Similitude from the Viewpoint of Ghazālī and Avicenna

جستارهایی در فلسفه و کلام

Article 4, Volume 44, Issue 2, February 2013   

Document Type: علمی پژوهشی

DOI: 10.22067/philosophy.v44i2.4013

Authors

Sayyid Murtaẓā Ḥusaynī Shāhrūdī^* ; Tuktam Mashhadī

Abstract

Relying on and refuting some viewpoints of the theosophists concerning God as being Creator, Ghazālī contravenes the similitude between the Exalted God and the creatures, since he believes that according to these arguments and the analysis he makes on the causality and the causal necessity, the world cannot be Divinely made. He examines this contravention in terms of action, actor, and the common mode between the action and the actor. According to Avicenna and given that his argument about qā‘ida al-Wāhid (principle of oneness = the principle that from one, no more than one can issue forth) is based on similitude, it can be said that he accepts this principle as the rational rule by the way of qā‘ida al-wāhid; however, considering his viewpoint concerning the heterogeneousness of existences, he cannot be viewed as believing in similitude between the Creator and the created.

Keywords

al-wāḥid; similitude; cause and effect; Avicenna; Ghazālī. Study of the Claim