The problem of the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of Evil, i.e. theodicy, proves to be particularly acute in Twelver Shi.i Islam, because of the historical awareness of evil within the community and of the fundamental dualism, metaphysical as well as moral, of the doctrine. However, this problem was the subject of various essays by Iranian Shi.i philosophers of Neoplatonic inspiration, trying to harmonize the teachings of the Shi.i tradition (i.e. the.adi.s attributed to the Impeccable imams) with the arguments of the Avicennian philosophy. The first part of the article focuses in detail on the works of the philosopher, theologian and lawyer Mir Damad (m. 1041/1631). His reflections on the problem are not collected in a single book, as they are in Leibniz, but scattered in works belonging to different fields (fiqh, kalam, or philosophy per se), in Arabic or in Persian. He deals successively with the problem of human freedom (qadar) versus divine determinism (gabr); with the Imami notion of bada., i.e. the apparent change of the divine Will in the course of history; with Good and Evil with regard to the ontological categories of essence (dat), accident (arad), existence (wugud), and non-existence (adam); with the execution of eschatological threats and the punishment of the damned – thus embracing all the dimensions of the problem and phenomenon of evil. The second part of the article considers some logical and unexpected developments of Mir Damad’s theses in the works of two of his students, Mulla Samsa Gilani (m. 1064/1654), in a brief epistle on perfection, and Qutb al-Din Askiwari (m. between 1088/1677 and 1095/1684), in a monumental history of universal wisdom. This should make appear that the problem of Evil was a powerful catalyst for the emergence of a “Shi’i philosophy” in the 11th/17th century.
| Yazar: | Mathieu Terrier |
| Yayın: | Oriens |
| Cilt: | 49 |
| Sayı: | 3-4 |
| Sayfa: | 269-317 |
| Tarih: | 2021 |
| DOI: | 10.1163/18778372-12340006 |
| ISSN: | 0078-6527 |
| URL: | https://brill.com/view/journals |
