply whether there are in fact eternally non-actual, yet genuine possibilities. Ghazālī uses the falāsifahs’ theory of the soul to argue that there are. Nay, this is just as when one looks at a common man and knows that he neither knows the unseen in any manner whatsoever nor apprehends the intelligibles without instruction; and yet, with all that, one does not deny that the soul and intuition [of this ordinary man] may become stronger so as to apprehend what the prophets apprehend, in accordance with what [the philosophers] acknowledge – although they know that such a possibility has not taken place (2000 p. 171).

That is, they claim that while all human beings have the potential, most will never apprehend the intelligibles or (miraculously) the unseen. This entails not only that there are genuine possibilities that never come to be, but also that we can know they do not come to be, though they are possible. Miracles, experienced as disruptions in the usual pattern of nature, are possibilities that

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usually do not occur. When they do occur, knowledge of their non-occurrence does not occur to those who witness it, for as Ghazālī again asserts, God does not create it. Here again, alongside side an account of human knowledge in terms of the soul’s innate potential, he refers to God’s directly creating the knowledge. ‘There is therefore nothing to prevent a thing being possible, within the capabilities of God, [but] that by His prior knowledge He knew that He would not do it at certain times, despite its possibility, and that He creates for us the knowledge that He will not create it at that time’ (2000 p. 171).

SECTION 11.2. THE SECOND APPROACH

The ‘second approach’ Ghazālī proposes appears to diverge from his initial denial of natural necessity, by conceding to the falsafah theory of essential natures. Hence the controversy over which approach represents his ‘genuine’ position, and the role it plays in the broader debate over whether he stayed true to ʾAshʿari doctrine, or (and to what extent) he adopted the doctrines of the falāsifah. Some of this has focused on how to interpret his description of this second position, as promising ‘deliverance’ from the ‘villifications’ or ‘absurdities’ (tashniʿāt) raised about fruits becoming humans and the like (Marmura 1981 p. 92). As mentioned earlier, my interest here is not to argue for his faithfulness to one or another doctrine, but rather to show that the two approaches are compatible. For they are not in fact two distinct, mutually exclusive theories of the relation between God and nature, but rather two different ways of approaching that relation. The second position is to ‘admit’ or to ‘grant for the sake of argument’ (al-nusallim) that, ‘fire is created in such a way that, if two similar pieces of cotton come into contact with it, it would burn both, making no distinction between them if they are similar in all respects’ (2000 p. 171). In case cotton fails to burn on contact with fire, the specimen in question differs in some respect from those that do burn on contact with fire. Note that he says here that fire (and we should obviously include cotton and everything else) is created in such a way; that is, with a fully

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consistent behavior profile. It is not this way independently of or prior to its creation (and thus not so independently of divine will). This proposition is therefore logically compatible with the first approach, at least as he expresses it here, that is as the denial that the principles of existence do not act by choice and that God does not act voluntarily. For God can have created things with different behavior profiles, and yet this is compatible with the insight we gleaned from Ibn Rushd’s argument, that God’s creating something at all entails it having a fully consistent behavior profile. Necessarily, any existing thing must have a nature. This does not mean that any existing thing necessarily has the nature it has. Something that both burns and fails to burn on contact with fire, in exactly similar circumstances, would not be one thing. It would not be cotton, for instance, in both cases. That does not mean that cotton exists necessarily. It may not have existed at all. God acts voluntarily, but inasmuch as He acts, there is necessarily an act. Secondly, nothing here implies that cotton burns by contact with fire rather than merely with it. That would contradict Ghazālī’s univocal assertion to the contrary. It is crucial that he made this assertion at the beginning of the discussion and not in the course of explaining his first approach. It is not therefore specific to the first approach but a general principle to which both approaches must conform, if he is to remain consistent. The proposition, then, is that if cotton fails to burn on contact with fire, it will be with (not by) some respect in which it differs from specimens of cotton that do burn. If the crucial factor here is only the consistency in behavior between similar things under similar conditions, God can alter the behavior of a thing without destroying the unity of its being by creating a quality that changes the conditions of its behavior without compromising its nature. Thus, there would come about either from God or the angels a quality in the fire which restricts its heat to its own body so as not to transcend it (its heat would thus remain with it, and it would [still] have the form and true nature of fire, its heat and influence, however, not going beyond it), or else there will occur in the body of the prophet a quality which will not

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Here Ghazālī refers to the example of talc (as Ibn Rushd had already pre-emptively mentioned), which he claims will protect a body covered in it from burning. Never having observed this, he argues, is no grounds for one to deny its possibility. By extension, there are no grounds for denying that God has the power to create other sorts of qualities in things, of which we have had no prior experience, but that alter the pattern of their behavior from what we have observed, while leaving their intrinsic natures intact. ‘Among the objects lying within God’s power there are strange and wondrous things,’ he argues. ‘Why then, should we deny their possibility and judge them to be impossible’ (2000 p. 171)? Again, we must read all this in conformity with his principle that ‘connected’ creatures exist with and not by each other. Cotton fails to burn on contact with fire, with the presence of talc. The question, then, is not over whether things have essential natures, but the extent to which we can infer the natures of things from our experience of their behavior. For, again, this is always the behavior of the thing under specific sets of background conditions. The nature of a thing, understood as something that if known would afford us knowledge of its behavior under all possible conditions, would be impossible to comprehend fully based on our experience. We can never know that we are aware of all the relevant factors included in those sets, nor how the thing would behave under conditions very different from those under which we have observed it. A miraculous event thus need not be a violation of the nature of anything, but may rather be a manifestation of the natures of things under circumstances unprecedented in our experience and beyond our comprehension. Another possibility Ghazālī suggests within this framework pertains to Moses’ miracle of changing a stick into a snake. We can call this accelerated hylomorphism. Matter, Ghazālī says, is receptive of all things. Change, in accordance with the falāsifah theory of nature, is the reception of matter by a new form, once the matter is properly prepared for that specific reception. This preparation involves the forms that the specific matter has already received, in conjunction with accidental changes,

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extrinsic to the nature of the substance serving as the matter of that change. To take Ghazālī’s example, earth and the basic elements become plants, which eaten by animals become blood and sperm that, poured into a womb becomes an animal. The change from earth to animal requires all these phases, which ‘in accordance with habit, takes place in a lengthy period of time’ (2000 p. 172). ‘Why then,’ Ghazālī asks, ‘should the opponent deem it impossible that it lies within God’s power to cycle matter through these stages in a time shorter than what has been known’ (2000 p. 172)? Thus, a stick could change into a snake by passing through these changes at an accelerated rate, resulting in the miracle. Here again, nothing in this hypothesis contradicts his assertion that God acts voluntarily. One need simply maintain that God, having created things such that changes always involves certain phases, can have created things altogether differently, while maintaining, again, that His having created anything entails that similar changes under similar conditions always involve similar phases. We are proposing that Ghazālī’s two ‘approaches’ are compatible with each other, based on the two descriptions of them he gives here. That is, that God acts voluntarily is compatible with the proposition that He acts consistently. Yet there remains conspicuous tension between the other two expressions we saw Ghazālī give to these approaches. As previously mentioned, in the 20th Discussion he describes the second approach as proposing that miracles are due to causes of which we may have no experience. These unknown causes are thus equivalent to what he refers to here as respects in which, unbeknownst to us, the circumstances of the miraculous event differ from that of its usual counterpart. We have argued that, given Ghazālī’s clearly univocal commitment to God’s acting voluntarily, we should (and can) avoid understanding these ‘causes’ as rendering His act necessary, whether that be in the occurrence of the miracle or any ordinary event. That is, causes are circumstantial differences between different events logically necessary for the consistency of the behavior profiles entailed by the existence of things involved in

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those events. Yet the way he expresses the first approach in Discussion 20 is to say that the miracle comes about without its causes. If he means the same thing by ‘cause,’ then this is simply to assert that God creates things with inconsistent behavior profiles. Cotton can fail to burn under circumstances exactly similar to those in which cotton burns. This is unsatisfying, not simply because it runs counter to our hypothesis that the two approaches are compatible, but also because the first approach, thus understood, does lead to nihilism as Ibn Rushd argued. Ghazālī, however, has provided us the terms by which we can formulate an alternative interpretation of his first approach. These are latent in the ambiguity Ibn Rushd complained of, in the use of the term ‘habit.’ In one place, Ghazālī refers to what we habitually believe to be causes, and in another to the habit, not of God (as Ibn Rushd suggested), but of the pattern in our experience of past events. The closest thing to a ‘habit’ of God that he mentions is the creation of things with what we have called consistent behavior profiles, with each other in coherent patterns. We may therefore understand the term, cause, in the first sense in his expression of the first approach, and in the last sense in his expression of the second approach. The ‘causes’ without which the miracle occurs according the first approach are therefore of a different sort from those with which it occurs according to the second. The first approach is to say that the miracle occurs without any factor that we habitually believe to be a cause of such an event, based on prior experience. The second approach is to say that the miracle occurs under novel circumstances unknown to us, being without precedent in our experience (and perhaps even in prior cosmic history). Again, to remain consistent with his univocal assertion in the beginning of the discussion, Ghazālī must maintain that the miracle exists with and not by these novel conditions. They are nevertheless integral to the consistent behavioral profiles and thus the natures of the things involved, as eternally known and willed by God. The two approaches are therefore compatible. The difference between them is simply that the second approach involves the extra step of affirming that even in the event of a miracle, nature remains a coherently ordered divine act.

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That raises the question whether that coherent order, realized in the behavior profiles of things, follows from their natures or from God. Ghazālī’s falāsifah pose a question that alludes to his apparent ambivalence on this matter. Does the miracle proceed from the soul of the prophet or from God? Ghazālī responds that one may pose the same question to their own theory of miraculous events related to the practical faculty of the soul. According to his own previous summary of the natural sciences of the falāsifah, they argue as follows. Normally, the practical faculty of the soul can influence parts of the body to which it attaches (that being the proper function of bodies). The power of the soul over the body varies with the strength of its practical faculty. Since the soul is not imprinted on the body (that is, it is not an accident or part of the body), but is rather an independent substance with an inclination to manage its particular body, the relation between them is not essentially different from the relation between the soul and other bodies. It differs only in the degree of influence the soul has over them. It is therefore not impossible for a soul to become powerful enough to influence and command objects other than its body. This explains the miracles of prophets (2000 pp. 164–5). While Ghazālī asserts that he can answer the question in the same way the falāsifah do, he says, ‘it is more fitting for you and us to relate the miracle to God’ (2000 p. 172). The miracle comes about from God, he says, when the time merits its appearance. This involves the direction of the prophet’s attention, and the order of the good (nizām al-khair) specifically depending on the miracle’s appearance ‘so that the order of the revealed law may endure.’ The presence of these conditions is the murajjih, giving preponderance to the miracle’s occurrence, the miracle being in itself possible, and its agent being ‘benevolent and generous’ (2000 p. 172). That is, the miracle in question may always come about with the phenomena they describe in relation to the soul of the prophet. It certainly comes about with circumstances under which it serves the purpose of establishing divine revelation. None of this, however, renders the miracle necessary, for it comes about by God’s will, but as integral to and not in violation of the

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overall cosmic order of His act. Hence, Ghazālī can agree with the falāsifah that the miracle proceeds from the soul of the prophet, understanding by this a description of the order of God’s act. We may even understand it as an explanation of the miracle, in the sense that it explains how the event fits coherently into the overall cosmic order. It does not explain the miracle in the sense of demonstrating that this rather than any other cosmic order necessarily exists, for it is in its entirety contingent on divine will. The two approaches are compatible in that they do not differ with respect to how things are. Rather, they differ with respect to the frame of reference from which we approach them. Approached from what we have called the human frame of reference, with its A-series temporal structure, there appears a disruption in the habitual course of events; that is the pattern of our experience of the past. It occurs without any factor that we habitually believe, based on that experience, to be a cause of such an event. From what we have called the cosmic frame of reference, with its B-series temporal structure, we can conceive the habitual pattern as the coherent order of events across the cosmos within which each thing has its consistent behavior profile. We described this, above, as recorded in the Preserved Tablet. We can understand ‘causes’ here as circumstantial differences in the behavior profile of a thing, correlating to differences in its behavior, such that its behavior remains similar in similar circumstances. In this sense, there are no disruptions of the habitual course of events, for miracles are part of the cosmic order itself. While miracles are disruptions of the habitual course from the human frame of reference, that occur without any ‘cause’ as understood from that frame of reference, no such disruptions occur without a ‘cause’ in the cosmic sense. In either sense, a ‘cause’ is a kind of existence with, for nothing exists truly by anything other than divine will. We may say a thing’s behavior occurs by its essential nature, on Ghazālī’s conditions of necessitation, only by conceiving its nature as identical to its behavior profile. We may thus say ‘it is the nature of cotton to burn on contact with fire, under specific conditions,’ simply in the sense that as matter of cosmic fact, it does so, in

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which case the affirmation of the profile entails the affirmation of any behavior included therein. Yet inasmuch as we understand a thing’s nature as something distinct from its behavior, we could not understand it as that by which it behaves in the way it does. Ibn Rushd argues as if it were self-evident that a thing’s nature is not separable from its behavior. If intelligence were possible in the inorganic, he says, ‘it would be possible that intellect exist without performing its function, and it would be as if warmth could exist without warming the things that are normally warmed by it’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 539 / 1954 p. 331). Setting aside his assertion that the intellect can perform its function only in the organic (we will consider this below), note that he takes it as given that the intellect cannot exist without performing its function. The persuasive force of this relies on the second example, that of warmth that does not warm anything. This, like fire that does not burn, appears as sheer contradiction because we take the nature as identical to the act, warmth just is the warming of things, just as fire is burning. Likewise, intellect is thinking. Intellect without thinking is therefore self-evidently impossible. If on the other hand, we say that intellect is something other than thinking, ‘from which it proceeds’ in Ibn Rushd’s sense, we effectively postulate an indemonstrable necessary relation between the act of thinking and a distinct, unidentified something. It is the same with the general hypothesis, that the nature of a thing is something distinct from its behavior, by which it behaves as it does. This involves postulating something other than the observed pattern of behavior, and thus empirically inscrutable, as that of which the pattern being otherwise is impossible. We arrive at our notion of a thing’s nature through our experience of its behavior under the conditions in which we experience it. We conceive that nature as something constant about it in virtue of which what we experience of its behavior is orderly. If we understand the thing’s total pattern of behavior across time and space as a single fact in God’s eternal knowledge (in other words recorded in the ‘preserved tablet’), then we need only understand by the thing’s ‘nature’ this fact. In this way, we

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solve both the problems of its inscrutability as well its necessary relation to the behavior we experience.

SECTION 11.3. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Given that both parties agree that everything possible, and nothing impossible, is within God’s power, the falāsifah ask, exactly what is impossible? For if, as Ghazālī has it, the impossible is only affirming and negating the same thing, absurdities would still follow. For wherever ‘this’ is not ‘that’, one can exist without the other. Thus, God can create will without knowledge of the object of will, and knowledge without life, with the following consequence. He can move a dead man’s hand, seating him and with the hand writing volumes and engaging in crafts, the man being all the while open-eyed, staring ahead of him, but not seeing and having no life and no power over [what is being done] – all these ordered acts being created by God together with the moving of [the man’s] hand, the moving coming from the direction of God (2000 p. 174).

It will not work for the mutakallimūn to concede that though He never does, God can create will without knowledge, or knowledge without life, for they build well-known arguments pertaining to the attributes of God Himself on the claim that knowledge and life follow necessarily on will. Ghazālī himself deploys such an argument in Discussion 11: ‘For that which is willed must necessarily be known to the willer’ (2000 p. 125). This precludes explaining the necessary relation between will, knowledge and life in the way we did the relation between cotton burning and its contact with fire, above, as a function of their respective behavior profiles. That would be to explain the ‘essence’ of will in terms of its behavior profile, by saying that God never creates will without the accompanying phenomena of knowledge and life, a fact that is thus part of what will is, so that a will without knowledge or life would not be will but something else. The problem, however, is that in the context of theology these are not creatures but eternal attributes of God that we must conceive without material implications. Ghazālī conceives divine will, for example, as the realization of one over another equally

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optimal cosmic possibility, while Ibn Rushd reminds that divine knowledge is the cause of its object rather than the effect. Life, as a divine attribute, is obviously not a biological phenomenon. Divine attributes are not, as it were, behavior profiles of God. An inference that God’s will entails His knowledge and life cannot turn on concepts of will, knowledge, and life that are merely generalizations entailed in the behavior profile of created will, and thus pertain only to that. Ghazālī’s falāsifah raise this problem against other important suppositions of ʾAshʿarī theology which Ghazālī himself deploys in his work in kalām (Ghazālī 2013; Marmura 1994). One of these is the distinction between the voluntary movement and the tremor, The ʾAshʿarīs allege that this distinction is empirically self-evident proof that human acts, though created by God alone, are nevertheless also connected (by ‘acquisition’) to human power and thus genuinely voluntary. The hypothetical zombie writer they propose here would, they imply, be carrying out voluntary movements that are tremors. Secondly, it undermines the ʾAshʿarī premise that the welldesigned act indicates the knowledge and power of the agent, by which they argue that God is knowledgeable and powerful, for the possibility allowed for is just that of a well-designed act proceeding from an ‘agent’ (the dead man) which has neither knowledge nor power. Again, they could not argue that the relation between order in the act and knowledge in the agent is merely a matter of God’s ‘habit,’ or in our new terminology, the behavior profile with which he creates orderly acts and knowing agents. That would undermine their argument by rendering the key premise contingent on God’s act and thus inapplicable to His attributes. Yet order in the act neither is nor entails knowledge in the agent, the falāsifah assert, and so on Ghazālī’s rule should be possible without it. Moreover, the falāsifah claim, this high standard of impossibility allows that God can change genera. Thus, substances could change into accidents, knowledge into power, blackness into whiteness, sound into smell, etc. The impossible, Ghazālī replies, consists of three things: 1) affirming and denying the same thing, 2) affirming the more specific while denying the more general category that includes it,

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and 3) affirming two things while negating one of them. According to Griffel (2009), Ghazālī’s response here constitutes a distinct, third position. It is, he says, a physical theory according to which ‘God is bound not only by certain rules of logic, such as the principle of excluded contradiction, but also to a limited number of natural laws that we know to be true and binding from experience’ (pp. 159–60). Such laws ‘rely on the relationships of implications…usually formulated in definitions’ (p. 175). On the contrary, what follows does not bind God by anything more than the rules of logic. This follows precisely from the fact that the ‘natural laws’ involved rely, as Griffel puts it, on the implications of definitions, and are thus ultimately reducible to the logical rule of non-contradiction. Whether we discover these definitions empirically is a separate matter. The latter two impossibilities Ghazālī describes are merely implicit forms of the first. He is therefore not expanding his notion of impossibility, but simply drawing out the logical implications of his core definition of the impossible to show that its scope is more expansive than what the falāsifah have construed here to generate their absurdities. All of it reduces to the impossibility of God enacting a selfcontradiction. It is thus not a distinct position from what Ghazālī has already proposed. As we have shown, both his previous approaches to the issue have been consistent with the position that this alone is impossible. They differ only in the frame of reference and consequently in the extent to which he draws the implications of the rule of non-contradiction in each case. Thus, by describing something as black, he says here, we understand that it is not white. It is therefore impossible for something to be both black and white, since that is implicitly equivalent to its being both black and not black. By an individual’s being in one place, we understand that it is not in another place, so that a thing’s being in two places at once is likewise selfcontradictory. As we argued above, by God’s having created something, we understand that the creature is something. To propose that it behave differently under exactly similar conditions implies otherwise. Since by ‘will’ we understand ‘the seeking of something known,’ Ghazālī explains, will is impossible without knowledge.

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Finally, by the ‘inanimate’ we understand that which does not apprehend. ‘If apprehension is created in it, then to call it inanimate in the sense we have understood becomes impossible’ (2000 p. 175). As Dutton (2001 p. 43) points out, this is not equivalent to saying that inanimate matter does not have the potential for apprehension. It cannot be, for again, according to Ghazālī the life that we are to infer from knowledge is God’s, and He is immaterial. We cannot therefore derive this understanding of the necessary relation between will, knowledge and life from experience and the estimative imagination, in the same way we do the opposition between black and white or the impossibility of something being in two places at once. God is neither black nor white, nor in one place or another, but does according to Ghazālī have will, knowledge, and life. These are not creatures but divine attributes. If God creates this knowledge in us with (in Ghazālī’s sense) an empirical process, then it is not simply by way of exposing us to the habitual course of material phenomena, in the way He informs us when cotton will burn on contact with fire. For the objects of this knowledge, if it is applicable to theology, are ultimately not material. They are divine attributes, which by implication include one another in that order: will including knowledge, and knowledge life. Their definitions, whether acquired empirically or otherwise, must apply beyond the empirical. In the case of changing genera, Ghazālī explicitly registers his disagreement with some of the mutakallimūn who have held it to be in God’s power. This, he says is unintelligible. If, for example, blackness were to change into a cooking pot, he argues, either the blackness will continue to exist, or not. If the blackness ceases to exist in that process, then it will not in fact have turned into a cooking pot. Rather, the blackness will have ceased to exist and something else (the cooking pot), will have come to exist. If, on the other hand blackness does not cease to exist, then it still will not have become a cooking pot, but we have instead simply the coming to be of a cooking pot alongside the blackness. While the previous explanations turned on what we understand by blackness, will, knowledge and the like; this line of reasoning

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reduces the notion of changing genera to self-contradiction based on what we understand by change. The very concept of change, as opposed to coming or ceasing to be, logically entails underlying continuity, and hence the impossibility of changing genera. By contrast, when we suppose blood changing into sperm, ‘we mean by this that matter itself took off one form and put on another,’ he explains. ‘This, then, amounts to the fact that one form has ceased to exist and one has come into existence, there being a subsistent matter over which the two forms passed in succession’ (2000 p. 176). Likewise, when we suppose a staff changing into a serpent. Since there is no common matter between different genera, it is impossible for one to change into another, for again the very notion stands in contradiction to what we understand by change. To propose that God could enact such a thing is to propose that He can enact a self-contradiction: a change that is not a change. On the other hand, according to Ghazālī, it is possible for God to make a dead man sit up and write books, for the fact of never having observed this happen is not sufficient to rule out its possibility (2000 p 176). What would be impossible is that the corpse be the agent of such an act. God is the agent in the supposed scenario. This implies that, again, we understand that agency entails life. This possibility does not then negate the fact that the well-designed act proves the knowledge and power of its agent. Consequently, Ghazālī must maintain that we understand by the very concept of a well-ordered act that it proceeds from a knowledgeable agent, such that the denial would be selfcontradictory. Nor, he asserts, does the possibility of a dead man writing (or perhaps more precisely, God writing ‘by zombie’) negate the distinction between the voluntary act and the tremor, for this distinction is self-evident from immediate (not ‘habitual’) experience. That is, our internal experience of control over some motions of our own body, in contrast with others over which we do not experience control. Indeed, immediate internal experience is one of the four sort of primary propositions Ghazālī acknowledges in the Miʾyār (Marmura 1965 p. 194), and which does not depend, like tajriba, on drawing an inference from the

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constant correlation between distinct things. Through that, the difference between a voluntary act and a tremor is immediately evident. It should follow that in the same internal experience of voluntary action, we directly grasp that we know what we intend to do or achieve by such an act, or as Ghazālī put it, that will is ‘the seeking after something known,’ and that therefore, God cannot create will without knowledge of the object willed. For affirmation of one includes that of the other. By contrast, when we externally observe another making many ordered notions, ‘there occurs to us knowledge of their being within his power,’ Ghazālī explains. This is by way of tajriba. ‘For these are cognitions which God creates according to the habitual course of events, by which we know the existence of one of two possible alternatives, but by which the impossibility of the other alternative is not shown, as has been previously said’ (2000 p. 177). That is, from the premise that many ordered motions cannot be a random occurrence, we conclude that they proceed from the agency of the very body performing them. This alone, however, does not rule out the possibility that they proceed from another agency, such as God. There we have Ghazālī’s solution to the problem of other minds. It is impossible, that is, for there to be a zombie-world ala David Chalmers (1996), without there being some knowledgeable agent behind the ordered behavior of the Turning-test-passing replicants surrounding us in such a scenario. For ordered behavior without knowledgeable agency is ultimately self-contradictory. It is not necessary, however, that the seat of that agency be the very body that is exhibiting the behavior. When as a matter of contingent fact it is, our knowledge of that is due to God creating it for us ‘according to the habitual course of events.’ This makes it clear that for Ghazālī, such knowledge comes with but not by the habitual course. For the possibility that God is the agent in any such case undermines the very premise that the habitual course of experience has been such that the agency behind ordered behavior was located in the very bodies exhibiting it. It is merely the case that we have habitually supposed it to be such, God having regularly created this supposition in us.

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SECTION 11.4. MULTIPLE REALIZABILITY

Ibn Rushd concludes by describing Ghazālī as walking back from a denial that things have ‘qualities and forms from which particular acts follow.’ I have attempted to show that Ghazālī did not deny this, but instead denied that these ‘natures’ and the cosmic uniformity that follows from them are necessary in themselves rather than contingent on God’s will. Ghazālī’s allegedly different positions are actually different frames of reference from which to conceptualize created natures and their relation both to the acts that follow from them, and to God, in conformity with what he intends as a single consistent ontology. I will now leave the reader to evaluate that interpretation. Ibn Rushd is naturally more favorable to the second of what he, and perhaps the majority of readers, see as distinct positions. Since they agree on the ‘talc effect,’ that things need not necessarily act in the way they usually act, Ibn Rushd narrows down their difference here to what he says is Ghazālī’s position that ‘particular forms have not a particular matter in every object’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 537/ 1954 p. 331). Ghazālī did not make this explicit statement, but Ibn Rushd seems to be referring to the end of his explanation how miracles are compatible with an ordered nature, on his second approach. Here, he explains that animals come from sperm each from its kind, for only sperm is receptive, as per falsafah physics, of the animal form; that is, the animal powers that emanate from the principles of being. The reason humans do not come from horse sperm is that horse sperm is only receptive to (or disposed to receive) the horse form (2000 p. 173). Here, the particular forms (horse and human) do have particular matters (horse sperm and human sperm). Yet some animals like worms, Ghazālī says, emerge spontaneously from earth, while others emerge both from earth and through procreation. This raises the question, why do some samples of earth turn to worms and others not? That is, why is only this earth predisposed to receive the wormy form? ‘Their dispositions to receive forms differ due to things unknown to us,’ Ghazālī writes, ‘it being beyond human power to know them, since, according to [the philosophers], forms do not emanate from

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the angels by whim or haphazardly’ (2000 p. 173). Different things emerge from apparently similar matter for reasons, and not randomly. For nothing happens randomly (and again, everything that happens is something). There is thus a natural explanation, not of why these forms emanate (for they come from metaphysical principles), but of why certain matter is disposed to receive them. We simply do not know the explanation in every case. Thus, these different things do not actually emerge from completely similar matter, for the matters differ in unknown ways. This, then, is also a case of particular matters for particular forms. The case is perhaps different when we consider a single sort of thing emerging from apparently different matter, as when something hypothetically comes by both spontaneous generation and procreation. Here, even if something cannot come to be from just any matter (it must be the right kind of sperm or the suitably disposed matter), there seems to be more than one suitable kind of matter for a single particular form. This assumes however, that the suitably disposed stuff is not effectively equivalent to the right kind of sperm, so that the two are really one sort of matter suitable for the form. If not, then Ghazālī’s affirmation of this possibility amounts to a denial that each form has a particular matter. Of course, without exhaustive knowledge of matters and forms, we would have no way of knowing how that stands. Ghazālī’s position, then, is that a particular form can only emerge in suitably disposed matter, though we do not have complete and exclusive knowledge of what might adequately dispose matter in any case. If, then, the principles of dispositions are beyond enumeration, the depth of their nature beyond our ken, there being no way for us to ascertain them, how can we know that it is impossible for a disposition to occur in some bodies that allows their transformation in phase of development in the shortest time so that they become prepared for receiving a form they were never prepared for receiving previously, and that this should not come about as a miracle? (2000 p. 174).

It is at least not obvious, then, that Ghazālī’s position means that a particular form does not always have a particular matter. The

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difference is just that Ibn Rushd is more particular about this particularity, as we will see. As Ibn Rushd starts by noting, all parties must agree that ‘matter is a condition for material things’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 538 / 1954 p. 331). This is more than a tautology, for by matter he means the genus of a thing. Thus, animality is as much a condition of the existence of a human (‘rational animal), as is the specific difference (rationality), it being part of the definition expressing her essence. The difference according to Ibn Rushd is that for the falāsifah ‘the general qualities are as much a condition as the particular.’ That is, qualities that are not part of the very definition of the thing are as necessary for it as those that are. For example, ‘warmth and moisture are a condition of life in the transient’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 539 / 1954 p. 331). These are more general. Not all warm and moist things are living but, crucially for Ibn Rushd, all living things are warm and moist. In other words, animality (not to mention rational animality) cannot inhere in metal, plastic, and silicon. Multiple realizability, as proposed by many contemporary philosophers of mind, would be absurd to Ibn Rushd. For behind this there is the premise that the qualities that are empirically correlate to specific things, though not part of their definitions, are also necessary for them. The fact that we never observe living things that are not warm and moist establishes that warmth and moisture are essential for life, not in Ibn Sīnā’s stricter notion of ‘essential’ but in the broader Aristotelian sense in which, as we saw, the predicate consequentially connected to a subject is ‘commensurably universal’ thereof. We establish the consequential connection between them through observation but not, again, as Ibn Sīnā had it, by tajrība, understood as an inference from their constant conjunction and the premise that there must be some underlying cause, for that will not establish the required certainty as to what that cause is. We need to know that life is impossible without warmth and moisture – that even God cannot make a tin man – and for that we need to grasp it empirically, yet directly. Consequently, he is at an understandable loss when it comes to mounting an argument, and can only reach for persuasive

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examples. A living thing’s shape, he says, is also one of its necessary conditions. If, for example, there could be a fish with feet, then ‘either the special shape of the animal might exist without exercising any function, or this special shape might not exist at all’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 539 / 1954 p. 331). In other words, there would be no real purpose to the normal fishy shape of fish, since they could just as well have feet, or wings, so long as they have gills, from which it follows that there is no particular fishy shape at all. On the contrary, fish have their particular shape because this is most suitable for them to perform the fishy act, and it would be impossible for a fish, without a shape suitable for that act, to be a fish. Ibn Rushd’s own example, mentioned above, is more interesting. …the hand is the organ (ālatu) of the intellect, and by means of it man performs his rational acts, like writing and the carrying on of the other arts; now if intelligence were possible in the inorganic (al-jamād), it would be possible that intellect might exist without performing its function, and it would be as if warmth could exist without warming the things that are normally warmed by it’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 539 / 1954 p. 331).

Here there is a bit of ambiguity. Since the mutakallimūn agree that life is a condition of knowledge, there is no question whether intellect is possible in the non-living. The question is whether life is possible in material other than the sort in which we know life to inhere. Presumably, they would agree that intellect could not exist without performing its function. What is intellect without thinking, which a material intellect performs materially? Consequently, it cannot perform its function in matter that is not suitably prepared. Yet, like functionalists among contemporary philosophers of mind, they may hold that it can perform that function in any sort of material capable of being suitably prepared. This is the question pertinent to whether certain qualities, like moisture and warmth, normally associated with material in which intellect does inhere, are necessary for that. Affirming that they are entails denying not just that intellect is possible in the non-living. It entails denying the possibility that life is possible in materials, like silicon, very different from what

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we have observed it to inhere in, and by extension, denying that the function of intellect might be performed by means of instruments very different from brains, hands, tongues, and the like. The mutakallimūn, on Ibn Rushd’s construal, would thus appear, contrary to himself, favorable to the thesis of multiple realizability. For they disagree, he says, ‘in regard to the things which have no common matter or which have different matters…whether some of them can accept the forms of others’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 540 / 1954 p. 332). That would include the question whether rational animality can inhere in silicon or some other matter somehow suitably prepared in an unprecedented manner to perform its function. This question for Ibn Rushd really turns on epistemology, though he would like it be an ontological issue. For the question, according to him, is ‘whether something which is not known by experience to accept a certain form except through many intermediaries can accept it without intermediaries’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 540 / 1954 p. 332). The actual question, at least from the standpoint of Ghazālī, is whether it can accept a certain form through intermediaries of which we have had no prior experience. His point was that the principles of dispositions are more than we know, not that matter can become prepared without any such principles. Ibn Rushd’s underlying presumption seems, again, that nothing is possible outside what we have already observed. The theologians affirm that the soul of man can inhere in earth without the intermediaries known by experience, whereas the philosophers deny this and say that, if this were possible, wisdom would consist in the creation of man without any intermediaries, and a creator who created in such a way would be the best and most powerful of creators (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 540 / 1954 p. 332).

The implicit assumption, again, is that aside from those known by experience, there are no other possible intermediaries. ‘Wisdom’, indeed the very being of intellect, at least as per our interpretation of Ghazālī given above, entails that the soul cannot inhere in earth without some intermediaries to prepare it adequately for that role. Any two similar materials, that is, would either both

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have an inherent soul or not, just as any two similar pieces of cotton will burn on contact with fire. If one were to have a soul and the other not, then there must be some relevant difference between them, though not necessarily one we know of. Here Ibn Rushd resorts to scriptural reference, citing the Qur’anic verse detailing the process by which God creates the human being from clay, formed into a clot, and so on (Qur’an 23:12–14). Interestingly, he overlooks the several verses that describe the jinn, beings both animate and rational, from smokeless fire (Qur’an 55:15). ‘This is the wisdom of God and God’s course in created things,’ he writes, ‘and you will never find in God’s course any alteration,’ echoing the Qur’an, verse 33: 62 (1954 p. 333). He thus interprets God’s course here as equivalent to the course of events we have experienced, thereby assuming that the latter represents the comprehensive course of events throughout the cosmos rather than a limited sample thereof. When we distinguish between these, as Ghazālī has done in his two approaches, the interpretation is more complex. Radical alterations are possible in our experience of God’s course without there being any alteration in His course per se. It follows that indeed we will never find any alteration in the latter, not only because there is none, but also because we can never comprehend it with the totality required to discover it. Yet would this not, as Ibn Rushd seems to imply, obviate human intellect altogether? ‘It is through the perception of this wisdom that the intellect of man becomes intellect,’ Ibn Rushd writes, ‘and the existence of such wisdom in the eternal intellect is the cause of its existence in reality’ (1954 p. 333). Ghazālī, I suggest, might respond by pointing out that for the temporal intellect, this perception is discovery, a process through which intellect becomes intellect no less so for the fact of its being perpetual. What Ghazālī offers is a vision of natural science as a continual project rather than a closed and complete system of knowledge. He could thus have agreed with the assertion that the existence of wisdom in the eternal intellect is the cause of its existence in reality, understood either as the comprehensive order of the cosmos itself, or as the dynamic and diverse process of representing that order in the human intellect.

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Ibn Rushd closes by denying, in response to Ibn Hazm’s very different position from Ghazālī, that the human intellect is a ‘possible entity’ (meaning that even the most basic logical principles are contingent). Ghazālī, if the interpretation I offered here is correct, might have argued that the human intellect has both a necessary and a contingent dimension: a necessary one which Ghazālī has affirmed and attempted to define, as well as a perpetual horizon of empirical discovery no less essential to its realization as intellect.

DISCUSSION 3

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CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT In the third part of Discussion 3, Ghazālī argues that the falāsifah’s claim that God is the world’s agent and maker is incompatible with their theory of the relation between the agent and act. The problem stems from their principle that ‘from one, only one proceeds’ (hereafter referred to as the ‘one from one’ rule), coupled with their strict conception of God’s unity. Since the world is a plurality, then either it is not the act of God, God is not one in the sense they claim, or many can proceed from one after all. Both the ‘one from one’ rule and the conditions of ‘true unity’ will become major issues in the ensuing debate. Ibn Rushd blames Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā for wrongly applying the rule in the same manner to the immaterial as it applies to the material. For this reason, he ultimately agrees that Ghazālī’s objection holds against them, though not against true Peripatetic philosophers, who apply the rule correctly in the context of the immaterial. ‘In the sense in which we have expounded the Aristotelian doctrine,’ Ibn Rushd says, ‘this statement, that out of the one only one proceeds, is true; and the statement that out of the one a plurality proceeds is equally true’ (1930 p. 250 / 1954 p. 149). Ibn Rushd is not baldly defying the rule of non-contradiction here, for there are two different senses of unity and plurality involved. Of the objections Ghazālī raises from the rule, he writes, ‘if by this expression one understands that, from the simple numerically one, only one simple one – not something numerically one in one way but plural in another – can proceed, and that its unity is the cause of the existence of plurality, then one can never escape from

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these doubts’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 251 / 1954 p. 149). For Ibn Rushd, then, what proceeds from God is one in a sense and plural in a different sense. We must then proceed to make sense of these differences. In Section 12.1, we will review the ‘one from one’ rule, Ghazālī’s objection that the rule precludes the possibility of complex entities, allowing only a linear series of simple existents, and Ibn Rushd’s assertion that Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā exposed themselves to this objection by failing to distinguishing material from immaterial plurality. In Section 12.2 we examine the elaboration that Ghazālī’s falāsifah offer in defense of their theory of mediated emanation, along with Ibn Rushd’s objections and corrections. These include the key assertion that since the immaterial intellect is identical to its object, identifying the First Cause as the First Intellect does not compromise its unity, as the falāsifah claim. While this does not explain how the procession of material plurality from a single immaterial cause is possible, Ibn Rushd appears here to agree with Ghazālī that such an explanation is beyond human comprehension. In Section 12.3 we examine Ghazālī’s objections to the falāsifah’s attempt to mediate between unity and plurality via the contingency of the First Intellect, showing that his target is Ibn Sīnā’s standard of ‘true unity.’ Then, we attempt to explain, on the basis of Ibn Rushd’s response, his alternative theory of simplicity and plurality in the immaterial. In Section 12.4 we continue our effort to understand this theory from statements Ibn Rushd makes in response to Ghazālī’s objections pertaining to the knowledge of the First Intellect, and discover a troubling tension between how God, according to Ibn Rushd, understands Himself, and how He really is. For despite, and yet according to Ibn Rushd in virtue of the fact that God is the principle of all things, He does not apprehend Himself as their principle. In Section 12.5, we meet the first point at which the debate touches on the controversy over the proposition that God knows only Himself, and examine Ibn Rushd’s summary explanation of how the observable nature of the cosmos leads eventually to the puzzling conclusion that God both knows everything and nothing other than Himself. The section thus serves as an appropriate place to close the present

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 315 investigation over matters in the Tahāfut debate pertaining to nature and the cosmos, and, God willing, to resume our follow up investigation of the points of the debate pertaining to God and the soul, including its rich discussions of divine attributes and knowledge.

SECTION 12.1. ONE FROM ONE

At the end of his response to Discussion 3, Ibn Rushd neatly summarizes the line of reasoning that the one from one rule applies to everything empirical (that is, sensible and therefore material and temporal). This summary begins with the observation that things have their names and definitions through their observable behavior. That is, we recognize what a thing is, as distinct from others, based on what it does. Fire burns, water boils at 100C, etc. If any kind of act could come from any kind of thing, the essences and definitions of things would be unintelligible, he says, and ‘knowledge would be annihilated’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 257 / 1954 p. 153). Among things, some have a single and some a composite essence. Perhaps fire is a useful example of a single essence. As such, it has one act, which is to burn. By contrast, an iron brand is of a composite essence. It is a unity of a number of different features: being of iron, with a certain size, shape, etc. When hot, it will so act as to produce a mark on a substance with an appropriate potency, like wood. This effect is also composite, the mark having a certain size, shape, color, and so on, each element of which corresponds to one of the elements of its cause, as the unique act of that single element. If many different acts could come from a single essence, Ibn Rushd explains, its distinction from others as a specific thing would be impossible. Furthermore, it would follow that things can occur without any cause, for arising from a single essence there could be no additional variable to account for one such effect proceeding from its cause rather than another. An agent from which different sorts of acts can proceed must therefore possess multiple potencies, one for each act, and therefore be composite. Something from which anything at all can proceed would have no specific nature and thus, Ibn Rushd says, be closer

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to being nothing rather than something (1930 p. 258 / 1954 p. 154). As Ghazālī’s falāsifah explain, plurality in the world comes about in one of four ways: through differences between the acting powers of a composite agent, differences in the materials on which it acts, differences in instruments by which it acts, or through mediation. The sun, for example, ‘whitens the washed garment, darkens the face of the man, melts some substances, and solidifies others’ (2000 p. 65). This is not because the sun has a separate act (whitening, darkening, melting, or solidifying) for each thing. The act is one, while the plurality of outcomes is from the pre-existing variety in the natures of the patients involved (cloth, skin, ice, etc.). Since a truly single agent has a single act, diverse effects from such an agent require the causal contributions of the various natures of the substances in which that agent initiates change. Where plurality arises from the agent alone, the agent itself must be plural by way of its acting powers or through a plurality instruments. As an example of the former, Ghazālī offers the difference between the appetitive and irascible powers, two faculties of the soul by which an animal is attracted or repelled by things around it. The animal soul is thus a composite requiring (as does every composite) unification through an external agent and thus, as Ibn Rushd will repeatedly emphasize, ultimately through a First Agent which is one in essence and therefore not composite. God, therefore, does not have diverse powers but rather one act. Since nothing exists with Him, nothing can serve as His instrument. Diversity in the cosmos cannot be through the diversity in some sort of instruments of its creation in the way differences in the products of a carpenter result from the diverse features of his tools (saws, drills, etc.). Consequently, the falāsifah explain, this diversity can only be through mediation. Since God is one, and only one can come from one, it can only be through the mediation of another simple (non-composite) one proceeding from Him. This is the root of the theory of mediated ‘emanation.’ The one that proceeds from God is an immaterial intellect, the First Intellect, from which proceeds a second intellect, from

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 317 which proceeds a third, and so on. The problem, Ghazālī objects, is that according to the one from one rule, there should be only a series of simple existents, each following from the one before. This precludes the existence of the composite world. However long the linear series of simple existents is, if the composites of the world emerge therefrom then at some point many proceed from one. In that case, they can all proceed from God and there is no need for the elaborate mediation. This is a problem, according to Ibn Rushd, that Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā fell into by ‘conceding to their opponents that the agent in the divine world is like the agent in the empirical.’ The Peripatetic philosophers are immune to this problem, he claims, for they distinguish plurality in the immaterial from plurality in the material. Immaterial existents are simple beings, emerging from one another in a linear progression from ‘one unique cause which is of their own genus’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 178 / 1954 p. 107); that is, they are all intellects proceeding from the unique First Intellect. We may presume that this is the ‘something numerically one in one way but plural in another’ which as he mentioned, proceeds from the simple one. This perhaps explains his passing remark that, contrary to the mediated emanation outlined by Ghazālī’s falāsifah, the theory that ‘out of the one all things proceed by one first emanation is generally accepted’ by his contemporaries (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 178 / 1954 p. 107). Yet, he ultimately seems to embrace the mediated version, for the plurality of intellects gives rise, he says, to the plurality of heavenly bodies. These bodies, we will see, are not according to Ibn Rushd composites of form and matter, for since they are eternally in motion they must be imperishable. More precisely, then, they are their circular motions rather than in them, and this motion is not the actualization of a potency as is material motion. As for the plurality of material existents, according to the ambiguous explanation that follows, once the forms of the heavenly bodies are acquired from their respective movers (purely immaterial intellects), earthly composites get their forms ‘from the heavenly bodies and from each other, indifferently, whether they are forms of the elements which are in imperishable

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prime matter, or forms of bodies composed of the elements, and indeed the composition in this sublunary world arises out of the heavenly bodies’ (Ibn Rush 1930 p. 179 / 1954 p. 107). This explanation of material composites, apparently as mixtures of elements brought about by the heavenly motions, seems simply to presuppose the existence of material plurality (the elements) subsisting in a second eternal principle (imperishable prime matter) rather than explaining how it proceeds from one immaterial cause. Prime matter, recall, is pure potentiality. It is not an actually existing thing, and so to call it ‘imperishable’ is potentially misleading, provoking an image of some eternal primordial stuff from which elements emerge from the action of the heavenly motions. To describe the forms of the elements as existing ‘in imperishable matter’ can, it seems, only mean that the elements bear the permanent potency to change from one to another. Yet this interpretation is incompatible with Ibn Rushd’s assertion, above, that unity is the cause of plurality, for then plurality turns out to be a brute fact, and God turns out to be only the agent of the world’s motion and not its existence, as the falāsifah claim to explain. None of this explains his understanding of the difference between material and immaterial plurality. We have only that immaterial intellects are indeed a series of simple beings (which per Ghazālī’s objection, is all there should be given the ‘one from one rule’), while material things are composite effects of composite or multiple causes. Aside from an explanation of how material plurality originates from the heavenly motions, Ibn Rushd leaves us here wanting an explanation of the sense in which the heavenly motion and additional intellect that apparently proceed from a single prior intellect are one, and the alternative sense in which they are plural. For this it seems is what his equivocal interpretation of the ‘one from one’ rule must allow in order to dodge Ghazālī’s objection against Ibn Sīnā.

SECTION 12.2. EMANATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

In defense of their theory, Ghazālī’s falāsifah proceed to explain its details. Existents, they say, are either substances (not subsisting in a ‘receptacle’) or forms and accidents subsisting in

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 319 substances. The latter are temporal with temporal causes terminating in the eternal circular motion of the heavens. Substances are either receptacles of forms and accidents or not. The former are bodies and the latter either souls, which are movers of bodies, or intellects, which are movers of souls. Each of the nine heavens is a body moved by its own soul and intellect, leading from the highest heaven (the sphere of the outermost stars) to the sublunary sphere (2000 p. 66). From the First Intellect there proceeds another intellect, along with the soul and body of the highest heaven. This second intellect in turn entails the soul and body of the next heaven and another intellect, and so on down to the body and soul of the moon and the ‘agent intellect’ from which proceed the forms of everything in the terrestrial realm. This trinity of entailments (intellect, soul, and body) correspond to the metaphysical trinity by which they explain the emergence of multiplicity. ‘No multiplicity is conceivable in the first effect except in one respect,’ they explain, ‘namely, in that it intellectually apprehends its principle and intellectually apprehends itself’ (2000 p. 67). Each intellect’s knowledge of itself is the soul that moves the heaven of which it is the intellect. Apart from its principle (or cause of its existence), it is merely possible of existence, and this fact is the moved body of its heaven. Its knowledge of its principle (God) is the intellect of the heaven below it. No metaphysical explanation of this correspondence is given here, or why there should be just nine such emanations of intellects and heavens before we reach the sublunary material world, other than the (for them) empirical astronomical fact of nine geocentric heavens. In Discussion 14, Ghazālī challenges the falāsifah to prove that the heavens are animals, and they debate the question in more detail. As Ibn Rushd explains here, ‘they have well-defined shapes and move in well-defined directions toward well-defined actions in opposite motions’ and ‘these welldefined acts can only arise from beings perceptive, living, capable of choice and of willing’ (1930 p. 189 / 1954 pp. 113–114). Yet in his view, by contrast to Ibn Sīnā, the heavens are not material. They are thus not ‘possible of existence’ in the only sense Ibn Rushd accepts as real (the potentiality of matter to receive form),

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though he views their eternal existence as dependent on God in a manner radically different from the material, and according to him, importantly different from the manner in which Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā conceived it. The First Intellect is not the First Cause, according to the falāsifah, but is instead the first effect proceeding from Him. For Ibn Rushd, on the contrary, the First Intellect is the First Cause. Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā made this distinction in order to explain the existence of plurality without compromising either God’s unity or the one from one rule, he contends, in the face of the problem they created for themselves by conflating the immaterial and empirical agent. For them, plurality arises from trinity in the knowledge of the First Intellect, which is impossible for God since it would compromise His simplicity. This is mistaken, according to Ibn Rushd, for the crucial reason that in the immaterial intellect ‘thinker and thought are identical’ (1930 p. 180 / 1954 p. 108). Hence, the ‘plurality in one sense, unity in another’ of the immaterial, which Ibn Rushd distinguished from the plurality of the material. For to say that thinker and thought are one is to identify two things initially conceived as distinct, though essentially related. Yet Ibn Sīnā’s assimilation of the divine agent to the empirical, which Ibn Rushd alleges here, is not simply that of conflating immaterial with material plurality. For as Ghazālī has relayed, the only sort of plurality conceivable in the First Intellect is that involved in its apprehending both itself and its principle, which is not a material plurality. The problem, instead, lies in what Ibn Rushd takes to be Ibn Sīnā’s reason for making an absolute distinction between God and the First Intellect. This he says is wrong. ‘For the first agent in the divine world is an absolute agent, while the agent in the empirical world is a relative agent,’ he writes, ‘and from the absolute agent only an absolute act which has no specific individual object can proceed’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 180 / 1954 p. 108). He apparently understands Ibn Sīnā as assuming that God’s agency has a specific individual object, which can therefore be nothing other than a distinct First Intellect.

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 321 As Ibn Rushd explains, everything that is a conjunction of matter and form exists through the ordered unity of its parts. The material cosmos (itself an ordered unity of such composites) and everything in it exists therefore through the unity it receives from this absolute act of the self-subsistent unity of God, who is one in essence. In this way, all beings proceed from God’s single essential act, unity being ‘distributed in the different classes of things according to their natures,’ just as the warmth of all warm things proceeds from fire, which is warm in itself. ‘By means of this theory Aristotle connects sensible existence with intelligible,’ he writes, ‘saying that the world is one and proceeds from one, and that the One is partly the cause of unity and partly the cause of plurality’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 181 / 1954 p. 108). The ambiguity in this statement raises a crucial question. Is God ‘partly’ the cause of unity and plurality in the sense that He is the cause of both, or rather in the sense that he is one among other causes thereof? If the former, then He does not have a single essential act, but two: unifying and multiplying or differentiating. If the latter, then not all things proceed from His single essential act, for there are other factors involved; for example, the specific natures of things, which he says determine the distribution of unity among them. If those natures are the result God’s single act of unification, then how are they diverse? If rather they are the result of this single act in combination with some other factor of diversity and specification, then the world does not after all proceed from one act. Opposing the ‘inventions fabricated against the philosophers by Ibn Sīnā, Fārābī, and others,’ Ibn Rushd explains their ‘true theory’ as follows (1930 p. 184 / 1954 p. 111). The argument begins with the observation of the eternal circular movements of the heavens. Like every motion, they require a mover, but no material mover can move eternally. The material is necessarily finite, and a material mover would in any case be a moved mover requiring yet another mover. The movers of the heavens must therefore be immaterial. Since knowledge (as has been proved, according to Ibn Rushd, by Aristotle in De Anima) can only differ from its object if the object is material, it follows that immaterial beings (and thus the movers of the heavens) are intellects. Such a

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mover, furthermore, can only move by commanding, since it cannot physically ‘push’ the moved in the manner of a material substance acting as an efficient cause. Thus, the heavens move in response to the command of their intellectual movers, and must therefore be rational animals, aware of themselves and their movers. They ‘move towards them in obedience to them and out of love for them, to comply with their order to move and to understand them, and they are only created with a view to movement.’ And since there is order in the world (the heavenly motions are different and yet coordinated), it follows according to Ibn Rushd that their principles – the intellects – are all connected to a single First Principle who ‘commands the other principles to order the other movements to the other spheres’ (1930 p. 185 / 1954 p. 111). There is some obviously figurative language here: a circular motion cannot be spatially ‘towards’ anything, much less an immaterial thing. It is clearly understood as movement ‘toward’ the fulfillment of a goal, described here as compliance to and understanding of the mover. Are the heavenly motions themselves eternal acts of understanding their principle, or something else undertaken in order to realize that act? Since they are not according to Ibn Rushd material, their motions cannot then be the actualizations of potencies, as are the motions of material things. It seems the heavens simply are their eternal motions, and if these motions are intellectual apprehensions of their principles then they are not, according to what he said, distinct from those principles (since pure intellect and its immaterial object are one). It seems it should also follow that the heavens are God’s own self-contemplation and thus not distinct from God Himself. Ibn Sīnā’s ‘derivation’ of heavenly intellects from one another is, according to Ibn Rushd, an example of his assimilation of the divine to the empirical. Although, as we just saw, he described the Peripatetic theory as holding that ‘some are the causes of others,’ he claims that Ibn Sīnā’s notion of this derivation ‘is a theory unknown to the ancients, who merely state that these principles hold certain positions in relation to the First Principle, and that their existence is only made real through this

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 323 relation to the First Principle’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 186 / 1954 p. 112). It is the connection which exists between them which brings it about that some are the effect of others and that they all depend on the First Principle. By ‘agent’ and ‘object’, ‘creator’ and ‘creature’, insofar as it concerns this existence nothing more can be understood than just this idea of connection. But what we said of this connection of every existent with the One is something different from what is meant by ‘agent’ and ‘object,’ ‘maker’ and ‘product’ in this sublunary world (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 186 / 1954 p. 112).

In the sublunary, the agent is the efficient cause: a material substance in motion, bringing about motion in a distinct material substance. Ibn Sīnā, recall, distinguished this, as the accidental efficient cause (which merely prepares the matter for the reception of a new form) from the essential efficient cause of the very existence of a distinct, co-existing effect. God was understood in this sense as the first essential efficient cause of the cosmos. Hence, Ibn Rushd’s charge that he had assimilated the divine agent to the empirical. Ibn Sīnā sought to show that God was not only the first cause of the motion of the cosmos, as Aristotle had shown, but also the efficient cause of its existence. For Ibn Rushd the motion of the cosmos is its existence. This is apparent in his analogy of divine agency. Imagine, he says, the ruler of an army with a chain of command each member of which exists only through being commanded, and whose very existence consists in its obedience to the command (1930 p. 186 / 1954 p. 112). Taken to illustrate, as he says, the ‘connection of every existent with the One’, this sounds like ʾAshʿarī ‘occasionalism’ followed to its logical conclusion. Yet Ghazālī would have likely objected that it still does not explain the existence of multiplicity from a single absolute act with no specific object. That is (to continue the analogy) if the ruler’s command is just ‘Be!’ then the ‘soldier’ can rightly ask ‘Be what?’ From the first discussion, we can surmise that Ghazālī would insist that God’s creative act does indeed have a specific object. That object is the cosmos that actually exists, with the number of heavens it actually has,

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moving in the directions they move, out of all the possible ways it could just as well have been, as specified by God’s eternal will. That is simply to say, of course, that the multiplicity and specificity of what exists is not rationally explicable as following necessarily from God’s simple existence and essential unity. Indeed, Ghazālī believes it is impossible to comprehend God’s creative act. ‘Investigating the manner of the act’s proceeding from God through will is presumption and a coveting of what is unattainable,’ he insists (2000 p. 66). Thus, even if the Peripatetic theory is incapable of explaining it, Ibn Rushd might be justified in claiming, as he does, that ‘their philosophy is the highest point human intellect can reach’ (1930 p. 187 / 1954 p. 112). He in fact appears to concede that it falls short in this respect, closing an edificatory account of how they infer the existence of God from the order of the world. ‘Therefore you will understand that the creation of these bodies and the principle of their becoming cannot be like the coming to be of the bodies of this sublunary world,’ he writes, ‘and that the human intellect is too weak to understand how this act works, although it knows that this act exists’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 193 / 1954 p. 116). Thus, both agree not only that the emanation theory does not explain the relation between the cosmic act and its agent, but that this relation is beyond human comprehension.

SECTION 12.3. THE TRUE ONE AND ITS POSSIBILITY

Ghazālī raises five objections to the emanation theory. The first three center on the falāsifah’s conditions of ‘true unity,’ Ghazālī’s contention being that they equivocate on this with respect to each member of their emanative trinity. That is, in order to maintain that the First Intellect is a single effect of God (thus preserving the ‘one from one’ rule), they deny that its possibility and knowledge are distinct from its existence, only to affirm that distinction in order to explain its mediating role in bringing about multiplicity. Essentially, he demands a univocal answer as to whether the First Intellect is a unity or multiplicity. The main objective here is to call into question their standard of ‘true unity,’ for that will be crucial in the later discussions on God’s unity and attributes.

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 325 The objective of the fourth objection is to reveal the connection between the question of true unity and that, previously debated, over divine will. For the specificity of the existing cosmos (the contingency of which for Ghazālī is proof of divine will as he conceives it) is itself, according to the falāsifah’s standard of unity, a kind of multiplicity which, if understood as proceeding from the First Intellect’s simple knowledge of its own possibility, would violate the ‘one from one’ rule. The fifth objection simply criticizes as theoretically arbitrary, their pairing of the metaphysical trinity to the cosmological. What, that is, does the First Intellect’s knowledge of its possibility have to do with the existence of the outermost heaven, with its specific size, rotation, and number of stars? The significant philosophical question in all this is that of the conditions of ‘true unity’ or identity, which will play a central role in much of what follows. The First Intellect, according to the falāsifah, mediates between absolute unity and plurality by the fact that it knows itself, its Principle (God), and its possibility of existence (the fact that, without its Principle it is only a possibility). In each case, Ghazālī’s procedure is the same. He asks, is the First Intellect’s being possible of existence identical to its existence or not? If so, then they are one and no plurality can arise therefrom, according to the ‘one from one’ rule. For the body of the highest heaven would then proceed from the same thing as does its soul. In that case, many can proceed from one, and there is no need to postulate mediated emanation rather than allowing that everything proceeds directly from God. If, however, we must deny that because, by the ‘one from one’ rule it would entail plurality in God, then the possibility of the First Intellect must be distinct from its existence after all. The simplest move would be to point out that this also entails a plurality proceeding from the One. Instead, Ghazālī argues that it entails God’s necessity is other than His existence, on the falāsifah’s standard of unity. If it is said, ‘There is no meaning to the necessary of existence except existence,’ then [we would say that] there is no meaning to the possibility of existence except existence. If you then say, ‘It is possible to know its being an existent without knowing its being possible; hence, [being possible] is other

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COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE than it,’ [we would say that] similarly with the Necessary Existent, it is possible to know His existence without knowing its necessity except after another proof; hence, let [the necessity] be other than Him (2000 p. 69).

He thus demands symmetry between the standard of unity as applied to the necessity and existence of the necessary existent, and the possibility and existence of the possible existent. In support of this, he invokes Ibn Sīnā’s own postulate, that ‘existence is a general thing that divides into the necessary and the contingent,’ so that one is distinct from existence if and only if the other is. The implication of this, to which he aims to bring attention, is that the same standard of unity applies univocally to God and creatures. He is then in a position to call this into question by invoking another of Ibn Sīnā’s postulates, in the voice of the falāsifah. How can the possibility of the contingent existent be identical to its existence, they ask, when its possibility is from itself and its existence is from another? This objection has force only in juxtaposition to what is unsaid: God’s existence and necessity by contrast are both from Himself. If it follows that the necessity of the necessary existent is identical to its existence, while the possibility of the possible existent is distinct from its existence, then the same standards of unity do not apply to both. Thus, when Ghazālī counters this by asking how necessity can be identical to existence, though we can affirm the latter and deny the former, he is implicitly calling into question the standard of unity the falāsifah apply in their own conception of God. The true one in every respect is the one not subject to [simultaneous] affirmation and negation, since it cannot be said of it that it exists and does not exist…But it is possible to say that [something] exists but is not necessary of existence, just as it can be said that it exists but is not possible of existence. It is through this that unity is known. Hence, it would be incorrect to suppose this [identity of the necessity of existence and existence] in the case of the First, if what they say – namely, that the possibility of existence is other than existence that is possible – is true (2000 p. 69).

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 327 In the Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ (2:1) on ‘discussing the one,’ Ibn Sīnā examines several equivocal (bil-tashkīk) senses of unity, which while sharing ‘the denial of divisibility in actuality insofar as each one is what it is,’ differ in degree, ranging from accidental unity (joining a subject and accidental predicate) upward through various forms of essential unity: sameness of genus, species, continuity, and nature (2005 pp. 74–5). Of natures, some are divisible in themselves (as water can be divided in several portions) while others are divisible only in some other aspect, as he explains, a human being is divisible into body and soul, neither of which constitute a separate human being. An indivisible nature of this sort is further distinguished according to whether or not ‘another nature exists for it’ (2005 p. 76). If so, then either this additional nature is position (in which case the indivisible nature to which it is attached is a geometric point), or not. If not, the nature in question is that of intellect or soul. ‘For the intellect has an existence other than what is understood by its being indivisible, and this existence is not a position and is divisible neither in its nature nor in any other respect’ (2005 p. 76). Beyond this, the indivisible nature for which no additional nature exists, enjoys an even greater unity. That, he explains, includes the very principle of unity itself, which in combination with another nature becomes number (for example, one intellect). ‘Hence,’ he concludes, ‘among those types of unity there are those [where] what is understood by them is not divisible in the mind, to say nothing about material, spatial, or temporal divisibility’ (2005 p. 77). If this highest degree is indeed of a mindindependent unity, then it is the crux of what Fazlur Rahman identifies the ‘most general and basic principle’ of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy. That is, the proposition that ‘to every clear and distinct concept there must correspond a distinctio in re’ (1963 p. 481). Now, whenever two concepts are clearly distinguishable from each other, they must refer to two different ontological entities… and, further, whenever two such concepts come together in a thing, ibn Sīnā describes their mutual relationship as being accidental, i.e. they happen to come together, although each must be found to exist separately.

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COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE This is the case, for example, between essence and existence, between universality and essence (1963 p. 485).

While it is clear how the standard of true unity follows from this basic principle, it seems both contradict the proposition (discussed above) that existence and whatness are only logically, but not ontologically distinct. For how can this be if every conceptual distinction is ipso facto ontological? In later discussions, the falāsifah apply this standard in their denial of Divine attributes ‘additional’ to God’s essence, for it informs the sense of ‘additional’ they have in mind in asserting that such an attribute compromises His unity. Thus, Ghazālī is not only dialectically arguing that the falāsifah’s emanation theory ultimately contradicts the standard of unity that motivates it, but he is also raising a positive objection to that standard, at least as applied to God. For if, even indirectly, many does proceed from one, then that standard fails to apply. Ibn Rushd also rejects this standard. ‘For not all the different dispositions which can be imagined in a thing need determine additional qualities in its essence outside the soul,’ he writes (1930 p. 198 / 1954 p. 119). Privations and relations do not. Necessity is only the negation of a cause, and possibility the relation to one. They do not entail multiplicity in the external existent but in the mind only. ‘Ghazālī, however, implies in his argument that any additional meaning must apply to an additional entity outside the soul’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 198 / 1954 p. 119). This is in fact the notion Ghazālī wants to challenge, but he left himself open to this misconstrual by going so far out on a dialectical limb. For he knows, but fails to relay here, that the falāsifah would respond in the way Ibn Rushd has: necessity is merely negation. He fully explains this theory in the Fifth Discussion. In his zeal to force on the falāsifah, by their own premises, that necessity is additional to existence, he gives the strong impression that he thinks it is. Yet as we will see him repeatedly assert, from the Fourth Discussion onward, necessity is just negation of a cause. He thus agrees with them on that count, but finds them equivocating on it. For they claim that possibility and necessity, respectively, are relation and negation, neither entailing plurality. Then based on

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 329 their standard of unity, they claim that possibility entails plurality in the First Intellect, in order to explain the emergence of multiplicity therefrom in conformity with the ‘one from one’ rule. Either they both entail plurality by virtue of being distinct in meaning, or they both (as being merely relation and negation) do not. If the latter, then distinction in meaning does not entail plurality in existence after all. Ibn Rushd calls a false dilemma here, ‘for Ghazālī has overlooked a third case, namely, that necessity of being might not be something added to existence but a condition in the necessary existent which adds nothing to its essence…’ (1930 p. 197 / 1954 p. 118). Yet this ‘third case’ is not a third case. It is just to say that necessity does not implicate the necessary existent in plurality. Explaining it in terms of negation and relation, as Ibn Rushd goes on to do, does not render a third option. Nor does it address the problem at hand, but merely evades it. For Ibn Rushd affirms that neither modal term entails plurality, so even if he accepted that the First Intellect is ‘possible of existence’ (which he does not), this would not explain the emergence from it of material plurality. His true aim here is to construe Ghazālī as holding that modality does entail plurality, and he takes thorough advantage of the opportunity for obfuscation Ghazālī left open for him. Nobody doubts that these specific differences are neither substantial differences which divide the essence nor additions to the essence, but that they are only negative or relative relations, just as when we say that a thing exists, the word ‘exists’ does not indicate an entity added to the thing outside the soul, which is the case when we say of a thing that it is white (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 197 / 1954 p. 118).

That ‘nobody’ however, includes in his view Ibn Sīnā and his fans, (against whom, recall, Ghazālī has specifically targeted his objections). It is here that Ibn Sīnā erred, for he believed that unity is an addition to the essence and also that existence, when we say that a thing exists, is an addition to the thing…for him possibility was a quality in a thing, different from the thing in which the possibility is, and from this it seems to follow that

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That a thing’s unity, existence, and possibility constitute distinct things follows straight from Rahman’s ‘most general and basic principle’ of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy, or as Ibn Rushd put it above, that any additional meaning must apply to an additional entity outside the soul. From that, again, follows the conception of the ‘true one’ that Ghazālī deployed, as that which cannot be simultaneously affirmed and denied. As we said before, this is the falāsifah’s own standard of unity, which Ghazālī is deploying dialectically against them. Since this is false, according to Ibn Rushd, the ‘possibility of existence’ that the falāsifah ascribe to the immaterial intellects does not entail a plurality therein. It cannot therefore account for the materiality of the heavenly bodies, as the falāsifah claim. Only the ‘true possible’ is a real plurality, for it is the temporal, which entails an essential division between matter and form. No such plurality follows from a plurality of relations, and the ‘possibility of existence’ the falāsifah attribute to the immaterial intellects is just the relation of being caused. And if it should be claimed that out of relational qualities a plurality of acts results, then a plurality will proceed from the First Principle of necessity without need of the intervention of an effect as the principle of plurality; on the other hand, if it should be claimed that out of relational qualities no plurality of acts results, then out of the relational qualities of the first effect also there will result no plurality of acts, and this latter assumption is better (Ibn Rushd 1930 pp. 199–200 / 1954 p. 120).

This is just to restate Ghazālī’s objection of inconsistency in the emanation theory, with the exception that he does not say the ‘latter assumption’ is better. For of course, that assumption leaves the question how composites come to exist at all. Though Ibn Rushd claims that Ghazālī’s problem is solved simply by understanding that multiple negations and relations are not actual things and so do not compromise a thing’s unity, any such

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 331 solution should explain the existence of a real plurality of things, not explain it away (assuming a real plurality is acknowledged). The ‘solution’ he offers does not. He explains that for everything other than the necessary existent, ‘the mind perceives in it a composition through cause and effect’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 200 / 1954 p. 120). These are either bodies or incorporeal. In bodies, there is ‘both a unity actually, and a plurality potentially,’ while in the incorporeal, ‘the mind does not perceive a plurality, either in act or in potency’ (1930 p. 200 / 1954 p. 120). Hence the true philosophers, he explains, call the immaterial intellects simple, ‘but they regard the cause as more simple than the effect and they hold that the First is the simplest of them all, because it cannot be understood as having any cause or effect at all’ (1930 p. 200 / 1954 p. 120). The puzzling statement must mean that the First Cause has no specific effect, as we saw above. How then shall we understand the notion of degrees of relative simplicity, between things already described as simple, such that the mind does not perceive in them a plurality in potency? For based on this, he says ‘composition can be understood of the principles which come after the First,’ and that ‘the meaning of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ in these existents is that a potential plurality (as it were) exists in them which shows itself in the effect, i.e. there proceeds out of it a plurality of effects which it never contains actually in any definite moment’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 201 / 1954 p. 120). We have here two different senses of potential plurality. In one sense, a thing is potentially plural if it is divisible into actually distinct parts. This sense of potential plurality is exclusive to the material. The sense of simplicity corresponding to this is an indivisibility exclusive and univocally necessary to the immaterial. The immaterial nevertheless admits of potential plurality in a different sense: that a plurality of effects, as he says, proceed from it which are not however parts that would result from its division. Corresponding to this, there is a second sense of simplicity that applies to the immaterial in varying degrees – each effect being less simple than its cause. While each is absolutely simple in the first sense (that it is indivisible), it admits to varying

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degrees of relative simplicity in respect to the number of intermediary intellects between itself and God; knowledge of which constitutes its very essence. The idea seems to be that each succeeding intellect is, as it were, an apprehension of God, progressively more complex than the preceding one. ‘The substance of everything under the First Principle depends on the way in which it thinks the forms, order, and arrangement which exist in the First Intellect,’ he later writes, ‘and their greater or lesser superiority consists only in this’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 217 / 1954 p. 130). By the forms, order, and arrangement existing ‘in’ the First Intellect, he means, in the sense just described, that they proceed as effects from it; and not as a plurality of parts actually contained in it. Each such apprehension is indivisible and absolutely simple (since it is after all one), and yet gradually more complex and leading to greater complexity in the sense that each is itself an apprehension of what preceded it and the principle of an apprehension of itself. Yet none of this entails a ‘plurality of acts’ as Ibn Rushd puts it. That is, each intellect is a single apprehension not divisible into constituent parts. It’s selfapprehension and that of its principle are not actually distinct. In that sense, then, he rejects the standard of unity the falāsifah deploy, according to which distinction in meaning constitutes an ontological distinction. Thus, Ibn Rushd resists a kind of plurality in the intellects, which he interprets Ibn Sīnā as affirming, and which Ghazālī suggests would imply what for Ibn Rushd would be an objectionable form of plurality in God. He affirms a second sense of ‘plurality’ in them, so as to oppose what he calls Ibn Sīnā’s mistaken univocal application of the one from one rule. Yet this is merely to evade the thrust of Ghazālī’s question as to how material plurality in the world is to be explained, obscuring it under disputes with Ibn Sīnā over the nature of the immaterial intellects.

SECTION 12.4. THE TRUE ONE AND ITS KNOWLEDGE

Ghazālī’s second objection is to ask in similar fashion, about the knowledge of the First Intellect, whether its knowledge of its

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 333 Principle is identical to or distinct from its existence and selfknowledge. ‘If identical, then there is no plurality in its essence – only in the verbal expression about its essence’ (2000 p. 69). Real plurality does not then emerge by its mediation. If they are distinct, however, then that plurality also applies to God, assuming that He knows Himself and others. If the falāsifah argue that God’s Essence is His self-knowledge, and (by entailment of His being their Cause) also identical with His knowledge of all things, then this also applies to the First Intellect. For as an immaterial intellect, according to their theory, its essence is its self-knowledge as well, and by similar entailment, its knowledge of its being an effect. We are then back to the same problem: if only one proceeds from one, then how is there a composite world? If the plurality of the world proceeds by mediation from the ‘plurality’ of the First Intellect, then since the same sort of ‘plurality’ is true of God, the falāsifah’s argument for resisting Ghazālī’s position collapses. ‘Let then the varied things proceed from Him,’ and ‘let us forsake the claim of His unity in every respect, if unity ceases with this kind of plurality’ (2000 p. 70). Ibn Rushd answers Ghazālī’s challenge by saying that the first effect’s knowledge of its principle is identical to its essence, and that the first effect belongs to the ‘domain of relation,’ whereas the First exists by itself. Relations (and negations), recall, do not constitute anything ‘additional’ to the essence of anything ‘outside the soul.’ Thus, the essence of the first effect is its knowledge of its relation (of being an effect) to its principle. As its knowledge of its principle is thus relative and does not constitute a ‘second thought’ so to speak, it suffers no plurality thereby. The First, on the other hand, existing by itself and not through a relation to anything else, ‘thinks only His own essence – not something relative, namely, that He is a principle’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 202 / 1954 p. 121). Otherwise, what He thinks of Himself, and thus His essence, would depend on that of which He is a principle. Even so, Ibn Rushd maintains, God avoids the implication of ignorance by the fact that His essence ‘contains all intellects, nay all existents’ in a ‘nobler and more perfect way than

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they all possess in reality’ (1930 p. 202 / 1954 p. 121). Yet this is not by any sort of logical entailment from the fact of His being their principle, as Ghazālī’s falāsifah suggest. This statement is wrong, for His being a principle is something relative and cannot be identical with His essence. If He could think that He is a principle, He would be conscious of the things the principle of which he is, in the way these things really exist, and in this case the higher would be perfected through the lower, for the thing known is the perfection of the knower according to the philosophers, as is set forth in the sciences about the human intellect (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 203 / 1954 p. 122).

Taken at face value, this has the perplexing implication that God’s perfection entails His not knowing things in the way they really are (as His effects), and in general then that the unreal is more noble and perfect than the real. Ibn Rushd does not expand more here on the nobler manner in which all existents are contained in God without His containing a plurality. He only whets the appetite for more puzzles. Ghazālī, he says, have the true falāsifah all wrong in thinking they ascribe plurality to the immaterial intellects. ‘There is, according to them, no plurality in these intellects,’ he says, ‘and they do not distinguish themselves by simplicity and plurality, but only by being cause and effect’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 204 / 1954 p. 122). Whereas the First thinks only itself, he then writes, ‘the other intellects think themselves as related to their cause and in this way plurality is introduced into them’ (1930 p. 204 / 1954 p. 122). There is thus no plurality in there and yet there is; and whereas he had just insisted that they are not distinct in simplicity, he now says they ‘need not all have the same degree of simplicity, since they are not the same rank in relation to the First Principle and none of them is simple in the sense in which the First Principle is simple’ (1930 p. 204 / 1954 p. 122). The only way to make sense of this is, again, to read Ibn Rushd as using ‘plurality’ and ‘simplicity’ equivocally in each instance. In the first case he means to deny that immaterial intellects are plural in the sense applicable, for him, only to the material (that is, they are not divisible into actual parts). In the

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 335 second case, then, he means they admit of various degrees of complexity in the sense just explained (that is, as apprehending a plurality of relations without being an actual plurality of apprehensions). It does not follow from the fact that intellect and the thing known are identical in the separate intellects that they are all similar in simplicity…absolute simplicity is only found in the First Intellect [i.e. God] and the reason is that the essence of the First Intellect is subsistent by itself, and the other intellects, when they think themselves, are conscious that they subsist by it; if intellect and the intelligible were in each of them of the same degree of unity as in the First Principle, either the essence existing by reason of itself and the essence existing by reason of another would be congruous, or intellect would not conform to the nature of the intelligible thing; which is impossible according to the philosophers (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 204 / 1954 p. 123).

If the other intellects were as simple as the First, then they would also apprehend themselves as self-subsistent, in which case they would also be self-subsistent, or they must not apprehend themselves as they are. Yet they are not self-subsistent, and thus cannot apprehend themselves as such, for as pure intellects they are simply identical to their self-apprehension. They must necessarily be less simple than the First, since they are the apprehensions of themselves as subsisting by the First. Indeed, according to Ibn Rushd, to discuss this without knowing the nature of the intellect is ‘nothing more than babbling’ (1930 p. 205 / 1954 p. 123). If we knew what intellect is, we presumably would know, as he has already asserted, that the immaterial intellect is identical with its object. This raises a question. If the immaterial intellect apprehends its principle then it must be identical with its principle, but if its principle is selfsubsistent and it subsists therein, they cannot be identical. Conversely, if the intellect does not apprehend God as He apprehends Himself (for God, recall, does not apprehend Himself as principle of other things, while the intellect apprehends God as its principle), then it seems that strictly speaking, the intellect does not apprehend its principle as it really is. For God

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apprehends Himself as He really is, but not as a principle of other things. On the other hand, perhaps this is nothing more than babbling. If the First Intellect’s knowledge of itself and of its principle are a plurality, Ghazālī had argued, then the same plurality is in God, since He knows Himself and others. He then anticipates the falāsifah responding with this very assertion that God knows only Himself, and that ‘His intellectual apprehension (ʿaqluhu dhātuhu) of Himself is identical with Himself; intellect, intellectual apprehension, and what is apprehended being one’ (2000, p. 70). Ibn Sīnā, he notes, tried to distance himself from this infamous position by holding that God knows all as proceeding from him; universals and particulars ‘in a universal way.’ According to Ghazālī, this was to avoid the absurd implication that God’s effect would be superior, the first intellect knowing itself and others and God knowing only Himself. Secondly, Ghazālī argues, if knowledge of another would entail plurality in God, so also it would in the First Intellect. In that case, the First Intellect’s knowledge of God is other than its knowledge of Itself. It thus requires a cause, and there is no candidate for the position other than God. Yet the First Intellect is already the effect of God and, as the falāsifah say, only one can proceed from one. His third objection is to assert that since ‘knowledge is other than the object known’, the self-knowledge of the First Intellect cannot be identical with its essence (2000 p. 72). In that case, God’s self-knowledge is also other than Himself, and a plurality proceeds from Him. Furthermore, the self-knowledge of the First Intellect would entail not only a triple but a five-fold plurality, for not only would its essence be distinct from its knowledge of itself, but its knowledge that it is necessary through another would be distinct from both its knowledge of its contingency and of its principle. Whether knowledge is in fact other than its object is a crucial point in what follows.

SECTION 12.5. SOME PLAUSIBLE PREMISES

Ghazālī’s reference to the doctrine that God knows only Himself is one of the points that provoke Ibn Rushd, in the course of his response, to plea that the dialectical context of the discussion is

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 337 inappropriate to metaphysics. Since the reasoning of the philosophers is beyond the grasp of the general public, their theories only appear absurd. Hence, it is forbidden to discuss the topic in this format. ‘But in any case we shall try to show some plausible premises and true propositions,’ he writes, ‘in order to set out the motives which moved the philosophers to believe these theories about the First Principle and other existences, the limit which the human understanding can reach in this matter, and the doubts which beset these problems’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 210 / 1954 p. 126). Ibn Rushd’s account of these plausible premises begins with the observation that objects of our experience, animate and inanimate, all come to be through the four causes: form, matter, the agent (or efficient cause), and the end (or final cause). Since efficient causes are distinct moved movers, they form a series (one moving another); and since an infinite series is impossible, there must be a first. In pursuit of that, the ancient philosophers gazed upward to the constant, all-encompassing cyclical motions of the heavens, which Ibn Rushd says, they considered sufficient for explaining the generation of the basic elements of the inanimate. Life, however, requires a different sort of explanatory principle, adequate to function as ‘the bestower of soul and form, and of the wisdom which is manifested in this world’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 212 / 1954 p. 127). Furthermore, were the heavens generated as are things below, there would again be an infinite regress of agents and matters from which heavens upon heavens emerge; and since generation ‘has no other definition or description or explanation or meaning other than that which we have laid down here,’ the heavens are not generated at all, but exist and move from and for eternity. Their motion thus requires a principle that is eternal and not matter in motion. For these reasons, the philosophers ‘were convinced of the existence of incorporeal principles which are not potencies in a body’ (1930 p. 214 / 1954 p. 128). The next crucial part is to explain why these principles should be intellects, and what that means for the relation between these principles, and the order of the cosmos as manifest to the human intellect. The investigation of cognition discovers that

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forms have two ‘modes of existence’: the sensible (existing in the material object outside the soul and by which it is the actual sort of thing it is), and the intelligible, ‘which is separate from matter and exists in the soul’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 214 / 1954 p. 128). We are thus familiar with the human intellect as that which is separated from matter in the process of abstraction from the objects of our experience. Put another way, what we understand by the immaterial is intellect. The aforementioned principles of the heavenly bodies, already surmised to be absolutely immaterial, are therefore understood as intellects in a purer sense than the human intellect. And so, of necessity, they deduced that the objects of thought of those intellects are the forms of the existents and of the order which exists in the world, as is the case with the human intellect, for the human intellect is nothing other than the perception of the forms of the existents, in so far as they are without matter (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 215 / 1954 p. 128).

The intellect is nothing other than the perception of the forms of things, since again according to Aristotle the actual intellect and its intelligible are identical (De Anima III:4). As Ibn Rushd explains in his Long Commentary on De Anima, ‘if it has its own form, then that form will impede its receiving other extraneous forms because they are other than it’ (Ibn Rushd, 2009 p. 301). That is, knowledge of external things as they are would be impossible. Apart from its object, the material intellect is thus not an actual, distinct substance with its own nature and identity. Instead, its nature is nothing other than that of the pure possibility to grasp (become) any form. Actualized, it just is the universal intelligible fully abstracted from matter after such a material process, wherein particular substances acting on the human faculties transmit the material form. While in that sense the human intellect is the effect of the material object, the opposite is true for the heavenly intellects. For the order and arrangement in the existents of this sublunary world are only a consequence and result of the order which exists in these separate intellects; and the order which exists in the intellect which is in us is only a consequence of the order and arrangement which it perceives

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 339 in the existents, and therefore is very imperfect, for most of this order and arrangement it does not perceive (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 216 / 1954 p. 129).

The direction of causation is opposite in each case. While our intellect is the effect of the forms of material substances, the heavenly intellect is their cause. Yet how is this possible, if intellect and intelligible are identical? How is there a series of causally related entities (heavenly intellect – cosmos – human intellect), instead of only one intellect? Ibn Rushd’s explanation of this calls into question his assertion that the forms of sublunary things are the objects of thought of the heavenly intellects. They are the effects of that thought, but for that very reason cannot univocally be considered as its object. If this is true, there are different degrees in the forms of the sensible existents; the lowest is their existence in matters, then their existence in the human intellect, is superior to their existence in matters, and their existence in the separate intellects is still superior to their existence in the human intellect. Then again they have in the separate intellects different degrees of superiority of existence, according to the different degrees in these intellects themselves (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 216 / 1954 p. 129).

Thus one and the same form has different ‘existences’, in the human intellect, in matter, and in the heavenly intellects, each with a different degree of ‘superiority,’ correlating to their relation one to another as either cause or effect. The cause in each case is superior to the effect, except in the relation between the existence of forms in the human intellect and in matter, where the effect is superior. This is because the existence of forms in matter is not intellect, for the forms exist in matter only in potency, the actualization of which takes place through abstraction in the human intellect. The nature of the causal relation is therefore different in this case from that between the heavenly intellects. That a thing can have different degrees of existence is exemplified, he says, in the phenomena of color, of which, while ‘the lowest degree is its existence in matter, a higher degree is its existence in sight, for it exists in such a way that color becomes

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conscious of itself, whereas existence in matter is an inorganic existence without consciousness’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 228 / 1954 p. 136). To describe the perception of color as color ‘becoming conscious of itself’ expresses Aristotle’s theory (De Anima III-2). Sensation is self-aware, for through it we are aware that we see or hear. Its act, furthermore, is one with that of the sensible object. It is in the very act of seeing and hearing that the color and sound of the visible or audible thing is actualized. Hence, the actuality of color – its existence ‘in sight’ – is its selfconsciousness, as Ibn Rushd has it. Above that, he says here, there is its existence ‘in’ the (human) memory, imagination, and intellect. Extrapolating, he would presumably describe these, respectively, as color ‘remembering itself,’ ‘imagining itself,’ and ‘thinking itself,’ in a hierarchy reflecting its degree of abstraction from matter rather than causality, as among the separate intellects. Since the heavens, of which these intellects are the principles, coordinate in manifesting the cosmos as a single act, Ibn Rushd’s philosophers ‘believed that these abstract principles depend on a unique abstract principle which is the cause of all of them, that the forms and the order and arrangement in this principle are the noblest existence which the forms and the order and arrangement in all reality can possess, that this order and arrangement are the cause of all the orders and arrangements in this sublunary world, and that the intellects reach their different degrees of superiority in this, according to their lesser or greater distance from this principle’ (1930 p. 217 / 1954 pp. 129–30). Thus color, also, ‘has in the essence of the First Knowledge an existence superior to all its other existences…’ (1930 p. 228 / 1954 p. 136). The intellect and intelligible being identical, each intellect is simply the form of reality as such in a certain order and arrangement, and can only think (be) itself. It can think (be) neither its superior (the form of reality in the order and arrangement which is its cause), nor its inferior (that arrangement which is its effect). Otherwise, Ibn Rushd says, they would all be one. Thus, God thinks only Himself, but in doing so also thinks everything else in its ‘noblest order and arrangement’ (which can

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 341 of course be nothing other than their absolute unity, and not as distinct things other than God at all). He does not think anything inasmuch as it is in any sense separate from Him. Each intellect below Him is as it were a thought of God ‘from a distance’, that is, the thought of itself as a consequence of God, in terms of which God cannot of course think of Himself. Each of these intellects in turn is, according to Ibn Rushd, part of the cause of a class of existence pertaining specially to it, as well as ‘the cause of its own essence, i.e. the human intellect in its universality’ (1930 p. 218 / 1954 p. 130). Van Den Bergh takes this to mean that each heavenly intellect is the cause of the active intellect. That would be, in the terms Ibn Rushd uses here, the order and arrangement of the form of reality which the human intellect actually becomes, inasmuch as it grasps something intellectually. To call this the essence of the separate intellect, of which it is an effect, is puzzling unless one understands the essence of a thing as a product of abstraction as well as a (direct) object thereof. The essence, that is, is universal, and universal knowledge is as we will see always an effect of and posterior to the separate intellects. All this was, again, in response to Ghazālī’s objection that the position that God knows only Himself renders Him inferior to His effect, for the effect knows both itself and God. Ibn Rushd’s plausible premises taken to their logical conclusion lead to a twofold answer: the first effect does not know God in the way God knows Himself, and God knows His effect in a way other (and nobler) than the effect knows itself. The difference on examination turns out to be that the effect only knows its cause as other than itself, while the cause does not know the effect as anything other than itself. Thus rather than asking whether God knows anything other than Himself, it is more to the point to ask whether there is anything of which God is ignorant. This turns on the question whether the effect is anything other than the cause, to which no univocal answer seems to be possible, in light of the notion that one and the same thing can have different degrees of existence. These were described as its existence ‘in’ various intellects or matter. If, however, the intellect and intelligible are one, it is again more precise to speak of one

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thing’s existence as various intellects and in matter only ‘potentially,’ (being that ‘from’ which the human intellect abstracts the form). Thus the effect is the cause at a lower degree of existence. Alternatively, we might call it a lower degree of ‘selfconception.’ Inasmuch as it is the cause, then the cause knows it in knowing itself. Inasmuch as it is a lower degree of existence than the cause, then the cause does not know it, for the cause has only the degree of existence it has, and knows itself only as it is. If the only difference between the two is the relative existential privation of the effect, then one may argue that it is not something other than the cause, and thus not something of which the cause is ignorant. It is not the cause, yet nothing other than the cause; the ultimate implication being, in a sense, that nothing other than God is anything other than God. Ibn Rushd stops short of that when at last he directly addresses Ghazālī’s objection, which he says would ‘only be a valid inference if the way it thinks its essence were to exclude all existents absolutely.’ His description of the ‘way’ God thinks His essence consists of two propositions: 1) that it ‘includes the existents in their noblest mode of existence,’ and 2) that ‘it is the intellect which is the cause of existence, and that it is not an intellect because it thinks the existents, insofar as they are the cause of its thinking, as is the case with our intellect’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 226 / 1954 p. 135). As he then makes clear, the first proposition follows inferentially from the second. ‘This problem as a whole,’ he writes, ‘is based on two necessary points.’ First if God thought existents in such a way that they should be the cause of His knowledge, His intellect would necessarily be transitory and the superior would be brought into being through the inferior. Secondly, if His essence did not contain the intelligibles of all things and their order, there would exist a supreme intellect which would not perceive the forms of existents in their order and proportion. And since these two cases are absurd, it follows that when this principle thinks its own essence these existents exist in it in a nobler mode than that in which they exist by themselves (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 227 / 1954 p. 136).

CHAPTER TWELVE. BETWEEN THE AGENT AND THE ACT 343 The absurdity, on pain of which Ibn Rushd concludes that everything exists ‘in’ God’s essence ‘in a nobler mode than that in which they exist by themselves,’ is the very absurdity of which Ghazālī accuses those falāsifah who hold that God knows only His own essence: God, the Supreme Intellect would know less than His creation. The answer is apparently that God just is the knowledge of all things in a mode nobler than ‘that in which they exist by themselves.’ What, then, is the ‘mode’ in which they exist ‘by themselves’? This is unclear and yet crucial, for all we know about the nobler mode in which they exist in God’s essence, is that it is nobler than this. From the preceding, we know only that they exist ‘in’ the separate intellects, the various faculties of the human soul, and matter. In each case, however, perception and perceptible, intellect and intelligible, are identical. In that sense things exist ‘by themselves’ in every mode, aside from matter, where they exist only in potency. Again, by their existing ‘by themselves’ he cannot mean that they exist without a cause, for only God exists without a cause. That, as he insisted was the only difference between God and the separate intellects. Yet he has described the existence of things ‘by themselves’ as other than their ‘nobler’ existence ‘in’ God. Another possibility is that by their existence ‘by themselves’ he means their existence as distinct entities. This interpretation coheres better with Ibn Rushd’s overall theory so far, if we understand it as including not only their existence as distinct individuals (as manifest only ‘in matter’), but also as distinct forms. As Ibn Rushd insists, God’s Knowledge cannot be described as either universal or individual, since both sorts of knowledge are effects rather than the cause of existents (1930 p. 227 / 1954 p. 135). ‘Horseness’ and ‘treeness’ are not existing distinctly ‘in’ God’s essence. Presumably these only emerge as distinct forms in the Active Intellect. At the ‘level’ of God no formal distinctions remain at all, leaving only the One. Again, the sense in which the existents are ‘in’ God’s essence for Ibn Rushd is just, as we saw earlier, that a plurality arises ‘from’ God which never actually exists ‘in’ Him, hence not compromising his absolute unity.

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Ibn Rushd concedes that the precise order and number of separate intellects cannot be proven. The central insight of the philosophers is rather that material and immaterial principles proceed from the First Principle, through which the cosmos as a whole is a unity and without which the organic order evident therein would be impossible. ‘And it in no way follows from the fact that this one potency permeates many things that there should be a plurality in it, as those thought who said that from the First principle there can in the first place emanate only one from which plurality can then emanate’ he says, effectively affirming Ghazālī’s objection to the falāsifah, ‘for this statement can only be regarded as valid if the immaterial agent is compared to the material agent’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 230 / 1954 p. 137). His true philosophers, instead, held that most principles follow from God indirectly only because of their observation of a hierarchy in the heavenly motions, where some appear to follow others. ‘If we assume that the cause is an intellect and knows its effect, it does not follow that this is an addition to the essence of the cause,’ he writes, ‘on the contrary, it belongs to the essence itself, since the emergence of the effect is the consequence of its essence’ (Ibn Rushd 1930 p. 236 / 1954 p. 140). This consequential statement opposes the falāsifah conception of true unity, the target of Ghazālī’s objections. An intellectual distinction does not in itself constitute an ontological distinction. A multiplicity, it seems, can proceed from the One after all; assuming however that it ‘knows its effect.’ That is a crucial provision. For as we saw, according to Ibn Rushd the cause does not know its effect as its effect, but can only know it as itself. We are again left with the question, whether there is something of which God is ignorant; or conversely, whether anything other than God really exists. The theory of the true philosophers, which Ibn Rushd has relayed here to replace that of Ghazālī’s falāsifah, implies that the answer is the same for both these questions. In other words, he has left us with the question how the following three propositions can all be true: 1) that God knows only Himself, 2) that God knows all existents, and 3) that there are existents other than God.

CONCLUSION We began with the simple thesis that the Tahāfut debate is a genuinely philosophical enterprise, and not, as is often construed, merely a polemic against, and defense of ‘reason in Islam.’ In what followed, I supported it in the appropriate manner, by analyzing the arguments, objections and counter-objections deployed by all three sides in the debate. That alone, one might argue, is inadequate; for the thesis implies, and thus demands explanation and argument for, some criteria of what counts as a ‘genuinely philosophical enterprise.’ Though at various points above I have evaluated the debate in terms of some factors commonly assumed as characteristically philosophical, I have not categorically defined philosophy at the outset. The question thus remains, in what sense of ‘genuine philosophy’ am I claiming the debate is genuinely philosophical? Explanations of what philosophy is always start with its literal translation, as ‘love of wisdom.’ Efforts to define it more specifically tend, on interrogation, to reduce to the arbitrary or terminological, and hence, unphilosophical. To search for a definition that survives such scrutiny could require another book, and would remain inconclusive. Simply stipulating a definition of philosophy operative for the present purposes would have allowed us to arrive at rather artificial conclusions, relative to and thus relevant only to the stipulation, while appearing to avoid or subvert any consideration of the key question over what philosophy is and requires. That would have been less interesting and informative than an alternative procedure; that is, to consider some necessary conditions of being philosophical presupposed by

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various reasons that may be given for denying the genuine philosophical nature of the Tahāfut. Thus, we may explore some notions of what philosophy is and requires, according to which the debate is not philosophical. For example, there is the notion that philosophy is a kind of taqlīd, or blind allegiance, to Aristotle, or even to Ibn Sīnā as one faction of its proponents among Muslims seem to assume. As we mentioned above, this is the presumption behind construing Ghazālī’s initiation of the debate as anti-philosophical simply in virtue of his questioning the demonstrative status of falsafah arguments. It is similar to the idea that being genuinely philosophical requires only the approval of a committee of white male professors. The fact may be obscured by a habit of viewing the mere recital of ostensibly demonstrative ‘proofs’ as in itself a demonstration, but on that standard, philosophy itself is not genuinely philosophical. Nor were any of the participants in this debate. For we have sufficiently established that all, including Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, were critical of and departed from Aristotle at points. Still less were any of them engaged in taqlīd to Ibn Sīnā (even Ibn Sīnā himself), though that sort of engagement still goes by the name ‘philosophy’ among some Muslim ‘philosophers.’ On the contrary, all three participants at least aspired to liberation from the condition of blind dependence on authority of a sort from which, they agreed, logical demonstration (if attained) would deliver. Such an aspiration nevertheless leaves open important questions such as whether demonstration is the only means of achieving the independent, objective certainty associated with tasdīq, whether it is capable of delivering it, and even whether such a condition is at all possible. At the end of a process guided by that aspiration, that is, one might yet arrive, correctly or not, to either answer for any of those questions. If we assume that a genuine philosophical approach entails the conviction that logical demonstration is the only possible means of objective certainty, then based on his work outside the Tahāfut, one might find reason to argue that Ghazālī was not genuinely philosophical in his approach. In al-Munqidh he seems either to deny that logical demonstration is the only way to attain

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objective certainty, that it can achieve it at all (at least on its own), or that objective certainty is even possible. While in the classical context the skeptic was usually considered as the enemy of the philosopher, in the modern context he is more often considered as the true philosopher. Which of the two labels we are thus warranted in branding Ghazālī with, in light of that assessment of the power of reason, depends not only on whether it is a skeptical assessment, but also on which notion of philosophy we take as normative. If he allows that objective certainty is possible, but only with the help of divine illumination, this shifts the picture so that we might instead expect the modern philosopher to dismiss Ghazālī as a ‘mystic’, while a philosopher in the classical mold may simply have some questions about what he means by ‘light.’ This does not pertain to the specific question of his approach in the Tahāfut, however, where he appeals to neither divine illumination nor textual authority to support his critique. If a genuine philosophical approach requires one to refrain from appeal to anything other than logical demonstration (or at least to avoid appealing to mystical insight or textual authority) to support a claim, then Ghazālī’s approach in the Tahāfut meets that requirement. Ibn Rushd far more often appears, in what we read above, to appeal to authority (whether to Aristotle’s or the Qur’an’s). In his defense, however, we should consider the context of his motivation, which was to clarify the interpretation of these sources and not necessarily to appeal to them as a form of argument (depending perhaps on what sort of reader you are). In the Tahāfut, Ghazālī makes no assertion, explicitly or implicitly, about whether reason is either a means, or the only means, of objective certainty as such. As promised, he has evaluated the arguments of the falāsifah according to their own standards of logical demonstration, which appropriately should not include any assumptions about what is or is not liable to demonstration. We can only test the proofs offered, as to whether they in fact demonstrate what they claim. That certain knowledge is possible through logical demonstration is apparently axiomatic for Ibn Rushd. Recall his reduction of the denial of natural necessity to absurdity on the charge that it would render such

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knowledge impossible. That it might after all be impossible is apparently not, for him, in the cards. Both however, agree that not everything is liable to human comprehension. With respect to their questions over nature and the cosmos, which we explored above, the one such matter we found mentioned (in Section 12.2) is, in Ghazālī’s words, ‘the manner of the act’s proceeding from God through will.’ For, as Ibn Rushd explains ‘the human intellect is too weak to understand how this act works, although it knows that this act exists.’ For either or both parties to have arrived at this conclusion through logical demonstration would require a demonstration, at least of what sort of thing the procedure of the divine act cannot be, given its existence and function. In conjunction with that, it would require another demonstration of how the human mind works, of a sort that enables us to distinguish the sort of thing the human mind can possibly comprehend from that which it cannot, in such a way as to demonstrate that the procedure of the divine act is of the latter sort. As we saw, the two differ sharply about what sort of thing it can be, beyond the terminological issue over whether to call it an act ‘by will.’ The point here is that one may conceivably conclude, through logical demonstration, that something exists, the nature of which is nevertheless incomprehensible through logical demonstration. That is, if such a thing cannot be demonstrated, then it is by virtue of the nature of the thing in question rather than the nature of logical demonstration per se. Thus, if one insists that a genuine philosophical approach precludes any such concession, it cannot be on purely methodological grounds, but must rather be on substantive grounds. In that case, it must be either that a genuinely philosophical approach entails a commitment, prior to and independent of any demonstration, to the comprehensibility of everything by reason alone (a kind of faith in the limitless power of human reason); or it entails actually having arrived at demonstrative knowledge of everything. If the latter is our standard of what constitutes the genuine philosopher, then perhaps one is hiding away in a mystery cave. If the former, then genuine philosophy requires belief in something not yet demonstrated. One or another of these

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follows from any argument that Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd fail to be genuinely philosophical simply by virtue of having concluded that the manner in which the cosmos proceeds from God is ultimately beyond human comprehension. Our aim in this book, however, was obviously not just to advance the thesis that the Tahāfut debate is genuinely philosophical. We were interested in what we can learn from it. Again, our aim main was not to learn about Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd as individuals, representatives of schools of thought, or windows on alternative Muslim histories. Rather we are interested in whether the eternity or temporality of the cosmos is provable, whether an ordered discoverable nature precludes the possibility of miracles, and underlying questions like what is the nature and relation between time, change, possibility, and the like. We articulated this as an inquiry into the contents of a hypothetical ‘book of ultimate truth’ which Ghazālī promised to write after the Tahāfut, laying out the true doctrine rather than merely refuting, and for which Ibn Rushd was evidently distressed at his apparent failure to follow through on. Rather than search through the corpus for a candidate, we planned to piece together speculatively what such a book might contain, based on the state of the argument as these two left it. Like Ghazālī, I also have failed to follow through. For what you have read is not the book of ultimate truth. Rather, it as a book of questions that any such book would need to answer, if Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd were to resolve their differences therein. In the first volume of Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd’s hypothetical book of ultimate truth (the volume on nature and the cosmos) we would, first of all, expect to find a more complete explanation of what time is; for this, as we saw, affects their discussion of this subject at every major turn. How we are to conceive the very question of cosmic pre-eternity, the relation between cause and effect per se, and necessity or order in nature, more specifically, all turn on the nature of time, which all participants in this debate agree is in some sense the measure of motion. They also agree that God, being unmoved, is therefore timeless, though Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd appear to have followed the implications of this

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through more thoroughly than Ibn Sīnā. Time, like space, qualifies a kind of being rather than being as such, and for that reason imagination is not a reliable guide to metaphysics. This defines the tiered, ‘audience-appropriate’ theological discourse which the falāsifah advocate, and which we saw Ghazālī display in the course of his critique of their first proof of cosmic eternity. Yet it also leaves open many questions, epitomized perhaps in asking, of what sort of motion time is a measure, and what sort of measure? Ghazālī suggests that, at least in the A-series sense, time is essentially only the measure of some kind of motion of the soul (the estimative imagination to be precise). The leftover Bseries is, to Ibn Rushd’s outrage, analogous to space and consequently, as we saw, intrinsically directionless. It seems to follow that constituents of the cosmos (things or events) are not in themselves temporally ordered. From this it is natural to infer that their temporal order is something God creates in creating the human soul and its specific motion, just as according to Ghazālī, He creates the spatial directions ‘above,’ ‘below’, ‘left’, and ‘right’ in creating our specific bodily features. This raises a number of interesting questions that we would therefore hope to find addressed in our ‘book of ultimate truth.’ We would then need another section of the book to address the nature of motion, which all Ghazālī’s partners in this debate, following Aristotle, explain as the actualization of potential being. Many have assumed that Ghazālī rejects this model in favor of an atomist theory, associated with the ʾAshʿarī school, which denies potency and affirms the strict Parmenidean binary between being and non-being. Yet we have seen from Ghazālī here neither any explicit assertion nor clear implication to that effect. Rather, we saw that he and Ibn Rushd both respond to Ibn Sīnā’s premise that the agent relates to the act either in its existence or in its nonexistence, by asserting the apparent third option. For Ibn Rushd, that is its becoming – the being in a state of non-being which for the Aristotelian is the mark of the mutable. For Ghazālī, that is its ‘moment of creation.’ In their final book of ultimate truth, we would thus like some clarification as to how things stand for him on the matter.

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That is, we would like to see a more complete metaphysics of modality, confronting the question whether and in what sense we can coherently understand non-being as a mode of being. Since this is the central problem around which defining change turns, any explanation of time in terms of change is by extension one in terms of modality. This poses in turn, the question whether modality is explicable independently of time, for if not then any explanation of time in terms of motion will ultimately be circular. If, for instance the simple statistical interpretation captures the essence of the possible by defining it as that which sometimes is and sometimes is not, then time cannot be defined in terms of change, understood as the actualization of the possible (rather than, say, an illusion produced by the rapid succession of discrete actualities). This also applies to our interpretation of potentiality, the mode of being not which Aristotle proposed to solve the problem of change. If we are forced to explain this as a kind of being not now but yet to be, as evident from having been, then again, time is essential to our concept of change, and thus cannot be defined by it. On the other hand, if we can adequately explain possibility as potentiality without resorting to any temporal references, this raises the prospect of explaining the direction of time in terms of the asymmetry in the relation between act and potency. Yet a conception of act and potency independent of, and thus more basic than time, entails a radical change for any concept of change understood in those terms, according to which in spite of the temporality of our experience of change, its essence would be non-temporal. Thinking about a sense of potentiality more basic than time leads straight to the possible in itself, which Ibn Sīnā considered a basic concept, determined by the whatness of a thing, understood as distinct from its existence. On examination, this is another iteration of the mode of being not, for the whatness of a thing is the limit between what it is and what it is not, setting it apart as one finite being among many (for which reason, Parmenides argued, plurality is absurd). The mode of being not is for that reason the very finitude of the finite and, as Ibn Sīnā also argued, the contingency of the contingent.

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Perhaps, then, the undiscovered final book of ultimate truth might explain time and change as an experience arising from a finite being’s awareness of its own finitude; which is its awareness of its limit, the distinction of what it is from what it is not, and thus its mode of being not. Such a book might explain space and time as experienced dimensions of that limit, through which one encounters oneself as both other than and as what one is not (but has been, will be, could be, etc.). Whether that is or is not the case, we hope our dream book’s account of the matter would be more precise and tightly argued than these last few paragraphs. That would require a conclusive chapter on the question whether possibilities are only intellectual judgments, as Ghazālī argued (and of which intellect), or require instead an external substrate or ‘matter’ (and exactly what this is), or are simply self-subsistent. Finally, does the reality and discoverability of natural order preclude the possibility of miracles? As we have shown, any book of ultimate truth that can settle this hot-button question must not only provide clarity as to what constitutes a ‘miracle,’ but also a fully developed theory of empirical knowledge, natural science, and its relation to metaphysics (and thus of time, modality, and their relation). Preferably, it would also clarify the relation between Divine will and creation, in light of Ghazālī’s expressed rule that no relation between distinct things can be necessary. Yet perhaps we must file this under matters pertaining to the ‘way’ in which the act comes to be from will, which he said was beyond human comprehension. Here, I have taken insights from the first discussion, and deployed them in an interpretation of Ghazālī’s theory of ‘natural causality’ which resolves apparent ambiguities in his own presentation in the 17th Discussion, and responds to Ibn Rushd’s penetrating objection. Whether any of that would make it into the final draft of their book of ultimate truth, I expect the attentive reader will find it deeper and more innovative than the typical analyses of this section of the debate. That sort of reader – the one I hope to reach – will most certainly discover many faults, argumentative gaps, imprecisions, and crucial leftover questions. I will have achieved my aim so long as that reader finds it

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worthwhile to press these issues, pursue new possibilities, and continue the conversation. For the final book of ultimate truth, which Ghazālī promised and for which Ibn Rushd wished, remains unwritten, and as the latter feared, we will most certainly die before it is. For we have it on good authority that no such book could be completed by a mere human. The search for it is, like the cosmos according to both of these searchers, a perpetual work in progress. It proceeds not only in the pages of manuscripts gathering dust in the libraries of Istanbul or Timbuktu, but in the collective thoughts of living thinkers.

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Ibn Sīnā, Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn. (1984). Isharāt wal tanbihāt (part 1: logic). Translated by: Shams Constantine Inati, Ontario: Pontifical Insitute of Medieval Studies. Ibn Sīnā, Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn. (2005). Kitāb al-ilāhiyyat al-shifāʾ (‘The metaphysics of the healing’). Translated by Michael Marmura. Provo: Brigham Young University Press. Ibn Sīnā, Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn. (2009). Kitāb al-samāʾ al-ṭabīʿī. (‘The physics of the healing’). Translated by Jon McGinnis. Provo: Brigham Young University Press. Ibn Sīnā, Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn. (2011). Al-Najat: al-mantiq. Translated by Asad Q. Ahmed in Avicenna’s Deliverance: Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kogan, Barry S. (1985). Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kukkonen, Taneli. (2000a). Possible worlds in the Tahāfut altahāfut: Averroes on plenitude and possibility. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 38 (3). Kukkonen, Taneli. (2000b). Plentiude, possibility, and the limits of reason: a medieval Arabic debate on the metaphysics of nature, Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (4), 539–560. Kukkonen, Taneli. (2012). Eternity. In Oxford handbook of medieval philosophy. Marenbon, J. (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press Leaman, Oliver. (2002). An introduction to classical Islamic philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marmura, Michael. (1959). The logical role of the argument from time in the Tahafut’s second proof for the world’s preeternity. The Muslim World, 49 (4), pp. 306–314. Marmura, Michael. (1959). The conflict over the world’s pre-eternity in the Tahāfuts of Al-Ghazāli and Ibn Rushd. Doctoral Dissertation: University of Michigan. Marmura, Michael. (1960). Avicenna on the problem of the infinite number of souls. Mediaeval Studies, XXII, pp. 232–39. Marmura, Michael. (1965). Ghazālī and demonstrative science. Journal of the history of philosophy, 3 (2), pp. 183–209. Marmura, Michael. (1981). Al-Ghazâlî's second causal theory in the 17th discussion of his Tahâfut. In P. Morewedge (ed.)

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Islamic philosophy and mysticism. Delmar: Caravan Books, pp. 85–112. Marmura, Michael. (1984). Avicenna on primary concepts in the metaphysics of his al-Shifā. In R. Savory and D. Aquis (eds.) Logos Islamikos: Studio Islamica in honorem Goergii Michaelis Wickens. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, pp. 219–39. Marmura, Michael. (1994). Ghazālī’s chapter on divine power in the iqtisād. Arabic Science and Philosophy: A Historical Journal, 4 (2), pp. 279–315. Marmura, Michael. (2004). Ghazālī’s al-iqtisād fī al-iʾtiqad. Its relation to Tahāfut al-falāsifah and to Qawaʾid al-Aqaʾid. Aligarh Journal of Islamic Philosophy, 10, pp. 1–12. McGinnis, Jon. (2003). Scientific methodologies in medieval Islam. Journal of the history of philosophy, 41 (3), pp. 307– 327. McGinnis, Jon. (2006). Occasionalism, natural causation, and science in Al-Ghazālī. In James E Montgomery (ed.) Arabic theology, Arabic philosophy. Leuven: Peeters. pp. 439–461. McGinnis, Jon. (2010). Avicenna. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McTaggart, J.M.E. (1921). The nature of existence, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1974). The gay science: with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Nowacki, Mark. (2007). The kalām cosmological argument for God. New York: Prometheus. Ormsby, Eric. (1984). Theodicy in Islamic thought: the dispute over Al-Ghazālī’s best of all possible worlds. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Philoponous, John. (1987). Against Aristotle on the eternity of the world. Translated by Christian Wildberg. London: Duckworth. Philoponus, John. (2006). Against Proclus on the eternity of the world. Translated by James Wilderbing. London: Bloomsbury. Popper, Karl. (1963). Conjectures and refutations. London: Routledge.

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361

Rahman, Malik Fazlur (1958). Prophecy in Islam: philosophy and orthodoxy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rahman, Malik Fazlur (1963). Ibn Sīnā. In M.M. Sharif (ed.) A history of Muslim philosophy. Wiesbaden. Otto Harrassowitz, pp. 480–506 Shehadi, Fadlou. (1982). Metaphysics in Islamic philosophy. Delmar: Caravan. Sorabji, Richard. (1983). Time, creation, and the continuum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strawson, Galen. (1989). The secret connexion: causation, realism, and David Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Richard. (2012). Averroes on the shariʾah of the philosophers. In Taylor R. and Omar I. (ed.) The JudeoChristian-Islamic heritage: philosophical and theological perspectives. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Tooley, Michael (1993). Causation: Reductionism vs. Realism. In Sosa and Tooley (ed.) Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Den Bergh, Simon (1954). Volume II (notes to his translation of Tahafut al-Tahafut. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Fraassen, Bas C. (1980). The scientific image. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vetter, Barbara (2015). Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press Yaqub, Alladin. (2017). Al-Ghazālī’s view on causality. In N. Muhtaroglu (ed.) Occasionalism revisited. Abu Dhabi: Kalam Research and Media.

INDEX NAMES

Griffel, Frank 14, 68, 251, 300 Halevi, Leor 250 Halper, Yahuda 37 Hourani, George 61, 73 Kukkonen, Taneli 167, 176– 177 Leaman, Oliver 63, 66, 71 Marmura, Michael 18, 61–2, 165, 178, 232, 250, 260, 261–262, 264 McGinnis, Jon 153, 256, 258– 259 McTaggart, J.M.E. (d. 1925) 133, 136–140 Muhammad the Prophet (d. 632) 22 Nietzsche, Friedrich (d. 1900) 214 Parmenides (d. 5th century BC) 180, 351 Philoponos, John (570) 94, 141 Plato (d. 348 BC) 4, 21, 28, 40, 104–106 Popper, Karl (d. 1994) 267 Rahman, Malik Fazlur (d. 1988) 327, 330 Shehadi, Fadlou (d. 2012) 174 Sorabji, Richard 139

Al-ʾAshʿarī, Abu Hasan (d. 936) 5 al-ʿAllaf, Abū al-Hudhayl (c.a. 840) 206 Al-Fārābi, Abū Naṣr. (d. 950) 1, 21, 29 Al-Kindī, Abu Yūsuf (d. 873) 94, 141 Aquinas, Thomas (d. 1274) 61, 174 Aristotle (d. 322 BC) 14, 21, 28, 37, 45–8, 61, 94–5, 135, 142, 155, 176, 180, 186, 252–253, 260–262, 323, 338, 340 Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) 152–153 Bahlul, Raja 63 Black, Deborah 68 Black, Max (d. 1988) 81, 119 Cerami, Christina 261 Chalmers, David 303 Dougherty, M.V. 227, 240–242 Dutton, Blake D. 301 Frank, Richard 130 Frege, Gottlieb (d. 1925) 255 Galenus Aelius (d. 216) 215 Goodman, Lenn 62, 67, 92, 147, 267

363

364

COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

Van Den Bergh, Simon (d. 1978) 75, 165–166, 341

SUBJECTS

Accidental cause 46–8, 52, 85, 323 Infinite regress of 131 Accidental form 46 Accidental unity 327 Accidents As conditions for the existence or annihilation of substances 220–4 Argument from the possibility of 194 Act Absolute act 320–1 Delay of the act after its intention 86–7 Eternal act 131, 161 Every act has an agent 257 God as pure act 46–7 Natural act 237, 270–6 Of annihilation 218–224 Of God 45, 48–49, 237–9, 242, 252, 282, 315–18, 348 Of sensation 340 Prior non-existence / coming to be as a condition of being an act 228–236 Priority of act to potency 171–2 Special act / passivity 270– 6, 316–6 The world as a well-ordered act 19

Vetter, Barbara 170 Yaqub, Alladin 256, 283–284 Voluntary act 115, 240, 302–3 Actuality Actuality and potency 45–6 Actuality in the product / in the act 48–9 Actuality of the past 93, 104–6 Actuality prior to potentiality 171, 235–6 Agent / agency 44–49, 110, 169, 187, 199–200, 227–243, 258–268, 315–324 Absolute agent 320 Composite agent 316 Empirical agent 236, 238, 320 Natural / voluntary agent 56–7, 83, 119, 236– 238, 241–242 Perfect / imperfect agent 161 al-dahriyya (materialists) 43 al-‘ilm al-ḍārūrī (necessary knowledge) 7 al-‘ilm al-kalām 7 al-Masīh al-dajjāl 6 Analogy Between human and divine attribute 113–114, 236– 238 Between time and space 140–147, 210–211 Annihilation 218–224

INDEX Of the world 133, 136–137, 205–208, 218–224 ʾAshʿarīah 8, 16, 26, 33, 39, 56, 86–8, 104–105, 141, 159, 218–220, 223–224, 240, 242, 250, 259, 261, 277, 286, 290, 299, 323, 350 Background condition 272, 275, 292 Baḥth naẓar 4 Becoming 186, 195, 231, 350– 352 Eternal becoming 233 Behavior profile 275–276, 291, 294–296, 298–299 Being 270–271, 275, 350 As the object of demonstrative and dialectical sciences 37–8 Bestower of forms 267 Burhān inna (demonstration of fact) 260–262 Burhān līma (demonstration of reasoned fact) 260 Burhān muṭlaq (absolute demonstration) 260 Cause Accidental cause 46–48, 52, 85 Infinite regress of 131 Complete cause 169, 256 Efficient cause 44–47, 84, 238, 241, 247, 256–259, 277–278, 323, 337 Essential cause 46–48, 52– 53, 60, 63, 66–7, 74, 85, 270 Infinite regress of 131

365

Eternal cause 39, 44, 80, 85, 87, 232 Final cause 47, 337 First cause 10, 45, 48, 50, 121, 130, 217, 314, 320, 323, 331 Formal cause 45–6, 277–278 Material / receptive cause 41, 45–6, 277 Natural cause 239, 241– 242, 257 Proximate cause 240 Receptive cause 170 Voluntary cause 44, 241 Conservation 48, 218, 229 Constant conjunction 262, 286, 306 Constructive empiricists 251 Contingency / contingent 82– 84, 236, 266, 286, 309–310, 325–326, 336, 351 Cosmology 119, 121, 124–126, 148 Creation Prior non-existence as a condition of 230 Continuous creation 227, 231–233 Divine act of 219 Moment of 231 Temporal creation of the world 62–71, 80, 86, 109, 127, 118, 156, 180 Demonstration / demonstrative Absolute demonstration 260 Demonstration of fact 260– 262

366

COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

Demonstration of reasoned fact 260 Dialectic / dialectical 11, 34, 57 Disposition 258, 268, 286, 305 Eclipse 22–3, 98, 251–252 Emanation 10, 31, 314, 316– 332 Empirical adequacy 251 Endurance 220–221 Entelechy 237 Episteme (see also science) 120 Essence (see whatness) 173–174 And existence 328–329 As in ‘substantial form’ / ‘specific nature’ 46, 270–274, 315 Composite and simple essence 315–316 Divine essence 65, 88, 114, 219, 243, 321, 328, 333– 335, 342–343 Possible essences 130 Essential 174, 306 Essential attribute 252–253, 279 Essential nature 248, 252–253, 268–279, 283, 296 Of heavenly and terrestrial animals 127–130 Essential relation 263, 278 Eternal (qadīman) 39 Eternal by itself / eternal through another 55 Eternal recurrence 214–215 Eternal will 79–80, 82–84, 86– 89, 91, 108–109, 278, 288– 289, 324

Eternity Pre-eternity 39–67, 92–107, 143, 155, 161, 163, 165, 179, 183, 205–207, 209, 234–235, 349 Post-eternity 106, 107, 205–224 Sempiternity 56 Timeless eternity 56, 59, 65–6, 72–78, 168–169, 181, 208–210, 212–213, 284–285 Estimative faculty (wahm) 60, 68–72, 97, 98, 106, 114, 134, 140, 142, 145–147, 148, 159, 188 Falsifiability 267 First principles 7, 9, 11, 34, 37, 69, 261 Fitrah 92 Form 45–6, 186, 239, 305, 338–339 Accidental and substantial form 46 Corporeal form 188 Functionalism 281 Genera 190 Impossibility of changing genera 301–302 Habit 86, 285–287, 293–294, 299 Happiness 10–11, 33 Hādath (temporal) 43 Hadsiyāt (intuition) 262 Haqīqa (see whatness) 173 Hikmah (wisdom) 120–127, 287, 308–309, 337 Hypothetico-deduction 267

INDEX Hyle (see matter) 170 Hylomorphism 111, 180, 183 Accelerated hylomorphism 292 Identity 255, 325–326 Identity of Indiscernibles 112– 113, 116–117, 214–215 Impossibility 52, 83, 164–165, 172, 185, 189, 192–195, 254, 299–303 Induction 253, 259–264 Complete induction 262 Simple induction 262 Inertial frame 149–152 Infinite / Infinity 102 Actual infinite 92, 94–107, 141, 157, 161, 177, 179– 180, 206–207, 210–211, 214–215 Potential infinite 92, 94– 107, 167, 179, 212 Infinite regress 47–8, 50–2, 55, 106, 113, 130–131, 139–140, 187–188, 197, 256, 337 Intellect 31, 297, 307–310, 327, 335–344 Active Intellect 10–11, 341, 343 Agent Intellect (see active intellect) 265 Divine intellect 28, 190, 332–344 Eternal intellect 309 First Intellect 31–2, 231, 314–336 Heavenly Intellect 339, 341

367

Human intellect 69–70, 103, 191, 194, 282, 286– 287, 309, 337–339, 348 Immaterial intellect 314, 316, 320, 333, 335 Material intellect (see also possible intellect) 307, 338 Possible intellect 55 Potential intellect (see also possible intellect) Intromission / extramission theory (of vision) 265 Istiqrāʾ 262 Jawhar 22 Kalam Cosmological Argument 93 Karramīah 55 Knowledge 7–12, 29, 186, 189– 192, 277–279, 283, 321, 338, 347 Acquired (inferential) knowledge 7 Certain knowledge 5, 7, 12, 260, 264, 347 Demonstrative knowledge 28, 34, 348 Divine knowledge 114, 194, 199, 232, 288, 297, 332– 335 Empirical knowledge 283, 292, 352 Eternal knowledge 91, 289, 297 In relation to life and will 298–303 Metaphysical knowledge 2, 19–20, 28, 35

368

COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

Necessary knowledge 7 Of un-actualized possibles 285–290 Scientific knowledge (episteme) 120, 251–253, 260–264 Logic 2, 4, 18–20, 32, 36–37, 174, 300 Māhiyya (see also whatness) 173 Mathematics 18 Matter 41, 45–46, 170, 183– 205, 214, 217–218, 223, 234–236, 259, 263, 267, 292–293, 302, 304–308, 339–340, 352 Prime matter 55–56, 111, 170–171, 188, 318 Methodological naturalism 81, 122, 126 Miracles 247–251, 253, 259, 281, 289, 293, 295–296, 304, 349, 352 Modality 43, 52, 72, 82, 83, 122, 156, 164, 167, 190, 252, 329, 351 Temporal-frequency / statistical model of 52, 72, 164–165, 177–178, 252, 351 Motion 49, 51, 104, 178, 267, 350 And rest 109, 134, 220, 222– 224 And the moved / mobile 178, 208–209, 223–224, 231, 235, 323 Animal motion 128

Circular motion 107, 131, 231, 322 In relation to time 59–67, 73– 74, 134–136, 141–144, 153–157, 160–161, 205, 209, 211–212, 349–351 Heavenly motion 82, 102, 122, 125, 127–128, 131, 231, 233, 317–319, 321, 337 Past / future motion 98, 105 Relativity o 124, 134, 149– 153 Muḥdath (generated) 39 Multiple realizability 281, 306, 308 Multiplicity 88, 91, 114, 319, 323–325, 328–329, 344 Mujabbarāt (experience) / tajriba 262–264, 302–303, 306 Mukhaṣṣaṣ (specifier) 108–109 Murajjih (giver of preponderance) 50–51, 108, 295 Mutakallimūn 1, 4–12, 22, 29, 34–35, 110–112, 115, 121, 277–278, 298, 301, 307–308 Muʿtazilah 88, 196, 218–219 Naturalism / naturalist 248, 258–259, 266 Natural necessity 126, 237, 247–310, 347, 349 Natural science 2, 19, 126, 195, 216, 248, 251–254, 261, 276, 309, 352 Necessity 52, 54–5, 83, 172– 173, 189, 254, 328

INDEX Identity of necessity and existence for the Necessary Existent 325– 330 Distinction between purpose and 109 Of reason 87–92 Necessary concomitance 174 Necessary Existent 326, 329, 331 Necessary in itself 53–4, 84, 172–173, 175, 254 Necessary-possible 54–5 Necessary through another 84, 158, 256, 336 Nihilism 248, 270–271, 294 Occasionalism 261, 284, 323 Particulars / individuals Abstract particulars 68 God’s knowledge of 14–15, 31, 336 Human knowledge of 68, 253, 262 Prior potentiality of 171 Patient (and agent) 110, 169, 187, 200, 258 Possibility 28, 39, 51–2, 54–5, 83, 129, 158–159, 164–201, 209, 214, 254, 288, 351 And unity / plurality in the First Intellect 324–332 Possible in itself 53, 83, 161, 172–176, 180, 194, 209, 256, 283, 289, 351, Possible world 119, 125, 156, 160, 180 Best possible world 81, 116, 121, 287

369

Necessary-possible 54– 55 Truly possible 54–55, 289 Potency / potentiality 45, 105– 106, 168–172, 178, 180, 189, 192, 195–198, 209, 229–230, 234–236, 317–318, 339, 350–351 Iterated potentiality 170 Remote / proximate potency 169–170 Specific potentiality 169, 230 Plenitude 164, 177–179 Plurality And unity 313–344 Conceivability as sufficient condition of 327–328 Discernibility as a necessary condition of 113, 118 In the modality of the First Intellect and / or God 324–332 In the knowledge of the First Intellect and / or God 31, 88, 91, 114, 332–344 Power 299, 302–303 Active power 258, 268 Animate power 127–128 Divine power 111–112, 157, 159, 161, 219, 243, 298, 301 As the substrate of possibility 185–187, 198 In relation to annihilation 219–224

370

COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

In relation to natural causality 249–250, 292–293 Passive power 169–171, 258, 268 Predetermination 284 Preponderance (see Murajjih) Preserved tablet 289, 296–297 Prime mover 267 Primary concepts 34, 172, 175 Primary premises 89, 253, 262, Priority / posteriority 105, 179 Essential and temporal priority 56, 60–68, 72– 78, 143, 181, 239, 284 Of act to potency 172, 235 Prophet 11, 16, 287–288, 291, 295–296 Psychological quality 277 Quiddity (see whatness) 172– 173, 253 Regularities (empirical) 263 Regularity theory 287 Relational qualities 330 Representative realism 192, 276 Resurrection 14–15, 24, 175, 248–249 Science 22, 41, 92, 120, 253– 254, 268 Simplicity 31, 314, 320, 331– 332, 334–335 Sophism 192, 195 Soul 103, 327, 337 Animal soul 68–9, 316 Existence outside / representation in the soul 103–104, 134–136, 142–

144, 175, 189, 191, 328– 330, 333, 338, 350 Faculties of the soul (rational, imaginative, and practical) 288–289, 295, 316 Heavenly soul 319, 325 Human / rational soul 10, 68, 286 Individual soul / relation to matter or body 106– 107, 198–201, 295, 308– 309, 327 Species 82, 106, 122, 127, 129–130, 190, 239, 264, 275, 277, 327 Substance (see also jawhar) 22, 45–47, 169–170, 174, 178, 185–186, 188, 196–197, 209, 217, 220–221, 224, 230–231, 237, 239, 273–274, 295, 315, 323 Syllogism 20, 87, 262 Ta’wīl (metaphorical interpretation) 23 Taqlīd 1, 3–5, 7–9, 12, 16, 90, 92, 346 Tasdīq 4, 6–8, 16, 346 Tasawwur 4 Telos (see also cause - final cause) 110, 128 Teleology / teleological 81–82, 122 Teleological / ‘design’ argument 19 Temporal (see hādath) Theodicy 81, 110, 112, Thing / thinghood 172–176

INDEX Time And space analogy 140– 144, 146–147, 206 As the measure of motion 59–67, 74, 153, 155, 160, 205, 212, 349 As the measure of possible motion 154–155 A-series / B-series 133, 137–140, 144–145, 148, 153, 206, 281, 284–285, 296, 350 Direction of time 145–147, 351 Ontological status of time 97–98, 105–106, 134– 136, 138–139, 142–144, 153–155 Relativity of time 134, 139, 147–148 Truth As correspondence 189, 191, 286 Truth-maker 189 Truth-value 189 Unity As a condition of being 45, 186, 233, 239, 291, 315– 318, 321, 344 Divine unity 31–2, 88, 91, 228, 243, 313–315, 321, 324, 333, 343

371

True unity 313, 324–332, 344 Universal Human knowledge of 68–9, 252–254, 260–264 God’s knowledge of 31, 88, 114, 336, 343 Ontological status of 28, 183, 190–192, 338 Commensurate universal 253, 261, 306 Universal assent 88–89 Unmoved mover 267 Virtues (four types) 10 Voluntary Wahm (see estimative faculty) Whatness 173–175, 328, 351 Will Divine will 81, 108–130, 237, 243, 251, 264, 266, 269–270, 283–285, 287, 291, 295–296, 298–299, 304, 325, 352 Empirical Will 82, 84, 228, 236, 239 Eternal will 79–80, 82–91, 108–109, 288–289, 324 Free will 240 Wisdom (see hikmah) Zombie 299, 302–303