Al-Kindī and the Mu'tazila: Divine attributes, creation and freedom

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 45-77

  Adamson, Peter ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950064393     PISSN: 09574239     EISSN: 14740524     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0957423903003035     Document Type: Review

References (85)

1. On the translation movement see D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London, 1998).
2. Other useful studies include 'A. Badawī, La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe (Paris, 1968);
3. C. D'Ancona, La Casa della Sapienza (Naples, 1996);
4. G. Endress, "Die wissenschaftliche Literatur," in W. Fischer (ed.), Grundriβ der arabischen Philologie, Bd. III, Supplement (Wiesbaden, 1992);
5. F.E. Peters, Aristoteles Arabus (Leiden, 1968).
6. On the Mu'tazila generally, see H. Daiber, Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mu'ammar Ibn 'Abbād as-Sulamī, Beiruter Texte und Studien 19 (Beirut, 1975), which is wide-ranging despite its main focus on Mu'ammar;
7. A.N. Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu'tazila (Beirut, 1956);
8. H.A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, 1976); as well as numerous studies by R.M. Frank cited throughout in what follows.
9. See G. Endress, "The circle of al-Kindī," in G. Endress and R. Kruk (eds.), The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism (Leiden, 1997), pp. 43-76.
10. Al-Kindī, Rasā'il al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, edited by M.'A.H. Abū Rīda, vols. 1-2 (Cairo, 1950, 1953), pp. 28-31.
11. In R. Walzer, Greek into Arabic (Oxford, 1962), pp. 175-205.
12. J. Jolivet, L'intellect selon Kindī (Leiden, 1971), p. 156.
13. "Al-Kindi and the Mu'tazilah: a reevaluation," in Al-Kindi's Metaphysics (Albany, 1974), pp. 22-34. Ivry's treatment begins with a useful summary of Walzer's and Ab̄ Rīda's interpretations.
14. Ivry's view finds favor with H. Wiesener in The Cosmology of al-Kindi (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1993), p. 30: seeing the Mu'tazila as "rivals," al-Kindī "acknowledged the differences in method and overlapping of subject matter between philosophy and Mu'etazilite kalām, and he took the side of philosophy."
15. I.R. Netton, in "Al-Kindī: the watcher at the gate," in Allāh Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (London, 1989), pp. 45-98, also takes a middle view, adding to the debate by pointing out that al-Kindī's understanding of God's oneness (tawh{dot below}īd) looks Mu'tazilite in inspiration. On this see below, section I.
16. See Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, edited by G. Flügel (Leipzig, 1871-2), pp. 256.4, 8-9, and 259.18-19 for these three titles.
17. Ahmad Hasnawi has pointed out that another title indicates that al-Kindī responded to a claim made by Abū al-Hudhayl: Fī al-radd 'alā man za'ama anna li-al-ajrām fī huwiyyihā fī al-jaww tawaqqufāt (On the refutation of those who claim that there are moments of rest in the falling of bodies through the air), in Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, p. 259.16-17.
18. See Hasnawi's entry on al-Kindī in L'encyclopédie philosophique universelle, general editor A. Jacob, vol. III: Les œuvres philosophiques, volume edited by J. F. Mattéi (Paris, 1992), pp. 655-7.
19. This was mentioned previously by Ivry, Al-Kindi's Metaphysics, p. 50, footnote 52
20. and F. Klein-Franke in "Al-Kindī," History of Islamic Philosophy (London, 1996), 169.
21. The Mu'tazilites Hafs{dot below} al-Fard and Mu'ammar ibn 'Abbād both wrote works by the title Fī al-istit{dot below}ā'a: see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. V, pp. 252 and 254.
22. M. Marmura and J. Rist, "Al-Kindī's discussion of divine existence and oneness," Mediaeval Studies, 25 (1963): 338-54;
23. C. D'Ancona Costa, "Aristotele e Plotino nella dottrina di al-Kindī sul primo principio," Documenti e Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale, 3 (1992): 363-422;
24. J. Janssens, "Al-Kindī's concept of God," Ultimate Reality and Meaning, 17 (1994): 4-16.
25. The entire argument has been summarized by Marmura and Rist, "Al-Kindīs discussion of divine existence," pp. 339-46.
26. For the de Causis see C. D'Ancona Costa, Recherches sur le Liber de Causis, Études de philosophie médiévale, vol. 72 (Paris, 1995).
27. For Opinions of the Philosophers see U. Rudolph, Die Doxographie des Pseudo-Ammonios: ein Beitrag zur neuplatonischen Überlieferung im Islam (Stuttgart, 1989).
28. See e.g. Daiber, Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mu'ammar, p. 134;
29. Netton, "Al-Kindī: the watcher at the gate," pp. 57-8;
30. Janssens, "Al-Kindī's concept of God," p. 14.
31. Al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-Milal wa al-nih{dot below}al, edited by 'A. al-Wakīl in two volumes (Cairo, 1968), p. 46.12-13.
32. See further Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu'tazila, pp. 49-50.
33. Sometimes the word ma'ānī is used instead, but without suggesting that the properties are essential. See R.M. Frank, "Al-ma'nà: Some reflections on the technical meaning of the term in the Kalām and its use in the physics of Mu'ammar," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 87 (1967): 248-59, at p. 249.
34. Al-Ash'arī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn wa ikhtilāf al-mus{dot below}allīn, edited by H. Ritter, Bibliotheca Islamica 1a-b (1929), 345.6ff [VE XVII.13].
35. On D{dot below}irār see J. van Ess, "D{dot below}irār b. 'Amr und die 'Cahmiyya': Biographie einer vergessenen Schule," Der Islam, 43 (1967): 241-79
36. While one might make an exception in the case of Mu'ammar, he seems to me an exception that proves the rule. He distinguishes between the properties of a thing, which he calls ma'ānī, and the "nature" (ta{dot below}b') of the thing, which might be thought to constitute a division between accidents and essence (see the critique of Wolfson's comparison of Mu'ammar's view to Aristotle in Frank, "Al-ma'nà). But in fact the "nature" does not constitute a separate class of attributes or properties: rather it is the cause or source of those properties. See al-Khayyāt{dot below}, Kitāb al-Intis{dot below}ār, edited by A. Nader (Beirut, 1957), p. 45.22-24: "Know that Mu'ammar maintained that the forms (hay'āt) of bodies are a natural act (fi'l) from the bodies, in the sense that God formed them in such a way that they would naturally make (taf'alu) their forms."
37. R.M. Frank, "The divine attributes according to the teaching of Abū 'l-Hudhayl al-'Allāf," Le Muséon: Revue des études orientales, 82 (1969): 451-506, at p. 464.
38. Al-Ash'arī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 177.14-15 [VE XXI.62].
39. Here it is relevant to note that Ibn oazm seems to have known FP under the title Kitāb al-tawh{dot below}id: see H. Daiber, "Die Kritik des Ibn H{dot below}azm an Kindīs Metaphysik," Der Islam, 63 (1986): 284-302, at p. 287 note 29.
40. This argument is similar to Plato's argument for the Forms, which are supposed to exclude their contraries, unlike the sensible particulars that participate in the Forms. Interestingly al-Kindī's view seems to reverse what we find in texts produced in his own circle of translators: the Theology of Aristotle seeks to guarantee divine transcendence by asserting that God, rather than creatures, is both F and not-F. See my The Arabic Plotinus, chapter 5.
41. Cf. W. Heinrichs, "On the genesis of the Haqīqa-Majāz dichotomy," Studia Islamica, 59 (1984): 111-40.
42. Jahm may even have been a source for al-Kindī's On the True Agent, because he too held that God alone acts "fī al-h{dot below}aqīqa," while humans only act " 'alā al-majāz (Al-Ash'arī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn, 279.3-5 [VE XIV.6]).
43. For general discussion of the issue see J. van Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des 'Ad{dot below}udaddīn al-Īcī (Wiesbaden, 1966), pp. 191ff;
44. R.M. Frank, "Remarks on the early development of the Kalam," Atti del Terzo Congresso di Studi Arabi e Islamici (Napoli, 1967), pp. 315-29, especially at pp. 324-5;
45. R.M. Frank, "Al-Ma'dūm wal-Mawjūd: the non-existent, the existent, and the possible in the teaching of Abū Hāshim and his followers," MIDEO, 14 (1980): 185-209;
46. F. Klein-Franke, "The non-existent is a thing," Le Muséon, 107 (1994): 375-90.
47. On the related discussion of "thingness" and the relation between shay' and wujūd in Avicenna, see T.-A. Druart, "Shay' or Res as concomitant of 'being' in Avicenna," Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale, 12 (2001): 125-42
48. and R. Wisnovsky, "Notes on Avicenna's concept of thingness (shay'iyya)," Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 10 (2000): 181-221.
49. Al-Khayyāt{dot below}, Kitāb al-Intis{dot below}ār, 16.2-10.
50. See Frank, "Al-Ma'dūm wal-Mawjūd," p. 190: "al-Shah{dot below}h{dot below}ām was solely concerned with the question of the possible."
51. For this treatise see F. Klein-Franke, "Al-Kindī's 'On Definitions and Descriptions of Things'," Le Muséon: Revue des etudes orientales, 95 (1982): 191-216;
52. also M. Allard, "L'Épître de Kindī sur les Definitions," Bulletin d'études orientales de l'Institut français de Damas, 25 (1972): 47-83.
53. Less easily available but extremely useful is T. Frank, Al-Kindī's "Book of Definitions": its Place in Arabic Definition Literature (unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1975), which traces the sources of many of the definitions. In what follows I will refer to the work simply as On Definitions. See below, footnote 87, for the authenticity of this work.
54. R. fī kammiyyat Kutub Arist{dot below}ūt{dot below}ālīs wa mā yuh{dot below}tāju ilayhi fī tah{dot below}s{dot below}īl al-falsafa (On the Quantity of the Books of Aristotle and What is Required for the Attainment of Philosophy), al-Kindī, Rasā'il al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, 363-84.
55. An earlier edition, with a translation into Italian, is M. Guidi and R. Walzer, Uno Scritto Introduttivo allo Studio di Aristotele (Rome, 1940).
56. Walzer, Greek into Arabic, pp. 177ff.
57. On this terminology see my "Before essence and existence: Al-Kindī's conception of being," The Journal of the History of Philosophy, 40 (2002): 297-312, at p. 300.
58. See Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World, translated by C. Wildberg (London, 1987).
59. See H.A. Davidson, "John Philoponus as a source of medieval, Islamic and Jewish proofs of creation," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89 (1969): 357-91.
60. I follow Abū Rīda in understanding l-y-s as a noun (see his footnote 8 on page 375) rather than a verb, and reading mukhāt{dot below}lab ("is spoken to") rather than mukhāt{dot below}ib ("is speaking"). Jolivet, L'intellect selon Kindī, p. 107 footnote 5, also agrees with this reading.
61. and the Spanish translation in R.R. Guerrero and E.T. Poveda, Obras Filosoficas de al-Kindī (Madrid, 1986). Guidi and Walzer render it: "Iddio non rivolge la parola direttamente ad alcuno" (reading mukhāt{dot below}ib, evidently), and Guerrero and Poveda translate: "aqui se interpola a lo que no tiene capacidad de ser interpelado."
62. and Guidi and Walzer, Uno Scritto Introduttivo, p. 388.
63. Kitāb fī al-ibāna 'an al-'illa al-fā'ila al-qarība li-al-kawn wa al-fasād (On the Explanation of the Proximate, Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption), 244-261 [RJ 177-199], at 257.10 [RJ 195.6-7].
64. The basis of my interpretation of this sentence as a reference to the actualization of possibilities is the word ikhrāj. Al-Kindī uses the verb kharaja as a technical term, meaning to emerge [into actuality]." See for example al-Kindī, Rasā'il al-Kindī alfalsafiyya, 246.4-5 [RJ 179.14-15], 250.4, 8 [RJ 185.9, 12], 251.13, 17 [RJ 187.11, 14], 268.18.
65. The same verb is used for creation in the passage we studied from On the Quantity of Aristotle's Books, at p. 375.13.
66. The situation may be more complicated still, given that there is some evidence that the Mu'tazila (especially al-Naz{dot below}z{dot below}ām) themselves drew on Philoponus' Against Aristotle in their arguments against the eternity of the world. See Davidson, "John Philoponus," pp. 375-6, 379.
67. On this see D. Gimaret, Théories de l'acte humain en théologie musulmane (Paris, 1980).
68. Al-Khayyāt{dot below}, Kitāb al-Intis̄ār, 98.4-5, excludes him from the Mu'tazila in part for the same reason.
69. See the discussion of this argument in Gimaret, Théories de l'acte humain, pp. 252ff. Sometimes the argument is made without reference to divine justice: it is simply incoherent to imagine a command being given to an agent who cannot freely follow the command. See below for al-Kindī's acceptance of this claim.
70. Reading khawāt{dot below}ir, with Klein-Franke, "Al-Kindī's 'On Definitions and Descriptions of Things'," p. 211 (number 22)
71. and Frank, Al-Kindīs "Book of Definitions", p. 81. See just below for al-Kindī's definition of khāt{dot below}ir, which is a second stage after conceiving a "thought (sānih{dot below})." The contrast seems to be between an idle thought and an actual tendency towards doing something. For instance, one sees an apple, and becomes aware that one could eat the apple, which is a "thought." Only then does one form the further "inclination" actually to eat the apple. Then one "deliberates" about whether to follow this inclination, or a rival inclination not to eat the apple.
72. The use of this term may correspond to khrēsis in his Greek source, if Frank, Al-Kindī's "Book of Definitions", p. 58, is right in seeing John of Damascus as that source.
73. Perhaps al-Kindī means that my own choices eventually lead to my own decisions, which then cause further choices: a circular explanation, but is it deterministic? Presumably our thoughts and inclinations are frequently caused by an external factor: my thought that I might eat an apple is occasioned by seeing an apple, the thought causes an inclination to eat it, which causes the volition to eat it. One might think that my volition will be undetermined as long as my decision stems from a prior volition of my own (e.g. my prior resolution to eat more apples), but of course this is only the case if that volition itself was undetermined. What is needed to avoid determinism is the claim that sometimes volitions happen without being caused at all, but al-Kindī seems to deny precisely that in his definitions. I here speak of determinism as including the claim that causes necessitate their effects, since al-Kindī seems to conceive of causes in this way, as will become clear in the cosmological context explored below. This should not be taken to imply that al-Kindī is a logical determinist, however: I believe he would accept that unactualized actions are logically only possible, though it is causally necessitated that an alternative action is chosen. On this see the discussion of modality in the final section of my "Abū Ma'shar, al-Kindī and the philosophical defense of astrology," Recherches de philosophie et théologie médiévale, 69 (2002): 245-70.
74. Frank, Al-Kindī's "Book of Definitions", claims that al-Kindī's definitions on this topic are based ultimately on the Expositio fidei of John of Damascus (whereas Klein-Franke, "Al-Kindī's 'On Definitions and Descriptions of Things'," p. 202, compares the first definition of ikhtiyār to a passage in Andronicus of Rhodes). I cannot assess this claim here, and will say only that Frank seems right at least in finding a structural similarity between the two accounts.
75. F. Rosenthal, Ah{dot below}mad b. at{dot below}-T{dot below}ayyib as-Sharakhsī (New Haven, 1943), p. 134;
76. J. van Ess, Frühe mu'tazilitische Häresiographie (Beirut, 1971), 96.14-15 of the Arabic edition. Al-Nāshi' was slightly later than al-Kindī.
77. See above, footnote 59. The relevance of al-Kindī's astrological works for his views on freedom is noted in T.-A. Druart, "Al-Kindī's ethics," Review of Metaphysics, 47 (1993): 329-57, at pp. 344-7.
78. F. Jadaane, in his L'influence du stoïcisme sur la pensée musulmane (Beirut, 1968), p. 200, claims that for al-Kindī human acts are unfree because of the stars' influence.
79. R.M. Frank, "The autonomy of the human agent in 'Abd al-Jabbār," Le Muséon, 95 (1982): 323-55.
80. See van Ess, "D{dot below}irār b. 'Amr und die 'Cahmiyya'," pp. 270ff., and passages translated as VE XV.12-15. The incompatibilism of the Mu'tazila is displayed in their attacks on what they saw as the determinism of D{dot below}irār.
81. Here I should address two possible objections to my interpretation: (1) there is no reason to think that al-Kindī is in fact consistent across his corpus, because he was simply drawing on Greek sources and these may have been inconsistent with one another; and (2) I have depended heavily on On Definitions, which may not be authentic. In response to (1) I may refer the reader to my discussion of this problem in The Arabic Plotinus, Appendix section 1. Briefly, I hold that al-Kindī was for the most part trying to be consistent and was not slavishly dependent on his sources. All else being equal, interpretations that show him to have achieved consistency are likely to be historically correct as well as philosophically satisfactory. Regarding (2), the authenticity of On Definitions, this has been thrown into doubt by D. Gimaret in his introduction to the text and translation of the work in Al-Kindī, Cinq Épitres (Paris, 1976), pp. 8-13.
82. After producing some indications of inauthenticity, such as the fact that it is not mentioned in later lists of the Kindian corpus like the one in the Fihrist, Gimaret concludes that its authenticity "n'est rien moins que certaine." I believe on the contrary that the work is almost certainly authentic, though we cannot rule out that some definitions were inserted by later authors. This is suggested by numerous parallels between On Definitions and the rest of the Kindian corpus. Some of these parallels are mentioned by Gimaret. Here I would add only that the distinctive inclusion of "nature" in the Plotinian hierarchy (to yield "First Cause, Intellect, Soul, Nature") represented in the first four definitions is paralleled not only in the Prologue to the Theology of Aristotle, which I believe to have been written by al-Kindī, but also in his Sayings of Socrates (Alfāz{dot below} Suqrāt{dot below}) edited by M. Fakhry, "Al-Kindī wa 'l-Suqrāt{dot below}," al-Abh{dot below}āth, 16 (1936): 23-34, at p. 30.18-19.
83. (On the Plotinian origin of this sequence in On Definitions, see Klein-Franke, "Al-Kindīs 'On Definitions and Descriptions of Things'," p. 199.) What are we to make of the unusual features of the transmission of On Definitions, namely its absence from the Arabic bibliographies and its lack of an introductory section addressed to al-Kindī's sponsor? (Both are mentioned by Gimaret, though he is incorrect to say that all other epistles by al-Kindī have been transmitted with these adulatory introductions: for example, neither On the True Agent nor the aforementioned Sayings of Socrates have them). A possible explanation is that On Definitions was not a formal epistle or treatise by al-Kindī but was intended as a tool to be used in constructing those epistles, and also for consultation by his translators or students. At any rate I think we may include On Definitions in the Kindian corpus: it contains much that al-Kindī repeats elsewhere and nothing he could not have written. It should certainly be used with caution if it is the sole evidence for al-Kindī's view on a particular topic, but in this case my interpretation also draws on al-Kindī's cosmological works.
84. See Daiber, "Die Kritik des Ibn H{dot below}azm an Kindīs Metaphysik," pp. 286-7.
85. See R.M. Frank, Creation and the Cosmic System: al-Ghazālī & Avicenna (Heidelberg, 1992), p. 22.