The first and second proofs for the world's pre-eternity in al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-falasafah
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Authors
Mall, Zakariah Dawood
Issue Date
2009-08-25T10:44:43Z
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
Birth of the world , Eternal , Attribute , Matter , Space , Time , Logical , Argument , Philosophers , Allah
Alternative Title
Abstract
The Philosophers such as ibn-Sina had maintained that time and space were co-eternal with Allah, emanating by necessity from His Attributes, and not being the results of a deliberate act of creation. This must be the case, for otherwise nothing would have been present to induce Him to create the world after a period of non-existence.
Al-Ghazali's refutation of this is that Allah had decreed in pre-eternity that the world would materialize at a future, predetermined date, selecting an instance for its birth from a myriad like-instances by exercising His Free Will and manifesting therewith a cause with a delayed effect. The Philosophers' explanation of local phenomena as resulting from the perpetual motion of the spheres is flawed, since perpetual celestial motions would result in perpetual, not transient phenomena.
Time, the measure of motion, does not extend beyond the physical realm. Time, and hence motion, is finite.
Description
Citation
Mall, Zakariah Dawood (2009) The first and second proofs for the world's pre-eternity in al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-falasafah, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/555>