Dharmakīrti and Maimonides on divine action

Here’s a juxtaposition for you: the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (c. 600 - 660) and the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138 - 1204).  Both had interesting things to say about divine action, Dharmakīrti from the point of view of a critic of theism and Maimonides from the point of view of a theist committed to “negative theology.” 

Theism of a sort reminiscent of Western philosophical theology has its defenders in the history of Indian philosophy, particularly within the Nyāya-Vaiśeșika tradition.  In particular, one finds in this tradition arguments for the existence of īśvara (the “Lord”) as a single permanent, personal cause of the world of intermittent things.  The debate between these thinkers and their Buddhist critics parallels the dispute between theists and atheists in the West.  (To map the Indian philosophical traditions onto those of ancient Greece, you might compare the Buddhist position to that of Heraclitus, the Advaita Vedanta position of thinkers like Shankara (788 - 820) to that of Parmenides, and Indian theism to Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover.  But the similarities should not be overstated.)

Dharmakīrti’s critique of theistic arguments is usefully surveyed by Roger Jackson in his 1986 article “Dharmakīrti's Refutation of Theism” (from Philosophy East and West Vol. 36, No. 4).  In response to arguments from intermittent things to a permanent cause, Dharmakīrti objects:

How, if an entity is a cause,

(But is said) sometimes to be
A non-cause, can one assert in any way
That a cause is a non-cause?  One cannot so assert.

Jackson comments:

Successive causality and noncausality poses a problem because the causal entity posited by the theist, īśvara, is permanent.  He cannot, therefore, change from moment to moment, and if he is asserted to be causal, then he must always be causal, and can never become noncausal, for that would entail a change in nature, an impossibility for a permanent entity… Simultaneous causality and noncausality poses a problem, because īśvara is a single entity, yet is being furnished with contradictory qualities at one and the same time.  Contradictory properties cannot be predicated of a single, partless entity at one and the same time, and if these properties are reaffirmed, then īśvara cannot be single, but must be multiple.  Īśvara cannot, thus, be a creator of intermittent entities. (pp. 330-31)

The objection can be read as a dilemma, to the effect that īśvara either acts successively or he acts simultaneously, and each possibility leads to an unacceptable conclusion.  Start with the first horn of the dilemma.  If īśvara acts successively, then since intermittent things sometimes exist and sometimes do not, that means that he is sometimes causing them and sometimes not causing them.  That in turn entails that he undergoes change, in which case he is not the permanent entity he is supposed to be.  To put the point in Western terms, if īśvara is sometimes not causing intermittent things and then sometimes is causing them, then he goes from potency to act and is thus not immutable.

Now the Western classical theist will say that the divine first cause of things must be eternal or outside of time and thus does not act successively.  Rather, he causes the world of intermittent things in a single timeless act.  This brings us to the second horn of the dilemma posed by Jackson in expounding Dharmakīrti.  If īśvara timelessly causes intermittent things (as the Western classical theist would put it), then he simultaneously causes an intermittent thing (insofar as he is what makes it true that such a thing exists at the times when it does exist) and does not cause it (insofar as he refrains from making it true that it exists at the times when it does not exist).  But then we are making contradictory attributions to īśvara, insofar as we say both that he is causing and that he is not causing.  And to avoid this contradiction by making these attributions of two different causes would be to abandon the unity attributed to īśvara.

There is a fallacy here, though, which can be seen by comparison with the following example.  Suppose I am drawing a line across the top of a piece of paper, but that at the same time I am not drawing a line at the bottom of the paper.  So I am both drawing and not drawing at the same time.  Is there a contradiction here?  No, because I am not both drawing and not drawing in the same respect.  There would be a contradiction only if it were said that I am both drawing a line at the top of the page and also at the same time not drawing a line at the top of the page.  But that is not what is being said.  What is being said is that I am drawing a line at the top of the page and at the same time not drawing a line at the bottom of the page, and there is no contradiction in that. 

Similarly, suppose we say that īśvara timelessly causes an intermittent being A that exists from 8 am until 9 am.  Then he is not causing it to be the case that A exists before 8 am or after 9 am but is causing it to be the case that A exists between 8 am and 9 am.  There would be a contradiction here only if it were being claimed either that īśvara both causes and does not cause A to exist between 8 and 9 am, or if it were being claimed that īśvara both causes A to exist before 8 am and does not cause A to exist before 8 am, or if it were being claimed that īśvara both causes A to exist after 9 am and does not cause A to exist after 9 am.  But of course none of these things is being claimed.  What is claimed is rather that īśvara causes the existence of something that exists during the interval in question but not before or after it, and there is nothing contradictory in that.

More can be said -- which brings us to Maimonides, who, though he certainly did not have Dharmakīrti in mind, says things that imply a response to the objection under consideration.  Maimonides famously holds that we cannot make affirmative predications of God but only negative predications.  We can say what God is not but not what he is.  What about attributions of actions to God, as when we say that God shows mercy to us?  For Maimonides these should be understood as assertions not about God’s essence but rather about his effects.  To say that God shows mercy is to say that his effects are like the effects a merciful human agent would produce.

Now, consider the suggestion that a diversity of effects implies diversity in the cause -- in particular, that it implies either numerically distinct causes (which, in the case of divine action, would conflict with monotheism) or a distinction of parts (which would conflict with divine simplicity).  Dharmakīrti might be read as putting forward such an objection, if we interpret him as saying that insofar as īśvara both produces intermittent things and does not produce him, then we have to say either that there is more than one divine cause (one which causes intermittent things and one which does not) or distinct parts within īśvara (a part which causes intermittent things and a part which does not). 

Maimonides (though, again, he is obviously not addressing Dharmakīrti himself!) responds to this sort of objection, in his Guide of the Perplexed, using the analogy of fire:

Many of the attributes express different acts of God, but that difference does not necessitate any difference as regards Him from whom the acts proceed. This fact, viz., that from one agency different effects may result, although that agency has not free will, and much more so if it has free will, I will illustrate by an instance taken from our own sphere. Fire melts certain things and makes others hard, it boils and burns, it bleaches and blackens. If we described the fire as bleaching, blackening, burning, boiling, hardening and melting, we should be correct, and yet he who does not know the nature of fire, would think that it included six different elements, one by which it blackens, another by which it bleaches, a third by which it boils, a fourth by which it consumes, a fifth by which it melts, a sixth by which it hardens things--actions which are opposed to one another, and of which each has its peculiar property. He, however, who knows the nature of fire, will know that by virtue of one quality in action, namely, by heat, it produces all these effects. If this is the case with that which is done by nature, how much more is it the case with regard to beings that act by free will, and still more with regard to God, who is above all description. (Book I, Chapter 53)

So, just as effects as diverse and indeed opposed as bleaching and blackening, hardening and melting, can be produced by one and the same cause, heat, so too can a radical diversity of effects be produced by a divine cause which is absolutely simple and unique.  And (we might add, applying the point on Maimonides’ behalf to Dharmakīrti’s objection) just as heat will effect some things in one of the ways named while affecting others not at all, so too does the same absolutely simple God cause it to be the case that a thing exists at one point while not causing it to be the case that it exists at some other point.

Maimonides considers a related objection in Book II, Chapter 18, to the effect that “a transition from potentiality to actuality would take place in the Deity itself, if He produced a thing only at a certain fixed time.”  Maimonides says that “the refutation of this argument is very easy,” for a transition from potency to act need occur only in things made up of form and matter.  (Aquinas would add that it could occur in something immaterial but still composed of an essence together with a distinct act of existence, viz. an angel.)  To suppose that since the material things of our experience go from potential to actual when they produce a temporally finite effect, so too would God have to go from potential to actual in order to produce a temporally finite effect, is to commit a fallacy of accident.  All the philosophy professors who have ever lived or who are likely ever to live have been under ten feet tall, but it doesn’t follow that every philosophy professor must necessarily be under ten feet tall.  And even if the causes with which we are directly aware in experience produce their effects by virtue of moving from potency to act, it doesn’t follow that every cause must necessarily move from potency to act.

(I have considered related objections in this post and this one.)