An Evaluation of Ibn Rushd’s Responses to Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā Regarding the Theory of the Distinction of Existence from Quiddity and its Accidents
Subject Areas : Comparative studies in the field of history of philosophy
Ghasem Pourhasan
1
,
Nahid Sookhtanloo
2
1 - Associate Professor, Philosophy Department, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
2 - MA in Islamic Philosophy and Kalam, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Quiddity, occurrence, Existence, Ibn Rushd, Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā,
Abstract :
The discussion of existence and quiddity and the relationship between them is one of the fundamental debates in philosophy, and various portraits of this relationship can be shown in distinct natural, logical, and philosophical molds. The word “distinct” is a homonym in these cases and has a particular meaning in each one. However, these meanings have been frequently confused with each other in the history of philosophy. One of the innovations of Islamic philosophy is the theory of the distinction of existence from quiddity, which was only possible in the light of understanding the meaning of the truth of existence. Islamic philosophers, particularly Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, tried to perceive existence differently from Aristotle and not to reduce the question of being to the whatness of objects because of their epistemological distance from the Greek tradition in philosophy. Nevertheless, this approach has also had its own critics. One of the philosophers who criticized the distinction of quiddity from existence is Ibn Rushd. He accused Ibn Sīnā of misunderstanding and heresy regarding the relationship between existence, quiddity, and accidents of existence and believed that Ibn Sīnā had confused the different meanings of existence and the one and had fallen in the trap of sophistry due to homonymy. Ibn Rushd maintained that the origin of the formation of objects is substance and considered existence to be merely a concept that can be abstracted from existing objects. His main criticism of Ibn Sīnā concerning this problem was that viewing existence as an accident for quiddity leads to several misconceptions such as equating existence with substance. However, Ibn Rushd himself had in fact failed to understand the meaning of existence as an accident in Ibn Sīnā’s view. He believed that Ibn Sīnā had equated existence and accident in the sense of a quiddative affair with each other, while Ibn Sīnā’s intention of occurrence of existence to quiddity as an accident was its addition to quiddity.
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