Existence and Knowledge

Existence and Knowledge

A comparison of Mulla Sadra's and William Rowe's Perspectives on "God's freedom"

Document Type : Research Article

Author
Reza Naghavi
Ph.D. in philosophy of religion, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
10.22096/ek.2024.2005514.1515
Abstract
Mulla Sadra and William Rowe, representing divergent philosophical traditions, addressed the issue of "God's freedom" and arrived at disparate conclusions. Both philosophers concur that God's will for the creation of the world possesses an eternal necessity. However, their dissimilarity arises from Mulla Sadra's adherence to a compatibilist perspective on freedom. He believes that as in the case of man, where the necessity per aliud of the will does not conflict with the freedom, in the case of God, the eternal necessity of the will does not conflict with his freedom. Conversely, William Rowe, an advocate of the libertarian concept of freedom, posits that the eternal necessity of God's will leaves no room for His freedom. Drawing a parallel between the necessity per aliud in human beings and the eternal necessity in God, according to Rowe, is an erroneous analogy. In this article, through an examination of these philosophers' arguments, we arrive at the stance that William Rowe's position holds greater defensibility. Firstly, his viewpoint aligns more harmoniously with our linguistic and moral intuitions. Secondly, there are sound justifications for distinguishing between necessity per aliud and eternal necessiity, in terms of determinism
Keywords
Mollasadra
William Rowe
God's freedom
necessity
possibility

Subjects

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Existence and Knowledge
Volume 9, no. 2 - Serial Number 18
October 2022
Pages 189-209