Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual : His Interpretation of Four Aristotelian Arguments

According to Avicenna, whatever exists, while it exists, exists of necessity. Not all beings, however, exist with the same kind of necessity. Instead, they exist either necessarily per se or necessarily per aliud. Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual: His Interpretation of Four Aristotelian Arguments explains how Avicenna uses these modal claims to show that God is the efficient as well as the final cause of an eternally existing cosmos. In particular, Celia Kathryn Hatherly shows how Avicenna uses four Aristotelian arguments to prove this very un-Aristotelian conclusion. These arguments include Aristotle's argument for the finitude of efficient causes in Metaphysics 2; his proof for the prime mover in the Physics and Metaphysics 12; his argument against the Megarians in Metaphysics 9; and his argument for the mutual entailment between the necessary and the eternal in De Caelo 1.12. Moreover, Hatherly contends, when Avicenna's versions of these arguments are correctly interpreted using his distinctive understanding of necessity and possibility, the objections raised against them by his contemporaries and modern scholars fail. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 Notes 18 Part I: God as The First Cause of Existence 24 Preliminary Remarks 24 Notes 31 Chapter 1: The Modal Distinction in the Proof from the Metaphysics of the Healing 38 The Modal Distinction and the Conservation Thesis 39 The Conservation Thesis and Essentially Ordered Causal Series 44 The Modal Distinction and Avicenna’s Proof for the Existence of God 49 Conclusion 54 Notes 55 Chapter 2: The Modal Distinction in the Proof from the Metaphysics of the Salvation 62 Necessary and Possible Existence 63 The Modal Proof 66 Conclusion 75 Notes 76 Part II: God as The Ultimate Final Cause 80 Preliminary Remarks 80 Notes 83 Chapter 3: The First Efficient Cause as the Ultimate Final Cause 86 The Finitude of Final Causes 87 God as a Universal Final Cause 89 God as the Ultimate Final Cause of Motion 92 Conclusion 96 Notes 96 Chapter 4: The Role of the Proof from Motion 102 Aristotle’s Proof from Motion 103 Avicenna’s Use of Aristotle’s Proof from Motion 104 Avicenna Against the Proof from Motion as a Proof for the Existence of God 111 Conclusion 118 Notes 119 Part III: The Eternity of the World 126 Preliminary Remarks 126 Notes 131 Chapter 5: Material Potency as a Principle of Change 134 Avicenna’s Account of Potency and Act 136 Avicenna’s Reply to the Megarian and Ashʿarites 138 The Nature of the Potentiality (quwa) to Exist 143 Al-Ghazali’s Critique 150 Conclusion 153 Notes 154 Chapter 6: The Eternal and the Generable 158 The Generation of Motion 160 The Generated and the Generable 163 Philoponus’s Objection 170 Conclusion 175 Notes 176 Bibliography 182 Index 196 About the Author 200 "In his magnum opus, The Healing, Avicenna took four Aristotelian arguments and used them to prove a very un-Aristotelian conclusion: that the cosmos is both created and eternal. This book explains how Avicenna used his distinctive understanding of possibility and necessity to do so"-- Provided by publisher