The Necessary Existent (wājib al-wujūd)

From Avicenna to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Fedor Benevich

One of the most famous and influential ideas of Avicennan metaphysics is

that God is the Necessary Existent through Himself (wājib al-wujūd bi-dhātihi).
This notion plays a central role in Avicenna’s proof for God’s existence: roughly
speaking, everything in the world exists contingently through itself (mumkin
al-wujūd bi-dhātihi), and in order to exist needs something which is necessarily
existent through itself, namely God.1
To be a Necessary Existent is not just an attribute of God among others.
God Himself or God’s essence (dhāt) just is the Necessary Existent. Avicenna
argues in Ilāhiyyāt 8.4 that one can distinguish in God no quiddity (māhiyya)
apart from being the Necessary Existent.2 How precisely should one under-
stand this? Is God’s essence necessity of existence, or is God’s essence to be
identified with existence, which in His case is necessary? Avicenna is rather
ambiguous on this question. He speaks both of necessity of existence (wujūb
al-wujūd) and of existence that is necessary, but his conclusion is that God’s es-
sence is “thatness” (anniyya) or alternatively “existence on the condition that
non-existence and other attributes are negated” (al-wujūd maʿa sharṭ salb al-
ʿadam wa-sāʾir al-awṣāf ).3 In his Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna claims that God’s essence
is “being necessary” (wājibiyya), which he immediately glosses as existence in
actuality (wujūd bi-l-fiʿl).4 In the Mubāḥathāt, the same notion of wājibiyya is
instead explained as something possessing necessary existence due to itself
(huwa lladhī yajibu wujūduhu) however elsewhere Mubāḥathāt agrees with
Taʿlīqāt saying that wājibiyya means existence itself (nafs al-wujūd).5
This paper will not offer a reconstruction of Avicenna’s own doctrine (though
such a project remains a desideratum in the secondary literature).6 Rather its

1   On Avicenna’s proof for God’s existence see Mayer, “Burhān al-Siddiqīn”; Marmura, “Proof”;
Davidson, “Proofs.”
2   Avicenna, Ilāhiyyāt 8.4, 275.15–16; Najāt, 556–58; and Dānishnāma, Ilāhiyyāt, 76.10–77.12.
3   Avicenna, Ilāhiyyāt 8.4, 276.2 (cf. Dānishnāma, Ilāhiyyāt, 76.12) and 276.16.
4   Avicenna, Taʿlīqāt 265, 180.7–10.
5   Avicenna, Mubāḥathāt §386–91, 140–42. We return to both passages in the concluding
section.
6   On Avicenna’s conception of God see e.g. Adamson, “From Necessary Existent to God”
and Bertolacci, “Essence-Existence”, 282–83, as well as the aforementioned references on
Avicenna’s proof for God’s existence.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/99789004426610_007

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aim is to present interpretations of, and reactions against, Avicenna’s claim

that God’s essence consists in being the Necessary Existent. The main figure
will be Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), who argued against Avicenna’s con-
ception of God in numerous works. His arguments will be analyzed against the
background of several philosophers and theologians who stood between him
and Avicenna, including Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), ʿUmar Khayyām
(d. 517/1123), Rukn al-Dīn al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1141), ʿUmar b. Sahlān al-Sāwī (d.
c. 540/1145), Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (d. 560/1164–65), Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191),
Ibn Ghaylān al-Balkhī (d. c. 590/1194), and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī (d. before
600/1204), some of whose ideas al-Rāzī used extensively, as we will see. As
has already been noticed by Toby Mayer and Robert Wisnovsky, theological
reasons may have led these and other authors to pose criticisms against the
Avicennan notion of Necessary Existent.7 However, I will approach this topic
as a purely metaphysical one, and focus on three aspects of the question: (1) If
God is sheer existence, then how does He differ from existences which worldly
things have? This problem was discussed on the basis of the analysis of how
the word “existence” signifies: does it always have the same meaning or not?
(2) If God’s existence differs from worldly existences, how can one avoid mak-
ing God composite? This issue was solved through the idea of non-entitativity
of such notions as “necessity”. (3) Last but not least, if God is composite, how we
ought to construe this composition? Our main hero, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, will
use the theory of the priority of essence to its existence to explain composition
in God. I will thus show how certain basic metaphysical presuppositions—in
some cases thoroughly Avicennan, in others Ashʿarite—drove the debate over
the Necessary Existent in al-Rāzī and his predecessors.

1 Univocity, Equivocity, and Analogy 0f Existence

For the most part, the post-Avicennan tradition clearly understood Avicenna as
holding that God is pure existence which necessarily exists. Supporting this in-
terpretation were of course the aforementioned statements by Avicenna him-
self; an important role may also have been played by al-Ghazālī’s influential
Tahāfut al-falāsifa, which states on Avicenna’s behalf that “there is no quiddity

7  Mayer, “Rāzī’s Critique”, 208 and Wisnovsky, “Essence-Existence Distinction”, 44. Mayer’s
analysis of al-Rāzī was based entirely on Sharḥ al-Ishārāt. Therefore I will discuss several
other treatises by al-Rāzī but exclude Sharḥ al-Ishārāt. Still, my observations are largely in
harmony with those of Mayer.

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we are abstracting them from a real situation in which essences are in fact ex-
istent. Thus al-Rāzī states in Mabāḥith and in Arbaʿīn that the contingency of
existence does not have to mean possible existence or non-existence in the
future (mustaqbal). It can also apply to essences that already exist.133 Hence,
his idea of the “neither existent nor non-existent” is significantly different
from that of the proponents of aḥwāl. Rather we should prefer the explana-
tion which situates it in the Avicennan metaphysical framework (although it
is not just Avicenna’s view itself). This approach lays great emphasis on the
abstraction of essential attributes of an essence from its accidental attributes.
For worldly essences, neither existence nor non-existence would fall on the es-
sential side of this distinction; only in God’s case existence is essential.

4 Concluding Remarks

If one wants to place the Rāzian metaphysics of the Necessary Existent within
a broader historical context, the most proper solution would be to see him
as carrying on the project of al-Ghazālī and al-Masʿūdī. All three see God as
an essence that possesses necessary existence as its essential concomitant.
Especially al-Masʿūdī is of relevance for al-Rāzī, because it is most probably
to him that al-Rāzī owes his central argument against the Avicennan concep-
tion of God, namely the univocity problem. Yet al-Rāzī goes beyond al-Ghazālī
and al-Masʿūdī, further developing all the metaphysical distinctions and
puzzles found in earlier discussions of the Necessary Existent. For instance,
he invokes the univocity argument against the idea that we possess transcen-
dental knowledge of God. Whether he means to do so or not, he here strikes
at the heart of Abū l-Barakāt’s conception of God. Al-Rāzī also hints at the
problem that God cannot be a principle just in virtue of a negational attri-
bute, and in so doing recalls a discussion of this point found in al-Shahrastānī.
In another area, though, al-Rāzī is less concerned to engage with the previ-
ous debate. Numerous post-Avicennan figures worried about the entitativity
of predications applied to God, and asked whether such predications might
imply that God is multiple. These figures included Khayyām, al-Shahrastānī,
al-Sāwī, Ibn Ghaylān, and al-Suhrawardī. Of course al-Ghazālī and al-Masʿūdī
also discussed the problem of non-entitativity, but in their case this was in
order to reject Avicenna’s argument against God having any quiddity. In other
words, non-entitativity of some attributes like “necessity” and “existence” was
either used to defend Avicenna’s definition of God as the Necessary Existent

1 3 3   Al-Rāzī, Mabāḥith, 1:117.6–13 and Arbaʿīn, 1:84.19–85.21.

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 150 Benevich

from those who saw a composition problem in this definition; or it was meant
to defend, from Avicenna’s accusations of composition, the view that God does
have an essence which is distinct from His existence. Al-Rāzī too discusses
non-entitativity, for instance in order to secure his understanding of existence
and necessity. But the prospect of multiplicity and composition in God is sim-
ply not a problem for him: his God is complex; He has an essence to which
at least some attributes such as the necessary existence pertain as necessary
concomitants.
Finally, we might ask whether al-Rāzī’s conception of God is really anti-
Avicennan. We saw in the first section that Avicenna already acknowledged
the univocity problem. Al-Rāzī was aware of this: in his Mabāḥith, he provides
a long quote on this point from Avicenna’s Mubāḥathāt. There, and also in the
Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna goes so far as to accept that existence as such (wujūd muṭlaq),
which sounds like the univocal existence so important to al-Rāzī, is a necessary
concomitant (lāzim) of God’s essence. And this is precisely al-Rāzī’s solution
to the univocity problem. Al-Rāzī acknowledges this in Mabāḥith, though he
wonders whether Avicenna would really agree that existence is something ex-
trinsic to God’s essence. It seems from Mubāḥathāt and Taʿlīqāt that he would.
On the other hand, in both treatises Avicenna claims that God’s essence is ex-
istence itself, and calls this existence “being necessary” (wājibiyya), which sug-
gests that divine existence is not univocal with created existence.134 Al-Rāzī
says that if we follow this line of thought, then we will have to admit that ex-
istence is equivocal—for “being necessary” would obviously be intensionally
distinct from existence in ordinary sense, which for him is the existence that
is concomitant to God’s essence. In al-Rāzī’s interpretation, this Avicennan
view amounts to saying that God has an essence, which is called existence only
equivocally, whereas the univocal common sense existence belongs to it as an
extrinsic necessary attribute. One existence (equivocal) has another existence
(univocal). Obviously, this position does not significantly differ from al-Rāzī’s
own theory: God has an essence—let them equivocally call it “existence”—
which has an extrinsic concomitant of being existent. Another route, though,
would be to say that divine essence is less than fully equivocal; that is, to ac-
cept the notion of tashkīk al-wujūd. A more developed version of this solution
will of course be found later in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, who will develop hints
found in Avicenna, Abū l-Barakāt, and al-Suhrawardī. With this theory, God
has an essence which is the perfect existence; existence is predicated of it and
other existences analogically; such existence has the common sense existence

1 3 4   Avicenna, Mubāḥathāt 387–91, 140–42 (cf. al-Rāzī, Mabāḥith, 1:122–24 and al-Risāla
al-kamāliyya, 45.23) and Taʿlīqāt, 265–67, 170–71.

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 The Necessary Existent 151

as its necessary concomitant. Most of the critics of Avicenna in the period we

have examined would deny that analogy of existence is any better than out-
right equivocation of existence. Whether al-Ṭūsī, or anybody else, has provided
good responses to their arguments, is a question worthy of further study. Yet,
as was noted in the end of the first section, it appears that their analysis of
the tashkīk of existence actually agrees with al-Rāzī’s theory and Avicenna’s as-
sumptions in Mubāḥathāt that the univocal existence is just a concomitant of
God and not God’s essence itself. The crux of the debate then turns around the
special kind of existence (wujūd khāṣṣ) which is God’s essence: can we say that
it is “existence” only equivocally, as al-Rāzī would claim, or it is existence in an
analogical sense, where God’s existence is the perfected existence, to which
“existence” applies most properly? In any case, none of the aforementioned au-
thors regardless on which side of the debate they are would accept that God’s
essence is just “existence” in the common univocal sense of this word.135

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1 3 5   I am grateful to Peter Adamson, Davlat Dadikhuda, and Hanif Amin Beidokhti for helpful
discussions and comments on this paper. I am also grateful to DFG for the generous sup-
port of the “Heirs of Avicenna” project, a part of which this paper is.

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