Recovering Causality? Ibn Taymiyya on the Creation of the World

Most philosophical and theological conceptions on causality (taʿlīl) within the Islamic context are related to one of the subjects that has received most attention in scholarly literature, namely, the creation of the world. Given the enormous amount of literature that exists on causality, creation, and the nature of God as creator within the Islamic context, in this chapter I do not intend to reconstruct in detail the arguments of Avicenna (d. 1037), al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), Averroes (d. 1098), and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209). Nevertheless, I shall revisit some of their views to introduce the discussion I want to undertake, that is, the recovery of causality in the 14th-century religious controversial thinker Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). For Ibn Taymiyya, both philosophy (falsafa) and theology (kalām) were two innovative disciplines that encroached upon traditional views of religion. One would expect, from someone engaged to traditional Islam, that he would advocate creatio ex nihilo. However, Ibn Taymiyya was opposed to both the kalāmic notion of creatio ex nihilo and Avicenna’s conception of eternal emanation. While Ibn Taymiyya had plenty of disagreements with the philosophers, he endorsed perpetual creation, an idea already found in Avicenna and Averroes. Several works have recently been published pointing out the influence of Averroes on Ibn Taymiyya. It is well-known that Averroes refuted al-Ghazālī’s denial of natural causality. In addition to Averroes, Ibn Taymiyya, an ‘anti-philosophical’ thinker, also recovered the notion of causality. Here I discuss to what extent Ibn Taymiyya takes up causality as understood by Averroes and to what extent he breaks away from him. ©Routledge