Thinker · TH-0035
Al-Ash’ari
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari was a theologian of Basra and Baghdad who trained among the Mu'tazila before breaking with them. The school named after him…
أبو الحسن الأشعري
Also known as Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
874 – 936 · Basra, Baghdad
Traditions: Islamic
Schools: Ash'arism
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari was a theologian of Basra and Baghdad who trained among the Mu'tazila before breaking with them. The school named after him became one of the main currents of Sunni kalam. He held a theological voluntarism in which good and evil are fixed by divine command rather than knowable by reason alone, and he developed the doctrine of acquisition (kasb), according to which God creates human acts while human beings acquire them.
Key ideas
- Moral status depends on divine determination or command, not on qualities reason can discover independently.
- God creates all things, including human acts; the human agent 'acquires' the act (kasb).
- Rational argument may defend revealed doctrine, against both literalists and the Mu'tazila.
- God's attributes are real and eternal, not merely names for the divine essence.
Major works
- Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn (Doctrines of the Muslims)
- Kitāb al-Lumaʿ
- al-Ibāna ʿan uṣūl al-diyāna
In the conversation
- Question Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
- Question What exactly is kasb (acquisition), and is it just compatibilism with God in it?
- Question Are the words of the Veda abstract objects? Mīmāṃsā’s eternal language and Frege’s third realm
- Discussion Mu’tazilis, al-Māturīdī and Aquinas: three ways of saying reason can see part of the moral law
- Debate The Mu’tazila were right: reason can know that injustice is wrong before any revelation
- Debate Kasb is a real distinction, not a verbal escape: the Ash’ari answer deserves a hearing
- Question Analogy, negation, or “without asking how”: how can finite words say anything true of God?