rivages Outils de lecture

Al-ğūd (Goodness) constitutes the main subject of the first Mīmar (Chapter) of the arguments of Proclus’ De Aeternitate mundi. The question that arises here is the following. What is the meaning of the concept of Goodness? The answer to this
question is based on the two Arabic translations of Proclus’ first Mīmar (first argument), of which the Greek original is lost. The first translation is made by Isḥāq bn Ḥunayn, and the second is attributed to Ibn Nāʿima al-Ḥimṣī. The idea of Proclean Goodness finds its philosophical origin in a fragment of Timaeus, dialogue
of Plato, according to which the cause of the creation of the world is the Goodness
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of God (Allah). Therefore, in this Mīmar, Proclus demonstrates, by the concept of Goodness, the argument of the existence of a resemblance between the Creator (al-
bāriʾ) and the Existence (the existence of the world), and this analogy is not realized only if Goodness is pre-eternal (azalī) and eternal (abadī). In the same context, Proclus uses the two expressions: the a parte ante (lam yazāl) to denote pre-eternity, which is infinite into the past (without beginning), and the a parte post (lā yazāl), to denote the eternity, which is infinite into the future (without ending). In both cases, Goodness is concomitant with eternity (al-dahr); in other words, Goodness is an endlessness (Sarmadī), and this is what makes it not conditioned by any cause ('illa), nor affected by any change (istiḥāla) nor any alteration (ta'thir), neither by generation, nor by corruption.