The Birth of Nominalism: Ash'ari Impact on Medieval Philosophy

The Birth of Nominalism: Ash'ari Impact on Medieval Philosophy

“Al-Ghazâlî’s critique of twenty positions of falsafa in his Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahâfut al-falâsifa) is a significant landmark in the history of philosophy as it advances the nominalist critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century Europe.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Prior to reading this blog post, one should read my other blogs in this order:

1. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/04/universals-and-particulars.html

2. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/06/overview-of-athari-metaphysics.html

3. https://zainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2023/11/ibn-taymiyya-on-universals-and.html


Nominalism came to medieval philosophy from Islam, through the works of the Ash’aris who are a school of thought in Sunni Islam. It was the Ash’ari school, in its attack on Aristotelian physics and metaphysics that paved the way for nominalism and empirical science. Without the works of the Ash’aris, the Christian opponents of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle would not have legs to stand on. As stated in my blog post about universals and particulars, nominalists argue that there are no universals concepts and that these concepts are merely names or labels that are given to particulars that share certain properties. For example, the concept of “redness” is simply a label given to a group of particulars that happen to be red rather than a universal existing amongst all red things. Nominalists believe that knowledge comes from observing particular things and grouping them based on their similarities, rather than from abstract universals.

As relating to God, the voluntaristic God of the Ashari and then nominalist teaching constitutes the farthest possible development of the logic of power as God does what He pleases and there is no other explanation needed for it or as said by the famous nominalist, William of Ockham,

“The ways of God are not open to reason, for God has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover.” (Dale T Irvin & Scott W Sunquist, History of World Christian Movement Volume, I: Earliest Christianity to 1453, p. 434)

In other words, God created because He wanted it that way and our understanding of it is faith alone. What this means is that the Ash’aris held that given two identical choices, in this instance for God to create or not, the will of the agent is sufficient in selecting one over the other. If there is no difference between the two choices, that choice is ‘arbitrary’. This is perfectly in line with Ash’ari occasionalism, because God does not need secondary causes to bring about the effects He chooses. Rather, any contingent being can be brought into existence without any intermediary, nor any preceding matter, nor any contingency in the Divine Essence. Nominalism can lead to occasionalism. Water, for example, would not have a real universal essence. Water does not have a universal essence of flowing or quenching thirst but rather it is God creating it, there is no secondary causation. Think of it as a film of a movie with each frame coming after the next, it is not that the previous frame is causing the next one. As an Athari I personally reject this notion and accept secondary causation similar to Ibn Taymiyya. Ibn Taymiyya rejected nominalism and the realism of the Aristotelians, rather he adopted a theory known as conceptualism. Ibn Taymiyyah claimed only particular things exist in reality and thus rejecting shared qualities by virtue of shared names. There are no forms in reality that inhere in God and the creations and in which they participate.

“If it is said the throne is an existent thing and mosquitos are an existent thing, no sane person would say they are the same because they participated in the names: ‘thing’ and ‘existent,’ That is because there is nothing in the external world in which they participate. Rather, the mind abstracts the universal concept, which is called the absolute name. And if it is said that this exists and that exists, then the existence of each of them pertains to it uniquely, and others do not share in it, even though the name is a reality in each of them.” (al-Fatâwa)

If there is any similarity between creation and God is it analogical not univocal. One of the reasons that one may adopt nominalism is to avoid anthropomorphism or likening God to creation which could be argued if there is a shared essence or attribute. However, adopting analogical language can bypass this issue. Also, one could take the Kantian route of denying existence being a predicate. Ibn Taymiyyah argued that particulars preceded the universals. The universals are mental conceptions abstracted through the human experience of the world. They are not in a world of perfect forms as the Platonists believed nor are they in the particular ontologically and in the external world.

In conclusion, Al-Ghazâlî’s critique in ‘Incoherence of the Philosophers’ marks a pivotal paradigm shift in philosophy, shaping the nominalist critique of Aristotelian science. This essay explores the transmission of nominalism from Islam to medieval Europe as seen via William of Ockham through the Ash’ari school, emphasizing their rejection of Aristotelian principles. The contrast with Ibn Taymiyya’s conceptualism is examined and the implications of this philosophical shift including considerations of anthropomorphism and analogical language. While it can be conceived of Ibn Taymiyya postulating a different type of nominalism, I believe reading him as a conceptualist is most accurate.