[Section: Al-Abharī’s Objection to the Argument Ruling Out an Infinite Regress of Causes]

Al-Abharī and those who followed him raised an objection to this argument ruling out an infinite regress of causes, claiming that it demonstrated the argument’s weakness. In his discussion of al-Rāzī’s al-Mulakhkhas (The Compendium) and other works, he said:

“Regarding the assertion, ‘The aggregate of those contingent causes depends on each one of them,’ etc. 0 We reply: Why could the cause bringing that aggregate into existence not be one of its members? As for his statement that this member cannot be the cause of itself or of what precedes it, and therefore cannot be the cause of the aggregate, we reply: We do not concede this. That conclusion would follow only if the cause of the aggregate were the cause of every one of its parts. Why, then, do you maintain that this is so? Something may be the cause of an aggregate considered as an aggregate without being the cause of every one of its parts. For that which exists necessarily in itself is the cause of the aggregate of existing things, but not of every one of its parts, since it cannot be the cause of itself.

“It cannot be objected that the aggregate of those causes in an infinite regress is contingent, that everything contingent needs an external cause, and that this aggregate therefore needs a cause external to it. For we reply: We do not concede that everything contingent needs a cause external to it. An aggregate composed of that which exists necessarily and that which is contingent is itself contingent, because it depends on the contingent, yet it does not need a cause external to it. Nor can it be objected that every individual constituent of the aggregate needs an external cause, for we