The Reasons for and the Consequences of Averroes’ Saying Essence to God Abstract

Abstract

This article deals with the relative reasons and consequences of Averroes’ saying God the essence. Thus, based on the example of Averroes, it is desired to show that the philosophers’ conception of God is actually directly related to the subject of metaphysics. The distinctions between potential and actual, being-essence and matter-form, which are thought to have strong forms of explanation, will be applied when needed. According to Averroes, his research of being is basically an investigation of essence. Although the concept of being/existence does not represent a higher level of being above the substance, it takes place in metaphysics as a higher concept with different meanings. However, according to Ibn Avicenna, the existing meets a higher level of being than the substance, and therefore its inquiry cannot be only the one for substance. Therefore, according to him, the subject of metaphysics is not a substance qua substance. In short, the possible reasons for Averroes to call God essence are as follows: First, God is the most suitable for the definition of essence in all existence. The second is that, keeping other meanings of being in mind, he accepted the concept of “mawjūd” as a mental concept that has no reality in the external world, that is, as a genus, and therefore only recognized the substance as reality. The third is the idea that the celestial bodies move endlessly. The fourth is his view on the relationship between universals and discrete entities and tangible individual essences. Following Aristotle, Averroes thinks that universals and ideas do not contribute to the existence of individual essences. The possible consequences of Averroes’ calling God a substance are as follows: The first is his Hanbalī attitude towards God in his books Fasl al-maqāl and al-Kashf an manāhij al-adilla, which he wrote on the relationship between religion and philosophy. Secondly, what was mentioned above as a cause, is a cyclical thing that can be expressed as a result here. In other words, while accepting the celestial bodies and the universe as eternal, causes God to be called essence, calling God essence results in the idea that the universe exists only apart and disconnected from him under the influence of God. The third is his rejection of the doctrines of creation out of nothing and sudūr (emanation). The refusal to create out of nothing is based on a general ontological principle -as the ancient philosophers openly expressed- “absolute absence cannot be the source of existence”.