Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

212 Ayman Shihadeh
Avicenna claims to advance a purely metaphysical proof (as opposed
to a physical proof), one that rests purely on an analysis of the notion of
existence qua existence, without consideration of any attributes of the
physical world. 53 He writes:
Reflect on how our proof for the existence and oneness of the First
and His being free from attributes did not require reflection on
anything except existence itself and how it did not require any
consideration of His creation and acting even though the latter
[provide] evidential proof for Him.
This mode, however, is more reliable and noble, that is, where
when we consider the state of existence, we find that existence
inasmuch as it is existence bears witness to Him, while He
thereafter bears witness to all that comes after Him in existence. 54
If true, this characterisation would set the proof apart from all
contemporaneous, cosmological and teleological proofs. In contemporary
terminology, it would qualify it to be an ontological proof, that is to
say, a proof which argues for the existence of God entirely from a priori
premises and makes no use of any premises that derive from our
observation of the world. Recent studies of Avicenna’s proof, however,
differ on whether the argument is cosmological or indeed ontological. 55
As we will see, doubt with regard to the purported fundamental novelty
of Avicenna’s proof was expressed centuries ago.
The proof rests on conceptions that, Avicenna contends, are primary
in the mind, intuited without need of sensory perception and mental
cogitation, namely ‘‘the existent’’ and ‘‘the necessary’’. The conception
‘‘the possible’’, being what is neither necessary nor impossible, is either
equally primary, or derived directly from the conception ‘‘the necessary’’.
An existent, by virtue of itself, is either possibly existent, or
necessarily existent. If we posit an existent that is necessary in itself,
then, Avicenna argues, it will have to be uncaused, absolutely simple,
one and unique. If we posit an existent that is possible in itself, it will
have to depend for its existence on another existent. The latter will be its
cause, not in the sense of being an antecedent accidental cause for its
temporal generation, but as a coexistent essential cause for its continuous
existence. If this cause is itself a possible existent, it will have to
exist by virtue of another. The series of actual existents, Avicenna
argues, cannot continue ad infinitum, but must terminate in an
uncaused existent that is necessary in itself.
But why does a possible existent require a cause to exist? Avicenna
proves this using the argument from particularisation, apparently
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