Time and Creation in Some Safavid Philosophies

Time and Creation:The Contribution of Some Safavid Philosophies

SAJJAD H. RIZVI

ABSTRACT: The old medieval problem of the temporal relationship between an eternal Godand an eternal or timed world remains an issue that animates debates about thenature of God in contemporary philosophy of religion. The Islamic debate pittedthe philosophers, in particular Ibn Síná [Avicenna], who held that an eternal Godproduced an eternal world that was merely logically posterior to him, against sometheologians, such as al-Ghazálí (Alghazel) who insisted on the scriptural doctrineof creatio ex nihilo and refuted the possibility of an eternal world. The conflictcontinued with each side ceding some aspects and rejecting others until the Safavidperiod in which one finds the divisions between philosophy and theology irrevocablybreaking down. I shall discuss the positions of three key philosophers of early modernIran who all defended the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo from a philosophical perspec-tive and came up with some novel approaches to the old problem of the temporal rela-tionship between God and creation.

KEY WORDS: al-Ghazálí [Alghazel] (d. 1111); Causality; Creation; Dámád, Mír(d. 1621); Emanation; Eternity; Foreknowledge; God; Ibn Síná [Avicenna] (980-1037); Iran, Contributions to Philosophy in; Isfahan, School of; Metaphysics;Motion; —adrá Shírází, Mullá (d. c. 1635); Neoplatonism; Process; Qummí,Qádí Sa›íd (d. 1696); Safavids; Soul; Temporality; Time; Timelessness; World,Begin of the.

RESUMO: O presente artigo parte da constatação de que o velho problema dos pensadoresmedievais acerca do relacionamento temporal entre um Deus que é eterno e ummundo que ora se entende como eterno ora como localizado no tempo permaneceainda hoje um dos assuntos que animam os debates relativos à natureza de Deus nafilosofia da religião contemporânea. Constata-se, antes de mais, que o debate que severificou no seio do Islão começou por levantar os filósofos, particularmente IbnSíná [Avicenna], o qual defendia que um Deus eterno produziu um mundo eternoque apenas do ponto de vista lógico lhe era posterior, contra os teólogos, tais comoal-Ghazálí [Alghazel], o qual insistia na doutrina baseada na Escritura da creatio exnihilo e refutava a possibilidade de um mundo eterno. O conflito continuou com

* University of Exeter (Exeter, United Kingdom). – According to the author, “this paper is partof a larger work in progress on time and creation in post-Avicennan philosophy. A related versionwas presented at the Third Safavid Roundtable in Bamberg in July 2003.” The author expresseshis gratitude to Hermann Landolt and Toby Mayer for discussions on the topics of this article.

[713]Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

62 • 2006 47-67[713]Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

62 • 2006

R.P.F.62 • 2006

cada uma das partes cedendo alguns aspectos e rejeitando outros até à emergência doperíodo dos Safavidas durante o qual se verifica o rompimento das divisões entreFilosofia e Teologia. Assim, o autor do artigo propõe-se analisar as posições de trêsfilósofos fundamentais do início da era moderna no Irão, pensadores esses que defen-diam a doutrina da creatio ex nihilo numa perspectiva filosófica e, ao mesmo tempo,foram capazes de avançar com algumas abordagens novas ao velho problema darelação temporal entre Deus e a criação.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: al-Ghazálí [Alghazel] (m. 1111]; Causalidade; Dámád, Mír(m. 1621); Emanação; Eternidade; Providência; God; Ibn Síná [Avicenna](980-1037); Irão, Filosofia no; Metafísica; Movimento; —adrá Shírází, Mullá(m. c. 1635); Neoplatonismo; Processo; Qummí, Qádí Sa›íd (m. 1696); Safavidas;Isfahan, Escola de; Alma; Temporalidade; Tempo; Intemporalidade; Mundo,Começo do.

The philosophy of time in pre-modern philosophy was never far removedfrom the question of the world and its relationship to its principle.Whether or not thinkers had a keen sense of what time was, how it

may be divided and even whether it was real or conceptual, they all had distinctnotions about whether the world was created in time or an eternal logicalconsequence of its principle, whether the Neoplatonic One, the AristotelianUnmoved Mover or the Islamo-Judaeo-Christian God. There were two keyquestions relating to the problem. First, how could a timeless, immutable Godcreate and act in and/or with time? Second, how can an omniscient God havetimeless knowledge and yet be cognisant of contingent events ‘in the future’?1

I shall focus on the former question as the latter requires a more detailedexplanation of tensing and causation and my interest in this paper is moregenerally on the problem of time and ‘the beginning’ and not the continualrelationship between God, time and the cosmos.

Before considering time in the Safavid period, we need to appreciate theshifts in philosophical discourse from an earlier period. Whereas earlierphilosophers had considered time as a problem of physics, along with corol-

Sajjad H. RIZVI714

[714]Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia62 • 2006

1 For insightful discussions of this problem in the philosophy of religion, see Paul Helm,Eternal God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; William Hasker, God, Time and Knowledge. Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1998; N. Kretzmann; E. Stump, “Eternity.” In: Journal of Philosophy.78 (1981), pp. 429-58; William Lane Craig, “God, time and eternity. î In: Religious Studies. 14(1978), pp. 497-503. Most Islamic thinkers understood God to be beyond time, eternal in thesense of being timeless and thus their positions are susceptible to some of the critiques from theanalytic tradition of the philosophy of religion that, at the very least, from the time of Pike’s sem-inal work on the subject has regarded the notion of an acting but timeless God to be incoherent –a good example is Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986,pp. 38ff.

laries of matter, place and motion, and associated time as a concomitant of aspatial extension, in the Safavid period, the philosophy of time was intimatelyassociated with the focal discussion of metaphysics, namely the question ofbeing. Hence the issue for our thinkers is: how does time relate to being?There were other significant shifts: while earlier thinkers such as Avicennahad produced a creative system based on Aristotelianizing Neoplatonic prin-ciples, Safavid thinkers seemed most consciously to revive a late antique Neo-platonic tradition that sought to integrate philosophy and spiritual practice,ontology and psychology. A key feature of this was a shift from an Aristotelianmetaphysics of substances as stable, immutable essences to a more proces-sual understanding of realities as structures of events or, as Corbin would putit, of ‘acts of being’.2 Further, Safavid thinkers were rather fond of syntheses,even of those which one terms following the mediævals coincidentiae opposi-torum: eternity and physical time, creation and emanation, eternity and incip-ience of the cosmos.3 Finally, in relation to the notion of time, Safavidthinkers rejected the uni-directional model of time as a sequence from preter-nity through our time into the future of post-eternity; rather they conceived oftime as cycles of ontological processes that affect different spheres of exis-tence. The central sphere is the phenomenal world of physical time; beyondthat is the sphere of perpetuity and beyond that still the sphere of eternity.When philosophers of the period spoke of an eternal God, it is quite clear thatthey held the common medieval doctrine of the timelessness of God.4

In the course of this inquiry, I shall examine the positions on time andcreation of three key thinkers who make up the trio whom Henry Corbinfamously used as exemplars of the ‘School of Isfahan’, the Safavid philo-sophical tradition: Mír Dámád (d. 1621), Mullá —adrá Shírází (d. c. 1635) andQádí Sa›íd Qummí (d. 1696).5 In terms of the chronology of arguments, I shallonly assume that Mír Dámád’s work came first (the completion date foral-Qabasát is 1034/1624–25), Mullá —adrá’s second (the completion date foral-Asfár al-arba›a is 1037/1627–28) and Qádí Sa›íd Qummí last (the completiondate for Sharh Tawhíd al-—adúq is 1099/1687-88). We still do not know enoughabout the chronologies of their respective composition, and in the absence of


62 • 2006

]

Time and Creation: The Contribution of Some Safavid Philosophies 715

2 Especially Henry Corbin, En Islam Iranien. 4 vol. Paris: Gallimard, 1971-72, IV.3 Cf. Henry Corbin, Temple and Contemplation. Translated by P. Sherrard. London: KPI, 1986,

pp. 375-76; for a discussion of the notion of the ‘coincidence of opposites’ in history of religionsand in particular in the thought of Corbin, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 67-82.

4 One ought to add that this amounted to an argument for God’s ‘durationless’ existence andnot, like some contemporary process theologians, to his everlasting duration.

5 Corbin coined the term ‘l’école d’Isfahan’ and devoted volume four of his major workEn Islam Iranien to the school. Cf. Sajjad Rizvi, “Isfahan School of Philosophy.” In: EncyclopaediaIranica (forthcoming).


62 • 2006 47-67

thorough textual examination, we cannot assume a strict developmental orunitarian approach to their work. In what follows, I shall analyse their argu-ments chronologically and assess their significance and validity within theirtraditions.

Augustine said in Book XI, Chapter 14 of his Confessions,

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is; if I want to explain it to some-one who asks, I know not.

Time is indeed one of the most obvious and puzzling aspects of reality.Why is the notion of time and questions of its reality interesting? From ourcontemporary perspective, thinkers concerned with literature, nation andidentity often speak of narrative time,6 philosophers of language talk abouttensed-time and its resultant theories of meaning, logicians may talk ofmodalities of time, metaphysicians may dispute the reality of time and soforth. But when we consider philosophies of time in the Safavid period, and ifwe presume to take Safavid philosophy seriously as Corbin rightly suggestsand to engage with it critically and creatively, then we should attempt to con-textualise those theories as well as consider the significance of those theoriesfor our own engagement with theories of time. So we should start with thequestion: why is the notion of time, its definition, and its ontology importantfor our thinkers? The most obvious answer is to understand that time is seenas a concomitant of some aspect of ontology and as some measure. It is linkedto arguments about the nature of and indeed the incipience of the world. Thusone of the key issues of philosophical theology is whether the world is incipi-ent, that it had a beginning (hudúth), often understood to be a beginning intime, or whether the world is a necessary contingency (al-wájib bi fi l-ghayr,ghayr masbúq bifi l-›adam) of its principle, that is the famous theory of emana-tion. This is a critical issue because it considers whether divine activity is voli-tional or instrumental: is the cosmos a direct causal result of a choosingdivine agent or the natural consequence of the essence of its Principle? Thekey to this question is the nature of time and its role in the cosmos, and itsrelationship to the principle of the cosmos.7 Now let us turn to our thinkers.

Sajjad H. RIZVI716

6 Most magisterially discussed in Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit. 3 volumes. Paris: Editions duSeuil, 1985.

7 To a certain extent, contemporary philosophical preoccupations with time have little rele-vance to our analysis because they are concerned with issues of temporal duration as exhibited intenses and dates, and in the psychological question of the un/reality of time as well as the physicsof time entailed in studying time’s direction as a dimension of material existence and the specula-tive issue of time travel’s possibility.

The question of the divine will also raises the following problems. If God is omniscient andpossesses foreknowledge including that of future contingents and indeed of all possibilia, in whatsense do those future events possess true contingency? If God is the cause of existence (includingtime) and stands ‘together’ with time and space in some form of simultaneity, then how can he


Mír Muhammad Báqir Dámád (d. 1621) was a prominent courtier at thetime of Sháh ›Abbás I and a pre-eminent religious scholar of Isfahan. A scionof a noble family of Astarábád who claimed descent from the Prophet andgrandson of the powerful jurist Shaykh ›Alí al-Karakí (d. 1538), he combinedin his social being the prestige of the native elite descending from the Prophetand the scholarly elite of the › ¿milí ›ulema. A jurist as well as a subtle philoso-pher and theologian, his work is often described as ‘obscure’. It is indicative ofCorbin’s method that he devotes most of his analysis of Dámád’s thought tohis spiritual vision and his exposition of the imaginal realm, an ontologicalstate of being that mediates between the higher intelligible world of arche-types and forms and this sensory world of material bodies.8 Thus he almostentirely ignores the one theory for which he is most famous. Perhaps MírDámád’s greatest and most obscure philosophical contribution is his para-doxical notion of the perpetual incipience (hudúth dahrí) of the world thatcombines the theological insistence upon the incipience of the world as anact of a volitional deity with the philosophical demand that the good deitynecessarily supports and emanates an eternal cosmic existence.9 This theorydepends on three grades of incipience that result from three grades of tempo-rality that are found in Avicenna, namely, time (zamán), perpetuity (dahr), andeternity (sarmad). In al-Qabasát [Burning Embers], Mír Dámád sets out toprove his theory of incipience by citing key quotations from Ibn Síná/Avicenna(d. 1037) on the nature of time and one from his student Bahmanyár (d. 1066)in his Kitáb al-tahhíl [The Digest].10

Dámád sets out the following, rather processual, definition of grades oftemporality before citing his examples from the Peripatetic tradition:

In de re existence (al-huhúl fí nafs al-amr), there are three types of consciousness(wa›iyya). The consciousness of an extended existence in flux (al-wujúd al-mutaqaddaral-sayyál) and a continuous extended non-existence that belongs to mutable entitiesinsofar as they are mutable is time (zamán). The consciousness of a pure existence(haríh al-wujúd) that is preceded by a pure non-existence, and that transcends the hori-zon of extension and non-extension and belongs to immutables insofar as they are


possess ‘foreknowledge’ of what is simultaneous with him and how can that knowledge lead toconstraints in human (and indeed divine) freedom? On the question of freedom, see RichardTaylor, “Timelessness and foreknowledge.” In: American Philosophical Quarterly. 1 (1964), pp. 73-80.

8 H. Corbin, En Islam Iranien, IV, pp. 30-53.9 Henry Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie Islamique. Paris: Fayard, 1964, p. 464.

10 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát. Edited by M. Mohaghegh, T. Izutsu et al. Tehran: TehranUniversity Press, 1978, pp. 6-10. This major text was completed by 1034 AH/1624, the same dateas the completion of two other key texts on hudúth, namely Risálat hudúth al-›álam (comparingPlato and Aristotle) and al-—irát al-mustaqím (the latter has been published). See ›Alí Awjabí,“Introduction.” In: Mír Dámád, Taqwím al-ímán. Edited by ›Alí Awjabí. Tehran: Mírá ³- i Maktúb,1998, pp. 101, 110.


62 • 2006

f

f


62 • 2006 47-67

immutable while embracing actuality, is perpetuity (dahr). The consciousness of a pureReal Immutable Sanctified Existence (baht al-wujúd al-thábit al-haqq) absolutely devoidof the accidentality of change and transcendent above any sense of being preceded bynon-existence, and who is pure and sheer activity (energeia, fi›liyya) is eternity (sarmad).Just as perpetuity transcends and is more vast than time, so too is eternity higher, moremajestic, more holy and greater than perpetuity.11

I want to indicate five key points in this passage. First, note the processualnature of entities at each of these levels and the processual nature of the gradeof temporality that corresponds to it. We are not here faced with an Avicennansubstance metaphysics. Even God is a process insofar as He is pure activity.12

Second, note that both existents and non-existents are considered within thecategory of time that raises interesting issues of tenses and future possibility

Sajjad H. RIZVI718

11 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 7. 1-7.12 However, unlike Process Theologians such as Nicholas Wolterstorff, this does not mean that

God undergoes change or is in time. In Nicholas Wolterstorff, “God everlasting.” In: Contempo-rary Philosophy of Religion. Edited by S. M. Cahn & D. Shatz. New York: Oxford University Press,1982, p. 78, it is written: “God the redeemer cannot be a God eternal. This is so because God theredeemer is a God who changes. And any being which changes is a being among whose statesthere is a temporal succession ... A theology which opts for God as eternal cannot avoid being inconflict with the confession of God as redeemer.” Indeed, analytic philosophy of religion finds thenotion of a timeless God to be nonsensical, a medieval façon de parler that shows the vestiges ofHellenic thought but tells us little about the nature of God. William Kneale has focused on theHellenic roots of the need for a changeless and timeless God but ultimately rejected the notionbecause if God is a person, as most monotheistic traditions suggest, then the agency of personstakes place within time. See William Kneale, “Time and eternity in theology.” In: Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society. 61 (1960-1), pp. 87-108. In the Timæus 37-39, Plato distinguishes betweenthe immutable, timeless demiurge and the cosmos that it produces in time, making the cosmosand time coeval [For a dissenting interpretation of time and creation in the Timæus, see JohnSallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timæus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999;for an attempt to reconstruct the cosmology of the Timæus in the light of contemporary physics,see Luc Brisson and F. W. Meyerstein, Inventing the Universe: Plato’s Timæus, the Big Bang and theProblem of Scientific Knowledge. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995]. Anotherobjection to divine timelessness is the argument from indexicals. Truth conditions about somepropositions of fact require the notion of a ‘now’. How can God know that I am typing this sen-tence at this point in time and know it to be true if he is timeless? Hasker has argued that theproblem of divine foreknowledge can be solved if one discards the condition of divine eternality– see God, Time and Knowledge. However, recently from within the analytic tradition, there havebeen defences of eternality – see Helm, Eternal God; Kretzmann & Stump, “Eternity”; Kretzmann& Stump, “Eternity, awareness and action”. Of course, much of the debate rests upon the assump-tion of the analogy of God and creation, on the notion (in principle) that my personhood is muchthe same as God’s, that my knowledge is similar to God’s, that my location in time is similar toGod’s. While analogy within religious language is the key requisite for theological talk, it is clearthat most Islamic philosophers did not share this notion of analogy: God’s personhood, Hisknowledge, His agency is utterly different from the human. For a defence of a God who is time-less and personal, considering three criteria of personhood (consciousness, intentionalityand inter-person relationships), see William Lane Craig, “Divine timelessness and personhood.”In: International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion. 43 (1998), pp. 109-24.


within this world. Third, the level of perpetuity is the crucial ground for therelationship between God the immutable and the world the mutable (genera-tive and corruptible in the standard Aristotelian terminology). Fourth, time isan aspect of existential consciousness. This raises the possibility of the psychicprovenance of time that would suggest continuity with the late Neoplatonictradition. Fifth, the temporality of perpetuity (dahr) seems to follow Proclus(and other Neoplatonists) notion of ‘temporal perpetuity’.13

Mír Dámád draws upon a number of proof texts for his tripartite divisionof temporality, beginning with passages from Ibn Síná:

1. Al-Ta›líqát [The Glosses]:14

Mír Dámád cites this passage from this late work that is a series of notesaddressing questions brought to Ibn Síná’s attention by his students concern-ing issues in his major works.15 Thus the discrete paragraphs of the Glossesare often more explicit and clear than the relevant passages on time in the Cureand in Pointers and Reminders. This passage describes the intellect’s ability tograsp through its consciousness three modes of temporality relating to threetypes of entities. This is significant: temporality devoid of an ontology ofthings would be quite absurd for Ibn Síná and is so too for Mír Dámád.

The intellect grasps three types of entities. The first is in time and expressed by ‘when’and describes mutables that have a beginning and an end, although its beginning is notits end but necessitates it. It is in permanent flux and requires states and renewal ofstates.16 The second is being with time and is called perpetuity (dahr) and it surroundstime.17 It is the being of the firmament with time and time is in that being because itissues from the motion of the firmament. It is the relationship of the immutable to themutable although one’s imagination cannot grasp it because it sees everything in timeand thinks that everything is ‘is’, ‘will be’ and ‘was’, past, present and future, and seeseverything as ‘when’ either in the past or the present or the future. The third is the being


13 Proclus, Elements of Theology. Translated by E. R. Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963,prop. 55 = Fífi l-khayr al-mahd [Liber de Causis]. In: ›A. Badawí (ed.), al-Aflátúniyya al-muhdatha ›indal-›Arab. Kuwait: Wikálat al-matbú›át, 1977, ch. 29, pp. 28-30.

14 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 7.10–8.5; cf. Avicenna, Al-Ta›líqát. Edited by ›A. Badawí. Cairo:al-Hay fi a al-Mi“riyya al-›ámma li fi l-Kitáb, 1974, 141.26-142.17; Michot, La destinée de l’homme,pp. 59-60.

15 Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Leiden: Brill, 1988, pp. 141-43.16 In Kitáb al-hudúd, Avicenna defines time as a measure of motion in a direction from what

came before it and what succeeds it – see Avicenna, Tis›rasáfi il fífi l-hikma wafi l-tabí›iyyát. Edited byÕ al-›¿“í. Beirut: Dár Qábis, 1986, 76.5; elsewhere, he defines time, not as a measure or even aplace associated with it (time-space) but as that thing to which ‘before’ and ‘after’ pertain suchthat the ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ continue eternally. See Avicenna, Uyún al-hikma. Edited by ›A. Badawí.Cairo: al-Hayfi a al-Mi“riyya al-›ámma lifi l-Kitáb, 1954, Physics, fa“l VIII, 26.7-8.

17 In Kitáb al-hudúd, Avicenna defines perpetuity as an intelligible relationship between animmutable and the totality of time as experienced in the soul. See Tis› rasáfi il, 76.3-4.


62 • 2006[719]Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

62 • 2006 47-67

of the immutable with the immutable and is called eternity and it surrounds perpetu-ity… Perpetuity is conscious of time as it surrounds it. Time is a weak existence as it isin flux and mutable.18

The inadequacy of human intellection requires us to use notions of tempo-rality and even tensing to explain in temporal terms, the two notions of perpe-tuity and eternity even though these notions and realities transcend time assuch. Our ordinary language of time and temporality is tensed, a discursivefact from which it is difficult to extricate ourselves. The Neoplatonic taste ofthe passage is quite clear: what is immutable, what is simplex and what ismotionless is ontologically higher and prior to what is mutable, complex andin motion. That time is described as a ‘weak existence’ also suggests the begin-nings of a processual shift in the language of temporality and ontology as itentails the notion of intensity, of more or less, stronger and weaker in exis-tence, which would seem odd in a strictly substantialist notion of existingthings. It also suggests that Avicenna allows a discourse of intensification, ofmore or less to be applicable to existence.

2. Al-Shifáfi [The Cure]: 19

The following passage occurs at numerous instances in the Physics andMetaphysics of Ibn Síná’s main summa the Cure.20

There is no extension in either perpetuity or eternity because measure pertains tomotion.21 So time is as if an effect of perpetuity and perpetuity as if it were an effect ofeternity. If there were no permanence of the relationship of the causes of bodies to theirprinciples, bodies would not exist, let alone their motion, and if there were no perma-nence of the relationship of time to the principle of time, time would not be realised.

Thus we have further evidence adduced to demonstrate the intimate linkbetween ontology and temporality. But what we also see in this passage is anaspect of the circularity of Ibn Síná’s definition of time: we can only under-stand eternity and perpetuity through temporality and temporality andchange only with respect to immutability and permanence. Note the recourseto figurative language to describe the relationship between temporality andatemporality precisely because the notion of a God who is beyond time is sodifficult to grasp.

Sajjad H. RIZVI720

18 On this final statement, see Aristotle, Physics IV 218b 21-22.19 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 8.23-9.3. Various instances in Avicenna’s work.20 On this text, Gutas, Avicenna and Aristotelian Tradition, pp. 101-12.21 Following the physical Aristotelian notion of time as a measure of physical extension and

motion. See Avicenna, Al-Shifáfi: iláhiyyát. Edited by G. Anawátí et al. Cairo: al-Hayfi a al-Mi“riyyaal-›ámma lifi l-Kitáb, 1960, pp. 19, 117. This is also a denial of the Proclean view that there is sometemporal extension in this intermediate level of time. See Proclus, Elements of Theology, p. 229.


3. ›Uyún al-hikma [Elements of Philosophy]: 22

The following passage is cited from a short epitome of philosophy. Onceagain in this passage we see that temporality is defined in terms of the rela-tionships of entities to mutability and motion.

The essences of things are immutable, and also mutable in a sense and immutable inanother sense. Considered in the sense of their being immutable, they are not in timebut with time. The relationship of what is with time but not in time is perpetuity. Therelationship of what is not in time to what is not in time is eternity. Perpetuity in itself isof eternity but in comparison to time is perpetuity.

This passage reflects two issues. First, the gradation of temporality that wehave already seen in other citations is clear. Second, if we take the body-soulrelationship within humans as a referent of those things discussed in the firsttwo sentences, we may see that the soul is the eternal, unchanging element,while the body is mutable, corruptible, perishable and temporal.

4. Al-Ishárát wafi l-tanbíhát [Pointers and Reminders]: 23

Finally, we have two passages from Ibn Síná’s later summa, Pointers andReminders. The first passage comes from namat VII on the intellect and theparticular section relates to Ibn Síná’s famous ‘denial’ that God knows partic-ulars because that would compromise God within time.

It is necessary that the knowledge of particulars that the Necessary Being has is nottemporal knowledge such that He is in time, in the present, past and future. That wouldrequire that an attribute of His essence be that he is mutable. Rather, it is necessarythat His knowledge of particulars be in a sense that is holy and transcends time andperpetuity.

God, as a transcendent, immutable and timeless deity cannot be confinedin temporality. Our knowledge of things is a function of the temporal andontological contexts of ourselves and the objects of our knowledge. God is notconfined to such a context; He is singularly in eternity and thus His knowl-edge of objects cannot be the same as ours conditioned by space and time andsensibility. However, what this does not preclude is that God may be in time inthe sense of McTaggart’s B-series.24 Avicenna explicitly rules out the tensednotion of time, or McTaggart’s A-series. The second passage from namat Vdeals with the nature of eternity and causality.


22 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 9.4-8; Avicenna, ›Uyún, Physics, fa“l VIII, 28.12-17.23 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 9.9-15; cf. Avicenna, al-Ishárát wafi l-tanbíhát, III, namat VII,

315.16-18, namat V, 119.9-10.24 But even this may be problematic, because in this series, there is no future as such – see

William Lange Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. Leiden: Brill, 1991, pp. 226–27.However, it is quite conceivable that events may lie in the future for us and as such be future con-tingents whilst being simultaneous with God’s durationlessness.


62 • 2006

f

f

f


62 • 2006 47-67

If it is permitted for something to be similar in state in all matters and have an effect, itis not far from being necessarily eternal.

If a cause encompasses potentially all things and there is sympathybetween it and all entities beneath it in the ontological hierarchy, it is aneternal cause beyond time since unlike its effects it is not confined by tempo-rality. The similarity of the state of that thing in all cases means that Ibn Sínáis discussing immutable entities. Immutable causes are beyond time. MírDámád goes on to cite an explanation of eternity with respect to the two othermodes of temporality as explained in the commentary upon the passage byIbn Síná’s enthusiastic but creative champion Nahír al-Dín Túsí (d. 1274):25

He [Ibn SwnÁ] uses the term ‘eternity’ to express permanence because it is a technicalterm. The term ‘time’ is applied to the relationship between mutables. The term ‘perpe-tuity’ is applied to the relationship between immutables and mutables, and the term‘eternity’ is applied to the relationship between immutables.

5. Al-Naját [The Salvation]: 26

The final citation from Ibn Síná glosses the previous one from the Cure.What is significant throughout these citations is that Mír Dámád intends toestablish the possibility of God being with time and space and indeed beingan agent but not being implicated in time and space.

Not everything that exists with time is in time.

The reference, as is clear in the commentary tradition of Aristotle’s PhysicsIV 221a 17 to which it alludes,27 is to eternal entities that exist with time andhave causal efficacy within time but are not in time or confined by timeand space.

He completes his citation of Avicennan texts by quoting a passage, by wayof summarising the school position, from Kitáb al-tahhíl [The Digest] by IbnSíná’s student Bahmanyár (d. 1066):28

It is known that time does not exist in time such that its non-existence is in anothertime. Time is one of those things that is weak in existence such as motion and matter.

Temporal things are those in which there is priority and posteriority, past andfuture, beginning and end, and what is motion or possesses motion. But what isextrinsic to this is what exists with time…

Sajjad H. RIZVI722

25 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 9.16–19; cf. Avicenna, Al-Ishárát wafi l-tanbíhát. With commen-taries of al-”úsí, al-Rází and Qutb al-dín. Edited by M. Shihábí. Repr. Qum: Nashr al-Balágha,1996, III, namat V, 119.22-25.

26 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 9.20-21; cf. Avicenna, al-Naját, I, 146.23-24.27 Most clearly articulated in the comments of Alexander and Simplicius on the lemma. See

Simplicius, in Phys., 739,14-20.28 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 10.3-15; Bahmanyár, Kitáb al-tahhíl. Edited by M. Mutahharí.

Repr. Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1996, metaphysics (book II), maqála II, 462.12-463.9.


If this simultaneity exists by analogy of the permanent to the impermanent, then itis perpetuity that encompasses time. If it is in relation of the permanent with a perma-nent, then it is properly called eternity… Both of them are opposed to being temporal intime… Neither perpetuity nor eternity have extension, either in conjecture or in fact,not even a measure of motion.

This passage strongly mirrors the initial Avicennan citation from theGlosses and illustrates the completion of the Avicennan ‘position’ whoseauthority Mír Dámád wishes to invoke.

Then to reflect his Platonic tastes, Mír Dámád cites passages on time fromthe Physics of al-Mutárahát of the Iranian Illuminationist philosopher Shihábal-Dín Suhrawardí (d. 1191) and the Theologia Aristotelis, the famous so-called‘Theology of Aristotle’ that is, in fact, adapted renditions of sections of Plotinus’Enneads IV-VI.

Suhrawardí says (following and paraphrasing Avicenna from the passagefrom al-Shifáfi cited above),

Perpetuity is on the horizon of time and time is like an effect of perpetuity and perpe-tuity is like an effect of eternity. If there were no permanence of the relationship ofuniversal bodies to their principle, bodies would not exist, let alone their motion, and ifthere were no permanence of the relationship of time to the principle of time, timewould not be realised. So it is valid to say that eternity is a cause of perpetuity andperpetuity a cause of time.29

Notice that the hierarchy of temporality is glossed here as a causal descentand the Neoplatonic tendency of this explanation of temporality is morestriking.

The citations from the Theologia are designed to demonstrate that perpe-tuity is the level of intelligible time, while the level of eternity is that of asimultaneous whole. The Theologia thus also represents the threefold divisionof temporality, but also most significantly posits the possibility of a humansoul to traverse these levels. In the headings of topics (ru fi ús al-masá fi íl) pro-vided in the introduction of the text, the author argues that every intelligibleentity is timeless because intelligibles properly exist in perpetuity and not intime. It is because of this that they can be causes for time.30 Humans are thusparadoxical composites of a body that is temporal and a soul that belongs toperpetuity.31 To demonstrate the distinction between time and perpetuity, MírDámád cites mímar II of the Theologia in which the author argues that whenthe soul reverts to its origin in the higher intelligible world, as is its wont indi-cated by the famous doffing metaphor of Enneads IV.8.1,32 it shows that it


29 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 11.1-4.30 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 11.12-17; cf. Theologia Aristotelis, 8.6-10.31 Cf. Theologia Aristotelis, 11.11-16.32 Cf. Theologia Aristotelis, Mímar I, 22.


62 • 2006[723]Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

62 • 2006 47-67

belongs to a world of perpetuity and not of time.33 The soul knows through itsrecollection of the immutable and timeless essences of things in that intelli-gible realm, and thus can be a cause for time through the process of cogni-tion. Then he cites mímar V of the Theologia to demonstrate the divine level ofeternity.34 The author discusses three levels of activity: the perfect energeiaof the First Agent that is God, a less perfect activity of the intellects, and thetransient activity of temporal agents. To each of these levels of activity corre-sponds a level of temporality. Finally, he cites Mímar VII of the Theologia todemonstrate the relationship of God with entities across time.35 There is acausal chain that traverses levels of temporality depending on the level of themutability of entities at that ontological level. What is of critical importance isthat God does not create in time; the cause of time itself must transcend time.36

The result of the citations of these texts is to show that there are threelevels of temporality that correspond to three ontological levels of reality.Hence, there are three possible types of incipience: the first means that thecosmos has a beginning in time (hudúth zamání) a view usually associatedwith the dialectical and systematic theology in Islam known as kalám,37 thesecond that the cosmos is preceded by absolute non-existence which meansthat it succeeds God by essence (hudúth dhátí) a view associated with IbnSíná, and the third that the cosmos is preceded by a relative non-existence,meaning that it was potential but then becomes actual and this last is what isknown as perpetual incipience (hudúth dahrí).38

Now what does this entail for the God-world relationship? Avicennareduces the notion of the incipience of the world to a mere contingency(imkán) on the Necessary Being.39 The cosmos is utterly dependent upon Godas its cause, giver of existence and ontological sustainer. The world is essen-tially incipient (hudúth dhátí) as it is logically posterior to God but not tempo-

Sajjad H. RIZVI724

33 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 11.19-12.10; Theologia Aristotelis, Mímar II, 29.3-8, 30.6-11,31.7-9.

34 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 12.11-13.3; Theologia Aristotelis, Mímar V, 68.2-17.35 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 13.4-14.6; Theologia Aristotelis, Mímar VIII, 94.1-6, 96.4-14,

108.5-8, 110.18-19, 111.2-3, 12-13, 114.14-18.36 Mír Dámád could have cited further texts from the Theologia that insist that the world is not

created in time but rather at the intelligible level of perpetuity (although the text uses the termeternity), which God transcends.

37 S. ›A. Músawí Bihbahání, Õakím-i Astarábád Mír Dámád. Repr. Tehran: Tehran UniversityPress, 1377 Sh., p. 198, mentions 3 lemmata for this option: tadríjí (graduated) incipience inwhich existence unfolds over and in time, daf›í (once and for all) in which creation comes aboutall at once for all time, and another daf›í which is a theological occasionalist model for creation intime. The argument has been popularised by William Lane Craig as the ëkalám cosmological argu-ment’ for the existence of God.

38 Músaví, Õakím-i Astarábád, p. 196.39 Avicenna, al-Ishárát wafi l-tanbíhát, namat V, III, 97-115.


rally posterior. For Mír Dámád, the reduction of hudúth to imkán does notentail a real incipience of the world. Further, he regards the Avicennan com-promise between the perpetual level of the intellects and the eternal level ofthe divine to be problematic.40 The incipience of the world may be savedthrough a radical disjuncture between the notions of perpetuity and eternity.41

Essences that are logical concomitants of God are not really incipient andthus the notion of incipience needs to address the issue of whether contin-gency lies in the nature of events or in their temporality.42

Having accepted with Avicenna the absurdity of creation in time,43 thequestion thus arises: where and when does creation take place? While forAvicenna the answer of this question may be meaningless insofar as the worldhas no real beginning, for Mír Dámád, the answer is more ontologicallyabsolute and distinct: creation and the incipience of the world occurs at thelevel of perpetuity because it is there that the immutable God in His eternityinteracts with a mutable time. This theory is known as hudúth dahrí.44 For MírDámád, there must be a rupture (infikák) between the divine essence and thecosmos, the latter being absolutely posterior to the former. The cosmos isboth conceptually and causally posterior to God because all that existsresolves in the perpetuity of dahr but God alone exists at the level of sarmad.45

In Taqwím al-ímán [Establishing Faith], he argues that God is absolutely priorand unique in eternity, creative and together with entities in perpetuity whereHe brings them forth from potentiality into actuality, and transcends timewhose physical constraints cannot embrace Him.46 One point to bear in mindin understanding Mír Dámád’s notion of incipience is his essentialism.47 Heposits three ontological levels: God who is beyond being, essences both in


40 Mír Dámád, Taqwím al-ímán, 326.12-329.6.41 Fazlur Rahman, ìMír Dámád’s concept of hudúth dahrí: A contribution to the study of

God-world relationship in Safavid Iran.” In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 39 (1980), pp. 139-51(pp. 142-43).

42 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 226.3-14, cf. Rahman, “Mír Dámád’s concept of hudúth dahrí’,p. 144.

43 Of course, contemporary philosophy of religion considers the notion of creation withouttime to be equally absurd. See Helm, Eternal God.

44 Músaví, Õakím-i Astarábád, pp. 179-99.45 Mír Dámád, Kitáb al-Qabasát, 75.4-76.6; cf. Rahman, “Mír Dámád’s concept of hudúth

dahríî , p. 150.46 Mír Dámád, Taqwím al-ímán, 329.10-330.6. This text may have been written around the

same time as al-Qabasát or earlier. It must have been completed by 1023 AH/1613 (11 years beforethe completion date of al-Qabasát) because the earliest manuscript (MS ¿ stán-i Quds-i Radaví222) of the commentary of Sayyid Ahmad ›Alawí (his student and son-in-law) entitled Kashfal-haqá fi iq bears that date. See Awjabí, Introduction to Taqwím al-ímán, p. 157. The argumenton hudúth in this text is more succinct but one finds elements of the probably later argument inal-Qabasát.

47 Mír Dámád, Taqwím al-ímán, 324.8-326.8.


62 • 2006

f


62 • 2006 47-67

potentiality and actuality in perpetuity, and individual existents that manifestthose essences in this phenomenal world. At the level of perpetuity, essencesthat are potential are those that are with God sharing simultaneity (ma›iyya),but those essences that become actual are posterior to God because they haveundergone the process whereby He brings them from potentiality to actuality.The problem thus with the Avicennan model is that it does not explain divinecausality at this level and does not characterise the coming into actuality ofessences. Thus Mír Dámád suggests an intriguing solution to the problem of atimeless deity acting and creating in time.

Apart from the issue of the nature of the eternal incipience of the cosmos,Mír Dámád’s notion of time has a proposed solution for the debate on the Shí›ítheological notion of badáfi , or, to put it crudely, the idea that God changes hismind.48 Within the context of the religious polemics of the Safavid period,badáfi had become a hotly debated topic. The doctrine of badáfi may be seen asa Shí›i theodicy and attempt to explain defeat and failure in this world.49

To their opponents, it hopelessly compromised a belief in the absoluteness ofthe divine decree and divine omniscience and omnipotence. If God’s decreeand knowledge is absolute in eternity, then there is no scope for a change inevents in this world. What the doctrine attempts to do is to divorce the divinewill from divine foreknowledge and posit degrees of the processual unfoldingof the latter.50 Furthermore, it clearly articulates a non-propositional, non-discursive view of divine knowledge: God’s knowledge of events is not propo-sitional nor does his knowledge engender a particular disposition within hismind that may alter and change with ‘changes’ in his knowledge and theunfolding of events.51 Divine ‘consciousness’ does not contain processes ofduration and deliberation. An immutable durationless God cannot know bymeans of tensed (A-series) propositions.

Sajjad H. RIZVI726

48 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi wa taswáfi al-sawáfi fí sharh báb al-badáfi wa ithbát jadwá al-du›áfi.Edited by Õ. N. Ihfahání. Tehran: Mírá ³- i Maktúb, 1995; Músaví, Õakím-i Astarábád, pp. 209-14.

49 Mahmoud Ayoub, ìDivine preordination and human hope: A study of the concept of badáfi inImámí Shí›í tradition. î In: Journal of the American Oriental Society. 106 (1986), pp. 623-32.

50 A distinct and instructive parallel can be seen in the notions of natural and ‘middle’ knowl-edge associated with Molina and Suarez in the early modern period. See Craig, Divine Fore-knowledge and Human Freedom, pp. 237ff, and Id., The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge andFuture Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez. Leiden: Brill, 1988, pp. 169ff; cf. Alvin Plantinga, Godand Other Minds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967, pp. 140-48; Hasker, God, Time andKnowledge, pp. 19–52. Molinism is actually a defence of human freedom whilst retaining divineomnipotence, a compatibilist argument that posits God’s true knowledge of counterfactuals suchthat he knows what any creature may freely choose to do.

51 Cf. Anthony Kenny’s discussion of Aquinas on this issue in his, The God of the Philosophers.Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986, pp. 38-43. Similarly, Alston argues that God does not havebeliefs or dispositions about things or events because such states entail fallibility; rather, divineknowledge is intuitive. See William P. Alston, “Does God have beliefs?” In: Religious Studies. 22(1986), pp. 287-306.


In his theological treatise Nibrás al-diyáfi wa taswáfi al-sawáfi (The Lamp ofIllumination and Keeping the Balance) on the explanation of badá fi and theprofitability of supplication, Mír Dámád deploys his theory of time and ofperpetual incipience of the world to explain the notion.52 The standard Shí›ídefence of badá fi is that it is merely a form of naskh (abrogation); just ascertain verses of the Qurfi án were abrogated whilst remaining part of the textof revelation, so too is the eventuality of certain events set aside after the com-munication of those events in this world was altered.53 Mír Dámád acceptsthis point when he says that the place of badáfi in creation is like that of abro-gation in the revelation.54 But he goes beyond it.55 God is utterly beyond bothtime and perpetuity; He is neither in time nor with time. Existents in thisworld, however, are limited by extension and duration and are temporal enti-ties, whilst occurring in some form in perpetuity as well.56 Every originatedthing has a share in three types of hudúth: essential (dhátí), perpetual (dahrí)and temporal (zamání).57 Temporal events that occur in this world are limitedby extension but do not have a corresponding extension in perpetuity (andcertainly not in eternity where there is no extension). Now God and His attrib-utes (including creation and knowledge) manifest His existence at these threelevels of being and time, but their nature varies according to the ontologicallevel of manifestation.58 No one event in either time or perpetuity that resultsfrom the activity of a divine name is the same as another.59 Thus the appear-ance of the progression of events in our temporal extension is unlike that ofits extension in perpetuity, and quite unlike its cause in eternity. Furthermore,


52 The text is actually a critical rebuttal of Nasír al-Dín ”úsí’s rejection of the notion. ClearlyAvicennan determinism (which in this case amounts to a form of theological fatalism) is irrecon-cible to such a dynamic notion of divine knowledge because drawing on the Aristotelian tradition(in particular the famous discussion of future contingents in De Int. IX), it recognised the prob-lem of reconciling truth values of propositions about future contingents with affirmations ofdivine omnipotence and omniscience.

53 M. Ayoub, “Divine preordination and human hope”, p. 624. Mullá —adrá sets forth an alter-native which is to distinguish between two levels of divine knowledge, one that is absolute andanother relative and revealed. To this effect, he quotes two hadíth from the 5th and 6th Imams whodifferentiate between a hidden knowledge known only to God and knowledge communicated tohis prophets and Imams. See al-Asfár, VI, 399.2-10.

54 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi , 55.18.55 An alternative approach is proffered by Bahá fi al-Dín al-›Ámilí, Mír Dámád’s close friend,

who argues that we consider time to be like a rope with only a section available for us to see. Thusfor us time is discrete and tensed since we experience time as a past, present and future. However,God’s knowledge of things including time is presential (hudúrí); so the whole of the rope is avail-able to Him. See Kashkúl, I, 183.19–24.

56 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi , 58.17-59.8.57 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi , 59.9-15.58 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi , 62-63.59 Mír Dámád, Nibrás al-diyáfi , 64-65.


62 • 2006

f

f

f


62 • 2006 47-67

since God’s knowledge is timeless, determinism is avoided since events intime are not directly caused by timeless knowledge.60 The key ontologicallevel for theodicy is thus neither the absolute and vital realm of eternity andthe pure names whose sole referent is the divine essence, nor the temporalrealm of events in this world, but rather the mediating realm of perpetuity inwhich trajectories of events and their sequence is in flux. In this intermediaterealm, nothing is determined and nothing is immutable, whilst also beingdetermined and mutable. The doctrine of badáfi thus needs to be understoodat this level, as a compromise between radical libertarianism that would makeGod subject to the mutability of temporal beings and radical necessitarianismthat would place temporal events of this world beyond the pure immutabilityof the eternal.

In the thought of Mullá —adrá, Mír Dámád’s student, temporality is inex-orably linked to being in a way that superficially parallels their conjunction inHeidegger.61 But Heidegger’s concerns with the negation of subjectivity, theeveryday nature of one’s existence and one’s temporality (that are arguably thesame for him) are not found in the Sadrian use of time as both a divine andabsolute reality, and as a notion critical to the debates about the incipience ofthe cosmos, aspects of onto-theology that Heidegger wishes to overcome.More importantly, Mullá —adrá’s conception of time and its concomitantnotions about the incipience of the world and the temporal duration of creationare at odds with his teacher Mír Dámád and articulated as such.

Just as everything in existence is in constant flux and gradation, thisinsight being a result of Mullá —adrá’s twin key notions of the gradation andmodulation of being (tashkík al-wujúd) and substantial motion (harakajawhariyya), so too is time, which is a consequence of these two facts, in motionand flux.62 So unlike the Aristotelian notion of time as the measure of motionof a stable substance discussed in Physics IV, time becomes the concomitant,

Sajjad H. RIZVI728

60 Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum. London: Duckworth, 1983, pp. 255-58.61 The link seems clear at Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Translated by J. Stambaugh.

Albany: SUNY Press, 1996, pp. 15-18. Heidegger’s own conceptualisation of time seems eminentlyricher. While Mullá —adrá and other Safavid thinkers are concerning with the ontology and hypo-statisation of time, Heidegger is more concerned with the varying instances of its conception,four of which can be cited: authentic time that is a feature of absolute Da-Sein, inauthentic timethat is a feature of everyday existence, public time that is the mode in which we encounter beingsin the world, and vulgar (or philosophical) time that is the notion of a sequence of instants asarticulated by Aristotle and others. It is indicative of his approach to the history of philosophythat he considers the notion of time most commonly found in history to be the ‘vulgar’ one!

62 On the principles of modulation and substantial motion, see Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, I, 71–73,III, 31-32, 60-65, 80-92; cf. Rahman, Fazlur, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá. Albany: SUNY Press,1975, pp. 38-41, 94-108; Christian Jambet (ed.), L’Acte d’être. Paris: Fayard, 2002, pp. 181-219.


indeed dimension, of a dynamic unfolding and transforming substance.63

Following Plotinus, Mullá —adrá considers time to be a creation of the WorldSoul, but only insofar as it is the substantial motion of it. The flow of time, thus,has two aspects, consistent with his method of coincidentia oppositorum:

With respect to its existence, it possesses immutability (thabát) and continuity (ittihál)but also renewal (tajaddud) and discreteness (inqidáfi ). It is as if something between purepotentiality and sheer actuality. With respect to its existence and subsistence, it dependsupon a preserving agent that will make it subsist, and with respect to its incipience(hudúthih) and ephemerality (inhirámih) it requires a receptacle that will accept itscontingency and the potentiality of its existence.64

The intellect-oriented aspect of the World Soul makes time a unity, whileits body-oriented aspect makes time a succession. That time is related tosubstantial motion, makes it a relative phenomenon. Thus the three grades oftime in Avicenna are redefined in the following manner: sarmad is time relatedto God or to the nous, dahr is time in relation to the firmament, and zamán istime relating to those things that come into existence and pass out of it.65

Time is temporal insofar as its temporality entails its eternity as only God isbeyond time.66 Time is also subjective as it is a concomitant of substantialmotion, but also real and not a mere relation.67

What does this means for time in the world and its creation? Mullá —adrá’sdynamic notion of time as a process sets aside Mír Dámád’s theory of per-petual incipience in favour of a seeming paradox.68 God’s attribute of creatoris eternally (and essentially) true of Him thus He must eternally create andbring things into existence; so He remains the cause of things in this world.But the actual contents of this world in flux are temporal, and their tempo-rally contingent antecedents are not eternal. Thus events and processes in thisworld have an eternal cause in the divine command (amr) while being pre-pared by temporally prior events (mu›iddát). These events are thus constantlyrenewing and in flux because the world process is not discrete, just as time isnot discrete, but is a continuous process through substantial motion.69 God


63 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 115.4-116.12, 140.4-7; cf. Jambet, L’acte d’être, p. 209; Rahman,The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, p. 107. For the more general point that time is a real physicaldimension, see Abú fi l-Barakát Baghdádí, Al-Kitáb al-Mu›tabar fí fi l-hikma. Edited by ° . Yaltkaya.Repr. Isfahan: Isfahan University Press, 1994, III, 30-31; Shlomo Pines, Studies in Abu’l-Barakátal-Baghdádí: Physics and Metaphysics. Repr. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press at the Hebrew Univer-sity, 2000, pp. 116-17.

64 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 116.12-117.2.65 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 144.1-143.1; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, pp. 109-10.66 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 124.9–16; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, p. 110.67 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 151; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, p. 110.68 Mullá —adrá’s assessment of the arguments of the theologians against the philosophers on

the issue of the eternity of the world is found at al-Asfár, III, 128-66.69 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, II, 137.7-138.17; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, pp. 62-63.


62 • 2006

f


62 • 2006 47-67

does not bring essences into actuality in perpetuity because Mullá —adrá,unlike his teacher is not an essentialist: contingency is defined in the exis-tence of an entity and not in its essence.70 But Mullá —adrá retains a theo-logical desire to demonstrate the temporal incipience of the world for whichMír Dámád’s theory is unsatisfactory. He argues from the impossibility of anactual infinity (rather like Philoponus) to prove that the world must have abeginning because there cannot be an infinite chain of causes in the past.71

Belief in temporal incipience is a mark of faith and as such must not beaccepted through blind imitation but understood rationally.72 What is also ofinterest is that this view, which he says is that of the people of truth, is anauthentically Platonic view, although he recognises that some have reportedthat Plato regarded the world to be eternal.73 In doing so, Mullá —adrá is liningup an Islamic theological position with Presocratic cosmology. The world istemporally incipient as a result of substantial motion in which everythingin constant flux is at every moment a renewed emergent existent and hesays that the truth of the incipience of the cosmos is one accepted by all theAbrahamic faiths.74 Since the causal chain in the thought of Mullá —adrá isexistential, the essentialist problems in Avicenna and Mír Dámád relating toessential incipience do not arise. Contingency is thus a fact of existentialpoverty and dependence upon a Necessary existential Cause.75 Thus one cansee Mullá —adrá’s theory of incipience to fit between the purely logical andrather instrumental essential incipience of Avicenna and the meta-temporalintermediate perpetual incipience of Mír Dámád, opting for a real incipience

Sajjad H. RIZVI730

70 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, I, 396ff, II, 202.1-204.7; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá,p. 63.

71 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 158-60; cf. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullá —adrá, p. 112. How-ever, elsewhere he has admitted the possibility of an infinite number of souls, which is clearlycontradictory – see al-Asfár, II, 152. On Philoponus’ use of arguments from infinity for the tem-poral incipience of the world (using Aristotle’s axiom of the impossibility of an actual infiniteagainst him), see Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, pp. 210-31. For its influence onIslamic thinkers, see Herbert Davidson, “John Philoponus as a source of medieval Islamic andJewish proofs of creation.” In: Journal of the American Oriental Society 89 (1969), 357-91; HarryA. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Kalam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 410-43;S. Pines, “An Arabic summary of a lost work of John Philoponus.” In: Id., Studies in Arabic Versionsof Greek texts and in Mediæval Science. Repr. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press at the Hebrew Univer-sity, 2000, pp. 294-326; Ibn al-Qiftí, Ta fi ríkh al-hukamá fi. Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbí, n.d.,223.13-15. See Philoponus’ famous refutation of Proclus’ De Aeternitate Mundi: Against Proclus onthe Eternity of the World. Translated by Michael Share. London: Duckworth, 2003.

72 Mullá —adrá, Hudúth al-›álam, 182.10-12.73 Mullá —adrá, Hudúth al-›álam, 184.15-18.74 Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, III, 166.1-8. Elsewhere, he adduces rather traditionally Qur fi ánic

verses in support of the temporal incipience of the world. See al-Ma ¤ áhir al-Iláhiyya fí asráral-›ulúm al-kamáliyya. Edited by M. Khámanahí, Tehran: SIPRIn, 1999, 66.5-67.12.

75 Mullá —adrá, Hudúth al-›álam, 191.3-193.4.


and real contingency based on utter existential poverty and need for a Cause.The Sadrian view arguably gives God, the first Cause greater volition, andmakes the desire for existence a reciprocation of that. There is a mutual loveand desire in this model of contingency that may result from the influence ofthe Sufi Ibn ›Arabí (d. 1240) on Mullá —adrá.

There are, of course, problems and inconsistencies with Mullá —adrá’stheory.76 He had already insisted that substantial motion does not invalidatethe persistence of the identity of those existents through their intrinsicmotion. If the motion leads to an individual of more ‘intensive’ existence, doesthat really mean it is a new existence per se? Furthermore, Mullá —adrá insiststhat substantial motion always is a feature of existence and existence alwayshas been and always is. Does this not raise the issue of an infinity of motionin the past and in the future, which entails an absurdity because pre-modernscience following Aristotle considers the occurrence of an actual infinite to beimpossible? Finally, on the issue of types of incipience, does the Sadriannotion of contingency as existential poverty really differ all that much fromthe Avicennan notion of radical contingency as an absolute dependence onGod for one’s existence? Is the distinction merely semantic?

Qádí Sa›íd Qummí (d. 1696) was an indirect student of Mullá —adrá as hehad been a student of Muhsin Fayd Káshání (d. 1680). Like Káshání, he wasaccused of being of Sufi and a traditionalist, although that did not prevent hisbeing appointed a qadi in Qum by Sháh ›Abbás II (d. 1666). As a philosopher, hehad a strong taste for Neoplatonism and wrote glosses on the famous TheologiaAristotelis,77 and consistent with such ideas, advocated a strongly apophaticphilosophical discourse. His opposition to various key theories of Mullá —adrámay have been the influence of his other main teacher, Rajab ›Alí Tabrízí(d. 1667), another theologian with keen Neoplatonic tastes while safeguardingthe utter transcendence of the divine. Another key feature of Qummí’s workthat is illustrative of the Safavid period is to use the genre of commentaryupon the hadíth (narrations) of the Shí›í Imams to expound philosophical andtheological doctrines. There was a growth of such commentaries composedincluding works penned by Mír Dámád and Mullá —adrá.

One of the key peculiarities of Qummí’s notion of time, consistent withhis ontological focus upon what Corbin calls the mundus imaginalis (›álamal-mithál) is his notion of subtle or imaginal time (al-zamán al-mithálí), which


76 There is a further eschatological aspect to Mullá —adrá’s theory of time, which is beyond thescope of this paper, but which is summarised in his al-Ma¤ áhir al-iláhiyya, 116.3-120.12.

77 See my paper, “Qádí Sa›íd Qummí’s reception of the Theologia Aristotelis.” In: Peter Adamson(ed.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: Sources and Reception. London: The Warburg Institute, 2007(forthcoming). I am also currently preparing material for a critical edition and translation of hisGlosses.


62 • 2006

f


62 • 2006 47-67

is a measure (miqdár) of time or motion particular to the imaginal body inthat realm, that corresponds to the physical notion of time as a measure of thephysical body in this world.78 Corbin coined the term ‘imaginal’ to describe anevent possessing an ontological level that is neither fully historical nor imagi-nary in the sense of being a pure fiction of the mind.79

Consistent with his taste for late Neoplatonism, Qummí also considerstemporality to be an aspect of our existence across different ontological levels.80

In his famous commentary on the Kitáb al-tawhíd [Book of Divine Unity] ofShaykh al-—adúq, his apophasis makes him insist that God is beyond bothexistence and time (even some sense of eternity) and his proof for this liesin his suggestion that these three ontological grades of time cannot apply toGod.81 The first grade of temporality is dense time (zamán kathíf), which is thephysical time of material bodies and an expression for the motion of sensibleobjects. The second grade is subtle time (zamán latíf), which is the motion ofspiritual bodies in the spiritual realm beyond the sub-lunary cosmos. But it isalso a measure of an intermediary realm that lies between our physical worldand the absolute intelligible world beyond. This grade of temporality maybe considered as an equivalent of Plotinus’ psychological time, or time as ameasure of the motion of the soul that is neither fully of this world nor of thesupreme intelligible world. The third grade of temporality is most subtle time(zamán altaf), which is a feature of the ontology of the highest spiritual beingsand lights. Embedded in this notion of three grades is a Platonic sympathy(mediated through the Illuminationist school) for three grades of reality anddefinitions of three types of time predicated upon three relationships betweenimmutables and mutables (as already expressed in the thought of Avicennaand others).82 The first grade is thus the equivalent of the normal notion oftime or zamán as the relationship between two mutables. The second grade isthe equivalent of dahr, or the eternal Aeon, which expresses the relationshipbetween the mutable and the immutable. Finally, the third grade is the equiv-alent of sarmad, or divine eternity that is the relationship between immuta-bles. Since God transcends these three grades of reality, he must necessarily

Sajjad H. RIZVI732

78 Corbin, Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique, p. 475. The Imaginal Realm is a key insight ofIslamic philosophy in the eyes of Corbin.

79 Corbin, En Islam Iranien, I, p. 45.80 Qádí Sa›íd Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín. Edited by N. Õabíbí. Tehran: Mírá ³- i Maktúb, 2000,

p. 389.81 Qádí Sa›íd Qummí, Sharh Tawhíd al-—adúq. Edited by N. Õabíbí. 3 vol. Tehran: Wizárat

al-thaqáfa wafi l-Irshád al-Islámí, 1994–99, Ch. 2, hadíth 2, I, 152-53; cf. Corbin, En Islam Iranien,I, 179-81.

82 Qummí, Sharh Tawhíd al-—adúq, Ch. 2, hadíth 3, I, 199: the third worlds are the sensible, thepsychic and the intelligible or the phenomenal, the imaginal and the unseen.


transcend their concomitant grades of temporality.83 The application of theword time to all of these grades as with the actual discourse of existence inthe work of Qummí displays the paradox of apophasis that one sees in earlyNeoplatonists such as Plotinus as well as Mullá —adrá. Actually locating Godbeyond being and time in effect renders a meaningful discourse of meta-physics futile. Without the notions of eternity and beyond being, being andtime cannot make sense. Thus Qummí’s apophasis is an elusive quest for theunsayable and remains unsaid.

However, in his commentary on Forty Õadíth, he introduces an imaginal(mithálí, khayálí) level of time that mediates between sensible time and intel-ligible time.84 In his commentary on the hadíth of the Prophet, ‘I am youngerthan my Lord by two years’, he sets forth a fourfold division of time, each ofwhich corresponds to the level above it:

One of the phenomena in our world is Phenomenal Time (al-zamán al-mashhúd), andwe shall explain the opinions concerning it. Corresponding to this well-known time is aspiritual reality (haqíqa malakútiyya) in the realm of the divine throne that is calledImaginal Time (al-zamán al-khayálí) in which one finds the motion of some spiritualbodies such as managing angels and jinn and the motion of some of the saints whotraverse the earth. Corresponding to this imaginal time is a spiritual reality (haqíqarúhiyya) in the realm of lordship that is the domain of holy spirits and noble souls andthis reality is called perpetuity (dahr) and also pre-eternity (azal), and in which one findsthe motion of some of the prophets ascending up to God and of the elect among thesaints traversing time… Corresponding to perpetuity is an intelligible image and a lumi-nous substance in the realm of divinity, which the philosophers called eternity (sarmad)or Pre-eternity of pre-eternities (azal al-ázál).85

Note that by referring to these levels of time as reality, he makes it clearthat he regards time as real. Further, note that modifying Plato’s statementin the Timæus, perpetuity is a moving image of eternity (mithál ›aqlí). Qummígoes on to define these levels of time in terms of their motion: phenomenaltime is a measure of the motion of the highest sphere (following the Avicennanmodel), imaginal time is the measure of the motion of the divine throne(which plays an important ontological role in Qummí’s cosmology),86 perpe-tuity is a real extension of the motion of unseen realities but eternity is thetimeless absorption (indimáj) of luminous realities in the divine names.87

So what does this entail for the incipience of the world? In his commen-tary on hadíth 27, which significantly concerns the nature of theological dis-


83 Qummí, Sharh Tawhíd al-—adúq, Ch. 2, hadíth 2, I, 153.84 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 465.22-23.85 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 365.8-19.86 See Henry Corbin, “The configuration of the temple of the Ka›bah as the secret of spiritual

life.” In: Temple and Contemplation. Translated by P. Sherrard. London: KPI, 1986, pp. 183-262.87 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 366.2-11.


62 • 2006

f

f

f


62 • 2006 47-67

pute, he criticises those who hold that the world is eternal, quoting amongothers the Sufi ›Ayn al-Qudát Hamadání (d. 1131).88 His argument attempts todemonstrate the falsity of the proposition that the world has no beginning.89

His dissatisfaction with the Avicennan doctrine that reduces incipience tocontingency is clear.90 True doctrine following the Imams is to affirm thetemporal incipience of the world.91 The first two arguments that he deploysagainst empiricism and infinity need not detain us as we have seen the latterabove and the former is a weak argument aimed at a straw man.92

His main argument that follows on the temporal incipience of the worldexactly replicates Mullá —adrá, even in his quotations from the Zubdat al-haqá fi iq of Hamadání and others.93 This is important because on the mainquestions of metaphysics such as the ground of being, the reference of existenceand so forth, he rejects Mullá —adrá’s views and seems closer to Mír Dámád’sessentialism. In al-Nafahát al-Iláhiyya [Divine Suspirations], he rejects Mullá—adrá’s doctrine of the ontological primacy of existence (ahálat al-wujúd) anddefends with his teacher Rajab ›Alí Tabrízí and Mír Dámád the primacy ofessence.94 God brings forth essences and then actualises them as existentsthrough the accident of existence that is bestowed upon those essences. Yetagainst the two-tiered system of creation in perpetuity propounded by Dámád

Sajjad H. RIZVI734

88 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 479ff.89 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 480.14.90 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 484-87.91 Qummí, Mirqát al-asrár. In: Kitáb al-arba›íniyyát. Edited by N. Habíbí. Tehran: Mírá ³- i

Maktúb, 2003, 139.15-18. The purpose of this whole treatise is to explain the relationship of Godand the world as one between an eternal and a temporally incipient.

92 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 480-82; Id., Ta›líqát ›alá Uthúlújiyá. Edited by S. J. ¿ shtiyání inMuntakhabátí az á ³ ár-i hukamá fi -yi iláhí-yi Írán. Repr., III, 79-286, 196-97. The first argumentfollows Philoponus against eternity, and the second is based on the absurdity of eternal time.

93 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 483-87. The quotation from Zubdat al-haqá fi iq is at 483.2-12(cf. Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, VII, 330.13-331.11, who actually finds the argument weak because ofhis differing view on the nature of God’s simultaneity with existence): “The claim of one whobelieves that the universe is temporally preternal (qadím al-zamán) is pure folly and futile. If it issaid to him, ‘What do you mean by the universe? Do you mean by it all bodies such as heavensand earth or all existents except God?’ If he says, ‘I mean by it every existing contingent whetherbodies or otherwise such as intellects and souls’, then against this is the fact that for most exis-tents that are covered by the term ‘universe’, their existence does not depend on the existence oftime, rather they are necessarily prior to time. So how can one claim that the universe is tempo-rally preternal but that the majority of existents in the universe exist prior to time? If he says,‘I mean by universe all bodies’, then that is not permissible either because that means that bodieshave existed since time has existed with the resulting sense that time is prior in existence tobodies in existence but this is not so. Bodies are prior in existence to time and time is posterior inexistence to them, even in the sense of their essences and rank.” – For a sophisticated discussionof Hamadání’s views on God, time and creation as expressed in Zubdat al-haqáfi iq, see ToshihikoIzutsu, Creation and the Timeless Order of Things. Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1994, pp. 124-40.

94 Qummí, al-Nafahát al-Iláhiyya in al-Arba›íniyyát, 159.8-160.18.


in which God brings forth essences and then actualises their potentiality,Qummí insists that there are no stages of succession between divine will,knowledge and creation – all these attributes are essential to the divine andare pure activity and thus simultaneous.95 Furthermore, God is a volitionaland powerful agent and can choose to act as He wishes without a successiveprocess.96 Essential incipience is absurd because the cosmos cannot existpurely with God being merely logically prior to it as the effect does not existabsolutely with its cause at the same level.97 This is a weak argument as theproponents of essential incipience such as Avicenna do not hold such a naïvedoctrine of causality. Qummí quotes Mullá —adrá as saying that no onebelieves that the cosmos exists with God at the level of His existence – but thatis quite clear already and could be turned against Qummí by an opponent.98

By the end of his argument, he has entirely set aside the possibility forincipience that might arise from positing an imaginal level of time by iteratingthat there are merely three grades of temporality: time in the world of creation,eternity in the realm of the divine and perpetuity in the realm that mediatesbetween creation and the divine command.99 He has thus conflated the notionof perpetuity and imaginal time whilst retaining an intermediate level of timebetween temporality and eternity, between the created and the Creator.

The use of Mullá —adrá reveals a further inconsistency: his proof for thetemporal incipience of the world depends on the notion of substantial motionwhich Qummí explicitly rejects.100 But he also shares with Mullá —adrá onekey inconsistency on incipience: they both agree that there is an infinity ofsouls and that souls precede bodies and emerge from an eternal world ofintelligibles.101 Qummí further complicates this by arguing that actually thesoul is not quite eternal but on the ‘horizon of perpetuity’.102 Qummí’s accountof time and creation is rather consistent with a naïve Platonist’s reading of theTimæus. The world is created in time but God transcends time and eternity.The soul is somewhat eternal and precedes the creation of the physical world,


95 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 488.3-12.96 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 488.13-22.97 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 491.20-21.98 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 491.1-7, quoting Mullá —adrá, al-Asfár, VII, 331. He does not, how-

ever, develop the unique notion of God’s simultaneity (ma›iyya) with the world that Mullá —adráexplains. See Sajjad Rizvi, “The Modulation of Being in the Philosophy of Mullá —adrá Shírází.”Ph.D. diss. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2000, pp. 176-81.

99 Qummí, Sharh al-arba›ín, 493.2-8; Id., Ta›líqát, mímar II, 197.19-198.4; Id., Mirqát al-asrárin al-Arba›íniyyát, 148.15-149.10.

100 Qummí, Ta›líqát, mímar III, 243.15–246.17; Id., Mirqát al-asrár in al-Arba›íniyyát, 121.15-122.1.

101 Qummí, Ta›líqát, mímar II, 191.14-192.17.102 Qummí, Ta›líqát, mímar II, 203.3-4.


62 • 2006

f


62 • 2006 47-67

and yet is posterior to its principle.103 Such an association is not forced sincethroughout Qummí’s Ta›líqát on the Theologia, he repeatedly expresses hisallegiance to the views of the divine Plato.104 But the theological bent in histhought is such that he affirms that all three Platonic worlds of being, of intel-ligibles and of sensibles are temporally incipient as only God stands outsideof time.105

The concerns of a theistic metaphysics that seeks to understand the rela-tionship between God and the cosmos, between individual responsibility andability to discern truth and divine determinism, influences the theories oftime in the Safavid period. As I have suggested all three theories that devel-oped in a diachronous exchange with the other, assume a processual nature ofreality in which everything is in flux and all entities are dynamic and notstatic. While each of them is a product of their intellectual formation andstand upon the shoulders of the Greeks and classical Islamic thinkers, not oneof the three is a conventional thinker in the slightest, least of all Mír Dámádwhose terminology is decidedly different. It might even be tempting to label MírDámád’s views as consistent with late Neoplatonism, Mullá —adrá’s with middlePlatonism (and even Presocratic thought) and Qummí’s with the Academy;but they all move beyond those paradigms and express key concerns as theo-logical thinkers from a Shi›i context reacting to mature Islamic (Neo)Platonictraditions in the Safavid period. What may be significant is that none of themupholds the eternity of the world (qidam al-›álam) as Avicenna and Abú fi l-Barakát Baghdádí had. This may be because the notion of philosophy hadloosened to encompass theology and mysticism and a commitment to a ‘reli-gious life’, and certainly postulating that the world was eternal seemed tobelie the Qur fi án and many famous sayings of the Shi›i Imams as all threeauthors note.

Corbin might well have found (and there are suggestions in his work thathe did) Qummí’s notion of time most appealing because it stresses the onto-

Sajjad H. RIZVI736

103 Compare this to Proclus’ notion that while soul’s essence is eternal, its activity is in time;see his Elements of Theology, prop. 191, 166-69, and In Timæum, III. 32.27-30; cf. L. Siorvanes,Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996, p. 135.

104 Qummí’s views are entirely, thus, consistent with Shi›i theological views on incipience andbelie that unjustifiable statement of Arjomand that Qummí’s views, especially as articulated inKalíd-i bihisht a text that I have not considered here because it uses traditional modes of theolog-ical discourse and not philosophical arguments, are incompatible with ëShi›ite dogma’. See SaidA. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1984, p. 150. Arjomand clearly has little understanding of the thought of these three thinkers – onthe same page, he suggests that Mullá —adrá rejects bodily resurrection in the afterlife, anotherëShi›ite dogma’, when in fact Mullá —adrá insists that the failure of past philosophers to providephilosophical proofs for bodily resurrection is a travesty and sets out to demonstrate the fact ofphysical resurrection in al-Asfár al-arba›a, IX, pp. 185ff.

105 Qummí, Mirqát al-asrár in al-Arba›íniyyát, 154.2-14.


logical significance of the Imaginal Realm and it finds within it as its con-comitant a notion of time that gives events in that realm greater reality fromour perspective. It is not the realm of the divine, which for Qummí is the soletimeless plane of and beyond existence. From my own perspective, I find MírDámád’s theory of time rather satisfactory because he deploys it to usefuleffect to deal with two key problems: the creation of the world (how did wecome to be here?) and divine theodicy (why does the unfolding of events inthis world seem so arbitrary?). Mír Dámád’s theory exhibits a higher level ofinternal consistency across his work than either Mullá —adrá or Qádí Sa›ídQummí. Yet although the popularity of Mullá —adrá in Iran quite often preventsa critical engagement with his thought, Mír Dámád is respected as a difficultthinker whose thought is never analysed. A full and nuanced analysis ofDámád’s work remains to be undertaken. We can only assess the contribu-tions of the school of Isfahan, even appreciate whether it is useful to applysuch a label, once we have critically understood the work of its principalmembers.



62 • 2006

f

f


62 • 2006 47-67

Time and Creation in Some Safavid Philosophies

Documents

Transcript of Time and Creation in Some Safavid Philosophies