Abstract

The Kalam fi mahd al-khair, generally known in the West as the Liber de causis, is a small collection of propositions devoted, for the most part, to a consideration of the First Cause and the higher realities of Medieval and Ancient Metaphysics. While this work appears not to have had great influence in the Islamic Philosophical milieu, its Twelfth Century Latin translation played a fundamentally important role in the formation of Western Medieval thought and came to be adopted as part of the Medieval Aristotelian corpus thanks to its ascription to Aristotle. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide the proper foundations for study of this treatise as an influential philosophical work. ;In Part I the notion of being as originated and as Originating is examined in the context of other Proclean and Plotinian Arabic philosophical texts, after a discussion of the general Greek philosophical background. The notion of being in those texts and the Mahd al-khair is shown to be fundamentally the same and quite possibly to have the thought of Porphyry as its source. ;Part II considers the Mahd al-khair historically. After examination of the relevant testimonia, the questions of the title and composition and author are dealt with in detail. The title found in the Ankara and Istanbul manuscripts, Kalam fi mahd al-khair, "Discourse on the Pure Good," is taken as the work's original title. It is also determined that the anonymous author was probably a Muslim or Christian philosophical thinker living in the Middle East between 833 and 922 A.D. whose thought was influenced by the Plotiniana Arabica. Finally, it is shown that it is not impossible that the Mahd al-khair and the Proclus Arabus texts recently edited by Gerhard Endress came from a single Arabic translation of Proclus' Elements of Theology. ;Part III contains descriptions of the materials used in the edition together with discussions of other editions, the tradition of the text and the methodology for this critical edition. ;Part IV contains the Arabic text, the English translation and detailed notes to these. ;Finally, the study is supplemented by five appendices including relevant Arabic materials and also detailed critical observations and remarks on the Latin Liber de causis