The
next figure of the proponent of falsafah after Al-FÉrÉbÊ was Ibn SÊnÉ
(370-428/980-1037). He was the most prominent figure of Muslim peripatetic
philosophers, who built an elaborate and systemic philosophy. Like al-FÉrÉbÊ, Ibn
SÊnÉ’s system of philosophy can hardly be separated from Aristotle’s, yet it
does not necessarily mean that Ibn SÊnÉ is merely paraphrasing Aristotle. His
philosophy exhibits differences in emphases so that some modern thinkers have
admitted Ibn SÊnÉ’s departure from Aristotle’s thought.[1]
However,
there are some fundamental principles left without appropriation that tempted al-Ghazali
and other Muslim scholars to rebuff. In
fact, Ibn SÊnÉ’s concept of causality is embedded in his concept of God. His
concept of God, however, is the result of the reconciliation of the Qur’anic
concept of God with the Greek philosophical principles. In his concept of
causality, Ibn SÊnÉ adopted the concept of the First Cause from Greek
philosophical principles, and introduced his original concept into the realm of
Islamic thought the concept of Necessary Existence.[2]
Maintaining
the Islamic doctrine of God unity, Ibn SÊnÉ also establishes the concept of
God’s unity and simplicity. However, this concept is rather strange to Muslim
belief, for unity according to him is that God’s existence and essence is one
and simple in all respects.[3]
Thus, God’s existence is identical with His essence, for if any being whose
essence (mÉhiyah) is other than its existence; it is not the Necessary
Existence. The principle is constructed to evade any causation in God’s essence
that might risk the principle of unity.
Therefore,
the Necessary Existence has no mÉhiyah (quiddity) other than his anniya.”[4] For if God has mÉhiyah He belongs to a genus and would share the
other genus or become a part of things in some way.
Simplicity
means that God’s essence is not being composed.[5]
God cannot be composed of anything, nor divided into anything. This principle
is aimed to preclude the occurrence of multiplicity in God’s essence, since
multiplicity could render causation in God’s essence, which is impossible. If
God’s existence is necessarily uncaused, it clearly can be linked in any way to
a cause. If, on the other hand, His existence is not necessarily uncaused He
obviously cannot be considered as the Necessary Being. To support this doctrine
Ibn SÊnÉ characterizes God with some negative notion, such as that God has no
cause, neither relative, changing, multiple nor has He any associate in the
existence, which is His own. [6]
Having
established the concept of God, Ibn SÊnÉ explicates his concept of causality.
In his argument to prove God’s Existence, he introduces his most outstanding
concept of the Necessary Existent
(WÉjib al-WujËd). The doctrine is related closely to the
explanation of God-world relation in term of divine causation.
Ibn
SÊnÉ’s doctrine of Necessary Existent
(WÉjib al-WujËd) can be explicated briefly as follows:
The existence of being necessary in itself is determined based on two
principles: first, the chain of possible beings at any time cannot be
infinite; and second, this chain cannot be necessary since it consists
of possible units. Thus, it must lead to a necessary cause external to this
chain - this cause being the Necessary Existent or Being who is God.[7]
The Necessary Existent, being eternally prior in existence to everything and
the source of the existence of everything, is said to be the First Cause.[8]
There is causal dependency between the First Cause and the subsequent causes,
meaning that the contingents are dependent on or exist due to something other
than itself. The series of dependencies culminate in a Necessary Existent, who
is One.[9]
The
above division of being into necessary existence and possible existence is made
to construct the order of the natural world in emanative fashion. This is
derived from one principle of being in a way that is modeled on logical
derivation. The Necessary Existence is One from which the possible existence
emanates. Therefore, the possible existence becomes necessary by virtue of
another and the necessity of causal interaction become virtually identical with
that of logical entailment. By this principle, the entire universe is linked in
a necessary order with The First Cause.
In
order to avoid the resemblance between the Necessary and the possible existence
he posits that the principle of the series of causes is radically different
from the series itself: what in the final analysis is the cause of everything
has itself no cause. This means that there are two different types of relation
of being to existence. "Each being in its self (dhÉt), regardless
of everything else, either necessarily possesses existence in itself, or does
not. If it does, it is true by itself (haqq bi dhati-hi) and necessarily
exists by itself: this is the Ever-existent"[10]
Moreover,
Ibn SÊnÉ holds that God is the efficient as well as the final cause in the metaphysical
realm. The efficient cause, says Ibn SÊnÉ, is a cause, which bestows existence
that differs from itself.[11]
Efficient causality in terms of existence itself (bi hasb al-wujËd binafsihi)
means that everything, which is a cause of an existence that is different from itself
becomes an efficient cause.[12]
This explanation not only suggests the inclusion of the emphasis on the
otherness of cause and effect, but also the separation between efficient and
final causality.
In
the case of God with respect to the world, the term agent (al-fɑil) is
not the principle of motion as Aristotle and other natural philosophers
believed, but the principle and the bestower of existence. Thus, God is the
efficient cause who bestows the existence of the entire creatures including the
world. The final cause is the cause of the existence of other causes, and it
precedes them in mind and in existence, it is the Cause of the Causes (illat
al-‘ilal).[13]
In this definition, Ibn SÊnÉ introduces other causes, which is the cause of the
causes that ends at the final cause. In Aristotle’s theory of causality by causes,
he refers to matter and form from which all material things originate.
The
other principle of causation is drawn from the metaphysical argument of the al-ShifÉ’,
in which it is argued that all existents other than God are in themselves
only possible, meaning that in themselves they can exist or not exist. However,
since such possibles do in fact exist, there must be something outside their
nature that must had specified them with existence rather than with non-existence,
and this is their cause.[14]
Hence, the possibles must have been rendered necessarily through their causes,
and thus their existence becomes necessary through their causes. This argument
suggests that every contingent effect must have a cause. Given a contingent
existent that may exist or may not, its existence becomes necessary through its
cause, meaning that it is necessitated by its cause. In this principle the
"possible being," after it is "bound" (muta‘alliq)
to its cause, becomes "necessary" (wÉjib: also wÉjib al-wujËd
— "necessarily-existent"). Since its necessity has an external
source and it is not derived from its essence, it is
"necessarily-existent-by-the-other" (wÉjib al-wujËd li-ghayri-hi).
This implies that as long as the cause exists the effect must also exist, and
even the effect cannot be delayed after the existence of the cause. Cause and
effect coexist in time.
This
argument is brought into an ontological principle, which is found in his logic.
The ontological principle implies that two things may mutually imply the
existence of each other, one, however, being the cause of the other and as such
ontologically prior. Although the simultaneity of cause and effect belongs to
Aristotle’s causal theory (Metaphysics, 1014a 20f.), the main concern of
Ibn SÊnÉ is the essential efficient cause; that the essential cause does not
precede the effect in time like accidental causes; and that the existence of
the one can be inferred from the existence of the other.[15]
The principle, which became a point of dispute among Muslims philosophers
(theologians), is the consequences of the theory of natural causation that
causal action proceeds as the necessary consequence of the things or the
agent’s nature or essence. The application of the coexistence of cause and
effect brought about the doctrine of the world eternity. For if the eternal
agent produces the world by the necessity of his eternal essence, the effect,
the world, must be eternal. Based on the principle of essential causality Ibn
SÊnÉ affirms that the regularities in the phenomenal world are not because of
accident or coincidence but due to causal natures inherent in things.[16]
As
has been alluded above that in spite of following Aristotle, Ibn SÊnÉ builds up
his own doctrine. While Aristotle couched his philosophy based on physical
theory,[17]
Ibn SÊnÉ constructs his philosophy, including his concept of God, based on the metaphysical
as well as physical principles. In physical philosophy, or natural philosophy,
for example, cause is regarded as efficient cause or the principle of
movement, and the existence of God is demonstrated as the Prime Mover of the
universe. The Prime Mover is the only principle of a series of causes and is
not the cause of the perfection of every entity.
In
Ibn SÊnÉ’s metaphysical philosophy, cause is not regarded as the
principle of movement but the source of existence. The Necessary Existent, which
is the Prime Mover, is also the cause of perfection, either as proximate,
remote or efficient cause. Even though Ibn SÊnÉ’s account of four causes in his
DÉnish NÉma resembles Aristotle’s Physics 194b 24 – 295b 35 and
Metaphysics 1013a 24-1014b 15, he differs regarding the cause of existence. For
Aristotle the cause of existence or the cause of body (material substance) is
the form or the proximate cause, whereas for Ibn SÊnÉ the cause of every
existent is Necessary Existent, the ultimate necessary and origin of every
existent. The point that made Ibn SÊnÉ’s position differs from that of
Aristotle is his conviction that the investigation of the existence of God and
of His nature lies outside the scope of physics altogether and must be
developed within a metaphysical framework.[18]
In
consonant with his concept of God, Ibn SÊnÉ’s concept of divine causality is
the adoption of the doctrine of Neo-Platonic emanation. In his voluminous al-ShifÉ’
he elaborates the emanative and ontological system that compliment and shed
light on each other. The emanative system runs as follows: From God, the
Necessary Being, flows, through the process of emanation, the first intellect
alone. It is because from a single absolute simple entity, only one thing can
emanate (al-wÉÍid lÉ yaÎduru ‘anhu illa wÉÍid). However, the nature of
the first intellect is no longer absolutely simple since it is only possible
and its possibility has been actualized by God. The intellect then gives rise
to two entities: 1) the second intellect by virtue of the higher aspect of its
being, actuality, and 2) the first and the highest sphere by virtue of the
lower aspect of its being, its natural possibility. This dual emanatory process
continues until we reach to the lower and tenth intellect that governs the
sublunary world and is called Active Intellect, which the Muslims identify as
the Angel Gabriel.
This
theory of causality is related to his doctrine of intellect, in which heavens
are generated by a series of intellection, each Intellect actually bestowing
existence upon that which it generates. The series of intellection represented
by the hierarchy of being in the whole cosmic process ends in the Pure Being
from which every thing originated.
However,
it should not escape our attention that besides dealing with causality in the
phenomenal world or nature Ibn SÊnÉ also discusses causality in the human
action, whereby man acts "by choice" or freely. According to Ibn SÊnÉ
the principle of causation in both natural events and human action is this:
when the cause and the recipient of the action in the natural event are present,
the effect must follow. In the human action that involves technical voluntary
or appetite powers, such powers exist with the recipient of their action the
effect does not follow.[19]
The
example given for the latter is the hand moving a key. The explanation includes
an appeal to reason. If one says, “Zayd moved his hand then the key moved” our
mind will admit it; but when one says “when the key moved, Zayd moved his hand”
our mind will repel it, even though our mind knows that the movement is caused
by the movement of Zayd’s hand. This indicates that when two movements coexist
temporally, the mind assigns a priori to one and a posteriory to
the other. The mind will tell us that
the existence of the first is the cause of the existence of the second. This is
called ontological priority.[20]
This example suggests that the cause and effect coincide in time, so that the
absence of the effect gives the impression that the absence of the cause is
produced by it. In such case, the cause "precedes" the effect
logically, or "by essence" (taqaddum bi al-dhÉt). Logical
precedence also takes place in the realm of the metaphysical principles of
being that are not subject to temporal changes. Thus, the concepts of
"precedence" (taqaddum) and "retardation" (ta'akhkhur)
lie at the core of the doctrine of strict linear causality.
Ibn
SÊnÉ’s model of causality cannot be easily imported into the realm of Islamic
thought that predominantly uphold the belief that God creates the universe
freely. It is because the order described by the emanation scheme contradicts
the concept of God in the Qur’an Who has a pervasive power. It is in this point that Ibn SÊnÉ got serious
challenge from al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-RÉzi.
[1] Netton quoting De Boer stated that Ibn SÊnÉ’s concept
of God is a ‘mis-statement’ of Greek thought,
Netton, Ian Richard, Allah Transcendent, (London: Routledge, 1989),
149. Davidson says that Ibn SÊnÉ’s concept is originally his own and has gone
beyond Aristotle’s, see Herbert A Davidson, “Avicenna’s Proof
of the Existence of God as Necessarily Existent Being”, in Parviz Morewedge, Islamic
Philosophy and Theology, SUNY Press, New York ,
Albany
[2] Davidson regards Ibn Sina as the first
philosopher who employed the concept of necessary existence to prove the
existence of God. See Davidson, Herbert A, “Avicennas’s Proof of the Existence
of God as a Necessarily Existent Being”, in Islamic Philosophical Theology,
ed. Parviz Morewedge, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1979): p 169.
[3] Ibn Sina, al-NajÉt, 2d ed. MuÍy
al-DÊn Øabri al-Kurdi, (Cairo: n.p., 1936), 264-5. Ibn Sina, Al-IshÉrÉt wa
al-TanbÊhÉt, ed. SulaymÉn DunyÉ, 4 vols. vol.3, (Cairo: DÉr al-Ma‘Érif,
1958): 42-43
[4] Ibn SÊnÉ, Al-ShifÉ’, al-lÉhiyÉt, 2 vols, vol.II, edited Muhammad
YËsuf .MËsa, et al., (Cairo: U.A.R. WazÉrat al-ThaqÉfah wa al-IrshÉd
al-QuwmÊ, 1960), vol.2, 344
[5] Ibid.,
347.
[6] Ibid., vol.I, 37; cf. Al-IshÉrÉt, vol., 3, 44-45.
[7] Ibn SÊnÉ, al-NajÉt, 97-101; see also
al-IshÉrÉt wa al-TanbÊhÉt, translated by Sham Inati, Remark and Admonition,
Part One, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984):118-28.
[8] Ibn SÊnÉ, al-ShifÉ’ vol. II, 242-3.
[9] Ibn SÊnÉ, DÉnish NÉma, trans. with
critical commentary by Parviz Morewedge, in The Metaphysics of Avicena (Ibn
Sina), ch. 28, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973): 59-60.
[10]
Ibn Sina, Al-IshÉrÉt, Part.
Three, 447.
[11] Ibid,, 257.
[12] See Michael E Marmura, “The Metaphysics of
Efficient Causality in Avicenna”, in Michael E Marmura Islamic Theology and
Philosophy, (Albany: SUNY, 1984), 174.
[13] Ibn Sina, Al-ShifÉ’, al-lÉhiyÉt,
vol.I, 293-4.
[14]
Ibid.,
37-39
[15] Ibid., 1, 163-69
[16] Ibn SÊnÉ., Al-ShifÉ’, al-BurhÉn, (Demonstration) ed. AE.Afifi,
Revised edition by I.MadhkËr, (Cairo: OGIG, 1956), 95.
[17] In his account of four causes, for
example, Ibn Sina follows Aristotle’s notion of causation as it is represented
in his Physics 194 b 16 –195 b 35 and his Metaphysics
1013 a 24-1014 b 15.
[18] Ibn
Sina, Al-ShifÉ’, al-lÉhiyÉt,
vol.2, 257.
[19] Ibn SÊnÉ, Al-ShifÉ’, al-BurhÉn, 298.
[20] Ibn Sina also discusses this topic
in his DÉnish NÉma, ch. 15, 41; For further discussion see Michael Marmura,
“Avicenna on Causal Priority”, in Parviz Morewidge, Islamic Philosophy and
Mysticism, (New York, Delmar,: Caravan Books, 1981): 65-83.
