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"Not So Ridiculous" : Avicenna on the Existence of Nature (tabi'a) contra Aristotle and the Ash'arites (2019)

Dadikhuda, D. (2019). "Not So Ridiculous" : Avicenna on the Existence of Nature (tabi'a) contra Aristotle and the Ash'arites. In R. Pasnau (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy : Volume 7 (pp. 1-43). Oxford University Press.

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Julkaisun tiedot

Julkaisun kaikki tekijät tai toimittajat: Dadikhuda, Davlat

Emojulkaisu: Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy : Volume 7

Emojulkaisun toimittajat: Pasnau, Robert

ISBN: 978-0-19-884551-5

Julkaisuvuosi: 2019

Artikkelin sivunumerot: 1-43

Kirjan kokonaissivumäärä: 288

Kustantaja: Oxford University Press

Kustannuspaikka: Oxford

Julkaisumaa: Britannia

Julkaisun kieli: englanti

Julkaisun avoin saatavuus: Ei avoin

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Julkaisu on rinnakkaistallennettu (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/65462

Tiivistelmä

In this paper, I set out to explicate what I take to be a distinctive argument that Avicenna offers for the existence of nature (ṭabī ͑a) as a causal power (quwwa) in bodies (ajsām). In doing this, I first clarify the philosophical and historical context of the argument, showing that its two main targets were the Aristotelian tradition on the hand and the Ash ͑arite theological (kalām) tradition on the other. With regards to the Aristotelian tradition, which took the existence of nature as a given, I show that the shaykh departs from it in this regard for at least two reasons. The first has to do with a certain feature of how Avicenna conceptualized, consistent with the Aristotelian tradition, the hierarchical relation between the various sciences. That feature is: principles of a lower science must sometimes be proven by a higher one on the hierarchy. The second reason has to do with the influence of Avicenna’s theological contemporaries; for although such thinkers held, with the Aristotelians, that bodies display various kinds of activity or motion, they were anti-realists about any sort of powers and so of nature understood as a power. That is, they denied, against the Aristotelians, that bodies behaved in their characteristic ways in virtue of some internal power identifiable with ‘nature’ in the technical Aristotelian sense. Instead, bodies, they argued, do what they appear to be doing in virtue of a single, powerful, and transcendent being, i.e., God. Avicenna had to meet this challenge, and I show that he meets it in a unique manner - namely, by allowing, with the Ash ͑aris, the causal involvement of a transcendent being in the production some effect e from some body x, and yet still showing, against them, that e must occur in virtue of some property F in x, where F makes a real causal contribution to e’s occurrence. In this way, Avicenna attempts to establish the existence of nature qua power and thereby refute occasionalism.

YSO-asiasanat: arabialainen filosofia; metafysiikka; luonnonfilosofia; kausaliteetti

Vapaat asiasanat: nature; causality; Aristotelianism; Ashʿari theology; Avicenna

Liittyvät organisaatiot

OKM-raportointi: Kyllä

Raportointivuosi: 2019

JUFO-taso: 3