We might suspect...

We might suspect, then, that al-Kindi took Aristotle's aim in the Metaphysics of studying "being qua being" as central to his own undertaking, and indeed as central to an adequate philosophical understanding of God. In this paper I shall try to confirm this suspicion through a study of al-Kindi's corpus, focusing specifically on his conception of being, or, rather, on his conceptions of being; for as we shall see there are two competing treatments of being in al-Kindi.

First, in common with the Arabic Plotinus and the Liber de Causis , he has a conception that emphasizes the simplicity of being, and opposes being to predication. Second, he has a complex conception of being indebted to Aristotle. These [End Page 298] two conceptions can be reconciled: simple being, I will argue, is prior to and underlies complex being.

Finally, I will suggest that al-Kindi's simple conception of being anticipates Avicenna's distinction between existence and essence, but only to a limited extent.…