Abu al-Hasan al-Aszari

Dzieła

• ok. 925Księga błysków (Kitab al-Luma‘)

  Krótka summa przeciw mutazylitom: wieczne atrybuty Boga, niestworzony Koran, widzenie Boga oraz czyny ludzkie stworzone przez Boga i przyswajane przez ludzi.

Stanowisko

Al-Ashari kept the Mutazilite method of rational argument but used it to defend positions held by the traditionalists, the “people of hadith” associated with Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Against the Mutazila he held that God’s attributes – knowledge, power, will, speech – are real and eternal, not merely names for his essence; that the Qur’an, as God’s speech, is uncreated; that believers will see God in the hereafter; and that acts are good or evil because God commands or forbids them, not because of a standard of justice that binds God. His best-known doctrine concerns human action. God creates every event, including human acts; humans do not create their acts but “acquire” (kasb) them, and through this acquisition they are responsible for them. Critics then and later asked whether acquisition adds anything to determinism, and a later proverb called something obscure harder to grasp than al-Ashari’s acquisition. Later Asharites, above all al-Baqillani and al-Juwayni, combined these positions with an atomism in which God creates atoms and their accidents anew at every moment, so that what we call natural causes are only regular sequences of divine acts. Al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wrote within this tradition, and together with the Maturidis the Asharis became the main school of Sunni theology. Maimonides discussed the Asharite view of providence and the occasionalism of the kalam critically in the Guide of the Perplexed, Averroes attacked Asharite arguments in his Exposition of the Methods of Proof, and Ibn Taymiyya opposed the school from a Hanbali position.

Życie i kontekst

Abu l-Hasan Ali ibn Ismail al-Ashari was born in Basra in 873 or 874 (260 AH) and traced his descent to Abu Musa al-Ashari, a Companion of the Prophet. He studied kalam, rational theology, with the leading Mutazilite of Basra, Abu Ali al-Jubbai, who according to some reports was also his stepfather, and was for many years his best-known pupil. Around 912 (300 AH), at about forty, he broke with the Mutazila. The sources tell of dreams in which the Prophet told him to defend the transmitted traditions, and of a public renunciation in the mosque of Basra. He later moved to Baghdad, where he died in 935 or 936 (324 AH). Later lists credit him with up to three hundred works. Only a few survive, among them the Maqalat al-islamiyyin, a survey of the theological views of Muslims, the Kitab al-Luma and al-Ibana, whose authenticity and relation to his other writings are debated.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Doctrines of the Muslims (Maqalat al-islamiyyin)
• The Book of Highlights (Kitab al-Lumaʿ)
• Elucidation of the Foundations of Religion (al-Ibana ʿan usul al-diyana; authenticity and dating debated)
• Vindication of Engaging in Kalam (Istihsan al-khawd fi ʿilm al-kalam; attributed)