Abstract

This article offers a way of approaching the question of causality in Ibn ʿ Arabī’s relational and processual metaphysical system. Ibn ʿ Arabī’s metaphysics is relational in the sense that entities are perceived as the totality of their relationships to God. The Divine Names are theological categories denoting these relations. It is processual in that it perceives the world as the multiplicity of the incessant and ever-changing process of the manifestations of the divine qualities. The world is recreated anew at each moment and entities are societies of divine acts or theophanies. In this framework, causal power is attributed to God and causality describes the regularity and predictability of the related theophanic individualities. The article, then, turns to examine how Ibn ʿArabī presents a participatory account of freedom in accordance with his understanding of causality. The paper, first, briefly summarizes different accounts of causality offered by Muslim theologians and philosophers before Ibn ʿArabī. The second section introduces some relevant aspects of Ibn ʿArabī’s metaphysics for our discussion and rethinks the question of causality within this larger framework. The third section discusses the question of freedom and responsibility of the moral agents. Finally, the paper offers a comparative examination of Ibn ʿArabī’s theory of causality.