The term “principle of sufficient reason” (PSR) was coined by Leibniz, and he is often regarded as its paradigmatic proponent. But as Leibniz himself often insisted, he was by no means the first philosopher to appeal to the idea that everything must have a reason. Histories of the principle attribute versions of it to various ancient authors. A few of these studies include—or at least do not exclude—medieval philosophers; one finds the PSR in Abelard, another finds it in Aquinas. And (...) while Leibniz retains pride of place in these histories, Spinoza is sometimes said to precede him “in appreciating the importance of the Principle and placing it at the center of his philosophical system.” In this paper, the author argues that the same should be said of the Islamic philosopher Avicenna. Writing 600 years before his early modern counterparts, Avicenna routinely and consistently appeals to the PSR in generating his metaphysical system. The paper aims first to establish that Avicenna deserves a position of prominence in histories of the PSR, and then to consider how he addresses certain challenges to the PSR, especially the threat posed by necessitarianism. (shrink)

This paper aims to present concisely the Islamic kalām atomism as an alternative philosophy to Hellenizing falsafa. Kalām is a theological-philosophical discourse which, first ventured to rival the falsafa represented early by al-Kindī, then by al-Fārābī and Avicenna in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, and which eventually appeared to be inclined to propose a mingling of the kalām discourse with falsafa in a series of varied "syntheses".—Focusing on the simple ontology of the basic kalām atomism, and noting the hybrid character (...) of kalām, the aim of this paper is to help to clarify the inevitable problematic consequences of those late ventures of Islamic intellectualism. (shrink)