The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy

Richard C. Taylor, Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317484325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

This valuable reference work synthesizes and elucidates traditional themes and issues in Islamic philosophy as well as prominent topics emerging from the last twenty years of scholarship. Written for a wide readership of students and scholars, The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy is unique in including coverage of both perennial philosophical issues in an Islamic context and also distinct concerns that emerge from Islamic religious thought. This work constitutes a substantial affirmation that Islamic philosophy is an integral part of the Western philosophical tradition.

Featuring 33 chapters, divided into seven thematic sections, this volume explores the major areas of philosophy: Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy in the Sciences, Philosophy of Mind/Epistemology, and Ethics/Politics as well as philosophical issues salient in Islamic revelation, theology, prophecy, and mysticism.

Other features include:

•A focus on both the classical and post-classical periods

•A contributing body that includes both widely respected scholars from around the world and a handful of the very best younger scholars

•"Reference" and "Further Reading" sections for each chapter and a comprehensive index for the whole volume

The result is a work that captures Islamic philosophy as philosophy. In this way it serves students and scholars of philosophy and religious studies and at the same time provides valuable essays relevant to the study of Islamic thought and theology.

Part I

Philosophical Issues in Islamic Revelation and Theology

1

God and Creation in al-RāzĪ’s Commentary on the Qurʾān

Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth

Introduction

The concept of “the creation of the world” occupies a central place in the Qurʾān and in Islamic theological discourses. Theologians studied this issue as a division of their study on the existence and attributes of God with many arguing that the world must have a first efficient cause and that this cause must be God. Muslim philosophers, on their part, studied this issue under the study of cosmology and, though they also held that the first cause is a divine power, they argued that the world is not created in time but that the process of creation is instead eternal. Muslim theologians and philosophers had a long and bitter struggle with this issue and its central questions: how and when the world originated from God. Although the theologians sought an answer from the Qurʾān, they were strongly influenced by their Christian theologian neighbours. The concept that God created the world out of nothing, ex nihilo, was extensively discussed among Middle Eastern Christian theologians, among whom the most well known in Arabic were John Philoponus and John of Damascus. H. Wolfson points out that the concept of creation ex nihilo is not mentioned in any detail either in the Bible or in the Qurʾān, though he does refer to Maccabees 7:28 where God is said to have created heaven and earth “not from something existent.” This statement was developed into the concept of “creation out of the nonexistent.” However, since the Aristotelian teaching distinguishes between the essential nonexistent (absolute nothing) and possible nonexistent (potential existent), the Church Fathers adopted the term “out of nothing” instead of “out of nonexistent” in order to emphasise that God created the world out of absolute nothing, a thought expressed in Latin in the term creatio ex nihilo (Wolfson 1976: 355–6). Muslim theologians, on the one hand, adopted the position of their Christian neighbours and produced long argumentations for creation ex nihilo, considering it as an article of faith. Muslim philosophers, on the other hand, developed the concept of the eternity of the world. In this they were following the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic teachings which were taught in many intellectual circles in Baghdad and other important cities in the Islamic Empire.

Although the concept of creation ex nihilo was deeply rooted in medieval Islam and Christianity, here we shall ask ourselves to what extent this issue influenced their perception of God or, more precisely, whether this concept was established in order to defend a certain image of God. This is a question that gripped al-Ghazālī in his book The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-Falāsifa). There he differentiated between the philosophical image of the divine produced by Ibn Sīnā and al-Farābī and the religious perception of God set out by theologians of Islam. For him, the producer of the world must forever retain certain connections to his production. He emphasises that God made the world through his eternal knowledge (‘ilm), power (qudra) and will (irāda). These three qualities produced the world with certain definite intentions and wisdom (ḥikma). This wisdom protects and guides the world through revelation. Al-Ghazālī claims that the philosophers, conversely, interpret the production of the world as a necessary process that emerged from a rational One (God) who acts through an everlasting productive nature. God, for the philosophers, is also endowed with eternal knowledge and power, such that there is no period when He was not acting and using these qualities. Thus, the world has existed for as long as God has; that is, from eternity. Al-Ghazālī argues here that the existence of the world, according to the philosophers, happened through a necessary process and as a result of God’s divine ability and knowledge. In his analysis, excluding the divine will from the process of creation distorts the relationship between God and the world and denies that creation is truly an expression of divine wisdom.

In this way, the different interpretations of the existence of the world caused a lengthy dispute between the philosophers and the theologians regarding which characteristics must be attributed to God in presenting the image of the Divinity. For the theologians, God wills, knows and has omnipotent power, and also acts wisely and in a perfect fashion. This wisdom not only creates but also protects creation through divine guidance. The philosophers, alternatively, believed that God is a rational intellect whose eternally productive action follows from his eternal contemplation of himself. According to al-Ghazālī, the philosophers hold that God’s knowledge of his production comes out of his knowledge of himself rather than any direct connection to the actual world. This connection would seem to imply that as the world changes, God changes with it.

Here we will consider these issues through the Qurʾān’s perspective and examine how some key verses convey the concept of “creation” and how this concept relates to God. This will be done through the interpretation of The Long Commentary (al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr, also called Keys to the Unknown, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb) written by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209). This choice of al-Rāzī is based on the fact that he mastered both theology and philosophy, an achievement that broadens his discussion of some key verses and demonstrates the ability of some Muslim thinkers to engage their philosophical acumen with their own religious beliefs. For the sake of clarity, it is valuable to initiate this exploration with a brief explanation of al-Rāzī’s understanding of this issue in his last work (The Higher Issues, al-Maṭālib al-‘Ālya), and how he connects it to the study of the attributes of God. This will provide some basic knowledge of his view important for understanding his discussion in the al-Tafsīr. It is also germane to mention that al-Rāzī wrote al-Maṭālib during his writing of al-Tafsīr and he died before finishing both works.

Al-Rāzī and His Conception of the Creation of the World

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, one of the most prominent scholars of Islamic Theology, was strongly influenced by philosophy and followed the footsteps of the philosophically astute theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. Born in Rayy in 1149 C.E., he died in Herat in 1207 C.E. He left a very rich corpus of philosophical and theological works that reveals influence from the works of Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037 C.E.), Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. 1168 C.E.) and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 C.E.). Eastern Studies in Metaphysics and Physics (Al-Mabāḥith al-Mashriqiyya fi ‘ilm al-Ilahiyyat wa-l-ṭabiʾiyyāt) and his last work al-Maṭālib al-‘Ālya are usually regarded as his most important philosophical works. Al-Rāzī changed his theological and philosophical views during his intellectual life and the Maṭālib is commonly considered his full and last opinion on the issues discussed here. In this work, his views are very close to the opinion of the philosophers. Moreover, he often employed many philosophical concepts explained in the Maṭālib in his great work the al-Tafsīr, one of the most detailed works on the commentary on the Qurʾān (al-Zurkān 1963: 15–25).

His discussion on the creation of the world is closely connected to his study on the attributes of God, which will assist us in understanding how the world originated from Him. Al-Rāzī ascribes to God different attributes, both positive (such as ability, knowledge and will) and negative (such as His not being subject to space, and not being incarnate). The positive attributes constitute the basis for his discussion on the creation of the world in volume four of the Maṭālib. Here I will mainly concentrate on some of the positive attributes that are connected to his concept of creation.

In the Maṭālib, al-Rāzī starts by presenting some arguments for the existence of a divine power that is necessary for the existence of the world. This divine power is, in itself, necessarily existent (wājib al-wujūd), which means it necessitates its own existence. He argues here that being necessary is describing the manner in which a thing exists, not the fact that it exists. Therefore, the necessity of existence cannot be applied to every existing thing because obviously there is a time when a given created thing ceases to exist and thereby loses the necessity of its existence. Thus, the thing can exist either by its own power or by another. If it exists by itself, then it is necessary (wājib), but when it exists by another, then it is contingent (mumkin) even if it exists eternally. Since the only entity that exists through its own power is God, al-Rāzī applies to God the term “necessary existence,” a term that is familiar in the philosophy of al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. Since God is the only being whose existence is necessary, God is therefore the source of all existence and the first cause of all things (al-Rāzī 1999: 1, 90–4).

After establishing the concept that the only giver of existence is the Necessary Existent, al-Rāzī considers the attribution of different qualities to God. He reasons that whatever is necessarily existent is consequently eternal and everlasting since God never ceases to exist. In this manner, al-Rāzī continues assigning to God many positive attributes such as power (qādir) and knowledge (‘ilm), and h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Notes on the Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Philosophical Issues in Islamic Revelation and Theology
• Part II: Logic, Language, and the Structure of Science
• Part III: Philosophy in the Natural Sciences
• Part IV: Metaphysics
• Part V: Ethics and Political Philosophy
• Part VI : Ethics and Political Philosophy
• Part VII: Philosophy, Religion, and Mysticism
• Index