Online research in philosophy

The present work deals with establishing of the exact meaning of the technical terms used by al-Kindi in the longest of his extant philosophical treatises, The Letter on the First Philosophy. On many occasions, however, when the meaning of a term appeared to be obscure in the Letter, the evidence of al-Kindī's usage of such a term has had to be brought forward from his other philosophical works in order to elucidate its meaning as accurately as possible.

In his essay, “Dispensing with Existence,” D.C. Williams says the following: There is no more thorough-paced philosopher than Leibniz, and the relations of essence and existence are the very crux of his system; yet he tells us almost nothing about Existence except that it is contingent and a predicate, and he half retracts these. He never intimates, for example, how he can tell that he is a member of the existent world and not a mere possible monad on the shelf of essence. (Williams 1962, pp. 751-52) Is this a fair charge? Does Leibniz in fact give us no way to make the distinction between our existence in the actual world and our perceptions of a world not actual, when we are merely on the shelf of essence? What could a Leibnizian response to this charge look like? Many of us interested in Leibniz’s philosophy have thought about his views on modality and the extent to which Leibniz adumbrates counterpart-theory. In this paper, I want to look at Williams’s criticism and certain issues related to it, and I want to examine epistemological issues involved in accounts of actuality and modal realism.

In God existence is the same as essence; or—the same thing ·put differently·—it is essential for God to exist. So God is a necessary being, ·a being who exists necessarily·. Created things are contingent, i.e. their existence doesn’t follow from their essence. which comes to..

Thomas Aquinas holds that the existence of God is self-evident in itself (because God’s essence is his existence) but not to us (since we do not know the divine essence). Giles of Rome agrees with the first part of Thomas’s claim, but he parts company with Aquinas by maintaining that God’s existence is self-evident to the wise. Since the wise can know that God is his existence, they cannot think of him as not existing. This paper reexamines Thomas’s teaching in the light of Giles’s criticisms. By examining closely what is involved in the claim that God’s essence is his existence, and how one’s knowledge of this claim is related to the knowledge that God exists, it argues that Thomas’s position has the resources to withstand Giles’s objections.

CHAPTER ONE Al-Kindl and Kind! Studies: A Resume THE NAME OF Abu Yusuf Yacqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, "the philosopher of the Arabs", is well known to students ...

Al-Kindi was influenced by two Greek traditions in his attempts to explain vision, light and color. Most obviously, his works on optics are indebted to Euclid and, perhaps indirectly, to Ptolemy. But he also knew some works from the Aristotelian tradition that touch on the nature of color and vision. Al-Kindi explicitly rejects the Aristotelian account of vision in his De Aspectibus, and adopts a theory according to which we see by means of a visual ray emitted from the eye. But in the same work, al-Kindi draws on Philoponus.

The paper discusses al-Kindi's response to doctrines held by contemporary theologians of the Mu‘tazilite school: divine attributes, creation, and freedom. In the first section it is argued that, despite his broadly negative theology, al-Kindi recognizes a special kind of “essential” positive attribute belonging to God. The second section argues that al-Kindi agreed with the Mu‘tazila in holding that something may not yet exist but still be an object of God's knowledge and power (as the Mu‘tazila put it, that “non-being” is a “thing”). Also it presents a new parallel between al-Kindi and John Philoponus. The third section gives an interpretation of al-Kindi as a compatibilist, in other words as holding that humans may be free even though their actions are necessitated. In all three cases, it is argued, al-Kindi is close to the Mu‘tazilite point of view, though he departs from them in the arguments he gives for that point of view.

Socrates, for example, has an essence that includes more than his human nature, which is his specific essence; he has an essence proper to himself alone, an essence that cannot be had by anyone else. Although Socrates does have singular (individualized) forms, his singular essence is not a form—there is no form Socrateity for the singular essence parallelling the form humanity for the specific essence. Instead, Socrates has his singular essence in consequence of being an individual, that is, in consequence of having an ‘individual differentia’. Scotus further rejects the distinction between identity and individuality, maintaining that what it is for Socrates to be Socrates is the same as what it is for him to be an individual. Socrates, in the end, is his singular essence.