Al-Šahrastānī on Proclus
Résumé
The Islamic author Tāj al-Dīn Abū al-Fath Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Šahrastānī (1086–1153 CE), devotes an important discussion in his Book of Religion and Sects (Kitāb al mihal wa-l-nihal) to Proclus, in a chapter entitled “The sophisms of Proclus on the Eternity of the World” (p. 1025-1032 Badran). Most of the discussion is taken up by an Arabic version of eight of Proclus' 18 arguments against the eternity of the world, a work that is lost in Greek but preserved, except for the first argument, in John Philoponus' De aeternitate mundi (ed. H. Rabe). This paper focuses on a paragraph at the end of Šahrastānī's account that has no precise correspondent in the extant text of Philoponus, in which the possible reasons for God's hypothetical non-creation of the world are discussed. I examine various parallels and potential sources in ancient Greco-Roman thought for the arguments attributed to Proclus, re-situating them within the context of the debate between Christians and Pagans over the creation or eternity of the world.
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