Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (أبو الحسن الأشعري)
c. 874-936 · Islamic Philosophy · Prominent
Al-Ash'ari trained under the Mu'tazila and broke with them around his fortieth year, then spent the rest of his life arguing that they had reasoned God's own words away. The attributes the Qur'an names - knowing, powerful, living, willing, hearing, seeing, speaking - are really God's and are affirmed as they stand, bila kayf, without asking how; and the Qur'an is His uncreated eternal speech. He put behind that a world of atoms with no natures in it, which God rearranges anew at every instant, so that no creature causes anything at all. Human acts are created by God and merely acquired by us, which leaves us answerable for them without leaving us any power the Mu'tazila would have recognised.
Signature
The position Ash'ari is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- strongly leans Describable
- Agency
- Occasionalism
Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- strongly leans Describable (10 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (100 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ash'ari refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Occasionalism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Continuous Creation
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death?