Abstract

The subject that God knows the particulars in a universal way has become one of the main philosophical problems that especially medieval Islamic thinkers focused upon and interpreted after Ghazali’s critiques. The essence of the problem is that particulars change constantly and are perceived ; the knowledge of particulars involves knowledge of changes in the particulars. If we try to know it, our knowledge will change for the knowledge depends on its subject. Besides, the universals are in the intellect and apprehended by it, and never change. Then, how can the human intellect understand the particulars? If knowledge of the particulars changes the intellect while they are apprehended, why doesn’t same knowledge change God? Or if God knows particulars in a universal way, then how does He distinguish the particulars from each other? Some thinkers, such as Marmura and Leaman, added to this questions the new ones to critisize it again in the last century. We don’t hold most of their critiques, and discuss all of the questions above mentioned according to the philosophers’ passages; but we also critisize the philosophers in different ways in the conclusion