Chapter 16

Al-Frbs Arguments for the Eternity of

the World and the Contingency of Natural
Phenomena
Philippe Vallat

The question of the eternity of the world in Frbs writings has up to now been
addressed twice; irst by Herbert Davidson in his book Proofs for Eternity, and
more recently by Marwan Rashed in an extensive study entitled Al-Frbs
lost treatise on Changing Beings.1 Davidson could ind in Frbs writings only
indirect evidence for his adherence to this doctrine, which explains why Frb
only briely appears in his book. Rashed, who admits he could ind no more
explicit statements in Frbs available works than did Davidson, has for his part
based his study on the testimonies of the lost treatise On Changing Being, which
was known to Ibn Ba, Maimonides and Averroes. Based on the evidence at
hand, both think Frb to be a faithful Aristotelian. In what follows, I would like
to bring into focus some other texts, where I believe Frb endorsed the position
at issue, at some times more clearly than at others.
In fact, among Frbs preserved works, at least two lines of argument, which
are straightforwardly Neoplatonic, partly stem from Proclus proofs for the eternity
of the world. This is evidence that his main concern was not to purify Aristotles
interpretation of the heterogeneous concept of creation, whether in its monotheistic
or Neoplatonic form. More relevantly, as a pagan philosopher keen to challenge
creationist doctrines, Frb felt perfectly free to seize and reshape ideas regardless
of their origin. As for the philosophical bearing of Frbs doctrinal elaborations,
I will show that, although proceeding from premises similar to those used by Kind
and Avicenna, and which could have led him to deterministic conclusions akin
to theirs, Frb carefully steered clear of any such conceptions and held as a
core principle the contingency of physical phenomena and human events. In this
respect, the present study will lay the groundwork for further inquiries into the
similarities between his thought and theirs. The analysis of his statements will also
lead us to survey the causal structure of his metaphysical architecture and enable
H. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval
Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York-Oxford, 1987); M. Rashed, Al-Frbs Lost
Treatise on Changing Beings and the Possibility of a Demonstration of the Eternity of the
World, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 18 (2008): pp. 1958.
1

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us to understand, irst, how it is linked to Proclus and to Ammonius, and second,

how the whole of Frbs worldview is cognate to Hellenism and its aversion to
revealed monotheism.
Once brought together, these various points will show to what extent Frb can
be called an Aristotelian and how his thinking was nourished by Neoplatonism,
whether Alexandrian or Athenian. Ultimately, my purpose is to complement both
Th.-A. Druarts study of the reasons why Frb felt dissatisied with Aristotles
metaphysics,2 and also my monograph devoted to Frbs relation to Greek
Neoplatonism.3
The irst argument to consider is Frbs conception of act, action, activity and
actuality, four notions that Arabic renders by the same word, il. I will sum up the
part of this theory relevant to our present purpose.
There are two kinds of acts: one which is the result of an actualization process
and another which is free of any foregoing potential state and which in itself is the
immediate result of the entelechy of a perfect being. The former, which pertains to
Aristotles Categories, is a process that takes place in time, while the latter, whose
relation to Aristotle is at once questionable, occurs in no time or without time
being existent, bi-l zamn.
Unlike the various kinds of passions, which Frb assimilates to corresponding
kinds of movements, action and actuality, in his view, do not necessarily presuppose
that movement preceded them. There is one kind of action which requires no
movement at all and needs no impetus in order to take place all at once. The
agent is in no way stirred or induced to act. Hence this act is on the agents part
not a completion or realization of its being through an act. Even as it is, so it
acts. This act is in itself a spontaneous creation and brings forth an unintentional
result which, as such, remains unknown to its effecter. An activity of this sort is
instantaneous, meaning that the effecter and the effect are concomitant. In short,
this kind of act or activity is both atemporal in the sense that it occurs in no time,
and eternally productive in the sense that its effect never fails nor ever will cease
to proceed from the agent. Before returning to this point, I shall for now only
remark that it in no way implies that the effecter shares with its effect an identical
kind of extensive eternity, but rather that this extensive eternity is the modality
according to which the effect takes part in the intensive, instantaneous and everpresent eternity of the act whereby its effecter brings it forth.
Let us now turn to Frbs and Proclus texts.

2
Th.-A. Druart, Al-Frb and Emanationism, in John F. Wippel (ed.), Studies in
Medieval Philosophy (Washington, 1987), pp. 2343.
3
Ph. Vallat, Farabi et lEcole dAlexandrie, Des prmisses de la connaissance la
philosophie politique (Paris, 2004).

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261

1. Frb and Proclus on the Eternity of the World

1.a Frb, Ful muntazaa 84
The Arabic is as odd as its English translation may sound. This is, I think, perfectly
deliberate on Frbs part. I will venture an explanation of this point later. The
text reproduced omits the punctuation added by the editor. The words in oblique
brackets are designed to help the reader and are not in the original Arabic. This
translation does not correspond to either D.M. Dunlops or C.E. Butterworths
which do not pick up on the references I believe Frb had in mind.
The assessment of the text irst requires one to be aware of the argument
prefaced to the whole treatise entitled Ful munatazaa: Analecta (ful)
gleaned among (muntazaa min) the writings of the Ancients, which bring
together many a principle regarding the ways cities ought to be governed and
made prosperous, and how the way of life of its inhabitants ought to be amended
so they may be ordained to felicity.4 This argument, more likely in my opinion
than the variant given in the apparatus, enables us to see not that Frb was an
amateur doxographer, as some may think, but that, without mentioning it, he
borrowed some of his wording from ancient philosophers in order to elaborate his
own thought. At any rate, the author of the argument was aware of Frbs way
of quoting texts and deemed it important to let it be known since Frb did not
name any more ancient philosophers in this treatise than in others. The question
of how the doctrines of Ful muntazaa might contribute to the good governance
and prosperity of the city represents a separate issue which I will not address here.
Ful muntazaa 84, pp. 889:

4
Al-Frbs Ful Muntazaah (Selected Aphorisms), ed. with an introduction and
notes by Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut, 1971), p. 23, 35 [henceforth: Ful muntazaa].

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Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity

5

6


Any effecter of a certain thing knows that effecting this thing at a given moment
is optimal or good, or effecting the thing is not optimal or bad. He then postpones
this, because an obstacle comes his way (li-iq la-hu) which impedes him from
effecting it. Namely, the distortion (fasd) he estimates and even knows will
ipso facto affect this thing if he effects it at that moment is the obstacle which
comes his way (al-iq la-hu). He must therefore know what the cause of this
expected distortion (sababu l-fasd) is at that moment and what the cause of
the orderliness (sababu l-al) is if he effects the thing the moment after that.
If there has up to now been no cause for the expected distortion,7 then that
it does not happen is not more likely than that it does (fa-laysa an l yakna
awl min an yakna),8 so that the question how it could possibly happen or
Reading bal huwa wa-zawl with the Chester Beatty MS.
Reading mutaaar with the Chester Beatty MS.
7
In this sentence, cause (sabab) means the determinative factor which makes the
thing more likely to occur than not. If the hypothetical cause is not determinative, it remains
unknown qua cause. See the following footnote.
8
I think the text must be kept as it is. As I will argue below, Frbs deliberately
bafling formulation seems to mean that in the case at issue, which in fact is one of the
processes of association and dissociation which occur at the level of homeomeric contrary
substances (i.e. substances without differentiate parts which are the basic constituents of
organized anhomeomeric substances), distortion, that is corruption (fasd), can
equally occur or not. For the underlying doctrinal context, see Ph. Vallat, Du possible au
ncessaire. La connaissance de luniversel chez Frb, Documenti e Studi sulla tradizione
5

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263

not has not yet occurred.9 Besides there comes the question of whether or
not the maker in question (lika l-ni) has the capacity to do away with the
distortion affecting the act whereby he effects the thing at the said moment. If
he has such a capacity, then, the distortion is not more likely to happen than not.
Hence bringing this thing forth at any given moment would not be impossible to
its maker. But if he has not the capacity to do away with the distortion, then this
means that the cause of it is stronger and also that the maker is not endowed
with such complete self-suficiency that the thing in question could come
about unconditionally (yakna al l-ilq). If so, then regarding what he is
able to effect (f ili-hi), he actually admits of a contrary and of something which
impedes him from effecting it. In all regards, he alone is consequently not so
self-suficient as completely to achieve such an act, but he and also the receding
of the cause of the distortion and the presence of the cause of orderliness are all
required for the act to be achieved.
Now, if in virtue of his very essence, he is the cause of the orderliness, then
the orderliness, viewed with regard to the act, shall be non-posterior in time,
but both the act and the orderliness of its effect shall occur simultaneously.10
For this reason, it must be the case that the effecter provided that he is selfsuficient is such that from him a certain thing originates whose being is not
posterior to his own.11
ilosoica medievale XIX (2008): pp. 89121; Ph. Vallat, Al-Frb, in Henrik Lagerlund
(ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500 (Berlin,
2010).
9
Both D.M. Dunlop (The Ful al-madan, Aphorisms of the Statesman of al-Frb,
ed. and trans. with introduction and notes [Cambridge, 1961], p. 66) and Ch. Butterworth
(Alfarabi, The Political Writings [Ithaca and London, 2001], p. 54) understood fa-kayfa
lam yaqa (p. 88, 12) as a question in the direct style (my italics): If there is no cause of
non-success, its non-existence is not preferable to its existence, and why did it not happen?
(Dunlop); If there is no reason of corruption, then it is not more appropriate that it not
be than that it be. So why should it not come about? (Butterworth). R. R. Guerrero (AlFrbi, Obras Filosico-polticas [Madrid, 1992], p. 137) also understood the clause as
a question: y entonces, como no tiene lugar? But if there is no cause of corruption, the
question how? cannot apply, which is, I think, precisely what fa-kayfa lam yaqa means:
the question how? is unlikely to occur, whether understood in a logical sense (i.e. we,
human beings, cannot answer this question) or in an ontological sense (i.e. the thing in
question has no how? cause other than its possible factuality). At any rate, that fa-kayfa
lam yaqa is syntactically not a question becomes clear immediately after that, when Frb
states that the sole answerable question in this context is not about an undetermined course
of events (how? kayfa), but about the agents being endowed with the possibility to nullify
the effect of its indetermination (whether, hal).
10
Or: shall exist simultaneously, yaknn maan.
11
p. 88,20p. 89,2: fa-li-lika yalzamu an yakna l-fil matt kna muktaiyan
f nafsi-hi wada-hu an yadua an-hu ayun m lam yataaar wudu lika l-ay
an wud al-fil. With R. R. Guerrero (De aqu se sigue necesariamente que, cuanda el

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In the form they have been preserved, the structure of the three irst sentences
is a little clumsy and the phrasing of the whole is at irst glance quite disconcerting.
But this clumsiness and untidiness can hardly be involuntary given the eficiency
with which they conceal the actual object of the text. This apparently explains why
H. Davidson, M. Rashed, and the three translators into English and Spanish did
not see this text as an argument in favour of the eternity of the world. It is to me no
coincidence that Frb is at his most obscure when dealing with these sensitive
metaphysical matters while he expresses himself with such clarity on other topics.
His style is even more abstruse in the section immediately before, which also
refers to Proclus.
From a stylistic point of view,12 the quotation is also characterized by a set
of peculiarities: an indeinite active participle followed by a complement in the
direct case inlection (ayyu filin ayan m, Any effecter of a certain thing),
a perfectly correct construction which, however, is nowhere else to be seen in
Frbs writings; the word arr, literally evil, here taken in the unusual sense of
improper (time); the curious correlated sense given to fasd (distortion, damage,
deterioration, decay) and al (orderliness, soundness, integrity) which normally
mean respectively corruption and good state (health) in relation to living or
at least natural beings, but never to actions; the clause fa-kayfa lam yaqa wamaa lika hal (so that the question how it could possibly happen or not
has not yet occurred. Besides there comes the question of whether ), which
connects in a very elliptic manner two questions phrased in the indirect style; the
abrupt shifting from fil (effecter) to ni (maker); the very word al-ni
(the maker) which usually appeared in the Arabic Neoplatonica as a reference
to a demiurgic god; the clause bal huwa wa-zawlu sababi l-fasd wa-uru
sababi l-al employed to mean but he and also the receding of the cause of
agente es suiciente por s solo, una cierta cosa procede de l sin que el ser de esa cosa sea
posterior al ser del agente, Obras Filosico-polticas, p. 137), I take mat kna muktaiyan
f nafsi-hi wada-hu (provided that he is self-suficient) to be one phrase. Dunlop (Ful
al-madan, p. 66) reads mat kna muktaiyan f nafsi-hi wada-hu f an and translates
the whole as and therefore, when the agent is suficient in himself alone for something
to come into existence from him, it follows that the existence of the thing is not later than
the existence of the agent. Reading Najjars text that I reproduce (mat kna muktaiyan
f nafsi-hi wada-hu an), Butterworth (Political Writings, p. 54) translated the sentence as
if he read muktaiyan f an: Therefore it follows that when the agent in and by himself
sufices for generating a certain thing, the existence of that thing is not postponed after
the existence of the agent, (my italics). For the idea formulated here, cf. Die Pseudoaristotelische Schrift Ueber das reine Gute bekannt under dem Namen Liber de causis, ed.
O. Bardenhewer (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882), 25, pp. 1056; reprint F. Sezgin, Islamic
Philosophy, vol. 105 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000).
12
Further remarks about the texts I am presently studying are to be found in my
forthcoming French translations: Rgime politique, Spicilge politique, Accession la
flicit, De lintellect. It could be that fasd/al is also an allusion to Ab Bakr al-Rz
(d. 925). I will address this question elsewhere.

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265

the distortion and the presence of the cause of orderliness are all required for the
act to be achieved: even if the part I added to the sentence to make it intelligible
is required by the particle bal, I am not aware of any other example of such an
elliptic phrasing. Some of those peculiarities will be explained in what follows.
On the other hand, the alternation of izlat (to do away with) and zawl
(receding), two terms drawn from the same root, is found elsewhere,13 as are the
clause fa-laysa an l yakna awl min an yakna (then that it does not happen
is not more likely than that it does) and the nouns of action wuq and kawn,
which all belong to the common vocabulary of the future contingents problem
and ultimately stem from the Arabic translation of Aristotles De interpretatione,
IX.14 The irst three sentences can also be traced back to De interpretatione, IX.
As for the repeated allusion to an obstacle, it ultimately comes from Frbs
interpretation of Aristotles Physics, II, 8, 199b18: (if nothing
obstructs it). This phrase often recurs in Alexanders treatises as well.
As for the doctrinal content of the quotation, Frb examines the relation of an
act to its agent or effecter as two basic alternatives: the effecter of a certain thing
can or cannot carry out his task by himself. To carry out the task by oneself precisely
means here that the thing carried out, once achieved, shall remain existent, which
demands that it keeps on enjoying its initial orderliness or integrity and does not
experience deterioration. The fact that its initial integrity somehow gets marred
entails several things according to Frbs reasoning. First, it means that at the
outset its effecter did not possess in himself what was required to provide his effect
with the ability to remain in its original state and thus to endure. Correlatively, this
means that outside the effecter two forces were already existent: the two forces
he will have to take into account in order to succeed in effecting his act later on,
although he cannot directly act upon these two forces, that is, the cause of the
possible decay and the cause of the required initial orderliness. From the fact that
out of those two forces, one blunts and even wrecks the effecters ability to act
(in the sense here deined) and the other is out of his reach, Frb infers that the
13
See e.g., Al-Frbs The Political Regime, ed. with introduction and notes Fauzi
M. Najjar (Beirut, 2nd edn, 1993) [henceforth: Political Regime], p. 84, 1016.
14
Ibid., p. 57, 46: It does not belong to the nature of the possible (al-mumkin) to
assume just one determined mode of being [wud wid muaal, i.e. a given actual
form]; it can be such and not such and it can be something and its opposite. Its status with
regard to the two opposite beings [i.e. actual forms] is one same indifferent status (l
wid, i.e. ) and hence that it be this being is not more likely (awl) than that it be
the opposite of it. Cf. De int., 18b89 (J. Barness translation, The Complete Works of
Aristotle, vol. I, Princeton, 1984, p. 29): For otherwise it might equally well happen or not
happen, since what is as chance has it is no more thus than not thus, nor will it be,

( = wa-law lam takun ka-lika la-kna kawnu-h wa-ayru kawni-h al
mil wid (=) wa-lika anna l-ay alla yuqlu f-hi inna-hu yaknu al ayyi
l-amrayn ittafaqa fa-laysa huwa bi-aadi l-amrayn awl min-hu bi-l-ar wa-l yaru kalika: Maniq Aris, vol. I, ed. Abd al-Ramn Badaw, Cairo, 1948, p. 71).

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effecter is not self-suficient. In order to take these two elements into account, to
increase his chances of success and to give his action its greatest eficiency, the
only means the effecter has at his disposal is to ascertain in advance the most
proper time to act. But even this is not always possible since in some cases there is
no cause which may be ascribed to what happens, meaning that deterioration can
equally occur as not. As a consequence, how to properly act in order to achieve
the task is not only unknown to the agent but also incognizable. Thus not two but
three elements have to be ascertained and taken into account: (1) the cause of the
possible deterioration when it can be determined; (2) the cause of the well-ordered
state, which is the immediate condition for the expected effect to endure; and (3)
the right time to act in order to prevent the deterioration (when its cause can be
determined). Those are the three extrinsic factors which are imposed upon the
effecter and together explain why he is unable to carry out his task by himself.
According to Frb, (1) and (3) do not concern a self-suficient effecter and
(2) is inherent to his activity. This means that a self-suficient effecter is always
in a state that for him is the right time to act: there is no time when a possible
deterioration could affect what he does and no factor which could compel him to
postpone his act in the hope for a better time to come. The well-ordered state of
what he effects is coextensive to his act. In other words, time is of no relevance to
him, because he is and will always be in such a state that what he effects lasts as
long as he himself is. And since there is no time when acting would be inappropriate
and no related possibility of decay which requires time what this effecter does
is from the outset assured of a well-ordered state. Therefore the act achieved by the
effecter and the well-ordered state of the thing carried out through this act do not
take place one after the other, but simultaneously. And if a self-suficient effecter
is such that the right time to achieve something is of no signiicance to him since
he has always been and will always be capable of acting without encountering any
extrinsic impediment, it follows that this effecter has always been and will always
be effecting something which in turn always has enjoyed and will always enjoy a
well-ordered state. In other terms, he is productive by deinition or in virtue of his
very essence (bi-ti-hi wada-hu) and consequently acts in such a way that a
thing eternally originates from him, the well-ordered being which is not posterior
but concomitant to his own being.
Bearing in mind that the underlying Greek idea for al (orderliness, integrity)
might well be cosmos understood as something ordered, and that the effecter
Frb refers to in the last sentences corresponds to the First Principle, the whole
text becomes a direct demonstration of the eternity of the world: the orderliness of
the effect of the act achieved by a self-suficient agent is not separable from this
effect, but as everlasting and incorruptible as this effect. In other words, the thing
Frb is talking about is the incorruptible cosmos: al, as opposed to fasd, in
reality means incorruptibility.
This text moreover constitutes an indirect demonstration of the eternity of the
world since the purpose of the irst part of the argumentation points to the fact that
the effecter of something that in some way gets corrupted is himself non-suficient,

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267

meaning he cannot be divine. This conclusion appears to target the creationist

claim that the world is corruptible. Frbs implicit account is simple: if the effect
brought forth by the Creator is corruptible, then the Creator referred to is not selfsuficient and hence not divine, which reduces religious creed to absurdity. Such
an assault against religious beliefs may sufice to explain why Frb deemed it
appropriate to wrap his argumentation in a cloudy wording.
One can briely add that the irst sentence, and especially the word ala, may
allude to the mutazilite doctrine of the best of all possible worlds, and this doctrine
may therefore have constituted his irst target. The criticism can accordingly be
reformulated as follows: only an imperfect agent has to choose which among
different possibilities is the best or the optimal, ala. An agent can be said to
be self-suficient only if what he effects is eternal. Consequently, the optimal,
ala, is merely what is eternally enduring a plain rejection of the mutazilite
problematic as a whole.
The following remarks now aim to show not only which sources Frb
combined but also the way he combined them. The employment and development
of two kinds of sources is typical of his method. One may also speak of an original
and consistent re-elaboration of Greek material.
First, there is no doubt that the right or opportune moment to act ultimately
echoes Nicomachean Ethics which he knew in its entirety. The kairos and more
generally the conditions of all eficient actions which involve matter are here
regarded as dependent upon the natural phenomena, with the course of which
they have to link up. The underlying Aristotelian doctrine at stake such as
Frb re-interprets it is the division of phenomena according to their statistical
frequency or the modal status of the knowledge one has of them. The kairos can
be determined only in the case of phenomena whose natural causality can itself
be rationally grasped. This is possible only in the case of phenomena which are
likely to occur most of the time ( = mumkin al l-akar). According
to Aristotle, we do not deliberate about what necessarily occurs, a statement that
Frb implicitly supplements by holding that neither do we deliberate about what
equally occurs and does not (mumkin al l-tasw).15 In the case of the latter
phenomena (and those which occur most rarely, al l-aqall), no deliberation can
reach a rational assessment of the right moment to act and consequently there is no
practical knowledge to be gained. The reason for this is that the hypothetical agent
has to deliberate, taking into account the probability of the deterioration affecting
what he intends to do. Accordingly, he has to assign a cause to the occurrence
of the deterioration and, in order to do so, he has to ascertain which part of the
phenomena is favourable to his plan, that is, what is the nature of the phenomena
or events necessarily involved in the realization of his plan and which among them
are likely to hinder its realization. If the unfavourable phenomena are among those
which are equally likely to occur or not, that is, those which strictly speaking are
15
See Nicomachean Ethics VI, 1140a 3133; 1141b1012. The Arabic translation of
Book VI was not preserved. Frb often refers to it implicitly in Ful munatazaa.

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contingent, then the agent will not be able to set an appropriate time for his plan,
for within a contingent course of events there is no such time. This means that in
the second case considered by Frb, that of a maker endowed with the capacity
(qudra) in fact to bring forth what he intends to do, one is no longer dealing with
a purely contingent course of events, but with events and phenomena which do
occur most of the time. This, I think, is what the clause the distortion is not more
likely to happen than not to happen is about. Although this clause means the
distortion can equally happen or not which amounts to saying that orderliness
too can equally happen or not I do not think that Frb is still thinking, in a
speciic sense, of the kind of contingency involved in the irst case, that of a nonindividual agent (fil), but of contingency taken in a generic sense, as a common
feature of human affairs. If I am correct, then the free agent associated with qudra
is the one who, although he dwells in a realm of general contingency, is able to
identify those of the contingent phenomena that happen most often and that can be
taken into account in practical deliberation.16
What is particularly interesting here is that Frb is plainly establishing a
correspondence between the natural course of regular phenomena which occur
most of the time, and a maker endowed with a capacity, qudra: If he has such a
qudra, then, the distortion is not more likely to happen than not, means, according
to what we have just seen, that distortion will at most happen in half of the cases.
I will not here go into the implications of using the term qudra. Sufice it to
say, irst, that according to Frb (and Aristotle) man is par excellence the agent
shaped to live, determine himself and act within the realm of events which do not
occur of necessity but most of the time or contingently; and, secondly, that the
correspondence thus established between the most often occurring phenomena and
the capacity (qudra) is a way, on Frbs part, to indicate that mans freewill is
the ultimate result of the teleological dynamics of nature in general.17 In short, this
constitutes a counterargument to the manifold doctrines, whether philosophical or

This issue is dealt with at length in Attainment of Happiness 2652: K. tal alsada, in Al Yasin (ed.), Al-Frb, The Philosophical Works (Beirut, 1992), pp. 11997;
esp. pp. 14979; English trans.: Al-Frb, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. with
an Introduction by M. Mahdi (New York, 1962), pp. 2741 where Frb might rely on a
Neoplatonic commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, probably that of Porphyry.
17
This appears from Frbs repeated claim (e.g. Ful muntazaa 17) that a
human beings natural state with regard to virtue (well-ordered moral disposition) and
vice (ill-ordered moral disposition) is such that he/she is endowed with a most-of-the-time
inclination to accomplish certain kind of acts (certain things are easier for him to do than
others), but never determined by a univocal disposition or a determinate habit to accomplish
them, which conversely means that he/she remains able to go back and forth from one
disposition to another, but not easily or without qualiication. In short, a human beings
freewill relies and depends on his/her only prevalent ability ( = mumkin al
l-akar) to incline toward a given thing.
16

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269

founded on the Quran or both, which were lourishing in his time and in one way
or another denied man any true capacity to deliberate freely and act accordingly.18
Now, as Frbs argumentation clearly shows, this idea is here briely sketched
out not for its own sake, but in order to contrast the conditions imposed upon nonsuficient agents with the case of a self-suficient agent unimpaired by extrinsic
impediments an idea which certainly never occurred to Aristotle.

See ar al-Frb li-kitb Arsls f l-ibra: Commentary on Aristotles

, eds W. Kutsch & S. Marrow (Beirut, 1960), p. 83, 1623: Some people
have undertaken to withdraw the contingency from phenomena, not arguing from primary
knowledge (al-marifa al-l) but from what is conventionally held (al-wa), from
Shariah (al-ara) and from authority (al-qawl). And yet their innate nature (ira) does
require from them that their works and deeds be in conformity with what this innate nature
of them involves. Thus, concerning what is primarily known by nature [m huwa malm
bi-l-ira, i.e. the contingency of phenomena], one does not have to take into consideration
[reading: laysa yultafatu] some peoples opinion that the situation is different in the light of
Shariah (bi-l-ara). / Since inquiry in logic and in philosophy in general proceeds through
and from things known by nature or through and from things which result necessarily
from (lzima an) things known by nature, without having recourse in this matter to any
premises posited by Shariah (muqaddimt urriat) [i.e. the Quran] nor anything which
results necessarily (lazimat an) from things posited by Shariah (ay urriat) [i.e. the
theological interpretation of the Quran], nor anything which has become commonly held
(mahra) among people as resulting necessarily (lzimatan) from the judgement of one
man (an rayi insnin) whose word is endowed with authority (maqbl) among those
people [i.e. Muammads Sunna], then philosophy and logic do not have to go along with
(laysa tataiu bi-) any such thing. (my translation; cf. Al-Frbs Commentary and Short
Treatise on Aristotles De Interpretatione, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
F.W. Zimmermann, London, 1981, p. 77). One cannot be more explicit and exhaustive.
Frb explicitly opposes ira and philosophy to ara. Rashed (On the Authorship of
the Treatise On the Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Sages attributed to AlFrb, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 19 (2009), pp. 4382, p. 46) quotes a text of
Frb which contains the following sentence: These are the roots of wicked opinions
and the reason for corrupt, bad doctrines (his transl.). It would have been useful to the
reader to know that Frb has just quoted the Quran. The sentence is better translated as:
These are the scriptural foundations of iniquitous doctrines and the basis for pernicious and
corruptive trains of thought, ul li-ri suin wa-sababu li-mahiba rada wa-fsida
(Ful muntazaa 87, p. 92, 1). The terms ul and mahib, which both belong to Islamic
vocabulary, are certainly not used at random by Frb: in this vocabulary, ul denote the
Quran and Sunna, and mahib refer to the main theological schools built on these ul,
which appeared during the eighth and ninth centuries; see D. Gimaret, Ul al-Dn, EI2:
X, 930b; N. Calder, Ul al-Fiqh, EI2: X, 931b. The typical Quranic phraseology quoted
a few lines above by Frb may equally refer to Q. v, 17; vi, 163; vii, 190; xi, 12; xxv, 2;
xvii, 111; xviii, 26. But the doctrine he targeted recurs at least ifty times in the Quran. See
below, n. 31.
18

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1.b How Frb read Proclus

I shall now turn to the concepts of distortion (fasd) and orderliness or wellordered state (al). This distinction could be a remote allusion to Met., A
984b10-985a5 where Aristotle reviews his predecessors opinions on cosmological
causes which he divides into causes of order and causes of disorder. The context is
similar since Aristotle looks into the kinds of causes from which his predecessors
wanted to deduce the actual world. The fact that Met., A 984a5b was probably
unknown to Arabic readers is not suficient cause to dismiss the possibility that
Frb knew its content, for instance through a commentary. Nonetheless a more
probable although not contradictory source for the fasd/al distinction is
Procluss ninth and twelfth proofs for the eternity of the world, which were known
in Arabic independently of Philoponus refutation, as is shown in detail by Elvira
Wakelnig in Proclus Arabus, a study to be published in the Encyclopedia of
Medieval Philosophy (cf. above, n. 8).
Let us irst consider the twelfth. Proclus makes the hypothesis that if the
cosmos, that is, the well-ordered state of the All, was not at some earlier time
or will not be at some later time (
, p. 466, 7-8 Rabe), that is either because at one time its maker has failed
at his work ( , l. 5) or because he proved himself
not suficient for the job ( , ll. 18-19).
Everything generated requires matter and maker. Consequently, if something
generated is not eternal but has being only temporarily, it is not eternal either
because it is peculiarly unit or because the maker has failed at his work or
for both reasons: the matter is unit and the maker is not self-suficient. If the
cosmos was not at some earlier time or will not be at some later time, it has
experienced this [not being] either because of the matter or because of whatever
made it a cosmos. But the latter is always self-suficient for the process of
making, inasmuch as the maker is always the same and not different at different
times; therefore either the maker is not adequate for constructing the cosmos
now or is adequate now and earlier and later. And the matter was either always
and uniformly it for the construction of the cosmos, just as in the same way it is
also either it now or not it now, since it is always and uniformly the same being.
For the matter is unchangeable, just as the maker is unalterable. If everything
that is at one time and is not at another is such either because the maker is not
suficient for the job or the matter is not always serviceable, then (since it is the
case neither that the maker of the cosmos is at one time suficient to make and
at another time not suficient, nor that the matter is at one time serviceable and
at another time not serviceable) it cannot be that the all at one time is and at

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another is not. Therefore, for all time both the demiurge makes and the matter is
organized into the cosmos and the cosmos is eternal.19

In this twelfth proof lies the explanation for the alternative presented by Frb
between an insuficient agent and a self-suficient one. But Frb does not use the
hypothesis of the same agent, alternatively non-suficient and self-suficient, to
carry out a determined task, nor does he then use an ad absurdum demonstration
of a self-suficient agent not acting continuously from the start, that is, eternally.
Instead, Frb places the non suficient and self-suficient attributes into two
agents whose identity, either natural, human or divine has to be inferred from his
wording. He then rephrased the time condition accordingly: whether something
should take place earlier or later20 that is, whether it should be postponed in
order to be eficiently dealt with now concerns the non-suficient agent only, as
distinguished from the self-suficient one. But the main argument is identical in
both authors: provided the agent at issue is self-suficient, there can be no time,
before or after, when he is not carrying out his task and no time when the things he
effects fail to enjoy a perfectly well-ordered, that is, an incorruptible state.21 This
shows that al in Frbs words really constitutes a form of meiosis.
As to the question whether the effect of the act achieved by the divine craftsman
takes place simultaneously with the order obtained through this act, this was raised
by Proclus in his fourteenth argument for the eternity of the world. In short, the
point Proclus wants to make is that there can be no interval between the preparation
(or creation) of matter by the divine craftsman and the occurrence within matter
of the traces (ichnoi) of the forms according to which matter is shaped: both have
to take place simultaneously, meaning they must have existed together for all
eternity. Strictly speaking, there can be no occurring or supervening of the traces
in matter, because, with regard to their common cause and the nature of this cause
(the divine craftsman), traces and matter have always existed inseparably from

19

Translation quoted from: Proclus, On The Eternity of The World, De Aeternitate

Mundi, Greek Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Helen S. Lang &
A.D. Macro, (Berkeley, 2001), p. 103. Greek text, ibid., p. 102 = p. 466, 223 ed. Rabe.
20
For the implications of this wording in Proclus thought, see his fourth argument.
Frb heavily relies on this fourth proof in Ful muntazaa 83, i.e. in the section which
immediately precedes the one quoted above.
21
Frb repeats this in the following form: Since the First Cause experiences the
being-existent It alone possesses, it is a necessity that from It all the following natural
existents have been proceeding, which are not within the reach of human ability to act
(laysat il itiyr al-insn) given what the being they are imparted with is, namely:
observable by sensuous faculty for one part and cognizable by intellectual demonstration
for another part., Political Regime, p. 47, 1113. The existents in question are the celestial
bodies which lie outside the reach of human deliberation and action. In view of the context,
the protasis is to be read as: mat waada al-awwalu al-wuda alla la-hu.

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one another.22 Proclus then remarks that as has been shown, order () too is
simultaneous with them. Order therefore is both ungenerated and incorruptible
and of the three none is irst, none second, none third except in theory alone.
Consequently, setting aside theory, all are simultaneous, the matter, the traces and
order.23 In addition to the fourteenth argument, Proclus showed the simultaneity
of order and the All in his ninth proof which was also preserved in Arabic.
From the fourteenth argument, the wording of which is a little tortuous,
Frb seems to retain the following twofold idea: the act achieved by the selfsuficient agent and the well-ordered state of the effect brought forth by his act are
concomitant and, conversely, the agent of an act which is not well-ordered from
the very outset is non-suficient to achieve this act perfectly. Moreover, in both
Proclus and Frb we ind the play on the word well-ordered, cosmos or al
more conspicuous indeed in the case of Proclus. It seems hardly deniable that
Frb had the same idea in mind. As for matter, Frb discards Proclus treatment
of it24 and chooses to deal with it according to the abovementioned Aristotelian
statistical way.
I now turn to Proclus ninth argument. As noted above, Wakelnig has shown
that the extant Arabic edition of Proclus 18 arguments for the eternity of the world
was not the irst of its kind. We know thanks to Al-Nadm, the tenth-century author
of the bio-bibliographical encyclopaedia Al-Fihrist, that the 18 arguments did at
some time exist in Arabic or in Syriac independently of Philoponus refutation.
From the excipit of the Arabic manuscript of the irst nine arguments which have
been preserved, one also learns that Isq b. unayn, their supposed translator,
was the second scholar to undertake this task. Another bad (rad) translation of
the 18 arguments already existed which Isqs was probably meant to replace.
To attempt to determine on philological grounds which Frb used would be
futile given that we know nothing of the ninth argument in the old translation also
preserved, and that Frb could have completely recast the initial formulation he
found. Therefore a doctrinal comparison is the only possible approach.

22
Cf. Frb, Political Regime, p. 58, 1659, 3: Moreover, for prime matter
existence consists in always existing for the sake of another and thus it has no existence at
all for itself. This is why if that for the sake of which matter was originally brought forth
had not existed, matter would not have existed either. Thus if none of these forms existed,
matter would not exist either. As a consequence, there is no way that prime matter exists
at any moment separated from all form (fa-li-lika l yumkinu an tada l-mdda al-l
mufraqatan li-ratin m f waqtin alan). Here is a crystal-clear statement of the eternity
of the world. The line of argumentation is both Aristotelian and identical to that in Proclus
fourteenth proof.
23
Rabe, p. 540, 1117; English transl., p. 115.
24
This however does not mean that Frb would not adopt himself the doctrine at
issue. See below, the quotation of Risla f l-aql, Texte arabe intgral en partie indit tabli
par M. Bouyges s.j., (Beirut, 21983), p. 29, 728, 1 [henceforth: De intellectu].

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273

In the ninth argument, which is perhaps one of his weakest, Proclus wants to
show that what becomes corrupted is what at the outset involves an internal defect
(fa: damage) or evil (arr = ). Since Plato said the All is a god (cf.
Timaeus) and has no defect which could alter it from within to contribute to its
corruption, it is incorruptible and hence ungenerated and eternal. This argument
from authority is what makes this argument weak. Proclus then goes on more
convincingly: So, whatever the cause from which a thing originates, the latter
will corrupt the former. It is so, because each thing, if it is prevailed upon, causes
another to originate, and if it prevails, causes another to be corrupted.25
This doctrine, which Proclus mainly takes from Aristotle (Phys., I, 5, 7, 9),
corresponds in Frbs text to the case where no prevalent or determinative cause
can be ascribed to what happens, i.e., the case of natural phenomena which occur
or do not occur equally. Moreover, this shows that the agent Frb irst refers to
in his argument is in fact an entity which itself undergoes distortion or corruption
and not just an agent whose act becomes corrupted. In other words, the passage
in Frbs text deals with a pair of contraries, each one of which is in relation
to the other a contingent cause either of corruption or of generation. The irst
insuficient fil alluded to is one of a pair of contraries, subject as such to the
natural law of contingent alternation. The homeomeric bodies directly made of
such contraries (such as minerals, metals, lesh and bones) are also concerned by
this alternation.26 Frb makes it clear elsewhere that what is strictly contingent
and fortuitous regarding homeomeric bodies is their association or dissociation
which cannot be ascertained in advance.27
Incidentally, this may be the reason why Frb does not yet speak at this
point of a maker (ni), but more vaguely of an effecter (fil), a notion which

Here is the translated Arabic text (Kalm Broqlus min kitabi-hi Usss alur, in Al-Alniyya al-mudaa inda l-arab, ed. Abd al-Ramn Badaw [Kuwait,
1977], pp. 3442 ; p. 42 for the quotation): wa-lika anna kulla m an-hu yaknu udu
l-ay fa-lika yafsudu-hu li-annahu i kna l-malba kna sababan li-hudi-hi wa-i
kna l-liba kna sababan li-fasdi-hi. The translation (Proclus, On The Eternity of The
World, p. 81) from the Greek runs as follows: For the generation of each thing comes from
what is destructive of each. If it is dominated, it is a contributary cause of birth, while if
it dominates, it is a contributary cause of corruption, ,
, , p. 313,
1921 Rabe.
26
According to Olympiodorus (Olympiodori in Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria,
ed. Stve, CAG XII, 2 [Berlin, 1900], p. 273, 15) the bodies are to be theoretically divided
as follows: irst (i) the homeomeric bodies in general, (ii) the anhomeomeric in general;
then, (i) the inanimate homeomeric, (ii) the inanimate anhomeomeric, (i) the animate
homeomeric, (ii) the animate anhomeomeric. The class (ii) is empty since no such bodies
exist and the class (ii) in fact is called organic bodies.
27
See Political Regime, p. 66, 1267, 2 ; on the alternation of contraries, see also
ibid., p. 57, 1218 ; 59, 760, 2.
25

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can also be translated as factor if one puts aside the human quality implied by
Frbs wording.
Compared with Proclus ninth proof which simply contrasts the case of a pair
of contraries with the case where no defect exists and hence where no corruption
is expected to occur, Frb thus adds the case of a maker who indeed is dwelling
in a realm of contingent and most-of-the-time occurring possibilities28 but is
nonetheless endowed with a capacity to determine himself freely by ascertaining
when his actions are likely to give the results he expects.
Like Proclus, however, Frb examines the case of contraries directly in
relation to ontological suficiency and insuficiency in one of the metaphysical
passages I alluded to above.
Ful muntazaa 73, p. 80:
All that admits of a contrary is ontically deicient (nqi al-wud) for all
that admits of a contrary, admits of a privation; because the meaning of two
contraries is the following, namely that each one annihilates the other when they
encounter each other or come together [cf. Aristotle, Phys., I, 9, 192a2122]. It
is so irst because in order to actually exist, each is contingent upon (muftaqir
il) the receding (zawl) of its contrary and also because of an obstacle to its
being (li-wudi-hi iq), so that it is not, on its own, suficiently endowed to
actually exist.
Consequently, what admits of a privation admits of a contrary and what is not in
need of anything at all besides its essence admits of no contrary.

I believe this represents the essence of what can be drawn from Proclus ninth
argument regarding the difference between, on the one hand, the things which
involve an intrinsic defect, and so are doomed to destruction and replacement by
their contrary, and on the other, the entity which has neither law nor contrary and
shall remain uncorrupted. In addition, the structure of this much shorter argument
is the same as that in Section 84 quoted above: the irst part is almost Aristotelian
and the second part, Proclusean. Their respective content is therefore also similar
in the sense that the irst part of 73 is included in the irst part of 84, i.e., the part
relating to the irst insuficient agent; while the conclusion of 73 is assumed
in the conclusive reasoning of 84. Moreover, whether Frb applies 73 to the
eternity of the world is a question answered at the end of 84, where he states
that the effect of the act achieved by a self-suficient agent is coextensive to this
28
In Aristotles view the modality most of the time or for the most part (
) is related to what is contingent or possible as one meaning of the modal operator
possible (Prior Analytics 3, 25b14; Posterior Analytics, 30, 87b1927; 12, 96a819),
while in Frbs view, (mumkin al l-akar) is primarily one particular case
of that which can possibly exist. Although sometimes has an ontological
sense for Aristotle as well, Frbs use of this concept is straightforwardly ontological or at
least involves an ontological reference.

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275

agent, that is, coeternal. The fact that this theme recurs in various parts of the
treatise surely reveals something about the apparently chaotic composition of
Ful muntazaa.
2. The Eternity of the World in the Anatomy of Frbs Neoplatonism
Summing up the results of the previous analyses, I will now turn to the historical
context of Frbs metaphysics.
Generally speaking, what is striking about the texts examined is their structure:
Frb proceeds upon Aristotelian presuppositions which clearly ground his
own thought, but then goes beyond conclusions drawn purely from Aristotelian
premises to enter into another conceptual framework, that of Neoplatonism. No
doubt this synthesis of two systems of thought is, in its speciics, his own creation,
but as a method it had been common enough before him among Neoplatonists.
The second striking feature of the irst text is its conclusion. On the one hand,
there is Proclus who wanted to show that unlike the components of a pair of
contraries each involving an evil, i.e., a privation, which ultimately results in
the corruption of one and the generation of the other, that which does not involve
any privation does not get corrupted and does not generate anything else. On
the other hand, we ind that Frb adopts the same argumentation but applies
it to the principle of the world, rather than to the world, so that what does not
admit of a privation and a contrary is not only self-suficient as the world is in
Proclus understanding, but self-suficient in the sense that the world unceasingly
originates (yadua) from its principle. The predicate self-suficient, once
transferred from the world to its principle, entails a quite different conclusion.
Proclus would probably not have spoken of the worlds origination. Coming
from Frb, this is all the more surprising since the verb adaa/yaduu as well
as the active and passive participles and the noun of action (di, mad, ud),
all drawn from the same root, were employed by the Muslim theologians to assert
that the world is adventitious or supervened, that is, in their view, created
out of nothing. This conclusion is striking in another respect. In our text (Ful
muntazaa 84), the verb used by Frb certainly is curious since, after having
so strongly insisted on the conditions on which the agent can effect or enact a
well-ordered and perennial thing, Frb inally gives the thing the place of the
agent. In fact, to originate understood in the intransitive mode is undoubtedly
an act of the thing which originates and not of the agent who throughout the
argumentation was supposed to bring the thing forth.
Given that Frb is not accustomed to mistake one term for another, one could
rephrase his conclusion as follows: when an agent is self-suficient to achieve
an act or to produce an effect, he does not need to enact anything because the
expected effect has already emanated from him by itself. In other words, in the
case of a self-suficient agent, the causal eficiency is always found on the side of
the effect. In Frbs words, in the case of a self-suficient agent, the expected act/

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effect in fact continuously originates from the agent. Such is, I think, the meaning
of the alleged ontological simultaneity of the agent with the thing which originates
from him. A self-suficient agent does not act as an eficient or transitive cause but
in another, intransitive, manner, as a cause which has always in advance provided
the effect with the said eficiency so that the thing in question forever comes into
being by itself. In sum, the self-eficiency within the act/effect, a self-eficiency
which in fact ensures its incorruptibility, corresponds to the self-suficiency
within the agent. The cause cannot be thought of without its effect. This necessary
relation reminds us that the conception of the Alls structure in terms of causality
is adventitious or contrived in that it involves a consecution which in reality is
without object since the All has always been such as it actually is.
This interpretation is conirmed by a sentence which, however isolated, is
very meaningful. Frb states as if en passant that the nine Second Intellects
are independent or free (bara) both from what proceeds from them, which
goes without saying, and from what precedes them in rank, that is from the First
Principle itself, an uncommon position to hold in a monotheistic context.29 In fact,
Frbs thought is reminiscent of a Hellenic pagan worldview much more than of
a religious universe in the sense of the revealed religions of his time. His Second
Intellects in fact are authupostata, what a Hellenic philosopher would have
called (self-subsistent) gods.30 And the whole structure of Frbs intelligible
and sensible universe is likewise subsistent by itself.31 This is why he cannot be
counted among the Arabic philosophers, whether eternalist or creationist, who
derive the entire universe from a irst cause and for whom this means that the
29
Here is this very short and elusive sentence, Political Regime, p. 41, 1213: The
Second Causes are exempt from all that is external to their essence and this in both cases.
About the souls of the celestial bodies, Frb has just speciied (l. 12): by in both cases,
I mean: with regard to their subsistence as well as to their granting others existence. This
obviously means that the Second Causes do not depend on the First Principle for their
eternal subsistence. Unlike McGinnis and Reisman (Classical Arabic Philosophy, An
Anthology of Sources, Indianapolis-Cambridge, 2007, p. 87), I believe the subject of the
next sentence (l. 1314) is still the Second Causes.
30
As a matter of fact, thus they are called: mutaawhir bi-ti-hi = authupostaton,
in Frbs Virtuous City (= Kitb mabdi r ahl al-madna al-fila: On the Perfect
State, A revised Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Richard Walzer,
Oxford, 1985), p. 100, 15. On this idea in Arabic philosophy, see C. DAncona La doctrine
noplatonicienne de ltre entre lAntiquit tardive et le Moyen Age, Le Liber de Causis par
rapport ses sources, Recherches de philosophie ancienne et mdivale 59 (1992), pp. 41
85 and La doctrine de la cration mediante intelligentia dans le Liber de Causis et dans
ses sources, Revue des sciences philosophiques et thologiques 76 (1992), pp. 209233.
31
As I have shown in a forthcoming study on Frbs conception of religion and
politics (Un philosophe intransigeant. Religion, langage et politique chez Frb), he had
no objection (Ful muntazaa 87, p. 91, 810) to metaphorically calling the philosopher
an associate (ark) of the First Cause. In its plural form, this term is Quranic and represents
a most reprehensible heresy: irk, i.e. giving God associates, urak, sing. ark.

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277

universe may theoretically be reduced to its irst principle or, the other way round,
may be deduced, at each degree of its hierarchical structure, from its ultimate
cause. Frb is in this regard hardly comparable with Kind or Avicenna since for
him each world or degree of the All possesses its own ontological consistency,
which is also true of the material world.
As I will show in my comments on Ful muntazaa and Political Regime,
it is a common feature of his metaphysical formulations that the emphasis is on
what results from each principle rather than on the act whereby each result is
brought forth by its cause. In grammatical terms, the effects generally appear as
the subjects of the verbs used to express their occurrence (intransitive originate,
necessarily result, proceed, intransitive emanate,32 come into existence, etc.),
while their cause seems to have no eficient activity in this process. At any rate,
that is the case with the First Principle and the Second Principles (al-awn) from
which the nine celestial bodies respectively proceed (by themselves) while the
Principles remain entirely absorbed in a self-contemplative activity and ignore
what is not them.
The situation is very different when it comes to the Tenth Intellect, i.e. the
Active Intellect not to mention the heavenly spheres. On account of a passage
drawn from Aristotles Purposes in Metaphysics (p. 37, ll.1820)33 where Frb
reports Aristotles refutation of the existence of Platos Ideas, Rashed34 argues that,
like his master, Frb undoubtedly rejected Platos paradigmatic Ideas. However,
I have argued35 that Frb, like Ammonius before him, does not reject Platos
paradigmatic Ideas themselves (maqlt) but their existence per se outside a
separate Intellect of some sort. I believe the passage invoked by Rashed represents
only a factual explanation of the contents of Aristotles Metaphysics. As for the
existence of paradigmatic Ideas within the active Intellect, Frbs texts contain
no ambiguity. For instance, in De intellectu, p. 27, 89; p. 28, 9p. 29, 2; p. 29, 6
(and so on), he afirms that the forms (uwar) eternally subsist within (lam yazal f)
the Active Intellect in a state of indivision (ayra munqsasimatin), while they (the
same forms) lie in matter in a state of division (munqasimatan). And the Active
Intellects own essence consists in indivisible things, a kind of oxymoron which
is strongly reminiscent of Plotinus doctrine of the nos. This incidentally provides
the elements of an argument for the eternity of the world.
32
For instance, emanate is intransitive in Political Regime, p. 41, 10: yafu an-h
wudun il ayri-h, a being emanates ad extra from the souls of the celestial bodies (the
verb is fa). McGinnis and Reisman (Classical Arabic Philosophy, p. 87) translated as if
they read: yufu an-h wudan il ayri-h, bestowing existence on something else.
The verb they erroneously read is afa.
33
In F. Dieterici (ed.), Alfarabis philosophische Abhandlungen: aus Leidener und
Berliner Handschriften (Leipzig, 1890). Reprinted in F. Sezgin, Islamic Philosophy, vol. 12
(Frankfurt am Main, 1999), pp. 348.
34
M. Rashed Authorship, p. 54.
35
Vallat, Frb et lEcole dAlexandrie, p. 81, n. 4.

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In The Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 130, 18,36 Frb asserts that the forms of
species are given by the Active Intellect from the outset (munu awwali l-amr)
as a whole/in one time/all at once (f l-umla) and then that they unfold or
come after one another as particulars (az) within the realm of generation (almutakawwan). This entails that the forms subsist within the Active Intellect in a
corresponding compact, indivisible mode of being, which in turns illustrates
the above-mentioned passage of De intellectu and forms a straightforward
Neoplatonic statement of the eternity of the world: by giving matter the whole
set of the forms of species at once, the Active Intellect necessarily gives it for all
eternity. Furthermore, in Virtuous City, p. 264, 1012 Walzer, Frb takes the
inter-connection between the intelligibles, and hence their uniplurality (cf. the
indivisible things in which the active Intellects essence consists), as an illustration
of the state of the separate souls with regard to one another; cf. Plotinus V 3 [49],
5, 4. Even after closer examination,37 the fact remains that Frb accepts a kind
of subsistence for the intelligibles within the Active Intellect. In Political Regime,
p. 51,13p. 52, 1, a connection is even established between an elevated human
mode of thinking and what subsists within (f) the First Principle. Last but not
least, Frb explicitly states (De intellectu, p. 29, 7p. 28, 1), in a way which
is reminiscent of Proclus own wording, that the Active Intellect gives matter
traces or likenesses (abh) of what subsists in him indivisibly, i.e. of the forms,
a doctrine that he eventually attributes to Aristotles De anima. This same doctrine
is echoed in the previously mentioned passage of Political Regime.
Moreover, Frb calls the Active Intellect a formal, eficient, inal and
paradigmatic separate cause of human intellect (Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 128,
418)38 and characterizes its causality as provident toward man. The Active
See Al-Frbs Philosophy of Aristotle, ed. M. Mahdi, (Beirut, 1961). English
trans.: M. Mahdi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, p. 59130.
37
See Ph. Vallat, Frb, De intellectu, traduction annote et analyse: Lintellect et
les intellects selon Frb, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2011.
38
The paradigmatic causality exerted by the Active Intellect, expressed by the
phrase yuta uwu-hu in Philosophy of Aristotle (p. 128, 910; cf. Ful muntazaa,
p. 68, 1269, 1; Attainment of Happiness 54, p. 181), also appears in De intellectu, p.
28, 929, 5: Thus, the forms which today are in matters [in re] are abstract forms in the
active Intellect [ante rem]; not, however, in the sense that they irst were in matters
and then were abstracted [post rem], but in the sense that they have always been in the
active Intellect in actuality. Hence, with regard to prime matter and other matters, a pattern
was followed [utu, i.e. utu uwun] in that they were given the forms which are in
actuality in the active Intellect [reading: allat bi-l-il f l-aql al-fal]. And the beings
at whose existentiating the Active Intellect aims, according to the irst intention, for the
sake of us human beings (wa-l-mawdt allat qaada da-h qaadan awwalan fm laday-n) are the forms in question. However, as the existentiating of those beings
was not possible down here otherwise than in matters, those matters were generated. This
text brings together recurring features of Frbs method: an original Aristotelian text
read with the aid of: (i) a Neoplatonic commentary (probably Alexandrian), to which refer
36

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279

Intellect also plays such a role toward the other natural substances, but only
indirectly, through the actualization of the human formal substance seen as the
highest natural forms. If Alexander of Aphrodisias inluence is in this case more
conspicuous, it remains mitigated by other equally conspicuous Neoplatonic
characteristics. Compared to the First Cause, Frb makes it clear for instance (De
intellectu, pp. 3233) that the Active Intellect is imperfect in that it has to exert
causality on a substrate (maw) which is not always serviceable to it. In other
words, in order to act or, more speciically, in order to exert its proper eficient
function, the Active Intellect is in need of something other than its own essence.
It then falls to a certain extent under the category of what is ontically deicient
(nqi al-wud) and cannot, Frb concludes against Alexander and Themistius,
be the First Principle.
This shows that in an eternal world, i.e. a world which, even in theory did not
come into being but has always existed, eficient causality amounts to aficient
causality, that is, causality which acts upon something pre-existent and not which
brings about something new. So, if eficient causality can only mean aficient
causality, which in turn presupposes a substrate on which this causality is exerted;
and if the need to act upon an extrinsic substrate proves an ontical defect within the
cause in question, then a perfect being cannot be an eficient cause. Consequently,
the First and Second Causes cannot be eficient causes save in the sense that they
sustain themselves eternally and, being thus self-suficient, incessantly induce
existence in essences they neither create nor produce in any way.
I believe this conclusion necessarily follows from Frbs demonstration
of the Active Intellects imperfection. What is particularly striking in this
demonstration is that its irst premise actually turns out to be the eternity of the
world. In this respect, among others, Frbs metaphysics differs widely from
Kinds and Avicennas. Both start from the nature of their ultimate cause and in
this regard appear as monotheists, while Frbs thought, inasmuch as it relies
on a metaphysical tenet which does not belong to the stock of strictly theological
concepts proper to Arabic philosophy, comes out as polytheistic.
the doctrines of the threefold status of universals (in re, ante rem, post rem) and of the
paradigmatic cause (unknown to Aristotle); (ii) a commentary or a treatise of Alexander
of Aphrodisias, to which the phrase according to the irst intention (qaadan awwalan)
refers. The semantically equivalent phrase al l-qaad al-awwal can be found eight times
in the Arabic version of Alexanders On Divine Providence where, however, it serves to
characterize the kind of providence that Alexander precisely refuses both to his Divine
Intellect and to the celestial bodies. The sole existing providence is in his view a byproduct of the movements of the celestial bodies, that is a providence according to the
second intention; see R.W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Divine Providence:
Two Problems, The Classical Quaterly, 32 (1982): pp. 198211, esp. p. 199, n. 13. On
the contrary, Frbi not only endows his Active Intellect with a prima intentio providence
towards the human mind, but he goes as far as to postulate the existence of the world (the
enmattered forms) for the sake of the progressive actualization of the human intellect.

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What then is the kind of causality exerted by the First and Second Causes?
This question can be answered by a process of elimination. If they are not eficient
causes, we are left with formal, paradigmatic and inal causalities. That they cannot
be paradigmatic causes is inferred from the fact that if they were, they would
know what proceeds from them, and would contain the paradigms of posterior
things. But that is not the case. Among other reasons put forward by Frb to
show how absurd this would be, he states that it would mean that what they know
is causa inalis of what they do and hence that the existence of something inferior
would constitute for them an extrinsic purpose, foreign to their self-contemplative
activity, and ultimately the suficient reason of their own existence.
This explanation, found in Virtuous City as well as in Political Regime, equates
the inal cause with the eficient cause which therefore is eficient only insofar as
it is inal. Thus Frb regards the inal cause as suficient reason for the existence
of its effect, which plainly reduces eficient causality to the inal one. Surely, this
reasoning makes the Active Intellects transcendence vis--vis the substrate of
its aficient action unclear. It also shows that Frb is struggling to harmonize
Aristotle and Alexander39 with a Neoplatonic metaphysical structure which has the
advantage of keeping the First Cause free from any relation with what is posterior
to it. Frb seems to resort to a Neoplatonic scheme in order to make Aristotle and
Alexander more consistent.
If not paradigmatic, then the First and Second Causes must be formal and inal
causes. Frb is generally discreet on the subject of formal causality, except in
one sentence of the Summary of the Virtuous City40 where he seems to say that the
First Cause is the form of the forms. The corresponding exposition in Virtuous
City can be found at pp. 945 (23) where one reads that the First Cause is such
that all that eventually emanates from It is hierarchically ordered and mutually
connected so as to form one whole. This sympathy or cohesion of the whole,
he adds, appears in each being either within its own substance or as a state (l)
immediately resulting from the substance considered, like in the case of love or
friendship (maabba) between human beings. That Frb thus is commenting
upon the Stoic-Neoplatonic doctrine of cosmic sympathy or philia is as undeniable
as the fact that he explains this cosmic order based on the formal causality exerted
by the First (and its associates). Once again, this brings us close to the conclusion
of Proclus twelfth proof of the eternity of the world and of his ninth and fourteenth
proofs as well. At any rate, the doctrinal context is very similar. One may just add
that Frb derives the political nature of humanity (al-insn) from its cosmically
shaped inclination toward intimacy or friendship, a notion which in Arabic can

Alexandre dAphrodise, Trait de la Providence, Version arabe de Ab Bir Matt

ibn Ynus, introduction, ed. and trans. Pierre Thillet (Paris, 2003), p. 16, 824 (Ruland,
645).
40
Ful mabdi r ahl al-madna al-fila in Book of Religion and Related Texts,
M. Mahdi (ed.), (Beirut, 1986), p. 79, 1415.
39

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281

also be referred to as uns (intimacy, humanity, humaneness), a term drawn

from the same root as insn (human species).41
The First Cause is therefore a formal cause. And in the same respect as
a formal cause, it must also be a inal one since both are identical in this case.
But It then is inal as First and supreme principle of the hierarchical structure
which formally emanates from It, i.e. as the ultimate end never reached but always
desired by all other beings. However, if they undoubtedly desire It, this is not a
direct desire except in the case of the Second Causes but a desire which stops
at the particular inal cause on which everything ultimately depends for perfection.
As for the Second Causes, given that they do not depend on the First for their own
subsistence or for the fact that something emanates from them, they independently
exert on what emanates from them the same kind of formal and inal causality as
the First does on the irst Second Cause and beyond, through the latter.
But let us come back for a minute to the posterior beings and especially to the
case of human beings and celestial spheres. Frb nowhere states that man desires
the First Cause. In the parallel passages of Virtuous City (pp. 828, 1315)
and Political Regime (p. 46,6p. 47,10), he alleges, comparing the perfection of
man and that of the First, that man desires his own perfection or perfection of
his essence which does not amount to his union with the First, but only to the
actualization of the perfection of his own formal substance. That man eventually
comes to know the Active Intellect and, through the latter, the highest immaterial
hypostases (ibid., p. 42, 56), is merely a side effect of his perfectly actualized
state called acquired intellect.
The case of the celestial spheres is even more interesting since therein lies
another proof of the eternity of the world. From their respective Second Cause,
each celestial substance receives two things: (i) from the outset they are fully
endowed with their most eminent mode of being (arafu wudti-h), that is the
one which comes closest to it.42 This explains why they cannot assume another
form than the one they respectively have already; and (ii) they are also granted
most of their being, akaru wudti-h. Frb then goes on:
Of their being only a minute part is left that these substances are not of a
nature that this part could have been wholly granted them from the outset all
at once (wa-baqiya min-h ayun yasrun laysa min ani-h an yuwaff-h
See Book of Dialectics ( = K. al-adal, in Al-Maniqiyyt li-l-Frb ed. M.T.
Daneshpajuh [Qom, 1408 h.], vol. 1, pp. 358455), pp. 364, 20365, 2 and Attainment of
Happiness 16, pp. 139-40; trans. Mahdi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, p. 23: It is
also the innate nature (ira) of this animal to seek shelter and to dwell in the neighbourhood
of those who belong to the same species, which is why he is called the social (uns) and
political animal.
42
Political Regime, p. 54, 89, reading: wa-huwa m and not wa-m huwa with
Najjar. I understand it this way: they have been wholly granted their most eminent mode of
being, that is, what comes closest to it.
41

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dufatan min awwali l-amr); they are only of a nature that this part can gradually
come into their possession over time, everlastingly (bal innam anu-h an
yada la-h ayan fa-ayan f l-mustaqbal diman). They strive for this part
for this reason, in order to reach it, and reach it only through their motion being
everlasting (wa-innam tanlu-hu bi-dawmi l-araka). This is why the celestial
bodies everlastingly (diman) move and why their movements undergo no
interruption: they only move toward, and strive for, their most beautiful being
(asani wudi-h) (Political Regime, p. 54, 57).

In this passage, Frb bypasses the impossibility for a inite body to possess
an ininite power to move and, more to the point, an ininite power to exist.43 He
explains the heavenly bodies everlasting motion by their ad ininitum reception
of their own being. The minute part of their being that they are not capable of
receiving all at once is what separates a inite quantity of power and being from an
ininite one. This minute part will take an ininity of time to be given to them by
their respective Second Cause. That this part of their being is received from their
respective inal cause and through their perpetuating their motion is obvious from
Frbs wording. The reason why they could not receive it all at once lies in their
nature and not in that of their cause. It thus would be more appropriate to say that
the part of their being that they do not yet possess will take an ininity of time to
be received by them due to their inite receptive capacity; or because the imperfect
mode according to which they receive their being measures the potential ininity
of time. The eternity of the world consists in this indeinite postponement of their
complete actualization and time is the extension of the movement through which
they are granted their most beautiful being.
The underlying doctrine, common to all Platonists from the author of the
pseudo-Platonic Deinitions (411e2) onwards, is the one which Proclus Arabus
expressed as follows: omni receptum est in recipiente per modum recipientis
(Liber de Causis, prop. 99, 179). In the present case, per modum recipientis means
a mode of celestial sempiternity as distinguished from noetic eternity. This is what
Frb calls existing for a time during which it cannot be otherwise, which is
an intermediary modality between what cannot not exist i.e. The First and
Second Causes and what can possibly exist and not exist44 the sublunary
43

Cf. De intellectu, p. 34, 45: Every celestial body only moves as a result of
the act of a mover which is the cause of its coming into being, in that this body gets
substantialized thanks to it. For all that concerns the Aristotelian argument and its multiple
interpretations, I can only refer my readers to Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, and to R.
Sorabjis enlightening explanations: Ininite Power Impressed: the Transformation of
Aristotles Physics and Theology, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, the Ancient
Commentators and their Inluence (Ithaca, New York, 1990), pp. 18198.
44
Respectively: Ful muntazaa 69, p. 78, 14: an yada nan wa-l yumkinu fhi ayru lika; p. 78, 15: m l yumkinu an l yada; p. 78, 16: alla yumkinu an yada
wa-an l yada. This is a doctrinal elaboration ultimately made on the basis of Aristotle,

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283

beings. Sempiternity or everlastingness what I called extensive eternity in the

introduction is the mode according to which heavenly bodies partake in the
intensive eternity of their respective cause.
Before turning to the Greek source Frb is relying on this time and before
concluding, I will examine the conclusion Rashed arrived at in light of what we
have seen up to now. Summing up the reconstruction he proposed of Frbs
argument for the eternity of the world, Rashed writes:
I think that if al-Frb decided to reorganize Aristotles categories and insisted
on the fact that continuity should be considered as the prominent feature of action
and passion, it is probably because he was willing to rule out the possibility of an
action all at once. In other words, al-Frb aimed at purifying Aristotelianism
from a heterogeneous concept introduced in order to explain the existence of
the world: that of divine creation, or ibd; Creation (ibd) is an action, every
action, for al-Frb (but not for Aristotle), is a motion, and every motion is
continuous.45

Frb does not intend to rule out the possibility of an action taking place all
at once since everything emanates eternally from the First in this manner. Each
thing however receives its own being and partakes in the First Causes eternity
according to its own capacity and mode of reception: the Second Causes in a (co-)
eternal mode, the heavenly bodies in a sempiternal mode and the sublunary beings
in a temporal mode. Moreover, what Rashed believed to be Frbs recasting of
Aristotles categories and his emphasizing the continuity of action and passion
are in fact drawn from another Neoplatonic proof for the eternity of the world, as
we will now see. At any rate, the continuity of action is rather to be understood
as the eternity and instantaneity of the act/effect emanating from the First, and
the continuity of passion as the continuous process whereby each thing save
the Second Causes receives existence from its proximate cause. Thus, this
formulation in terms of continuity cannot account for the co-eternity of the Second
Causes and Active Intellect.
If the term world could refer to the All, then Aristotles categories would
have no epistemological relevance as to the question of the eternity of the world.
Frb claims that what is above the heavenly bodies falls outside the categories,
ria an al-maqlt.46 This is the case because the categories, which Frb
curiously regards not only as semantic items but also as beings (wudt), appear
(ul) with the substances of the heavenly bodies (Political Regime, p. 53, 14p.
De caelo I, 12, 281a28282a13. For the Arabic, see the facsimile of MS 11821 National
Library, Tunis, published by G. Endress: Commentary on Aristotles Book on the Heaven
and the Universe by Ibn Rushd (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), pp. 98104.
45
Respectively: Al-Frbs lost treatise, p. 53; Authorship, pp. 578.
46
See e.g. Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 130, 914; and K. al-urf, Alfarabis Book of
Letters, ed. M. Mahdi (Beirut, 21990), 1617, pp. 689.

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54, 3; p. 65, 1518; cf. p. 66, 912) and do not exist above or before that point.
Due to their ontical deiciency,47 these substances require supervening properties,
which turn out to be corporeal properties and these are the instruments (lt)
the heavenly bodies need in order to fulil their purpose, i.e. to be the eficientaficient causes of the sublunary species. The categories are those properties. Thus
in Frbs view, nothing can be inferred from the categories as to the relevance or
correctness of such a notion as action occurring all at once, which only applies to
the First Cause and the Intellects and falls outside the categories as well as outside
the world. In summary, Frbs demonstration of the eternity of the All cannot be
based on his conception of Aristotles categories.
As a matter of fact, in Political Regime, p. 54, 57 quoted above, Frb adopts
almost word for word one of Proclus arguments such as it appears for instance in
this passage of his commentary on Platos Timaeus:
In just the same way, everything shows that it [i.e. the cosmos] will obtain its
ininite power of existing from there [i.e. from the Intellect] because of the
argument which says that an ininite power never exists within a inite body
Something else, then, will give it the power of existing, and will give it not all at
once, since it will not be capable of receiving it all at once. It will give it, then, in
the amounts it can take, in a stream that lows and ever lows onto it. No wonder
the cosmos is for ever coming into being and never has being.48

Regarding this Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotles demonstration of

the incorporeity of the First Mover, R. Sorabji49 also refers to Examinations of
Aristotles Objections to Platos Timaeus, ap. Philoponus, De aeternitate mundi,
238, 3240, 9 ; 297, 21300, 2 ; 626, 1627, 20 Rabe. Thus Frb either found
it in Philoponus refutation of Proclus or as an appendix to the old translation of
Proclus 18 arguments. But it may also be the case that he found it in Proclus
commentary on Platos Timaeus since this work also seems to have been known
in part to Arabic readers.
This interpretation, which equates the impression of movement with the
giving of being, deserves to be dealt with on another occasion. It might perhaps
clarify what belongs to Proclus in the text quoted and what Frb means by the
distinction between the noblest or most eminent mode of being of the celestial
bodies and their most beautiful being.

47
They are made up of a soul and of a substrate and then are composite. And all
composites are ontically deicient; see Ful muntazaa 82, p. 87.
48
Proclus, In Tim., I, 267, 16268, 6 Diehls, quoted by Sorabji, Ininite Power, p.
184.
49
Sorabji, Ininite Power, p. 184.

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Conclusion
Frb divides the four Aristotelian causes plus the paradigmatic cause into
two groups: the formal and inal kinds of causality pertain in the irst place to the
First and Second Causes and then to the other causal entities, the Active Intellect
and the heavenly bodies. To the Active Intellect also pertain the eficient-aficient
and paradigmatic kinds of causality. The heavenly bodies exert an eficientaficient causality in the sense that they are motor causes. To matter only pertains
material causality. This thoroughly Neoplatonic scheme is intrinsically linked to
the thesis of the eternity of the world which pervades all Frbs formulations in
the previously quoted texts.
In this scheme, the attribution of the inal-formal causality to the First and
Second Causes and that of the eficient-aficient causality to the Active Intellect
and the celestial bodies is well-known historically-speaking. It owes little to
Aristotle and Alexander and almost all to Ammonius and beyond him to Proclus.
R. Wisnowsky50 summarizes the ontological and cosmological distribution of
the three Aristotelian causes adopted by Proclus as follows:
If the superlunary world is rigidly stratiied according to causality with the
inal causality of the Good at the top, the paradigmatic causality of the Ideas in
the middle and the eficient causality of the Demiurge at the bottom then the
eficient causation of the Universe will be traceable to the Demiurge, and the
inal causation of the Universe will be traceable to the Good. In this case it will
be no identity between the ultimate inal cause and the initial eficient cause in
the superlunary world, and the inal causes status would be clearly superior to
that of the eficient cause.

Beyond the thesis of the eternity of the world, it is this causal structure,
common to Proclus, his pupil Ammonius and his pupil Simplicius, that Frb
actually recast. Yet Frbs main argument for the eternity of the world already
relied on this structure since it allows him to evade the question of the eternity of
what is outside the world. I mean here that the term world has in his vocabulary
a deinite signiicance which has gone unnoticed.
There is no word in Frbs vocabulary to refer to the All and hence no term
to refer to its origin, whether eternal or created. So far as I know, in his preserved
treatises, he never uses the word al-kull and only once the phrase umla wida,
one whole (Virtuous City, p. 96, 7), but this only refers to the system composed
of the celestial and sublunary bodies. And the very term world (lam, plural
awlim) only means the whole made up of the heavenly spheres and the sublunary

50
Final and eficient causality in Avicennas cosmology and theology, Quaestio 2
(2002), pp. 97123; p. 104 for the quotation.

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substances.51 Hence, in addition to the texts I examined above and others I cannot
presently examine, Frb tacitly settled the question of the eternity of the world,
irst, by always presupposing the existence of the Active Intellect and Second
Causes and, secondly, by focusing on the eficient-aficient causality of the Active
Intellect and celestial bodies vis--vis the sublunary realm. In other words, the
most obvious argument for the eternity of the world in Frbs writings is found
in the causal structure of his universe.

51
See Political Regime, p. 31, 911. However, Frb speaks more loosely of three
worlds in Ful muntazaa 69, p. 78, 17: The worlds (awlim) are three: the spiritual, the
heavenly, the hylic. These worlds are so called as realms distinguished from one another
by their modal or statistical ability to exist. This text is to be read in the light of Averroes
refutation of Alexander and Avicenna summed up by Davidson Proofs for Eternity, pp.
321ff.