The Poison of Philosophy 255
against those “heretics” and wrote two voluminous refutations of log-
ic and rationalism, namely al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn (The Refuta-
tion of the Logicians) and Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql (Averting the
Conflict between Reason and Tradition). These two interlinked works
have, until now, only been scarcely studied. They constitute one of the
most thorough – and certainly the harshest and most comprehensive –
critique of logic and philosophy and certainly the harshest and most
comprehensive one in the realm of Islam.
Yet, as every intense preoccupation leaves its traces on the preoc-
cupied, the arguments and tenets Ibn Taymiyya so deeply studied and
vigorously dismissed left positive imprints on his thought. The present
article examines some of these imprints and aims to challenge further
the still-widespread view of Ibn Taymiyya as a rigorous fideist and
anti-rational theologian, not only in Wahhabi circles.^9 In recent years
this view has been seriously questioned especially by Yahya Michot^10
and by Jon Hoover.^11 My research mainly draws on different sources
than the ones used by them and thus elucidates Ibn Taymiyya’s ratio-
nality and his vote for “clear reason” from another perspective. In the
few studies devoted to al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, mine included, Ibn
Taymiyya’s position has been presented so far as one of a “nominalist”
and/or an “empirist” and thus as a fervent rejection of the rationalist
deductions and universal propositions gained from experience. Fur-
ther investigation led me, however, to a more differentiated view.
9 See the studies mentioned by Krawietz, Birgit: Ibn Taymiyya. Vater des isla-
mischen Fundamentalismus? Zur westlichen Rezeption eines mittelalterlichen
Schariatsgelehrten, in: Manuel Atienza, Enrico Pattaro, Martin Schulte, Boris
Topornin and Dieter Wyduckel (eds.): Theorie des Rechts und der Gesell-
schaft. Festschrift für Werner Krawietz zum 70. Geburtstag, Berlin 2003, and
by Hoover, Jon: Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism, Leiden and
Boston 2007, pp. 19–20.
10 Yahya Michot reveals in almost all of his translations and studies of Ibn
Taymiyya’s works the rationality of his arguments (for an almost complete bib-
liography with the possibility to download many writings see http://www.muslimphi-
losophy.com/it/index.html, accessed April 3, 2008).
11 Hoover, Jon: Perpetual Creativity in the Perfection of God. Ibn Taymiyya’s
Hadith Commentary on God’s Creation of this World, in: Journal of Islamic
Studies 15 (2004), pp. 287–329; Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy (it includes
- in a revised form – two articles that had been published in the Theological
Review of the Near East School of Theology in 2006). The monograph was pub-
lished when I was preparing the final draft of this article. Therefore, in the sec-
tions where I deal with subjects he treated, I include his findings in the course
of my presentation and not at the beginning.
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