Abstract
This paper offers a detailed reconstruction of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s mereology. First, it tackles the semantics of the concepts “parthood” and “wholeness,” their epistemic status, and their extension relative to one another. It then considers the most important properties characterizing part-to-whole relations. Particular attention is devoted to explicating the parts’ conceptual and existential priority to the whole, which al-Rāzī deems to be an extensionally equivalent proprium of parts, and discussing al-Rāzī’s arguments against the possibility of wholes with infinite parts. After that, the paper considers two particularly significant doctrines whose combination is specific to al-Rāzī’s mereology, inherentism (in most cases one of the parts of a whole must inhere in the others) and reductionism (the whole is numerically identical to the sum of its parts), highlighting the historical background of the two in falsafa and kalām respectively, as well as laying out their implications. Finally, the paper delves into al-Rāzī’s rejection of multi-located accidents, explaining why the latter is incompatible with his mereology. Unable to decide which horn of the dilemma to let go, alRāzī finds himself in a genuine antinomy.
Keywords
Inherentism Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī Mereology Multi-location ReductionismShare
Details
- Authors: Francesco Omar Zamboni, University of Tübingen
- DOI: dx.doi.org/10.12658/Nazariyat.11.2.M0268en
- Page: 45-80
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