Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Arguing God from Being?

in Islamic philosophy especially being which in Arabic is called wa Jude plays a central role usually when you and I look at something they say that table is there that tree is in the garden we don't think about it anymore we think that we have a kind of big cake of existence within which there are different pieces and different places however if you look at more deeply the way your mind can understand and analyze this experience of a world out there you can ask two fundamental questions one is does that thing exist or does not exist and the other is what is it and these two questions are very distinct because you can right now think of a pink cow in your mind and the answered the question what is it you can answer but if you say is it you have to say no because no external reality is only your mind or vice versa you can ask whether something is or not without really inquiring about what it is now outside they're wet together you'll never find separate essence ever existence but within the philosophical mind it's possible to separate one from the other does that distinction in Islamic philosophy help us to understand God or how God created the world more richly very much so a thing in itself has no existential effect it doesn't exist for example right now you ask what is grapefruit what is aspirin but that aspirin cannot cure your headache and that grave really cannot have for breakfast there has to be this elemental whoa dude there has to be added to the quiddity to the Mahia in order to exist an she ate it and enable it to have effect now where does that come from it doesn't come to think itself and everything in the universe shares in this balanced equality between being or not being that's called a possible being contingent being now that's something which comes from the outside then necessitates the existence of something but everything is a contingent being there's only one exception something who's very quiddity is being so it could not not be that is the most powerful proof of the existence of pure being which is God that is the heart of this argument the ontological argument the things of this world would be considered to be objects have no being of their own be received being from something other than what defines in our mind what they are gives an opening into accepting the being from which the existence or lower being everything comes by distinguishing between the quiddity of something an existence which is added to that quiddity you are already positing the reality something outside of that what we consider that object to be it's what nests this is the road that takes us to the realization of pure being whose character it is to emanate to give of itself like light which is the character of light to illuminate and so if you discover that there's some light in this room will immediately say that that must have a source because this chair is not by its nature luminous so our intelligence as soon as we say this chair is lit this is looking for the light which has lit hell lit this chair and this is how being a scene in Islamic philosophy so the very existence of you and I is proof that God is in fact the famous saying of Descartes I think therefore I am cogito ergo sum was answered by a great metaphysician by saying he should have said cogito or kazuto ergo s that is I think therefore God is at the very fact they were thinking beings who think is proof of that pure being which enables us to exist

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 42,511

Rating: 4.7080612 out of 5

Keywords: Hossein Nasr (Author), Philosophy (Field Of Study), God (Deity), Religion (TV Genre), Being, Closer To Truth (TV Program), Ontology (Field Of Study), Epistemology (Field Of Study), Agnosticism (Religion)

Id: sz2QjGHlLuM

Length: 4min 41sec (281 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 31 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Objetc]

This is an eloquent statement of the ontological argument, which has been pretty much dismissed by philosophers for the last few hundred years. See Kant, Hume, et al!

[u/luvintheride]

I don't know the boundaries of these arguments, but I think it is better to start with Aristotle's Prime Mover (First Cause) argument. The contingency argument still leaves everyone wondering where things started.