An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 4 by Mehdi Aminrazavi;S. H. Nasr; & mehdi aminrazavi

Author:Mehdi Aminrazavi;S. H. Nasr; & mehdi aminrazavi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

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1. Qazwīnī’s objection is based on the idea that being cannot be added to quiddities otherwise we would have to accept that quiddities exist before existence is added to them. ‘Blackness with existence’ added to it and non-existence illustrates this point: when ‘existence as added to blackness’ is removed from it, blackness (or any black object) must cease to exist rather than becoming ‘blackness without existence added to it.’ This is another way of stating the logical impossibility of existence as an accident.

2. Being is a common term (mafhūm mushtarak) among actually existing substances but not a genus or species because whereas a genus or species by definition applies only to a definite number of objects, being, as the all-inclusive reality of all things, cannot include certain things and leave out others. Such logical terms as genus and species apply to the order of thought, not the order of being.

3. The commentator Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mubārak-Shāh al-Bukhārī notes that this is ‘in contrast to the Muʿtazilites and the majority of the Ashʿarites.’

4. God is identical with His Essence because there is no distinction between His Essence and Existence. We can explain this as follows. Essence or quiddity, which I use to translate māhiyyah, is that which makes a thing what it is. Now, no finite and contingent being is completely identical with its quiddity because quiddities are by definition shared by other individual beings. Zayd’s quiddity, for instance, is ‘being human’ or simply humanity. But other individuals share the quiddity of humanity just like Zayd. Furthermore, Zayd as a human being has many accidents such as walking and laughing, which are not part of his quiddity. In other words, Zayd has certain attributes besides his quiddity. Therefore Zayd is less than his quiddity (humanity), on the one hand, because others partake of it but more than his quiddity, on the other hand, because he always co-exists with accidents outside his quiddity. While this holds true for all contingent beings, it does not for God because nothing other than God can share His quiddity. In other words, God is the only instance of His kind. Furthermore, God has no accidents because He subsists by Himself. In other words, He is necessary-by-itself (wājib bi-dhātihi). In this sense, God cannot have accidents because accidents may exist in different substances. Accidents may or may not depend for their existence on their substratum whereas in the case of God, nothing is caused by anything other than Himself. This somewhat difficult yet central doctrine of Islamic philosophy is shared by medieval Western philosophy. Thomas Aquinas advances similar proofs for the identification of God with His Essence. See his Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, Articles 3–6.

1. Literally ‘benefits’ (al-mufīd). Like the grammatical expression in Arabic ‘complete sentence’ (jumlah mufīdah), that which completes being (al-mufīd li’l-wujūd) expresses the idea of the completion of actually existing substances.

1. Despite the difficulty of Qazwīnī’s text, the issue at hand is clear enough: if God’s Being is identical

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