On First Philosophy

Quick Facts

• Title: On First Philosophy
• Author: al-Kindi
• Date: mid-9th century, exact date unknown
• Original language: Arabic
• Field: first philosophy, meaning metaphysics, the study of what is most basic in reality
• Main claim: the world depends on one first cause, and that first cause is the one God
• Surviving state: incomplete; the surviving text gives only the first part of the treatise
• Main labels: Islamic falsafa, Translation Movement, Neoplatonism

The Problem

Al-Kindi is trying to answer a basic question: what explains the existence and order of everything else?

He writes in a world where Greek philosophy is being translated into Arabic and debated by Muslim scholars. Aristotle had called metaphysics "first philosophy" because it studies the first causes and the most basic features of being. Al-Kindi accepts that project, but he gives it an Islamic shape. For him, first philosophy is the search for the first truth, and the first truth is God.

The problem is not only "Does God exist?" It is also "Can philosophy help explain creation, unity, and truth without betraying revelation?" Al-Kindi thinks it can. He wants to show that Greek reasoning, when used carefully, supports the claim that the world is created and depends on a single, simple source.

In One Minute

On First Philosophy is al-Kindi's most important surviving metaphysical work. It argues that philosophy is the search for truth, and that truth should be accepted wherever it is found, including from Greek thinkers. That matters because al-Kindi is defending the use of translated philosophy in an Islamic intellectual setting.

The treatise then asks what the highest truth must be. Al-Kindi's answer is that everything that exists has some truth, unity, and order. None of the ordinary things around us explains that by itself. A person, a tree, or a city is "one" in some way, but each is also made of many parts. So there must be a first source of unity that is not itself divided into parts. Al-Kindi calls this source the true One. In religious language, this is God.

The work combines Aristotelian language about first causes with Neoplatonic language about the One. It also rejects the idea that the world is eternal. The world is not God. It is caused, finite, and brought into being.

The Main Argument

Al-Kindi starts from a generous rule about truth. Philosophy is not owned by one people. If a Greek thinker, a Christian commentator, a Muslim theologian, or anyone else has found a true point, the student of truth should use it. This is his defense of the translation movement: Arabic philosophy can learn from Greek books without becoming Greek religion.

He then identifies first philosophy with the study of the first truth. "Truth" here does not mean only a true sentence, like "snow is white." It means the reality that makes true things true. If something exists, it has truth because it is really there. A clay cup, for example, has truth in this broad sense because it is an actual thing and not nothing. God is the first truth because every other truth depends on God.

The argument turns on unity. Ordinary things are both one and many. A book is one book, but it has many pages. A human being is one person, but has many organs, powers, memories, and actions. A species such as "human" is one kind, but it includes many individuals. Even a word or concept can gather many cases under one heading.

Al-Kindi thinks this mix of unity and multiplicity needs an explanation. Multiplicity means many-ness: having parts, cases, kinds, or features. Unity means being one thing in some respect. If every ordinary thing is one only by also being many, then no ordinary thing is pure unity. It cannot be the final explanation of unity itself.

So there must be a cause of unity that is not just another partly unified thing. This cause must be one through itself, not one because something else holds it together. Al-Kindi calls it the true One. The true One is not a member of a class, not a body, not a bundle of parts, and not a thing whose nature can be divided into features. It is the first cause of the being, truth, and unity of everything else.

This is also why al-Kindi rejects an eternal world. If the world were eternal in the same way God is eternal, then the world would not fully depend on God. Al-Kindi argues instead that the world is caused and finite. Creation means that being is brought from non-being. In plain terms: the universe is not a self-standing rival to God. It exists because the first cause gives it existence.

Key Ideas With Examples

• First philosophy: the highest kind of philosophy because it studies first causes. If biology asks what living things do, and physics asks how bodies move, first philosophy asks why there is a reality with causes, beings, and truths at all.

• First truth: God as the source of every other truth. A sentence about a tree can be true only if the tree exists in some way. Al-Kindi pushes that idea upward: all created truths depend on the first truth that causes them to be.

• The true One: the first cause understood as absolutely one. A house is one house because bricks, beams, rooms, and doors have been arranged together. God is not one like that. God is not assembled. God is unity without parts.

• Unity and multiplicity: the pairing of oneness and many-ness in ordinary things. A choir is one choir and many singers. A body is one body and many organs. Al-Kindi thinks all created things are like this, so they need a source that gives unity without needing unity from something else.

• Divine simplicity: the claim that God is not made of parts or attributes added together. If God were a stack of pieces, something would have to explain why those pieces form one God. Al-Kindi avoids that by saying the first cause is simple, meaning not composed.

• Negative language about God: the idea that we often speak more accurately by saying what God is not. Al-Kindi thinks normal categories do not fit the true One. Calling God a body, a species, or an item inside a genus would make God one thing among others. The first cause is not one item in the universe.

• Creation from non-being: the claim that the world does not merely change shape from earlier matter but receives existence from God. A carpenter makes a table from wood. God, for al-Kindi, is not just a cosmic carpenter using pre-existing stuff. God is the cause of the world's being at all.

Why It Matters

On First Philosophy helped make philosophy in Arabic a serious intellectual project. It showed how Greek metaphysical tools could be used to defend claims important to Islamic monotheism: that God is one, that God is first, and that the world is created.

It also set a pattern for Islamic falsafa. Later philosophers would disagree with al-Kindi about many things, but they inherited his project of doing rigorous philosophy in Arabic while working inside a religious culture. The text is an early example of a problem that keeps returning in medieval philosophy: how to connect reason, revelation, creation, and God as first cause.

The work matters historically because it stands near the beginning of the Arabic philosophical tradition. Al-Kindi is not merely repeating Aristotle. He is reshaping Aristotle through Neoplatonic ideas about the One and through Islamic commitments about creation and divine unity.

Proponents, Critics, and Opponents

• al-Kindi: the author. He uses philosophy to defend the search for truth and to argue for God as the first cause and true One.

• Aristotle: the main Greek authority in the background. Al-Kindi uses Aristotelian ideas about first philosophy and causation, but he does not simply follow Aristotle on the eternity of the world.

• Neoplatonism: an important influence, especially in the language of the One and the idea that all multiplicity depends on a higher unity.

• Islamic theology: an important context. Al-Kindi's defense of creation, divine unity, and God's difference from creatures overlaps with theological concerns, even when he argues as a philosopher.

• Later philosophers such as al-Farabi and Avicenna developed more systematic metaphysics. They inherited the Arabic philosophical world al-Kindi helped open, but they often moved beyond his way of making metaphysics directly the study of God.

• Critics of philosophy in al-Kindi's time worried that Greek learning was foreign or dangerous. On First Philosophy answers that worry by saying truth is not dishonored by coming from another language or people.

Related Pages

• al-Kindi
• Aristotle
• Islamic falsafa
• Islamic theology
• Neoplatonism