On 02 Dec 2013, at 14:58, Jesse Mazer wrote:
The Muslim philosophers and theologians I have found addressing the
issue seem to agree that there are "necessary" truths that God
cannot change, which include logical necessity. Examples:
From http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/K057 on Abu Hamid al-
Ghazali, who rejected causal necessity but seems to have accepted
logical necessity-- "Unlike the Ash'arites, however, al-Ghazali
presents a philosophical argument for this position. The only form
of necessity he recognizes is logical necessity, and he has little
difficulty in showing that causes do not logically necessitate their
effects." Also see http://www.betsymccall.net/edu/philo/blackbox.pdf
"causality's black box" which suggests al-Ghazali accepts geometric
necessity.
Another Muslim thinker who discussed the issue is Ibn Rushd or
Averroes, quoted on p. 85 of "An Introduction to Classical Islamic
Philosophy" by Leaman (Averroes had great influence on Maimonides
and Aquinas as discussed at http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2011-11-08-malik-en.html
): "Those evil events which inevitably affect the individual cannot
be said not to have come from God...he cannot do absolutely anything
at all, for the corruptible cannot be eternal, nor can the eternal
be corruptible. In the same way that the angles of a triangle cannot
be equal to four right angles, and in the same way that colour
cannot be heard, so it is an offence against human reason to reject
such propositions."
There has been a Muslim Neoplatonist branche, but like with the
Christians, neoplatonism survived only partially, on the Sufi, like on
the Cabbala. Ibn Arabi is also quite interesting.
Averroes will influence Maimonides and Aquinas to diverge or deviate
from Platonism (and from "comp", thus)
Where is my book on Muslim Neoplatonism?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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