The Poison of Philosophy 295
“a wrong way in itself and distraction” (ʿayn al-ḍalāl wal-iḍlāl),^181 a
waste of time that distracts from what benefits the soul,^182 and a cor-
rupter of reason.^183
Yet Ibn Taymiyya does not deny the usefulness of establishing
concepts by inferring common features of particulars and thereby
creating definitions. Thus, he explicitly accepts various types of
nominal definitions, most of which are word-thing definitions.^184 He
even admits their usefulness for the sciences, but he insists on their
being a convention that several people have agreed upon: “Whoever
reads the books of grammar, medicine, or other sciences has to know
what the respective specialists mean by those terms and phrases.”^185
However, the existing variety of definitions even within one field of
knowledge, for instance the more than 20 definitions of “noun” in
grammar and of “analogy” in jurisprudence proves for him that defi-
nitions are not the indispensable basis for understanding and form-
ing judgments.^186
Ibn Taymiyya expresses his conviction that man is incapable of for-
mulating absolutely certain universal propositions, denying men the
capacity to ever observe all particulars. Thus, he regards universals
won by abstraction as fallible. As one example, he quotes the universal
statement “animals move their lower jaws when they eat, for we have
observed them and found them to do so” and falsifies it by the obser-
vation “that crocodiles move their upper jaws”.^187 He thereby takes an
ing” had to be “accidental” or “descriptive,” because otherwise the statement
“every laughing being is necessarily a human” must, according to Aristotle’s
rules of necessary propositions, also be true when converted into the proposi-
tion “some humans are necessarily laughing,” which is wrong (on this, see the
penetrating exposition of Street, Arabic Logic, pp. 256–261).
181 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 75; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 217; Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. 28, n. 37. Concering the Koranic terminology of ḍalāl and iḍlāl
see Rahbar, Daud: God of Justice. A Study in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qurʾān,
Leiden 1960, pp. 86–90, 349–354; Izutsu, Toshihiko: The Structure of Ethical
Terms in the Koran. A Study in Semantics, Tokyo 1959, pp. 196–199, 201–204.
182 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 31; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 208; Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, pp. 14–15, n. 20.
183 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 32.
184 Von Kügelgen, Ibn Taymīyas Kritik, pp. 187–204.
185 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 49.
186 Ibid., pp. 8, 26; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 204; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya,
pp. 7–8.
187 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 159–160.; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 259; Hal-
laq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 79–80, n. 119 (I follow his translation).
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