Free Will and the Problem of Determinism in the Theory of Dominion

The contrast between causal necessity and human free will has been a major challenging problem throughout the history of Islamic philosophy and theology. Many intellectuals have tried to solve the problem. Shahid Ṣadr is a contemporary incompatibilist Muslim scholar who contributed to the problem by borrowing and modifying Nāʾīnī’s ‘theory of will’ (ṭalab). He has formulated the problem as follows: as long as the human action is not necessitated as an instance of the principle of causal necessity it cannot exist, and such necessity is incompatible with free will, so human actions are deterministic. He then believes that the philosophical principle of “necessitation by the other,” as an aspect of causal necessity, finds an exception in free agents, and by adding the matter of dominion (salṭana) to the three philosophical matters (i.e. necessity, possibility, and impossibility), he has changed the principle from “the thing is not made existent as long as it is not necessitated” to “the thing is not made existent except by necessity or dominion.” In this paper, we seek to provide an analytic account of the ‘theory of dominion,’ establishing its cogency and accuracy by replying to objections, and in this way, we try to do justice to the free will and the problem of determinism.