COMPARATIVE

PHILOSOPHY
Abu Yusuf Yaq ub ibn Ishaq al-Sabbah
Al-Kindi also known as Al Kindi, was the
first recognized philosopher of the Arabic
tradition. His works are greatly
influenced by the Greek philosopher,
even once he collaborated with a team of
translators to translate Aristotle,
Neoplatonist, Greek mathematician, and
scientist. His treaties relied on these
translations, which included the famous
books of Aristotle. The First Philosophy
and the Intellect are one of the many
famous writings of his philosophical
works which discuss God and
Knowledge.1
John Duns Scotus was one of the
most important and influential
Philosopher-Theologian of the high
Middle Ages. His brilliantly complex
and nuanced thought earned him
“Subtle Doctor.” Scotus was ordained
to the priesthood in the order of
Friars Minor, The Franciscans, at
Saint Andrew’s Priory in
Northampton, England. Moreover, He
offers an overview of some of his key
positions in Four main areas of
Philosophy, Natural Theology,
Metaphysics, the Theory of
Knowledge, Ethics and Moral
psychology.
 Al-kindi’s goal in his book called Metaphysics
Metaphysics
is to explain that there are things that exist
without matter and are not connected or united
to matter; to affirm God’s oneness, the great
and exalted, to explain His great names, and to
show that He is the agent cause of the universe,
which governs through his flawless grace and
complete wisdom. God’s absolute oneness,
which Al-kindi believes is a unique feature
linked with God, is central to his view of
metaphysics. As a result, only God is truly one,
both in actuality and in notion, devoid of any
multiplicity. In his book, he discusses that God
is called the “True one” which is the cause of
beings in the world, and that God can create
from ex nihilo.
 Metaphysics
For John Duns Scotus, metaphysics is the philosophical discipline for
proving God's existence. God's existence is the goal of metaphysics. He
elaborates his views on form and matter. He Espouses Three important theses
that mark him off from some other philosophers of his day; He holds that
Matter can exist without any form whatsoever, that not at all created
substances are composite of form and Matter, and that one same substance
can have more than substantial form. Scotus maintains with Avicenna that
metaphysics studies being qua being. Of course, God is preeminent among
beings: He is the only perfect being on which all others depend. These facts
explain why God occupies the most important place in metaphysics.
However, what makes God a proper subject for metaphysics is not that He is
God but that He is a Being. Metaphysics also includes the study of the
transcendentals, which “transcend” the Aristotelian scheme of the categories.
The transcendentals have being, the proper attributes of being (“one,” “true,”
and “good” are transcendental terms because they are coextensive with
“being,” each signifying one of being’s proper attributes), and what is
signified by disjunctions that are coextensive with “being,” such as “finite or
infinite” and “necessary or contingent.” However, anything capable of actual
existence also falls under “being qua being” and may be studied in
metaphysics.8
 Metaphysics

The two philosophers have

commonalities. Because both
of them use the principle of
causation, something causes all
the beings in the world.
Second, both affirm that there
is a hierarchy of being, a
Supreme Being, and a being
created by the Supreme Being.
And lastly, they affirm that
God created something from
nothing.
Philosophy of God
Al-Kindi, God is a causative entity. According to Him,
God is an active player who serves as a final and
efficient cause. The central premise of Al-Kindi’s
Theodicy is the rejection of God’s positive traits in
favor of his negative attributes; His goal was to
underline God’s total transcendence over the world.
He chose the demonstration based on creation to
prove God’s existence because It demonstrates God as
the Necessary Being, supreme Creator, and source of
order and administration in the universe. He used the
negative theology of Neo-platonic origin as a key to
grasping, from a human perspective, what was
intended by God. In other words, he held that humans
could say what God was not, while they found it
impossible to say what he was.
 Philosophy of God
John Duns Scotus argues that a First Agent (A
Being that is First in Efficient Causality)
exists. Considering the First distinction
between essentially ordered causes and
accidentally ordered causes, He Argues that
there is an Ultimate Goal of Activity (A Being
that is First in Final Causality). A Maximally
Excellent Being (A Being that is First in what
Scotus calls “Pre-Eminence” Thus He has
proved what he calls the “triple primacy”:
there is a being that is first in efficient
causality, in final causality, and pre-eminence.
 Philosophy of God

I can say that their Philosophy

of God is significantly related to
their metaphysics because, just
like in their metaphysics, they
both affirm that God is the
cause of Everything. As they
recognized that God is the first
cause or an uncaused caused.
Through the principle of
Causality to affirm that God
exists.
Anthropology
Al Kindi proposes that the soul is an immaterial
substance considerably related to the material world
only because of its faculties. which operates through
the physical body. To explain the nature of our
worldly existence. He borrowed the Analogy of a Ship
by Epictetus. He compares it to a ship during its ocean
voyage, temporarily anchoring itself on an island and
allowing its passenger to disembark. He claims that
the soul is not tied to the body, and when the body
dies, the soul does not die; He also proposes that our
soul can be directed towards the pursuit of intellect.
He does not explicitly claim human nature, but we can
infer that the nature of humans is good and stained by
the pleasures present in the world.
 Anthropology

Scotus argued that the soul is the only

substantial form of the human being and
that when a person dies, the soul ceases
to inform the body, leaving a new
substance with new accidents. This
pluralism postulated a "form of the body"
(forma corporeitatis) and an "animating
form" (soul).
 Anthropology

The two philosophers are partly

similar and partly different for a
reason: first, both claim that the true
human self is the soul and the body is
an inauthentic self. Although Al Kindi
did not explicitly claim it, we can
presuppose in his writings that the
soul is the true self. Second, Al-
Kindi’s soul is in pursuit of its end.
For Scotus, the soul is in the quest of
spiritual ends. While Al-kindi claims
that the soul is in pursuit of intellect
and not the Spiritual ends like John
Duns Scotus.