A breath of philosophy 9: How and Why Did God Create the Universe?

In Islamic philosophy, God is defined as wajib al-wujud, or necessary being. He does not need another being to exist; in this respect, he is also called "Wajibu'l-wujud bizatihi". Everything outside of God is called the universe and needs another being to exist, hence it is also called wujib al-wujud bigayrihi. 

This point is important because, as we have stated in our previous articles on "A Breath of Philosophy", there is no unity, identity and interpenetration (ittihad and hulul) between God and the universe. Prophets provide the physical and metaphysical connection through an intermediary called Ruhu'l-kuds and/or Gabriel. Since there will be no more prophets, wise people after them, through the active intellect, provide this connection between the physical and metaphysical realms through the power of contemplation and imagination, and can reach the stage of timelessness and spacelessness. We will gradually discuss the efforts of the Peripatetic philosophers to explain the connection between God and the universe through the doctrine of emanation, the positions of the Illuminationist and Akbarian traditions in the face of this point of view, and the meanings they give to the concepts of philosopher, muhaqqqik alim and mutellih in the following articles. 

Introduction to Philosophy and Classification of Sciences with al-Fārābī

Al-Fārābī begins his philosophical analyses with the Enumeration of Sciences, first making a binary main classification as theoretical and practical sciences, and then analyzing the sciences in five sections: language, logic, educational/positive, theological, and civil sciences. First, he gives information about the science of language/language. Before moving on to the process of conception and affirmation, he explains the understanding of language in society, the principles of words, the principles of singular and compound words, and emphasizes the importance of writing down his thoughts properly.

The Key to Happiness Logic

The aim of philosophy is to achieve happiness (tahsil al-saade) and logic is the key to it (miftahu al-saade), explaining its relationship with linguistics. Science/discipline is analyzed both as a science and as an art. In this context, as an art, he gives the laws that, in their entirety, serve to correct the intellect and guide man to the right path and the truth in all reasonable things that can be made wrong, and the laws that protect and preserve man from error, slippage and mistake in reasonable things. It also shows the laws that are used to test a person who has done wrong, if one is not sure whether he has done wrong in the intelligibles or not.

The distinction between positive and human (spiritual/spiritual) sciences, the concepts of understanding and explanation, and the importance of hermeneutic readings in modern philosophy are well known. What Muslim philosophers did in the early period emphasizes the necessity of knowing the sciences of number/arithmetic, hendese/geometry, optics/menazir (landscapes) or perspective, stars, music, weights, mechanics/hyel/measures in order to explain how the universe was created. 

When we recall Plato's statement that those who do not know geometry should not come to his academy, it is good to remember that Muslim philosophers emphasized hendese/geometry and arithmetic and studied music within this framework, both as theoreticians and practitioners. 

Apart from the possible misuse of the science of the stars, such as astrology, they emphasize the teaching-based part of the science of the stars and examine the objects on the earth and in the sky at three main points. By the science of weights, they mean those that can be measured and the methods of lifting heavy objects and tools for transporting them from one place to another.  

After explaining the science of nature in detail to explain how the universe was created, he analyzes the divine sciences in the context of the question of why it was created. At the beginning, he states what he means by the necessary being itself. Then he emphasizes how the universe, i.e. beings other than God, emerged from him and how he benefited from their existence. Finally, after answering the how and why questions, the civil sciences (fiqh-theology-ethics) and practical philosophy are grounded. The difference between true happiness and the happiness that is perceived as such is emphasized. It is emphasized which issues will lead to the real one.  It explains that the social dimension of this can be achieved through the presidential system and the possibility of its virtuous and ignorant parts. To summarize, in order to explain how God created the universe through positive sciences and to understand why He created it, spiritual/spiritual/theological disciplines are important. (Abu Nasr al-Fārābī, Enumeration of Sciences, copyright and Translation M. Uyanık, A. Akyol, Elis Publishing House, Ankara 2019, 73 et al).

Three Styles of Contemplation as a Struggle of Paradigms

Here lies the importance of the fact that the last divine presentation of the truth was in Arabic, and that people until the Day of Judgment consistently justified in their own languages how the God-universe/human connection was established and why it was created. In the context of horizontal and vertical differentiation in the central Islamic geography, we read this as "The Conceptions of Islam as Revealed by the Arab, Persian and Turkish Minds". This is because grammar is the rule of speaking without errors, and logic is the rule of thinking correctly. Language is an external speech and logic is an internal speech, that is, the relationship of logic to concepts is the same as the relationship of language to words.  

This is why al-Fārābī emphasizes that grammar contains the rules of a nation's language, while logic expresses the laws of the thought of all humanity. He emphasizes the universal nature of logic by taking the side of his teacher Abū Bishr Mettā, who rejects Abu Said al-Sirafī's view that logic is specific to Greek language and thought; however, he does not neglect to work to overcome his teacher's shortcomings in the discussion process. 

In order to close the gap in al-Fārābī's teacher al-Mattā's statement, "I am a logician, I am not interested in grammar, because the logician does not need it, but the linguist needs logic, logic investigates thought, while linguistics investigates the word," al-Fārābī may have first entered the enumeration of sciences with linguistics and grounded its relation to nahw in detail. As a matter of fact, Ibn Sina also participated in this discussion and tried to clarify the position of logic by showing that it has a separate subject from language. 

The disciples of Abū Bishr al-Mattā, one of the logicians who founded the Baghdad school of philosophy, emphasized that the subject of logic was "universal meanings and the words that signify them" and thus wanted to show that logic did not study words in the same way as linguistics. Despite this, words still remained the subject of logic. 

The same attitude of clarifying the subject matter of this science can be seen in Avicenna's works. However, unlike his predecessors, he was quite disturbed by the association of the subject of logic with words and criticized the previous philosophers in this regard. According to Avicenna, the solution is to deal with the subject matter of logic independently of words, and the doctrine of the "second intelligibles" provided a strong argument for his idea of "abstracting logic from language in terms of its subject matter". These discussions are important because they are the first emphasis on the use of mathematical and algebraic language in modern and symbolic logic today.

Finally, without digressing, when we say that al-Fārābī's questions about Sirāfi's relationship between prepositions and logic entered the agenda of European logicians with the term "syncategoremate" from the 13th century onwards, and that it was the subject of 19th century logic and language studies, it is seen how seminal the debates of that period were.  (Osman Bilen, "A Discussion on Logic and Grammar between Abū Bishr Mattā and Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī," Islāmiyāt (7/2), 2004, 155-172, Harun Kuşlu, "The Subject of Logic from Abū Bishr Mattā to Avicenna: Words and Phrases or Second Reasonable Meanings?". Journal of Islamic Studies, 2019: 1-28; http://byvm.kapadokya.edu.tr/1.-METTA-B.-YUNUS-ILE-EBU-SAID-ES-SIRAFI-ARASINDAKI-MANTIK-DIL-TARTISMASI) 

Based on this information, we determine one more reason for taking al-Fārābī as a starting point in the effort to re-establish philosophy in Anatolia by examining the conceptions of Islam put forward by the Three Ways of Contemplation, that is, the Arab, Turkish and Persian Minds. As a Persian (non-Arab), al-Fārābī's construction of language-thought-logic has a significant impact. We care about his following the Syriac linguist and teacher Matta, but we say that what Sirafi said in the debates is very important. Because we see that there was an Arab logic, Greek logic and Byzantine logic in terms of mentality at that time.  As a matter of fact, it is seen that the sons of Umayyah had political and commercial relations with the Byzantines before they became Muslims, and this had an impact on the Umayyad state they established. 

With the Abbasids and the increasing influence of non-Arabs, Persians and then Turks (as Persians), it is possible to speak of an Eastern state in the sense of Khorasan, the "Birthplace of Light", and in this sense, it is possible to speak of the conceptions of Islam produced by Arab, Persian and Turkish mentalities. It is even possible to read it as an effort to get rid of the Persian influence, especially the Persian influence in Khorasan, with the effort to reduce the Persian influence and to update the Hellenic-Byzantine data through the translations made by Caliph Mamun in the Bayt al-Hikme, which he systematized. 

From this point of view, we examine the philosophical accumulation produced by the Turkish intellect due to the fact that the language of science was Arabic and the language of literature was Persian, and we examine the Sunni Islam in the Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids who took over the space vacated by the Samanids. We try to understand and explain the formation of Turkish Philosophy by investigating the projection of the Seljuks (Great, Anatolian, Iranian and Syrian Seljuks) who became independent from the Ghaznavids, the impact of this accumulation on the Ottoman Empire and its continuity in the Republic of Turkey. 

In this context, we examine Yassawi's Divan, Yusuf Has Hacib's Kutadgu Bilig, Edip Ahmet Yükneki's Atabetü'l-Hakaik as the "Founding Texts of Turkish Philosophy", which express in Turkish the "theological (Maturidi) and jurisprudential" (Hanafi) principles necessary to live the Islamic religion. 

Thus, while examining the principles of linguistics and grammar related to words specific to nations, we focus on the logical foundations of how the conceptions of the God-universe-human connection are consistently transformed into external speech and writing.  

We emphasize that the meanings that each society gives to words will vary with the differences of time and space, but we care to present the words used by all nations in a way that can be understood with the data of the science of logic. Thus, we are trying to increase the possible contributions to the process of universalization of a particular/singular conception of meaning and the general philosophical accumulation of humanity.