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‘Illa, kāraṇa, gù: what each tradition’s word for ’cause’ lets it ask

Layla Haddad Fellow
· 6 replies · 246 views
CausationChineseIndianIslamicIslamic jurisprudenceMohismNyayaAristotle#false-friends#illa#karana#translation
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I research classical Arabic philosophy in Beirut, and I've been thinking about how the translators of the ninth and tenth centuries handled Aristotle's aitia. They used 'illa and sabab, and here is the interesting part: 'illa already had, or soon acquired, a second life in law.

In Islamic jurisprudence, the 'illa is the operative reason of a ruling, the feature that lets a jurist extend it by analogy (qiyās). Wine is forbidden; the 'illa is intoxication; so other intoxicants fall under the ruling. The same word names a cause in physics and the ground of a legal ruling.

Aristotle's aitia was already broad, covering explanation and responsibility together. So the Arabic word kept that breadth, but in a different direction: towards legal reasoning rather than towards natural science.

That makes me want to compare. What does each tradition's word for "cause" let its thinkers ask, and what does it hide? I'd love to hear from people who know the Sanskrit, the Chinese, the Buddhist vocabulary.

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  1. Khalid Mahmood Awan

    Fellow

    The jurists were very careful with the word, and their care is philosophically interesting. Most uṣūl writers insist the 'illa must be a manifest and stable attribute that a judge can identify, such as intoxication, and they distinguish it from the ḥikma, the wisdom or purpose behind the ruling, such as protecting the mind. Rulings follow the 'illa, not the wisdom, because the wisdom is too variable to apply. That's a distinction between an operative criterion and a final cause, drawn for practical reasons.

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  2. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    Nyāya's kāraṇa is much closer to "what produces". Its three kinds of cause are usually illustrated with cloth: the threads are the inherent cause, the conjunction of the threads is the non-inherent cause, and the loom and weaver are the instrumental cause. That overlaps with Aristotle's material and efficient causes, but there's no slot for the final cause and only a partial one for form. And in epistemology the same family of words gives karaṇa, the most effective instrument, which is how a source of knowledge (pramāṇa) is defined.

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  3. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    The later Mohist canons open with a definition of gù, which means something like "reason" or "cause". As A. C. Graham reconstructs it, they distinguish a "small reason", which when present doesn't guarantee the result but when absent rules it out, from a "big reason", which when present guarantees it. In modern terms, roughly necessary and sufficient conditions. So the Mohists' word led them straight into the logic of conditions, a very different path from both Aristotle and the jurists.

  4. Kenneth Leung Chi-ho

    Fellow

    And the Buddhist vocabulary pulls in yet another direction. Pratītyasamutpāda, dependent origination, is about things arising in dependence on conditions, and the Chinese rendering yīnyuán pairs a primary cause with supporting conditions. The point there is less "what explains this?" than "nothing exists on its own". Translating it as "causation" loses the claim about the absence of intrinsic existence, which is the whole point.

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  5. Layla Haddad

    Fellow

    This is wonderful. So: Aristotle's word reached towards explanation, the Arabic towards law, the Nyāya towards production, the Mohist towards conditions, and the Buddhist towards dependence. Same English word, "cause", five different questions. Khalid, your 'illa/ḥikma distinction is now going into my lecture.

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  6. Mona Fathy

    Contributor

    A cataloguer's addition. The Arabic Aristotle came largely through the late Greek commentators of Alexandria and Athens, and their discussions of the four causes were translated too. So the Arabic 'illa inherited not just Aristotle's word but centuries of commentary on it. Sometimes the breadth you see in Arabic is the commentators' breadth.

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