Before essence and existence: Al-Kindī's conception of being

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 297-312

  Adamson, Peter ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949906804     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2002.0043     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. See the discussion of this question in A. Cortabarria Beitia, "À partir de quelles sources étudier al-Kindi?", MIDEO 10 (1970): 83-108.
2. In what follows I shall assume that Hcombining dot belowimscombining dot belowī was in fact the author of the paraphrase and the source of its deviations from Plotinus, contrary to the earlier supposition that the paraphrase was originally by Porphyry (see, e.g., P. Thillet, "Indices Porphyriens dans la Théologie d'Aristote," in Le Néoplatonisme, Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sciences Humaines, Royaumont 9-13, Juin 1969 [Paris, 1971], 293-302,
3. For the case against Porphyry and for Hcombining dot belowimscombining dot belowī as the sole author, see F. Zimmermann, "The Origins of the So Called Theology of Aristotle," in J. Kraye et al., eds., Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts XI: Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages (London: Warburg Institute, 1986), 110-240, esp. 131-3.
4. For an update of Zimmermann's views on al-Kindī's circle, generally consonant with his conclusions in this earlier paper, see "Proclus Arabus Rides Again," Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 4 (1994): 9-51.
5. See further P. Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the "Theology of Aristotle" (London: Duckworth, 2002).
6. Because al-Kindī's works are so closely engaged with the translations he commissioned, it is important to consider those translations in any consideration of his philosophy. Often passages in the extant Arabic versions of Aristotle or the Neoplatonists provide a starting-point for understanding his philosophical works, and indeed this will be my strategy below. For a superb analysis of the translation movement under the 'Abbāsids, see D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London: Routledge, 1998); on al-Kindī's circle in particular 145-50.
7. See also G. Endress, "The Circle of al-Kindī," in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, G. Endress and R. Kruk, eds. (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1997), 43-76.
8. K. fī 'l-Falsafa al-Ūlā (On First Philosophy), 98.1-2.
9. For an argument aimed at showing that al-Kindī was the author of the Prologue to the Theology, see C. D'Ancona Costa, "Al-Kindī on the Subject Matter of the First Philosophy. Direct and Indirect Sources of 'Falsafa-l-Ūlā,' Chapter One," in Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter, J. A. Aertsen and A. Speer, eds., Miscellanea Mediaevalia (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 841-55.
10. For the Arabic text, see O. Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift über das reine Gute (Frankfurt a.M.: Minerva, 1882).
11. The best English translation currently available can be found in St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, Guagliardo et al., trans. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1996).
12. M.-Th. D'Alverny, "Anniyya-Anitas," in Mélanges offerts a Étienne Gilson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1959), 65.
13. See also R. M. Frank, "The Origin of the Arabic Philosophical Term Anniyya," Cahiers de Byrsa 6 (1956): 181-201, which argues for a Syriac derivation.
14. G. Endress, Proclus Arabus: Zwanzig Abschnitte aus der Institutio Theologica in arabischer Übersetzung (Beirut and Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1973), 80.
15. Theology of Aristotle, VIII. 125.
16. For anniyya and huwiyya as "being" in the abstract sense, see, e.g., al-Kindī, FP 117.4 [RJ 31.22] and 113.2 [RJ 27.9], respectively. For anniyyāt, "beings," see FP 97.14 [RJ 9.13]. Jolivet, incidentally, translates both terms with the French "existence." For further comment on the term anniyya, see G. Endress and D. Gutas, A Greek-Arabic Lexicon (Leiden: Brill, 1997), Fasc. 4, 428-36.
17. Cf. Proclus, Elements of Theology, Proposition 70.
18. See especially R. Taylor, "Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica and the Metaphysics of Being and Actuality," Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (1998): 241-64.
19. Plato, Republic 509b.
20. Letter on Divine Science 107,
21. Sayings of the Greek Sage I.27-28. The thrust of these passages is often that, since God is simple, He does not have a will or thought process external to His essence that He uses in creation. Thus, He creates "through being alone." See further below, n. 27.
22. This has also been suggested with regard to passage (C) in a brief remark by J. Jolviet, L'Intellect selon Kindī (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 121.
23. The same conclusion is drawn by J. Janssens, "al-Kindī's Concept of God," Ultimate Reality and Meaning 17 (1994): 7.
24. See also the analysis provided by C. D'Ancona Costa in "La doctrine de la création 'mediante intelligentia' dans le Liber de Causes et dans ses sources," Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 76 (1992): 209-33,
25. repr. in Recherches sur le Liber de Causis, Ètudes de philosophie médiévale, vol. 72. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1995).
26. For this treatise, which seems to be a storehouse of technical definitions culled largely from Greek sources, see F. Klein-Franke, "Al-Kindī's 'On Definitions and Descriptions of Things,'" Le Muséon: Revue des Études Orientales 95 (1982): 191-216.
27. From a passage in Ash'arī's Maqālāt, cited in Richard M. Frank, "The Divine Attributes According to the Teaching of Abū 'l-Hudhayl al-'Allāf," Le Muséon 82 (1969): 453.
28. Other Mu'tazilites held similar positions and, like Abū 'l-Hudhayl, juxtaposed them with a largely apophatic theology. Thus it is reported that Najjār and Dcombining dot belowirār held that God possesses the attributes "by Himself" (li-nafsihi), while Ibn Kullāb is ascribed the statement that "the attributes of God are essential to Him (li-dhātihi)." See H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 208 and 223.
29. This is often called the difference between the "is of predication" and the "is of identity." I am not focusing on the role of the verb "is" here, as has been done in scholarship on ancient philosophy, for example in discussions of Plato's Sophist. (See G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," and L. Brown, "Being in the Sophist: a Syntactical Enquiry," both in Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, G. Fine, ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 416-54 and 455-78.
30. See more generally C. Kahn, "The Greek Verb 'to Be' and the Concept of Being," Foundations of Language 2 [1966]
31. and the response by M. Matten, "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth," Phronesis 28 [1983]: 113-35.) I avoid this because of the disanalogies between verbs for "to be" in Arabic and those in Greek or English. For example there is no infinitive and no present tense copula in Arabic. Indeed it is worth emphasizing that the words al-Kindī and his translators use for "being" are exclusively nouns, even though they translate verbs. Anniyya, for example, is a noun that often translates einai, which is an infinitive.
32. See further F. Shehadi, Metaphysics in Islamic Philosophy (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982), 5-9 for discussion of the similar distinction between the "complete" and "incomplete" uses of kāna, 31ff. for the absence of the copula.
33. See also A. Ivry, Al-Kindi's Metaphysics (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1974), 120-1 and note on FP 97.13.
34. Here I am simply assuming that the distinction does not appear earlier-in Plotinus himself, for example. Others have claimed, wrongly I think, that Plotinus does distinguish existence from essence, for example K. Corrigan, "A Philosophical Precursor to the Theory of Existence and Essence in St. Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist 48 (1984): 219-40. If we were to find the distinction in al-Kindī and his translators, those who hold that the distinction is made by Plotinus might simply think of the Kindī circle texts as providing an accurate interpretation of the Enneads. (My thanks to Verity Harte for this erenic proposal.)
35. See A. M. Goichon, La Distinction de l'Essence et de l'Existence d'après Ibn Sīnā (Paris: de Brouwer, 1937), 41-4.
36. In G. Anawati, La Métaphysique du Shifā' (Paris: J. Vrin, 1978), anniyya is variously translated as "essence" and "être" depending on the context (see, e.g., 85 and 87, respectively).
37. For Ibn Sīnā's terminology here, see D'Alverny, Anniyya-Anitas, 81.
38. On the different versions of the argument, see M. Marmura, "Avicenna's 'Flying Man' in Context," Monist 69 (1986): 383-95.
39. Ibn Sīnā, Ishārāt wa 'l-tanbīhāt, vol. 3, 460.1-462.1.
40. F. Rahman, "Essence and Existence in Avicenna," Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958): 1-16.
41. For a more recent defense of the same position, see D. Burrell, "Aquinas and Islamic and Jewish Thinkers," in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, N. Kretzmann and E. Stump, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 65-70.
42. G. Vajda, French trans. "Les notes d'Avicenne sur la 'Théologie d'Aristote,'" Revue Thomiste 51 (1951): 346-406.