292 Anke von Kügelgen
Ibn Taymiyya repeatedly states in his direct critique that universals
exist solely intramentally (post res) and have no correlate whatsoev-
er in the extramental world, the world of particulars^164 – a tenet that
met opposition.^165 Hence, he vigorously argues against “radical” and
“moderate realism” disclosing thereby a plain “nominalism” that he
infers from the Koran.^166
“Nominalism” and “radical” or “moderate realism” are terms that
the historians of the “dispute on universals” in Latin scholasticism
use to classify the different viewpoints on the existence and mode of
the universals, such as genus or species. These terms are not without
pitfalls in Latin scholasticism, since, as Alain de Libera has convinc-
ingly shown, the manner of understanding and looking at universals
and particulars differs from author to author and cannot be under-
stood solely from their respective epistemologies.^167 These terms have
to be used all the more carefully in a context like the history of ideas
in the Islamic world, where there was apparently no broader “dispute
on universals.” I would like, however, to argue that the concepts com-
monly associated with “nominalism” and “realism” existed^168 and that
Ibn Taymiyya’s statements on the “reality” of the universals fit to a
certain extent into that dispute. My presentation is but a preliminary
approach and I use these terms for lack of better alternatives. Further
Wael B.: Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God, in: Acta Orientalia 52 (1991),
pp. 49–69. As to Ibn Taymiyya’s rejection of Ibn Rushd’s “Koranic proofs” of
God’s existence, see von Kügelgen, Dialogpartner, pp. 470–472.
164 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 9–10, 64–67; significantly shortened in: al-Suyūṭī,
Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 215; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 24–25; Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ
taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6, pp. 26–28; vol. 8, pp. 219–220.
165 The Moroccan scholar and homme de belles lettres al-Yūsī (see above, chapter
5) vehemently rejects the tenet of a solely intramental existence of universals.
If someone accepts as knowledge only the extramental particulars perceivable
by the senses, he has to reject all sciences, since “he does not know any juridi-
cal, theological, grammatical, or other rule (qānūnan)” and thus “only knows
the Scripture and the Sunna” (al-Zabīdī, Kitāb Itḥāf al-sāda, vol. 1, p. 178).
Al-Yūsī draws these inevitable consequences from al-Suyūṭī’s al-Qawl al-
mushriq fī taḥrīm al-ishtighāl bil-manṭiq, where the latter definitively severely
simplified Ibn Taymiyya’s concepts of universals and particulars (see chapters
5, 10.1 and 11.2–3).
166 See von Kügelgen, Ibn Taymiyyas Kritik, pp. 181–183, 206–209; see also
Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy, p. 52.
167 De Libera, Alain: La querelle des universaux de Platon à la fin du Moyen Age,
Paris 1996.
168 Von Kügelgen, Ibn Taymiyyas Kritik, pp. 219–220.
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