Temporality and Eternity of the World in Ikhwān al-Ṣafā

Temporality (ḥudūth) and eternity (qidam) of the world has always been one of the important issues in Islamic theology and philosophy. In order to explain and evaluate the theory of Ikhwān al-Ṣafā, who are among the first Islamic philosophers, the authors have discovered two arguments for the temporality of the world by scrutinizing their works. The first argument is based on the concomitance between temporality and being caused, or, the contradiction between eternity and being caused. In the second argument, the changes in the world have been considered as the reason for its temporality. The first reason, though well-established, is flawed in terms of failing to explain the concomitance between eternality and being caused. Also, the second argument is not inclusive since it does not include the incorporeal existents. It is a positive point in Ikhwān’s theory that they did not limit the temporality to “time”, but since the temporality, which is the “existence after non-existence,” implies a kind of anteriority and posteriority and thus requires determining a criterion for anteriority, they should have proposed the criterion, but they have not. Ignoring the views of the opponents is another weakness of their viewpoint. Therefore, Ikhwān al-Ṣafā did not properly analyze the aspects of the problem.