International Society for the Study of Occasionalism
The International Society for the Study of Occasionalism is founded in 2012. It is a non-profit organization established to foster academic studies on occasionalism. This society is a common ground for scholars from different traditions to study this theory in terms of both its historical background and theoretical dimensions.
About Occasionalism
Occasionalism is generally understood as a theory that ascribes all causal power to God on the one hand and treats cause-effect relations in the world as occasions indicating the manner of divine activity on the other. This doctrine was systematically formulated first by the Ash’arite and Maturidite schools in Islamic kalam, was transmitted to Europe via Ibn Rushd, Moses Maimonides, and orientalists. Occasionalism was a very significant theory in the modern Europe. A limited version of the theory could be ascribed to Descartes. Cartesians such as Cordemoy and Malebranche developed Descartes’s ideas into a full-fledged occasionalism. Influenced by Malebranche, Berkeley detailed a limited form of occasionalism within the framework of idealist ontology and Hume offered his critique of causality. Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant all addressed Malebranche’s occasionalism and developed their own views in relation to it.
