Chapter II: God's Attributes - I
A. God's Being and Attributes
We saw in Chapter IV of Part I on Causation (and in the preceding chapter of this part) that God had attributes; we also saw that these attributes are identical with God's Existence, are not additional to it, but have the status of notions(mafahim)
. These are somewhat analogous to essences in contingent existents but cannot be strictly characterized as essences since essences are finite and are not identical with the existence of contingents. In the following pages Sadra will explain the nature of divine attributes and their relationship to God's being. But before we discuss this in detail, it has to be noted that among the attributes there are those that are pure negations and those that are positive, the latter category being itself divisible into those attributes that are real or substantive(haqiqi)
and those that are relations and, as such, do not have a substantive being. The negative attributes are all reducible to the negation of contingency and, since contingency itself is negative, being privation of necessity, negative attributes come to mean negation of negation.
As for relations, these are also reducible to one single relation - the relation of sustaining all existence(qayyumiya)
, of which creation, and giving life and sustenance, etc., are all parts. This qayyumiya manifests itself in the first instance in the rise of the Breath of the Merciful(Nafas al-Rahman)
discussed in Chapter IV of Part I, and, through it, in particular contingent beings.
But it is the substantive attributes like knowledge and power which are the most important for God's nature-in-itself and which form the subject of the present discussion.
God's attributes are original and essential, whereas these attributes in contingent beings are derivative and accidental; and Sadra quotes from al-Farabi to the effect that just as in the case of existence there is the original existence which belongs to God and a derivative, contingent existence which belongs to contingents, so with attributes like knowledge and power: there is an original, essential knowledge or power which belongs to God and a derivative, accidental knowledge or power which belongs to contingents.
Sadra elaborates this by saying that since all attributes arise out of existence, which is the primordial reality, in the Necessary Existence they are necessary while in contingent existence they are contingent.
Indeed, thanks to the identity of the attributes with existence in the sense that attributes have no existence of their own which may be added externally to existence, tile principle of thetashkik
(systematic ambiguity) of existence is extended by Sadra to include attributes as well: the nature of attributes in a being is of the same order as its existence. Thus in God, who is the fullness of existence, pure and simple, underived and original, in which there is no composition(tarkib)
, attributes are identical with His existence; in a contingent, on the other hand, since its existence is derived and non-necessary and is hence subject to tile dualism of essence and existence, attributes and existence make up some kind of duality or composition. In God, knowledge, for example, is as self-necessary as His existence; in the Intelligence it is of tile order of intellect, while in the soul it is of a psychic order. It also follows that whereas in God knowledge, life, power and will are existentially identical with each other (although not conceptually, since their meanings or notions - mafahim - differ from each other), they are existentially different in contingent beings since these latter do not have fully integrated existence.
But the true method of attribution, i.e., the identification of attributes with being, is possible only when the primordiality of existence is admitted, for then existence itself will be found to contain within itself, without the addition of a new factor, all the attributes. Since most Muslim philosophers, particularly of the later period, have not held this view but have regarded existence as a secondary idea(màqul thani)
, they have believed that in God's case, different attributes are identical with each other in the sense that they mean the same - i.e., that the meaning of “knowledge” and “power,” for example, is the same - which is manifestly absurd, since each of these terms means something different or else when one has said “knowledge” one has also said “power,” “will,” etc.; or they have denied all attributes of God and totally denuded Him of positive nature. On the second view, they have held that although God has no real attributes, yet all those consequences which flow from and are attendant upon real attributes in other beings, do so, in God's case, from His sheer being.
This view is obviously sophistical and has arisen from the non-recognition of the truth that existence by itself creates in itself its attributes or properties, on the analogy of an essence which by itself generates its properties as, for example, it follows from the nature of the number “four” that it is a sum total of four units. But this state of affairs characterizes existence only when it becomes progressively fuller and fuller and simpler and simpler until absolute existence is reached in God. Lower forms of existence, always characterized by contingency and correspondent duality, cannot get rid of their attributes being additional to themselves.
Those among later philosophers who have denied attributes to God (presumably inspired by the Mùtazilite model) have argued like this. An attribute or quality needs a substance to inhere in the latter; hence, that which inheres cannot be necessary-in-itself for its necessity is derived from that wherein it inheres. This is because the aspect in which a certain thing is “receptive” of a quality is different from the aspect in which it is “productive” of that quality. Hence, if God had qualities, He would be a composite of receptivity and productivity, which is impossible in view of God's simple nature. That receptivity and productivity differ is shown by the fact that productivity sometimes occurs in something other than the agent (as, for example, when fire heats water); if the two were identical, then every agent of a quality would also be receptive of it and vice versa.
God, therefore, cannot have attributes.
Sadra's reply, taken over from Ibn Sina, is that receptivity and productivity differ from each other only in cases which are characterized by potentiality and passivity, as in the case of water being heated by fire. But, whereas water passively receives heat from fire, fire possesses heat inherently in itself and not from the outside. In the case of fire, therefore, productivity and receptivity are identical. Indeed, all necessary attributes of an essence can be said to be both “produced” by the essence and “inherent” in it as well. That is why Ibn Sina said that in all simple beings “from” and ''in,” i.e., activity and receptivity, coalesce. Now, God's attributes can be envisaged on the analogy of essences. Further, in the case of a created being, its necessary attributes are also indirectly created (not directly, since essences for Sadra are not created per se, but only through existents which are directly created), while the attributes of God, who is uncreated and original, are also uncreated.
It may, however, be objected that a simple essence has no necessary attributes which belong only to composite essences; hence, in a composite, reception and production may be different. God, being simple, therefore cannot have attributes. Sadra's reply to this objection is, first, that every composite essence has simple parts, each of which can have attributes. Secondly, and more importantly, even a composite essence has, as a whole, a simple nature and certain attributes pertain to it as such. A triangle, for instance, has the attribute that its angles amount to two right angles. Now, a triangle is a composite of several parts, but this particular attribute does not belong to parts as such but only to the simple whole. A simple nature, therefore, can have attributes. This is why Muslim Peripatetics like Ibn Sina have not shied from assigning to God cognitive forms which, according to them, are additional to His essence, without incurring the risk of attributing duality (of reception and production) to Him.
Sadra also urges that if this argument of those who deny attributes to God - viz., that attributes would become something additional to His being - is given validity, then relational attributes of God like creation, sustenance, etc., would either have to cease to be attributes or they cannot be considered additional to His being. Al-Sabzawari rejects this argument of Sadra on the ground that relations have no real being and, therefore, cannot be considered as something that is added to the subject.
But, surely, not all relations can be said to be unreal abstractions which do not affect the subject of attribution. While attributes like “being to the right of” or “being to the left of” and even “being a brother of” may be unreal in this sense, it is difficult to believe that causational attributes like “creation” can be unreal and do not affect the being of the agent. If this were true, there would be nothing corresponding in reality to terms like ''builder,” “writer,” etc.
On the question of the attributes of God, then, there are those who deny them altogether, there are those who say that God has attributes but they are additional to His being, like the properties of an essence, and finally, there are those who think that the identity of attributes with God's being means that these attributes have the same meaning. All these views are false and their falsity basically arises from the fact that they have not believed in or have not realized the full implications of the fact that existence is the sole reality and that the more perfect eixstence is, the more it has of positive attributes which are not additional to it but are it. Having criticized these views, Sadra proceeds
to give his own proof for the identity of attributes with the being of God. But the way our philosopher formulates his proof so obviously contradicts his previous statements that al-Sabzawari, in part, at least, rightly takes him to task. Sadra states that if these attributes of perfection like life, knowledge, and power are not identical with God's being but are something additional, then God's being-in-itself would be denuded of them; this means that God-with-power, for example, would be more perfect than God's being as such. So far, this argument appears sound and I do not think al-Sabzawari's criticism is quite to the point. For al-Sabzawari says that tiffs argument is petitio principii and that the opponent admits that God's being-in-itself is denuded of attributes. Sadra's point, however, is that in that case, God's being plus attributes must be admitted to be more perfect than God's being as such - since these attributes are perfections - which is not petitio principii.
But then Sadra goes on to say that if attributes are regarded as something over and above His being, this would mean that God owes His perfections to something other than Himself. This, however, blatantly contradicts what he has said in the preceding chapter in the discussion of whether God has an essence or not and what he has been saying here just before stating his own proof, viz., that it is not correct to say that all attributes involve existential plurality in a being since in simple beings and in simple essences, “being from” and “being in” are identical, as these attributes are not caused from without. It seems as though Sadra is running with the hare and hunting with the hound in the same breath. Al-Sabzawari interprets him correctly in the light of his own real doctrine by saying that something devoid of positive perfections will either have to be an essence - but God has no essence - or a being which has potentialities - and God has no potentialities to be realized. God, indeed, is pure and absolute existence and, as such, must have all attributes of perfection, not additionally to His being, but as being identical with His being; otherwise, God would not be absolute existence.
It is clear, then, that the “identity of attributes with God's being” does not mean either that only God's being is real and His attributes do not exist as those who deny His attributes - like the Mùtazilites and their followers - insist,
or that God's attributes are so like each other and with God's being that their meaning is the same, as we have pointed out earlier, but means that what is real is existence and God's existence, being absolute and most perfect, is all these attributes. God's attributes are, therefore, as necessary as His existence.
Sadra seeks to clarify this identity of attributes and existence in God on the analogy of the soul and its attributes and operations. This is because the soul has been created in the image of God upon this earth.
The soul, therefore, is a unitary, simple being while at the same time it has conceptually distinct faculties; but these faculties, while conceptually distinct, are existentially identical with each other and their identity with each other is due to the fact that they are identical with the existence of the soul. On this analogy is to be understood the unity and the multiplicity of God's being and His attributes. God, as pure existence, “eminently” contains within His absolute simplicity all the attributes but these are not distinguishable either from His being or from each other. This state of absolute simplicity is called the “stage of absolute unity(martabat alahadiya)
.” But it is also true that these attributes can be regarded as distinct both from each other and from God's being; this state is called the “stage of Godhead(martabat al-ilahiya)
.” Yet even when attributes are regarded as distinct, it must be remembered that existentially speaking, the only reality is existence; the attributes are real only notionally and conceptually.
This whole question, then, once again, boils down, for Sadra, to the fact that existence is the only original reality(al-asl)
, essences or attributes being only secondarily or derivatively or, indeed, notionally real.
Existence is all-inclusive and comprehensive, while essences are mutually exclusive. They lack the amplitude which is the basic characteristic of reality and which existence alone can possess. Infinite existence, that is, God, comprehends all, but even a finite existence can, by substantive movement, create a greater amplitude for itself while essences are always static. The reason why God's attributes cannot be called “essences” is that the term “essence” is restricted to the realm of finite existence where it attaches to existents from “the outside,” as it were. But in God's case, His attributes are original and do not come from the outside; hence the term “essence” is inappropriate. But both essences and divine attributes agree in this, viz., that both are notional anti have a derivative reality. Those philosophers for whom existence is notional and derivative anti essence is the reality must concede a plurality of separate attributes for God, since there is no existence to hold them together. But since they are reluctant to admit a plurality of gods, in order to flee from this unpalatable conclusion, they seek refuge in their dictum that all attributes of God mean the same thing, which, as we have pointed out, is absurd.
Even though God's attributes are notions(mafahim)
, they are nevertheless necessary since they belong to the Necessary Existence; thus, God's knowledge, power, and will are as necessary as His existence.
This is a necessary corollary of Sadra's argument. It seems to me, therefore, that al-Tabataba'i's remark
that this is not proved by the argument is out of place. For, if God's attributes were not necessary, they would have to be contingent and would have the same status as other essences. The tenor of Sadra's whole argument is against it. This is, indeed, the very meaning of his view that God's attributes are identical with His existence; it is in contingent beings that attributes are attached to existence as something additional. This view of the “necessity” of divine attributes is apparently different from al-Farabi's view referred to earlier by Sadra himself, which seems to say that just as all existence must end up in a necessary existence, so must all knowledge end up in a necessary knowledge, all power in a necessary power, etc.
But Sadra wants to say that divine knowledge, power, and will are necessary because they are identical with His necessary existence. Al-Tabataba'i seems to confuse the two.
B. Knowledge
We now turn to a consideration of the two most important and traditionally most widely discussed attributes of God, viz., His knowledge and His power. On God's knowledge, Sadra enumerates nine or ten views, some of which he accepts after necessary modifications, while rejecting others. He then formulates his own view - once again oil the basis of the doctrine that existence alone is real and God is pure existence. Philosophers who have put forward different views on the subject have either held that He has knowledge of things or that He has no knowledge of things other than Himself - as was stated by Aristotle - since this would introduce multiplicity in God (some have even denied all knowledge to God, including serf-knowledge, since all knowledge, for them, is a relationship which is inconceivable between a thing and its self). Sadra rejects the latter view on the ground that knowledge, being a perfection, cannot be denied to God.
Those who affirm knowledge on the part of God either hold that it is separate from His being or not. Those who hold His knowledge to be separate from Him believe that non-existents subsist(thabit)
either in external reality - as the Mùtazila hold - or in God's knowledge - as several statements of certain Sufi thinkers like Ibn Àrabi appear to indicate - or, if the “separatists” do not believe in the subsistence of non-existents, they either say that God's knowledge is identical with Platonic Forms, which have an independent existence, or that God's knowledge actually depends upon things themselves, which, as separate, distinct, and successive existents, are the objects of God's knowledge, but insofar as they are present to Him collectively and emanate from Him, constitute His knowledge. On this latter view, held by al-Suhrawardi and also accepted by al-Tusi, change, therefore, affects not God's knowledge but the objects of His knowledge. Of those who hold God's knowledge not to be separate from Him, some think that it is, nevertheless, additional to His being itself and is related to His being as properties or necessary attributes are related to an essence.
This is the view of Muslim Peripatetics like al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Those who do not think that knowledge is additional to God's being are of two varieties: some, like Porphyry, are of the belief that in God, as Intellect, there is identity of the knower and the known or the intellect and the intelligible; while some latter-day Muslim philosophers, following certain remarks of Ibn Sina about the “simple intellect,” believe that God's knowledge is simple and in its simplicity contains - and is further creatively related to - the entire multiplicity of forms and concepts.
The first target of Sadras' criticism is the view that essences subsist before their actual existence and in this state of “subsistence(thubut)
” are known by God.
This theory of subsistence is held by the Mùtazila school who believe that all non-existents are, nevertheless, “something” that can be talked about as referent of thought and hence “subsist.” This theory, Stoic in origin, was rejected both by the Ashàri school and by the Muslim philosophers.
Sadra also rejects it on the ground that essences have no reality at all unless they are invested with real, external existence and that the non-existent cannot “subsist” by itself whether this subsistence is said to be real or mental. Now, whereas the Mùtazila believe in real subsistence of non-existents, certain statements emanating, for example, from Ibn Àrabi regard essences as subsisting in God's mind (as distinguished from God's existence). Ibn 'Arabi's view, therefore, as expressed in these statements, must be rejected also. When we come to these statements, Ibn Àrabi does, indeed, hold that, prior to their actual existence, essences have a being in God's mind and are objects of His knowledge. All non-existents are said to be “seeing and seen, hearing and heard by a subsistent sight and audition.” Some are good, some bad. God does nothing except to give existence to such among them as are capable of existence by His word “be.”
Sadra, however, seeks to interpret Ibn Àrabi's statements on the basis of his own doctrine of simple existence which contains all so that Ibn Àrabi is saved from the objection that he is committed to the subsistence of nonexistents. In sum, Sadra says that these essences, before their spatio-temporal existence, exist in a simple manner as necessary consequencs of God's attributes. 24 That is to say, they have a higher existence prior to temporal existence.
The trouble, however, with this interpretation is that Ibn Àrabi does not appear to subscribe to Sadra's doctrine of simple existence and that essences arise out of the reality of this existence as such. But quite apart from this, Sadra's interpretation will not hold since Ibn Àrabi says explicitly that these subsistent essences(àyan thabita)
do not have being just in a simple manner but that each essence is distinct with its own consequences except such consequences as flow from positive existence. Nor, further, can the contents of God's attributes and their subdivisions (which Sadra insists are identical with God's simple existence) be called essences for, as Sadra explicitly states in his final treatment of the question of God's knowledge (Asfar, III, l, p. 271, line 6 ff.), essences only belong to contingent beings whose existence is finite; in the case of God, whose attributes are as infinite as His existence (even though His attributes are only notional, not real), there can be no talk of essences. How, then, can finite, strictly defined essences - which are mutually exclusive - be attributed to God's being or His attributes? This interpretation is, therefore, no more than a tour de force on Sadra's part, carried out through pious motives.
Sadra also rejects the view of those who identify God's knowledge with Platonic Forms as separate from God's being. This is because, in the traditional view of these Forms, they are posterior to God's existence and His knowledge of them. How could they, in that case, be God's eternal and primordial knowledge?
Also, since these Forms are real entities and not mental forms, the question arises with regard to them as to how they are known by God. There is, then, no escape from positing a prior knowledge on God's part of these entities.
Sadra, of course, patently accepts Platonic Forms but, as was pointed out in Chapter IV of Part I on Causation, and as will be discussed again presently in relation to his interpretation of Ibn Sina's view, he regards these Forms as the content of the first determination (i.e., the First Intelligence) of the first serf-manifestation of the Ultimate Reality termed the “Serf-unfolding Being” or the “Breath of the Merciful,” or the “Universal Intelligible Matter.”
This first serf-manifestation of God's being is existentially identical with God and only conceptually different from it. In Chapter IV of Part I referred to here, Sadra however calls this Universal Substance or Intelligible Matter - the Realm of Forms - a “contingent substance” - a kind of bridge between the Ultimate Reality and the contingent world. But this ''contingency” simply means that it is the result of a conceptual analysis; otherwise, it is existentially absolutely identical with God.
When so interpreted, Platonic Forms are identified by Sadra with the transcendental Intelligences of the Peripatetics; both cease to be, then, independent existents, separate from God and, as we shall see below when we discuss the Peripatetic doctrine of God's knowledge, they are described by Sadra as non-posterior concomitants of God's being: they are not “caused” by Him, nor do they “emanate” from Him but “are with” Him, i.e., can be conceptually distinguished from Him as His cognitive forms or attributes.
Nor does Sadra accept the traditional view that God's knowledge, in its “simplicity,” ensures knowledge of all things.
He, indeed, strongly upholds the doctrine of “simplicity” and has formulated the principle that “a simple being is all things” and he will presently invoke this very principle to give his final solution to the problem of God's knowledge.
But his basic objection to Ibn Sina, who was the first to formulate the idea of “simple knowledge” (the Scientia Simplex of the medieval Latin scholastics), is that he denies the absolute identity of the intellect and the intelligible.
The identity of the intellect and the intelligible, in turn, requires, in Sadra's view, that existence be regarded as the original reality from which the attribute of knowledge is derived as a “notional abstraction.” Hence, for Sadra, knowledge and existence are co-extensive and just as existence admits of an infinite gradation and is applied with systematic ambiguity, so is knowledge. In his doctrine of the Intellect, Sadra states and rejects the objections of al-Suhrawardi and al-Razi against Ibn Sina's idea of simple knowledge but here he states those very objections and apparently approves of them.
This is because, whereas the idea of simple knowledge is basically regarded as correct by him, the traditional formulation of it - since it is not based on the fundamental idea of the originality of existence and existence alone (and he regards the denial of the identity of the subject and object in intellection as a corollary of the denial of originality of existence) - is strongly disapproved of by him at the same time.
Sadra reports two formulations of the doctrine of God's simple knowledge. According to one version, God knows Himself and is also the principle or source of all things. Hence God knows all things. On this view, God knows all things not just because he knows Himself but because He is the Cause or Source of all things. The holders of this view contend that God's knowledge of all things means His being the source of all things. They argue that knowledge is the cause of distinction between the knowables and since God causes distinctions among things by producing them as distinct, “knowledge” and “productive cause” are equivalents.
Sadra's objection to this reasoning is that it involves the fallacy that a universal, positive proposition can be simply inverted - i.e., that the proposition “all knowledge is the cause of distinction” can be converted into “all that causes distinction is knowledge.”
According to the second version of the argument, God knows all things with their distinctive characteristics because His knowledge is creative, not receptive as is the case with our knowledge. God possesses this creative knowledge because in His self-knowledge the knowledge of everything is implicitly involved. Sadra says that if these people are asked how a simple knowledge can be conceived as a form which contains all other forms, and in which all forms are “implicitly involved,” they can give no answer.
For these philosophers, i.e., Peripatetics, have themselves defined knowledge of a thing as a “form equivalent to that thing and constitutive of its essence.” Where and how, then, do they find a form that will apply to everything?
And if one can speak of such a form at all, how will it do justice to distinct essences, while at this simple stage no essences are forthcoming?
The holders of the first version of the argument reply
to this objection by saying that just as distinctions are created by cognitive forms or concepts, so can they be produced by a cause, since a cause requires a specific effect. Now, since God's simple being is the cause of every specific existent, in that being all specific characteristics are given in a simple manner. Sadra replies
that this proof illegitimately assimilates a cause to a cognitive form like certain false analogical reasonings of jurists! A cognitive form, for example, constitutes the essence of a thing but not so its cause.
Al-Sabzawari seeks to defend their analogy against Sadra's criticism
on the basis of the principle that in the case of separate existents the “what” and the “why” are identical, hence their form and their cause are one and the same.
But Sadra's basis of criticism seems to be his view, voiced in the preceding Section of this Chapter, that attributes like power and knowledge, although existentially identical, must be conceptually distinguished, else power and knowledge would mean the same, which is absurd.
Those who maintain the version of simple knowledge as creative knowledge reply to Sadra's objection that it is the very nature of simple knowledge to create anti apply to everything and that distinctions are in the objects of knowledge not in knowledge itself. Against this Sadra urges that it is inconceivable that one single idea or concept can apply to all separate and distinct objects even though one knower or subject of knowledge may contain diverse ideas in himself.
As has been indicated at the beginning of this discussion, Sadra is a strong believer in the doctrine of simple knowledge but disagrees with Ibn Sina's statement of it which has made it vulnerable to the kind of objections stated here and which were urged by al-Suhrawardi and al-Razi. In his view the only satisfactory way to formulate the idea of God's simple, creative knowledge is to regard existence and knowledge as coextensive and to view existence as the original reality and knowledge as an “abstracted notion.” For it is existence alone which in its all-comprehensiveness can contain everything in a simple manner. Once knowledge is disengaged from existence and is viewed per se, then one must talk of so many essences, concepts and ideas as mutually exclusive units that it is impossible to reduce them to any simple unity. The only principle of unity-in-diversity is the principle of existence as it is the only veritable reality, while attributes like knowledge, power, and will are derivative realities or notions.
We now come to a consideration of the most important and most widely discussed of the historical views about God's knowledge, viz., that of Ibn Sina, who held that God's knowledge cannot derive from things since this would make Him dependent upon something other than Himself and, since there is a succession in temporal things, His knowledge would change from moment to moment. God's knowledge, therefore, is not produced by things; on the contrary, things are created by His knowledge. This instantaneous knowledge, however, is an ordered knowledge in accordance with the order of causes and effects. Thanks to this order, God knows everything - all particulars to their last details and including temporal priorities and posteriorities - even though He does not possess sense-perception. God knows, for example, that a certain solar eclipse will occur so many years, months, and days after a certain other sun-eclipse, thanks to the order of causes and effects.
The question as to how this knowledge and the forms it consists of are related to God is discussed by Ibn Sina at length. If one made these forms a part of His very being, His being would become a composite and the simplicity of His being would be destroyed. If one conceived of these forms as independently existing, they would become Platonic Forms and would be liable to the same objections as are urged against these Forms. If one held these forms not to be separate from Him as Platonic Forms but related to Him as extrinsic accidents, He would not be absolutely necessary.
Finally, one may hold that forms are in some other being, either a soul or an intellect, in such a manner that when God thinks them they come to exist in such an intellect or soul. But one must not say that the existence of these forms in this other being is one thing and their emanation from God another, for in that case, their existence, being a fact in its own right, will again require another intellect to think it and this process would go on ad infinitum. Hence, their existence in a being and their intellection by God must be one and the same fact. To say, therefore, that “these forms were intellected [i.e., by God] and therefore came into existence [i.e., in another being]” is to say that “they were intellected and were therefore intellected” or to say that “they became existent and therefore became existent.” This is because, as we have argued, their intellection and their existence are one and the same thing. Hence these forms cannot exist in a being other than God. There is, therefore, no escape from the consequence that these forms must be accepted, not as part of God's being, nor yet as His accidents, but as the necessary consequences or properties(lawazim)
of His being.
The argument is, of course, explicitly based on the premise that God's knowledge of His cognitive forms must precede actual existents, of which they are forms, and not follow these existents, for in that case God's knowledge, being derivative from things, would become contingent.
This theory of Ibn Sina was severely criticized and rejected by several philosophers after him, but Sadra defends Ibn Sina against all these critics, although he himself criticizes the theory, not perhaps so much as formulated by Ibn Sina but as elaborated by his disciples like Bahmanyar, who declared these forms to be “accidents inhering in God” and as “properties posterior to God's being(lawazim muta'akhkhira)
.” Sadra essentially refers to three criticisms of Ibn Sina's theory by Abu 'l-Barakat, al-Suhrawardi, and al-Tusi, all of whom hold that God's knowledge is directly related to things and not through prior cognitive forms. Abu 'l-Barakat urges that if the function of prior cognitive forms is to save God from being directly related to contingents or to prevent contingents from becoming eternal, then the same difficulty arises with regard to God's power as with regard to His knowledge, for God's power is also related to that over which it is power as His knowledge is related to that of which it is knowledge. In other words, just as God needs other things besides Himself to be a knower, even so He needs other things besides Himself to be a doer. But if one saves the eternity of God's knowledge by positing eternal cognitive forms, how can the eternity of His power be saved, since one apparently cannot insert forms in this case between God's power and its objects? Some people have tried to differentiate between objects of knowledge and objects of power by saying that whereas power need not have an object, knowledge must, i.e., whereas knowledge requires a real relation to its object, power does not. Sadra rejects this distinction by saying that relations in both cases are real. However, he says that what is required in both cases is not an actual, existential relation but its principle and possibility and that this requirement is satisfied by forms which are at the same time both cognitive and action-oriented and an existential object is not needed. That is to say, it is sufficient for God's knowledge and power to have a form through which He both knows what will be and intends what He will do but the existential counterpart of this form is not necessary.
But the most relentless critic of Ibn Sina and the Peripatetic tradition on this question is al-Suhrawardi, who has urged against this position several considerations, viz., that it renders God into a subject characterized by a variety of qualities or accidents that inhere in it and that it is inconceivable that a substratum is not “affected [i.e., changed]” by such qualities; that whether or not the first form contemplated by Cod precedes or follows or is simultaneous with the first external effect, God, in His own being, will not be complete cause since He needs a form to cause the first external effect; and finally, that the first form will have a dual role in giving a form to God's being and helping cause the external effect and in its former role, at least, will be an agent of God's perfection. Sadra replies to these objections point by point that qualities or attributes change or affect a subject only when the former are extrinsic to the latter, not when they necessarily arise from it as in the case of the necessary attributes of a simple essence (that is why Ibn Sina insists that in a simple being “being caused by it “anhu
”) and “being inherent in it(fihi)
,” i.e., the causational and attributional aspects, are one and the same.
The reply to the second question is that the first form necessarily precedes the first external effect, otherwise God's providence(ìnaya)
will be set at naught, as we shall see below; however, these forms being related to different contingents - non-material and material - have to be different and Ibn Sina has accepted this as the least objectionable of all the alternative modes of God's knowledge cited earlier.
Finally, there is no surprise nor harm in the dual nature of the first form since the Peripatetics themselves insist that these forms, as necessary consequences(lawazim)
of God's knowledge do not constitute His perfections which is rather the principle and source of these forms, which is God's being itself.
Indeed, the ultimate basis of such objections is that when an attribute is attached to a subject as a necessary but posterior consequence, it must be related to the subject as a contingent. But this is surely not true of necessary attributes which are inherently caused by the subject. The reason is that that subject possesses in itself that whereby it causes such an attribute.
Thus, when, for example, fire actually burns, this is an attribute which arises from the very nature of fire, which is prior to its actual burning operation. It is indeed the natural perfection of fire to be possessed of a nature from which actual burning flows as a necessary consequence, and this consequence itself does not constitute its primary perfection. That is why Ibn Sina recurrently stated that the perfection of God consists in His being such that forms flow from Him, not in the actual forms themselves. As we have repeatedly pointed out, “God's causing something” and “something being in God” have the same meaning. That is also why he unfailingly attests that the existence of these forms is not something additional to His intellection of them, nor His intellection of them something additional to their existence; both are absolutely identical.
These forms are, therefore, self-intelligible, which is very different from such contingents as display a duality of nature so that their being is only capable of being intellected and is not constituted by self-intellection. This latter kind of being has its essence as additional to its existence; and, at least through a conceptual analysis, possesses a duality which prevents it from being self-intelligible and, therefore, in such a case “being from it [i.e., its causation]” and “being in it [i.e., its reception]” are two different things.
Similar considerations are also urged against Ibn Sina by al Tusi, which are, according to Sadra, taken from al-Suhrawardi, about the relationship of these forms to the being of God; and Sadra replies in the same vein as he does against al-Suhrawardi on the basis of Ibn Sina's theory of the self-intelligibility of these forms. The question as to whether al-Tusi actually borrowed from al-Suhrawardi we shall consider below. But Sadra once again criticizes Ibn Sina for his inconsistency in holding, on the one hand, that the being and intelligibility of these forms is one and the same and, on the other, in denying the identity of the intellect and the intelligible attributed to Porphyry in his theory of knowledge. On the same basis must be understood Sadra's reply to al-Tusi's objection that these forms would produce multiplicity in God. Sadra quotes from Ibn Sina to tile effect that since these forms have an order of causal priority and posteriority, although temporal extension is eliminated, this argues for a multiplicity-in-unity.
From this point of view, this doctrine resembles Bergson's idea of “pure duration” from which serial time is eliminated but where pure order remains. I do not think, therefore, that al-Sabzawari's objection that this does not get rid of multiplicity is justified.
For pure order does not produce malignant multiplicity but either temporal sequence or logical disorder.
For Sadra, then, the real objection to Ibn Sina's theory of God's knowledge is not on the ground of there being forms or of the multiplicity of cognitive forms, nor on the ground that these forms are necessary consequences of God's being itself, but on the ground that they are described as posterior “accidents” of and as “imprinted” upon God's mind,
just as ideas are “imprinted” upon our minds when we conceive of things. The objection, then, is two-fold, viz., that these forms are mental, not existenial, and that they constitute “necessary accidents” of God's mind, posterior to the mind itself. To disprove this, Sadra brings three arguments. The first argument states that necessary attributes may be divided into three types: (l) purely subjective as e.g., “being a class” is an attribute of men; (2) existential attributes, as, e.g., being hot is an attribute of fire; (3) properties of essences, as, e.g., “being equal to two right angles” is an attribute of a triangle. Divine forms obviously cannot be of the first type.
The second type is existential and even the third type becomes existential when the essence comes to exist. God's attributes or cognitive forms, therefore, must be existential realities, veritable entities, and not mental affairs.
It is probable that the term “attribute of God” used in this context does not strictly refer to conventional attributes like knowledge, power, etc., since these, as we have seen, are only conceptual(mafahim)
. Sadra is here talking of the content of God's knowledge (which is, of course, also the content of His power and will) i.e., cognitive forms which are related to God on the one hand and to the created things on the other. But it must be admitted that even on this point his thought is not at all clear. For Sadra has already - as in Chapter IV of Part I and in the present chapter as well - identified God's cognitive forms with Platonic Forms, with the “Breath of the Merciful,” etc., and declared them to be notional (maàni
;mafhumat
, etc.). Sadra himself raises the question as to how it is possible to conceive of these forms both as veritable entities and yet in the same breath as inseparable properties of God.
The final answer he gives, as we shall see presently, is that since God is pure existence, His attributes, inasmuch as they share this absolute existence, are also existential. However, when these are regarded as separate from His being, by a kind of mental analysis, and are viewed as pure attributes, they are of the mental order of existence. On the whole, therefore, it is not really Possible to distinguish between divine attributes and their contents, thanks essentially to the mutual identity of the attributes themselves.
Sadra's second argument against the theory of these forms as “imprinted” in God's mind is that the Peripatetics' own principle that perfect knowledge of an effect can only be obtained through its cause goes against this theory. Sadra insists that this principle does not mean that an effect can be conceived (as an essence, that is) only when its cause is conceived, but that it has to do with an existential cause and effect. That is to say, this principle does not say, e.g., “whenever there is fire, it burns” but “ this is fire, hence it burns.” In other words, the principle is talking of direct existential entities, not of indirect inferential essences. Hence, these forms, as caused by God directly, are directly known as existential realities, not as mere concepts.
Al-Tabataba'i has criticized this argument on the ground that this principle does not talk about direct knowledge but only about indirect knowledge, since Peripatetics do not admit any direct knowledge except in the case of serf-knowledge.
But the principle, which comes from Aristotle, says that those things which have causes, can be known with scientific certainty or perfection only through a knowledge of these causes. This would hold good for both indirect and direct knowledge, since in the latter, the cause - the self - is directly present. Now, these cognitive forms have a cause, viz., God's being. From the human standpoint, this knowledge would be “indirect” but from God's point of view would be direct, since He Himself has caused these Forms. In either case, the knowledge of cause is essential for a perfect knowledge of these forms or attributes.
Sadra's third argument on which he lays great emphasis rests on a principle which he took directly from al-Suhrawardi. According to this principle, called “the principle of the higher possibility,” everything that exists at a lower level of being is sure proof that it exists a fortiori at a higher level, which is its cause. On this principle, it is inconceivable that what exists at a higher level as cause of the lower level shall be inferior to the latter. It is, therefore, absurd, says Sadra, that divine cognitive forms, which are the cause of the contingent world, should be only conceptual while the contingent world itself is existential, existence being perfection - indeed, the highest form of perfection.
Sadra then proceeds to amend both the Islamic Peripatetic and Islamic Platonic traditions in the light of his own thought. The former are wrong in viewing God's cognitive forms as accidents, for these are veritable existential entities, while the latter are wrong in declaring these entities to be separate from God for these, although they are existential entities, are part of God since they are, after all, His cognitive forms. If these are regarded as separate from God, a prior knowledge will be required on God's part in order to know them and this would involve a vicious regress.
Being part of God and yet being self-subsistent entities, these forms cannot be viewed as being related to God in the sense of emanating(sudur)
from Him as Ibn Sina's language suggests. They are rather to be seen as simple entities systematically differentiated among themselves in terms of the degree of existence they possess and free from contingency.
Their being systematically differentiated in terms of the degree of existence apparently means that the forms of the higher beings like the Peripatetics' Intelligences have an existential priority over other contingent beings. But, strictly speaking, according to Sadra, these cognitive forms are identical with the Platonic Forms and with the Peripatetics' Intelligences; how, then, can they exhibit differences in terms of the degree of existence? Again, Platonic Forms are numerous while the Peripatetics' Intelligences are ten in number.
Next, Sadra passes on to a consideration of al-Suhrawardi's theory - taken over, according to him, also by al-Tusi, otherwise a Peripatetic - viz., that God's knowledge (for al-Suhrawardi, indeed, all knowledge) occurs by a special illuminational relationship between God and things. This “illuminational” relationship is radically different from all other relationships which imply a difference between related things.
The prototype of this illuminational cognition in the field of perceptual knowledge for al-Suhrawardi is vision which does not occur, according to him, by rays of light emitted by the eye, as Platonists hold, or by the transmission, through light, of the form of the external object to the eye, as Aristotelians hold, but by a direct, illuminational relationship between the perceiving subject and the seen object. This relationship is explained by al-Suhrawardi as that of creation(faìliya)
and lordship(qahr)
which exist between every higher and lower form of being. This relationship of illumination and lordship exists between the soul and all its objects of knowledge, be they perceptible or imaginative and, indeed, between the soul and its own body, which is the soul's artifact. Every knower, therefore, knows its object thanks to this relationship ofishraq
(illumination) and to the extent that this relationship subsists between the two. God, therefore, knows things directly because of this relationship of ishraq and does not need any intermediate cognitive forms.
We have already seen al-Suhrawardi's detailed objections to the Peripatetics' doctrine of forms and Sadra's refutation of these objections. Here it only needs to be reiterated that for al-Suhrawardi, cognitive forms involve a receptivity which is unbecoming of God, or, indeed, of every higher being vis-à-vis the lower. Hence al-Suhrawardi opposes to this idea of receptivity Iris idea of creativity, “illuminational lordship.”
For al-Suhrawardi, therefore, knowledge is this ishraq (which also is the existence of the effect) and not any preceding cognitive forms from which the effect might come into existence. As we saw above, al-Tusi also rejects Ibn Sina's doctrine of forms in God's mind and attributes God's knowledge to, or, rather, interprets it as being the same as, God's causation of external effects. External effects, for example, the First Intelligence et al., therefore are known to God directly because He is their immediate cause or creator. Just as the soul knows such imaginative and intellective forms as it itself creates directly, not through any preceding forms, but because it is their creator, so does God know things directly because they flow from Him as His creations, not through any preceding cognitive forms.
The affinity of this view with that of al-Suhrawardi in certain essential respects is obvious: both deny Ibn Sina's cognitive forms and identify God's knowledge of things with the fact that things flow from God, i.e., a direct knowledge based upon God's creative activity. This view gives priority to God's creativity over His knowledge and, in a sense, reduces the latter to the former. Sadra's statement, however, that al-Tusi simply borrowed this view from al-Suhrawardi is doubtful.
To begin with, al-Tusi does not use the key-term of the illuminationist philosopher, ishraq. All he says is that God's knowledge of things is His creation of them and thus is direct and not mediated by forms.
This is, in a good sense, a legitimate or at least understandable development from Ibn Sina himself, particularly under the influence of al-Suhrawardi's criticism of the latter. For Ibn Sina had repeatedly said about the forms themselves, that their being contemplated by God and their existence are one and the same - thereby giving a certain priority to the knowledge aspect over the existential aspect of these forms. Al-Tusi, who is worried about forms themselves because they threaten to become accidents of God, now transfers this same view about knowledge-existence identity from forms to external effects of God and transforms knowledge-existence identity to existence-knowledge identity, thus giving a certain priority to existence over knowledge. This is not at all surprising since many other thinkers had also criticized Ibn Sina for attributing accidents to God.
Al-Tusi and al-Suhrawardi agree, then, that God's knowledge of things is the things themselves. They further agree that this direct knowledge of God is not only of universals but also of particulars and, indeed, material objects. But they disagree in the manner of God's knowledge of this latter category. For al-Suhrawardi, God's knowledge of material objects is also by way of ishraq or direct illumination. This is in conscious contradiction to Ibn Sina's view that God knows all things, even particulars, but His knowledge is by a simultaneous but ordered cognition of all the causes and their effects. Thus, for example, God knows that an eclipse of the sun A will occur so many years after an eclipse B; but this knowledge of the particular eclipses is through a general “universal” knowledge of the causal process; since God does not have sense-perception, He does not know, i.e., see these eclipses when they actually occur. This ingenious theory was devised by Ibn Sina to meet the religious demand that God know particulars as well as universals. Nevertheless, this theory still denied God a direct knowledge of particulars as particulars i.e., as objects of sense perception, since, based as it was on the causal process, it was indirect. For al-Suhrawardi, God knows all particulars thanks to direct illumination.
But here al-Tusi's view differs widely from al-Suhrawardi's. God, for him, gives rise to the First Intelligence, which is separate from Him but which He knows directly, being its creator. Further, He also knows the content of this Intelligence directly. Now, part of that content is the forms of the material world, both in its spatial and temporal dimensions. The content of the material world is divided into “here” and “there” - spatially - and present, past and future - temporally - only for a space-time bound being, e.g., man. But for the First Intelligence this cannot be the case, since for it all is “here,” no “there,” and all is “is,” no “was” or “will be.” It is just as when a reader reads a book word by word, these words exist separately for him, both spatially and temporally, but when he has the whole book “with him,” all words exist for him simultaneously and together. By the book al-Tusi appears to mean the First Intelligence. Now God, when He knows the Active Intelligence directly, being its cause, also knows directly these forms of the material objects.
There is, therefore, no need of postulating cognitive forms on God's part.
Sadra, who previously had defended Ibn Sina or, rather, his interpretation of Ibn Sina, against these two philosophers point by point, now urges several considerations against their own doctrines as outlined above. His first and most important objection is that, in their view, God, at the level of pure unity, is denied all knowledge - since these philosophers do not recognize prior cognitive forms on God's part - and that His knowledge is derived from things rather than things being derived from His prior knowledge. It is this prior knowledge that is called'inaya
(i.e., purposive plan.)
It is this plan, which has a cause-effect order, that ensures the perfection of the well-knit world system as we know it; otherwise, it will not be a system but a haphazard flow of things. Whereas most philosophers have asserted purposiveness and a sort of unconscious knowledge even of physical movements and processes, how strange that these philosophers should deny this to God!
Al-Suhrawardi claims that the relational system in this world is a replica of the system in the higher realm, but the question is whence does that system come unless it is posited in God's own nature?
Again, as we shall see in the discussion of knowledge and particularly intellective knowledge in Chapter IV of Part III, knowledge cannot be reduced to pure relation, whether this relation is described as ishraq or not.
But even supposing we accept the nature of knowledge as ishraq, i.e., as creation and consequent lordship(qahr)
, how can this relationship subsist between the perceiver and the perceived, since a perceiver does not create his object of perception in al-Suhrawardi's view? Nor does imagination create an image which, according to him, it simply perceives in the World of Images.
Further, if God knows perceptibles as perceptibles, which is claimed by al-Suhrawardi and al-Tusi (we have seen, however, that al-Tusi differs here from al-Suhrawardi for he posits forms of material things in the First Intelligence which is the object of God's knowledge in turn; but it must be admitted that sometimes he speaks as though God knows perceptibles qua perceptibles directly, cf. Asfar, I, 3, PP. 410-11, referred to in note 58 above), then God must have sense perception.
But, as we shall see in the account of sense perception in Chapter III of Part III, material objects as such cannot even become objects of sense perception for humans, let alone for God. This is because these objects - their parts being mutually exclusive - are not even present to themselves, let alone present to a percipient.
The soul, therefore, when confronted with a material object, creates a form from within itself which corresponds to but is not identical with the material object. It is this form which is known directly and the material object only indirectly and accidentally. If such be the case with us, what about God?
It is, therefore, worse than futile to attempt to compromise with the orthodox demand to an extent that would betray philosophic principles. God certainly knows all particulars, including material objects, as Ibn Sina held, but only through forms and not directly.
As we have said before, these forms, as metaphysical realities, are part of God's being and only when regarded in abstracto do they differ and become distinguishable from Him. When so regarded, they are posterior to His being as His necessary consequents. They then become mutually different and exhibit an order of priority and posteriority among themselves, as we have seen. But existentially, they are not different from Him: thus, the Intelligences of the Muslim Peripatetics, the Forms of Plato, and the Attributes of the theologians are identical with God's being - existentially, that is to say. It is this Divine Realm which is best described as ''truth-in-itself(nafs al-amr)
.”
Truths that are seen only as being applicable in this material world but are not regarded as existential realities here - for example, two and two equal four, - are existential realities in the Divine Realm which contains, in the simplicity and totality of existence, all truths. We must now turn to Sadra's final account of this existence-truth equation in the simple being of God.
Cognitive forms are, in a sense, real and in a sense they are identical with God's existence, as we have seen. They belong to that level of Godhead which is called “Divinity(martaba uluhiya)
,” where God's attributes appear. But the appearance of this level of self-manifestation itself shows that they are latent in the level of God as Absolute Existent which is called “the level of absolute unity(ahadiya)
” or “absolute unseen(ghaib al-ghaib)
.” There are two ways to prove this, a philosophic way and a Sufi way. The philosophic proof is premised on four principles. First, a simple existential reality, as we have seen, can be the subject of attribution of multiple qualities or attributes, and this is particularly true of the final differentia as has been noted in our discussion of Essence in Chapter II of Part I. This is because the differentiae are simple existents.
Secondly, the more an existent is developed and strong, the more capable it is of giving rise to multiple attributes and ideas(mafahim, ma'ani)
. This is the meaning of the principle “a simple nature in everything.”
This apparently contradicts what Sadra had said in Chapter I of Part I on Existence, viz., that essence is dysfunctionally related to existence and that the more of essence something has the less of existence it has. But “essence” strictly speaking means such notions as limit a thing and mark it off from other things by definition. The more of existence something has, the less of such limitations it can accept, for existence by itself is the principle of inclusiveness, not of exclusiveness; hence “essences” weaken when existence increases until we reach God or the Perfect Man whose nature is all-inclusive. Although even in this case attributes are only mental abstracts or notions extracted from existence, yet the capacity to yield notions in such a being is limitless. It is this unlimitedness of existence, giving rise to unlimited attributes, that lifts such a being from the realm of essences.
But thirdly, as we saw in Section C, Chapter I of this Part while discussing the principle that a simple nature must be all-inclusive, although a higher form of existence contains the lower ones, these latter do not exist in it distinctly and severally but only analytically or notionally. Hence, one cannot predicate lower forms of existence of the higher.
Although animal functions exist in man as part of his nature and vegetative functions exist in the animal, one cannot say “man is animal” or “animal is plant.” Therefore, although all existence is notionally contained in God, forms or modes of existence do not exist in Him distinctly so that lower forms of existence might be predicated of Him.
Finally, every cause contains its effects eminently in itself in accordance with the principle of “the Higher Possibility'' mentioned earlier.
Now, since all existence is present in God's simple being, it follows that when He contemplate Himself, without any duality between the subject and the object, He knows everything both simply and in detail - with all particulars - since His being is existentially simple but notionally involves an infinite multiplicity.
This notional multiplicity does not create an essence in God as it does in other beings since, as we have pointed out above, God's existence being infinite, these notions are also infinite. The mark of an essence is its finitude which marks it out from other essences, a finitude which is due to the conjunction of an essence with finite existence. It is this finitude of existence resulting in essences that is the clear sign of contingency God, on the other hand, being absolutely infinite and all-inclusive cannot be infected with contingency or essences.
Lest this proposition about essences appear a mere play of words, we shall elaborate it further to make it more intelligible. According to our third principle stated above, a lower-form function may be exhibited by a higher form of being without the corresponding essence being attributable to the higher form. Thus, man has animal functions but is not animal; animal has vegetative functions but is not plant. This is because man's existence is that of man, not of animal and animal's existence is that of animal, not of plant. An essence, properly speaking, then, belongs to a proper level of existence where it has its being. Animality may be manifested by man but man's existence does not constitute the proper being of animality as an essence whose proper being is animal alone. There is, thus, a capital difference between where an essence has its proper being and where it is simply manifested. Hence, whereas God, the most perfect and concrete existent, contains and “manifests” essences, His being is not the being of those essences.
God, then, has no essences at the level of His absolute being. But the question now is: if God possesses all forms of existence in His utter simplicity, what is the need for additionally positing so many different forms which Ibn Sina and his followers had affirmed to be His accidents (and whereby they mean Intelligences) and which Sadra has striven so hard to lift from the realm of pure contingency and make part of the Divine Realm? Sadra's answer is that, besides that simple knowledge which God possesses in His very being of all forms of existence, He must also know them in an order, i.e., as His effects. Merely to know something is not the same as knowing it as the cause of an effect or effect of a cause.
This answer seems highly dubious for, surely, if God possesses all forms, He must already possess them in an order; for it is the principle of existence which, for Sadra, orders the entire realm of being, and God, being pure existence, must possess this order in Himself as the paragon of all existence. In Section B of Chapter IV of Part I we had criticized Sadra for positing separate ideas or attributes in God's mind and we expressed there the suspicion that his motivation for doing this was to bring together diverse elements in Islamic philosophical, mystical, and theological thought. This suspicion is now further confirmed since, after positing all forms in God's being in a simple manner, there seems little need for attributing duplicate explicit forms. It appears certain that he wants to combine in one stroke the Intelligences of the philosophers, the “Essences of Contingents” of Ibn Àrabi, the Platonic Forms of the Platonists, and the angelology of the theologians. This genre of thought was much too widespread and much too firmly rooted in the diverse currents of the Islamic tradition to be simply ignored or contradicted. But it is apparently not easily compatible with Sadra's doctrine of existence and its movement through various hierarchical forms of existential reality.
But among the various Islamic thought-currents, probably the most important source of inspiration for Sadra on this subject is Ibn Àrabi. From Ibn Àrabi he takes the idea of the “descents(tanazzulat)
” of the Absolute, that at the first stage of descent - the stage of Godhead(uluhiya)
- attributes and essences appear and that these essences, although they have effects and can be spoken of(laha ahkam)
, have absolutely no share of existence. Inspired with this doctrine, Sadra then goes back to the philosophic tradition of Islam, notably to Ibn Sina and his critic, al-Suhrawardi, and interprets this whole tradition under the impact of this inspiration. This is, of course, not to say that our philosopher lacks originality - on the contrary, his doctrine of existence and constant movement of existential forms is uniquely his own, even though his source of inspiration remains Ibn Àrabi, and to a lesser extent al-Suhrawardi among post-Ibn Sina thinkers.
The second method of proving God's knowledge - the Sufi method - is in essence the same as we have seen in another context in Section B, Chapter IV of Part I. God's being, while simple and unitary existence, is nevertheless characterizable by certain attributes.
This multiplicity of attributes, their consequents, and their attendant relationships and permutations do not interfere with this simple unity since these are mere abstractions, mental in character and “have never even smelt of existence,” as Ibn 'Arabi's famous dictum has it. They are neither existent nor non-existent; existence is not their attribute nor are they attributes of existence. They simply “are there(thabit)
” as by-products of divine existence. They cannot even be said to “follow upon” existence since the phrase “follow upon'' also smacks of some kind of existence.
Now, when God knows Himself, He necessarily also knows these notional beings or essences. Hence, He knows, by the same unitary and simple act of knowledge, all the multiplicity of the world, all causes with their effects. Sadra here distinguishes three stages of God's knowledge (and indeed, His being). The first stage is that of absolute unity, of pure existence, which he calls the “stage of absolute unity” or “absolute Absence”; the second that of Godhead(uluhiya)
where distinct attributes appear and which he calls the “stage of unity” (since all attributes and essences, though distinct, share the same divine existence); the third that of Platonic Forms where every Form exists by itself and which he calls the “stage of distinction.” Here the Divine Realm ends and the material realm begins; but we must remember that these three stages or “descents” for Sadra are logical, i.e., are abstractions, for in reality there is nothing but the simple existence of God. After the last stage of the Divine Realm, we have the material world with increasingly “absolute difference.”
Notes
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Author: Dr. Fazlur Rahman
