Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish

Philosophy by Herbert A. Davidson

Review by: Daniel H. Frank
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 110, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1990), pp. 366-367
Published by: American Oriental Society
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366 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.2 (1990)
The tone of positive assertion in the text contains no
acknowledgement of interpretive debates. Many of Lapidus'
statements are more controversial than he makes them seem,
although differences of opinion are noted in the bib-
liography. Different people make different choices of what to
include or omit. Here Zaydis are omitted from the discussion
of Shi'i Islam on pages 115-19 as is Islam in modern
Afghanistan and Muslims in northern Europe and the west-
ern hemisphere. Arabia is ignored after the Islamic conquests
because it was "outside the framework of general Middle
Eastern developments" (p. 344). Nevertheless Lapidus re-
peatedly alludes to the development of a reform tendency in
eighteenth-century Makka without explaining what it was.
Anyone who intends to use this volume as a textbook for
a survey course should be aware that its elimination of
former misconceptions is accompanied by the introduction
of new mistakes for the uninitiated to repeat. Najda (p. 60)
should be Najdiyya; Mazdaite (p. 79) should be Mazdakite;
Kritzech (p. 940) should be Kritzeck; Alaric (p. 379) should
be Visigothic (Alaric never lived to see Spain); the battle of
Poitiers was in 733 not 732; and North African Berbers
converted to Khariji Islam in the eighth century not the
seventh (p. 491). It is misleading to date the change in
language of the tax registers to Arabic in Khurasan in 742 to
"shortly after 700," to speak of "Sunni" Muslims before the
third fitna, or to locate the names of Sufi brotherhoods on
only one spot on map 8, "Muslim schools of law and Sufi
brotherhoods: c. 1500." It is equally misleading to claim that
the earliest experience of non-Muslim rule by Muslims was
in the Crusader states and Spain in the thirteenth century
(pp. 387-88) rather than the twelfth. There were even earlier
experiences by the Muslim merchant colony in China in the
eighth and ninth centuries, in northern Syria under the
Greeks and in the Alps after the fall of Fraxinetum in the
late tenth century, and an important experience under the
pagan Qarakhitai in central Asia in the twelfth century.
Instructors will need to define Phalange (p. 658) themselves.
They may also want to explain to beginners that Lapidus
uses "segmented" to mean differentiated or pluralistic, and
"lineage communities" for tribal societies rather than "seg-
mentary" as used by anthropologists, which can be confus-
ing. The text will be most suitable for courses organized
along regional lines and will need to be supplemented with
something that provides more political history, such as the
books in the Longman series.
In many ways this is a transitional work that looks
backward and forward at the same time. As such its signifi-
cance consists in the way it shifts the discourse from what
Islam does to what Muslims do.
MICHAEL G. MORONY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES
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Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in
Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy. By HERBERT A.
DAVIDSON. New York and Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY
PRESS, 1987. Pp. xii + 428. $37.50.
Let it be said at once that this volume is a towering
achievement. At the height of his powers here, Davidson has
gone back to the sources to assemble all the significant
medieval Islamic and Jewish proofs for the eternity of the
world, for the creation of the world, and for the existence of
God. Nine proofs for the eternity of the world, eight proofs
for its creation, and, finally, eight proofs for God's existence
are adduced. In addition, the responses to these arguments
from their respective opponents are also presented. Thus, the
book is in effect an extended dialogue across cultures and
centuries over the issues at hand. The major players are all
here, beginning with Aristotle, continuing through Proclus
and his creationist critic Philoponus, and into the medieval
period with (most importantly, but not exclusively) Avicenna,
Ghazali, Averroes, Maimonides, Gersonides and Crescas. It
is most welcome to see the medieval Islamic and Jewish
philosophers treated so rigorously in their own right, not
merely as precursors to Aquinas, or, even worse, as puppets
dangling in a history of medieval thought. This book pro-
vides as clear an indication as one could hope to have of the
health and vitality of Greek wisdom before its (re)discovery
in (Christian) Europe.
The book is not only "exhaustive" but also exhausting.
The argumentation is relentless, even with summaries ap-
pended to most chapters and resumes after crucial argu-
ments. The book is clearly written but, given the denseness
of the material, I fear that it may be one that individuals will
own but will not read except as a source book for one
argument or another. Furthermore, the book's rather un-
compromising tone, coupled with the author's reputation,
may seduce readers into accepting without question David-
son's interpretations as final. From a reading of the text one
would not realize that controversy has attended (and attends)
at least some of the issues which Davidson discusses. (I
discuss one such issue below).
Although the book is a contribution to the history of
philosophical ideas and, as such, eschews for the most part
evaluation of arguments, the philosophically minded reader
may wish Davidson had proceeded in a more critical manner.
As it is, he is content to let the philosophers speak for
themselves (and against each other), and rarely engages them
in debate. When he does so, as in the case of his dismissal of
Averroes' critique of Avicenna's "metaphysical" proof for
God's existence (pp. 331-34), the conclusion is compelling.
The bibliography cites no secondary sources, and virtually
none are cited in the footnotes save for Wolfson. To be sure,
basing a book on primary texts, unmediated by commentary,
can be intellectually liberating, forcing one to return to the
 Reviews of Books
sources themselves to make up one's mind rather than
(merely) taking sides in a "current" dispute. On the other
hand, such an approach can be (or appear to be) self-serving,
suggesting that virtually nothing that modern scholarship
has to offer is of worth. Even if this latter claim is true, it
requires argumentation to show it. Unfortunately, the book
does not provide such argumentation. And such argumenta-
tion would, I think, have enlivened the text. It would
encourage the reader to take part in an on-going debate,
and, pricked by the conflict of views, to return to the sources
themselves to make up his own mind.
For the remainder of this review I focus upon a single,
controversial claim of Davidson's, namely that nowhere in
medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophical literature is there
to be found an ontological proof for the existence of God
(pp. 214-16). For this view Davidson expands upon a
previous article of his own ("Avicenna's Proof of the Exis-
tence of God as a Necessarily Existent Being," in Islamic
Philosophical Theology, ed. P. Morewedge [Albany, 1979])
and, in the main, follows Wolfson ("Notes on Proofs of the
Existence of God in Jewish Philosophy," in Studies in the
History of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 1 [Cambridge,
Mass., 1973], 569-70). He counters, most recently, More-
wedge ("Ibn Sina, Malcolm and the Ontological Argument,"
The Monist 54 [1970]; "A Third Version of the Ontological
Argument in the Ibn Sinian Metaphysics," in Islamic Philo-
sophical Theology).
The paradigm case in the medieval Islamic-Jewish tradi-
tion for what is assumed to be an ontological proof for
God's existence is Avicenna's celebrated "metaphysical"proof
(found most prominently in the Najdt), a proof based on an
analysis of the concepts "necessarily existent" and "possibly
existent." Although this proof is clearly distinguished by
Avicenna from one which proceeds from God's "creation
and effect" (a patently a posteriori, empirical proof depend-
ing upon the nature of the physical universe), the "meta-
physical" proof is not, according to Davidson, thereby an a
priori proof. The analysis of "necessarily existent" is not by
itself sufficient to prove the existence of a being "necessarily
existent by virtue of itself," i.e., God. As Davidson presents
the case, the "metaphysical" proof depends in addition upon
the existence of something (in fact, anything), and thus what
might appear to be an a priori (ontological) proof is in fact a
type of cosmological proof for God's existence.
In his discussion of Avicenna's proof Davidson focuses
upon the seemingly logical modalities, necessity and possi-
bility. He denies that Avicenna employs a notion of logical
analyticity in constructing his proof, and further points out,
correctly in my view, that necessity and possibility are not
used by Avicenna to demarcate a distinction between what
must (and cannot not) be and what might not (and therefore
at some time was not and will not) be. For Avicenna (as for
Leibniz), all that (actually) exists must be, even if it might
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367
not have been, and thus the distinction between necessity
and possibility cannot be mapped on to a distinction be-
tween necessary and possible being.
Avicenna's proof comes into clearer focus upon realization
of this last point. The proof is in fact explicable only when
we accept the (apparent) paradox that some necessary ob-
jects are possible. And when we realize this, we may under-
stand that the "necessity" (i.e., the actual existence) of
possible objects entails the existence of something whose
being accounts for or renders possible the existence of the
possibilia. And such an existent is God, a being that exists
per se, through itself. From the fact, then, that there exists
an object (any object) whose being is dependent, i.e., not
necessarily existent by virtue of itself, we may ultimately
establish the existence of that being which exists per se. The
proof is indeed a cosmological proof, depending not merely
upon the analysis of concepts, but also upon the (actual and
necessary) existence of an object which "must depend on a
factor distinct from it to maintain it in existence" (p. 309). I
think that Davidson has successfully countered the arguments
of those who wish to read Avicenna's proof as an ontological
proof for God's existence. Rather, Avicenna's proof is of a
piece with other (cosmological) proofs in the Aristotelian
tradition of which it is a part.
In sum, while requiring maximum effort on the part of the
reader and without the customary genuflection to current
scholarship, I nominate this volume as the most substantial
contribution to medieval Islamic-Jewish philosophy since the
seminal works of Wolfson.
DANIEL H. FRANK
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
Averroes Epitome in Physicorum Libros. Edited by JOSEP
PUIG. Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem:
Series Arabica, A XX. Madrid: INSTITUTOHISPANO-ARABE
DE CULTURA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES
CIENTiFICAS, 1983.Pp. 283.
Averroes Epitome de Fisica (Filosofia de la Naturaleza).
Translated with commentary by JOSEPPUIG. Corpus Com-
mentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem (Versio Hispanica),
A XX. Madrid: INSTITUTO HISPANO-ARABE DE CULTURA,
CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTiFICAS, 1987.
Pp. 270.
In 1983 Professor J. Puig published the Arabic text of
Averroes' Epitome of Aristotle's Physics. Though the edition
was impressive and included a clear apparatus criticus, a
detailed analytical index as well as a Greek-Arabic index, the
extreme brevity of its introduction (one page) was very