An Evaluation of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s Dispute with Islamic Philosophy on the Issue of the Minority of Evils

The problem of evil and how it is incorporated into divine decrees is one of the most significant issues in Islamic philosophy. One of the most well-known responses to this issue is the theory of the fivefold division of beings attributed to Aristotle by Muslim philosophers. According to this view, evils are a necessary and inseparable part of the material world. Therefore, despite the possibility of such evils occurring, the world should still be created, as avoiding these minor evils is only possible by not creating the world at all—a solution that Islamic philosophers consider equivalent to abandoning immense good and committing significant evil. Through a deductive and a priori argument, they attempt to demonstrate, using quantitative calculations, how evils are minimal compared to goods in both human and non-human realms.
In contrast, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, by criticizing Islamic philosophy on this matter, argues that evils are not an inevitable part of the world, nor is refraining from creating the world to avoid these evils a significant evil. Using an inductive and empirical approach, similar to Islamic philosophers, he tries to show through quantitative calculations that most humans suffer from numerous evils and are deprived of various pleasures. Thus, contrary to the numerical calculations of Muslim philosophers, the claim that goods are predominant is false.
This paper, structured through a descriptive-analytical approach, primarily focuses on Ibn Sīnā 's perspectives to present the view of Islamic philosophy and then examines Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī 's critiques. Ultimately, it demonstrates that while Fakhr al-Razi fundamentally disagrees with Muslim philosophers on the rationale behind the existence of evils in the world, they share a common limitation in lacking or neglecting a qualitative and human-centric perspective in analyzing this issue.