322 Anke von Kügelgen
seems to be a contradiction, there are three possibilities on the side of
the wording (naṣṣ): either the indicant established on the basis of the
wording is corrupt, or the wording itself is not authoritative, or the
indicant is not in conformity with what it is meant to indicate. On the
side of the inference, one or all of the premises can be corrupt. Ibn
Taymiyya here explicitly refers to his Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql.^295
In fact, in order to save theology from philosophical inferences that
are based on the common factor, Ibn Taymiyya would not have needed
to deny the universals in rebus. He could have simply argued that syl-
logism is not fit for the investigation of God, just as juridical analogy
is not fit for it, since God has no like and cannot be placed on an equal
footing with other particulars. The reason for Ibn Taymiyya’s rejection
of syllogistic logic therefore seems to lie in his holistic view of the basis
and consequences of Peripatetic reasoning.
12. Methods of Inferences Adopted from
the Early kalām Theologians
There are other methods of inference that Ibn Taymiyya indeed adopts
from the early kalām theologians.^296 He presents them as an ostensi-
ble challenge to the Peripatetic logicians, who restrict the methods of
inference to syllogism, induction, and analogy^297 and who see these as
references, see Rapoport, Ibn Taymiyya’s Radical Legal Thought, ch. Legal
Theory. Correct Analogy and Qurʾānic Rationalism.
295 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 373 (the passage is not included in al-Suyūṭī’s
abridgement); see his slightly less differentiated position in the Risālat al-Qiyās
(p. 14, translated and commented upon by Rapoport, Ibn Taymiyya‘s Radical
Legal Thought, chapter: Legal Theory. Correct Analogy and Qurʾānic Ratio-
nalism, n. 261.)
296 They ressemble methods from Stoic logic. For parallels between the logic of the
early kalām theologians and the stoics, see van Ess, Josef: The Logical Struc-
ture of Islamic Theology, in: Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (ed.): Logic in
Classical Islamic Culture. First Giorgio Levi della Vida Biennial Conference;
May 12, 1967, Los Angeles, Wiesbaden 1970, pp. 21–50, here p. 27. Still, it is
unclear whether Stoic logic and philosophy has been appropriated by Muslim
theologians, see Gutas, Dimitri: Pre-Plotinian Philosophy in Arabic (other than
Platonism and Aristotelianism). A Review of the Sources, in: Aufstieg und Nie-
dergang der Römischen Welt 36 (1994), pp. 4939–4973, 4959–4962.
297 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 162; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, pp. 261–262; Hallaq,
Ibn Taymiyya, p. 83, n. 126. See for instance Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt,
vol. 1, pp. 365–369; Avicenna, Remarks and Admonitions, pp. 129–130.
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