Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra on God’s Knowledge of Particulars

Criticism and Analytic Assessment

Authors

  • Seyed Hassan Hosseini Sharif University of Technology, Tehran
  • Alireza Kazemi Sharif University of Technology, Tehran

Keywords:

God’s Knowledge, The Particulars, The Universals, Ibn Sina, Mula Sadra

Abstract

The problem of God’s knowledge of particulars goes back to the beginnings of classical philosophy, and within the context of Islamic philosophy and theology, diverse schools have arisen which respond to this problem in different ways. The scope and depth of God’s knowledge of our world, which also includes knowledge of human will and human action, is the subject of Ibn Sina’s account of God’s knowledge of particulars, which I set out to discuss in this paper followed by Mula Sadra’s main criticisms of his premises and argumentation, finally providing my assessment of these two philosophers’ positions.

References

Avicenna [Ibn Sina] and S. C. Inati. 2014. Ibn Sina’s Remarks and Admonitions: Physics and Metaphysics: An Analysis and Annotated Translation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Avicenna, [Ibn Sina] and M. E. Marmura. 2005. The Metaphysics of The Healing: A parallel English-Arabic text, al-Ilahiyat min al-Shifa. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

Leaman, O. 2001. An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164719

Marmura, M. 1962. Some Aspects of Avicenna’s Theory of God’s Knowledge of Particulars.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 823: 299–312. https://doi.org/10.2307/597641

McGinnis, Jon. 2010. Avicenna. Great Medieval Thinkers series. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nasr, Seyed Hossein 1972. “Mulla Sadra and the Doctrine of the Unity of Being.” Philosophical Forum 4: 153–161.

Nasr, Seyed Hossein. 1977. Sadr al-Din Shirazi and His Trancendent Theosophy, Background, Life and Works. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.

Zadyousefi, A. 2019. “Does God Know that the Flower in My Hand Is Red? Avicenna and the Problem of God’s Perceptual Knowledge.” SOPHIA 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0730-9

Published

2022-09-20

Issue

Section

Religious Studies and Theology

Categories