The Philosophical Proof for God’s Existence between Europe and the Islamic World: Reflections on an Entangled History of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance

Abstract

Abstract The Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.