برهان جهان شناختي در انديشه كانت و فلاسفه اسلامي

The Cosmological Argument in Kant and Islamic Philosophers

One of the important arguments adduced on the existence of God is the cosmological argument, which has been introduced and explained in different ways and under various titles such as the motion, causality, contingency and necessity arguments in Islamic and western schools of philosophy. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant views the arguments of proving the existence of God in the supernature as a product of the debates of the pure reason, coming into being as a result of applying the pure concepts of understanding to the ideas of reason (God, world, soul). In his view, the most important arguments adduced on the existence of God consist of ontological, cosmological and natural-theological arguments. When criticizing these arguments, he reduces the second and third arguments to the first one and then rejects it. This is because, firstly, existence is not a real predicate, and, secondly, predicating existence on the concept of God presents a synthetic (and not an analytic) propisition that could be considered neither an a posteriori synthetic proposition (since God is insensible), nor an a priori one (since a priori synthetic propositions can only be used in relation to the world of phenomena). In this article, first a summary of Kantʹs critical approach to the cosmological argument will he presented on the basis of his critique of pure reason. Next, reference will be made to the ideas of some of his commentators and critics in this regard. Finally, in order to portray a clear picture of this argument, some of the related explanations given by Islamic philosophers will be presented and, among all of them, the ones provided by Mulla Sadra and Mutahhari will be dealt with in more depth.