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SoSe 17: (Ü) Necessity and Freedom in Philosophy of the Islamic World

Peter Adamson

Comments

One of the central philosophical debates in the Islamic world concerned the concepts of necessity and possibility. Two particularly controversial, and interrelated, issues were God's necessity and the capacity of human agents to act freely. Regarding the first, a dominant philosophical conception of God (associated especially with Avicenna) made Him a "necessary existent" who cannot fail to exist, and cannot fail to create the universe. Against this, al-Ghazali and others insisted that God must be a freely acting agent, even if He does exist necessarily. Then there was the further question of whether humans are genuinely free agents: are their actions constrained by God, because all things proceed from Him necessarily, or because God decides freely what will occur instead of us, or even because God knows in advance what we will do, which makes our actions necessary? In this course we will examine contributions on these issues from both philosophers and theologians, and touch on Jewish and Christian thinkers who worked in the Islamic world. Some of the thinkers to be considered will include al-Ash'ari and his Mu'tazilite opponents; Saadia Gaon; Yahya ibn 'Adi; Avicenna; and al-Ghazali. close