The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Ibn Taymiyya

1263–1328

Also known as Ibn Taymiyyah, Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya

Damascene scholar and reformer who attacked Aristotelian logic and the theology of the philosophers, and argued that true revelation and sound reason never conflict.

Ibn Taymiyya was born in 1263 in Harran, in today’s south-eastern Turkey, and his family fled a Mongol incursion to Damascus, where his father, a Hanbali scholar, headed a madrasa that he took over in 1284. He urged resistance to the Mongol invasions of Syria and campaigned against Sufi theology and popular religious practices, which brought him trials and repeated imprisonment in Cairo, Alexandria and Damascus. He died in prison in Damascus in 1328.

He wrote no systematic treatises but a vast body of refutations and legal opinions. Very well read in philosophy and theology, he refuted Avicenna’s logic and the theology of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and attacked the “oneness of being” he attributed to Ibn Arabi. Some modern scholars count him a philosopher because of his nominalism and empiricism, while others see him as a traditionalist hostile to philosophy; today he is chiefly remembered as an inspiration of the Salafi movement.

Key ideas

Only particulars exist
Everything that exists, God included, is a concrete particular that could be perceived by the senses. Universals do not exist outside the mind; there are no shared essences within things for the mind to abstract.
Against Aristotelian logic
Definitions do not capture real essences; they are matters of linguistic convention that simply identify and distinguish things. Our concepts come from experience, not from definitions, and the logic of Avicenna is not needed to reach knowledge.
No conflict between reason and revelation
Much of what revelation teaches about God is known equally from reason and from our natural constitution (fitra). True revelation and correct reason therefore cannot conflict, which is the theme of his masterwork, Averting the Conflict.
God acts for wise purposes
God creates for a cause or wise purpose, producing the greatest benefit for the greatest number in the best of all possible worlds. Human ethics likewise weighs benefits against harms.
Region
Damascus and Cairo

Influences

Influenced by

Ibn Taymiyya1263–1328

Influenced by

Ibn Taymiyya1263–1328

Where these links come from
  • Ibn Taymiyya drew on and argued against Avicenna. Source: Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Ibn Taymiyya argued against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Source: Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Ibn Taymiyya argued against Ibn Arabi. Source: Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • Explication of the Deceit of the Jahmiyya (Bayan talbis al-Jahmiyya)
  • Refutation of the Logicians (al-Radd 'ala al-mantiqiyyin)
  • Averting the Conflict between Reason and Revealed Tradition (Dar' ta'arud al-'aql wa-l-naql)

Sources

  1. Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. William Chittick, Ibn ‘Arabī, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy