Theory of action in Arab Muslim and Samaritan primary sources

The article examines a number of Arabic medieval concepts that explain the metaphysical foundations of human action. The author analyzes a complex of ontological problems associated with the origin of acts, their causal relationship with human and divine wills, and explicates the paradigmatic differences between Arab-Muslim and Samaritan meta­physical models. In particular, it is proved that the autochthonous Arab ontology is based on the principle of accidental discreteness, according to which any act should be consid­ered a phenomenal manifestation of an elementary actional complex – acts of volition, power and action itself. According to the Mutakallims, who developed their metaphysical models independently of the epigonic constructions of Arab Peripatetism and Ishraqism, each of the three elements of an act is an independent accident produced either by God or man; they are connected due to reasons not so much of ontological as of correlational or­der. Philosophical Sufism, in turn, insists on the autonomy of human action and human will, antagonistic in relation to the “fixed prototypes” of universe objects established in the self of God. As for the Samaritan “philosophy of action”, it develops, in general, two lines of speculation among the Mutakallims – deterministic and Mu’tazili

Accidental · Autonomy · Metaphysics · Ontology · Speculation · Islamic Thought and Society Studies · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Social Sciences and Humanities