Chapter I: God's Nature
A. Proof of God's Existence
Sadra states that proofs given traditionally for God's existence are many, since ''ways to God are multiple”; yet all these proofs are limited in their value, for they seek to prove God by something other than God. Now God, being the Ground of all else, cannot strictly be “proved” by all else, but is Himself the proof for all else. God has to be His own proof, or else He cannot be literally “proved.” We shall first state Sadra's own proof and then pass on to his criticism of other proofs given by philosophers, theologians, and physicists or natural philosophers.
We have seen in the early chapters of Part I that Existence is the only reality. Hence existence and reality are commensurate and identical. Existence is that unique and all-comprehensive reality outside of which there is nothing.
Even essences which in themselves are negative, acquire some sort of semi-reality by being “sucked into” existence.
Existence as such, being positive, powerful, titanic in its grasp, is therefore incapable of being negated or denied. Al-Tabataba'i, Sadra's contemporary commentator, rightly points out that if reality were to be altogether denied, this denial would itself have to offer itself as reality and assume existential nature.
Therefore, existence, by definition, cannot be negated. It should be borne in mind, first, that we are not talking here of existence as a concept(mafhum)
but of being or reality as such. Secondly, as al-Sabzawari points out, we are not talking of a particular being or existent but of existence as an open nature or reality(tabi'a mursala)
. Now this open reality which is existence is God in its absolute and “simple” form. God is not, therefore, to be searched for beyond the realm of existence but is rather to be found in it as its absolute ground: “God is His own Witness,” as the Qur'an puts it.
This proof is, of course, based on the principle of tashkik or systematic ambiguity of existence. We recall from Chapter I of Part I that existence, while being one, is also many. Further, existence does not have two aspects, one by virtue of which it is one and the other by virtue of which it is many, but is one simple reality which by virtue of its being one is many. Only existence has this characteristic basically, which is also shared by movement and time derivatively, but the latter are, in a sense, not real. Now, many people deny, since it is difficult for them to conceive, something that is intrinsically and in the same breath one and many, perfect and imperfect, absolute and relative. The trouble is that these people conceive of existence as an essence, i.e., as a concept which uniformly and unequivocally applies to all members of a class or species, e.g., every man is man, no less and no more. But essences are, in their very nature, different from existence. Essences are strictly definable, existence is not; essences are, therefore, divisive of reality into classes and categories like man, animal, plant, substance, accident, etc., while existence unites and holds all these in its simple and all-inclusive grasp and is yet capable of differences.
Its contents are the same, yet, by virtue of being the same, diverse - so diverse, in fact, that each entity is unique. The unity of all existents, therefore, is a different kind of unity from that given by essences and so is the case of difference.
1-Suhrawardi from whom Sadra adopted the idea of a hierarchical order of being, i.e., the idea of “perfect and imperfect” or “more and less” and, by adding to it his principle of substantive movement, constructed his peculiar concept of tashkik, had also answered this question on similar lines. But for the Illuminationist philosopher, only essence was real, not existence, which he declared to be a purely mental abstraction. Within a single essence, al-Suhrawardi had endeavored to find differences; indeed, for him, a man can be more of a man or less of a man.
Sadra criticizes him for this, since an essence as such is incapable of such differentiation, being static and closed.
Only existence is not static and closed; it moves incessantly and is always open. It is because of this that only existence is capable of tashkik or systematic ambiguity: it is universal, yet unique in each instance. Hence existence can never become a real universal like an essence.
Let us now turn to Sadra's criticism of other proofs of God's existence.
The best and most important of these arguments is that based on contingency and the causation of the contingent by the Necessary Being, employed by Ibn Sina and other philosophers after him. Sadra discusses and criticizes it at length. The other two arguments, that of the theologians based on temporal causation or origination and that of the natural philoso phers based on movement are, in a sense, special forms of the philosophical argument. But these two arguments, while they suffer from the limitations, of the philosophical argument, are liable to an additional objection which is fatal. This is because, by treating causation horizontally and not verti cally, as does the philosophical argument, they cannot prove that the world-series had a temporal beginning. But Sadra restates them on the basis of his doctrine of substantive movement so that temporal change is interpreted as substantive change and, in fact, Sadra himself has principally used this argument to prove that the world is not eternal, because at no two moments is it the same.
The argument from contingency states that a contingent existent cannot exist by itself - since contingency means “hanging in the balance between existence and non-existence” - and, therefore, needs a cause which should tilt this balance towards existence. But this series of causes cannot regress ad infinitum and so we must reach a cause which exists by itself and does not need another cause. Sadra has two criticisms to make of this argument. The first is that it does not proceed from and is not based upon existence as reality but existence as a concept(mafhum)
: The concept “existence” is inspected and analyzed into two kinds, viz., contingent and necessary. Sadra has launched this attack on the philosophers in different contexts. In his criticism of their logical division of essences, as we have seen in Chapter I of Part I, they are accused of holding that an essence is either necessary-by-itself or possible-by-itself or impossible-by-itself, and that that which is necessary-by-itself is God. But then the philosophers discover that neither God has an essence, nor can an essence require its own existence.
Sadra's second and more basic criticism is that the causal argument simply brings in God to terminate the infinite regress and that, therefore, the value of this argument to prove God's existence is inferential and indirect at best.
Starting from the contingent, they find it necessary to come to some necessary being which may be God! Thus, God, who is the Cause and Ground of all things, becomes, in this argument, their effect or consequence. In order to avoid recourse to an infinite causal regress, some philosophers say that their argument does not necessarily assume a contingent but some being: if this being is necessary, well and good, if it is contingent, then the argument from regress applies. But this simply means that there is some being, either necessary or contingent, and this is far from proving the existence of God. Or, they say that part of the concept of existence is necessary existence and hence when we have said “existence,” we have implied necessary existence, or God. These people also have to admit that they are not talking about God, the most real existent, but about some necessary being, and that this argument (like Descartes' ontological argument, where a transition is also required from the concept to reality) is at best only inferential: whereas in actuality, God implies the world, in this argument the world implies God, and that too in a somewhat dubious manner, since to talk of some necessary being is hardly to talk of God.
Al-Suhrawardi attempted to reformulate this argument so as to avoid the idea of an infinite regress. His reformulation states that all contingents, taken together, whether finite or infinite, can be treated as a single contingent. Now, this contingent-as-a-whole can either be self-caused or caused by one of its parts or caused from the outside. Since the first two alternatives are impossible, the third, viz., its causation from the outside - by the Necessary Being - is established. Sadra rejects this argument on the ground that a “whole” of this kind has no reality over and above its individual parts. The argument, therefore, cannot avoid involving infinite regress, as it seeks to do, and ends up by begging the question.
For a more detailed discussion of this point, viz., whether a series can be said to cause itself or can be caused by a part thereof and Sadra's refutation of this argument, see his treatment of an infinity of a causal regress in Chapter III of Part I.
B. God as Pure Existence
Now that God's existence has been proved by the very nature of existence itself, it remains to be shown that God's nature is pure existence without there being any essence in it. It should be noted at the outset that Sadra's statements on this point, as they appear in Asfar I and Asfar III, seem at first sight to be inconsistent. In his first treatment of the subject in Asfar I, Sadra supports the common philosophic thesis that God cannot have an essence because this would introduce a duality into God's nature, which would mean that God's existence is caused by His essence and is hence contingent. In Asfar III, on the other hand, he rejects this argument as inadequate and seems to hold that some manner of essence - i.e., as a “subjective” or derivative idea(mafhum)
of divine Attributes - is not incompatible with God being Pure Existence. As we saw in the last section of Chapter IV of Part I, while discussing higher causation, Sadra does contend, following Ibn 'Arabi, that God's Being cannot be denuded of Attributes altogether, even though these latter are to be regarded only as “subjective” and secondary or derivative, like all essences, (see pp. 87-90 above) except that divine Attributes are not contingent as are essences of created things. For contingency characterizes only finite and closed essences, while God's Attributes, being infinite and interpenetrating, cannot be strictly called essences and cannot be contingent (see p. 90 above).
This apparent contradiction in the treatment of this important subject is to be resolved, it seems, on the ground that in the earlier part Sadra is taking essence as something real (as was done generally by philosophers before him) and hence as co-ordinate with existence. At this level of discussion, essence has to be rejected since it would endanger the necessity and originality of God's existence. In this earlier part, therefore, Sadra's concern is to show the unreality of essence over against existence, which is the sole objective reality. Having done this, Sadra proceeds in the latter part to reaffirm essence as divine Attributes with some sort of reality as ideas or mental entities(mafahim)
and rejects the argument which was the stock-in-trade of the philosophers for a total denial of divine essence. We shall now follow Sadra's analysis of the subject as he develops it.
There are several arguments to prove that God is pure existence without an additional essence, but the most important is the following. If God had an essence besides existence, His nature would be characterized by a duality. His existence, being an accident, would then be caused either by an outside factor or by His essence. It cannot be caused from the outside because God would then become contingent, and would cease to be necessary. But if His existence is caused by His essence, then two fatal difficulties follow. First, His existence would become an effect and hence would become contingent. Secondly, His essence would have to be assumed to exist (being cause) prior to its existence.
Therefore, God must be simple and absolute existence without an essence.
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi criticized this argument by asking why the essence as such cannot cause existence not by a prior existence, just as the essence of a triangle as such, e.g., causes certain properties, viz, the being of its angles equivalent to two right angles, and no existence is assumed on the part of triangle. God's existence would thus be a property necessitated by His essence. Sadra quotes Ibn Sina and al-Tusi in refutation of al-Razi's argument to the effect that existence can never be an effect of an essence or an idea but can only be the effect of an existent cause.
Sadra elaborates
this by saying that if an essence as such could be the cause of existence, it could cause existence whether it itself existed or not: by being merely conceived it would entail existence. But this is surely not the case since, although an idea can entail another idea (as a triangle entails the sum total of its triangle being equal to two right angles), it cannot entail existence unless it itself existed; only an existing triangle can result in the sum total of its angles being equal to two right angles as an existential reality. Under no conditions, then, can an essence yield existence.
Or, shall we say that existence itself can be conceived as an essence, as an idea, without entailing real existence?
God's essence, then, would be such that when it is conceived, it yields the idea of existence and when His essence actually exists His existence also becomes real and ceases to be a mere idea. This cannot be accepted, either. This is because the very idea of existence is impossible without real existence. The idea of existence differs in this respect fundamentally from all other ideas or essences, for no other idea implicates existence except the idea of existence itself. This is why the very idea of existence is said to be the primary anti serf-evident idea which resists any definition in terms of other ideas.
Indeed, the notion that essence can cause existence is absurd. This is because the relationship between these two, as has been shown in earlier discussions, is that of unity or existential identity, not of union: essence and existence are not two things or separate entities which somehow come together. Their relationship is that between something general and indeterminate (essence) and its concrete, determinate expression (existence) as is the case with the relationship between a genus and its concrete differentia. Now, far from the general and the vague being the cause of the concrete and the determinate, the truth is exactly the opposite: the differentia is the cause of the genus (i.e., of its concrete existence), existence of essence. But existence is its own cause; it is the original and sole content of reality.
Essence is something subjective, mental and derivative and existence is its cause and sole ground. How could it be said, then, that God's essence causes His existence when this is not the case even with contingent beings?
There are other arguments to prove that God has no essence besides His existence, two of them elaborated by al-Suhrawardi and accepted by Sadra. ne of these arguments states that since an essence is a universal, there could be potentially any number of necessary beings, even if actually its instance is only one. According to the second argument, God's essence, if He had one, would fall under the category of (secondary) substance and would, therefore, require a differentia which would make it concrete.
But objections can be raised against God being pure existence as well. One objection, stated in various forms, is that if being pure existence is an inherent property of God, all existents, inasmuch as they are existent, should be likewise pure existence since God shares existence with all other beings. It is not proper to set one being apart from others so that it alone is pure and necessary being. The answer to this objection, in the Muslim Peripatetic view, is that God's nature, His existence, differs radically and entirely from all other existents since His existence is original and is the source of all derivative existence, whereas all other existents derive their existence from God's. This fact sets God's existence and its nature entirely apart from all other existents. On the formulation of the “Persian sages,” the answer is that since existence is systematically ambiguous, admitting of “more or less” or “perfect and imperfect,” God's existence represents its absolute form and below Him are ranged all contingent existents hierarchi-cally. In this view, the existence of God and that of the contingents is basically one and unitary, yet each existent is unique and different and God's is the most perfect, the absolute existence. What God and the contingents share and share equally is the concept of existence which is a secondary idea or pure notion (although even this notion cannot be derived from contingents independently of God, who is their source and ground), but what is under discussion here is not the notion of existence but the particular existents(afrad al-wujud)
, viz., God and particular contingents.
The second serious objection states that if God is pure existence without an essence, then God should be knowable since existence is held to be the most self-evident idea. Yet God is also held to be unknowable. The most common reply is that what is universally and serf-evidently known is the notion of being, a secondary intelligible, while what is unknowable is the particular being of God (as afard
). Sadra's answer is different and is directly related to his proof of God on the basis of his principle of existence. That God's being-in-itself cannot be known through discursive reason is certain and this is why, we recall from the preceding section, Sadra criticized the argument that seeks to bring in God merely in order to terminate the infinite regress of contingents. God cannot be known except through God. It is equally true that God cannot be known totally and exhaustively even by direct intuition, since God, being the source of all existents, cannot be fully “comprehended” by these latter. Yet a direct primordial knowledge of God must be affirmed for all existents “each according to its own measure.” Just as God is at the base of all contingent existence, a direct “witnessing” of God must be at the root of all knowledge, whether conscious or unconscious.
Indeed, when we know anything at all, and in our knowledge of anything at all, a knowledge of God must be inalienably present as the ground both of existence and knowledge. This is the meaning of the Qur'anic verse that God “is nearer to man than the latter's jugular vein” and of the saying attributed to the Prophet, “If you were to be thrown down to the very bottom of the earth, you would fall upon God.''
In this simple, primordial sense, then, everything witnesses God and proclaims the existence of its Maker. The question is, if existence is known directly and if God is nothing but existence, why not admit a full and total knowledge of God on the part of His witness and a complete union of the latter with the former? This is because everything else besides God is finite, determined, and determinate and, no matter how much it develops, it cannot transcend this finitude. It is true that in mystic experience the experient can lose sight of his finite self and fix his gaze entirely upon God and “be lost” in Him, but losing sight of his finitude is not the same as losing his finitude. A drop, as part of the ocean, may enjoy the ocean, but cannot cease to be a drop, as the Persian verses quoted by al-Sabzawari on the point have it. It was this finitude and its inalienable otherness (or, was it, rather, its consciousness?) with which al-Hallaj was so impatient when he exclaimed:
Between You and me, my “I am” is in constant struggle with me; Lift this “I am” from the middle by Your Grace!
On this interpretation of the mystic experience, Sadra's view is close to that of al-Ghazali and identical with that of his Indian contemporary Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi who declared the unity experienced by the mystic to be a unity of perception(wahdat al-shuhud)
rather than unity of being(wahdat al-wujud)
. Yet, this immediate knowledge of God vouchsafed to everything in the universe and immune from error is not the basis of religious and moral obligation, says Sadra. For that, a more conscious knowledge is required, which is, by its nature, liable to error, is capable of degree and qualitative differences, and becomes immune from error only in rare and exceptional cases which constitute the logical limit of the form of knowledge and where the truth is “revealed” to the human agent.
Having come this far, i.e., (1) having started with the general philosophical position that essence is a reality coordinate with existence, (2) having then shown, with the philosophers, the impossibility of God's having such an essence and finally (3) having proved, contrary to the general philosophical position, that existence, not essence, is the sole reality, let us now review the original argument of the philosophers and criticize it in the light of our own conclusion. This is the task performed in Safar III in the renewed discussion on this subject. The philosophical argument was that if God were a composite of essence and existence, existence would be an additional attribute of the essence and thus essence would have to exist before it existed. But why should this be so if existence is the primitive and, indeed, the sole reality and essence a purely mental or derivative phenomenon? When even in the contingent being this is the case, why should it not be all the more true of God? Let us then say that in the contingent, existence is produced (maj'ul
, i.e., by God) primarily and directly, while essence is produced indirectly and derivatively; in God both his existence and essence are unproduced and original except that His essence is secondary to His existence.
And since the need for a cause arises only out of contingency, it is open to someone to say that the qualification of God's essence by His existence is not a contingent but a necessary fact. The proposition, “God's essence requires existence,” would not, then, mean that there is an essence without existence which is now being added to essence, but would simply mean,
“God's being or nature is such that it cannot be without the ascription of existence to it.”
Indeed, if the philosophers' argument is effective, it is so because they regard existence as a general, secondary notion and essence as primary reality. Thus, their statement, “existence is additional (to essence) in contingents, original and self-identical in God” means that a contingent is an essence such that “being existent” cannot be derived from it independently of God, while God is an essence such that “being existent” can be derived from it alone - where “being existent” simply means an essence qualified by a general notion of existence. This is clearly brought out, for example, in the statements of al-Dawwani to the effect that existence, as a general notion, is equally additional both to God and to contingents except that in the case of the latter its attribution is made possible because of God, their source, while in the case of God, He Himself is the sufficient ground of such attribution.
This shows that when these “latter-day philosophers” talk of the existence of God as self-identical reality, they are only using conventional language without there being any real substance to it: God's self-identity, His being pure existence is more a matter of courtesy with them than literal truth, for they do not recognize that corresponding to this general notion of existence, there is also a reality - indeed, the reality - which is existence itself. They believe that essence is the reality; only, when they come to God, they find it difficult to hold that God could be an essence to which existence is given as an extrinsic attribute like contingents, so they affirm that He is only existence, i.e., a general notion of existence! The conclusion may appear grotesque, yet it follows directly from their assumptions.
Sadra then formulates his own view in stark contrast to theirs. Far from existence being derived from the essences of the contingents, it is their essences that are derived from their various modes of existence which are unique. The proposition, “existence is additional in contingents, identical in God” does not mean that it is additional, i.e., extrinsic to the essences of contingents, intrinsic to God's, but means that in contingents it is not original but produced by God, while God's existence is original and primordial. So far as essence is concerned, it is derivative from existence in the contingents, i.e., the mind extracts a contingent's essence from its existence. This may well be, indeed must be, the case with regard to God also, since He has real Attributes which are not to be explained away either as mere relations or as negations as philosophers have done - although, so far as we humans are concerned, these Attributes are only a mental subjective notion, since God-in-Himself cannot be fully known by us.
C. God's Unity
Unity of God is one of the most fundamental problems of metaphysics, yet most philosophers who are essentialists have failed to solve it since a proper solution can only be given on the basis of existentialism. Some philosophers,
like al-Razi, have held that God is an essence such that only one being exists of its kind, i.e., God is a being whose existence is identical with its essence. This proof is inadequate, for, why cannot one imagine more than one being whose essence will entail its existence, as in the case of transcendental Intelligences? We, therefore, need another argument to prove God's uniqueness.
This argument can be stated as follows. Let us suppose two necessary beings.
These beings would equally share the notion of necessary existence and would mutually differ with regard to their natures or essences. Now, if they differ in respect of the totality of their essence, then, necessary existence would become extrinsic to them, which is untenable. If they differ in a part of their essence, they would become composite and cease to be simple, since they would equally share a part of their essence, while they would differ in respect of the other part. Finally, the entirety of their mutual difference may lie outside their essence. This is, again, untenable, for in that case they would be in need of an outside factor for their existence, or else, they would be entirely identical with each other; they would cease to be two and will be numerically only one, which would contradict the assumption of their being two.
But now a formidable difficulty arises in regard to this argument. It is pointed out that by their proposition,
“Necessary existence is identical with the essence of the necessary being,” philosophers mean that God's essence is such that it manifests the property of “being necessary of existence,” not that necessary existence is the same as or literally identical with God's essence. Thus “necessary existence” being only a quality or attribute of God, is over and above His essence; hence two (or more) different beings may well share this attribute, while being totally different in their natures.
Thus, this argument cannot establish the unity of God. It should be noted that this was the first of the three alternatives given in the preceding paragraph, with a difference. There, “necessary existence” lay outside the essences of the two supposed beings; here, although it lies outside their essences, yet it is caused by those essences as a necessary property. For this reason, it has been said that, on this point, the philosophical argument suffers from a veiled fallacy born of a confusion between notion and reality. For, when they say, ''God's existence is identical with His nature or being,” they are talking or mean to talk about His proper, real being; but when they assert the same proposition while proving His unity, they are talking about a notion, i.e., that in the notion of God's unique being His existence is necessarily given. In the first case, they talk about the real existence of God, but cannot prove His uniqueness; in the second, they talk about His uniqueness, not about His real existence but only about a necessary relationship between two concepts.
It is on the basis of essentialist doctrines concerning God and the world that the situation arose in Islamic philosophy, which made it possible for a philosopher Ibn Kammuna to formulate his notorious doubt about the unity of God: Why is it not possible that there be two (or more) simple beings of unknown nature, differing entirely in their natures or essences, such that each one of them will be a self-necessary existent, the concept “necessary existent” being extractable from each of them and applicable to them as a (necessary) accident or property; thus they will equally share this extracted notion but will differ from each other in the entirety of their essences?
Although this difficulty has become generally associated with the name of Ibn Kammuna, says Sadra, it was actually formulated by al-Suhrawardi, summarily in his work al-Talwihat but more explicitly in his al-Mutarahat. Ibn Kammuna also commented upon some of al-Suhrawardi's works, whom he followed in his belief that existence is a pure notion and essence is reality. Ibn Kammuna, indeed, states in one of his writings: “The arguments brought forth [by the philosophers - i.e., to prove God's uniqueness] tell against the possibility of more than one necessary being only if their essences are identical, but if their essences are different, one needs some further argument [to disprove a multiplicity of Gods]. However, I have not found one until now.”
This dilemma, in fact, arises for all those doctrines which do not assign primacy to existence but hold either that existence is something additional to essence or that existence is only a general mental notion having no counterpart in reality at all. On the former view, existence lies outside essence; in the latter, existence is something entirely notional, as al-Suhrawardi and his followers (including Ibn Kammuna) believe. Sadra repeats his charge, mentioned in the preceding section, that these philosophers, when they talk about the particular, real being of God, are only using conventional philosophical language without any real meaning, since they do not admit that existence has actual particulars(afrad)
in reality.
But on an existentialist basis, Ibn Kammuna's doubt has little force and can be refuted easily as follows. If two or more things do not have a common characteristic, no common proposition can be asserted of them at all. Now, if these two supposed beings are to share the characteristic of “necessary being,” they must possess something in common which warrants this common attribute. The abstract general notion of existence can be correctly asserted of all things only because they all really exist; hence this abstract notion “existence” is of the nature of an abstract noun like “humanity” extracted from actual human beings. If these two beings possess an essence which is different from their necessary existence, then they must necessarily become composite and cease to be simple beings. But a composite nature can never be a necessary existent since at least one of the two factors will have to be caused or produced from the outside.
There is, then, no sure proof of God's unity except on the basis of the reality - the sole reality - of existence, which has already served us as the only real proof of God's existence. This is because, on this basis, existence will not be a mere notion but will “stand for(' unwan)
” the objective reality of existence. Existence as such, however, is unitary, unanlyzable, and indivisible, since its multiplicity arises through its “modes(anha')
,” thanks to essences which are generated by existence itself in the realm of contingency. Existence, taken absolutely, therefore, cannot tolerate duality. For if we suppose another absolute existence, it will be absolutely identical with it - hence no duality is conceivable. That is why al-Suhrawardi declared that even if you were to suppose a second pure and absolute being, it will turn out to be no other than the first, since there can be no distinctions in something which is taken to be pure and absolute.
In other words, “a simple existence must comprehend everything” in its simplicity, for if it did not, it would cease to be simple. This is the most telling reply to Ibn Kammuna's doubts about the unity of God. If one supposes another being besides the simple being, the former would either be included in the latter or would be identical with it.
The crux of this argument is that “necessary being” means “absolute being'' and that “absolute being” conceptually cannot be but one being since “two absolute beings” is an absurd concept. If the question is raised that while it is admitted that an absolute being must necessarily be unique, what is the guarantee that such an absolute being does, in fact, exist?, the answer is that the factual existence of an absolute has been proved in the first section of the present chapter on the basis of the reality of existence.
Jalal al-Din al-Dawwani had also formulated a proof for the unity of God, which subsequently gained wide acceptance but which Sadra makes the target of a scathing criticism. The starting point of this proof is that common language is but a poor guide for attaining philosophic truth. Common language uses, for example, expressions likehaddad
(fromhadid
= iron) and mushammas (from shams = sun). Since many derivative forms in common linguistic usage imply that the root-meaning subsists in the derivative forms (for example, the root-meaning 'ilrn = knowledge is held to subsist in the active participle 'alim = a person who possesses knowledge), this may suggest that iron subsists in haddad and the sun subsists in musham-mas. Haddad, however, means “iron-monger,” not a person in whom iron subsists; similarly, mushammas means “water heated by the sun,” not something wherein the sun subsists. In other words, these two terms refer to a relationship of something to what the root means, and do not indicate that what the root means is subsistent in that something. In fact, iron and the sun are independent realities existing in their own right and are not like knowledge, which subsists in a knower. Now, the derivative term “existent(maujud)
” is to be construed in the same manner. Its root-meaning “existence(wujud)
” does not subsist in an “existent” but exists independently and absolutely, while an existent is that which comes into relation with it just as we have seen in the case of ironmonger and sun-heated water. Pure existence itself is God, while contingent beings are “existents'' in the sense that existence neither subsists in them nor is their accident or attribute, but their relationship to God.
Since, however, pure existence exists, it is also “existent” but in a different sense than contingent “existents.”
Existence is “existent” in its pure and absolute form, just as whiteness would be “white” and heat would be “hot,” if whiteness and heat could exist in their purity and absoluteness. Yet these two may be brought together under a common category of “existent” when by “existent” is meant “that which produces effects” or “that wherein existence subsists,” and even though subsistence of existence in the contingent is metaphorical, the application of the term “existent” need not be metaphorical.
The term “existent” is thus used in three different senses: a self-subsistent existent, that is, God; a contingent existent whose existence means “being related to God”; and, thirdly, existent in a most general and abstract sense, which is acknowledged to be the most self-evident idea or notion and is, as such, inapplicable to God. This account avoids the common objection that since “existent” is a mere general abstract notion, how can God be its referent?
The serf-subsisting existence - God - is, therefore, serf-necessary and must be one and unique. For, if there were two such beings, both will be characterized by necessary existence. The characteristic of necessary existence, being common, will, then, have to be additional to their essential nature and will have to be caused by something outside them. Hence, they will be contingent, not necessary. Hence, when we say, “The necessary being exists,” we cannot mean that necessary being happens to exist, but that necessary existence is its essence. That is why al-Farabi and Ibn Sina said that the application of the term “existent” to the necessary being, as is suggested by the common linguistic usage, is metaphorical, not real, since “existence” is not His extrinsic attribute.
Against this widely accepted proof of God's unity, Sadra urges ten objections, some of which are of doubtful validity and one, at least, contradicts his own principles. He contends that unless the referent or the meaning of the root-term is known, there is no question of “deriving” another form from it, and since existence (i.e., God) is itself unknowable, the derivative form “existent” is out of the question. But, as we have said in the preceding section of this chapter, Sadra admits a universal intuitive knowledge of God, even though at the sub-human level that knowledge is unconscious. As has been pointed out by al-Sabzawari, this knowledge is sufficient to warrant the term “existence.”
But Sadra has two objections which seriously tell against al-Dawwani. The first objection is that a derivative term is either literal, e.g., 'alim (a knower = a person in whom knowledge subsists) or relational and metaphorical, e.g., haddad (ironmonger = a person who deals in iron to make iron-products), but cannot be both at the same time. In the case of existence(wujud)
, however, al-Dawwani invites us to accept both at the same time - i.e., in the case of God, its use is literal while in the case of contingents it is only relational, since a contingent, in his view, is not that wherein existence subsists but that which is related to existence. Al-Dawwani's attempt to introduce the common category of “existent” covering both God and the contingent cannot succeed because “existent'' - whether it means “that which produces effects(mabda' al-athar)
” or “that wherein existence subsists” - itself will have a double meaning, the one applicable to God, the other applicable to the contingent.
The second objection is still more serious. Al-Dawwani is a die-hard es-sentialist for whom existence is a mere general notion without having a counterpart in objective reality. This being so, he cannot legitimately make a transition from the realm of concepts to the realm of reality and affirm the existence of God as a particular being (as afard al-wujud
), since existence has no particulars(afrad)
for him. He has labored hard to show how pure existence can be described as “existent” but this is, surely, a case of “side-tracking the issue during the debate” since this is not the point at issue. The question is, rather, what is the warrant for God's objective existence - not to mention unique existence - on the assumption that existence is only a subjective idea while essence is the primordial reality?
How can reason allow that a mere notion have (as opposed to “stand for”) a self-subsistent being?
All one can say, on that assumption, is that a self-necessary essence obtains objectively to which “existence” is attributable by the mind; but, then, why can there not be more than one such essence in reality to which existence may be attributable in this manner, since existence itself is not the reality but something added by the mind?
The uniqueness of God can, therefore, be established only on the ground that existence is the primary reality, with its systematically ambiguous forms, culminating in absolute existence which, by definition, can be only one.
Notes
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Author: Dr. Fazlur Rahman
