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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Before Essence and Existence Reconciling the Two Conceptions We have, then, found traces of two conflicting notions of being in al-Kindi's writings. When he speaks of "being alone," he means the mere act of existing that is prior to, and the subject of, the existent's essence and other predicates. But he also speaks of "a being," by which he means a fully constituted being that is already considered to have an essence.

On this latter notion, the being of each thing will be distinct from the being of anything else; on the former notion, being is mere existence and belongs to anything that God has seen fit to create. I think we can, however, discern a coherent philosophical position that would bring the two conceptions together. Consider first what al-Kindi has to say about the Aristotelian notion of substance.

In his treatise on definitions, al-Kindi defines substance as follows: On the Definitions and Descriptions of Things 166.7: "Substance" ( jawhar ) is what subsists through itself ( bi-nafsihi ). It is the bearer (hamil) for accidents, and its essence ( dhat ) does not undergo alteration. Notice how similar the role of substance here is to that of "being" ( ays ) in text (C), which first introduced us to the simple notion of being in al-Kindi.

We have the same terminology, hamil, this time used to express the fact that substance underlies accidents in the way that ays was in passage (C) said to underlie any predicate ( mahmul ). Notice also the emphasis on the fact that it can be the bearer of predication because it remains unchanged in itself, just as the "being" of passage (C) was said to subsist through a corruption. But note too the difference between "substance" in this definition and ays in passage (C).

For one thing, al-Kindi says not that substance underlies all predication, but only accidental predication. In another treatise, al-Kindi makes the same**[End Page 308]** point more emphatically in a very similar definition: "[one must] know the adjuncts of the substance that distinguish it from everything else, namely that it is subsisting through its essence ( bi-dhatihi ). ., [that it is] the bearer ( al-hamil ) for diversity, and is .

unchanging."41 Here the phrase "subsisting through its essence" shows that the being of a substance is complex being, where "to be" is to have an essence of a certain kind.