God’s Knowledge of Particulars:

Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides

Kevjn Lim

This article offers a comparative study of three thinkers

from almost as many intellectual and cultural traditions:
Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and discusses
the extent of the knowledge of particulars which each one
ascribed to God. Avicenna de-reified Aristotle’s abstract
and isolated Prime Mover and argued that God can know
particulars but limited these to universals. Maimonides
disanalogized divine from human knowledge, arguing that
the epistemic mode predicated of mankind cannot be equally
predicated of God, and that God knows particulars qua
particulars even as his Knowing encompasses all of eternity
in a single act of knowledge. Attempting an intermediate
path between the former’s highly discursive reasoning and
the latter’s more scriptural approach, Gersonides postu-
lated that God can know particulars qua particulars—as is
befitting a Perfect Being—but this He does ‘mediately’ as
it were, via the emanative ordering comprising the sepa-
rate intelligences and culminating in the Active Intellect.

F
undamentally underlying the scheme of Arabic philosophy—or
falsafa, building upon its largely Hellenic substrate—are ontol-
ogy and epistemology, being and knowledge, with the latter
typically conditioned by views concerning the former. Here, however,
the focus is on epistemology, or more specifically, God’s knowledge
of particulars. The ramifications of what God can actually know
and what He cannot potentially know are of enormous import to
believers, particularly in view of such issues as providence, reward
and punishment, and prophecy. Like so many fundamental areas of
enquiry, the contours of epistemology were charted out by Aristotle
among the Greeks and given theological value by his Peripatetic
followers (Mashshāʾīyyūn) among Arabic-writing Muslims. Yet,
while the Stagirite adopted an extremely restricted but nonetheless
deferential conception of the Prime Mover, subsequent generations of
philosophers endeavored to reconcile philosophically demonstrable

Journal of Islamic Philosophy 5 (2009): 75–98.

© 2009 by the Journal of Islamic Philosophy, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1536-4569
76 Kevjn Lim

truths with religious dictates, in the process enriching the arena of

intellectual debate.
This article examines the scope and nature of divine knowledge
as set forth by three medieval philosophers, one Muslim Persian
from Bukhārā, one Cordovan-born Jew who found refuge in Fusṭaṭ
(Cairo), and the third a Jewish native of Provence. The choice is
hardly arbitrary: Avicenna, as we see below, systematized Arabic
philosophy and set the tenor for much of the philosophical debate
to follow.1 Although his views on divine epistemology (like his
views concerning the primacy of essence over existence) provoked
rigorous criticism, his wider genius earned him admiration in even
greater measure.
Maimonides is generally considered the most venerated of
Jewish philosophers, both medieval and modern. Though Aristo-
telian in many ways, his was a vocation fully devoted to the Jewish
faith. Gersonides stands out for having dedicated an entire work
to the current problematic. If Maimonides allowed the Torah to
prevail against unsolvable philosophical issues, Gersonides did
likewise, with the exception that he sought recourse to rigorous
reasoning in the process. To this end, we draw upon their respective
texts: the fourth section of Avicenna’s principal Peripatetic opus,
al-Shifāʾ: al-Ilāhiyyāt (The Metaphysics of the Healing), among
others; Maimonides’ monumental Moreh Nevukhim (The Guide
of the Perplexed), addressed to a protégé; and the third treatise
of Gersonides’ six-part Milḥamot ha-Shem (The Wars of the Lord
Treatise Three: On God’s Knowledge).
Avicenna: God Knows Particulars via Universals
Just as he was the first among Muslim philosophers to finesse
the ontological distinctions between essence and existence as well
as necessary and possible beings, Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn Ibn
Sīnā, 980–1037) treated at length the boundaries of God’s knowledge.
In contrast to the Aristotelian notion of an unconcerned Prime Mover
whose knowledge is circumscribed to His immediate Self,2 Avicenna

1 G. M. Wickens, ed., Avicenna: Scientist and Philosopher (London: Luzac, 1952),

52.
2 A major consequence and perhaps even cause of this theory is that God has
no knowledge of evil in the world; see S. M. Afnan, Avicenna: His Life and
Works (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), 169.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 77

argued that God knows particulars, if only in a universal sense. In

this he came closer to Islam than his illustrious predecessor Abū
Naṣr al-Fārābī.3 The problem required that Avicenna modify, even
if only in part, the implicit Aristotelian denial of divine omniscience
and providence with the Qurʾānic portrayal of God.
An underlying premise may be stated in the following manner.
Since God is pure intellect and thus pure actuality (as opposed to
pure matter and potentiality),4 the mode of knowing most appropri-
ate to Him is intellectual or conceptual, and therefore universal.5
Furthermore, knowledge of particulars presupposes sensory faculties
bound to matter and subject to temporality. Knowledge of universals
on the other hand concerns abstract rules and logical relations
transcending both matter and time. As Amélie-Marie Goichon
observed, this approach attests to Avicenna’s desire to reconcile
“the knowledge ascribed to God by the Qur’an encompassing the
minutest details, and the knowledge attributed to the Necessary
Being by way of philosophical reasoning.”6
Secondly, God’s knowledge is essentially self-knowledge, namely
knowledge of His own essence. In the Treatise on Knowledge (Dānish-
nāma-yi ʿalāʾī), Avicenna defined knowledge as the apprehension
of an object’s form or “true reality” (ḥaqīqat) as separated from its
matter, by the similarly disembodied form of the apprehending
subject.7 Here, his discussion of the human soul as pure form is
pertinent insofar as it leads up to the discussion of the Necessary
Being. “Because it is disjoined [from matter], it is known from itself,

3 S. Nuseibeh, “Epistemology,” ch. 49 in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. S. H.

Nasr and O. Leaman, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1996), 838.
4 Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing (al-Shifāʾ: al-Ilāhiyyāt), trans. M. E.
Marmura (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 284.
5 M. E. Marmura, “Some Aspects of Avicenna’s Theory of God’s Knowledge
of Particulars,” JAOS 82, no. 3 (July–Sept. 1962), 300–1; A. M. Goichon, La
Distinction de l’Essence et de l’Existence d’après Ibn Sīnā (Avicenne) (Paris:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1937), 260, 267.
6 Goichon, Distinction, 267: “Le grand effort de ces pages est un essai de con-
ciliation entre la connaissance attribuée à Dieu par le Coran, s’étendant aux
plus infimes détails, et la connaissance attribuée à l’Etre nécessaire par les
raisonnements des philosophes.”
7 Avicenna, “Treatise on Knowledge (Dānish-nāma-yi ʿalāʾī),” ch. 11 in An
Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, ed. S. H. Nasr and M. Aminrazavi, vol. 1,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 199; Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans.
Marmura, 284–285.
78 Kevjn Lim

from that which is not separated from it, and it is not separated
from itself,” Avicenna wrote. “Hence, its knowing proceeds from
itself and is known to itself.”8 Similarly, in His self-knowledge and
His existence as pure form and hence pure intellect, God is the
Knowing Subject, the Known Object, as well as the Act of Know-
ing, or, in Aristotelian terms, thought thinking itself.9 The charge
of multiplicity is deflected when one considers that, in knowing
himself, Zayd is the knower and the known, and since he knows
himself by means of his intellectual faculty, he is also the act of
apprehension itself—even as Zayd remains Zayd and none other.
Given the Neoplatonic–emanative substrate within which Avicenna
situated his philosophy, by intellecting Himself, God intellects the
totality of existents that emanate from His existential plenitude.
Avicennian ontology introduced the framework for philosophical
debate by asserting that God’s unicity and indivisibility stem from
His essence and existence being identical. If this is true, it follows
that God’s self-intellection also renders His knowledge identical
to His essence.10
Thirdly, unlike man, God “knows all things in one instance,
daf ʿatan waḥidatan, without subjecting His essence to multiplicity
as a result of the many forms.”11 While man acquires knowledge in
a discursive and posterior manner, that is, through observation of
effects by means of the senses or imagination,12 God’s knowledge is
“ontologically and causally prior to the existents.”13 In other words,
creation comes about as a consequence of God’s self-knowledge. “God
knows, as it were, all the necessitated consequences in a timeless
intuition,” Marmura writes. “In other words, there is no discursus
in God’s knowledge.”14 That He knows things other than Himself is

8 Avicenna, “Treatise,” 200.

9 A. J. Arberry, Avicenna on Theology (London: John Murray, 1951), 33–35.
10 Afnan, Avicenna, 173.
11 Goichon, Distinction, 260: “Le Premier, dit Ibn Sīnā, «connaît les choses d’un
seul coup, daf ʿatan wāḥidatan, sans subir par leurs formes aucune multiplicité
dans la réalité de son essence, ḥaqīqā dhātihi.»”
12 Marmura, “Some Aspects,” 301.
13 Ibid., 302.
14 Ibid., 303; Ghazālī, in his scathing critique of Avicenna, agreed on this point.
See Averroes, The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahāfut at-Tahāfut), 2 vols,
translation, introduction, and notes by Simon Van den Bergh (London: Luzac,
1954), 276–278; see also Avicenna, “Treatise,” in which Avicenna adumbrates
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 79

illustrated by the following syllogism: God knows His own essence;

all of existence springs from His existence (and thus essence);
therefore, God knows all of existence. In the Metaphysics (Ilāhiyyāt),
the Shaykh established his case for God’s causality:
Because He is the principle of all existence, He appre-
hends intellectually from His essence that of which He
is a principle. He is the principle of the existents that are
complete in their concrete individual existence and of
the generable and corruptible existents—first in [terms
of] their species and, through the mediation of these, in
[terms of] their individual instances.15
Further on, Avicenna attempted to furnish an explanatory
framework concerning divine knowledge of particulars insofar as
they are universals:
[W]hen He intellectually apprehends His essence and
apprehends that He is the principle of every existent, He
apprehends the principles of the existents [that proceed]
from Him and what is generated by them. There is,
among the things that exist, nothing that is not in some
manner necessitated by Him [as] cause—this we have
shown. The collision of these causes results in the exis-
tence of particular things. The First knows the causes
and their corresponding [relations]. He thus necessarily
knows to what these lead, the time [intervals] between
them, and their recurrences. For it is not possible that
He knows [the former principles] and not this. He would
thus apprehend particular things inasmuch as they are
universal...16
In a similar argument elsewhere, God’s knowledge of contingent
beings (i.e., all of creation) becomes only logical when each of these
the distinction between psychological knowledge (ʿilm-i nafsānī) and intel-
lectual knowledge (ʿilm-i ʿaqlī). The first equates to human knowledge and
multiplicity by the fact that it is a passive receptacle “for multiple intelligible
forms,” while the second is characteristic of God’s knowledge, singularity of
act and apprehension, and the active originator of intelligible forms; 200–201.
15 Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 287; Avicenna, Livre des Directives
et Remarques (Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt), trans. A. M. Goichon (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1951), 451.
16 Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 288.
80 Kevjn Lim

is regarded as necessary-by-another (i.e., the First Being) rather

than possible-in-itself.17 Again, this assertion invokes God’s a priori
knowledge of causes and presupposes existents in “a necessitated
order.” A major dilemma that Avicenna attempted to solve with
the knowledge of particulars via universals thesis is temporality and
change in God’s knowledge. Knowledge of particulars such as they
are individuated in time requires that the knower and the known
be united. Supposing God’s knowledge is conditioned by time (and
hence possibility), a certain event occurring tomorrow will have
occasioned a change in Him by then (i.e., an accident superadded to
His essence) since the object of knowledge did not exist today, and
the potential would have preceded the actual. Yet divine ignorance
or mutability is absurd. If He knew that it would occur and it does,
then free will becomes a farce. If He thought that it would occur and
it does not, then He is in error, which is by far worse than any of
these consequences. Hence, God can only know things universally.18
Without observing individual eclipses occurring at certain points
in time, God knows that the orbits of the earth and the moon both
converging at a certain point in relation to the sun produce a specific
phenomenon.19 In this manner, God knows eclipses as a universal
idea by way of the logical movements and rules governing them,
and not individually through sense apprehension.
In a passage dealing with the divine attributes, Avicenna argued
that God’s essence is One and that all other attributes such as “Know-
ing, Living, Willing, Omnipotent, Speaking, Seeing [and] Hearing….
[do] not augment His Essence.”20 If this proposition holds true and if
God is the cause and not the consequence of all existents and objects
of knowledge, it similarly follows that change, or change-in-time
as it manifests in the world of corruption and generation, does not
affect His knowledge.
There is, however, a class of particulars that God knows qua
particulars, and here, Marmura’s analysis sheds some light. Avicenna’s

17 Avicenna, “Treatise,” 201–202; for a detailed exposition of these concepts, see

Goichon, Distinction, bk. 2, ch. 1, 156–180.
18 Avicenna, “Treatise,” 203.
19 Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 288–289.
20 Arberry, Theology, 32–35; in other words, and contra the theologians
(mutakallimūn), these attributes are one with and indistinguishable from the
divine essence, a view Maimonides shares.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 81

Neoplatonic universe operates on the dictum “from the one only one
proceeds.”21 In contemplating Himself, the Necessary Being emanates
a single entity, the First Intellect. This one in turn contemplates the
Necessary Being, itself as possible being, and itself as necessitated
by another (God), these three contemplative acts thereby creating
the Second Intellect, the soul (or form) of a celestial sphere, and
the physical sphere itself, respectively.
This triadic process of emanation (fayḍ) trickles right down to
the Active Intellect from which proceeds the sublunar world, and on
the way engenders the outermost sphere of the heavens, the fixed
stars, and the various heavenly bodies in the solar system.22 It is the
recurring creation of such triads with each subsequent Intellect that
engenders multiplicity, and not God Himself; indeed, multiplicity
arises through the intermediation of the species, thereafter producing
the individual existents within each species. Nonetheless, each act
of contemplation at the supralunar stage produces a single and sui
speciei entity, the only one of its kind.
As Marmura notes, the import of this emanative process lies in
the resolution of the problem of specification (takhṣīṣ) in individual
spheres and hence God’s knowledge of certain particulars.23 The
celestial spheres are (posited to be) immaterial and eternal while each
belonging to a different species and constituting the only member of
that species. As such, God also knows these entities qua particulars
since each one’s existential singularity coincides perfectly with the
universal concept it embodies.24
Accordingly, he suggests two conditions by which God can
know particulars qua particulars. The first has just been mentioned:
when a species is represented by a sole instance, such as the celestial
bodies. This includes the earth when considered in itself as a sphere.
The second derives from the first, in that the acts or events attributed
to such entities are also known to God. God knows such things as
eclipses for this reason, again, not by means of sense apprehension,
but rather by a conceptual and universal form of knowing.

21 Marmura, “Some Aspects,” 305; Avicenna, Directives, trans. Goichon, 387–388.

22 See Avicenna, Directives, trans. Goichon, 429n1; Afnan, Life and Works, 132–135.
23 Marmura, “Some Aspects,” 305.
24 Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 288; Avicenna, Directives, trans.
Goichon, 454–455, see also note 2.
82 Kevjn Lim

By the same logic, God does not know entities and events
in the world of corruption and generation qua particulars, only
via the intermediation of a particular’s species. However, there
remains a problem. While the argument may stand in relation to
corporeal entities, Avicenna does not make his position explicit
in regard to non-corporeal entities, namely the human rational
soul.25 Although immaterial and eternal, the soul is hardly the sole
instance in its species type. Moreover, between the moment of its
birth and the moment of its liberation from the physical host, the
soul is first of all enmeshed with matter, and secondly, it changes
and evolves—two individuating factors, the second of which sets
it apart from other souls.
According to Avicenna’s foregoing principles, God cannot know
an entity that is one among many members of its species, fused with
matter, and subject to change, especially if these converge all at once.
True, as Marmura observes, the soul at death becomes changeless
since it passes into eternity. Yet the problem in this connection
becomes acute when we attempt to discuss God’s capacity for reward
and punishment of individual human acts. This question has most
prominently been raised by Ghazālī,26 and indeed, constitutes one
of three major charges against the falāsifa—the other two being the
latter’s belief in the eternity of the world and their denial of bodily
resurrection.27
Intimately related to knowledge of particulars are the analyti-
cal categories definition and description. For Avicenna, definitions
(ḥadd) may only be predicated of permanent things and such as
command essential and universal qualities applicable to more than
one member of a genus or species. As Marmura describes, “One
arrives at a definition through universal descriptions that will only
specify the [essential permanent nature of a] kind, not the corrupt-
ible particular instance.”28 All human beings are defined as rational,
bipeds, and capable of laughter, or all triangles have three sides (by

25 Marmura, “Some Aspects,” 308.

26 For a précis of his position, see Averroes, Incoherence, trans. Van den Bergh,
276–267.
27 A. Shihadeh, “From Al-Ghazālī to Al-Rāzī: 6th/12th Century Developments
in Muslim Philosophical Theology, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 15 (2005),
149.
28 Marmura, “Some Aspects,” 306.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 83

definition). A description (rasm), on the other hand, is predicable

of transient particulars individuated in time and as such, given to
sensory apprehension. In order to single Zayd out from other men,
we describe him in terms of appearance or the peculiarities that set
him apart.
Again, the celestial entities form the notable exception: since
each one is the only member of its species, by simply knowing their
essential definitions God perceives them both as universals and
particulars without the need for a sensory apparatus.29 Consequently,
the principal difference between both categories is that definition
involves essence (of secondary substances, e.g., species) and descrip-
tion involves accidents (of primary substances, i.e., individuals).
This analytic perspective parallels Avicenna’s position concerning
God’s knowledge of particulars via universals. To this effect, Sari
Nuseibeh distinguished God’s knowledge of particulars (as one of a
kind) from His knowledge about particulars (via the species).30 To
conclude, it is worth noting that even Avicenna himself recognized
the apparent contradiction—and left it as such:
[T]he Necessary Existent apprehends intellectually all
things in a universal way; yet, despite this, no individual
thing escapes His knowledge. Not [even] the weight of
an atom in the heavens and the earth escapes Him. This
is one of the wonders whose conception requires the
subtlety of an inborn, acute intelligence.31

Maimonides: God Knows Particulars qua Particulars

If Avicennian epistemology represented an attempt to recon-
cile faith and reason based on the latter, Maimonides (Moshe ben
Maimon/‘Rambam’, c. 1135–1204) attempted the same based on the
former, albeit from a Jewish standpoint, in the process becoming
somewhat of a spokesperson for the Torah sages. In this respect
and in some ways similar to Ghazālī, he rejected the Peripatetic
construct of a highly abstracted deity whose rationally and logi-

29 Ibid., 307; see also Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 287–288.

30 Nuseibeh, “Epistemology,” 838.
31 Avicenna, Metaphysics, trans. Marmura, 287–288.
84 Kevjn Lim

cally uncompromising character eradicates any prospect for divine

involvement in human history.32
First, the very premise on which earlier philosophers based their
arguments of divine knowledge was flawed. Attempting to draw an
analogy between divine and human knowledge is like comparing
the taste of Turkish delight to the color pink—there is absolutely no
relation nor basis on which to make a judgment since there exist no
common qualities or likeness between species.33 In this connection,
Maimonides took the falāsifa to task by syllogistically exposing a
crucial flaw prevalent among their mainstream: if, according to the
latter, God’s essence is the same as His knowledge and it is impos-
sible to grasp His essence (both these have been illustrated with
Avicenna), how would it then be possible to grasp His knowledge?34
The underlying problem is thus an equivocation of terms: “these
attributions [i.e., divine and human knowledge] have in common
only the name and nothing else.”35 After all, the prophet Isaiah did
explicitly state:
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your
ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.36
Furthermore, the impossibility of comparison between God
and creation was both an intrinsic element and a logical conclu-
sion of Maimonides’ “negative theology.”37 God is absolutely and
unconditionally transcendent. As a consequence, even though they
represent the peak of rational existence, humans cannot hope to
know Him or His essence in any objective or scientific way, much
32 O. Leaman, Moses Maimonides (London: Routledge, 1990), 164.
33 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nevukhim), trans. S. Pines,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1.56 (130–131).
34 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 482.
35 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 131; Leaman, Maimonides, 101–102; also
known as “nominal equivocation” (shitūf ha-shem levad) or “absolute equivo-
cation” (shitūf gamūr), see Samuelson’s gloss in Gersonides, The Wars of the
Lord Treatise Three: On God’s Knowledge (Milḥamot ha-Shem), trans. N. M.
Samuelson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1977), 137n91.
36 Isaiah 55:8–9.
37 D. H. Frank, “Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Aristotelianism,” ch. 7 in The
Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and
Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 148.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 85

less ascribe to Him positive attributes.38 A middle way postulated

by Averroes, Maimonides’ older Arab contemporary in response to
Ghazālī’s scriptural literalism involves equivocation as well, though
in a limited sense.39 Here, man’s knowledge, among other qualities,
merely differs from God’s knowledge in that the latter is perfect,
superlative, and hence paradigmatic, compared to the former, which
is imperfect and derivative.40 While God’s knowledge encompasses
what we know, the reverse is not true. Illustrated crudely, it is as if
God knows in its entirety what an elephant is, though we can only
know an incomplete aspect thereof, such as its trunk or its ears. Yet
according to Maimonides, ascription to God of positive attributes,
even as superlatives, creates the risk of alienating ourselves further
from Him, since He is beyond comparison and certainly beyond
human apprehension:
What does this resemble? It is as if a mortal king who
had millions of gold pieces were praised for possessing
silver. Would this not be an offense to him?41
Aside from the posited disanalogy between divine and human
knowledge, there exists another qualitative difference between both
types of knowledge. Like Avicenna, the Jewish ḥakham argued
not only that “He knows with one single knowledge the many and
numerous things,”42 but also that humans know things derivatively
by observing their effects and thence perfecting their knowledge
thereof, while God knows things by being Himself prior to and
the reason for their causes.43 The Guide illustrates this through the
metaphor of the craftsman (artificer) and his water-clock (artifact).
The craftsman only needs to know the basic principles governing
the functioning of the clock, such as the quantity and manner of the
flow of water, the number of movements operated by the various

38 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 134–137; 143–147.

39 Leaman, Maimonides, 23.
40 Ibid., 165.
41 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 139–140.
42 Ibid., 480.
43 In Summa Theologica (1.14.8.3), Thomas Aquinas renders the twofold nature of
knowledge in this way: “natural things are midway between God’s knowledge
and ours — ours being derived from those things of which God’s is the cause”;
cited in D. Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides,
Aquinas (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 90.
86 Kevjn Lim

threads and balls, the intervals posed between each time unit, and
so on. Indeed, he does not even have to physically create the clock
in order to substantiate his mental blueprint. We, on the other hand,
require careful observation of the clock’s inner workings, and in
the process undergo multiplicity and renewal in our knowledge
at each stage.
Maimonides’ stance is unequivocal: if, and we have established
this via Avicenna, God’s (as well as man’s) essence and knowledge
are identical, then “through knowing the true reality of His own
immutable essence, He also knows the totality of what necessar-
ily derives from all His acts.”44 What is distinct from Avicennian
epistemology according to the foregoing metaphor is that in the
Maimonidean system, (a) God does not merely know particulars via
universals, He knows particulars qua particulars, and (b) unlike us,
God does not need senses in order to apprehend sensory data. Rather
than stopping short at the species, God’s knowledge encompasses
even the individual:
After what I have stated before about providence singling
out the human species alone among all the species of
animals, I say that it is known that no species exists
outside the mind, but that the species and the other
universals are, as you know, mental notions and that
every existent outside the mind is an individual or a
group of individuals.45
Likewise, though He does not dispose of a sensory array, God
must surely know and be familiar with what He creates. King David
was terribly incisive on this matter: “He who planted the ear, shall
He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?”46
Maimonides contended that since the most Perfect Being
cannot be attributed with deficiencies—“it is a primary notion that
all good things must exist in God”—and since ignorance is a patent
deficiency, we are therefore constrained to admit that God must
somehow know particulars.47 This significantly shapes his concept
44 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 485.
45 Ibid., 474.
46 Psalms 94:9: Ha-noṭa‘ ‘ozen ha-lo yishma‘ / ‘im yoṣer ‘ayn ha-lo yabiṭ?; Mai-
monides, Guide, trans. Pines, 478.
47 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 477; Aquinas took this a step further by
arguing that since existence (esse) is God’s sole and most bountiful preserve,
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 87

of providence, which he judges to be “consequent upon the intellect

[i.e., involving human beings only and not animals] and attached to
it.”48 In this scheme, creative intentionality on the part of God takes
precedence over the inevitable necessity occasioned by an emanative
worldview,49 substantiating even the Qurʾānic verse: your lord is the
creator who is truly creator, the one who knows all things.50
Having established this, he proceeded to illustrate five peculiari-
ties of the divine epistemic mode. First, like Avicenna before him,
Maimonides believed that God knows “with one single knowledge
the many and numerous things.”51 This seemingly esoteric statement
has been expounded in the example of the craftsman’s knowledge.
Second, relative non-existents can constitute objects of God’s knowl-
edge. I use the term relative in this sense to distinguish it from
absolute non-existents, in that while relative non-existents remain
a possibility to be brought by God into existence at some point in
time even if it does not exist now, the latter will never be brought
into existence and hence remain impossible. Put simply, God knows
things from an eternal perspective. Third, infinite things too can
constitute objects of God’s knowledge. Fourth, God’s apprehension
of time-conditioned things does not produce in Him change, as has
been adumbrated in the second point. Lastly, His knowing that one
of two possibilities will be eventuated does not in any way render one
necessary and the other impossible—both remain possible. Indeed,
this final aspect undergirds Maimonides’ belief in man’s perfectly
free will as well as responsibility, and by extension, divine absolution
from evil and wrongdoing.
Maimonides’ epistemological undertaking is not free from
problems. We saw earlier that Avicenna seemingly contradicted
himself by declaring God’s omniscience—“Not [even] the weight of

and given that existence is “first and more intimate [to each thing] than all
other effects,” He must therefore know each particular in an up-close and
personal way. The real individuating element of each particular is, however, its
proper agency, i.e., intellect or will. In this, Burrell argued for God’s practical
as opposed to speculative knowledge, Knowing, 90, 94–95.
48 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 474; Jeremiah 32:19: “For Thine eyes are open
upon all the ways of the sons of man, to give every one according to his ways.”
49 Burrell, Knowing, 73, 87.
50 Qurʾān 15:86, see also Burrell, Knowing, 74; Indeed, even for Avicenna, though
“emanation is necessary, [the First Being] is not blind,” ibid., 81.
51 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 480.
88 Kevjn Lim

an atom in the heavens and the earth escapes Him”—despite Him

not knowing particulars to the full extent. As will be evident to the
astute observer, Maimonides’ argument for God’s unconditional
omniscience similarly appears to contradict his earlier assertion that
we cannot ascribe positive attributes to God, not even knowledge:
He who studies true reality equitably ought accordingly
to believe that nothing is hidden in any way from Him,
may He be exalted, but that, on the contrary, everything
is revealed to His knowledge, which is His essence, and
that it is impossible for us to know in any way this kind
of apprehension.52
Furthermore, just as he stopped short of refuting Aristotle’s
eternity of the world thesis, given that there is no way to either
prove or disprove aeternitas mundi or creatio ex nihilo, only that
creatio seems the more plausible in view of Judaism,53 Maimonides
likewise failed to provide demonstrative proof of how it is that God
knows particulars in a unique way, stating only that the Aristotelian
account is inadequate.
Finally, Maimonides’ philosophical enquiry is brought to bear
on humankind’s summum bonum, i.e., happiness and perfection.
First, following Aristotle and Avicenna, Maimonides qualified
God as intellect, intellectually cognizing subject and intellectually
cognized object, all as one.54 Surprisingly, despite his earlier argu-
ment for God’s absolute incomparability, he extended this cognitive
unity to apply in man’s case as well. The difference is that God is
pure actuality and zero potentiality, making Him eternally aware and
One with His essence—the most perfect and perennial example of
Aristotle’s “thought-thinking-itself.”55 We, on the other hand, can
never hope to know all there is to know, and so our cognition is
characterized by continual shifts from potentiality to actuality. In
view of that, man’s goal in life is to become more godlike by being
attuned to the same things that are worthy of His thought, namely

52 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 485.

53 In Hebrew, the respective terms are qadmut ha-‘olam and ḥiddush ha-‘olam.
54 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 163–166.
55 Leaman, Maimonides, 105.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 89

formal and abstract things,56 and to eschew material and contingent

things,57 though ill-fortune continues to exist. Only then can his
thought become identical with his essence, just as his intellect then
becomes one with the thought and the act of thinking. Indeed,
Maimonides believed that providence is commensurate with the
individual’s level of intellectual perfection.58 To this end, he stressed
the significance of adhering to the Torah and its moral and religious
laws (the various rational mishpaṭim and arational ḥuqqim), thus
paving the way from ontology and epistemology to the soteriological
imperatives of deontology.
Gersonides: God Knows Particulars via their Intelligible
Ordering
Of the three, Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom, ‘Ralbag’, 1288–
1344) was the only one—no doubt with the assistance of hindsight
—to have devoted an entire treatise to divine epistemology. Deviating
from the Peripatetics and going beyond Maimonides in terms of
“scripturalizing” philosophy, Gersonides nonetheless arrived at his
conclusions through rigorous philosophical analysis.59 As a result,
even though characterized by his coreligionists and subsequent
generations of critics as an unorthodox humanist, he clung more
closely to the Jewish scriptures than his works appear to indicate
at first glance.
Gersonides began his opus by enumerating the arguments of his
predecessors, namely the Aristotelians and their two interpretations
on the one hand and the Torah sages on the other. The majority
tendency of Aristotle’s followers adduced eight proofs against God’s
knowledge of both particulars and universals, and some of these will

56 According to the final chapter of the Guide, four types of human perfection
obtain, each one more noble than the preceding: material possessions (relational,
i.e., extrinsic to the self), physical well-being (animal, again extrinsic to the
soul–self), moral virtues (social), and intellectual abstraction (apprehension
of God). Moreover, while the first three perfections depend on another thing
or being, the fourth, intellectual development, is self-sufficient, and hence
superior once again; 3.54 (632–638); for a discussion of certain unsolved issues,
please see Leaman, Maimonides, 148–161.
57 Leaman, Maimonides, 105.
58 Maimonides, Guide, trans. Pines, 475.
59 C. H. Manekin, “Conservative Tendencies in Gersonides’ Religious Philosophy,”
ch. 14 in Cambridge Companion, ed. Frank and Leaman, 331.
90 Kevjn Lim

be familiar by now. First, God possesses no hylic faculties, and such

things as the senses and even imagination are required to perceive
particular things. Second, particulars are time-conditioned, and
neither motion nor rest (time = motion) can be predicated of God.
Third, knowledge perfects the knower, and God’s excellence cannot
possibly be perfected by a particular’s deficiency. Fourth, it is ridicu-
lous that multiplicity or alterity enter God’s mind, and particulars
are many and other than God. Fifth, knowledge cannot encompass
what is infinite, and an infinite number of particulars abound.
Sixth, knowledge of particulars implies subjection to generation
and corruption: it is absurd that (1) God apprehends a non-existing
object; (2) undergoes change in His knowledge when a particular
contingent comes into being, and if He possesses foreknowledge;
and (3) everything loses its possibility and hence becomes either
necessary or impossible. Seventh, if God knows particulars it would
behoove Him to govern all existence in perfect order. Yet, evil exists,
and good things happen to bad people and bad things to good. Since
it is impossible to predicate bad governance of the Perfect One, it
must follow that He does not know particulars. A final and highly
technical proof hinges on the infinite divisibility of continuous
magnitudes (i.e., bodies). Either God knows these magnitudes, which
means they can be circumscribed (thus indivisible at some point),
which is erroneous according to the Aristotelians, or He does not
know them.60 The minority interpretation of this school of thought
requires no introduction, exemplified as it is by Avicenna that God
knows only universals.
Maimonides and the Torah sages on the other hand demon-
strated two simple proofs for God’s knowledge of particulars. First,
ignorance is a deficiency, and it is absurd to attribute deficiency
to the Perfect Being. Second, God knows all things by a single act
of knowledge, an assertion that concomitantly deflects charges of
change and multiplicity in Him. In view of his postulate of absolute
equivocation, Maimonides seems to entrap himself by applying
ignorance to both God and man.61 That motion does not apply
to God, for instance, does not make it a deficiency since motion
implies an unfulfilled goal or desire and is therefore predicable only

60 Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, 104–124.

61 Ibid., 133.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 91

of imperfect beings.62 Indeed, even application of its contrary, rest,

constitutes a fallacy. Likewise, that He does not know particulars,
according to the Aristotelians, is in reality a perfection “because
His knowledge is of the noblest known entities (and) is not of the
lesser known entities.”63 After citing arguments against Maimonides,
Gersonides offered his own view concerning absolute equivocation.
If “knowledge” cannot be predicated either equivocally (absolutely
without relation) or univocally (synonymous) between God and man,
there must be a third, more plausible theory: the term is employed
of Him as prior and of us as posterior. “[T]here is no difference
between the knowledge of God…and our knowledge except that
the knowledge of God,” wrote Gersonides “is immeasurably more
perfect.”64 In the course of his exposition Gersonides also highlighted
counter-arguments for Maimonides’ five illustrations, a minor aspect
we will not deal with here for lack of space.65
Gersonides argued, contra Maimonides, that it is possible to
establish God’s knowledge of particulars on a philosophical and
not merely on a religious basis, criticizing “the Master the Guide”
for being too constrained by the Torah.66 He brought to bear three
arguments for his own position, a precondition for countering
the Aristotelians. First, the instrumental status of the separate
intelligences and the Active Intellect, as well as the substances and
accidents ensuing therefrom in the sublunar realm all attest to a
higher cause. Consequently,
it being clear in the case of an instrument qua instru-
ment that it cannot move to do that for which it is an
instrument except by means of the knowledge of the
craftsman, it therefore clearly is apparent from this that
God, may He be blessed, knows all of these particulars.67

62 Ibid., 132n76.
63 Ibid., 133.
64 Ibid., 191, see also 186–190; In Aristotelian terms, this is a pros hen equivocation,
i.e., predicated of two things that share something in common, with one being
a logical or ontological derivative of the other; in a sense, this is also Averroes’
theory of limited equivocation. See my preceding section on Maimonides.
65 For a detailed discussion, see chapter 5, Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson
280–292.
66 Burrell, Knowing, 83.
67 Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, 227.
92 Kevjn Lim

Second, the perfection of God’s essence as equal to that of His

knowledge—given that both are identical in His case—requires
that He know everything that emanates from His essence.68 Hence,
either He does not possess perfect knowledge of His own essence,
which is implausible, or He knows every aspect of existence down to
particulars. This conforms to what the Provençal-Jewish philosopher
called yedi‘ah amitit, literally “true knowledge” or “understand-
ing” in Hebrew.69 Unlike sense-knowledge restricted to the purely
phenomenal or phenomenological, “understanding” implies an
ontically-intimate knowledge of the causes and effects governing
things. Note here Gersonides’ attempt to widen the scope of divine
knowledge. According to the Aristotelian account God knows only
Himself; in the Avicennian account, God’s knowledge is limited to
the universal, essential, and general principles of being. Gersonides,
however, contended that though accidents particularizing a sub-
lunar existent do not derive from God, they are “ordered by the
Active Intellect, through the influence of the heavenly bodies on its
material composition.”70 More importantly, and this is Gersonides’
third point, because the Active Intellect ultimately issues from
God’s mind,71 God must consequently know these particulars. If
the workers building a house know their respective specializations
and materials, how much more the knowledge of the architect who
conceived the entire blueprint! This point also falls within the ambit
of Aristotelian cosmology, according to which each celestial sphere
(whose “motor” is a separate intellect) presides over a partial aspect
of sublunar existence. Only the Active Intellect (and ultimately God)
knows these aspects in their totality and is therefore the nomos
of all existence.72 This intelligible ordering is none other than the

68 As Samuelson points out, emanation as formulated in this second argument

relates specifically to the Platonic conception of “degrees of reality”; See 228n330.
69 Cf. Aristotle’s episteme.
70 Manekin, “Conservative Tendencies,” 323.
71 Or, the proximate cause and the remote cause, respectively. See S. Nadler,
“Gersonides on Providence: A Jewish Chapter in the History of the General
Will’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 1 (January 2001), 45.
72 Gad Freudenthal, “Sauver son Âme ou Sauver les Phénomènes: Sotériologie,
Epistémologie et Astronomie chez Gersonide’, ch. 12 in Studies on Gersonides: A
Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1992), 324; The three Hebrew terms for the Greek nomos culled by
Samuelson are nimūs, “decorum” or “law,” seder, literally “order” or “arrange-
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 93

grand matrix of sublunar reality, the blueprint and timetable for the
unfolding of all created existence. Though knowledge by means of
this astral plan appears mediated at first glance, one might recall
that as an object of God’s sempiternal intellection, the intelligible
ordering also becomes identical with Him.
It would by now be clear that central to Gersonides’ concep-
tion of God’s knowledge is this intelligible ordering inherent in
the Active Intellect. Still, he qualified his position by appealing to
certain “aspects of plausibility” obtaining in the arguments of the
Aristotelians and the Maimonideans—that is, their premises and
not their conclusions. To the degree that proofs adduced in favor of
God’s knowledge of particulars appear plausible, so likewise those
in opposition thereto: the one does not prove God’s knowledge
any more than the other proves His ignorance. Accordingly, his
was an intermediate position between Avicenna (who was closer
to Aristotle) and Maimonides:
it is clear that the respect in which He knows [particulars]
is the respect in which they are ordered and defined….
The respect in which He does not know [particulars] is
the respect in which they are not ordered, which is the
respect in which they are contingents…73
That said, each of Gersonides’ three arguments invoking the
intelligible ordering can still be counter-construed as begging the
question, since knowing the intelligible ordering still differs from
knowing concrete particulars74—after all, the architect does not have
to know how bricks are made in order to design and oversee the
house’s construction. However as Manekin suggests, if everything
is divinely ordered in advance, then the contingencies that ensue
in their particularized manifestations would also fall within the
same scope. In the event, knowledge of the grand plan necessar-
ily encompasses every possible existential contingency. Similarly,
though one may well argue that the intelligible ordering differs
ontologically from instantiated particulars, Gersonides held that

ment,” and yosher, “rectitude” or “straightness” and in a more abstract sense,

“equilibrium” (i.e., neither left nor right), Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson,
100n13; Nadler, “Gersonides on Providence,” 49.
73 Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, 232–233.
74 Ibid., 239–245.
94 Kevjn Lim

these intelligibles constitute the actual and not potential aspects

of the particular, unlike the Avicennian universals which exist in
actu only in the mind.75 In Manekin’s words: “the intelligibles that
compose the plan do not signify universals but rather arbitrary
individuals of a certain type.”76 God as such knows particulars
from this perspective, that is, through their essences.77 Samuelson
further refines this position by drawing a distinction between
“particular” (peraṭī) and “individual” (yeḥīdī/ʾīshī) things, and that
properly speaking God only knows the latter. Now, individuals are
that which are “capable of unique reference” so that all particulars
are individuals too; however, because they are embodied in matter,
not all particulars are individuals.78 In his example, God and the
separate intellects are individuals but not particulars simply because
they are not material. God can therefore know such individuals as
the celestial bodies (cf. Avicenna). In addition, concepts that refer to
a given thing are only “universals which refer to essences and there
are no individual essences.”79 It takes a combination of descriptors or
referents to specify a thing, and because even then the description
may be applicable to other members of the same species yet merely
happens to apply to X, the thing is said to be “essentially universal
and accidentally individual.”80 Based on this formulation, one may
state that God knows particulars (in the widest possible sense) as
individuals, albeit only accidentally, to the degree that universal
essences happen to refer to it.
Likewise with the Aristotelians’ arguments:81 if, according
to Gersonides, the intelligible ordering in itself is constituted of
pure essences (and no accidents), eternal and eternally in God’s
mind, and a unified, if finite whole, then by knowing this, God
can indeed know particulars, albeit in a qualified sense. Also, if
God’s knowledge is of the causally prior variety, the argument that
the excellent cannot be perfected by the deficient loses its force.
Furthermore, God only knows which of two possibilities should be

75 Manekin, “Conservative Tendencies,” 325.

76 Ibid.
77 Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, 232.
78 Samuelson, in his introduction to Wars, 64.
79 Ibid., 65.
80 Ibid., 66.
81 See ch. 4, Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, for a full treatment of the topic.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 95

actualized, not will be actualized, and normative preference is not

the same as absolute foreknowledge. Accordingly, there is nothing
logically absurd in Him knowing things subject to generation and
change. Finally, with regards to the proof concerning continuous
magnitude, God is simply posited as knowing that an infinite suite
of divisions is possible without having to know the exact number,
but only because there is no exact number.
On the matter of contingency and free will, Gersonides pre-
sented but a brief outline. What is at stake here is human choice
and intellect:
However, from this (latter) respect [in which particulars
are not ordered] He knows that they are contingents
which possibly will not be actualized with regard to the
choice which God, may He be blessed, gave to man in
order to perfect what was lacking in the governance of
the heavenly bodies.82
Alongside the deterministic astral order programmed into
the Active Intellect, we find that God gives man the wherewithal
to avoid what we might call “fated evils” (e.g., natural disasters, not
consequent upon man’s choice). While Maimonides argued that
God knows which one of two possibilities will be actualized without
rendering A necessary and B impossible (thus, both remain truly
possible), Gersonides rejoined that God knows not which of these
will become reality, defending contingency as such.83 He merely
knows that they are contingents. Even then, rational choice-making
(assuming it is rational) often complements personal disposition pre-
ordained by the stars or separate intelligences, as Manekin suggests,84
thus allowing for some degree of “predictability.” Either way, personal
disposition and rationality are both ordered, one by the celestial
bodies, the other by reason. Whatever man chooses to do, God knows
the aggregate possible outcomes through the astral plan; what is not
clear, however, is whether God knows in advance the precise choice
man will make.85 Nonetheless, given that “true knowledge” entails
82 Ibid., 233. Italics added.
83 Tamar Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval
Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Dordrecht, Netherlands:
D. Reidel, 1985), 165.
84 Manekin, “Conservative Tendencies,” 327.
85 Ibid.
96 Kevjn Lim

knowing the fundamental, immutable cause–effect relations and

essences of all things, not knowing which of two possibilities will
materialize does not constitute a deficiency, so Gersonides reasoned.86
Such particularities are mere accidents (i.e., matter) and not true
essences (or forms), and knowledge of the latter is what counts.87
The logical corollaries of free will, at least in a religious context are
providence, as well as reward and punishment. For Maimonides,
the measure of providence granted to an individual bears direct
correlation with his intellectual perfection. Gersonides added that
the more intelligibles one apprehends, the more one knows about
the Active Intellect—the “receptacle of all possible knowledge,
and therefore, the objective of all enquiry” (hence his scientific
vocation)88—as well as the astral plan, in turn unlocking God’s
providence and His soteriological scheme.89 Still, there is a difference
between general providence, that which extends to “individuals qua
members of the human species” by virtue of the astral order,90 and
special providence, the “reward” for intellectual perfection, common
to both Maimonides and Gersonides.91 Special providence may be
elaborated as follows: given that the Active Intellect knows all of
sublunar reality, “the essences of things…and laws of nature” via the
astral plan, the more one’s intellect develops and hence approximates
the Active Intellect, the better one may “attain a higher degree of
‘protection’ from nature’s vicissitudes.”92 Sinners are then punished

86 Rudavsky, Divine Omniscience, 166; Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson,

235–236.
87 Gersonides, Wars, trans. Samuelson, 246n395; note that Samuelson suggests
a distinction between essences and universals, though never made explicit by
Gersonides himself. The former exist in actuality while the latter exist only
in abstraction, “the instrument by which we know essences”, 272n507.
88 Freudenthal, “Sauver son Âme”324–325: “Ainsi conçu, l’intellect agent devient
pour Gersonide le réceptacle de toute science possible et, partant, la fin de
toute recherche.”
89 “La félicité suprême de l’homme (ha-haṣlaḥa ha-takhlitiyit la-adam) est
d’appréhender et de connaître Dieu, béni soit-Il, pour autant que cela lui
est possible. [L’homme] y parvient en observant tout ce qui a trait aux êtres
existants, leur ordre et leur régularité, ainsi que la manière dont s’exerce la
sagesse divine en les disposant tels qu’ils sont,” cited in Freudenthal, “Sauver
son Âme,” 325.
90 Nadler, “Gersonides on Providence,” 48.
91 Ibid., 46.
92 Ibid., 50.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009 97

not by divine decree, as it were, but by being “left out in the cold”
and not being “in the know.”93 An alternative interpretation is that
evil originates in matter, so that the more an individual’s material
constitution dominates his form or intellect, the more susceptible
he is to evil. God’s particular knowledge in this connection may also
be differentiated from God’s knowledge of particulars. Insomuch as
individuals act in accordance with “their knowledge of the true and
the good,”94 a providential relationship exists, even though God does
not know, say, Moses qua Moses. Reward and punishment may then
be conceived as built into the astral plan’s “regulatory framework,” a
“feature” that functions according to divinely-preordained rules of
conduct and dessert, appropriately described by Nadler as “a system
of conditional propositions (if x occurs, then y occurs).”95 Finally,
knowing what goes on thanks to a built-in ontological system that
also circumscribes the scope for contingencies takes us back to
Gersonides’ original argument: God knows everything because
everything—that is, this same ontological system directed by the
astral plan—ultimately emanates from His essence.
Conclusion
This comparative analysis merely presents a somewhat modest
sketch of three conceptions of divine epistemology, the finer points of
which have already been broached in copious other works. Avicenna,
Maimonides, and Gersonides all flourished in varying intellectual
and cultural milieus. Yet their attempts to harmonize personal
religious convictions, whether Islamic or Judaic, with a science
establishing self-evident truths were symptomatic of a lifelong
pursuit to know, if not love, God.
Avicenna injected some degree of divine care and concern into
Aristotle’s reified portrayal of an unconcerned Prime Mover, although
he stopped at universal essences. Maimonides ventured a solution
from the other end, citing the Hebrew scriptures and emphasiz-
ing God’s absolute omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience,
including that of particulars qua particulars, yet refrained from
disclosing a fully developed theoretical framework. Gersonides,
finally, situated his own epistemology somewhere in between these

93 Ibid., 51.
94 Manekin, “Conservative Tendencies,” 329.
95 Nadler, “Gersonides on Providence,” 50.
98 Kevjn Lim

two, introducing into the equation what may, in a sense, be described

as an intermediary, i.e., the intelligible ordering, through and by
which God’s knowledge of particulars can be philosophically pos-
tulated and substantiated. Ultimately, it is the personal relationship
between man and God, as well as the varying notions of the good
(and ethical) life that matter, all for the sake of attaining a slightly
more meta-physical kind of happiness and perfection.
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Journal of
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Volume 5, 2009
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Journal of Islamic Philosophy / 2009

Editors
Macksood A. Atab
Muhammad I. Hozien
Valerie J. Turner

Editorial Board
Mustafa Mahmoud Abu Sway
Al-Quds University
Mashhad Al-Allaf
Petroleum Institute
Munawar Anees
John Templeton Foundation
Massimo Campanini
University of Milan
hérèse-Anne Druart
Catholic University of America
Majid Fakhry
Georgetown University
Ibrahim Kalin
Georgetown University
Richard C. Taylor
Marquette University
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy

Mission Statement

he Journal of Islamic Philosophy encourages the academic study of

Islamic philosophy. he journal provides a unique peer-reviewed
forum for scholars interested in the philosophical study of diverse
topics in Islamic philosophy. Classical Islamic philosophy of past
masters will be re-examined with a new focus. he underlying
issues regarding the many ethical, metaphysical, existential, and
epistemological challenges posed by western philosophy will be
explored in comparison to Islamic philosophy. We hope to serve
as an impetus toward the renewal of the rich and dynamic spirit
of Islamic philosophical discourse in the current era.
 Journal of Islamic Philosophy
Volume 5
2009
www.muslimphilosophy.com/journal/is-05

Contents

Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Thérèse-Anne Druart

Ibn Sīnā and Descartes on the Origins and

Structure of the Universe: Cosmology and Cosmogony. . . . 3
Hulya Yaldir

On God’s Names and Attributes: An

Annotated Translation from Mullā Ṣadrā’s
al-Maẓāhir al-ilāhiyya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Mohamad Nasrin Nasir

God’s Knowledge of Particulars: Avicenna,

Maimonides, Gersonides. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Kevjn Lim

A Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Review Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99

Muhammad Hozien
 Contributors

Thérèse-Anne Druart is the Ordinary Professor of Philosophy

at the Catholic University of America.
Hulya Yaldir is an Assistant Professor in the department of
philosophy, Pamukkale University, Turkey.
Mohamad Nasrin Nasir teaches at the Universiti Brunei, Darus-
salam.
Kevjn Lim is an independent scholar.