International Conference
Philosophy and Religion in the Abrahamic Traditions
The AAIWG expresses its sincere thanks and appreciation to the Marmara University Theology Faculty, the Dean of the Faculty and Professors Rahim Acar and M.Cüneyt Kaya for hosting a wonderful meeting with many insights on philosophy in Islamic texts relating to contemporary philosophy of religion and on the history of philosophy in the lands of Islam and its influence in Latin translations made available to European thinkers of the medieval period. We also thank the Templeton Foundation for its support for the work of Turkish scholars participating in this conference. We look forward to future collaborations with our Turkish colleagues to benefit from their deep and sophisticated understanding of philosophy and theology in the Islamic traditions and in contemporary analytic philosophy and science. Dialogue and the pursuit of understanding in philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are among the key goals of the AAIWG.
Part I: Contributions to Contemporary Philosophy of Religion
Organized by the “Philosophy of Religion in the Classical Islamic Intellectual Traditions: Problems, Texts and Contexts” Project
Part II: Contributions to the Study of the History of Philosophy
Organized by Aquinas and “the Arabs” International Working Group (AAIWG)
Istanbul May 29 – June 1, 2023
Hosted by the Marmara University Theology Faculty
Organized by Professors Rahim Acar (Marmara University), M. Cüneyt Kaya (Istanbul University), Luis López-Farjeat (Universidad Panamericana) and Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University and Catholic University of Leuven)
Meeting Place For the Conference:
The conference will take place in rooms in the lower part of the mosque beside & outside of the Marmara University Campus. There are two lower entrances to mosque lower level rooms. One entrance is near the Kitap Kahve (Book & Coffee) shop entrance.
ZOOM CONNECTION AND VIDEO RECORDING
We intend to make the Conference available to auditors via a Zoom Connection. The link will appear here on the days of the Conference. Note, however, that auditors will not be able to ask questions of the speakers. Only two (2) presentations will not be available on Zoom. There will be no recording of the event.
For Travel Information, See Below
| Day One (May 29, 2023, Monday) Opening Words of Welcome 9:00-9:45 Part I Session 1: Religious Epistemology | ||
| 9:45-10:40 | Mehmet Sait Reçber | “Renewing Philosophy in Islamic Thought” |
| 10:40-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00-11:50 | Jamie Turner | “Developing an Analytic Philosophy of Islam: A Case Study in Religious Epistemology” |
| 11:50-12:40 | Ayşe Sıdıka Oktay | “Relations between Philosophy and Religion in al-Fārābī’s Philosophy” |
| 12:40-14:30 | Lunch | |
| 14:30-15:20 | Ayman Shihadeh | “Epistemological Status of Prophetic Miracles” |
| 15:20-16:00 | Jalal Peykani | “Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī’s Objections to Avicenna’s Version of Evidentialism and Introducing His Version of Intuitionalism” |
| 16:10-16:30 | Coffee Break | |
| Session 2: Conception of God | ||
| 16:30-17:10 | Mehmet Ata Az | “Evaluation of Avicenna’s Flying Man Argument in the Context of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind” |
| 17:10-18:00 | Mohammad Saleh Zarepour (via Zoom) | “The Infinitude of God’s Knowledge” |
| 19:00-21:00 | Dinner | |
| Day Two (May 30, 2023, Tuesday) Session 3: Conception of God (continues) | ||
| 9:00-9:50 | Shoaib Ahmed Malik | “Biological Evolution and Essentialism: An Old Debate in a New Context” |
| 9:50-10:40 | Yasin R. Başaran | “God of the Philosophers and God of Ibn Sīnā” |
| 10:40-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| Session 4: Arguments for the Existence of God | ||
| 11:00-11:50 | Mehmet Bulgen | “Does Hudūth Argument Require Atomism” |
| 11:50-12:40 | Enis Doko | “Multiverse Theism and Evidential Arguments for Atheism” |
| 12:40-14:30 | Lunch | |
| Session 5: Religious Ethics | ||
| 14:30-15:20 | Kayhan Özaykal | “Al-Māturīdī’s Divine Ethics as Virtue Ethics” |
| 15:20-16:10 | Mariam al-Attar | “Divine Commands, Attributes or Divine Creation? A Critical Investigation of Contemporary Attempts to Ground Morality in Divinity” |
| 16:10-16:30 | Coffee Break | |
| Part II Session 1: Late Antique Philosophy and Post-Avicennian Philosophy | ||
| 16:30-17:20 | David Twetten | “Is the Source of the Essence-Existence Distinction Platonic? The State of the Question and a New Answer in Avicenna” |
| 17:20-18:10 | Zachary Candy | “The Unity of Existence as Monism? Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274) and Ḥaydar Āmulī (fl. 1385) on Unqualified Existence [wujūd muṭlaq]” |
| Day Three (May 31, 2023, Wednesday) Session 2: Late Antique Philosophy and Considerations of Islamic Philosophy and the Latin Tradition | ||
| 9:00-9:50 | Elisa Coda (via Zoom) | “What the Unmoved Mover Knows, and How: Themistius on Metaphysics Lambda” |
| 9:50-10:40 | Giulio Navarra (via Zoom) | “Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Islamic Context: Monotheism and Creationism as Marks of Arabic Aristotelianism” |
| 10:40-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00-11:50 | Richard Taylor | “Thomas Aquinas’s Avicennian Metaphysics” |
| 11:50-12:40 | Brett Yardley | “Kataphatic Prediction in al-Fārābī & Thomas Aquinas” |
| 12:40- | Lunch and Free Afternoon | |
| Day Four (June 1, 2023, Thursday) Session 3: Philosophical Discussions within Kalām and Religious Thought | ||
| 9:00-9:50 | Doha Tazi | “An Ashʻarī Theology of Property (in context)” |
| 9:50-10:40 | Edward Ryan Moad (via Zoom) | “Al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on Divine Knowledge and Power” |
| 10:40-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00-11:50 | Luis Xavier López-Farjeat | “Recovering Causality? Ibn Taymiyya on the Creation of the World” |
| Session 4: Middle Eastern Theology, Byzantine Philosophy, and Avicenna | ||
| 11:50-12:40 | José Alfonso Ganem | “Did Christ Suffered Voluntarily or Involuntarily: An Early Christian-Muslim Polemic on Divine Will and Free Will” |
| 12:40-14:30 | Lunch | |
| 14:30-15:20 | Jonathan Greig | “Neoplatonic Participation and Its Transformation in Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Methone” |
| 15:20-16:10 | Majid Bakhshi | “A Critical Review of the Modern Historiography of Avicenna’s Philosophy” |
| 16:10-16:30 | Coffee Break | |
| Session 5: Natural Philosophy: Avicenna and Neo-Scholasticism | ||
| 16:30-17:20 | Marina Novina | “Avicenna on Health as a Balance Between Soul and Body” |
| 17:20-18:10 | Nicola Polloni | “Puzzling Blends: Francisco de Toledo on Elemental Mixtures” |
ABSTRACTS
Part I: Contributions to Contemporary Philosophy of Religion
Mehmet Sait Reçber (Ankara University)
“Renewing Philosophy in Islamic Thought”
As a historical fact, Islamic thought has been long in contact with the western philosophical culture even though the character of this interaction is still in need of much clarification. Any attempt in this regard seems to need to take both horizontal and vertical aspects of such an engagement in order to demarcate its contextual elements and boundaries from a non-contextual or transcendental requirement. Today, it is easier to have a better understanding of the contextual conditions that seem to have shaped the medieval encounter of Muslim thought with the Ancient Greek philosophy. Given the contingent facts surrounding such an encounter, one can and certainly need to point out the non-essential elements of philosophy thus accommodated. It thus seems to me that a proper elimination of certain (particularly) metaphysical doctrines developed under the direct or indirect influence of Greek philosophy is somewhat essential to the idea of renewing philosophy in Islamic thought. In fact, such a task was partially fulfilled by al-Ghazālī in his criticism of certain metaphysical doctrines propounded by al-falāsifa while leaving the role of logic and argumentation intact. It is my contention, in this presentation, that philosophy can revived in Islamic thought by renewing its role as an analytical activity broadly conceived in terms of logical, semantic, epistemic and ontological analyses. Philosophy thus conceived can also find a justificatory ground from within the very Islamic sources inasmuch as most of its interest will be topic-neutral.
Jamie Turner (University of Birmingham)
“Developing an Analytic Philosophy of Islam: A Case Study in Religious Epistemology”
This paper aims to explore the possibility of developing a particular approach toward the consideration of philosophical concerns specific to the Islamic tradition. In particular, it aims to develop what we may coin an “analytic philosophy of Islam”. Roughly speaking, the discipline of analytic philosophy seeks to address philosophical questions characterized by their universality, generality, and necessity. Such philosophical questions may concern issues of metaphysics, science, ethics, and epistemology, but also religion. It is just the latter set of issues when taken up by analytic philosophical methods (i.e., thoughts experiments; offering analyses in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; refining analyses by way of counterexamples, etc.), which refers to what we term “analytic philosophy of religion”. Analytic philosophy of religion traditionally seeks to address topics or questions concerning the nature of God, religious belief, faith, revelation, the afterlife, and so on.
If the foregoing depicts what one means by analytic philosophy of religion, then an analytic philosophy of Islam ought to be understood as referring to the application of analytic philosophical methods to issues concerning the Islamic tradition. In this case the issues will pertain to specifically the Islamic conception of God, faith, revelation, and so forth. How exactly though is this analytic philosophical approach concerning Islam to proceed? Perhaps in the following way. First, it is a hallmark of the analytic philosophical approach to religion more generally to look toward the writings and thought of historical thinkers within a given religious tradition. These historical thinkers of a given religious tradition act as a source of arguments and theses which the analytic philosopher will then attempt to “translate” into the conceptual language, framework, and idioms of analytic philosophy. As such, analytic philosophers of Islam should seek to do the same with respect to their own traditions. Second, analytic philosophers of religion analyze the ideas of historic theological thinkers when translated into an analytic framework, by subjecting them close scrutiny; very precisely working out the ideas, re-formulating them; checking if they are coherent and if not require fine-tuning, and so on. Thus, the same should be the focus for the analytic philosopher of Islam. This is not to advocate for a “modernization” of the historic positions by significantly venturing away from their intended meaning particularly in light of scripture. It is however to suggest that upon analytical inquiry it is perhaps less important that one’s own development of the historic position is perfectly congruent with its original. Third, as we have suggested, analytic philosophers of religion go beyond the mere translation of ideas into a particular framework, but upon analysis through analytic methods, they seek to “embed” or “entrench” the developed ideas into theories or theses outside of philosophy of religion e.g., in broader metaphysical theories, normative epistemological theories. They also seek to embed or entrench ideas into models developed within philosophy of religion, but go beyond the mere analytic scrutiny of a position e.g., through an analysis of attributes of God one may embed the overall conception within a model such as classical or neoclassical theism. Thus, the same approach should be taken by analytic philosophers of Islam.
In light of the aforementioned, it is the purpose of this paper to outline exactly how an analytic philosophy of Islam ought to proceed, by drawing on a kind of a case study or example focusing on religious epistemology. This case study takes epistemological positions within classical Islamic theology and seeks to work them into the framework of analytic philosophy of religion.
Ayşe Sıdıka Oktay (Süleyman Demirel University)
“Relations between Philosophy and Religion in al-Fārābī’s Philosophy”
Al-Fārābī made a new definition of religion and philosophy by determining the place, boundaries and areas of religion and philosophy relative to each other and he developed a thought system that tries to establish a harmony and balance between reason and revelation/philosophy and religion despite the difference in method. In this paper, I am going to discuss al-Fārābī’s conception of the mutual relationship between philosophy and religion and their representatives, i.e., the philosopher and the prophet and argue his explanation is quite valuable in showing that there is no conflict between philosophy and religion, on the contrary, religion and philosophy are interdependent and need each other.
Ayman Shihadeh (SOAS University of London)
“Epistemological Status of Prophetic Miracles”
This paper investigates the epistemological status of prophetic miracles, a key aspect of their theorization in classical Islamic theology. The specific question it examines concerns the way in which a miracle, as an extraordinary occurrence, constitutes evidence for the prophethood of an individual in the framework of a general epistemology. We show that there were two accounts for the evidentiality of miracles. In the earlier account, miracles were explained as a unique type of evidence that operated differently from all other types. In the later account, they were assimilated into a general theory of evidence.
Mehmet Ata Az (Ankara University)
“Evaluation of Avicenna’s Flying Man Argument in the Context of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind”
One of the essential discussions of Avicenna’s metaphysics is the existence of the soul, its nature, and its relationship with the body. It is a matter of whether the soul possesses innate awareness of itself and self-consciousness independent of the body and sensations. Avicenna discusses the soul’s awareness of itself in the Flying Man thought experiment. In the first stage of our study, it will be determined whether the main emphasis of Avicenna in the flying man experiment is whether the soul is an immaterial, incorporeal and independent substance or whether the soul has the innate awareness of itself and self-consciousness. In the second stage, it will be discussed whether the soul, which he defines as a substance independent of the body, has an individual identity, consciousness or self-awareness before uniting with the body. Then, the concepts of self-awareness (al-shu‘ūr al-dhātī) and reflexive self-awareness (shu‘ūr al-shu‘ūr), which means self-consciousness, self-awareness, or cognition, will be analyzed in the context of consciousness, self-awareness, and mind discussions in modern philosophy.
Shoaib Ahmed Malik (Zayed University)
“Biological Evolution and Essentialism: An Old Debate in a New Context”
The theory of evolution states that all biological life is interconnected through a long historical lineage. Through the processes of natural selection and random mutations over extended periods of time, members of species and species themselves are undergoing constant flux. This raises an interesting question about essences or natural kinds. If the biotic world is constantly changing, are essences any longer relevant? In a pre-Darwinian era, the static worldview of species essentialism made sense, but this position has now come under stress in a post-Darwinian era. By taking this development as a cue, we turn to a well-known debate in Islamic intellectual history between the Muslim falāsifa, who were largely Neoplatonists, and the mutakallimūn,who were occasionalists. The former adopted a universalist position and the latter a nominalist one, which has implications for essentialism and thus evolution. This presentation will review this debate and determine how it intersects and lead to either the acceptance, appropriation, or rejection of the theory of evolution.
Mohammad Saleh Zarepour (University of Manchester)
“The Infinitude of God’s Knowledge”
Inspired by al-Kindī, Avicenna proposed a powerful argument—which was called ‘the Mapping Argument’ by the post-Avicennian thinkers—against the actual infinitude of magnitudes and multitudes. The conditions of the applicability of the Mapping Argument have been the subject of long-standing debates in post-Avicennian philosophy and theology. There have been disagreements on the applicability of this argument to time, souls, numbers, and many other things. But perhaps one of the most fascinating of these disagreements has been about the applicability of the Mapping Argument to the domain of God’s knowledge. Can we employ this argument to show that the number of things that God know cannot be actually infinite? If yes, how can this fact be compatible with God’s omniscience? If not, what does stop the Mapping Argument from being applicable to the domain of God’s knowledge? In this presentation, we discuss some of the most important positions regarding these questions in post-Avicennian philosophy and theology. I will then discuss the contemporary relevance of those positions by investigating their dis/similarities with some theories regarding the infinitude of God’s knowledge in the contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.
Yasin R. Başaran (Marmara University)
“God of the Philosophers and God of Ibn Sīnā”
Are nature and religion in conflict? If something is natural, can it also be religiously significant? Or, if something is sacred, should it be supernatural? The Muslim philosopher Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy suggests that what is natural is also religiously significant. Since Ibn Sīnā proposes a unified system of explanation for all existence and the entire system depends on the causal activity of the Necessary Being, nature becomes a way to learn about the source of religion. Because of this approach, Ibn Sīnā is commonly charged with defending a concept of God who is distant and disconnected from the world. According to this charge, Ibn Sīnā’s concept of God is a mere metaphysical principle rather than a personal, loving, caring, interested divinity. There emerges the parting of God of the philosophers and God of religion. In this paper, I claim that a careful examination of Ibn Sīnā’s arguments for divine action suggests that the charge is baseless. Let alone disconnecting God from the world, Ibn Sīnā is highly concerned with connecting divine activity with the operations in nature. God’s knowledge encompasses not only causal connections but also hierarchy of being. For him, nature becomes unintelligible without God. By addressing several criticisms of Ibn Sīnā, I also show that Ibn Sīnā’s approach promises to reconcile science and religion in an ingenious way.
Irfan A. Omar (Marquette University)
“On Forgiveness and Inclusion: Abū’l ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-Ghufrān on Life and the Hereafter”
Al-Maʿarrī (d. 1058 CE), the Syrian poet and philosopher who lived during the waning years of the Abbasid empire is a perplexing thinker. On the one hand, he lived an ascetic life, apparently, due to religious piety; on the other, he was fairly critical of religion in general. His critical views were leveled against practices in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. He particularly questioned, even mocked, customary Islamic understandings of heaven and hell, and derided many social norms of his time. In his poetic works he was able to couch his criticisms in the shadow of ambiguity using poetical and symbolic expressions, however his philosophical critique of religion as well as his “skeptical humanism” (Britannica Academic, s.v. “Al-Maʿarrī”) is fully revealed in his Risālat al-ghufrān, a work that describes al-Maʿarrī’s imaginary visit to paradise which, he discovers, is filled with people whom the doctors of religion would brand as “heretics.” This paper examines al-Maʿarrī’s method of critique as particularly “religious” even as it is aimed at religion. However, the goal of critique appears to be also religious, even spiritual; it is used to frame forgiveness and inclusion. In Risālat al-ghufrān al-Maʿarrī appears to be arguing that salvation and redemption exist outside of the neatly defined doctrinal and religious boundaries.
Mehmet Bulgen (Marmara University)
“Does Hudūth Argument Require Atomism”
One of the favorite arguments for the existence God, among medieval Muslim theologians, was based on the idea that universe began to exist after non-existence. They defended that the universe began to exist after non-existence (hudūth) by arguing that all things that make up the universe exist together with accidents that come to exist after non-existence. In the classical period when Muslim theologians used this argument, they also had adopted an atomistic cosmological model, such that the argument for the existence of the universe after non-existence was closely connected to the atomistic cosmology. In my presentation, I am going to explain the argument for the existence of God based on the existence of the universe after non-existence and the atomistic cosmology. And then, I am going examine how the claim that the universe began to exist after non-existence could be related to the atomistic cosmology.
Enis Doko (Ibn Haldun University)
“Multiverse Theism and Evidential Arguments for Atheism”
The evidential arguments for atheism are arguments that argue that certain empirical phenomena, such as the existence of certain kinds of evil, the hiddenness of God, the multiplicity of religions, and biological imperfections provide evidence against the existence of theistic God. In this presentation, motivated by Ibn Taymiyya’s perpetual creation model, which I will term Multiverse Theism, I will argue that God has created all the universes worth creating. Then I will argue that Multiverse Theism provides a generic defeater for the most evidential arguments for atheism.
Kayhan Özaykal (Istanbul University)
“Al-Māturīdī’s Divine Ethics as Virtue Ethics”
The main objective of this study is to identify Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī’s (d. 333/944) understanding of the relationship between God and morality, with the attendant claim that his view provides us with a unique way of understanding this relationship and has conceptual advantages over other theistic theories. In Islamic theology, the main ethical theories are those of divine command and natural law. Divine command theorists conceive imperatives contained within God’s revelation as fundamental to successfully explaining the origin, nature, and or authority of morality, while natural law theorists make central divine providence, which is considered to be manifested in nature, to do the same. These two alternatives have been standardly adopted by respective schools of kalam and dominated philosophical discussions in the Muslim world for centuries. At the same time, various Western authors have presented sophisticated metaethical theories over the last two decades, giving both divine command and natural law theory systematic application. Here, we argue that al-Māturīdī, by contrast, understands divine ethics specifically within the framework of virtue ethics and, in this way, offers a valuable alternative to the above theories.
We shall present several reasons to show that it is necessary to read al-Māturīdī as presenting God’s relation to morality in terms of the particular concepts featured in virtue ethics, primarily as found in the Aristotelian tradition. Each of these elements represents central tenets of virtue ethics while also occupying a prominent place in al-Māturīdī’s ethical thought. One of the first reasons to read al-Māturīdī as adopting virtue ethics as his main foundation is his use of the concept of wisdom, defined as putting everything in its proper place. This corresponds to the Aristotelian golden mean, where the morality of an action is determined by its position relative to two extremes. Al-Māturīdī deems the concept of wisdom to be the necessary basis for explaining God’s actions. In this regard, two other central concepts of virtue ethics are also prominently represented in al-Māturīdī’s writings, namely, telos, with al-Māturīdī’s claim that God only acts with purpose and knowledge, and accuracy (isābah), or “hitting the point”, which denotes an equivalent term repeated in Aristotle’s ethics. Secondly, we can point to the fact that Aristotle uses wisdom as a term for divine knowledge, as represented by “first philosophy”. We can also point out that al-Māturīdī does not identify any action as absolutely good or bad, which broadly parallels the position of virtue ethics. Finally, we can point out that al-Māturīdī deems morality partly limited to the temporal realm, in that good and evil belong solely to creation rather than God.
The second aim of this paper is to highlight the theological and philosophical advantages that divine ethics conceived in this way can have. The first is what we may call healthy moral skepticism. Al-Māturīdī’s view that we are generally unable to characterize a particular action as good or bad in all contexts perhaps offers much to explain the great complexity of morality. Second, we avoid ascribing a sole ethical principle to God, which has the advantage of intellectual humility toward the divine and leaves the door open to approve moral pluralism, again in view of moral ambiguity and variety. Third, we are not forced to identify any epistemic source as the essential one for moral knowledge and authority; we can, following al-Māturīdī, accepts a variety of sources in his moral epistemology, including practical reason, revelation, and natural inclinations. This, in turn, allows us to avert the dilemma of determining ethics as either exclusively known via God’s revelation or independently of it.
Mariam al-Attar (American University of Sharjah)
“Divine commands, attributes or divine creation? A critical investigation of contemporary attempts to ground morality in divinity”
Ashʿarite theology with its understanding of God and morality continue to prevail in Sunni Islamic thought. However, there are attempts to articulate different theories about the foundation of moral values that seem to have been developed in response to criticisms raised against the classical Ashʿarite conception of morality especially the charge of arbitrariness. A certain typology can be observed in the theories that attempt to ground morality in religion. Those who promote a version of Ashʿarite ethics tend to focus on the divine attributes of power and absolute freedom, and those who promote a version of Muʿtazilite ethics tend to focus on the attributes of goodness, beauty and justice. While it is true that we may never fathom the true nature of God and His attributes, our perceptions of divinity will continue to appeal to different psychological, moral and political aspirations.
In this presentation I argue for what can be considered a Sufi version of morality that can avoid both the charge of arbitrariness raised against classical Ashʿarite ethics on one side and the charge raised against the Muʿtazilites perception of morality, namely that it can dispense with revelation, on the other side. However, the conception of morality that is based on a Sufi perception of divinity follows the typology favored by the Muʿtazilites as it prioritizes the conceptions of divine goodness and beauty.
ABSTRACTS
Part II: Contributions to the Study of the History of Philosophy
David Twetten (Marquette University)
“Is the Source of the Essence-Existence Distinction Platonic? The State of the Question and a New Answer in Avicenna”
Recently Michael Chase has resurrected Hadot’s original 1963 thesis (subsequently qualified), proposing that the essence-existence distinction can be traced to Porphyry’s Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides with help of the Arabic Proclus/Plotinus. I argue, by contrast, that, although there is an essence-existence distinction in Porphyry and Victorinus, a distinction whose roots are clearly in Plato, the distinction is obscured in a context where, after Aristotle, to einai signifies primarily essence, as in much of Neoplatonism. Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius are good examples of the “obsuricissement de l’einai.” Only when two senses of to einai or wujūd are distinguished, as in Avicenna, can our sources be proved to be more than suggestive of Avicenna’s distinction. By contrast, I bring out the hitherto unnoticed source of Avicenna’s analysis, an analysis that must be bottom-up (and Aristotelian) rather than top-down: Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Zachary Candy (LMU Munich / University of Lucerne)
“The Unity of Existence as Monism? Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274) and Ḥaydar Āmulī (fl. 1385) on Unqualified Existence [wujūd muṭlaq]”
Building on Avicenna’s references to a single meaning of existence “unqualified” by either necessity or contingency, his commentator Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī circumvents potentially monist implications by deeming existence a mere second intention (min al-maʿqūlāt al-thānīya). Not all Ṭūsī’s readers grant existence this purely conceptual status, however: the Sufi philosopher Ḥaydar Āmulī argues that unqualified existence (now identified with God) is a concrete reality participated by all existents, including the “merely” Necessary Existent (now identified with a subordinate creator). This monism arguably follows Avicenna’s ontology to its logical conclusion—however, as Āmulī admits, it is also inimical to Abrahamic doctrinal concerns.
Elisa Coda (Marie Curie Fellow, Centre Jean Pépin UMR 8230, Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
“What the Unmoved Mover Knows, and How: Themistius on Metaphysics Lambda”
This paper focuses on Themistius’s exegesis of Metaphysics XII 9, wherethe Unmoved Mover is described by Aristotle as a divine Intellect. In his paraphrase of the passage1074b35-1075a12 (pp. 28-30 ed. Meyrav) Themistius provides an account which is in some respects surprising. Going beyond, and perhaps against Aristotle’s wording, the paraphrase claims: 1) that the divine Intellect, God, is full of Forms: in thinking itself, it thinks all the Forms and this the way in which it is the cause of the whole universe; 2) This thinking is the unified intuition of all its objects of thought simultaneously, and this is the way in which it imparts order to the whole universe. I argue that Themistius’ account combines Alexander of Aphrodisias’ and Plotinus’ theories about the divine Intellect. What, then, is the model of causality at work in Themistius’ paraphrase of the pivotal Chapter 9 of Book Lambda? This paper explores the sources, and describes the influence, of Themistius’ approach.
Giulio Navarra (University of Cologne)
“Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Islamic Context: Monotheism and Creationism as Marks of Arabic Aristotelianism”
A crucial aspect of cosmology during the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages is the clear distinction between the celestial upper world and the sublunar lower one. How to set up a unitary cosmological discourse if the cosmos appears sharply divided into two parts? This question the Kindī-circle’s adaptation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On providence tries to answer by displaying elements to fill this gap: it re-elaborates the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanationism and also develops a twofold model of Creation. This reshaping of Alexander’s model of providence which rethinks the role of the celestial bodies is possible because of the Kindī-circle’s way of re-elaborating the Hellenic metaphysics.
Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University and Catholic University of Leuven)
“Thomas Aquinas’s Avicennian Metaphysics”
This paper examines key points of the metaphysical thought of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna accepted by Thomas Aquinas in the foundations of his metaphysical thought and also critical innovative adaptations made by Aquinas in crafting his own very distinctive teachings formed in his rejection of central portions of the reasoning of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna.
Brett Yardley (DeSales University)
“Kataphatic Prediction in al-Fārābī & Thomas Aquinas”
Abrahamic philosophers are thinking about divine names (attributes of God) in the same way. While Thomas Aquinas was clearly influenced by Avicenna, he breaks from Avicenna in holding a position found in al-Fārābī’s Perfect State, namely that there is a tiny relation in an effect to what is in the cause (in some way). Thus, there is a non-apophatic way to know something about God. However, Thomas did not have access to al-Fārābī. I argue that Thomas and al-Fārābī arrive at the same (or remarkably similar) conclusion due to shared sources (e.g., Aristotle, Liber de Causis, etc.).
Doha Tazi (Columbia University)
“An Ashʿarī Theology of Property (in context)”
This paper is an attempt to elucidate the perplexing definition of justice (‘adl) that Shahrastānī attributes to the Ashʾarī school in his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal: while Muʿtazilites are said to equate justice with wisdom and rational norms, Ashʿarites allegedly identify justice with God’s disposal of his property according to his free will. In Shahrastānī’s account of Ashʿarism, justice is conceived as nothing less than God “freely disposing of his property and his sovereign dominion (mutaṣarrif fī milkihi wa-mulkihi).” In fact, it is in virtue of God’s quality as absolute sovereign owner (al-mālik al-muṭlaq) that good and evil are differentiated. Further, for Ashʿarites, it is in virtue of this very quality that a) God is never obliged to exhaust his capacity or his power in his act and to bring all possible being into existence (i.e. he is not bound by an ontological ‘optimum’, what Lovejoy called the “principle of plenitude”) and b) that he is never obliged to act for a reason or a purpose and perform the act that will be most advantageous for creation(i.e. he is not bound by a moral ‘optimum’). The paper will outline a response to the following question: Why do Ashʿarites consider God’s condition as absolute owner of all things to be the source of the differentiation between good and evil, between justice and injustice? Why is property the source of justice rather than its subset? How does this theology of property shape the nature of reality and morality? It will do so by delineating the various theological-philosophical tensions and concepts against which this Ashʿarite theology of property emerged— e.g. 1) the Muʿtazilite concept of a purposeful generous God (jawād)who is obliged to reward good deeds, who does nothing in vain and who cannot “keep in reserve” (iddikhār) the best and most beneficial act (al-aṣlaḥ) for human beings; 2) the Neoplatonic concept of purposeless generosity (jūd) understood as the effusion of all possible being by the One who “possesses nothing”; 3) contemporaneous counter-arguments by the least sympathetic opponent of the theory, Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār.
Edward Ryan Moad (Qatar University)
“Al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on Divine Knowledge and Power”
In his Incoherence of the Incoherence, Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) accuses al-Ghazālīof defending a concept of divine nature in the likeness of human nature, drawn from unsound analogies between the temporal and eternal. I find al-Ghazālīinnocent of this, except in his case for distinguishing divine knowledge from divine power. Here, al-Ghazālīis in need of an independent account of how we infer divine knowledge from the order we observe in the world, and how it is dependent on and not, as Ibn Rushd, claims the cause of its object. Without this, he appears guilty as charged.
Luis Xavier López-Farjeat (Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City)
“Recovering Causality? Ibn Taymiyya on the Creation of the World”
All philosophical and theological conceptions of causality within the Islamic context are inevitably related to the issue of the creation of the world, a topic that has received much attention in the scholarly literature. Given the enormous amount of literature that exists on the Islamic debate on causality, creation, and the nature of God as creator, here I do not intend to reconstruct in detail the arguments of Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, Averroes, or Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Nevertheless, I shall briefly revisit some of their views by way of introduction to the discussion I want to undertake, namely, the recovery of causality in the 14th century religious thinker Ibn Taymiyya. For Ibn Taymiyya falsafa and kalam were two innovative disciplines that encroached upon traditional views of religion. One would expect that someone engaged in reviving traditional Islam would advocate a temporal creation out of nothing. However, Ibn Taymiyya opposed both the kalāmic notion of creatio ex nihilo and Avicenna’s conception of eternal emanation. While Ibn Taymiyya had plenty of disagreements with the philosophers, he endorsed perpetual creation, an idea already found in both Avicenna and Averroes, according to which God perpetually creates everything from eternity. In this presentation, I discuss to what extent Ibn Taymiyya takes up perpetual creation as understood by Averroes.
José Alfonso Ganem (Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City)
“Did Christ Suffered Voluntarily or Involuntarily: An Early Christian-Muslim Polemic on Divine Will and Free Will”
In his Dialogue between a Saracen and a Christian John of Damascus discusses the origin of evil and whether or not human beings are free to act. Within the Dialogue, the Saracen defends some sort of fatalism, similar to that of the Muslim sect known as the Khārijites. By contrast, the Christian defends that human beings possess free will and they are responsible for all their actions. Against the Christian position, the Saracen argues that free will is a limitation to Divine Omnipotence. In order to respond to the Saracen, John of Damascus proposes to analyze the problem of predestination and free will from a Christological perspective. For John of Damascus, if Christ is both perfect God and human being, he has two wills, one divine and perfect, and the other human and fallible. The person of Christ can act according to both wills without falling into contradiction: he is free to suffer hunger, thirst or pain without this affecting his divine nature. The aim of this article is to discuss whether the two wills in Christ can really respond to the contradiction between the omnipotence of the Divine Will and human free will held by the Saracen and other Muslim sects.
Jonathan Greig (KU Leuven)
“Neoplatonic Participation and Its Transformation in Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Methone”
One thing the late Neoplatonist, Proclus, is most known for is his three-fold distinction between the (1) unparticipated, (2) participated, and (3) participants, noteworthily in texts like the Elements of Theology’s Prop. 23. Proclus uses this to explain the delegation of causality for the different levels of being, up to the highest level with the distinction between (1) the One-itself (to autoen), (2) the henads, and (3) beings. In the ensuing reception of Proclus in the Abrahamic monotheist traditions, one sees a reduction of this framework to two levels—i.e. (1) the first cause, and (2) beings—at the same time, however, that there is an affirmation of a distinction for the first cause as unparticipated and participated.
In this paper I would like to look at two particular direct critiques and responses to Proclus in the form of Thomas Aquinas (esp. in the Commentary on the Liber de causis) and the 12th-cent. Byzantine Nicholas of Methone (via his Refutation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology). Both figures reject Proclus positing really distinct intermediate principles between the first cause (1) and beings (3)—inasmuch as this leads to polytheism, among other things—and both employ similar strategies in critiquing Proclus. However, as I hope to show, both depart in two crucial ways in their alternative to Proclus’ framework. For Aquinas, ultimately following the De causis’ framework, the first cause, God, remains unparticipated in itself, while created beings indirectly participate God through the being (esse) produced and delimited in each specific creature by God. For Nicholas, following Ps.-Dionysius’ transformation, God is rather directly participated, as well as unparticipated, by creatures: the former as that by which creatures receive being, while the latter, as remaining transcendent beyond creatures. In effect, one finds the intermediate participated layer (2) moved in different directions: either as an immanent property in creatures, for Aquinas (via the De causis), or as located in God, for Nicholas (via Ps.-Dionysius). In this respect, Aquinas remains perhaps more faithful to Proclus, where Nicholas, effectively following Ps.-Dionysius, returns to a more Plotinian notion of participation.
Majid Bakhshi (Imam Khomeini International University)
“A Critical Review of the Modern Historiography of Avicenna’s Philosophy”
Unlike the historical approach that interprets Avicenna’s philosophy in a historical context and especially within the Aristotelian tradition, the traditionalist approach interprets Avicenna’s philosophy mostly in relation to the Islamic tradition. To compare these two approaches, I will discuss the following questions: What are the historiographical methodologies of these two approaches? Is the traditionalist approach an apologetic approach? Is the historical approach philosophy or history? What contribution can be made between these two approaches? I have chosen Avicenna’s philosophy so that more detailed discussions can be done.
Marina Novina (University of Zagreb)
“Avicenna on Health as a Balance Between Soul and Body”
From its beginnings medicine has the same goal, to restore health. However, throughout history health and medicine have been understood in different ways. For Avicenna, as we read in the Canon, medicine is philosophically founded and health, following the Greek and Islamic tradition, is related to balance (a balanced mixture) which refers to various phenomena related to health and illness of the body and mind in the mutual connection of soul and body. This presentation establishes the philosophical roots of Avicenna’s concept of health and presents the fundamental characteristics of Avicenna’s concept of health and illness.
Nicola Polloni (KU Leuven)
“Puzzling Blends: Francisco de Toledo on Elemental Mixtures”
The theory of mixture is among the most complex and problematic aspects of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Aristotle discusses the formation of elemental mixtures by positing three main conditions. First, mixtures are uniform bodies (uniformity condition). Second, something of the elements persists in the mixtures but not the elements themselves (‘partial permanence’ condition), And third, the causation of the mixture is not a case of substantial change (‘other than generation’ condition). These three conditions appear to be reciprocally opposed. How can something from the four elements persist in a uniform body if all the latter’s parts need to be uniform? How may the elements become a mixture without being corrupted into a newly generated body? For centuries, Latin medieval philosophers delved into these complex questions by assessing alternative solutions elaborated by Averroes, Avicenna, and earlier Scholastic philosophers like Aquinas. In my paper, I want to focus on a much consequential yet often neglected author from the 16th century: Francisco de Toledo (1515-1582). Specifically, I want to analyze Toledo’s treatment of the theory of elemental mixtures in his commentary on DGC I.10. Firstly, I will briefly introduce Aristotle’s theory of mixtures, its apparent frictions with (Scholastic) hylomorphism, and the main solutions elaborated in the Middle Ages. Secondly, I will analyze Toledo’s commentary on DGC I.10, focusing particularly on questions 17 and 18, which are dedicated to this topic. Finally, I will draw my conclusions on Toledo’s interpretation of DGC and his solution to the puzzle of mixtures.
Travel Information
Final Travel Information 18 May 2023
Let’s use Richard Taylor as an example. First, he had to check to determine whether he needs a visa to enter Turkey. Yes, he is required to have a visa, so he completed forms and with a credit card paid US$51.50 for his e-visa. He used this website: https://www.evisa.gov.tr/en/. Richard is flying into IST and he learned that a taxi to his hotel should cause ca. $20. However, this has to be paid in Turkish Lira cash, not credit card. He is aware that there are ATMs at the airport to get cash. The current rate of exchange is ca. 20 Lira to $1.00. He is staying at the Mercure Istanbul Altunizade Hotel.
For Taxi Service Information, see https://istanbul-international-airport.com/transportation/airport-taxi/.
The Route from the Airport to the Hotel/City Center
Traveling from the Airport to the Hotel:
The airport shuttle services operate daily with fixed departure times and routes. Departing from Sabiha Gökçen Airport, the shuttle stops at Kadıköy, Acıbadem Metro, Yenisahra, Tepeüstü, and Kavacık before heading to Istanbul Airport at 12:00 AM and 1:40 AM. Please note that for vehicles stopping at Kadıköy, the departure time is scheduled 35 minutes after the initial departure from Sabiha Gökçen Airport. E.g., The shuttles departing from Istanbul Airport at 2:15 AM and 4:15 AM make stops at Kavacık, Tepeüstü, Yenisahra, Acıbadem Metro, and Kadıköy before arriving at Sabiha Gökçen Airport. However, please be aware that operational changes in routes and departure times may occur due to traffic congestion, accidents, or other unforeseen circumstances. We kindly request passengers to be present at the station prior to the scheduled departure time.
For reaching Altunizade, you can utilize the Havaist shuttle service from the airport and then transfer to the MARMARAY and M5 metro lines. The transfer will require a short 5-minute walk.
In case our guests arriving late at night experience a time discrepancy preventing them from using the Havaist service, they have the option to reach their hotel by taking a taxi. It may be a good idea to take the Havaist Bus service from the airport to Kadıköy, and then take a taxi to the hotel.
For Taxi Service Information, see https://istanbul-international-airport.com/transportation/airport-taxi/.
As for the information for travel from the Istanbul airports to the conference location, there are two airports in Istanbul. One is located at the Anatolian side, (Sabiha Gökçen Airport), the other is located at the European side (Istanbul Airport). Below you may find different options to travel from the airport(s) to the Marmara University Faculty of Theology. And having reached Marmara University, Faculty of Theology, one may walk from there to the hotel where one may be staying.
Marmara University Faculty of TheologyAddress: Mahir İz Cad. No. 2 34662 Altunizade Üsküdar İSTANBULMarmara University Faculty of Theology is located in Üsküdar, Istanbul. Link Here.
FOR THOSE COMING FROM THE ANATOLIAN SIDE (Sabiha Gökçen Airport)
Option 1:You can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology when you take the bus number 12A departing from Kadıköy Rıhtım and get off at the Cultural Center stop.
Option 2:You can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology when you take the Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro from Ümraniye and get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop.
Option 3:If you are coming from Kartal, Maltepe, Pendik, Tuzla, take the Kadıköy-Sabiha Gökçen Airport metro at the Ayrılıkçeşmesi stop and transfer to Marmara. Get off at Üsküdar with Marmaray and transfer to Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
FOR THOSE FROM THE EUROPEAN SIDE (Istanbul Airport)
Option 1:If you are coming from Büyükçekmece, Beylikdüzü, Avcılar, Küçükçekmece, Bahçelievler, Mecidiyeköy directions, get off at Altunizade station by Metrobus from any Metrobus station and transfer to Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
Option 2:If you are coming from Bağcılar or Güngören, take the Kabataş-Bağcılar tram line and get off at Zeytinburnu and transfer to the Metrobus. From Metrobus, get off at Altunizade station and transfer to Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
Option 3:If you are coming from Esenler or Bayrampaşa, take the Yenikapı-Airport metro, get off at Merter station and transfer to the Metrobus. Get off at Altunizade stop by Metrobus and transfer to Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
Option 4:If you are coming from Bakırköy or Zeytinburnu, take the Marmaray from Kazlıçeşme and get off at Üsküdar and transfer to the Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
Option 5:Take the 129T bus from Taksim and get off at the Millet Bahçesi and transfer to the Üsküdar-Çekmeköy metro. When you get off at the Bağlarbaşı stop of the metro, you can reach Marmara University Faculty of Theology.
Options Regarding Accommodation in Istanbul, during the conference/workshop.
- Mercure İstanbul, Altunizade
Appearance of a regular room: Link
Location: Link
Distance from the Marmara Uni., Faculty of Theology: 1 km
Price (Regular Room): ₺ 2000 (Turkish Lira per night. Approximately $ 100) - Grand Üsküdar Otel
Appearance of a regular room: Link
Location: Link
Distance from the Marmara Uni., Faculty of Theology: 1,1 km
Price (Regular Room): ₺ 1400 (Turkish Lira per night. Approximately $ 70) - Aspera Hotel Altunizade
Appearance of a regular room: Link
Location: Link
Distance from the Marmara Uni., Faculty of Theology: 1 km
Price (Regular Room): 2615 ₺ (Turkish Lira per night. Approximately $ 130) - Diyanet Evi
Appearance of a regular room: Link
Location: Link
Rezervasyon Uygunluğunu ve Fiyat Bilgisi:
Distance from the Marmara Uni., Faculty of Theology: 1 km
Price (Regular Room): 700 ₺ (Turkish Lira per night. Approximately $ 35) (They do not make long-term reservations) - Holiday Inn Express Altunizade
Appearance of a regular room: Link
Location: Link
Distance from the Marmara Uni., Faculty of Theology: 1,1 km
Price (Regular Room): 1248 ₺ (Turkish Lira per night. Approximately $ 63)