The Formation of the Philosophical Theory of Distinction between Existence and Essence in Islamic World A Review of Kindi and Farabi's View

The discussion about existence and essence and their relationship is one of the fundamental discussions in philosophy. This relationship can be shown from different aspects in the form of natural, logical and philosophical distinction. No philosopher has discussed about natural distinction and the distinction observed in philosophical atmosphere of Greece and Aristotle’ works on discussions related to “scientific questions” and “first philosophy” is a logical distinction. Aristotle never goes beyond logical distinction and is unable to do so because he believes that world has no beginning and creator, existence is always there, absolute non-existence is absolutely non-existent, and theconcept of possibility- as a real gap between essence and existence- isunknown. On the contrary, divine religions regard universe and whatever in itas created which means that it does not have the cause of its “being” with itself and receives its existence from creator (God). In Islamic world, such a doctrine led to the emergence of the philosophical concept of “possibility” and bipolar classification of creatures into “necessary being” and “contingent being”. Philosophical distinction means that “existence” in contingent beings is the effect of an external cause and out of the essence of thing. Historically, this theory traces back to Kindi’s philosophy in which he replaces the doctrine of creation with the Hellenic theory of “visibility of universe” by providing thetheory of “creation from nothing” and describing the cause of all causes as being creator. Farabi is the first philosopher who discussed philosophical distinction by dividing creatures into necessary and contingent and analyzing contingents into existence and essence. Avicenna chose the philosophical distinction as the basis of his metaphysics and extracted its philosophical requirements in different domains. The present paper is conducted with the aim of showing Kindi and Farabi’s contribution to the formation of this theory, with regard to their existing works.