ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Before Essence and Existence Complex Being Others, such as Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny,36 have noted a double meaning of anniyya in the texts produced by al-Kindi's circle. One the one hand, as we have seen, anniyya can refer to mere existence. On the other hand, it can include the actual nature or essence of a thing: not that it is, but what it is.

In the case of a human, for example, being in this complex sense would mean "being a human." This equivocation on the meaning of anniyya is already prominent in Ustath's translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics , which uses anniyya to translate both einai ("to be" or "being" in the broadest sense) and to ti en einai ("essence").37 The complex conception of being is illustrated in passages like the following: FP 117.3-5 [RJ 31.22-24]: If time is limited, then the being ( anniyya ) of the body [of the universe] is limited, since time is not an existent ( bi-mawjud ), and there is no body without time, since time is the number of motion.

FP 120.3-4 [RJ 35.21-22]: Body is not prior to time, so it is not possible that the body of the universe have no limit, because of its being ( li-anniyyatihi ). So the being ( anniyya ) of the body of the universe is necessarily limited. Such passages actually play on the double meaning of anniyya . The simple conception is employed here insofar as al-Kindi is indeed talking about the sheer**[End Page 306]** existence of the world, and whether that existence is eternal.

But the complex conception is also evident, because he says in the second passage that the anniyya of the body of the universe causes it to have a limited, temporal existence.38 Here it would be more natural to understand anniyya as "nature" or "essence." Indeed, at one point he makes a remark that equates huwiyya , "being," with ma huwa , "what a thing is" (FP 119.15-16 [RJ 35.14-15]).

The complex conception seems to underlie another frequent usage of the words anniyya and ays , where they mean "a being." Thus anniyyat and aysat can mean "beings," onta , as mentioned briefly above in our terminological survey. A typical instance in al-Kindi can be found in his treatise On the First True Agent , where he writes that God's creative act is a "bringing-to-be ( ta'yis ) of beings ( aysat ) from non-being ( lays )" (FP 182.7 [RJ 169.6]).

Here lays seems to be the opposite of ays in the simple sense, so that "non-being" means simple non-existence.