Human Action and the Kasb Doctrine

One of the most technically demanding sections of Al-Irshad concerns human action and the Ash'ari doctrine of kasb (acquisition or appropriation). This doctrine was the Ash'ari school's attempt to navigate the difficult terrain between two unacceptable positions: complete divine determinism (jabr), which would make human beings mere automata with no genuine agency and therefore no basis for moral responsibility, and complete human independence (ikhtiyar), which would make humans the independent creators of their own actions, compromising divine sovereignty.

Al-Juwayni presents the kasb doctrine in its standard form: human beings do not create their own actions — God creates them — but they do acquire or appropriate those actions in a way that grounds genuine moral responsibility. The acquisition consists in the coincidence of the human agent's will and the divine creation of the corresponding action. When a human being intends to perform an action and God creates that action in the agent, the agent is said to have acquired the action — it is genuinely theirs in a morally relevant sense even though God is its creator.

The Ash'ari kasb doctrine has been criticized from multiple directions. Critics have argued that it does not actually provide what it promises — that if God creates the action entirely, the agent's will is either causally efficacious (in which case the agent is creating the action) or causally irrelevant (in which case the agent is not genuinely doing anything). Al-Juwayni addresses these objections in Al-Irshad, arguing that the kasb doctrine identifies a genuine middle ground that is coherent even if its precise analysis is difficult.

He distinguishes between what the agent does (brings it about that the action occurs through a real act of will and intention) and what only God does (create the action as a real event in the world). The human will is not causally impotent — it genuinely brings about the occurrence of the action within the framework God has established. But it is also not causally independent in the sense of creating the action from nothing or independently of God's creative act.

This section of Al-Irshad reflects al-Juwayni's engagement with the philosophical tradition's analyses of causation and agency, while maintaining the theological commitments of the Ash'ari school. His careful treatment of the kasb doctrine, even if not fully resolving the difficulties it faces, exemplifies the kind of rigorous analysis that distinguished Al-Irshad from simpler creedal expositions.