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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
If, as Ghazâlî presumes, the fact of creation can serve as evidence of the existence of God, and if, as he attempts to show, creation is the only binding, reasoned proof of God's existence, Ghazâlî must, to fulfill his program of reconstructing the intellectual basis of Islam, somehow find arguments adequate to prove that creation did in fact take place. He must disprove what was in his time the still vital claim that the Universe had not come to be but had existed forever differing in no essential way from the world we know today.
page 168 note 1 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut,ed. Bouyges, I, part i, pp. 4–63.Google Scholar
page 169 note 1 Ibid p. 4.
page 169 note 2 Ibid. pp. 17–18.
page 169 note 3 Loc. cit..Google Scholar
page 169 note 4 Ibid. pp. 19 and 23.
page 169 note 5 See Van Den Bergh, , The Incoherence of the Incoherence, vol. 2, p. 225, ‘Some Contradictions in Aristotle's System’, nos. 6 and 7.Google Scholar
page 169 note 6 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut,ed. Bouyges, I, part i, p. 13.Google Scholar
page 169 note 7 Ibid. pp. 15–16; cf. 26, 1. 10.
page 170 note 1 Ibid. pp. 34–40.
page 170 note 2 Ibid. p. 41.
page 171 note 1 Ibid. pp. 41–51.
page 171 note 2 Ibid. XVII.
page 171 note 3 See Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part i, p. 30 and Ma'ârij, p. 205.Google Scholar
page 171 note 4 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut,. ed. Bouyges, I, part i, pp. 7–11.Google Scholar
page 172 note 1 Ibid. p. 56.
page 172 note 2 Ibid. pp. 57–60.
page 172 note 3 Ibid. p. 21.
page 172 note 4 Ibid. part ii, pp. 64–97.
page 173 note 1 For the discussion and the example see Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part ii, pp. 65–9.Google Scholar
page 173 note 2 For the formula ‘First there was God, without the world, then there were God and the world’, cf.Shahrastânî, Kitâb Nihâyatu'l-Iqdâm fî ‘Ilmi’l-Kalâm, ed. Guillaume, p. 17. Like Ghazâ1î, Shahrastânî uses this formula in an attempt not to reintroduce the category of time in a disguised form, but to simulate the suspension of the temporal category characteristic of the experience of the Creator; cf. his argument at pp. 38–42, 50–3.Google Scholar
page 173 note 3 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part ii, p. 72.Google Scholar
page 173 note 4 Ibid. pp. 72–83.
page 173 note 5 Ibid. p. 76; cf. p. 93.
page 174 note 1 Ibid. p. 87.
page 174 note 2 Ibid. I, part iii, pp. 97–100.
page 174 note 3 Ibid. p. 97.
page 174 note 4 For a discussion of the sources of the notion that eternal possibility is tantamount to actuality in Aristotle'sDe Caelo, I, 10–12, Physics, III, 4, 203–30, and Metaphysics Theta 4, see Van Den Bergh's notes 57.1–5.Google Scholar
page 175 note 1 See Van Den Bergh's note 57.I.Google Scholar
page 175 note 2 Thus Van Den Bergh seems to feel that Ghazâlî has betrayed his own principles in abandoning Ash'arite Megarianism. See his notes 57.6, 58.I.Google Scholar
page 175 note 3 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part iv, pp. 100–17.Google Scholar
page 175 note 4 For the changelessness and unqualifiedness of the bearer of all qualities and substrate of all changes cf. the lines from Milton's juvenilia quoted by Anscombe, G. E. M. in ‘Aristotle’, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), p. 16, note 2.Google Scholar
page 175 note 5 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part iv, p. 100.Google Scholar
page 175 note 6 Ibid. p. 101.
page 175 note 7 Ibid. p. 102.
page 175 note 8 Ibid. cf. A sh'arî, Kitâb al-Luma', ed. McCarthy, no. 136.
page 176 note 1 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part iv, p. 103.Google Scholar
page 176 note 2 Ibid. pp. 103–4.
page 176 note 3 Ibid. p. 104.
page 176 note 4 Ibid. p. 105.
page 176 note 5 Ibid. p. 107.
page 176 note 6 Ibid. I, part iv, p. 107.
page 176 note 7 For the notion of monopsychism see Merlan, Philip, Monopsychism, Mysticism, and Metaconsciousness (The Hague: Nijhof, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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page 178 note 2 ‘Gods’, by Wisdom, John, reprinted in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), p. 149.Google Scholar
page 179 note 1 ‘An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief’ in The Existence of God, pp. 232–3.Google Scholar
page 179 note 2 ‘Can God's Existence Be Disproved?‘ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 54–5 with 47–8. For the argument that God cannot serve at once as an abstract and a concrete entity, as we seem to demand of Him, cf.Prior, A. N., ‘Can Religion be Discussed?’ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 4.Google Scholar
page 179 note 3 ‘Theology and Falsification’ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 98; cf. his God and Philosophy, 2.8.Google Scholar
page 179 note 4 Loc. cit.Google Scholar
page 180 note 1 ‘Theology and Falsification’, p. 97.Google Scholar
page 180 note 2 Ibid. p. 98.
page 180 note 3 See Wisdom, John, ‘Gods’, in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, p. 149.Google Scholar
page 180 note 4 See Hick, John, ‘Theology and Verification’, in The Existence of God, pp. 253–74.Google Scholar
page 180 note 5 Wisdom, John, ‘Gods’, in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 6. 1, pp. 154–6.Google Scholar
page 180 note 6 Ibid. 6.3; cf. 6.7.
page 181 note 1 Ibid. 6.5.
page 182 note 1 God and Philosophy, 9.28–9.Google Scholar
page 182 note 2 ‘Gods’, 7–8; cf.Hare, R. M., ‘Theology and Falsification’ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 99–103.Google Scholar
page 183 note 1 Tahâfut at-Tahâfut, ed. Bouyges, I, part ii, pp. 47–50.Google Scholar
page 183 note 2 Tahâfut al-Falâsifa, XIV.Google Scholar
page 184 note 1 See Prior, A. N., ‘Can Religion be Discussed?’ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
page 185 note 1 See von Weizsacker's, C. F. Gifford Lectures of 1959–60, The Relevance of Science (London: Collins, 1964), ch. IX, pp. 142, 146, 150, 153–4. Ibn Rushd presumes that empirical evidence bearing on creation is impossible.Google Scholar
page 185 note 2 For entropy in Philoponus, see Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity.Google Scholar
page 187 note 1 See Ghazâlî's Ihyâ' Ulûm ad-Dîn, xxxv; cf.Prior, ‘Can Religion be Discussed?’, pp. 3–11.Google Scholar
