The Late Mu‘tazila and Determinism: the Philosophers’ Trap

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who states the definitive authority of deterministic Ash‘arite view on the matter of human acts, based his opinion on this matter on the Mu‘tazilite scholar Abu’l-Husayn al-Basrī’s claim that “every act necessarily requires a motive to occur”. It has been suggested that this view of Abu’l-Husayn al-Basrī which propounds a necessary link between act and motive, inevitably leads to a double form of determinism: determination of the act by the motive and determination of the act by God, the creator of the motive. But it is hard to say that this claim of determinism is valid for the whole Mu‘tazilah, especially for Qādī ‘Abd al-Jabbār who hadn’t accepted a necessary relationship between act and motive. This could be true, however, for Abu’l-Husayn al-Basrī and his school who had propounded a necessary link between act and motive. Yet it cannot be said that they had fallen into such an absolute determinism as al-Rāzī who was influenced by philosophers