著者

青柳 かおる

出版者

学術雑誌目次速報データベース由来

雑誌

オリエント (ISSN:00305219)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.1, pp.106-118, 1997

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Among the Ash'arites and the Mu'tazilites, it had been discussed whether the divine name (<i>ism</i>) is the same as the named (<i>musamma</i>) or the naming (<i>tasmiyah</i>). The Ash'arites before al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) insisted that the name is the same as the named in itself, i. e., God, or the divine attribute (<i>sifah</i>), because of the consensus (<i>ijma</i>') that God has the eternal names and attributes before He creates His creature. On the other hand, the Mu'tazilites insisted that the divine name is the same as the naming, i. e., the speech which man makes and is not eternal. Thus different opinions had been proposed to whether the divine name is made or not.<br>However, al-Ghazali, in his <i>al-Maqsad al-Asna</i> which deals with the 99 Beautiful Names of God, argued that since the name, the named and the naming are different from each other in meaning, the discussion done before him that the name is either same as the named or the naming was wide of the mark, and he defined the name as the word (<i>lafz</i>), which is not eternal. It seems that al-Ghazali denied the thesis of the Ash'arites before him. He also discussed that man becomes near (<i>qurb</i>) to God through the divine names. He ceased the theological discussion of ontological positions of the divine names, and he regarded the divine names as means to become near to God mystically. Thus he found a new significance in the divine names.