320 Anke von Kügelgen
as the connection between the sun and the shapes of the moon.^286 Ibn
Taymiyya, in fact, not did reduce fiṭra to “intuition” (ḥads) in the sense
of the immediate grasping of the middle term. As a broader concept
of “innate intelligence,” it bears for him the meaning of “immediate
insight”^287 into knowledge in general, be it scientific or religious.
There are, however, fundamental differences between Ibn Taymiy-
ya’s apprehension of analogy and categorical syllogism and their
understanding by his enemies, some of which are mentioned in the
following. Most followers of al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā regarded the celes-
tial, active intellect (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl) as the “giver of the forms” (wāhib
al-ṣuwar) to all matters in the sublunar world and a communicator
of principal, abstract thoughts to the human mind.^288 For Ibn Sīnā,
it is also the provider of the middle term and the conclusions to the
human mind by ḥads.^289 Ibn Taymiyya, by contrast, vigorously rejects
the whole theory of the celestial intellects and of the active intellect
as the creator of sublunary forms and of the universal knowledge in
the mind.^290 Furthermore, whereas for the Peripatetics the middle term
in the categorical syllogism has to be an essential attribute, for Ibn
Taymiyya this is not a necessary condition. Although his critique of
the real definition does not lead him to the conclusion that particular
286 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 93, 302 (very similar and clearer in idem, Naqḍ
al-manṭiq, p. 202); al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 316; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya,
p. 144 (I do not follow Hallaq in his translation of al-ḥadsiyyāt takūn ʿan
afʿālihim as “the former are about their acts”, but understand it as “the intu-
itions are out of the reach of their [the experiencers’] acts,” because of Ibn
Taymiyya’s explanation in al-Radd on p. 302). The example of the explanation
of the moon’s light seems to have been often the single concrete example of
intuitive scientific knowledge cited by the advocates of ḥads (Langermann, Ibn
Kammūna, pp. 287, 289, 291). For a relation between ḥads and experience, see
Langermann, Ibn Kammūna, pp. 296–299.
287 I was inspired to choose “insight” as a translation by Davidson’s (Alfarabi,
p. 99) and Langermann’s (Ibn Kammūna, p. 288, n. 31) preference for it as an
English equivalent for ḥads.
288 Davidson, Herbert A.: Alfarabi and Avicenna on the Active Intellect, in: Via-
tor 3 (1972) 109–178; idem, Alfarabi, see index, s. v. active intellect.
289 Davidson, Alfarabi, pp. 100–102.
290 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 102–106, 115; much shortened in: al-Suyūṭī, Jahd
al-qarīḥa, pp. 220–221, 229; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 33, 43. He rebuts the
theory of the originating power of the celestial spheres also in other writ-
ings, such as his tract about the philosopher’s proof of God as the first cause,
Majmūʿat al-Fatāwā, al-mujallad 17, Cairo, vol. 9, pp. 158–163 (see Madjid,
Ibn Taymiyya on Kalām and Falsafa, pp. 158–181; Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s
Theodicy, p. 160).
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