When one begins to expound al-Razi's metaphysics, one at first comes across a small treatise attributed to him: Maqalah li Abi Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi fi ma ba`d al-Tabi'ah (Raghib MS. No. 1463, ff. 90a-98b, in Istanbul). There is much doubt about the authenticity of this treatise, because its contents do not agree entirely with al-Razi's otherwise known doctrines. So, either it may belong to another period of al-Razi's intellectual development, as Pines supposes,47 or it may contain only a systematic historical expose of other people's ideas without reference to his own,48 or it may not be by al-Razi at all.
Anyhow, the main points treated here are: (1) nature, (2) foetus, and (3) eternity of movement. The author refutes the partisans of the idea of nature as principle of movement, especially Aristotle and his commentators: John Philoponos, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Porphyry.
At first he denies that there is no need to prove the existence of nature, because it is not evident by itself. If nature is one and the same, why does it produce different effects in stone and in man? If nature permeates the body, does not that mean that two things can occupy one and the same place? Why do those partisans say that nature is dead, insensible, impotent, ignorant, without liberty and choice, and at the same time attribute to it the same qualities as to God? Against Porphyry the author says: You admit that nature acts in view of something and not by hazard or mere chance; why then do you say that nature is dead and not a living agent?
It seems that the author wants to refute all doctrines which pretend that nature is the principle of movement and creation, by showing the contra¬dictions to which these doctrines necessarily lead. His standpoint is that there is no place for admitting the existence of nature as principle of action and movement. But he does not define his attitude; his expose is negative and destructive.
As for the question of eternity of movement and time, the author discusses especially the ideas of Aristotle and Proclus.49 He refers to his refutation of Proclus. We know that al-Razi has written a treatise entitled “Doubts about Proclus,” and Kraus50 thinks that this is an argument in favour of the authenticity of the attribution of the treatise to al-Razi, but we think that this is a weak argument, because Proclus' de aetermitate mundi was much discussed by Arab thinkers after it had been translated by Ishaq ibn Hunain.51
The author's idea is that time is finite and not eternal, that the world is also finite, that there is only one world, and, lastly, that outside that one world there is no element and nothing (except God). Here he reproduces the ideas of Metrodorus and Seleucus taken from pseudo-Plutarch's Placita Philo¬sophorum.
The general trend of this treatise is polemical and dialectical. It cannot be reconciled with al-Razi's ideas on time, space, and Deity. Therefore, we think that it is spurious and cannot even belong to another period of al-Razi's spiritual development.
The real doctrine of al-Razi should be searched for in his Kitab al-'Ilm al-Ilahi. Unfortunately, that work is lost and we have only refutations of some passages from it collected by Kraus.52 We do not even have textual fragments of al-Razi's book. With all the inconveniences of adversaries' exposes, we have nothing more to do than to content ourselves with these refutations. What we can conclude from these is that al-Razi treated in this book: space, vacuum, time, duration, matter, metempsychosis, prophecy, pleasure, and Manichaeism.
Al-Razi's philosophy is chiefly characterized by his doctrine of the Five Eternals. Al-Biruni says53 that “Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi has re¬ported from the ancient Greeks the eternity of five things: God, the universal soul, first matter, absolute space, and absolute time, on which he founded his doctrine. But he distinguished between time and duration by saying that number applies to the one and not to the other, because finiteness attains numerality; and, therefore, the philosophers have defined time as the duration of what has a beginning and an end, whereas duration (dahr) has neither beginning nor end.
He said also that in Being these five are necessary: the sensible in it is the matter formed by composition; it is spatial, so there must be a space; alternation of its modes is a characteristic of time, because some precede and others follow, and it is by time that oldness and new¬ness, and older and newer and simultaneous are known; so time is necessary. In Being there are living things, so there must be soul; in it there are intelligibles and their constitution is absolutely perfect; there must be then a creator, wise, omniscient, doing things as perfectly as possible, and giving reason for the sake of salvation.”
Out of the Five Eternals, two are living and acting: God and soul; one is passive and. not living: matter from which all bodies are made; and two are neither living and acting, nor passive: vacuum and duration.54 Sometimes we find vacuum (khala') instead of space (makan), and duration (dahr) instead of time (zaman) or duration in the limited sense (muddah).
This doctrine is attributed, in, some sources (al-Fakhr al-Razi, al-Shahras¬tani, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi), to the so-called Harraniyyah. Who were these Harraniyyah? The word comes from Harran, the famous city of the Sabians and a centre of learning immediately before Islam and in the first four centuries of the Islamic era. Massignon55 thinks that these Harraniyyah are fictitious persons, and that what we find about them in our sources is a mere “literary romance” (roman litteraire).
Kraus is also of the same opinion, and he gives his reasons56 as follows: (a) before al-Razi we find no one who attributes the doctrine of the five eternals to al-Harraniyyah; (b) al-Razi, in his 'Ilm al-Ilahi has expounded the doctrines of the Sabian Harraniyyah and also his doctrine of the five eternals. But then Kraus gives a third reason which proves exactly the contrary of what the first two prove: al-Biruni, al-Marzuqi, al-Katibi, and al-Tusi say that al-Razi reported this doctrine from the ancient Greeks, that is to say, the early Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras, Democritus, etc.
How can we then say that al-Razi attributed this doctrine to a fictitious school, Harraniyyah, when he said expressly in his 'Ilm al-Ilahi that it was the doctrine of the early Greek philosophers? He was not in need of inventing the Harraniyyah, when he already had declared that it was the doctrine of the early Greek philosophers. For this reason, we cannot admit Massignon's suggestion, nor Kraus' evidence which are very weak. It is not right to identify what is attributed in the different sources to the Harraniyyah with al-Razi’s ideas unless this is expressly declared in the sources themselves.
We may now describe these Five Eternals.
(i) God
God's wisdom is perfect No inadvertence can be attributed to Him. Life flows from Him as light flows from the sun. He is perfect and pure Intelligence. From the soul life flows.57 God creates everything, He is incapable of nothing, and nothing can be contrary to His will. God knows things perfectly well. But the soul knows only what it experiences. God knew that soul would tend to matter and ask for material pleasure. After that soul attached itself to matter; God by his wisdom arranged that this attachment should be brought about in the most perfect way.
God afterwards poured intelligence and perception upon the soul. That was the reason for the soul to remember its real world and the reason for it to know that so long as it is in the world of matter it will never be free from pain. If soul knows that, and also that in its real world it will have pleasure without pain, it will desire that world and, once separated from matter, it will remain there for ever in utmost happiness.
In that way all doubts can be removed about the eternity of the world and the existence of evil. Since we have admitted the wisdom of the Creator, we must admit that the world is created. If one asks why it was created in this or that moment, we say that it was because soul attached itself to matter in that moment. God knew that this attachment was a cause of evil, but after it had been brought about, God directed it to the best possible way. But some evils remained; being the source of all evils, this composition of soul and matter could not be completely purified.58
(ii) Soul
God, according to al-Razi, has not created the world through any necessity, but He decided to create it after having at first no will to create it. Who determined Him to do so? There must be another eternal who made Him decide this.
This other eternal is the soul which was living but ignorant. Matter, too, was eternal. Owing to its ignorance, the soul was fond of matter and formed figures from it in order to get material pleasures. But matter was rebellious to forms; so God intervened in order to aid the soul. This aid was that He made this world and created in it strong forms wherein the soul could find corporeal pleasures. God then created man and from the substance of His divinity he created the intelligence of man to awaken the soul and to show to it that this world is not its real world.
But man cannot attain the real world except by philosophy. He who studies philosophy and knows his real world and acquires knowledge is saved from his bad state. Souls remain in this world till they are awakened by philosophy to the mystery and directed towards the real world.59
(iii) Matter
The absolute or first matter is composed of atoms. Each atom has volume; otherwise by their collection nothing could be formed. If the world is destroyed, it too is dispersed into atoms. Matter has been there from eternity, because it is impossible to admit that a thing comes from nothing.
What is more compact becomes the substance of the earth, what is more rarefied than the substance of the earth becomes the substance of water, what is still more rarefied becomes the substance of air, and what is still more and more rarefied becomes the substance of fire.
The body of the sphere is also composed of the particles of matter, but its composition differs from the compositions of other bodies. The proof of this is that the movement of the sphere is not directed to the centre of the world, but to its periphery. Its body is not very compact, as that of the earth, nor very rarefied as that of fire or air.
Qualities such as heaviness, levity, darkness, and luminosity are to be explained by the more or less vacuity which is within matter. Quality is an accident which is attributed to substance, and substance is matter.60
Al-Razi gives two proofs to establish the eternity of matter. First, creation is manifest; there must then be its Creator. What is created is nothing but formed matter. Why then do we prove, from the created, the anteriority of the Creator, and not the anteriority of the created being? If it is true that body is created (or more exactly: made [masnu`]) from something by the force of an agent, then we should say that as this agent is eternal and immutable before: His act, what received this act of force must also have been eternal before it received that act. This receiver is matter. Then matter is eternal.
The second proof is based on the impossibility of creatio ex nihilo. Creating, that is to say, making something out of nothing is easier than com¬posing it. God's creating men fully at one stroke would be easier than composing them in forty years. This is the first premise. The wise Creator does not prefer to do what is farther from His purpose to what is nearer, unless He is incapable of doing what is easier and nearer. This is the second premise. The conclusion from these premises is that the existence of all things should be caused by the Creator of the world through creation and not by composition. But what we see is evidently the contrary. All things in this world are produced by composition and not by creation. It necessarily follows that He is incapable of creatio ex nihilo and the world came to be by the composition of things the origin of which is matter.
Al-Razi adds, universal induction proves this. If nothing in the world comes to be except from another thing, it is necessary that natures are made from another thing, and this other thing is matter. Therefore, matter is eternal; it was originally not composed, but dispersed.61
(iv) Space
As it is proved that matter is eternal, and as matter should occupy space, so there is eternal space. This argument is nearly the same as that given by al-Iranshahri. But al-Iranshahri says that space is the manifest might of God. Al-Razi could not follow his master's vague definition. For him, space is the place where matter is.
Al-Razi distinguishes between two kinds of space: universal or absolute, and particular or relative. The former is infinite and does not depend on the world and the spatial things in it.
Vacuum is inside space, and, consequently, inside matter. As aa proof of the infinity of space, the partisans (al-Iranshahri and al-Razi) say that a spatialized thing cannot exist without space, though space may exist without spatialized things.. Space is nothing but the receptacle for the spatialized things. What con¬tains the two is either a body, or a not-body. If it is a body, it must be in space, and outside this body there is space or no-space; if no-space, it is a body and finite. If it is not-body, it is space. Therefore, space is infinite. If someone says that this absolute space has an end, that means that its limit is a body. As every body is finite, and every body is in space, so space is infinite in every sense. What is infinite is eternal, so space is eternal.62
Vacuum has the power of attracting bodies; therefore, water is conserved (or retained) in a bottle submerged in water with the opening turned down¬wards.63
(v) Time
Time, according to al-Razi, is eternal. It is a substance that flows (jauhar yajri). He is against those (Aristotle and his followers) who pretend-that time is the number of the movements of the body, because if it were so, it would not have been possible for two moving things to move in one time by two different numbers.
Al-Razi distinguishes between two kinds of time: absolute time and limited (mahsur) time. The absolute time is duration (al-dahr). It is eternal and moving. As for the limited time, it is that of the movements of the spheres and of the sun and stars. If you imagine the movement of duration, you can imagine absolute time, and this is eternity. If you imagine the movement of the sphere, you imagine the limited time.64
Senin, 25 November 2024