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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

209385

Potentiality in classical arabic thought

Taneli Kukkonen

pp. 95-121

Abstract

Medieval Arabic discussions concerning potentiality drew from two starkly different, indeed opposing sources. Within the intellectual lineage of falsafa, which historically speaking forms a continuation of the project of Greek philosophy on Arabic soil, what we find are a series of elaborations on the Aristotelian theory of potentiality and actuality, sometimes supplemented by considerations stemming from the late antique appropriation of the Aristotelian concept by Platonist commentators. These developments culminate in the works of Ibn Sīnā, or the Latin Avicenna (980–1037 CE), who presents the Aristotelian notion of potentiality in a thoroughgoing and novel fashion in the Metaphysics of his Healing. Another indigenous tradition of reasoning, however, exists within Islamic thought: this is the speculative theology of kalām, and within it a very different discussion emerges, one that problematizes the very notion of worldly entities having autonomous powers that would be explanatory of occurrences in the physical world. The theologians' common (though not unanimous) denial of potentialities within created reality was destined to collide with the philosophers' insistence on the explanatory primacy of potentiality. It did so quite spectacularly in the famous debate between al-Ghazālī (1056–1111) and Ibn Rushd (the Latin Averroes, 1126–1198) recorded in the former's Incoherence of the Philosophers and the latter's Incoherence of the Incoherence. What comes to the fore in the works of Averroes in particular is the role that potentialities have to play in Aristotelian explanations of nature.

Publication details

Published in:

Engelhard Kristina, Quante Michael (2018) Handbook of potentiality. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 95-121

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-024-1287-1_5

Full citation:

Kukkonen Taneli (2018) „Potentiality in classical arabic thought“, In: K. Engelhard & M. Quante (eds.), Handbook of potentiality, Dordrecht, Springer, 95–121.