The Poison of Philosophy 279
knowledge has led him to declare their writings to be bare of any
guidance or restoration of the soul. They serve only one useful pur-
pose, namely to provide arguments to refute each other.^110 Indeed,
Ibn Taymiyya frequently uses a critique of one rationalist against
another and seldom fails to immediately reject the respective counter-
argument in turn.^111 Moreover, he states that their works occasionally
served him as a source for the history of specific schools and theo-
ries, which they doubtless did.^112 He deconstructs most of the theories
about God, His messengers, and the invisible world that were known
at his time and often confronts them with his own views. Although his
tone is at times very polemical, his questions and critiques are mostly
of considerable depth and pertinence. In consistency with his view
that the application of logic is the main reason for their false dogmas,
he repeatedly criticizes in Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql their methods
of gaining definitions and deductions. Thus, this work completes al-
Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, where he in turn blames several metaphysi-
cal theories and their logical foundations. As a matter of fact, both
refutations have much in common and supplement each other. They
deserve to be studied in a thorough comparative work. The basis for
such an immense task, however, is not yet laid. Researchers on Ibn
Taymiyya’s huge Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql have so far only picked
asmāʾ al-kutub”, s. v., and below, chapters 10 and 11.1. Ibn Taymiyya can prob-
ably be considered with Yahya Michot as “the most important reader of falāsifa
after Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in the sunnite world” (Michot, Vanités intellectuelles,
p. 599). The fact that Ibn Taymiyya so extensively quotes passages from the
main Peripatetics shows, of course, that he wanted to rely on first-hand, not
second-hand sources. In addition, this seems to contradict the view that the
works of these philosophers ceased to be studied from the turn of the twelfth
century on, although there were times and places for which that view holds
true (Griffel, Apostasie, p. 353). Still, Ibn Taymiyya’s library remains to be
reconstructed, in order to be able to judge the degree to which Ibn Taymiyya
relied on the original works and not on citations of them in later writings.
110 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 9, p. 67.
111 Several times, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya agrees with Ibn Rushd’s critique of
some of Ibn Sīnā’s tenets (Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6, p. 245; vol. 8, pp. 174–175,
181; vol. 9, p. 116 et passim). See also al-Ṭablāwī, M. S.: Mawqif Ibn Taymiyya
min falsafat Ibn Rushd fī al-ʿaqīda wa-fī ʿilm al-kalām wal-falsafa, Cairo
1409/1989; al-Ṣughayyir, Mawāqif, pp. 169–172, 175–180; Michot, A Mamlūk
Theologian’s Commentary, pp. 170–172.
112 See, for instance, Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6, pp. 212, 245; vol. 8,
pp. 174, 198.
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