Medieval Islamic Theology

1. Medieval Islamic Theology

2. Ibn Sina (Avicenna; 980-1037)

3. Avicenna’s Argument • Contingent: has a reason for its being • Necessary: has no reason for its being • God = the necessary being

4. Avicenna’s Argument • Suppose there were no necessary being • Everything, including the current state of the world, a, would be contingent • There would be an infinite series: • . . . . <— e <— d <— c <— b <— a • But then the conditions for a’s existence would never be satisfied • So, there is a necessary being, God

5. Al-Ghazali’s Objections • Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), The Incoherence of the Philosophers: skepticism • Why not an infinite regress of reasons or causes?

6. Infinite Regress • It’s not self-evident that the world could not extend back infinitely far • Plato, Aristotle, al-Farabi, and Avicenna thought of some things other than God as eternal • Is there an argument?

7. A Possible Argument • Imagine the series • . . . . <— b <— a • It would have to be necessary or contingent • It consists of contingent beings, so it can’t be necessary • But it doesn’t depend on anything outside itself

8. Al-Ghazali’s Reply • But the series could be necessary, even though every event in it is contingent

9. Averroes (Ibn Rushd;1126-1198)

10. Averroes • Harmonizes religion and philosophy, and refutes al-Ghazali, in The Incoherence of the Incoherence

11. Two Kinds of Causes • Efficient cause: once caused, result is independent of cause • Dependence: result continues to depend on cause— cause and effect are inseparable

12. ‘Contingent’, ‘Necessary’ • Ambiguous • Contingent = having an efficient cause = having a causal explanation OR • Contingent = depending on something else • Necessary = having no causal explanation OR • Necessary = independent, self-sufficient

13. Averroes’s Argument • The world of efficient causes: • . . . <— c <— b <— a | G1 | G2 | God

14. Leibniz (1646-1716) • Principle of Sufficient Reason: “Nothing happens without a sufficient reason.” • So the universe— the series of contingent causes— must have a sufficient reason for its existence: • Something which is its own sufficient reason for existing: God

15. Sufi Mysticism • The ideal of union with God is the driving concept of much mystical thought • The Sufism of al-Ghazali and other Islamic mystics shares this idea • A Sufi believes it possible to have direct experience of God • This is the goal of mystic practices

16. Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya (717?-801)

17. Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya • Rabi’a teaches an intensity of commitment typical of mystics • According to her, the only acceptable motivation for any act is love of God • Concern for oneself should not count • She uses sexual imagery to report her quest for contact and indeed union with God

18. First-person Knowledge • Like many Sufis, she stresses the importance of experience • We cannot understand things we have not experienced • The Sufi exalts a first-person point of view: My experience of God gives me insight into God’s nature that I can communicate only through poetry

19. Zeb-un-Nissa (1638-1702) • Zeb-un-Nissa speaks of God as the Beloved, for whom she desperately yearns • But God spurns her, only occasionally yielding glimmers of hope • God is the Hunter of her soul, the one who inspires a sort of madness unintelligible to the world but understood by all others who know the Beloved

20. Union with the Divine • Real religion, she maintains, is an internal matter, a matter of the heart • The mystical impulse transcends any particular religion, expressing what all religions share: • An unfulfilled and unfulfillable striving for knowledge of and union with the divine

21. Moth to the Flame • She uses the image of traditional Sufi poets, that of a moth drawn to a flame, who attains what it desires only at its own destruction • But she also uses images drawn from other traditions, including Plato’s allegory of the cave, to probe the depths of mystical experience