Abstract:
Qāḍī Sa‘īd Qumī is one of the greatest philosophers and mystics of Iran during the Safavid era. He was competent in peripatetic and Illumination philosophies, and had mystic tendencies. With regard to the divine attributes, he believes in the negative divinity and believes that what we understand from the existence and attributes of the possible beings cannot be attributed to God. The reasons he gives in for this is that God is the pure Being and has no attribute, and the human intellect does not have the capability to understand God and His attributes. With regard to the ontology of attributes, Qāḍī deems detestable the belief in the addition and sameness of attributes with God, and favors the representativeness of attributes for the divine essence. He extensively discusses the divine knowledge attribute and believes that God’s knowledge is not intuitive, acquired, or differentiated (the views commonly hold by philosophers). This study aimed to adopt a critical view to examine Qāḍī’s viewpoint in the divine attributes’ domain – especially the divine knowledge attribute – and to show that despite its congruence with the outer appearance of some narrations, his viewpoint suffers from some internal weaknesses such as adherence to some questionable principles – such as belief in the overall difference between God and possible beings – and disagrees with some intellectual principles and narrations.
Machine summary:
The present paper aims to critically examine Qazi’s views in the realm of attributes, especially the attribute of divine knowledge, and to show that his views, despite being consistent with the apparent meaning of some narratives, suffer from a series of internal weaknesses and are inconsistent with some rational foundations and a series of narratives due to his adherence to certain principles, including the belief in a complete distinction between God and possible beings.
He considers the attribution of present and acquired knowledge to be specific to possible beings and, with reasons, did not consider them worthy of being attributed to God. Qazi, unlike those who considered God’s prior knowledge to be generality in detail, believed that this view was also incompatible with rational proofs and narrations.
In explaining his argument based on the impossibility of rational knowledge of God’s essence and essential attributes – in addition to referring to some narrations – he adhered to the following principles: First principle: The impossibility of describing God through attributes (and lam tahut bi al-sifat) (Qomi, 1415 AH, vol.
He also considers himself among the people of contemplation and says: They believe in verbal sharing and a distinction between God’s attributes and the attributes of creatures, and according to the hadiths of the Imams (peace be upon them) and rational arguments, they consider the establishment of essential attributes for God to be impossible and believe in the denial of attributes from the Essence of Truth (Qomi, 1415 AH, vol.
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