Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual

Celia Kathryn Hatherly

doi:10.5771/9781666904499

Summary

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.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-0448-2
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-0449-9
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 192
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
1. Notes No access
1. 1. The Modal Distinction and the Conservation Thesis No access
  2. The Conservation Thesis and Essentially Ordered Causal Series No access
  3. The Modal Distinction and Avicenna’s Proof for the Existence of God No access
  4. Conclusion No access
  5. Notes No access
2. 1. Necessary and Possible Existence No access
  2. The Modal Proof No access
  3. Conclusion No access
  4. Notes No access
1. 1. The Finitude of Final Causes No access
  2. God as a Universal Final Cause No access
  3. God as the Ultimate Final Cause of Motion No access
  4. Conclusion No access
  5. Notes No access
2. 1. Aristotle’s Proof from Motion No access
  2. Avicenna’s Use of Aristotle’s Proof from Motion No access
  3. Avicenna Against the Proof from Motion as a Proof for the Existence of God No access
  4. Conclusion No access
  5. Notes No access
1. 1. Avicenna’s Account of Potency and Act No access
  2. Avicenna’s Reply to the Megarian and Ashʿarites No access
  3. The Nature of the Potentiality (quwa) to Exist No access
  4. Al-Ghazali’s Critique No access
  5. Conclusion No access
  6. Notes No access
2. 1. The Generation of Motion No access
  2. The Generated and the Generable No access
  3. Philoponus’s Objection No access
  4. Conclusion No access
  5. Notes No access
Bibliography No access Pages 173 - 186
Index No access Pages 187 - 190
About the Author No access Pages 191 - 192