Chance and Accident From Ibn Sina' View

Salem, Maryam; Akbarian, Reza

doi:10.30497/ap.2008.67982

Chance and Accident From Ibn Sina' View

Document Type : Scholarly Article

Authors

Maryam Salem ¹
Reza Akbarian ²

¹ Ph.D. student of Philosophy of Philosophy, Tarbiat Modarres University

² Associate / Tarbiat Moddares University

10.30497/ap.2008.67982

Abstract

Among those people who regard the existence of whole world as deriving from accident and disregard the law of causality, some only attribute the emergence of individual beings to accident and maintain that in the genesis of material individual entities we can not disregard accident and defend the concept of causal necessity.
Aristotle besides believing in the law of causality throughout the universe, understands chance ad accident among causes.
But he does not believe in the conformity and affinity of chance and accident with necessity and considers accident and necessity as two opposite poles. Also Ibn Sina following the head of Peripatetics deals with the problem of chance and accident and thinks it does not contradict the law of causality. But in the framework of his specific cosmology and a different perception of existential causality explains them and does not consider them the real and positive causes of things and somewhat proceeds the discussion more successfully than Aristotle. But finally it is worth discussing which philosophical problem makes Aristotle and Ibn Sina to adopt such a position as regards chance and accident. This subject needs more investigation in the case of Ibn Sina. Because by accepting the best possible world, existence and sovereignty of causal necessity in the world and fore knowledge of Most High to creatures, there remains no place for such theories as chance and accident which has a more vulgar rather than a philosophical aspect and is deriving from man's ignorance with true causes.

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