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Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the

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 Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 (2015): 55–73

Between Divine Simplicity and the

Eternity of the World: Ghazali on the
Necessity of the Necessary Existent in
the Incoherence of the Philosophers

Edward R. Moad
Qatar University

Abstract
In the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
(1058–1111) leveled a critique against twenty propositions of the
Muslim peripatetic philosophers, represented chiefly by al-Farabi
(872–951) and Ibn Sīnā (980–1037). In the Fourth Discussion of
this work, he rejects their claim to having proven the existence of
God. The proof to which he objects is none other than the famous
‘argument from contingency.’ So why did the eminent theologian
of Islamic orthodoxy reject an argument for God’s existence that
ultimately became so historically influential?
I will show that the real targets of Ghazali’s objection are the
philosophers’ doctrine of the pre-eternity of the world, and their
denial of divine attributes. These two issues are linked in such a
way that, only if the philosophers’ argument regarding the divine
essence is sound, would they be able to prove that He exists while
holding to the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity.

In the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers), the cel-

ebrated Muslim theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) set
out to refute, on independent philosophical grounds, twenty proposi-
tions of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, represented chiefly by
al-Farabi (872–951) and Ibn Sīnā (980–1037). In the Fourth Discus-
sion of this work, he rejects their claim to having proven the existence
of God. The proof to which he objects is none other than the famous
‘argument from contingency,’ which at the hands of Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274) became a central pillar of natural theology in the West.
ISSN 0890-2461 DOI: 10.5840/philtheol20155521
56 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

This raises the question of why the eminent theologian of Islamic

orthodoxy would have objected to an argument for God’s existence
that ultimately became so historically influential?
A reading of the Fourth Discussion reveals that the real targets of
Ghazali’s objection are the philosophers’ doctrine of the pre-eternity
of the world, and their denial that God can have any essence (or
‘quiddity’) other than His necessary existence. Analysis of the Fourth
through the Eighth discussions will discover that these two issues are
linked in such a way that, only if the philosophers’ argument regard-
ing the divine essence (or lack thereof ) is sound, would they be able
to prove that He exists while holding to the doctrine of the world’s
pre-eternity. Furthermore, we will see that this argument depends on
the least philosophically plausible of two alternative interpretations
of Ibn Sīnā’s distinction between essence and existence, suggesting an
equivocation in this on his part.

I
In the Fourth Discussion of the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa, Ghazali recounts the
philosophers’ argument for the existence of God in the standard terms.
The world (with its existents) either has a cause or does not have a
cause. If it has a cause, then [the question arises]: “Does this cause
have a cause or is it without a cause?” [If it has a cause,] the same
[question] applies to the cause of the cause. This would either regress
infinitely, which is impossible, or terminate with a limit. The latter,
then, is a first cause that has no cause for its existence. We call this
the First Principle. (al-Ghazali 1997, 80)
Ghazali’s main objection to this argument is that its core premise,
that an infinite regress of essential causes is impossible, is incompatible
with the philosophers’ belief in the pre-eternity of the world. That
is, the pre-eternity of the world entails an infinite regress of events
temporally ordered into the past, and if this is admitted, then there are
no grounds for denying the possibility of an infinite regress of essential
causes. “If, then, [the infinite] is not impossible in the real, temporal
“before,”” Ghazali concludes, “then it ought not to be impossible in
the essential, natural “before” (al-Ghazali, 1997, 82).
The philosophers agree that an actual infinity is impossible, but
deny that an infinite temporal series constitutes an actual infinity.
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 57

Ghazali, of course, disputes this and argues vigorously that the sup-
position of the world’s pre-eternity entails the possibility of an actual
infinity. But for our purposes, we will pass over this issue because, even
if Ghazali is correct, his argument so far rests on the presumption that
the only thing precluding the possibility of an actually infinite regress
of essential causes is the impossibility of an actual infinite per se. In
this case, the onus of proving the impossibility of any such regress in
essential causes would remain with the traditional kalam arguments
against the pre-eternity of the world, based, as they are, on the general
premise that an actual infinite series is impossible.
But the argument from contingency, as is well known, targets
specifically the possibility of an infinite essential-causal regress in such a
way that does not depend on the general premise about actual infinite
sets. The philosophers would argue that the difference between the
two sorts of regress in question, even if they are both actual infinities,
is that the purely temporal infinite regress does not, in its own right,
violate the principle of sufficient reason by entailing the existence of
an intrinsic contingent without a necessitating cause. Ghazali presents
the argument in the following terms.
The conclusive demonstration for the impossibility of infinite causes
is to say: each one of the individual causes is either in itself possible
or necessary. If [it is] necessary, then it would not need a cause. If [it
is] possible, then the whole is characterized with possibility. Every
possible needs a cause additional to itself. The whole, then, needs
an extraneous cause. (al-Ghazali 1997, 82)
Though abbreviated, this is a relatively faithful exposition of an
argument Ibn Sīnā offers in al-Najāt and Ishārāt wa al-Tanbīhāt (Mar-
mura 2005, 145–48). If each member of a series of causes, whether
finite or infinite, is in itself possible, then the entire aggregate must also
be in itself possible, the reasoning being that otherwise, “the necessary
existent would subsist in things that are possible in themselves, which
is self-contradictory” (Marmura 2005, 145).
“The expressions “the possible” and “the necessary” are vague
expressions,” Ghazali writes, “unless by “the necessary” is intended
that whose existence has no cause, and by “the possible” that whose
existence has a cause” (al-Ghazali 1997, 82). Thus, goes the argument,
given the philosophers stance on the pre-eternity of the world, it is
58 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

perfectly possible that each member in the infinite series has a cause,
while the series as a whole has no cause and is, therefore, necessary
by definition. It is no more problematic for that without a cause to
subsist in the caused than for that without a beginning to subsist in
the temporally originated. Ghazali compares the two notions on the
basis of the principle that not everything true of the parts need be
true of the whole.
But the inference here is invalid. Whether everything true of the
parts must be true of the whole clearly depends on the nature of the
specific predicate in question (having a beginning, having a cause, and
being possible may be relevantly different in this respect). Secondly,
the entire argument rests on Ghazali’s reduction of ‘necessary’ and
‘possible’ to an issue of having and not having a cause, respectively.
This raises the question, why does Ghazali claim that the only clear
meanings of ‘necessary’ and ‘possible’ come down, respectively, to
having and not having a cause?
This question can be considered in terms of both motivation and
justification. Understood in terms of Ghazali’s motive, the answer is
clearly that he wants to force a dilemma between the proof of God’s
existence and the doctrine of the worlds’ pre-eternity. In this sense,
then, the argument here is an extension of First Discussion of the
Tahāfut, which focuses specifically on that issue. On the other hand,
as we will see, the question of the meaning of the terms “necessary”
and “possible” is directly related to the concept of the necessary
existent, which plays a central role in the philosophers’ doctrine of
divine simplicity, and consequently, in Ghazali’s arguments against
them regarding their position on the divine quiddity and attributes.
Thus, the two issues appear to be related in such a way that, if the
philosophers are successful in proving that a quiddity is impossible for
God, they will be able to uphold both their denial of divine attributes
and their doctrine of the pre-eternity of the world. So, showing that
the terms “necessary” and “possible” reduce to not having or having a
cause is of central strategic importance for Ghazali. Whether or not he
succeeds in this aim depends on the answer to our question in terms
of his philosophical justification.
In the Metaphysics of Al-Shifā (1.5), Ibn Sīnā lays out the funda-
mental notions of his ontology—“the existent,” “the thing,” and “the
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 59

necessary”—explaining that these are basic concepts, “impressed in the

soul in a primary way” (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 22). These ideas are, therefore,
not arrived at by inference from concepts understood prior to them,
as there are no such concepts. Since there are no more basic notions
from which these are derived, it is impossible to provide non-circular
definitions. Rather, one can only provide indicators which function
to turn the attention to their meanings, the understanding of which,
though a precondition of the possession of any other concept, may
yet be easily overlooked precisely because of their primary nature and
degree of familiarity.
Ibn Sīnā follows with his famous distinction between existence
(wujud) and ‘essence’ or ‘quiddity’ (mahiyya).1 To put it simply, this is
the distinction between what a thing is, and that it is. That these are
logically distinct is shown, according to Ibn Sīnā, by the fact that we
can conceive something, having an idea of what it is (e.g., a theoretical
entity like a quark, or phlogiston), without knowing whether it exists
or not. This distinction appears to have been somewhat motivated by
a debate in early Islamic theology, or kalam, over whether or not there
are non-existent things; which itself centered on the question of how
to interpret a verse of the Qur’an that describes God’s creation of a
thing as a command to it—“Be!”—whereupon it exists.
Ibn Sīnā’s position is to deny the possibility of non-existent things.
Every thing is an existent; but while some things exist independently
of the mind, others exist only in the mind. Either way, the ‘what-
ness’ of a thing can be considered independently of its existence. It is
therefore possible to speak or think sensibly of that which does not
exist extra-mentally, in virtue of its existence as a concept in the mind.
It would therefore be a mistake to identify the essence as a kind of
Platonic form. Ibn Sīnā rejects Platonic realism about universals for
the Aristotelian position that only concrete individuals exist.
The essence, consequently, is not ontologically independent of
the individual existent of which it is a logically distinct, qualitative
dimension. Nor is existence an accident, in the sense that it gets added
to an ontologically independent essence to produce an existent thing
(Marmura 2005).2 Robert Wisnovsky has articulated this philosophi-
cally and textually most plausible interpretation of the distinction in
the clear formula that “essence and existence are extensionally identical
60 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

and only intensionally distinct”—that is, two ways of considering a

single existing thing (Wisnovsky 2005).
Like “the existent” and “the thing,” the modal concepts—neces-
sity, possibility, and impossibility—cannot be given non-circular
definitions. This, as Ibn Sīnā points out, is because a definition of any
one of them will inevitably contain a reference to one of the others.
“The impossible is that whose existence is not possible, or that whose
nonexistence is necessary; the necessary is that whose nonexistence
is not allowable and is impossible, or that for which it is not possible
not to be; the possible is that for which it is not impossible to be or
not to be, or that for which it is not necessary to be or not to be” (Ibn
Sīnā 2005, 28). Thus, all three are, in a collective sense, primary. The
Metaphysics of Al-Shifā (1.6) opens with the following crucial statement.
The things that enter existence bear a [possible] twofold division in
the mind. Among them there will be that which, when considered
in itself, its existence would be not necessary. . . . There will also
be among them that which, when considered in itself, its existence
would be necessary. (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 29–30)
In the same vein, Ibn Sīnā writes in the Dānish Nama-I ala’i: “The
being of that entity which has being, is either necessary in itself due
to its own nature, or it is not necessary” (Ibn Sīnā 2001, 47). The
next step is to explain that, in the words of Al-Shifā: “That which in
itself is a necessary existent has no cause, while that which in itself is
a possible existent has a cause” (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 30). Now, if Ghazali
is correct in his contention that the only clear meaning there is for
the “necessary” and the “possible” is that the former does not have a
cause while the latter does, then this sentence would ultimately be
tautological: that which has no cause has no cause, while that which
has a cause has a cause. A look at the rather wordy argument appear-
ing in Al-Shifā, to the effect that the necessary existent has no cause,
provides some indication as to why one might suspect as much.
That the Necessary Existent has no cause is obvious. For if in His
existence the Necessary Existent were to have a cause, His existence
would be by [that cause]. But whatever exists by something [else], if
considered in itself, apart from another, existence for it would not
be necessary. And every[thing] for which existence is not [found
to] be necessary—if [the thing] is considered in itself, apart from
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 61

another—is not a necessary existent in itself. It is thus evident that

if what is in itself a necessary existent were to have a cause, it would
not be in itself a necessary existent. Thus, it becomes clear that the
Necessary Existent has no cause. (Ibn Sīnā, 2005, 30)
Like many of the great philosophers in history, word economy
was not one of Ibn Sīnā’s strong points. Consider the first premise:
For if, in His existence the Necessary Existent were to have a cause, His
existence would be by [that cause]. For Ibn Sīnā, for a thing to have a
cause just is for a thing to exist by that cause. Therefore, this statement
simply informs us that (1) if the Necessary Existent were to have a
cause, then He would have a cause. Whatever exists by something else,
if considered in itself, apart from another, existence for it would not be
necessary. Again, to exist by something else is just to have a cause,
and ‘that for which existence would be necessary, if considered in
itself,’ is the very definition provided of a necessary existent. Thus,
the real upshot of this statement is that (2) whatever has a cause is
not a necessary existent. Notice that this is essentially the conclusion
of the very argument in question. And every[thing] for which existence
is not [found to] be necessary—if [the thing] is considered in itself, apart
from another—is not a necessary existent in itself. This clearly reduces
to saying that (3) everything which is not a necessary existent is not
a necessary existent. Thus, upon navigating through the twists and
turns of the language here, we are left with the following:
1. If the Necessary Existent were to have a cause, then He would
have a cause.
2. Whatever has a cause is not a necessary existent.
3. Everything that is not a necessary existent is not a necessary
existent.
Therefore, the Necessary Existent has no cause.
Now, if one were to remove from this everything that is straight-
forwardly tautological, one would be left with an argument that says
that, whatever has a cause is not a necessary existent; therefore, the
Necessary Existent has no cause. This would appear circular as an argu-
ment. Yet, we must remember that the concepts involved—necessity
and existence—as primary, are such that they cannot be given non-
circular definitions. One can only offer indications as to their meanings,
some of which may themselves take the form of circular ‘definitions.’
62 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

In light of this, it would be understandable that the proposition that

the Necessary Existent cannot have a cause, relating, as it does, to just
these primary concepts, cannot be proven by a non-circular argument,
but only called to mind by various attempts at indication, some of
which may indeed take the form of a circular argument.
In Dānish, Ibn Sīnā argues, as follows, that, “in Itself, the Neces-
sary Existent cannot be united with any cause.”
Since its being is necessary in Itself without being caused, Its being
cannot be due to a cause. Thus, It is not united with any cause. If
Its being were not necessary without a cause, It would not be the
Necessary Existent in Itself. (Ibn Sīnā 2001, 48–49)
The entirety of the argument, here, is contained in the first sen-
tence, which itself boils down to the following:
1. The Necessary Existent is necessary in Itself, and is not caused.
Therefore, the Necessary Existent does not have a cause.
Again, the argument is ultimately circular, leaving us with two
possibilities. One is that the idea of the necessary existent is a primary
concept which is in fact distinct from the idea of not having a cause,
though it entails the absence of a cause, even though a non-circular
argument to this effect is not possible in virtue of the fact that a
non-circular definition of the necessary existent is not possible (i.e.,
a necessary existent is “a thing whose existence is necessary”). That
is to say, when one understands the idea of a necessary existent, one
understands that it does not have a cause, even though the idea of being
a necessary existent is logically distinct from that of not having a cause.
The other possibility is that Ghazali is correct, and they are not
logically distinct: there is no clear meaning for being a necessary exis-
tent over and above the idea of an existent that does not have a cause.
In this case, all of the above comes down to saying that the existent
without a cause does not have a cause; therefore, it does not have a
cause. Both hypotheses seem capable of explaining why Ibn Sīnā’s
arguments to this effect seem so intuitive and yet so clearly circular.
The question, therefore, is: what, if anything, does the term ‘neces-
sary existent’ really add to the idea of ‘not having a cause?’ Perhaps this
question has its answer in Ibn Sīnā’s characterization of the necessary
existent, cited above from the Dānish, as that whose being is neces-
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 63

sary in itself due to its own nature. This resonates with the following
argument, from Al-Shifā, to the effect that the contingent requires a
cause for either its existence or its nonexistence.
This is because the thing’s quiddity is either sufficient for this
specification or not. If its quiddity is sufficient for either of the two
states of affairs [existence or non-existence] to obtain, then the thing
would be in itself of a necessary quiddity, when [the thing] has been
supposed not to be necessary [in itself ]. And this is contradictory. If
[on the other hand] the existence of its quiddity is not sufficient [for
specifying the possible with existence]—[the latter] being, rather,
something whose existence is added to it—then its existence would
be necessarily due to some other thing. [This,] then, would be its
cause. Hence, it has a cause. (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 31)
From the passage above, we see that, if a thing’s quiddity is sufficient
to specify its existence, then it is a necessary existent. Can we, then,
conclude, conversely, that for a thing to exist necessarily in itself just is
for its quiddity to be sufficient to specify its existence? Consequently
it cannot have a cause, as we have seen. In the case of the possible,
the quiddity is not sufficient, and therefore its existence requires an
external cause. At this point it seems that, for Ibn Sīnā, having and
not having a cause do not constitute the meanings, respectively, of
the modal terms ‘possible’ and ‘necessary,’ as Ghazali has it, but are,
instead, distinct logical consequents of the meanings of these modal
terms. Moreover, for Ibn Sīnā, to cause is to render necessary: the cause
is that, through which the possible in itself becomes necessary through
another (Ibn Sīnā 2005, 31). Thus, in direct contrast to Ghazali, Ibn
Sīnā seems to define ‘cause’ in terms of necessary existence, rather
than the reverse. Necessity and possibility of existence, in turn, are
understood in terms of the relation between a thing’s quiddity and
its existence, and whether the former is sufficient to specify the latter.

II
In this light, we might re-evaluate Ghazali’s objection to the key
premise of the argument from contingency. In Ibn Sīnā’s terms, the
argument that the ‘necessary’ cannot subsist in the ‘possible’ would be
understood as follows. An infinite set, every member of which is such
that its quiddity is not sufficient to specify its existence, cannot be, as
64 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

a whole, such that its quiddity is sufficient to specify its existence. The
existence of any such set requires, therefore, a cause external to the
set. Causal regress, then, must terminate in something whose quiddity
is sufficient to specify its existence, on pain of admitting uncaused
existents that are merely possible in themselves; or as we might say,
‘unnecessary contingency.’
Looked at in this way, causal regress is relevantly different from
the merely temporal sort. The quiddity of a set is reducible to that
of its members, so if all of its members are contingent, the simple
fact that the set has the members that it does cannot entail the exis-
tence of the set, no matter how many members it has. Its existence
is contingent on that of its members. In this case the contingency of
all the parts does entail the contingency of the whole. Therefore, an
infinite causal regress could not actually exist, even if there could be
an infinite temporal series, the whole of which depends ultimately
on an independent external cause. With this concept of ‘necessary
existent,’ as that the quiddity of which is existentially self-sufficient,
it seems that a proof for God’s existence is in hand that, because it
does not depend on the impossibility of an actual infinite per se, can
stand on its premises alongside a pre-eternal world, even if it has to
be conceded that the latter does constitute an actual infinite.
But notice that this argument infers the existence of something
the quiddity of which is sufficient to specify existence, directly from
the need for an external cause to specify the existence of the set of all
things the quiddity of which is insufficient in that regard. Granted that
any external cause that can do the job must be something that is not
itself in need of a cause to exist, does it directly follow that its quiddity
is sufficient to specify its existence? What does this mean, after all?
The formula is well known. In Malik Fazlur Rahman’s words: “What
God is, i.e., His essence, is identical with His existence. . . . It follows
that God’s existence is necessary, the existence of other things is only
possible, and that the supposition of God’s non-existence involves a
contradiction, whereas it is not so with any other existence” (Rahman,
1963, 482). It sounds, here, as if God exists by definition, in which
case all reference to a set of contingents standing, as a whole, in need
of an external cause would be redundant. Indeed, it is Rahman’s view
that the “germs” of the ontological argument exist here, rendering the
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 65

Aristotelian cosmological argument “superfluous,” though Ibn Sīnā

“has chosen not to construct a full-fledged ontological argument”
(Rahman 1963, 482).
Jon McGinnis, on the other hand, finds “nothing like an Anselmian-
style ontological argument for the existence of God in Avicenna,” but
that “the question of whether there is anything necessary through
itself is for Avicenna a genuinely open one” (McGinnis 2010, 164).
MMichael Marmura takes the same position, noting Ibn Sīnā’s key
statement (quoted above), where he introduces the modal terms in
the Metaphysics of Al-Shifā 1.6, that: “the things that enter existence
bear a [possible] twofold division in the mind” (Marmura 2005, 136).
That the concept of existence can be divided between the possible and
the necessary does not directly entail that anything is instantiated in
either category, so the conclusion of the argument is not assumed in
the premises.
The difference between this argument and the Aristotelian cosmo-
logical argument is just that here, the argument proceeds a priori from
the conceptual division of existence in terms of the modal concepts,
such that if anything exists at all, then there is something that exists
necessarily. But though the argument does not depend on assuming
that a being exists whose essence is existence, neither does it lead to
such a conclusion. So far, all this argument really renders is that there
is something that exists without a cause.
Wisnovsky, as we saw above, articulates the standard interpreta-
tion of the distinction between the essence of a thing and its existence
in the formula that they are extensionally identical and intensionally
distinct. But in the same place, he notes textual bases for other in-
terpretations, including a passage (from Isagoge 2.1 of Al-Shifā) that
seems to indicate that essence and existence are both extensionally and
intensionally distinct; that is, two ontologically as well as conceptually
independent elements of the metaphysical ‘composition’ of a thing.
This is the philosophically less plausible, non-existent entity entailing
interpretation of Ibn Sīnā that has been widespread among western
historians of philosophy since Aquinas, and that drew criticism from
the likes of Ibn Rushd and Suhrawardi.3
It seems that Ghazali may also have shared this understanding of the
distinction. In a part of Discussion 5 of the Tahafut, while explaining
66 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

the five ways in which, according to the philosophers, “plurality finds

access to essences,” Ghazali explains the existence—essence distinction
in the following terms.
The fifth is a plurality that becomes necessary by way of supposing
a quiddity and hypothesizing an existence for this quiddity. For
there belongs to man a quiddity before his existence. Existence oc-
curs to [this quiddity] and is related to it. This, for example, is the
case with a triangle; it has a quiddity—namely, its being a figure
surrounded by three sides. Existence, however, is not part of the
constitutive being of this quiddity, giving it subsistence. For this
reason, the rational individual can apprehend the quiddity of man
and the quiddity of the triangle without knowing whether or not
they have an existence in concrete reality. If existence were to give
subsistence to [the] quiddity [of a thing], one would not [be able
to] conceive its standing firm in the mind prior to its existence.
Existence is hence [something] related to the quiddity—whether
as a necessary concomitant such that that quiddity would [always]
exist, as with the heavens, or as an occurrence after not being, as
with the quiddity of humanity with respect to Zayd and ‛Amr
and the quiddities of accidents and temporal forms. (al-Ghazali
1997, 89–90)
The key statement here that seems to imply the extensional dis-
tinction between essence and existence is that “there belongs to man
a quiddity before his existence.” Even though the term “before” need
not be understood in a temporal sense (as Ghazali argues in the First
Discussion), yet it retains the sense of ontological independence, as
in “before the world, there was God.” Thus, when Ghazali writes,
“existence occurs to the quiddity and is related to it,” it reinforces the
sense that he is interpreting Ibn Sīnā as drawing the distinction in the
extensional sense. Furthermore, he seems to explicitly object to this
in favor of a purely intensional distinction in the course of the Eighth
Discussion (of which more, later), when he writes, “this multiplicity
reduces only to sheer verbal utterance” (al-Ghazali 1997, 119).
This is not the only ambiguity in the interpretation of Ibn Sīnā
that shows itself in Ghazali’s treatment of this topic. As McGinnis
notes, “Avicenna wavers between saying that the essence of the Neces-
sary Existent is its necessary existence, and simply denying that the
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 67

Necessary Existent has any essence at all” (McGinnis 2010, 169). Thus,
Ghazali describes the philosophers’ position as follows:
[The philosophers] thus claim that this plurality must also be removed
from the First [Principle]. It is thus said [that] He does not have a
quiddity to which existence is related. Rather, necessary existence
belongs to Him as quiddity belongs to others. Thus, necessary
existence is a quiddity, a universal reality, and a true nature in the
way “treeness” and “heaviness” are quiddities. (al-Ghazali 1997, 90)
According to McGinnis, the explanation for this wavering between
denying a quiddity for God and identifying it with His existence is
twofold. On the one hand, an essence of a thing is supposed to be
considerable independently of the thing’s existence. However, in the
case of the Necessary Existent, what He is cannot be considered in-
dependently of the fact that He necessarily is (otherwise, it would not
be the Necessary Existent under consideration). Therefore, He cannot
rightly have an essence. On the other hand, identifying His essence
with His existence provides a very attractive explanatory closure with
respect to that necessity, since “should one understand the Necessary
Existent’s essence as identical with its existence, it turns out that it
exists simply on account of what it is” (McGinnis 2010, 170).
Importantly, then, it is not the case that we arrived at the con-
clusion that a being exists, the essence of which is identical to its
existence, on the basis of a modal argument in which the difference
between the necessary and the possible is already understood in terms
of that between the sufficiency and insufficiency of a thing’s quiddity
for specifying existence. Rather, after having proved that something
exists without a cause, on the basis of a modal argument in which
the modal terms are taken as (collectively) basic concepts, and then
concluding that, for such a thing, its essence must be sufficient to
specify its existence, Ibn Sīnā went back to re-articulate the concepts
of ‘possibility’ and ‘necessity’ as such in similar terms. Consequently,
we are given an analysis of the modal categories that seem to imply
an extensional distinction between existence and essence per se. The
sense in which this formulation seeks to make the existence of the
Necessary Existent self-explanatory was not lost on Ghazali.
The meaning that He is necessary of existence is that there is no
cause for His existence, and no cause for His being without a cause.
68 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

Nor, moreover, is His being without a cause causally explicable in

terms of Himself. Rather, there is fundamentally neither a cause
for His existence nor a cause for His being without a cause. (al-
Ghazali 1997, 86)
This is part of Ghazali’s objection to the first of two arguments
of the philosophers against the possibility of two necessary existents.
It is here that we encounter an independent rationale for the new
formulation of the concept, ‘necessary existent.’ It is therefore worth
examining these subtle arguments carefully. The first appears in the
Metaphysics of Al-Shifā (8.5).

III
For any normal thing with a specified quiddity (e.g., human) one can
ask, why does it have this quiddity? So one can ask, of (e.g.) Fatima:
what makes her human? To this it may be answered, her rational
animality, from which it follows that any other being with rational
animality is also human; rational animalty being, therefore, the cause
of the humanness of any individual human. In this case, Fatima is
not human through her very self, in the sense that being Fatima is the
cause of being human. If this were the case, then only Fatima could
be human, to the necessary exclusion of any other being.
The philosophers’ argument against two necessary existents begins
by asking, of the necessary existent, is it necessary through its very
self, or through a cause? Now, if that which has necessary existence
has it through a cause, then the necessary existent would have a cause,
which is a contradiction, since it has been established by the argument
from contingency as a being without a cause. That is, the feature of the
thing in virtue of which it is a necessary existent—its being without
a cause—is taken here as equivalent to a cause of the existence of the
necessary existent, producing the contradiction.
It follows that the necessary existent has necessary existence
through its very self, in the sense that necessarily excludes any other
being from necessary existence. That is, we must say that it is neces-
sary of existence because it is it; entailing that anything else that is
necessary of existence must also be it (i.e., the very one), in the same
way that, were we to say Fatima is a human simply by being herself,
it would follow that anything ‘else’ that is human must also be her
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 69

(i.e., only Fatima could be human). Now, in the case of Fatima, the
only predicate she has through her very self is, therefore, simply being
her. What she is (human, etc.), and thus her very existence, is caused
by factors external to herself. In the case of the Necessary Existent,
therefore, the only thing we can say about it is that it is it. Otherwise,
we would be attributing to it something other than what it has through
its very self, which would entail its having a cause. So, this argument
against the possibility of more than one necessary existent is really an
argument for denying the possibility of a quiddity for the Necessary
Existent, inasmuch as a quiddity would be something that is true of
it in virtue of other than its very self.
In rejecting this argument, Ghazali, who of course also believes
that more than one Necessary Existent is impossible, is primarily
focused on the implications of this specific argument with respect to
other topics, including the divine attributes. His objection is that the
argument is based on a false dilemma. Again, ‘necessary existence’ is
simply existence with neither a cause nor need for a cause. As a descrip-
tion this is “pure negation.” So there is no sense, according to Ghazali,
in asking whether the Necessary Existent has no cause by reason of
itself or due to a cause. To illustrate the falsehood of the dilemma,
Ghazali deploys it in the case of a positive attribute. Thus black is a
color, but not due to an external cause, for otherwise we should be
able to imagine a black that is not a color. But nor is it a color due
to itself in any sense that necessarily excludes red from being a color.
The second argument Ghazali mentions appears in the Metaphysics
of Al-Shifā (1.7). If there were two necessary existents, then from the
principle of the identity of indiscernibles, it follows that they would
be different in some aspect, and similar in another aspect (inasmuch
as they are both necessary existents). That aspect in which they differ
must therefore be different from the aspect that they share. So, each
would have more than one aspect, and this multiplicity of aspects
constitutes a composition of conceptually distinct parts, in the way
that a definition of a thing is composed of its conceptually distinct
genus and specific difference. But the Necessary Existent is absolutely
simple, beyond any such composition. Therefore, there can be only
one. Ghazali does not deny that the existence of two necessary exis-
tents entails this kind of difference, and its consequent multiplicity
70 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

in the essence of each. However, he rejects the claim that this kind of
multiplicity is impossible for the Necessary Existent as arbitrary, and
demands proof (al-Ghazali 1997, 87–88).
The argument the philosophers offer, for the impossibility of this
kind of multiplicity, is the reason for their asserting that the Necessary
Existent has no quiddity. The argument is that if the Necessary Existent
has a quiddity other than necessary existence, then He would be an ef-
fect of the combination of the two. The quiddity would then be a cause
of His existence, in the sense that it would be a necessary condition of
Him being what He is. But since the Necessary Existent does not have
a cause, then His existence cannot be connected to such a condition.
Therefore, He cannot have a quiddity (Ibn Sīnā, 2005, 36). “This is
because if [God] has a quiddity, then existence would be related to it,
consequent on it, and a necessary concomitant of it”; Ghazali sum-
marizes, “but the consequence is an effect, and thus necessary existence
would be an effect—but this is contradictory” (al-Ghazali 1997, 118).
Ghazali’s objection to this argument runs in a thread through the
dialectical exchange from the Sixth through the Eighth Discussion
of the Tahafut. In what follows, we will reconstruct the argument in
isolation from the process of that exchange, while referencing the
main points therein where each premise appears. The first premise
is the point, on which Ghazali repeatedly insists, that the argument
from contingency proves only the existence of an existent without an
efficient cause of its existence, to the exclusion of other sorts of condi-
tions that the philosophers want to negate of the Necessary Existent.
In the Sixth Discussion, on the divine attributes, the philosophers
argue that since every attribute requires something in which to sub-
sist, that in which an attribute does subsist is a necessary condition
of the existence of the attribute—it’s ‘receptive cause.’ If, therefore,
the Necessary Existent has attributes, they would subsist in His es-
sence, in which case the Necessary Existent, understood as a being
with those attributes, would be an effect, which contradicts its not
having a cause. “Naming the receptive essence a receptive cause is
an idiom of yours,” Ghazali replies, “The proof [you offer] does not
prove the existence of a necessary existent in terms of the idiom you
adopt, proving only a limit with which the chain of causes and effects
terminates” (al-Ghazali 1997, 99).
Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 71

Later, the philosophers are presented as arguing that the inher-

ence of attributes in the divine essence indeed entails Him having
an efficient cause, since “this would constitute a composition; and
every composition requires a composer” (al-Ghazali 1997, 101). But
this, Ghazali claims, is equivalent to the statement that every existent
requires a cause for its existence, and the argument from contingency
has already proven an existent without a cause. “There is neither a
cause for His essence, [nor] for His attributes, nor for the subsistence
of His attributes in His essence,” he writes, “Rather, all are eternal
without a cause” (al-Ghazali 1997, 102). This seems to go back to the
temptation of finding an explanation of the existence of the Necessary
Existent by rendering it self-explanatory; or perhaps more precisely,
eliminating from it anything that would remain unexplained, by
eliminating any composition, either by denying a quiddity for the
Necessary Existent or identifying it with His existence. But, if es-
sence and existent are only intensionally distinct, logically necessary
dimensions of any existent thing, then the proposition that every
composition requires a composer, where ‘composition’ is understood
in the way the philosophers ultimately intend, is equivalent to the
proposition that every existent requires a cause of existence. And so
Ghazali is quite right here in pointing out that an exception to this
rule is just what the argument from contingency has proven. Lastly,
in the Eighth Discussion, Ghazali writes:
The quiddity in created things is not a cause of existence; how,
then, [can this be] in the case of [what is] pre-eternal, if they mean
by, cause, that which enacts it? If they mean by [cause] some other
facet—namely, that [existence] does not dispense with it—let this be
the case, since there is no impossibility in [this]. The impossibility
is only in the [infinite] regress of causes. If the regress is terminated,
then the impossibility is prevented. The impossibility of other than
this is not known. (al-Ghazali 1997, 119)
This passage links our first premise, that the argument from contin-
gency only proves an existent without an efficient cause, to our second
premise. That is, a logically necessary condition of a thing, where that
condition is not an extensionally distinct thing existing independently
of the first, is not a cause of its existence, in the sense ruled out for the
necessary existent by the argument from contingency. Ghazali articulates
72 Moad: Between Divine Simplicity and the Eternity of the World

a general principle leading to this conclusion earlier on, in the Sixth

Discussion: “For what is affirmed for the essence as something additional
to the essence through a cause, the supposition of its nonexistence in the
estimative faculty is possible, even if this is not realized in [extramen-
tal] existence” (al-Ghazali 1997, 87). Thus, to use Ghazali’s example,
though being a color is a necessary condition of blackness, it is not a
cause of blackness, nor is there something else that causes blackness to
be a color, otherwise, one could conceive blackness that is not a color.
Likewise, the fact that being something (i.e., having a quiddity)
is a logically necessary condition of being an existent does not make
the quiddity (i.e., what the thing is), a cause of its existence. Other-
wise, one could conceive of an existent without a quiddity. This is
because, as Ghazali puts it, “this multiplicity reduces only to sheer
verbal utterance” (al-Ghazali 1997, 119). That is, the philosophically
plausible understanding of the distinction between the essence of a
thing and its existence—that they are extensionally identical and only
intensionally distinct—is the correct one. The essence of a thing is not
ontologically independent from the existent thing itself. Therefore,
the thing’s essence simply cannot be a cause of the thing’s existence
in any sense of ‘cause’ which the argument from contingency proves
an existent without. Conversely, therefore, the construal of a thing’s
essence as a cause of its existence (or as entailing that it has a cause)
seems to imply an extensional distinction between essence and exis-
tence. Therefore, the arguments advanced by the philosophers that
the Necessary Existent has no essence other than existence depend on
this construal of that distinction.
So, if we maintain the philosophically more plausible interpreta-
tion of the essence-existence distinction, then the argument that God
has no quiddity collapses; that is, it no longer follows from the fact
that He has no cause. Therefore, the argument from contingency only
proves the existence of an existent without a cause. At this point the
question is whether it is impossible that there be an infinite series of
existents, each member of which has a cause, but where the whole
series itself has no cause, for any reason other than the general impos-
sibility of an actual infinite as such.
If not, then the possibility of an infinite causal regress and that of
an infinite temporal regress (assuming that they both constitute actual
 Philosophy & Theology 27, 1 73

infinites) both fall only with the impossibility of an actual infinite. In

that case, the argument from contingency is only successful in proving
the existence of God, on the basis of an independent premise to the effect
that an actual infinite is impossible, which would also render impos-
sible an infinite temporal regress, simultaneously proving, thereby, the
temporal finitude of the world. Consequently, then, the philosophically
plausible interpretation of the distinction between essence and existence
would entail the falsehood of the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity.

Notes
1. The translations referred to in this paper translate mahiyya variously as ‘essence’
and ‘quiddity.’ To remain faithful to the translators’ choice, when quoting them
here, I will use the very term. Thus, where not otherwise specified, ‘essence’ and
‘quiddity’ as they appear hereafter should be understood as synonymous.
2. Marmura, Probing in Islamic Philosophy; also Rahman, “Ibn Sina”; and McGinnis,
Avicenna.
3. See Alatas, Islām and Secularism; Izutsu, The Concept and Reality of Existence; and
Rahman, “Ibn Sina.”

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