Muʿtazilī Perspective on Primary and Secondary Causes

The Muʿtazilites were a group of Islamic theologians who believed in human free will and moral responsibility. However, they did not share the same opinion about how God relates to natural events or how humans generate their actions and resulting effects. This paper explores the theory of primary and secondary causes in the Bahšamīya branch of the Muʿtazilites of Baṣra. First, it discusses how these Muʿtazilites explain the process of becoming and passing away in the world without resorting to occasionalism. Second, it introduces the theory of tawallud, which holds that human actions are not determined by the laws of nature or God, but rather humans generate effects through secondary causes. Finally, it examines the arguments presented by ʿAbd al-Ǧabbār, as a Muʿtazilite from the Bahšamīya school, against the theory of divine habit (ʿādah) in volume IX of the book ‚al-Muġnī fī abwāb at-tawḥīd wa-l-ʿadl‘ and proposes his idea of secondary causality as a necessary connection between events in nature that can be traced back to God as the primary cause.