this issue
next article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: God's Knowledge of Particulars
Subtitle: Avicenna, Kalām, and the Post-Avicennian Synthesis
Author(s): BENEVICH, Fedor
Journal: Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales
Volume: 86    Issue: 1   Date: 2019   
Pages: 1-47
DOI: 10.2143/RTPM.86.1.3285913

Abstract :
The question whether God knows particular individuals has traditionally attracted the attention of Islamic scholars: Does the perishability of worldly individuals entail problems about the perishability of God’s corresponding knowledge? Can one eternally know that Zayd will arrive tomorrow to the city? In this paper, I systemically and historically analyze (1) how post-Avicennian philosophers distinguished between two pre-Avicennian kalām views on whether such knowledge is eternal or perishable; (2) how they regarded Avicenna’s famous theory that God knows particulars qua universals as connected to the pre-Avicennian kalām debate; (3) and how the authors such as Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) and Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1191) attempted to synthesize Avicenna and kalām epistemology in their account of God’s knowledge as relation or as presence.

Download article