Islam, Causality, and Freedom

Özgür Koca
Hardback, 296 pages
9781108496346

From the Medieval to the Modern Era

"This learned and perspicacious book is one of the most important studies on Islamic theology and philosophy to be published in the last decade." – Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl

In this volume, Ozgur Koca offers a comprehensive survey of Islamic accounts of causality and freedom from the medieval to the modern era, as well as contemporary relevance. His book is an invitation for Muslims and non-Muslims to explore a rich, but largely forgotten, aspect of Islamic intellectual history. Here, he examines how key Muslim thinkers, such as Ibn Sina, Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Arabi, Suhrawardi, Jurjani, Mulla Sadra and Nursi, among others, conceptualized freedom in the created order as an extension of their perception of causality. Based on this examination, Koca identifies and explores some of the major currents in the debate on causality and freedom. He also discusses the possible implications of Muslim perspectives on causality for contemporary debates over religion and science.

Contents
1. Causality in the early period: Muʿtazilites and the birth of Ashʿarite occasionalism
2. Towards a synthesis of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic understandings of causality: the case of Ibn Sīnā
3. Occasionalism in the middle period: the cases of Ghazālī and Rāzī
4. The first as pure act and causality: the case of Ibn Rushd
5. Light, existence, and causality: the Illimunationist School and the case of Suhrawardī
6. The world as a theophany and causality: Sufi metaphysics and the case of Ibn ʿArabī
7. Continuities and developments in Sufi metaphysics: the cases of Qūnawī and Qayṣarī
8. Towards an occasionalist philosophy of science: the case of Jurjānī
9. Causality and freedom in later Islamic philosophy: the case of Mullā Ṣadrā
10. Occasionalism in the modern context: the case of Said Nursi
11. A discussion on Islamic theories of causality in the modern context.