ph. vallat al-farabis arguments for the eternity of the world-libre

Chapter 16

Al-Frbs Arguments for the Eternity of the World and the Contingency of Natural

PhenomenaPhilippe Vallat

The question of the eternity of the world in Frbs writings has up to now been addressed twice; irst by Herbert Davidson in his book Proofs for Eternity, and more recently by Marwan Rashed in an extensive study entitled Al-Frbs lost treatise on Changing Beings.1 Davidson could ind in Frbs writings only indirect evidence for his adherence to this doctrine, which explains why Frb only briely appears in his book. Rashed, who admits he could ind no more explicit statements in Frbs available works than did Davidson, has for his part based his study on the testimonies of the lost treatise On Changing Being, which was known to Ibn Ba, Maimonides and Averroes. Based on the evidence at hand, both think Frb to be a faithful Aristotelian. In what follows, I would like to bring into focus some other texts, where I believe Frb endorsed the position at issue, at some times more clearly than at others.

In fact, among Frbs preserved works, at least two lines of argument, which are straightforwardly Neoplatonic, partly stem from Proclus proofs for the eternity of the world. This is evidence that his main concern was not to purify Aristotles interpretation of the heterogeneous concept of creation, whether in its monotheistic or Neoplatonic form. More relevantly, as a pagan philosopher keen to challenge creationist doctrines, Frb felt perfectly free to seize and reshape ideas regardless of their origin. As for the philosophical bearing of Frbs doctrinal elaborations, I will show that, although proceeding from premises similar to those used by Kind and Avicenna, and which could have led him to deterministic conclusions akin to theirs, Frb carefully steered clear of any such conceptions and held as a core principle the contingency of physical phenomena and human events. In this respect, the present study will lay the groundwork for further inquiries into the similarities between his thought and theirs. The analysis of his statements will also lead us to survey the causal structure of his metaphysical architecture and enable

1 H. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York-Oxford, 1987); M. Rashed, Al-Frbs Lost Treatise on Changing Beings and the Possibility of a Demonstration of the Eternity of the World, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 18 (2008): pp. 1958.

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us to understand, irst, how it is linked to Proclus and to Ammonius, and second, how the whole of Frbs worldview is cognate to Hellenism and its aversion to revealed monotheism.

Once brought together, these various points will show to what extent Frb can be called an Aristotelian and how his thinking was nourished by Neoplatonism, whether Alexandrian or Athenian. Ultimately, my purpose is to complement both Th.-A. Druarts study of the reasons why Frb felt dissatisied with Aristotles metaphysics,2 and also my monograph devoted to Frbs relation to Greek Neoplatonism.3

The irst argument to consider is Frbs conception of act, action, activity and actuality, four notions that Arabic renders by the same word, il. I will sum up the part of this theory relevant to our present purpose.

There are two kinds of acts: one which is the result of an actualization process and another which is free of any foregoing potential state and which in itself is the immediate result of the entelechy of a perfect being. The former, which pertains to Aristotles Categories, is a process that takes place in time, while the latter, whose relation to Aristotle is at once questionable, occurs in no time or without time being existent, bi-l zamn.

Unlike the various kinds of passions, which Frb assimilates to corresponding kinds of movements, action and actuality, in his view, do not necessarily presuppose that movement preceded them. There is one kind of action which requires no movement at all and needs no impetus in order to take place all at once. The agent is in no way stirred or induced to act. Hence this act is on the agents part not a completion or realization of its being through an act. Even as it is, so it acts. This act is in itself a spontaneous creation and brings forth an unintentional result which, as such, remains unknown to its effecter. An activity of this sort is instantaneous, meaning that the effecter and the effect are concomitant. In short, this kind of act or activity is both atemporal in the sense that it occurs in no time, and eternally productive in the sense that its effect never fails nor ever will cease to proceed from the agent. Before returning to this point, I shall for now only remark that it in no way implies that the effecter shares with its effect an identical kind of extensive eternity, but rather that this extensive eternity is the modality according to which the effect takes part in the intensive, instantaneous and ever-present eternity of the act whereby its effecter brings it forth.

Let us now turn to Frbs and Proclus texts.

2 Th.-A. Druart, Al-Frb and Emanationism, in John F. Wippel (ed.), Studies in Medieval Philosophy (Washington, 1987), pp. 2343.

3 Ph. Vallat, Farabi et lEcole dAlexandrie, Des prmisses de la connaissance la philosophie politique (Paris, 2004).

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1. Frb and Proclus on the Eternity of the World1.a Frb, Ful muntazaa 84The Arabic is as odd as its English translation may sound. This is, I think, perfectly deliberate on Frbs part. I will venture an explanation of this point later. The text reproduced omits the punctuation added by the editor. The words in oblique brackets are designed to help the reader and are not in the original Arabic. This translation does not correspond to either D.M. Dunlops or C.E. Butterworths which do not pick up on the references I believe Frb had in mind.

The assessment of the text irst requires one to be aware of the argument prefaced to the whole treatise entitled Ful munatazaa: Analecta (ful) gleaned among (muntazaa min) the writings of the Ancients, which bring together many a principle regarding the ways cities ought to be governed and made prosperous, and how the way of life of its inhabitants ought to be amended so they may be ordained to felicity.4 This argument, more likely in my opinion than the variant given in the apparatus, enables us to see not that Frb was an amateur doxographer, as some may think, but that, without mentioning it, he borrowed some of his wording from ancient philosophers in order to elaborate his own thought. At any rate, the author of the argument was aware of Frbs way of quoting texts and deemed it important to let it be known since Frb did not name any more ancient philosophers in this treatise than in others. The question of how the doctrines of Ful muntazaa might contribute to the good governance and prosperity of the city represents a separate issue which I will not address here.Ful muntazaa 84, pp. 889:

4 Al-Frbs Ful Muntazaah (Selected Aphorisms), ed. with an introduction and notes by Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut, 1971), p. 23, 35 [henceforth: Ful muntazaa].


5

6

Any effecter of a certain thing knows that effecting this thing at a given moment is optimal or good, or effecting the thing is not optimal or bad. He then postpones this, because an obstacle comes his way (li-iq la-hu) which impedes him from effecting it. Namely, the distortion (fasd) he estimates and even knows will ipso facto affect this thing if he effects it at that moment is the obstacle which comes his way (al-iq la-hu). He must therefore know what the cause of this expected distortion (sababu l-fasd) is at that moment and what the cause of the orderliness (sababu l-al) is if he effects the thing the moment after that. If there has up to now been no cause for the expected distortion,7 then that it does not happen is not more likely than that it does (fa-laysa an l yakna awl min an yakna),8 so that the question how it could possibly happen or

5 Reading bal huwa wa-zawl with the Chester Beatty MS.6 Reading mutaaar with the Chester Beatty MS.7 In this sentence, cause (sabab) means the determinative factor which makes the

thing more likely to occur than not. If the hypothetical cause is not determinative, it remains unknown qua cause. See the following footnote.

8 I think the text must be kept as it is. As I will argue below, Frbs deliberately bafling formulation seems to mean that in the case at issue, which in fact is one of the processes of association and dissociation which occur at the level of homeomeric contrary substances (i.e. substances without differentiate parts which are the basic constituents of organized anhomeomeric substances), distortion, that is corruption (fasd), can equally occur or not. For the underlying doctrinal context, see Ph. Vallat, Du possible au ncessaire. La connaissance de luniversel chez Frb, Documenti e Studi sulla tradizione

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not has not yet occurred.9 Besides there comes the question of whether or not the maker in question (lika l-ni) has the capacity to do away with the distortion affecting the act whereby he effects the thing at the said moment. If he has such a capacity, then, the distortion is not more likely to happen than not. Hence bringing this thing forth at any given moment would not be impossible to its maker. But if he has not the capacity to do away with the distortion, then this means that the cause of it is stronger and also that the maker is not endowed with such complete self-suficiency that the thing in question could come about unconditionally (yakna al l-ilq). If so, then regarding what he is able to effect (f ili-hi), he actually admits of a contrary and of something which impedes him from effecting it. In all regards, he alone is consequently not so self-suficient as completely to achieve such an act, but he and also the receding of the cause of the distortion and the presence of the cause of orderliness are all required for the act to be achieved.

Now, if in virtue of his very essence, he is the cause of the orderliness, then the orderliness, viewed with regard to the act, shall be non-posterior in time, but both the act and the orderliness of its effect shall occur simultaneously.10 For this reason, it must be the case that the effecter provided that he is self-suficient is such that from him a certain thing originates whose being is not posterior to his own.11

ilosoica medievale XIX (2008): pp. 89121; Ph. Vallat, Al-Frb, in Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500 (Berlin, 2010).

9 Both D.M. Dunlop (The Ful al-madan, Aphorisms of the Statesman of al-Frb, ed. and trans. with introduction and notes [Cambridge, 1961], p. 66) and Ch. Butterworth (Alfarabi, The Political Writings [Ithaca and London, 2001], p. 54) understood fa-kayfa lam yaqa (p. 88, 12) as a question in the direct style (my italics): If there is no cause of non-success, its non-existence is not preferable to its existence, and why did it not happen? (Dunlop); If there is no reason of corruption, then it is not more appropriate that it not be than that it be. So why should it not come about? (Butterworth). R. R. Guerrero (Al-Frbi, Obras Filosico-polticas [Madrid, 1992], p. 137) also understood the clause as a question: y entonces, como no tiene lugar? But if there is no cause of corruption, the question how? cannot apply, which is, I think, precisely what fa-kayfa lam yaqa means: the question how? is unlikely to occur, whether understood in a logical sense (i.e. we, human beings, cannot answer this question) or in an ontological sense (i.e. the thing in question has no how? cause other than its possible factuality). At any rate, that fa-kayfa lam yaqa is syntactically not a question becomes clear immediately after that, when Frb states that the sole answerable question in this context is not about an undetermined course of events (how? kayfa), but about the agents being endowed with the possibility to nullify the effect of its indetermination (whether, hal).

10 Or: shall exist simultaneously, yaknn maan.11 p. 88,20p. 89,2: fa-li-lika yalzamu an yakna l-fil matt kna muktaiyan

f nafsi-hi wada-hu an yadua an-hu ayun m lam yataaar wudu lika l-ay an wud al-fil. With R. R. Guerrero (De aqu se sigue necesariamente que, cuanda el


In the form they have been preserved, the structure of the three irst sentences is a little clumsy and the phrasing of the whole is at irst glance quite disconcerting. But this clumsiness and untidiness can hardly be involuntary given the eficiency with which they conceal the actual object of the text. This apparently explains why H. Davidson, M. Rashed, and the three translators into English and Spanish did not see this text as an argument in favour of the eternity of the world. It is to me no coincidence that Frb is at his most obscure when dealing with these sensitive metaphysical matters while he expresses himself with such clarity on other topics. His style is even more abstruse in the section immediately before, which also refers to Proclus.

From a stylistic point of view,12 the quotation is also characterized by a set of peculiarities: an indeinite active participle followed by a complement in the direct case inlection (ayyu filin ayan m, Any effecter of a certain thing), a perfectly correct construction which, however, is nowhere else to be seen in Frbs writings; the word arr, literally evil, here taken in the unusual sense of improper (time); the curious correlated sense given to fasd (distortion, damage, deterioration, decay) and al (orderliness, soundness, integrity) which normally mean respectively corruption and good state (health) in relation to living or at least natural beings, but never to actions; the clause fa-kayfa lam yaqa wa-maa lika hal (so that the question how it could possibly happen or not has not yet occurred. Besides there comes the question of whether ), which connects in a very elliptic manner two questions phrased in the indirect style; the abrupt shifting from fil (effecter) to ni (maker); the very word al-ni (the maker) which usually appeared in the Arabic Neoplatonica as a reference to a demiurgic god; the clause bal huwa wa-zawlu sababi l-fasd wa-uru sababi l-al employed to mean but he and also the receding of the cause of

agente es suiciente por s solo, una cierta cosa procede de l sin que el ser de esa cosa sea posterior al ser del agente, Obras Filosico-polticas, p. 137), I take mat kna muktaiyan f nafsi-hi wada-hu (provided that he is self-suficient) to be one phrase. Dunlop (Ful al-madan, p. 66) reads mat kna muktaiyan f nafsi-hi wada-hu f an and translates the whole as and therefore, when the agent is suficient in himself alone for something to come into existence from him, it follows that the existence of the thing is not later than the existence of the agent. Reading Najjars text that I reproduce (mat kna muktaiyan f nafsi-hi wada-hu an), Butterworth (Political Writings, p. 54) translated the sentence as if he read muktaiyan f an: Therefore it follows that when the agent in and by himself sufices for generating a certain thing, the existence of that thing is not postponed after the existence of the agent, (my italics). For the idea formulated here, cf. Die Pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Ueber das reine Gute bekannt under dem Namen Liber de causis, ed. O. Bardenhewer (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882), 25, pp. 1056; reprint F. Sezgin, Islamic Philosophy, vol. 105 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000).

12 Further remarks about the texts I am presently studying are to be found in my forthcoming French translations: Rgime politique, Spicilge politique, Accession la flicit, De lintellect. It could be that fasd/al is also an allusion to Ab Bakr al-Rz (d. 925). I will address this question elsewhere.

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the distortion and the presence of the cause of orderliness are all required for the act to be achieved: even if the part I added to the sentence to make it intelligible is required by the particle bal, I am not aware of any other example of such an elliptic phrasing. Some of those peculiarities will be explained in what follows.

On the other hand, the alternation of izlat (to do away with) and zawl (receding), two terms drawn from the same root, is found elsewhere,13 as are the clause fa-laysa an l yakna awl min an yakna (then that it does not happen is not more likely than that it does) and the nouns of action wuq and kawn, which all belong to the common vocabulary of the future contingents problem and ultimately stem from the Arabic translation of Aristotles De interpretatione, IX.14 The irst three sentences can also be traced back to De interpretatione, IX. As for the repeated allusion to an obstacle, it ultimately comes from Frbs interpretation of Aristotles Physics, II, 8, 199b18: (if nothing obstructs it). This phrase often recurs in Alexanders treatises as well.

As for the doctrinal content of the quotation, Frb examines the relation of an act to its agent or effecter as two basic alternatives: the effecter of a certain thing can or cannot carry out his task by himself. To carry out the task by oneself precisely means here that the thing carried out, once achieved, shall remain existent, which demands that it keeps on enjoying its initial orderliness or integrity and does not experience deterioration. The fact that its initial integrity somehow gets marred entails several things according to Frbs reasoning. First, it means that at the outset its effecter did not possess in himself what was required to provide his effect with the ability to remain in its original state and thus to endure. Correlatively, this means that outside the effecter two forces were already existent: the two forces he will have to take into account in order to succeed in effecting his act later on, although he cannot directly act upon these two forces, that is, the cause of the possible decay and the cause of the required initial orderliness. From the fact that out of those two forces, one blunts and even wrecks the effecters ability to act (in the sense here deined) and the other is out of his reach, Frb infers that the

13 See e.g., Al-Frbs The Political Regime, ed. with introduction and notes Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut, 2nd edn, 1993) [henceforth: Political Regime], p. 84, 1016.

14 Ibid., p. 57, 46: It does not belong to the nature of the possible (al-mumkin) to assume just one determined mode of being [wud wid muaal, i.e. a given actual form]; it can be such and not such and it can be something and its opposite. Its status with regard to the two opposite beings [i.e. actual forms] is one same indifferent status (l wid, i.e. ) and hence that it be this being is not more likely (awl) than that it be the opposite of it. Cf. De int., 18b89 (J. Barness translation, The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. I, Princeton, 1984, p. 29): For otherwise it might equally well happen or not happen, since what is as chance has it is no more thus than not thus, nor will it be, ( = wa-law lam takun ka-lika la-kna kawnu-h wa-ayru kawni-h al mil wid (=) wa-lika anna l-ay alla yuqlu f-hi inna-hu yaknu al ayyi l-amrayn ittafaqa fa-laysa huwa bi-aadi l-amrayn awl min-hu bi-l-ar wa-l yaru ka-lika: Maniq Aris, vol. I, ed. Abd al-Ramn Badaw, Cairo, 1948, p. 71).


effecter is not self-suficient. In order to take these two elements into account, to increase his chances of success and to give his action its greatest eficiency, the only means the effecter has at his disposal is to ascertain in advance the most proper time to act. But even this is not always possible since in some cases there is no cause which may be ascribed to what happens, meaning that deterioration can equally occur as not. As a consequence, how to properly act in order to achieve the task is not only unknown to the agent but also incognizable. Thus not two but three elements have to be ascertained and taken into account: (1) the cause of the possible deterioration when it can be determined; (2) the cause of the well-ordered state, which is the immediate condition for the expected effect to endure; and (3) the right time to act in order to prevent the deterioration (when its cause can be determined). Those are the three extrinsic factors which are imposed upon the effecter and together explain why he is unable to carry out his task by himself.

According to Frb, (1) and (3) do not concern a self-suficient effecter and (2) is inherent to his activity. This means that a self-suficient effecter is always in a state that for him is the right time to act: there is no time when a possible deterioration could affect what he does and no factor which could compel him to postpone his act in the hope for a better time to come. The well-ordered state of what he effects is coextensive to his act. In other words, time is of no relevance to him, because he is and will always be in such a state that what he effects lasts as long as he himself is. And since there is no time when acting would be inappropriate and no related possibility of decay which requires time what this effecter does is from the outset assured of a well-ordered state. Therefore the act achieved by the effecter and the well-ordered state of the thing carried out through this act do not take place one after the other, but simultaneously. And if a self-suficient effecter is such that the right time to achieve something is of no signiicance to him since he has always been and will always be capable of acting without encountering any extrinsic impediment, it follows that this effecter has always been and will always be effecting something which in turn always has enjoyed and will always enjoy a well-ordered state. In other terms, he is productive by deinition or in virtue of his very essence (bi-ti-hi wada-hu) and consequently acts in such a way that a thing eternally originates from him, the well-ordered being which is not posterior but concomitant to his own being.

Bearing in mind that the underlying Greek idea for al (orderliness, integrity) might well be cosmos understood as something ordered, and that the effecter Frb refers to in the last sentences corresponds to the First Principle, the whole text becomes a direct demonstration of the eternity of the world: the orderliness of the effect of the act achieved by a self-suficient agent is not separable from this effect, but as everlasting and incorruptible as this effect. In other words, the thing Frb is talking about is the incorruptible cosmos: al, as opposed to fasd, in reality means incorruptibility.

This text moreover constitutes an indirect demonstration of the eternity of the world since the purpose of the irst part of the argumentation points to the fact that the effecter of something that in some way gets corrupted is himself non-suficient,

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meaning he cannot be divine. This conclusion appears to target the creationist claim that the world is corruptible. Frbs implicit account is simple: if the effect brought forth by the Creator is corruptible, then the Creator referred to is not self-suficient and hence not divine, which reduces religious creed to absurdity. Such an assault against religious beliefs may sufice to explain why Frb deemed it appropriate to wrap his argumentation in a cloudy wording.

One can briely add that the irst sentence, and especially the word ala, may allude to the mutazilite doctrine of the best of all possible worlds, and this doctrine may therefore have constituted his irst target. The criticism can accordingly be reformulated as follows: only an imperfect agent has to choose which among different possibilities is the best or the optimal, ala. An agent can be said to be self-suficient only if what he effects is eternal. Consequently, the optimal, ala, is merely what is eternally enduring a plain rejection of the mutazilite problematic as a whole.

The following remarks now aim to show not only which sources Frb combined but also the way he combined them. The employment and development of two kinds of sources is typical of his method. One may also speak of an original and consistent re-elaboration of Greek material.

First, there is no doubt that the right or opportune moment to act ultimately echoes Nicomachean Ethics which he knew in its entirety. The kairos and more generally the conditions of all eficient actions which involve matter are here regarded as dependent upon the natural phenomena, with the course of which they have to link up. The underlying Aristotelian doctrine at stake such as Frb re-interprets it is the division of phenomena according to their statistical frequency or the modal status of the knowledge one has of them. The kairos can be determined only in the case of phenomena whose natural causality can itself be rationally grasped. This is possible only in the case of phenomena which are likely to occur most of the time ( = mumkin al l-akar). According to Aristotle, we do not deliberate about what necessarily occurs, a statement that Frb implicitly supplements by holding that neither do we deliberate about what equally occurs and does not (mumkin al l-tasw).15 In the case of the latter phenomena (and those which occur most rarely, al l-aqall), no deliberation can reach a rational assessment of the right moment to act and consequently there is no practical knowledge to be gained. The reason for this is that the hypothetical agent has to deliberate, taking into account the probability of the deterioration affecting what he intends to do. Accordingly, he has to assign a cause to the occurrence of the deterioration and, in order to do so, he has to ascertain which part of the phenomena is favourable to his plan, that is, what is the nature of the phenomena or events necessarily involved in the realization of his plan and which among them are likely to hinder its realization. If the unfavourable phenomena are among those which are equally likely to occur or not, that is, those which strictly speaking are

15 See Nicomachean Ethics VI, 1140a 3133; 1141b1012. The Arabic translation of Book VI was not preserved. Frb often refers to it implicitly in Ful munatazaa.


contingent, then the agent will not be able to set an appropriate time for his plan, for within a contingent course of events there is no such time. This means that in the second case considered by Frb, that of a maker endowed with the capacity (qudra) in fact to bring forth what he intends to do, one is no longer dealing with a purely contingent course of events, but with events and phenomena which do occur most of the time. This, I think, is what the clause the distortion is not more likely to happen than not to happen is about. Although this clause means the distortion can equally happen or not which amounts to saying that orderliness too can equally happen or not I do not think that Frb is still thinking, in a speciic sense, of the kind of contingency involved in the irst case, that of a non-individual agent (fil), but of contingency taken in a generic sense, as a common feature of human affairs. If I am correct, then the free agent associated with qudra is the one who, although he dwells in a realm of general contingency, is able to identify those of the contingent phenomena that happen most often and that can be taken into account in practical deliberation.16

What is particularly interesting here is that Frb is plainly establishing a correspondence between the natural course of regular phenomena which occur most of the time, and a maker endowed with a capacity, qudra: If he has such a qudra, then, the distortion is not more likely to happen than not, means, according to what we have just seen, that distortion will at most happen in half of the cases.

I will not here go into the implications of using the term qudra. Sufice it to say, irst, that according to Frb (and Aristotle) man is par excellence the agent shaped to live, determine himself and act within the realm of events which do not occur of necessity but most of the time or contingently; and, secondly, that the correspondence thus established between the most often occurring phenomena and the capacity (qudra) is a way, on Frbs part, to indicate that mans freewill is the ultimate result of the teleological dynamics of nature in general.17 In short, this constitutes a counterargument to the manifold doctrines, whether philosophical or

16 This issue is dealt with at length in Attainment of Happiness 2652: K. tal al-sada, in Al Yasin (ed.), Al-Frb, The Philosophical Works (Beirut, 1992), pp. 11997; esp. pp. 14979; English trans.: Al-Frb, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. with an Introduction by M. Mahdi (New York, 1962), pp. 2741 where Frb might rely on a Neoplatonic commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, probably that of Porphyry.

17 This appears from Frbs repeated claim (e.g. Ful muntazaa 17) that a human beings natural state with regard to virtue (well-ordered moral disposition) and vice (ill-ordered moral disposition) is such that he/she is endowed with a most-of-the-time inclination to accomplish certain kind of acts (certain things are easier for him to do than others), but never determined by a univocal disposition or a determinate habit to accomplish them, which conversely means that he/she remains able to go back and forth from one disposition to another, but not easily or without qualiication. In short, a human beings freewill relies and depends on his/her only prevalent ability ( = mumkin al l-akar) to incline toward a given thing.

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founded on the Quran or both, which were lourishing in his time and in one way or another denied man any true capacity to deliberate freely and act accordingly.18

Now, as Frbs argumentation clearly shows, this idea is here briely sketched out not for its own sake, but in order to contrast the conditions imposed upon non-suficient agents with the case of a self-suficient agent unimpaired by extrinsic impediments an idea which certainly never occurred to Aristotle.

18 See ar al-Frb li-kitb Arsls f l-ibra: Commentary on Aristotles , eds W. Kutsch & S. Marrow (Beirut, 1960), p. 83, 1623: Some people have undertaken to withdraw the contingency from phenomena, not arguing from primary knowledge (al-marifa al-l) but from what is conventionally held (al-wa), from Shariah (al-ara) and from authority (al-qawl). And yet their innate nature (ira) does require from them that their works and deeds be in conformity with what this innate nature of them involves. Thus, concerning what is primarily known by nature [m huwa malm bi-l-ira, i.e. the contingency of phenomena], one does not have to take into consideration [reading: laysa yultafatu] some peoples opinion that the situation is different in the light of Shariah (bi-l-ara). / Since inquiry in logic and in philosophy in general proceeds through and from things known by nature or through and from things which result necessarily from (lzima an) things known by nature, without having recourse in this matter to any premises posited by Shariah (muqaddimt urriat) [i.e. the Quran] nor anything which results necessarily (lazimat an) from things posited by Shariah (ay urriat) [i.e. the theological interpretation of the Quran], nor anything which has become commonly held (mahra) among people as resulting necessarily (lzimatan) from the judgement of one man (an rayi insnin) whose word is endowed with authority (maqbl) among those people [i.e. Muammads Sunna], then philosophy and logic do not have to go along with (laysa tataiu bi-) any such thing. (my translation; cf. Al-Frbs Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotles De Interpretatione, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by F.W. Zimmermann, London, 1981, p. 77). One cannot be more explicit and exhaustive. Frb explicitly opposes ira and philosophy to ara. Rashed (On the Authorship of the Treatise On the Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Sages attributed to Al-Frb, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 19 (2009), pp. 4382, p. 46) quotes a text of Frb which contains the following sentence: These are the roots of wicked opinions and the reason for corrupt, bad doctrines (his transl.). It would have been useful to the reader to know that Frb has just quoted the Quran. The sentence is better translated as: These are the scriptural foundations of iniquitous doctrines and the basis for pernicious and corruptive trains of thought, ul li-ri suin wa-sababu li-mahiba rada wa-fsida (Ful muntazaa 87, p. 92, 1). The terms ul and mahib, which both belong to Islamic vocabulary, are certainly not used at random by Frb: in this vocabulary, ul denote the Quran and Sunna, and mahib refer to the main theological schools built on these ul, which appeared during the eighth and ninth centuries; see D. Gimaret, Ul al-Dn, EI2: X, 930b; N. Calder, Ul al-Fiqh, EI2: X, 931b. The typical Quranic phraseology quoted a few lines above by Frb may equally refer to Q. v, 17; vi, 163; vii, 190; xi, 12; xxv, 2; xvii, 111; xviii, 26. But the doctrine he targeted recurs at least ifty times in the Quran. See below, n. 31.


1.b How Frb read ProclusI shall now turn to the concepts of distortion (fasd) and orderliness or well-ordered state (al). This distinction could be a remote allusion to Met., A 984b10-985a5 where Aristotle reviews his predecessors opinions on cosmological causes which he divides into causes of order and causes of disorder. The context is similar since Aristotle looks into the kinds of causes from which his predecessors wanted to deduce the actual world. The fact that Met., A 984a5b was probably unknown to Arabic readers is not suficient cause to dismiss the possibility that Frb knew its content, for instance through a commentary. Nonetheless a more probable although not contradictory source for the fasd/al distinction is Procluss ninth and twelfth proofs for the eternity of the world, which were known in Arabic independently of Philoponus refutation, as is shown in detail by Elvira Wakelnig in Proclus Arabus, a study to be published in the Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy (cf. above, n. 8).

Let us irst consider the twelfth. Proclus makes the hypothesis that if the cosmos, that is, the well-ordered state of the All, was not at some earlier time or will not be at some later time ( , p. 466, 7-8 Rabe), that is either because at one time its maker has failed at his work ( , l. 5) or because he proved himself not suficient for the job ( , ll. 18-19).

Everything generated requires matter and maker. Consequently, if something generated is not eternal but has being only temporarily, it is not eternal either because it is peculiarly unit or because the maker has failed at his work or for both reasons: the matter is unit and the maker is not self-suficient. If the cosmos was not at some earlier time or will not be at some later time, it has experienced this [not being] either because of the matter or because of whatever made it a cosmos. But the latter is always self-suficient for the process of making, inasmuch as the maker is always the same and not different at different times; therefore either the maker is not adequate for constructing the cosmos now or is adequate now and earlier and later. And the matter was either always and uniformly it for the construction of the cosmos, just as in the same way it is also either it now or not it now, since it is always and uniformly the same being. For the matter is unchangeable, just as the maker is unalterable. If everything that is at one time and is not at another is such either because the maker is not suficient for the job or the matter is not always serviceable, then (since it is the case neither that the maker of the cosmos is at one time suficient to make and at another time not suficient, nor that the matter is at one time serviceable and at another time not serviceable) it cannot be that the all at one time is and at

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another is not. Therefore, for all time both the demiurge makes and the matter is organized into the cosmos and the cosmos is eternal.19

In this twelfth proof lies the explanation for the alternative presented by Frb between an insuficient agent and a self-suficient one. But Frb does not use the hypothesis of the same agent, alternatively non-suficient and self-suficient, to carry out a determined task, nor does he then use an ad absurdum demonstration of a self-suficient agent not acting continuously from the start, that is, eternally. Instead, Frb places the non suficient and self-suficient attributes into two agents whose identity, either natural, human or divine has to be inferred from his wording. He then rephrased the time condition accordingly: whether something should take place earlier or later20 that is, whether it should be postponed in order to be eficiently dealt with now concerns the non-suficient agent only, as distinguished from the self-suficient one. But the main argument is identical in both authors: provided the agent at issue is self-suficient, there can be no time, before or after, when he is not carrying out his task and no time when the things he effects fail to enjoy a perfectly well-ordered, that is, an incorruptible state.21 This shows that al in Frbs words really constitutes a form of meiosis.

As to the question whether the effect of the act achieved by the divine craftsman takes place simultaneously with the order obtained through this act, this was raised by Proclus in his fourteenth argument for the eternity of the world. In short, the point Proclus wants to make is that there can be no interval between the preparation (or creation) of matter by the divine craftsman and the occurrence within matter of the traces (ichnoi) of the forms according to which matter is shaped: both have to take place simultaneously, meaning they must have existed together for all eternity. Strictly speaking, there can be no occurring or supervening of the traces in matter, because, with regard to their common cause and the nature of this cause (the divine craftsman), traces and matter have always existed inseparably from

19 Translation quoted from: Proclus, On The Eternity of The World, De Aeternitate Mundi, Greek Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Helen S. Lang & A.D. Macro, (Berkeley, 2001), p. 103. Greek text, ibid., p. 102 = p. 466, 223 ed. Rabe.

20 For the implications of this wording in Proclus thought, see his fourth argument. Frb heavily relies on this fourth proof in Ful muntazaa 83, i.e. in the section which immediately precedes the one quoted above.

21 Frb repeats this in the following form: Since the First Cause experiences the being-existent It alone possesses, it is a necessity that from It all the following natural existents have been proceeding, which are not within the reach of human ability to act (laysat il itiyr al-insn) given what the being they are imparted with is, namely: observable by sensuous faculty for one part and cognizable by intellectual demonstration for another part., Political Regime, p. 47, 1113. The existents in question are the celestial bodies which lie outside the reach of human deliberation and action. In view of the context, the protasis is to be read as: mat waada al-awwalu al-wuda alla la-hu.


one another.22 Proclus then remarks that as has been shown, order () too is simultaneous with them. Order therefore is both ungenerated and incorruptible and of the three none is irst, none second, none third except in theory alone. Consequently, setting aside theory, all are simultaneous, the matter, the traces and order.23 In addition to the fourteenth argument, Proclus showed the simultaneity of order and the All in his ninth proof which was also preserved in Arabic.

From the fourteenth argument, the wording of which is a little tortuous, Frb seems to retain the following twofold idea: the act achieved by the self-suficient agent and the well-ordered state of the effect brought forth by his act are concomitant and, conversely, the agent of an act which is not well-ordered from the very outset is non-suficient to achieve this act perfectly. Moreover, in both Proclus and Frb we ind the play on the word well-ordered, cosmos or al more conspicuous indeed in the case of Proclus. It seems hardly deniable that Frb had the same idea in mind. As for matter, Frb discards Proclus treatment of it24 and chooses to deal with it according to the abovementioned Aristotelian statistical way.

I now turn to Proclus ninth argument. As noted above, Wakelnig has shown that the extant Arabic edition of Proclus 18 arguments for the eternity of the world was not the irst of its kind. We know thanks to Al-Nadm, the tenth-century author of the bio-bibliographical encyclopaedia Al-Fihrist, that the 18 arguments did at some time exist in Arabic or in Syriac independently of Philoponus refutation. From the excipit of the Arabic manuscript of the irst nine arguments which have been preserved, one also learns that Isq b. unayn, their supposed translator, was the second scholar to undertake this task. Another bad (rad) translation of the 18 arguments already existed which Isqs was probably meant to replace. To attempt to determine on philological grounds which Frb used would be futile given that we know nothing of the ninth argument in the old translation also preserved, and that Frb could have completely recast the initial formulation he found. Therefore a doctrinal comparison is the only possible approach.

22 Cf. Frb, Political Regime, p. 58, 1659, 3: Moreover, for prime matter existence consists in always existing for the sake of another and thus it has no existence at all for itself. This is why if that for the sake of which matter was originally brought forth had not existed, matter would not have existed either. Thus if none of these forms existed, matter would not exist either. As a consequence, there is no way that prime matter exists at any moment separated from all form (fa-li-lika l yumkinu an tada l-mdda al-l mufraqatan li-ratin m f waqtin alan). Here is a crystal-clear statement of the eternity of the world. The line of argumentation is both Aristotelian and identical to that in Proclus fourteenth proof.

23 Rabe, p. 540, 1117; English transl., p. 115.24 This however does not mean that Frb would not adopt himself the doctrine at

issue. See below, the quotation of Risla f l-aql, Texte arabe intgral en partie indit tabli par M. Bouyges s.j., (Beirut, 21983), p. 29, 728, 1 [henceforth: De intellectu].

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In the ninth argument, which is perhaps one of his weakest, Proclus wants to show that what becomes corrupted is what at the outset involves an internal defect (fa: damage) or evil (arr = ). Since Plato said the All is a god (cf. Timaeus) and has no defect which could alter it from within to contribute to its corruption, it is incorruptible and hence ungenerated and eternal. This argument from authority is what makes this argument weak. Proclus then goes on more convincingly: So, whatever the cause from which a thing originates, the latter will corrupt the former. It is so, because each thing, if it is prevailed upon, causes another to originate, and if it prevails, causes another to be corrupted.25

This doctrine, which Proclus mainly takes from Aristotle (Phys., I, 5, 7, 9), corresponds in Frbs text to the case where no prevalent or determinative cause can be ascribed to what happens, i.e., the case of natural phenomena which occur or do not occur equally. Moreover, this shows that the agent Frb irst refers to in his argument is in fact an entity which itself undergoes distortion or corruption and not just an agent whose act becomes corrupted. In other words, the passage in Frbs text deals with a pair of contraries, each one of which is in relation to the other a contingent cause either of corruption or of generation. The irst insuficient fil alluded to is one of a pair of contraries, subject as such to the natural law of contingent alternation. The homeomeric bodies directly made of such contraries (such as minerals, metals, lesh and bones) are also concerned by this alternation.26 Frb makes it clear elsewhere that what is strictly contingent and fortuitous regarding homeomeric bodies is their association or dissociation which cannot be ascertained in advance.27

Incidentally, this may be the reason why Frb does not yet speak at this point of a maker (ni), but more vaguely of an effecter (fil), a notion which

25 Here is the translated Arabic text (Kalm Broqlus min kitabi-hi Usss al-ur, in Al-Alniyya al-mudaa inda l-arab, ed. Abd al-Ramn Badaw [Kuwait, 1977], pp. 3442 ; p. 42 for the quotation): wa-lika anna kulla m an-hu yaknu udu l-ay fa-lika yafsudu-hu li-annahu i kna l-malba kna sababan li-hudi-hi wa-i kna l-liba kna sababan li-fasdi-hi. The translation (Proclus, On The Eternity of The World, p. 81) from the Greek runs as follows: For the generation of each thing comes from what is destructive of each. If it is dominated, it is a contributary cause of birth, while if it dominates, it is a contributary cause of corruption, , , , p. 313, 1921 Rabe.

26 According to Olympiodorus (Olympiodori in Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, ed. Stve, CAG XII, 2 [Berlin, 1900], p. 273, 15) the bodies are to be theoretically divided as follows: irst (i) the homeomeric bodies in general, (ii) the anhomeomeric in general; then, (i) the inanimate homeomeric, (ii) the inanimate anhomeomeric, (i) the animate homeomeric, (ii) the animate anhomeomeric. The class (ii) is empty since no such bodies exist and the class (ii) in fact is called organic bodies.

27 See Political Regime, p. 66, 1267, 2 ; on the alternation of contraries, see also ibid., p. 57, 1218 ; 59, 760, 2.


can also be translated as factor if one puts aside the human quality implied by Frbs wording.

Compared with Proclus ninth proof which simply contrasts the case of a pair of contraries with the case where no defect exists and hence where no corruption is expected to occur, Frb thus adds the case of a maker who indeed is dwelling in a realm of contingent and most-of-the-time occurring possibilities28 but is nonetheless endowed with a capacity to determine himself freely by ascertaining when his actions are likely to give the results he expects.

Like Proclus, however, Frb examines the case of contraries directly in relation to ontological suficiency and insuficiency in one of the metaphysical passages I alluded to above.Ful muntazaa 73, p. 80:

All that admits of a contrary is ontically deicient (nqi al-wud) for all that admits of a contrary, admits of a privation; because the meaning of two contraries is the following, namely that each one annihilates the other when they encounter each other or come together [cf. Aristotle, Phys., I, 9, 192a2122]. It is so irst because in order to actually exist, each is contingent upon (muftaqir il) the receding (zawl) of its contrary and also because of an obstacle to its being (li-wudi-hi iq), so that it is not, on its own, suficiently endowed to actually exist.Consequently, what admits of a privation admits of a contrary and what is not in need of anything at all besides its essence admits of no contrary.

I believe this represents the essence of what can be drawn from Proclus ninth argument regarding the difference between, on the one hand, the things which involve an intrinsic defect, and so are doomed to destruction and replacement by their contrary, and on the other, the entity which has neither law nor contrary and shall remain uncorrupted. In addition, the structure of this much shorter argument is the same as that in Section 84 quoted above: the irst part is almost Aristotelian and the second part, Proclusean. Their respective content is therefore also similar in the sense that the irst part of 73 is included in the irst part of 84, i.e., the part relating to the irst insuficient agent; while the conclusion of 73 is assumed in the conclusive reasoning of 84. Moreover, whether Frb applies 73 to the eternity of the world is a question answered at the end of 84, where he states that the effect of the act achieved by a self-suficient agent is coextensive to this

28 In Aristotles view the modality most of the time or for the most part ( ) is related to what is contingent or possible as one meaning of the modal operator possible (Prior Analytics 3, 25b14; Posterior Analytics, 30, 87b1927; 12, 96a819), while in Frbs view, (mumkin al l-akar) is primarily one particular case of that which can possibly exist. Although sometimes has an ontological sense for Aristotle as well, Frbs use of this concept is straightforwardly ontological or at least involves an ontological reference.

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agent, that is, coeternal. The fact that this theme recurs in various parts of the treatise surely reveals something about the apparently chaotic composition of Ful muntazaa.

2. The Eternity of the World in the Anatomy of Frbs NeoplatonismSumming up the results of the previous analyses, I will now turn to the historical context of Frbs metaphysics.

Generally speaking, what is striking about the texts examined is their structure: Frb proceeds upon Aristotelian presuppositions which clearly ground his own thought, but then goes beyond conclusions drawn purely from Aristotelian premises to enter into another conceptual framework, that of Neoplatonism. No doubt this synthesis of two systems of thought is, in its speciics, his own creation, but as a method it had been common enough before him among Neoplatonists.

The second striking feature of the irst text is its conclusion. On the one hand, there is Proclus who wanted to show that unlike the components of a pair of contraries each involving an evil, i.e., a privation, which ultimately results in the corruption of one and the generation of the other, that which does not involve any privation does not get corrupted and does not generate anything else. On the other hand, we ind that Frb adopts the same argumentation but applies it to the principle of the world, rather than to the world, so that what does not admit of a privation and a contrary is not only self-suficient as the world is in Proclus understanding, but self-suficient in the sense that the world unceasingly originates (yadua) from its principle. The predicate self-suficient, once transferred from the world to its principle, entails a quite different conclusion.

Proclus would probably not have spoken of the worlds origination. Coming from Frb, this is all the more surprising since the verb adaa/yaduu as well as the active and passive participles and the noun of action (di, mad, ud), all drawn from the same root, were employed by the Muslim theologians to assert that the world is adventitious or supervened, that is, in their view, created out of nothing. This conclusion is striking in another respect. In our text (Ful muntazaa 84), the verb used by Frb certainly is curious since, after having so strongly insisted on the conditions on which the agent can effect or enact a well-ordered and perennial thing, Frb inally gives the thing the place of the agent. In fact, to originate understood in the intransitive mode is undoubtedly an act of the thing which originates and not of the agent who throughout the argumentation was supposed to bring the thing forth.

Given that Frb is not accustomed to mistake one term for another, one could rephrase his conclusion as follows: when an agent is self-suficient to achieve an act or to produce an effect, he does not need to enact anything because the expected effect has already emanated from him by itself. In other words, in the case of a self-suficient agent, the causal eficiency is always found on the side of the effect. In Frbs words, in the case of a self-suficient agent, the expected act/


effect in fact continuously originates from the agent. Such is, I think, the meaning of the alleged ontological simultaneity of the agent with the thing which originates from him. A self-suficient agent does not act as an eficient or transitive cause but in another, intransitive, manner, as a cause which has always in advance provided the effect with the said eficiency so that the thing in question forever comes into being by itself. In sum, the self-eficiency within the act/effect, a self-eficiency which in fact ensures its incorruptibility, corresponds to the self-suficiency within the agent. The cause cannot be thought of without its effect. This necessary relation reminds us that the conception of the Alls structure in terms of causality is adventitious or contrived in that it involves a consecution which in reality is without object since the All has always been such as it actually is.

This interpretation is conirmed by a sentence which, however isolated, is very meaningful. Frb states as if en passant that the nine Second Intellects are independent or free (bara) both from what proceeds from them, which goes without saying, and from what precedes them in rank, that is from the First Principle itself, an uncommon position to hold in a monotheistic context.29 In fact, Frbs thought is reminiscent of a Hellenic pagan worldview much more than of a religious universe in the sense of the revealed religions of his time. His Second Intellects in fact are authupostata, what a Hellenic philosopher would have called (self-subsistent) gods.30 And the whole structure of Frbs intelligible and sensible universe is likewise subsistent by itself.31 This is why he cannot be counted among the Arabic philosophers, whether eternalist or creationist, who derive the entire universe from a irst cause and for whom this means that the

29 Here is this very short and elusive sentence, Political Regime, p. 41, 1213: The Second Causes are exempt from all that is external to their essence and this in both cases. About the souls of the celestial bodies, Frb has just speciied (l. 12): by in both cases, I mean: with regard to their subsistence as well as to their granting others existence. This obviously means that the Second Causes do not depend on the First Principle for their eternal subsistence. Unlike McGinnis and Reisman (Classical Arabic Philosophy, An Anthology of Sources, Indianapolis-Cambridge, 2007, p. 87), I believe the subject of the next sentence (l. 1314) is still the Second Causes.

30 As a matter of fact, thus they are called: mutaawhir bi-ti-hi = authupostaton, in Frbs Virtuous City (= Kitb mabdi r ahl al-madna al-fila: On the Perfect State, A revised Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Walzer, Oxford, 1985), p. 100, 15. On this idea in Arabic philosophy, see C. DAncona La doctrine noplatonicienne de ltre entre lAntiquit tardive et le Moyen Age, Le Liber de Causis par rapport ses sources, Recherches de philosophie ancienne et mdivale 59 (1992), pp. 4185 and La doctrine de la cration mediante intelligentia dans le Liber de Causis et dans ses sources, Revue des sciences philosophiques et thologiques 76 (1992), pp. 209233.

31 As I have shown in a forthcoming study on Frbs conception of religion and politics (Un philosophe intransigeant. Religion, langage et politique chez Frb), he had no objection (Ful muntazaa 87, p. 91, 810) to metaphorically calling the philosopher an associate (ark) of the First Cause. In its plural form, this term is Quranic and represents a most reprehensible heresy: irk, i.e. giving God associates, urak, sing. ark.

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universe may theoretically be reduced to its irst principle or, the other way round, may be deduced, at each degree of its hierarchical structure, from its ultimate cause. Frb is in this regard hardly comparable with Kind or Avicenna since for him each world or degree of the All possesses its own ontological consistency, which is also true of the material world.

As I will show in my comments on Ful muntazaa and Political Regime, it is a common feature of his metaphysical formulations that the emphasis is on what results from each principle rather than on the act whereby each result is brought forth by its cause. In grammatical terms, the effects generally appear as the subjects of the verbs used to express their occurrence (intransitive originate, necessarily result, proceed, intransitive emanate,32 come into existence, etc.), while their cause seems to have no eficient activity in this process. At any rate, that is the case with the First Principle and the Second Principles (al-awn) from which the nine celestial bodies respectively proceed (by themselves) while the Principles remain entirely absorbed in a self-contemplative activity and ignore what is not them.

The situation is very different when it comes to the Tenth Intellect, i.e. the Active Intellect not to mention the heavenly spheres. On account of a passage drawn from Aristotles Purposes in Metaphysics (p. 37, ll.1820)33 where Frb reports Aristotles refutation of the existence of Platos Ideas, Rashed34 argues that, like his master, Frb undoubtedly rejected Platos paradigmatic Ideas. However, I have argued35 that Frb, like Ammonius before him, does not reject Platos paradigmatic Ideas themselves (maqlt) but their existence per se outside a separate Intellect of some sort. I believe the passage invoked by Rashed represents only a factual explanation of the contents of Aristotles Metaphysics. As for the existence of paradigmatic Ideas within the active Intellect, Frbs texts contain no ambiguity. For instance, in De intellectu, p. 27, 89; p. 28, 9p. 29, 2; p. 29, 6 (and so on), he afirms that the forms (uwar) eternally subsist within (lam yazal f) the Active Intellect in a state of indivision (ayra munqsasimatin), while they (the same forms) lie in matter in a state of division (munqasimatan). And the Active Intellects own essence consists in indivisible things, a kind of oxymoron which is strongly reminiscent of Plotinus doctrine of the nos. This incidentally provides the elements of an argument for the eternity of the world.

32 For instance, emanate is intransitive in Political Regime, p. 41, 10: yafu an-h wudun il ayri-h, a being emanates ad extra from the souls of the celestial bodies (the verb is fa). McGinnis and Reisman (Classical Arabic Philosophy, p. 87) translated as if they read: yufu an-h wudan il ayri-h, bestowing existence on something else. The verb they erroneously read is afa.

33 In F. Dieterici (ed.), Alfarabis philosophische Abhandlungen: aus Leidener und Berliner Handschriften (Leipzig, 1890). Reprinted in F. Sezgin, Islamic Philosophy, vol. 12 (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), pp. 348.

34 M. Rashed Authorship, p. 54.35 Vallat, Frb et lEcole dAlexandrie, p. 81, n. 4.


In The Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 130, 18,36 Frb asserts that the forms of species are given by the Active Intellect from the outset (munu awwali l-amr) as a whole/in one time/all at once (f l-umla) and then that they unfold or come after one another as particulars (az) within the realm of generation (al-mutakawwan). This entails that the forms subsist within the Active Intellect in a corresponding compact, indivisible mode of being, which in turns illustrates the above-mentioned passage of De intellectu and forms a straightforward Neoplatonic statement of the eternity of the world: by giving matter the whole set of the forms of species at once, the Active Intellect necessarily gives it for all eternity. Furthermore, in Virtuous City, p. 264, 1012 Walzer, Frb takes the inter-connection between the intelligibles, and hence their uniplurality (cf. the indivisible things in which the active Intellects essence consists), as an illustration of the state of the separate souls with regard to one another; cf. Plotinus V 3 [49], 5, 4. Even after closer examination,37 the fact remains that Frb accepts a kind of subsistence for the intelligibles within the Active Intellect. In Political Regime, p. 51,13p. 52, 1, a connection is even established between an elevated human mode of thinking and what subsists within (f) the First Principle. Last but not least, Frb explicitly states (De intellectu, p. 29, 7p. 28, 1), in a way which is reminiscent of Proclus own wording, that the Active Intellect gives matter traces or likenesses (abh) of what subsists in him indivisibly, i.e. of the forms, a doctrine that he eventually attributes to Aristotles De anima. This same doctrine is echoed in the previously mentioned passage of Political Regime.

Moreover, Frb calls the Active Intellect a formal, eficient, inal and paradigmatic separate cause of human intellect (Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 128, 418)38 and characterizes its causality as provident toward man. The Active

36 See Al-Frbs Philosophy of Aristotle, ed. M. Mahdi, (Beirut, 1961). English trans.: M. Mahdi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, p. 59130.

37 See Ph. Vallat, Frb, De intellectu, traduction annote et analyse: Lintellect et les intellects selon Frb, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2011.

38 The paradigmatic causality exerted by the Active Intellect, expressed by the phrase yuta uwu-hu in Philosophy of Aristotle (p. 128, 910; cf. Ful muntazaa, p. 68, 1269, 1; Attainment of Happiness 54, p. 181), also appears in De intellectu, p. 28, 929, 5: Thus, the forms which today are in matters [in re] are abstract forms in the active Intellect [ante rem]; not, however, in the sense that they irst were in matters and then were abstracted [post rem], but in the sense that they have always been in the active Intellect in actuality. Hence, with regard to prime matter and other matters, a pattern was followed [utu, i.e. utu uwun] in that they were given the forms which are in actuality in the active Intellect [reading: allat bi-l-il f l-aql al-fal]. And the beings at whose existentiating the Active Intellect aims, according to the irst intention, for the sake of us human beings (wa-l-mawdt allat qaada da-h qaadan awwalan f-m laday-n) are the forms in question. However, as the existentiating of those beings was not possible down here otherwise than in matters, those matters were generated. This text brings together recurring features of Frbs method: an original Aristotelian text read with the aid of: (i) a Neoplatonic commentary (probably Alexandrian), to which refer

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Intellect also plays such a role toward the other natural substances, but only indirectly, through the actualization of the human formal substance seen as the highest natural forms. If Alexander of Aphrodisias inluence is in this case more conspicuous, it remains mitigated by other equally conspicuous Neoplatonic characteristics. Compared to the First Cause, Frb makes it clear for instance (De intellectu, pp. 3233) that the Active Intellect is imperfect in that it has to exert causality on a substrate (maw) which is not always serviceable to it. In other words, in order to act or, more speciically, in order to exert its proper eficient function, the Active Intellect is in need of something other than its own essence. It then falls to a certain extent under the category of what is ontically deicient (nqi al-wud) and cannot, Frb concludes against Alexander and Themistius, be the First Principle.

This shows that in an eternal world, i.e. a world which, even in theory did not come into being but has always existed, eficient causality amounts to aficient causality, that is, causality which acts upon something pre-existent and not which brings about something new. So, if eficient causality can only mean aficient causality, which in turn presupposes a substrate on which this causality is exerted; and if the need to act upon an extrinsic substrate proves an ontical defect within the cause in question, then a perfect being cannot be an eficient cause. Consequently, the First and Second Causes cannot be eficient causes save in the sense that they sustain themselves eternally and, being thus self-suficient, incessantly induce existence in essences they neither create nor produce in any way.

I believe this conclusion necessarily follows from Frbs demonstration of the Active Intellects imperfection. What is particularly striking in this demonstration is that its irst premise actually turns out to be the eternity of the world. In this respect, among others, Frbs metaphysics differs widely from Kinds and Avicennas. Both start from the nature of their ultimate cause and in this regard appear as monotheists, while Frbs thought, inasmuch as it relies on a metaphysical tenet which does not belong to the stock of strictly theological concepts proper to Arabic philosophy, comes out as polytheistic.

the doctrines of the threefold status of universals (in re, ante rem, post rem) and of the paradigmatic cause (unknown to Aristotle); (ii) a commentary or a treatise of Alexander of Aphrodisias, to which the phrase according to the irst intention (qaadan awwalan) refers. The semantically equivalent phrase al l-qaad al-awwal can be found eight times in the Arabic version of Alexanders On Divine Providence where, however, it serves to characterize the kind of providence that Alexander precisely refuses both to his Divine Intellect and to the celestial bodies. The sole existing providence is in his view a by-product of the movements of the celestial bodies, that is a providence according to the second intention; see R.W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Divine Providence: Two Problems, The Classical Quaterly, 32 (1982): pp. 198211, esp. p. 199, n. 13. On the contrary, Frbi not only endows his Active Intellect with a prima intentio providence towards the human mind, but he goes as far as to postulate the existence of the world (the enmattered forms) for the sake of the progressive actualization of the human intellect.


What then is the kind of causality exerted by the First and Second Causes? This question can be answered by a process of elimination. If they are not eficient causes, we are left with formal, paradigmatic and inal causalities. That they cannot be paradigmatic causes is inferred from the fact that if they were, they would know what proceeds from them, and would contain the paradigms of posterior things. But that is not the case. Among other reasons put forward by Frb to show how absurd this would be, he states that it would mean that what they know is causa inalis of what they do and hence that the existence of something inferior would constitute for them an extrinsic purpose, foreign to their self-contemplative activity, and ultimately the suficient reason of their own existence.

This explanation, found in Virtuous City as well as in Political Regime, equates the inal cause with the eficient cause which therefore is eficient only insofar as it is inal. Thus Frb regards the inal cause as suficient reason for the existence of its effect, which plainly reduces eficient causality to the inal one. Surely, this reasoning makes the Active Intellects transcendence vis--vis the substrate of its aficient action unclear. It also shows that Frb is struggling to harmonize Aristotle and Alexander39 with a Neoplatonic metaphysical structure which has the advantage of keeping the First Cause free from any relation with what is posterior to it. Frb seems to resort to a Neoplatonic scheme in order to make Aristotle and Alexander more consistent.

If not paradigmatic, then the First and Second Causes must be formal and inal causes. Frb is generally discreet on the subject of formal causality, except in one sentence of the Summary of the Virtuous City40 where he seems to say that the First Cause is the form of the forms. The corresponding exposition in Virtuous City can be found at pp. 945 (23) where one reads that the First Cause is such that all that eventually emanates from It is hierarchically ordered and mutually connected so as to form one whole. This sympathy or cohesion of the whole, he adds, appears in each being either within its own substance or as a state (l) immediately resulting from the substance considered, like in the case of love or friendship (maabba) between human beings. That Frb thus is commenting upon the Stoic-Neoplatonic doctrine of cosmic sympathy or philia is as undeniable as the fact that he explains this cosmic order based on the formal causality exerted by the First (and its associates). Once again, this brings us close to the conclusion of Proclus twelfth proof of the eternity of the world and of his ninth and fourteenth proofs as well. At any rate, the doctrinal context is very similar. One may just add that Frb derives the political nature of humanity (al-insn) from its cosmically shaped inclination toward intimacy or friendship, a notion which in Arabic can

39 Alexandre dAphrodise, Trait de la Providence, Version arabe de Ab Bir Matt ibn Ynus, introduction, ed. and trans. Pierre Thillet (Paris, 2003), p. 16, 824 (Ruland, 645).

40 Ful mabdi r ahl al-madna al-fila in Book of Religion and Related Texts, M. Mahdi (ed.), (Beirut, 1986), p. 79, 1415.

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also be referred to as uns (intimacy, humanity, humaneness), a term drawn from the same root as insn (human species).41

The First Cause is therefore a formal cause. And in the same respect as a formal cause, it must also be a inal one since both are identical in this case. But It then is inal as First and supreme principle of the hierarchical structure which formally emanates from It, i.e. as the ultimate end never reached but always desired by all other beings. However, if they undoubtedly desire It, this is not a direct desire except in the case of the Second Causes but a desire which stops at the particular inal cause on which everything ultimately depends for perfection. As for the Second Causes, given that they do not depend on the First for their own subsistence or for the fact that something emanates from them, they independently exert on what emanates from them the same kind of formal and inal causality as the First does on the irst Second Cause and beyond, through the latter.

But let us come back for a minute to the posterior beings and especially to the case of human beings and celestial spheres. Frb nowhere states that man desires the First Cause. In the parallel passages of Virtuous City (pp. 828, 1315) and Political Regime (p. 46,6p. 47,10), he alleges, comparing the perfection of man and that of the First, that man desires his own perfection or perfection of his essence which does not amount to his union with the First, but only to the actualization of the perfection of his own formal substance. That man eventually comes to know the Active Intellect and, through the latter, the highest immaterial hypostases (ibid., p. 42, 56), is merely a side effect of his perfectly actualized state called acquired intellect.

The case of the celestial spheres is even more interesting since therein lies another proof of the eternity of the world. From their respective Second Cause, each celestial substance receives two things: (i) from the outset they are fully endowed with their most eminent mode of being (arafu wudti-h), that is the one which comes closest to it.42 This explains why they cannot assume another form than the one they respectively have already; and (ii) they are also granted most of their being, akaru wudti-h. Frb then goes on:

Of their being only a minute part is left that these substances are not of a nature that this part could have been wholly granted them from the outset all at once (wa-baqiya min-h ayun yasrun laysa min ani-h an yuwaff-h

41 See Book of Dialectics ( = K. al-adal, in Al-Maniqiyyt li-l-Frb ed. M.T. Daneshpajuh [Qom, 1408 h.], vol. 1, pp. 358455), pp. 364, 20365, 2 and Attainment of Happiness 16, pp. 139-40; trans. Mahdi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, p. 23: It is also the innate nature (ira) of this animal to seek shelter and to dwell in the neighbourhood of those who belong to the same species, which is why he is called the social (uns) and political animal.

42 Political Regime, p. 54, 89, reading: wa-huwa m and not wa-m huwa with Najjar. I understand it this way: they have been wholly granted their most eminent mode of being, that is, what comes closest to it.


dufatan min awwali l-amr); they are only of a nature that this part can gradually come into their possession over time, everlastingly (bal innam anu-h an yada la-h ayan fa-ayan f l-mustaqbal diman). They strive for this part for this reason, in order to reach it, and reach it only through their motion being everlasting (wa-innam tanlu-hu bi-dawmi l-araka). This is why the celestial bodies everlastingly (diman) move and why their movements undergo no interruption: they only move toward, and strive for, their most beautiful being (asani wudi-h) (Political Regime, p. 54, 57).

In this passage, Frb bypasses the impossibility for a inite body to possess an ininite power to move and, more to the point, an ininite power to exist.43 He explains the heavenly bodies everlasting motion by their ad ininitum reception of their own being. The minute part of their being that they are not capable of receiving all at once is what separates a inite quantity of power and being from an ininite one. This minute part will take an ininity of time to be given to them by their respective Second Cause. That this part of their being is received from their respective inal cause and through their perpetuating their motion is obvious from Frbs wording. The reason why they could not receive it all at once lies in their nature and not in that of their cause. It thus would be more appropriate to say that the part of their being that they do not yet possess will take an ininity of time to be received by them due to their inite receptive capacity; or because the imperfect mode according to which they receive their being measures the potential ininity of time. The eternity of the world consists in this indeinite postponement of their complete actualization and time is the extension of the movement through which they are granted their most beautiful being.

The underlying doctrine, common to all Platonists from the author of the pseudo-Platonic Deinitions (411e2) onwards, is the one which Proclus Arabus expressed as follows: omni receptum est in recipiente per modum recipientis (Liber de Causis, prop. 99, 179). In the present case, per modum recipientis means a mode of celestial sempiternity as distinguished from noetic eternity. This is what Frb calls existing for a time during which it cannot be otherwise, which is an intermediary modality between what cannot not exist i.e. The First and Second Causes and what can possibly exist and not exist44 the sublunary

43 Cf. De intellectu, p. 34, 45: Every celestial body only moves as a result of the act of a mover which is the cause of its coming into being, in that this body gets substantialized thanks to it. For all that concerns the Aristotelian argument and its multiple interpretations, I can only refer my readers to Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, and to R. Sorabjis enlightening explanations: Ininite Power Impressed: the Transformation of Aristotles Physics and Theology, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, the Ancient Commentators and their Inluence (Ithaca, New York, 1990), pp. 18198.

44 Respectively: Ful muntazaa 69, p. 78, 14: an yada nan wa-l yumkinu f-hi ayru lika; p. 78, 15: m l yumkinu an l yada; p. 78, 16: alla yumkinu an yada wa-an l yada. This is a doctrinal elaboration ultimately made on the basis of Aristotle,

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beings. Sempiternity or everlastingness what I called extensive eternity in the introduction is the mode according to which heavenly bodies partake in the intensive eternity of their respective cause.

Before turning to the Greek source Frb is relying on this time and before concluding, I will examine the conclusion Rashed arrived at in light of what we have seen up to now. Summing up the reconstruction he proposed of Frbs argument for the eternity of the world, Rashed writes:

I think that if al-Frb decided to reorganize Aristotles categories and insisted on the fact that continuity should be considered as the prominent feature of action and passion, it is probably because he was willing to rule out the possibility of an action all at once. In other words, al-Frb aimed at purifying Aristotelianism from a heterogeneous concept introduced in order to explain the existence of the world: that of divine creation, or ibd; Creation (ibd) is an action, every action, for al-Frb (but not for Aristotle), is a motion, and every motion is continuous.45

Frb does not intend to rule out the possibility of an action taking place all at once since everything emanates eternally from the First in this manner. Each thing however receives its own being and partakes in the First Causes eternity according to its own capacity and mode of reception: the Second Causes in a (co-)eternal mode, the heavenly bodies in a sempiternal mode and the sublunary beings in a temporal mode. Moreover, what Rashed believed to be Frbs recasting of Aristotles categories and his emphasizing the continuity of action and passion are in fact drawn from another Neoplatonic proof for the eternity of the world, as we will now see. At any rate, the continuity of action is rather to be understood as the eternity and instantaneity of the act/effect emanating from the First, and the continuity of passion as the continuous process whereby each thing save the Second Causes receives existence from its proximate cause. Thus, this formulation in terms of continuity cannot account for the co-eternity of the Second Causes and Active Intellect.

If the term world could refer to the All, then Aristotles categories would have no epistemological relevance as to the question of the eternity of the world. Frb claims that what is above the heavenly bodies falls outside the categories, ria an al-maqlt.46 This is the case because the categories, which Frb curiously regards not only as semantic items but also as beings (wudt), appear (ul) with the substances of the heavenly bodies (Political Regime, p. 53, 14p.

De caelo I, 12, 281a28282a13. For the Arabic, see the facsimile of MS 11821 National Library, Tunis, published by G. Endress: Commentary on Aristotles Book on the Heaven and the Universe by Ibn Rushd (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), pp. 98104.

45 Respectively: Al-Frbs lost treatise, p. 53; Authorship, pp. 578.46 See e.g. Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 130, 914; and K. al-urf, Alfarabis Book of

Letters, ed. M. Mahdi (Beirut, 21990), 1617, pp. 689.


54, 3; p. 65, 1518; cf. p. 66, 912) and do not exist above or before that point. Due to their ontical deiciency,47 these substances require supervening properties, which turn out to be corporeal properties and these are the instruments (lt) the heavenly bodies need in order to fulil their purpose, i.e. to be the eficient-aficient causes of the sublunary species. The categories are those properties. Thus in Frbs view, nothing can be inferred from the categories as to the relevance or correctness of such a notion as action occurring all at once, which only applies to the First Cause and the Intellects and falls outside the categories as well as outside the world. In summary, Frbs demonstration of the eternity of the All cannot be based on his conception of Aristotles categories.

As a matter of fact, in Political Regime, p. 54, 57 quoted above, Frb adopts almost word for word one of Proclus arguments such as it appears for instance in this passage of his commentary on Platos Timaeus:

In just the same way, everything shows that it [i.e. the cosmos] will obtain its ininite power of existing from there [i.e. from the Intellect] because of the argument which says that an ininite power never exists within a inite body Something else, then, will give it the power of existing, and will give it not all at once, since it will not be capable of receiving it all at once. It will give it, then, in the amounts it can take, in a stream that lows and ever lows onto it. No wonder the cosmos is for ever coming into being and never has being.48

Regarding this Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotles demonstration of the incorporeity of the First Mover, R. Sorabji49 also refers to Examinations of Aristotles Objections to Platos Timaeus, ap. Philoponus, De aeternitate mundi, 238, 3240, 9 ; 297, 21300, 2 ; 626, 1627, 20 Rabe. Thus Frb either found it in Philoponus refutation of Proclus or as an appendix to the old translation of Proclus 18 arguments. But it may also be the case that he found it in Proclus commentary on Platos Timaeus since this work also seems to have been known in part to Arabic readers.

This interpretation, which equates the impression of movement with the giving of being, deserves to be dealt with on another occasion. It might perhaps clarify what belongs to Proclus in the text quoted and what Frb means by the distinction between the noblest or most eminent mode of being of the celestial bodies and their most beautiful being.

47 They are made up of a soul and of a substrate and then are composite. And all composites are ontically deicient; see Ful muntazaa 82, p. 87.

48 Proclus, In Tim., I, 267, 16268, 6 Diehls, quoted by Sorabji, Ininite Power, p. 184.

49 Sorabji, Ininite Power, p. 184.

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ConclusionFrb divides the four Aristotelian causes plus the paradigmatic cause into

two groups: the formal and inal kinds of causality pertain in the irst place to the First and Second Causes and then to the other causal entities, the Active Intellect and the heavenly bodies. To the Active Intellect also pertain the eficient-aficient and paradigmatic kinds of causality. The heavenly bodies exert an eficient-aficient causality in the sense that they are motor causes. To matter only pertains material causality. This thoroughly Neoplatonic scheme is intrinsically linked to the thesis of the eternity of the world which pervades all Frbs formulations in the previously quoted texts.

In this scheme, the attribution of the inal-formal causality to the First and Second Causes and that of the eficient-aficient causality to the Active Intellect and the celestial bodies is well-known historically-speaking. It owes little to Aristotle and Alexander and almost all to Ammonius and beyond him to Proclus.

R. Wisnowsky50 summarizes the ontological and cosmological distribution of the three Aristotelian causes adopted by Proclus as follows:

If the superlunary world is rigidly stratiied according to causality with the inal causality of the Good at the top, the paradigmatic causality of the Ideas in the middle and the eficient causality of the Demiurge at the bottom then the eficient causation of the Universe will be traceable to the Demiurge, and the inal causation of the Universe will be traceable to the Good. In this case it will be no identity between the ultimate inal cause and the initial eficient cause in the superlunary world, and the inal causes status would be clearly superior to that of the eficient cause.

Beyond the thesis of the eternity of the world, it is this causal structure, common to Proclus, his pupil Ammonius and his pupil Simplicius, that Frb actually recast. Yet Frbs main argument for the eternity of the world already relied on this structure since it allows him to evade the question of the eternity of what is outside the world. I mean here that the term world has in his vocabulary a deinite signiicance which has gone unnoticed.

There is no word in Frbs vocabulary to refer to the All and hence no term to refer to its origin, whether eternal or created. So far as I know, in his preserved treatises, he never uses the word al-kull and only once the phrase umla wida, one whole (Virtuous City, p. 96, 7), but this only refers to the system composed of the celestial and sublunary bodies. And the very term world (lam, plural awlim) only means the whole made up of the heavenly spheres and the sublunary

50 Final and eficient causality in Avicennas cosmology and theology, Quaestio 2 (2002), pp. 97123; p. 104 for the quotation.


substances.51 Hence, in addition to the texts I examined above and others I cannot presently examine, Frb tacitly settled the question of the eternity of the world, irst, by always presupposing the existence of the Active Intellect and Second Causes and, secondly, by focusing on the eficient-aficient causality of the Active Intellect and celestial bodies vis--vis the sublunary realm. In other words, the most obvious argument for the eternity of the world in Frbs writings is found in the causal structure of his universe.

51 See Political Regime, p. 31, 911. However, Frb speaks more loosely of three worlds in Ful muntazaa 69, p. 78, 17: The worlds (awlim) are three: the spiritual, the heavenly, the hylic. These worlds are so called as realms distinguished from one another by their modal or statistical ability to exist. This text is to be read in the light of Averroes refutation of Alexander and Avicenna summed up by Davidson Proofs for Eternity, pp. 321ff.

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