According to Avicenna, whatever exists, while it exists, exists of necessity. Not all beings, however, exist with the same kind of necessity. Instead, they exist either necessarilyper se or necessarilyper aliud.Avicenna on the Necessity of the Actual: His Interpretation of Four Aristotelian Arguments explains how Avicenna uses these modal claims to show that God is the efficient as well as the final cause of an eternally existing cosmos. In particular, Celia Kathryn Hatherly shows how Avicenna uses four Aristotelian arguments to prove this very un-Aristotelian conclusion. These arguments include Aristotle's argument for the finitude of efficient causes inMetaphysics2; his proof for the prime mover in thePhysics andMetaphysics 12; his argument against the Megarians inMetaphysics 9; and his argument for the mutual entailment between the necessary and the eternal inDe Caelo 1.12. Moreover, Hatherly contends, when Avicenna's versions of these arguments are correctly interpreted using his distinctive understanding of necessity and possibility, the objections raised against them by his contemporaries and modern scholars fail.

Celia Kathryn Hatherly is assistant professor of philosophy in the Humanities Department at MacEwan University.

Introduction

Part One: God as The First Cause of Existence

Chapter One: The Modal Distinction in the Proof from theMetaphysics of the Healing

Chapter Two: The Modal Distinction in the Proof in theMetaphysics of the Salvation

Part Two: God as The Ultimate Final Cause

Chapter Three: The First Efficient Cause as the Ultimate Final Cause

Chapter Four: The Role of the Proof from Motion

Part Three: The Eternity of the World

Chapter Five: Material Potency as a Principle of Change

Chapter Six: The Eternal and the Generable