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Udayana, Ibn Sina and Leibniz: three arguments for a first cause that do not need a beginning

Meera Kulkarni Fellow
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God & the argumentsIndianIslamicModern EuropeanMimamsaNyayaDharmakīrtiG. W. LeibnizIbn SinaKumārila BhaṭṭaUdayana#comparison#cosmological-argument#first-cause#isvara
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People often assume that arguments for a first cause depend on the universe having a beginning. I want to compare three that don't, from three traditions.

Udayana (Nyāya, eleventh century). In the Nyāyakusumāñjali he gives a series of inferences for Īśvara, starting from effects: things like the earth are products, and products, like pots, need an intelligent maker who knows the materials. Note that Nyāya held the world is created and dissolved in beginningless cycles. Īśvara is needed for each arrangement, not for a first moment.

Ibn Sina (died 1037). Things whose essence does not include existence are possible in themselves and need something to make them exist. A chain of such things, even an infinite one, is still, taken as a whole, possible in itself, so it needs a cause outside the chain that is necessary in itself. No beginning required; Ibn Sina in fact held the world to be eternal.

Leibniz (1714). Even an infinite series of states of the world, each explained by the one before, leaves unexplained why the series exists at all. So the sufficient reason must lie outside the series, in a necessary being.

What interests me is that the Indian argument is causal-and-design rather than about contingency, and that it met fierce opposition at home: the Mīmāṃsakas and the Buddhist logicians both rejected Īśvara. I'd like to hear how these arguments look side by side, and whether the opponents' objections travel.

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6 replies

  1. Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya

    Fellow

    Since you mention us: Kumārila argued that no one could have witnessed a creation, so a creator is not known by perception; that inference to a maker of the whole world has no proper example, since we have only seen potters make pots; and that a creator with no needs would have no motive to create, while one moved by compassion would not create suffering. The Veda, for us, needs no author at all, so we had no need of Īśvara. I think the motive objection travels well to Leibniz.

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  2. Layla Sfeir

    Fellow

    On Ibn Sina, one precision: the argument is from existence, not from motion or design, and it is deliberately independent of the eternity question, which is why it appealed to later theologians who disagreed with him about eternity. Its key step is the claim that the whole chain, considered together, is itself possible and so needs a cause. Critics asked, as Hume much later did too, whether a collection needs a cause beyond the causes of its members.

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  3. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    Fellow

    Aquinas would sit between your three. In his short work on the eternity of the world he argued that it cannot be demonstrated that the world had a beginning; he held the beginning by faith. His third way, from possibility and necessity, is close to Ibn Sina's, whom he had read. So the Latin tradition also had a first-cause argument that does not need a first moment, and it got it partly from the Arabic one.

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  4. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    And the Buddhist critique deserves its due. Dharmakīrti, in the Pramāṇavārttika, argues against a permanent creator: a cause that is permanent and unchanging cannot produce effects at different times, since it would either produce them all at once or never. That objection travels straight to any timeless first cause, including Ibn Sina's and Leibniz's. I find it the sharpest of all.

  5. Vikram Sethi

    Fellow

    On the logic: Udayana's inference has the standard Nyāya shape, with a reason (being an effect) and an example (the pot made by a potter). Kumārila's objection that there is no proper example for "the whole world" is an objection to the example step specifically. That is a nice case of the five-membered inference being attacked at a precise joint, which I wish my students could see more often.

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  6. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    This has gone further than I hoped. Dharmakīrti's objection is the one I will be thinking about: how does something unchanging cause things at different times? Ibn Sina would answer that the necessary being causes eternally and the variety comes from intermediaries, and Udayana would answer that Īśvara acts by will in accordance with karma. Neither answer is cheap.

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