II
Initial Ash'arite repudiation of natural causation, as
we have seen, arose
out of doctrinal disputes within
kalām. The arguments, as far as the available
sources
indicate, are mainly theological and metaphysical. A
second
phase in the history of the Ash'arite causal
theory is marked by a more
explicit attack on the
Aristotelian theory of necessary efficient causality
as
adapted to the emanative metaphysics of Alfarabi and
Avicenna. Here
we encounter two developments: (1)
an emphasis on the purely
epistemological argument
that necessary causal connection is provable
neither
logically nor empirically; (2) an attempt to uphold the
Aristotelian method of scientific demonstration and
its
claims of attaining certainty, on occasionalist, non-
Aristotelian, metaphysical grounds.
Both these devel-
opments are largely due
to Ghazali. Elements of the
epistemological argument are found in earlier
Ash'arite
writings, but it was Ghazali who gave this argument
its most
forceful expression and who first attempted
an occasionalist
reinterpretation of Aristotelian dem-
onstrative logic.
Ghazali's criticism of necessary efficient causation
pervades his Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of
the Philosophers), directed
mainly at Avicenna's
emanative metaphysics. Avicenna described the effi-
cient cause as that “which
brings about an existence
other than itself.” In natural
science, he held, this
existence represents motion in one of its forms.
For
the metaphysician, however, and here we note his
Neo-Platonism,
the efficient cause is also productive
of existence as such. In Avicenna's
cosmogony, the
world emanates eternally from God as a chain of ne-
cessitated and necessitating existents,
terminating in
the world of generation and corruption. In this sub-
lunar world, for the effect to follow from
the efficient
cause, the material, formal, and final causes must also
exist. The efficient natural cause must be the proximate
cause and there
must be no impediment. Agency, in
a natural cause, is “an
essential attribute,” hence pro-
ductive of one specific kind of act. Action is also
determined by
the specific nature of its recipient.
When such causal conditions obtain,
the effect follows
by necessity.
Ghazali attacked Avicenna's concept of divine cau-
sality as a negation of the divine attributes of life, will,
and
power. Only inanimate beings, Ghazali argued, are
said to act by necessity.
By definition, a necessitated
act is not a voluntary act. Ghazali also
opposed
Avicenna's scheme on the grounds that it does not
allow God to
act directly in the world of men, but
only through the mediation of other
causes. Since the
chain of existents proceeding from God is
necessarily
connected, there can be no disruption of its order.
Miracles, defined by the Ash'arites as the disruption
of nature's habitual
order, are thus impossible and a
prophet proclaiming their occurrence
becomes a de-
ceiver. It is in arguing for the
possibility of miracles
that Ghazali levelled his epistemological
argument
against the concept of necessary causal connection:
The connection between what is habitually believed to
be the cause
and what is habitually believed to be the effect
is not necessary
for us. But in the case of two things, neither
of which is the
other and where neither the affirmation nor
the negation of the one
entails the affirmation or the nega-
tion of the other, the existence or non-existence of the one
does not necessitate the existence or non-existence of the
other;
for example, the quenching of thirst and drinking,
satiety and
eating, burning and contact with fire, light and
the rising of the
sun, death and decapitation.... On the
contrary, it is within God's
power to create satiety without
eating, death without decapitation,
to prolong life after
decapitation and so on in the case of all
concomitant things.
[Trans. by the author.]
He then argued that necessary causal connection is
never observable in
nature: when, for example, cotton
is brought in contact with fire, all that
is seen is the
occurrence of burning “with” (ma') the contact, not
the burning of the cotton
“by” or “through” (bi) the
fire. The one who enacts the burning, he asserted,
is
God.
Ghazali did not deny that events in the world are
ordered in sequences of
priority and posteriority, tem-
poral and
ontological, ordinarily regarded as causes and
effects and on the basis of
which scientific inferences
about nature can be drawn. He denied, however,
that
these latter are real causes and that their order is
inherently
necessary. He endorsed Aristotle's method
of scientific demonstration, but
sought its interpretation
in occasionalist terms. He thus used Avicenna's
argu-
ment to justify the principle of
nature's uniformity, but
drew from it a different conclusion. Avicenna
(basing
himself on Aristotle, Physics ii. 5. 196b
10-15) had
argued that mere observation of past uniformities does
not
suffice to give us the certainly of their future
continuance; in addition,
there is the “hidden syl-
logism” to the effect that if these had been accidental
or coincidental, “they would not have continued al-
ways or for the most part.” Ghazali endorsed the argu-
ment to this point, but unlike Avicenna,
who concluded
that the uniformity derives from the natural necessary
connection between things, Ghazali maintained it de-
rives from God's arbitrary decree. For Ghazali, God
creates in
man knowledge that the world is orderly,
but also that its order is
contingent and disruptible.
When a miracle occurs, God refrains from
creating in
man the expectation of the uniform event, creating
instead
knowledge of the miracle. Ghazali did not
elaborate on this latter point,
leaving unanswered seri-
ous questions arising
from it.
