Non-existence
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
al-ʻadam · العدم · al-maʻdūm · al-ʻadam al-maḥḍ · al-ʻadam al-ṣirf · aʻdām · sheer non-existence · الاعدام · العدم الصرف · العدم المحض
in the texts
Mukhtaṣar fī ʻilm al-nafs al-insānīyah
Sheer non-being, posited as the wicked soul's end in one reported doctrine and excluded by the argument that the non-existent cannot be ascribed to God.
and had the souls been non-existent at that time, He, may He be glorified, would not have pointed to non-existence, for the non-existent is not attributed to the Existent whose existence is total.
man's existence after his non-existence is either for a benefit that returns upon him, or for a harm that reaches him, or for the denial of both sides.
when the wicked soul passes from one body to another baser than it, and from that to one baser still, it comes at the last of the matter to sheer nonexistence.
Risālat al-Wāridāt
ʻAdam, non-existence, in the strong sense of al-ʻadam al-ṣirf: something so wholly without determination that it can bear no relation, serve as no substrate, distinguish nothing, and therefore ground nothing — from which ʻAbduh derives that nothing arises out of it, that deficiency is just non-existence, and that ignorance cannot be ascribed to God.
In sum, self-evidence decrees that there is no relation between existence and sheer non-existence.
The coming-to-be of a thing out of sheer non-existence, therefore, is impossible;
and the necessity of its requiring a bringer-into-existence entails the impossibility of its coming to exist out of sheer non-existence.