The Principle of Causality and the Problem of Creation in Avicenna’s Approach

Causality as an existential cause serves as a basis for Avicenna’s philosophy and is one of the vital principles of philosophical and rational problems. As a rationalist philosopher, Avicenna has proposed some new insights including the idea that causality is based on existence. Proposing the distinction between existence and essence, he has provided a new model for the God-world relationship. He believes that the relationship between the creator and the created can be explained by examining the causality relationship. Among different causes, he prioritizes the efficient cause (Agent) which makes things exist out of nothing. As to the God-world relationship explanation, he argues that God governs the world of beings as the cause of causes. As for its existence and non-existence, the Being as the effect and the possible (non-aseity) needs a preponderance (Murajjih) that is the cause of causes. Avicenna believes that God’s essential aseity entails God’s necessitated existence. Not only he defines the dependency of the caused on the cause as “the necessity by virtue of another” (Wujub Bilghair) or existential possibility in Sadra’s words, but he emphasizes the existential relationship between the caused and the cause. Then he opens a clearer horizon towards the primacy of being which had a great impact on Islamic philosophers as well as Western philosophers like Thomas Aquinas.