How did the Muʿtazila and Ashʿarīs address the question of "kasb" (acquisition), and is their formulation coherent against contemporary philosophical criticism?

This question lies at the heart of Islamic kalām and touches the essence of the relationship between divine power and human action. The theory of "kasb" (acquisition) was an attempt to mediate between absolute predestination and absolute freedom, but it faced sharp criticism both historically and contemporarily. The question today: Are these formulations defensible against contemporary philosophical criticism, or do they require radical reformulation?

Inadequate Responses to Avoid

From some defenders of the kalām tradition:

"The Ashʿarī theory of acquisition solved the problem definitively." An unhistorical claim. Even within the Ashʿarī school itself, multiple and contradictory formulations of kasb emerged (al-Bāqillānī, al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī), each attempting to repair the gaps of the previous formulation. If the solution were definitive, these successive repairs would not have been needed.

"The Muʿtazila denied divine power by affirming human freedom." A misleading oversimplification. The Muʿtazila did not deny divine power, but distinguished between "power over action" and "actual action." They said: God is capable of creating human actions, but chose not to do so in order to preserve their moral responsibility. The distinction is subtle and philosophically important.

"Contemporary philosophical criticism is Western and doesn't apply to Islamic concepts." An isolationist position. The philosophical problem (how to combine divine causality with human responsibility) is cross-cultural. Contemporary critiques—whether from philosophy of action or philosophy of mind—pose logical questions valid across intellectual systems.

From some contemporary critics:

"The theory of acquisition is mere verbal play without real meaning." The classical criticism of al-Juwaynī and al-Rāzī ("more hidden than al-Ashʿarī's kasb") is repeated today in modern formulations, but this characterization is excessive. Kasb is a serious philosophical attempt to solve a real problem, even if the formulation is complex or unconvincing.

"The Muʿtazila are libertarians and the Ashʿarīs hard determinists." Direct projection of contemporary concepts. Both groups have specificities that don't exactly match contemporary classifications. The Muʿtazila, for instance, affirm "creation of actions" in a certain sense, and the Ashʿarīs affirm an "acquisition" that has some effect.

Why These Responses Are Inadequate

They share in ignoring the historical and philosophical complexity of acquisition theories. The kalām formulations were neither unified nor final, and contemporary criticism poses new questions that deserve new answers, not mere repetition or rejection.

Structure of the Historical Debate

The Muʿtazilī Position. Humans "create" their voluntary actions in reality. This doesn't mean they create them from absolute nothingness, but produce them through the power that God deposited in them. The central distinction: between "created power" (which is from God) and "produced action" (which is from the servant). The Muʿtazila say: if the servant were not the creator of his action, neither divine command nor punishment would be valid.

The precise Muʿtazilī formulation (according to Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār): God created in the servant a "created power" by which he can bring about the action or abandon it. This power is not merely a "condition" for action, but "influential" in it in reality. God does not create the action directly, otherwise responsibility would be negated.

The Early Ashʿarī Position. Al-Ashʿarī himself formulated the theory of kasb as a middle solution: God creates the action, and the servant acquires it. But what does "acquires it" mean? Here lies the complexity. According to al-Ashʿarī: the action is created by God "concomitantly" with the servant's created power, so it is attributed to the servant as "acquisition" not "creation." The created power does not affect the existence of the action, but is a condition for attributing it to the servant.

Developments of Ashʿarī Formulation. Al-Bāqillānī attempted to clarify the ambiguity: acquisition is "the connection of created power to action without influence." Al-Juwaynī saw the problem and tried to solve it: acquisition has "some effect" on the quality of the action (its being obedience or disobedience) not on its existence. Al-Ghazālī leaned toward a psychological interpretation: acquisition is the feeling of choice even if the action is created. Al-Rāzī acknowledged the difficulty and said: "Acquisition is an expression for the action being compatible with created power and decisive will."

Contemporary Philosophical Criticisms

From Action Theory. The basic criticism: the theory of kasb assumes the possibility of separating "action" (as event) from "agency" (as attribution). But in contemporary philosophy of action, voluntary action is defined by its emanating from the agent in a special way. If God were the real creator of the action, then the action is God's action not the servant's, regardless of what we call it "acquisition."

Harry Frankfurt and his followers pose: moral responsibility requires a kind of "sourcehood"—that the agent be a real source of his action. The Ashʿarī theory of kasb negates this sourcehood then tries to restore it with another term.

From Philosophy of Mind. The neuro-philosophical criticism: if created power doesn't affect action (as the Ashʿarīs say), what's the difference between it and mere illusion? Neuroscientific experiments (like Benjamin Libet's experiments) show that the feeling of will may be subsequent to the neural decision, but this doesn't eliminate agency—it redefines it. Ashʿarī kasb seems to affirm illusion and negate reality.

From Analytic Metaphysics. The problem of "causal overdetermination": if God creates the action and the servant acquires it, we have two complete causes for one event. This is unjustified causal overdetermination. Contemporary solutions (such as "top-down causation" theory) attempt to transcend this, but Ashʿarī kasb doesn't provide a clear mechanism.

Contemporary Defense Attempts

Interpretive Defense. Some contemporary thinkers (like Sherman Jackson) say: kasb is not a metaphysical theory as much as it is a religious-ethical position. The goal is to preserve both tawḥīd (everything is from God) and responsibility (humans are accountable) together, without entering into the details of mechanism. This is a pragmatic defense, but it abandons the philosophical claim.

Comparative Defense. Others (like ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī in his later works) compare kasb to contemporary theories such as "pre-established harmony" in Leibniz or "occasionalism" in Malebranche. The comparison is useful but shows that the problem is general, not specific to kasb.

Criticism of the Defenses

The interpretive defense transforms kasb from a philosophical solution to a symbolic expression. This is a retreat from the original claims of the theologians. The comparative defense shows that similar problems in Western philosophy haven't been solved either, but this doesn't make kasb more coherent.

Assessment from a Contemporary Perspective

The theory of kasb—in its classical formulations—faces serious difficulties against contemporary philosophical criticism:

1. Problem of conceptual coherence: Difficulty in conceiving a power that "doesn't influence" but "to which action is attributed."
2. Problem of responsibility: How is a human held accountable for what wasn't his real source?
3. Problem of human experience: Our direct experience of agency seems deeper than mere "acquisition."

But at the same time, contemporary criticism hasn't solved the original problem: how do we reconcile divine sovereignty with human freedom? Contemporary theories of free will (libertarianism, compatibilism, hard determinism) all face their own problems.

From the Perspective of Rational Preponderance (rajḥān ʿaqlī) (Site's Methodology)

Rational preponderance doesn't require a final solution to the problem of freedom and predestination. It suffices to acknowledge:
- The real philosophical complexity of the issue
- The limitations of solutions proposed historically and contemporarily
- The possibility of coexisting with a degree of metaphysical ambiguity

The result: historical formulations of kasb need radical development to face contemporary criticism, but the basic problem they tried to solve remains a real problem without a final agreed-upon solution.

Where We Stand in This Discussion Today

The period between 2020 and 2026 witnessed notable developments in this file on three axes. First, in analytic philosophy of religion, there was increased interest in what is called "theological compatibilism" among researchers like Kevin Timpe and Leigh Vicens, where the question of kasb is re-posed—though with different terminology—through models that combine divine sovereignty and human responsibility without requiring "alternative possibilities." These models intersect notably with Ashʿarī kasb, but transcend it by employing tools of contemporary action theory, specifically post-Frankfurt discussions.

Second, in academic Islamic studies, works emerged that re-read kasb in its historical context with greater precision, such as the works of Ayman Shihadeh that highlight the development of the concept of causal influence in al-Rāzī and afterward, and the works of Ramon Harvey that reframe the Māturīdī position as a more coherent alternative to classical Ashʿarī kasb through affirming real influence of created power.

Third, from philosophy of mind, the discussion about "conscious agency"—especially after developments in neuroscience research and artificial intelligence challenges to the concept of voluntary action—re-posed the old kalām question in a new form: can the feeling of agency be ethically real even if not metaphysically sourcing? This question gives Ashʿarī kasb—particularly al-Ghazālī's formulation—a new opportunity for dialogue, but requires conceptual reconstruction, not mere repetition of classical formulations. The discussion today is more mature and less isolated between intellectual traditions, but still far from a satisfactory solution.

For Reading

- Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-Tawḥīd wa-l-ʿAdl (Volume 8: al-Tawlīd)
- Al-Bāqillānī, al-Inṣāf fīmā Yajib