A New Exposition of the Ontological Argument in the Islamic Philosophy

Ontological arguments are arguments to prove the existence of Allah, in which His existence is proved, a priori, through a mere concept and without adherence to any objective entity. In the west, St. Anselm (1109-1033 or 1034) proposed this kind of argument in the Christian theology, and ever since it has had leading opponents and proponents. In the Islamic philosophy and theology, the argument has not had an outstanding place; however, in the words of the predecessors, and of Farabi as a frontrunner, traces of attention to this argument can be noticed. But, during the last half century, the attention to it is increasing. Some have accepted it, and some have negated it. In this article, after a brief review of the development of the ontological argument in the west, we have posed some Muslim philosopher’s views on the argument. Then, reconstructing Allameh Tabataba’i’s “argument of the truthful ones”, we suggest a new exposition of the ontological argument, which is immune from the critiques presented to Anselm’s ontological argument and its different narrations.