Before Essence and Existence

  1. Terminology Before embarking on this examination of being it may be helpful to provide a brief discussion of the terminology used for "being" by al-Kindi and his translators. I will be examining passages from three main sources: first, the aforementionedBook on the Pure Good orLiber de Causis ;7 second, the Arabic paraphrase of Plotinus produced in al-Kindi's circle;8 and third, al-Kindi's best-known work, entitledOn First Philosophy (hereafter FP). Part of the purpose of such texts was to establish technical terms for use in philosophy. Toward this end neologisms were invented, often for use in rendering Greek technical terms in Arabic. This is the case with three terms we find used to mean "being":anniyya ,huwiyya , andays .

Of these three, the one that has received the most attention isanniyya . Even in medieval times Arabic scholars speculated on the derivation of the word, offering sometimes fanciful etymologies.9 Though my argument does not turn on any particular etymology, the most likely derivation seems to be that suggested by Gerhard Endress: it is a substantification of the Arabicanna , which means "that" (as in "it is truethat al-Kindi is a philosopher").10 It makes its first appearance in Arabic literature at the time of al-Kindi's circle, and is prominent in the Arabic Plotinus and theLiber de Causis . The same goes for the wordhuwiyya , which later acquires a different, technical meaning in al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but in our texts is treated as a synonym foranniyya . (The exception is a passage in the Arabic Plotinus wherehuwiyya is used to translate Plotinus'stautotes , "identity."11 This led the scholar Geoffrey Lewis mistakenly to renderhuwiyya as "identity" throughout his groundbreaking translation of the Arabic Plotinus.12 ) In the plural bothhuwiyyat andanniyyat are used as synonyms of the Greekonta , "beings."13 These terminological**[End Page 299]** features are carried over into al-Kindi's own works, so thathuwiyya andanniyya seem to be accepted technical terms for the Greekeinai andon in all the texts we will be considering.14

The termays is more unusual, and to my knowledge appears at this time only in al-Kindi's own writings and in the translations produced within his circle. 15 Al-Kindi seems to have coined the word by imaginatively splitting the Arabic laysa , "is not," into la ("not") and ays ("being"). He also uses lays as a noun meaning "not-being." Like anniyya and huwiyya , the neologism ays can refer to a particular existent, with lays meaning a non-being (this usage appears repeatedly in a long passage to be examined below, FP 123.3-124.16 [RJ 41.3-43.7]). But like anniyya and huwiyya , ays can also signify being abstractly considered; as we will see below, for al-Kindi a thing can go from lays , non-being, to ays , being. 16