Doğada Fâillik mi? Tanrı’da Seçicilik mi? 15. Yüzyıl Tehâfüt’leri Bağlamında İlliyet ve Determinizm. [Agency in Nature? Or Omnivolence of God? Causality and Determinism in the Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Tahāfuts]

The period of the “philosophization of kalām” includes many different philosophical discussions that are often disregarded in the secondary literature of Islamic intellectual history. Looking at one of these highly contested issues, the nature of causal relations among post-classical philosophers, will reveal to us some important details about the intellectual world of a 15th century Ottoman scholar. The relationship between cause and effect also gives us the framework for the relationship among human agents as well as the particulars existing in nature. Questions such as “Could God intervene in nature?” or, with regard to the issues of miracles and resurrection, “Could they be possible physically?” are among the most debated issues in causality. When the commentaries of Khojazāda and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-įūsī on al-Ghazālī’s celebrated Tahāfut al-falāsifa are assayed in detail, a substantial picture of how the scholars in question perceived the issue of secondary causalities is revealed in the context of a 15th century Ottoman madrasa. In addition to accepting the theory of secondary causalities in broader terms, both of these Ottoman scholars also acknowledge that within some limitations, God could also interfere with the worldly affairs by changing the conventional course of things. In other words, what this paper argues is that all of works analyzed here, such as madrasa physics-kalām handbooks, Gennadios’ Orthodox creed and Mullā Jāmī’s adjudication among philosophers, theologians, and Sufis, argue against scientific causal determinism or in other words, the necessary relationship between cause and effect as it is accepted in classical Arabic philosophy (especially in Ibn Sīnā’s corpus). Instead of arguing for a necessary causal chain, all of these texts grant God an eternal power for creation and a room of intervening in worldly affairs. However, the rejection of Avicennan emanationism does not mean that there could be no necessary relationship between a cause and an effect. There is a very significant objection against the Avicennan (later Neo-Platonist) cosmology in Tahāfut and this objection is very instrumental in supporting the later post-classical arguments against the pre-eternity of the world. On the other hand, when we look at the important philosophical handbooks of the post-classsical madāris such as Tajrīd and SharĜ al-Mawāqif, we see that according to the new conception of al-ʿilla al-tāmma, there is also a deterministic scheme for the necessary relationship between cause and effect such that when all the relevant conditions (as well as the removal of the obstacles) are acquired, then a cause has to necessitate its effect. That is to say, even though later madrasa handbooks or books of philosophy rejected the Avicennan emanationism and determinism, we see that there is a redefined determinism in causal relations that are accepted by the scholars of the time.