SFII-UF 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Polymath
Document Summary
Averroes was a polymath (much learned, various fields), much like aristotle. Grenada, cordoba, sevilla, three important cities in islamic spain. Aristotle: form and matter are conjoined, and there are no forms apart from their material. Ghazali dislikes metaphysics, he says that philosophers don"t think logically about it. How can multiplicity stem from a single being. God has a will, except it is a divine will, different from the rest of us. Agency (natural, etc) are forms of the efficient cause. Hard determinists believe that things are already determined. Voluntarism: everything that happens is based on our agency. God"s agency is different because god doesn"t change, while nature does. There are things that we don"t understand, and there is a willing agency, that we don"t understand. Divine agency does not follow the rules of metaphysics. If god is eternal, then the world cannot be.