Jewish philosophy -- Early works to 1800; Judaism -- Works to 1900; Philosophy, Medieval -- Early works to 1800
“The absence of a property is itself a property that exists in the
body, a something superadded to its substance, an actual accident,
which is constantly renewed; as soon as it is destroyed it is
reproduced.” The reason why they hold this opinion is this: they do not
understand that rest is the absence of motion; death the absence of
life; that blindness is the absence of sight, and that all similar
negative properties are the absence of the positive correlatives. The
relation between motion and rest is, according to their theory, the
same as the relation between heat and cold, namely, as heat and cold
are two accidents found in two objects which have the properties of
heat and cold, so motion is an accident created in the thing which
moves, and rest an accident created in the thing which rests; it does
not remain in existence during two consecutive time-atoms, as we have
stated in treating of the previous proposition. Accordingly, when a
body is at rest, God has created the rest in each atom of that body,
and so long as the body remains at rest God continually renews that
property. The same, they believe, is the case with a man’s wisdom and
ignorance; the latter is considered by them as an actual accident,
which is subject to the constant changes of destruction and creation,
so long as there remains a thing of which such a man is ignorant. Death
and life are likewise accidents, and as the Mutakallemim distinctly
state, life is constantly destroyed and renewed during the whole
existence of a living being; when God decrees its death, He creates in
it the accident of death after the accident of life, which does not
continue during two time-atoms, has ceased to exist. All this they
state clearly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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